A Case of Cat and Mouse Page 2

  I loved my wacky family—Mom and Dad, and Ethan and Sara. And I missed them like crazy. They were all artistic; impetuous and unpredictable. Mom and Dad were actors. Ethan was a musician. Sara was a makeup artist and filmmaker. The artistic temperament had somehow skipped me. I was organized, responsible, pragmatic. Someone had to run the washing machine. Someone had to keep us in Band-Aids, ice packs and aspirin.

  I had been the practical person in the family as far back as I could remember. Coming to Mayville Heights, coming halfway across the country to Minnesota, had been the most impulsive thing I’d ever done. I hadn’t expected to make friends, to make a whole new life.

  So many things had changed for me in the last four years. I’d made friends who felt like family, fallen in love with the incredibly handsome and equally stubborn Detective Marcus Gordon and I’d found Owen and Hercules—or, closer to the truth, they had found me.

  “Do you remember the first time you saw Wisteria Hill?” Rebecca asked as though she had somehow known what I was thinking.

  I shot her a quick sideways glance. “Yes, I do.” For a long time Everett had had complicated feelings about his family homestead. He didn’t want to live there, but he wouldn’t sell the property, either. It had been overgrown and neglected when I discovered the old farmhouse one late winter day just after I’d arrived in town.

  “Hercules and Owen were just kittens then,” Rebecca said. “I have a photograph somewhere of them sitting on your back steps.”

  I grinned. “They were so tiny the first time I saw them, but they were determined to come home with me. I had no idea I was going to end up with two opinionated, furry roommates.” I had actually carried the kittens back up the long driveway a couple of times when they’d followed me, but they would not be dissuaded.

  I glanced at Rebecca again as the road curved uphill. “Do you ever regret Everett selling the property to Roma?” I asked.

  Rebecca’s mother had kept house for the Hendersons as well as using her herbal remedies as a kind of unofficial nurse to most of the townspeople. Rebecca had basically grown up at Wisteria Hill and she and Everett had loved each other all their lives.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw her smile as she shook her head. “No, I don’t. I’ve seen what can happen when you live in the past. I have so many happy memories of the place as a child, picking blueberries in the back field and blackberries on Mulberry Hill, climbing trees, swimming in the stream. But I don’t want to go backward. I like where we are now.”

  “So do I,” I said. Rebecca and I were backyard neighbors. She was the one who had first taken me to tai chi class and to Meatloaf Tuesday at Fern’s Diner.

  “I’m happy that Roma and Eddie are building their life out at Wisteria Hill. That’s how it should be.”

  When we got to the top of the long driveway we spotted Eddie up on a ladder in a clearing back away from the driveway, working on one of the small outbuildings on the property that had been moved up closer to the old carriage house. The farmhouse was to the right of the driveway. It was white with dark blue shutters and yellow doors. Roma had done a lot of work on the house even before she and Eddie had gotten married—which had taken place in their living room.

  “One thing I most certainly do not miss is that bumpy old driveway,” Rebecca said.

  I nodded in agreement. For a long time the driveway had been nothing more than two ruts cutting through an overgrown field. In the winter it was icy. In the spring it was more like a mud hole. I thought about all the times I had bounced my way to the top, on my way to feed the feral cat colony, fingers crossed that I’d make it safely up and then back down again.

  I parked and we got out of the truck. Rebecca looked down the driveway. “I remember one time being in the backseat of Everett’s old Impala. About halfway up that hill we hit a pothole that must have been six inches deep. My head smacked the roof of the car and I said a rather unladylike word.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders. “And exactly what were you doing in the backseat of Everett’s Impala?” I teased.

  “A lady doesn’t kiss and tell,” she said with a sly smile. “But I do miss that old car sometimes. I wish Everett still owned it. It had a lovely backseat.” She bumped me with her hip. “I would have loaned it to Marcus. You two would probably be married by now.”

