Faux Paw: A Magical Cats Mystery Read online

  Lorenzo? Did she mean Larry Taylor? Why didn’t I know his full name was Lorenzo?

  Margo was still talking. “I’ve heard that Mr. Kenyon has created a replica of this town’s seal done in the same way as the sunburst over your door.”

  I’d heard that rumor, too, although I wasn’t sure if it was true or not. Oren didn’t talk a lot about what was going on in his life.

  “It seems that he doesn’t have a cell phone.” She glanced over at her own smartphone, lying on the table next to her briefcase. “And I haven’t had any luck getting his home phone number, either. I asked Mary and somehow the conversation turned to how many third cousins she has in town.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t laugh. If Mary didn’t want to tell you something, she could lead you into a conversational labyrinth.

  Margo’s eyes flicked to the heavy, stainless steel watch on her left arm. “If the seal does exist and it’s as good as that sun, I’d love to have it in the exhibit. It fits with the overall theme of the other artwork: the history of this part of Minnesota.”

  Oren was a very private person. His father, Karl Kenyon, was a frustrated artist, a metal sculptor who’d spent his whole life working as a laborer, dreaming of a different life. Oren had inherited his father’s artistic streak, but unlike Karl, Oren enjoyed his quiet, small-town life in Mayville Heights. He liked working on the old buildings, extending their lives or giving them new ones. He was an incredibly talented pianist as well as a skilled woodworker and he had no desire to do anything differently.

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said. “I can’t promise he’ll say yes. But I will ask.” I knew that Oren was doing some work for Roma out at Wisteria Hill, her new home.

  “Thank you.” Margo glanced at her phone again. Most of her focus was clearly somewhere else.

  “I’ll be in my office if you need me,” I said.

  She nodded without even looking in my direction and reached for a file folder on the table. I headed for my office, but before I got there I caught sight of Larry Taylor coming up the stairs.

  “Kathleen, do you have a minute?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “Is something wrong?”

  He shook his head. “It just struck me that it might make more sense to put in a permanent fixture for the little spotlights Margo is talking about rather than doing something temporary. Cost-wise it’ll actually save you money, and Oren won’t have to patch the ceiling when this show is over.”

  “Exactly how little are these spotlights?” I had a mental image of the computer room looking like the stage at the Stratton Theatre.

  “That’s what I wanted to show you,” Larry said.

  We started down to the main floor. I darted a quick sideways glance at Larry. “Lorenzo?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

  His face flushed with color. “It’s a long story, Kathleen,” he said, ducking his head.

  I held up one hand and smiled at him. “I love long stories.”

  At that moment, behind me, I heard Margo Walsh call my name. At the same time Abigail came around the corner of the circulation desk. She raised a hand. “Kathleen, the reference computers have gone catawampus again.”

  I blew out a long breath. I had a feeling it was going to be a long day.

  And it was.

  The spotlights Larry was proposing to install permanently were small and could be rotated 360 degrees, so I told him to go ahead and put them in, making a mental note to call Lita and tell her what I’d agreed to.

  Margo had final (final, final) confirmation that the exhibit would be arriving Friday afternoon, which meant the library would be closed from one o’clock on Thursday until Saturday morning. Mary started making signs so our patrons would know what was going on, while Abigail dealt with a pile of books from the book drop and I tried to persuade the aging reference software on our even older computers to boot up for another day. I found myself thinking longingly of Rebecca’s muffins sitting on my desk.

  In the end, one of those muffins and a large cup of coffee were all I had time to grab all day—I gave the other muffin to Larry, who worked through his own lunch—and that wasn’t until after the library board had left, all of them happy with the way the work for the exhibit was shaping up, and charmed by Margo and her genuine praise for the library and the town. She could certainly turn on the charm and tone down the nitpicking when it mattered.

  I was very happy that Marcus had offered to cook supper for me. He’d also stopped in at my house to check on Owen and Hercules so I could drive directly out to his house when I left the library.

  Micah met me at the door. The small marmalade tabby had appeared one day out at Wisteria Hill, the former Henderson estate that was now Roma’s home. She hadn’t been part of the feral colony of cats that called the old carriage house home. They had all been neutered as part of Roma’s trap-neuter-release program and were cared for by Roma and a group of volunteers that included Marcus and me. Roma’s best guess was that someone had simply dumped the little tabby near Wisteria Hill, maybe believing she could just join the other cats.

  For months Roma had put out food for Micah; she had named her for the way the sunlight glinted off her ginger fur. She’d also erroneously said that Micah was a he. Marcus was the one who had first noticed that the very cautious cat was