  With that Rebecca walked over to greet Eddie. I just shook my head and followed her. Marcus and I had met because of one of his cases. For a while he’d actually considered me a person of interest. It wasn’t the best way to start a relationship, which didn’t stop what felt at times like the entire town from trying to play matchmaker.

  As I got close to the old carriage house I was hit with the memory of Eddie’s daughter, Sydney, getting stuck up in the hayloft. When her soon-to-be-stepsister—Roma’s grown daughter, Olivia—had tried to reach Sydney she had gotten trapped on the shaky platform as well. I’d been able to use a little physics along with a lot of luck, a coil of rope and a rusted chain to get them both down.

  Eddie followed my gaze as I joined him and Rebecca and I saw him swallow hard. “I’m so glad you were here that day,” he said.

  My chest got tight for a moment. I nodded. “Me too.”

  Rebecca gave my arm a squeeze. She tipped her head in the direction of the shed that Eddie was shingling. “When do you expect to be done?” she asked.

  “A few more days,” he said. “Assuming the weather cooperates.”

  Eddie was six foot four inches of muscled ex–hockey player. He still had all his own teeth and his nose had never been broken, unlike a lot of other players. He cooked, he could refinish furniture and renovate a house to put it all in. He was a romantic husband and with his sandy hair, brown eyes and wide smile he looked like he belonged on the cover of GQ as much as Sports Illustrated. I knew this small outbuilding he was fixing up as a new home for the cats would be done on time and done well.

  Rebecca glanced over at the carriage house again. “Selfishly, I’m happy that you and Roma decided not to tear that building down.”

  Eddie swiped a hand over his close-cropped hair. “It is structurally sound, at least as far as the framing and the roof trusses go.”

  “So what are you going to do with the space?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Let’s just say Roma and I haven’t reached a consensus yet.”

  I laughed.

  “Does Roma think the cats will accept the move into their new home?”

  Eddie rubbed his stubbled chin. “I hope so. There are only five cats left now and Roma has been talking about moving Smokey down to the clinic full-time.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “She’s just had the thought in the last couple of days. She said she was going to ask you what you thought.”

  Smokey was the oldest cat in the feral cat family. He had gotten his name from his smoke-gray fur. Desmond, another Wisteria Hill cat who had lived at Roma’s animal clinic since Marcus discovered him and the previously unknown colony, had seemed to tolerate the old tomcat when Smokey had spent an extended visit there. It might work.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Eddie smiled at Rebecca and at the same time tipped his head toward me. “If our cat whisperer here can convince Lucy to accept the new space, I think we’ll be okay. Where Lucy goes the others will follow.”

  Since Lucy was feral, too, I could never get too close to her, let alone touch her. But I had some sort of connection with the little cat, the same way I did with Owen and Hercules and with Marcus’s ginger tabby, Micah, who had also come from Wisteria Hill. Lucy seemed to somehow know I had her best interests at heart. And I wasn’t going to forget that it had been Lucy’s insistent meowing that had brought Marcus into the carriage house just before the hayloft had collapsed.

  I smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

  “You know, she’s been coming out to w
atch me the past couple of days,” Eddie said.

  “That’s a good sign,” Rebecca said.

  I’d been so busy at the library and working on the show that I hadn’t seen much of Roma or Eddie, or anyone else for that matter, for the past couple of weeks. “When are they going to start working on the warehouse?” I asked.

  One of the empty warehouses at the far end of the waterfront downtown was eventually going to be the home of Eddie’s hockey training center. The project had been stalled multiple times but now that Everett had gotten involved, things were finally going well.

  Eddie grinned. It was impossible to miss his enthusiasm—or to not catch a little of it. “Three weeks. Assuming there are no last-minute problems.” He gestured toward the house. “But you didn’t come here to talk hockey. C’mon. My starter is in the fridge.”

  We headed across the yard. Rebecca seemed so tiny walking next to Eddie. She was more than a foot shorter and with her layered silvery hair she reminded me of a tiny forest fairy.

  “I want to hear all about the show,” Eddie said. “What’s it like cooking on the set?”

  “Hot,” Rebecca said, raising her eyebrows for emphasis. “And steamy. Last week when we got those two unseasonably warm days I thought I was going to melt and run down a crack. Plus, the space is a lot smaller than it looks and sometimes it’s hard not to get in each other’s way.” She smiled then. “And it’s lots of fun. I never thought I would be on TV.”

  Even though the show hadn’t aired yet, Rebecca had already developed a fan base online. That hadn’t surprised me at all.

  “Do you all get along?” Eddie asked. “Or is it more cutthroat?”

  “Cutthroat? Heavens no!” she said. “When I broke my rolling pin Ray loaned me his. And when Caroline upended a bowl of flour on Kassie we all helped clean it up.”

  “The guys used to watch the original version of the Baking Showdown all the time,” Eddie said. I knew he was referring to his former teammates. “I’m glad Ruby’s friend revived the show. And by the way, Sydney wants your autograph the next time she sees you.”

  “I’m honored,” Rebecca said.

  Eddie looked at me. “What about you, Kathleen? How do you like working behind the scenes?”

  “I like it,” I said. “It’s not that time-consuming. Basically, my job is to find interesting facts for Eugenie, and sometimes Russell, to use in conversation with the contestants. I’m trying to work in references to Mayville Heights any chance I get. I’ve had to research some pretty obscure things, so it doesn’t always work.”

  The original Great Northern Baking Showdown had aired on network TV and ended twelve years ago. The premise was simple. A dozen amateur bakers competed for the top prize, fifty thousand dollars and a top-of-the-line double oven, six-burner gas range. In Elias’s remake the winner still received fifty thousand dollars, along with a chance to study at the Culinary Institute of America in New York.

  Each of the ten episodes had a different theme: bread, pastry, dessert, etc. However, at any time the judges could add a complication, such as a mystery ingredient or a mandatory baking technique. They could also take away any tool, from the bakers’ stand mixers to the parchment paper they used to line cookie sheets. The competition wasn’t just a measure of the contestants’ baking skills. It was also a test of their flexibility in the kitchen.

  At first I’d hesitated when I was approached by Elias Braeden himself to take the researcher job. I’d met him the previous winter. The man was an intriguing mix of bluntness and charm, qualities he had honed while working for my friend Ruby Blackthorne’s grandfather. Idris Blackthorne had been the town bootlegger and had run a very lucrative regular poker game, among other enterprises.

  Elias’s interests included a casino. While I had no reason to think he was anything other than an honest businessman, he had worked for Idris, which meant he wasn’t someone to turn your back on. But Ruby was very close to Elias. He’d known her from the time she was five days old and he was one of the few people she’d been able to count on as a mixed-up kid. So when he’d asked me to step in to avoid a delay in production it was partly my loyalty to her and partly my loyalty to the town that had made me say yes.

  “I think just having the production here overall is good for the town,” Rebecca said as we stepped into the side porch. “The production crew is staying here. So are the bakers. Maggie is helping the illustrator. You’re doing research. Eric is catering. Harry and Oren have worked on the sets. And I know they’ve had inquiries at the St. James and several of the bed-and-breakfasts from people interested in trying to get a glimpse of filming. Everything’s going perfectly!”

  As soon as the words were out of Rebecca’s mouth I had the urge to knock on wood. I wasn’t generally a superstitious person but I had grown up around theater people and they were. “Knock on wood” was one of my actor mother’s superstitions, a way to avoid tempting fate.

  I felt silly but I tapped softly on one of the kitchen chairs.

  Just in case.

  chapter 2

  Eddie kept a small amount of the sourdough starter for himself and sent Rebecca home with the rest, along with a detailed list of instructions for its care and feeding. Rebecca held the glass bowl securely on her lap and smiled all the way down the hill. Whatever uncertainty she’d had before seemed to be gone.

  “Thank you for everything, Kathleen,” she said as I pulled into the driveway at her house. “I’ll bring some bread over for you to try this evening.”

  “I’m looking forward to that,” I said with a smile. All the contestants practiced their recipes multiple times before an episode was filmed.

  Rebecca pulled a small brown paper bag out of her pocket and handed it to me.

  I shook my head as I unfolded the top to look inside. I knew exactly what I was going to find. Kitty treats: big surprise. They were tiny crackers shaped like little birds.

  “Roasted chicken,” Rebecca said helpfully. “It’s a new flavor Roma’s friend is testing.”

  Roma had a veterinarian colleague who also owned a small organic pet food company. Owen and Hercules had been his eager taste testers in the past. I hadn’t even noticed Eddie slip Rebecca the bag while we were at the house. Clearly it was something the two of them had planned, probably when they’d talked on the phone.

  “What am I going to do with you?” I asked.

  “Wish me luck with my bread-making,” she said with a completely straight face.

  I laughed and leaned across the seat to hug her. “Good luck,” I said. “I can’t wait to try the results.”

  Rebecca headed for her back door, carefully carrying the bowl of starter. I headed home.

  I found Hercules was still sitting on the bench in the sun porch looking out the side window. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the outdoors; it was more that he didn’t like wet grass under his feet, or mud between his toes or grackles dive-bombing his head. He liked Mother Nature from a distance.

  He turned to look at me, a questioning look in his green eyes.

  “Yes, Rebecca sent you a treat,” I said, holding up the small paper bag.

  “Mrrr,” he said. Then he jumped down and went through the door to the kitchen. Through the door as in he passed directly to the other side of the solid wooden door without even pausing and without waiting for me to unlock and open it.

  Hercules had the ability to pass through solid objects. It seemed impossible. It seemed to defy the laws of physics that I had studied in high school but it still happened. I had yet to come across any wall or door that was too dense for the little tuxedo cat to pass through to the other side.

  I pulled out my keys and heard a faint but clearly impatient meow from the kitchen. As I turned the doorknob he meowed once again.

  “Excuse me, some of us have to actually stop and open the door,” I said as I stepped into the kitchen.


  His whiskers twitched as though he was making a face at me. Which he was.

  Owen then appeared in the living room doorway. Literally appeared. Unlike Hercules, Owen couldn’t pass through solid objects, but he could make himself invisible—also equally unexplainable.

  The first time I had seen Owen’s ability was in the backyard while he was chasing a bird. It was easy to dismiss what I’d seen—or more accurately what I hadn’t seen—as a trick of the light. The first time I had been confronted with what Hercules could do was at the library. That had been harder to explain away.

  At the time a section of the library had been cordoned off. One of our meeting rooms had been part of a police investigation. Hercules had slipped nonchalantly under the yellow crime scene tape. I had scrambled after him, but he had just walked out of my reach, through the closed door in front of us, and disappeared.

  I remembered how my knees had started to shake. I’d closed my eyes and taken a couple of deep breaths. “Be there,” I’d whispered. I’d opened my eyes again. There was no cat.

  I had kept the secret about Owen and Hercules for years. I was too afraid of what might happen to them if anyone found out, even though there had been some close encounters during that time. Finally, a couple of months ago, I’d told Marcus. He had had trouble accepting what I was saying, even when Hercules walked through the kitchen door and Owen sat on a chair and then vanished right before our eyes. Marcus was even more shocked to learn that his own cat, Micah, shared Owen’s gift. Weeks later he was still looking for a rational explanation when I wasn’t sure there was one. Sometimes I had the feeling that all three cats were getting a little tired of it.

  I saw Owen and Hercules exchange a look. More than once I’d wondered if telepathy could also be one of their special skills. Owen came purposefully across the floor, stopped at my feet and fixed his golden eyes on the bag in my hand.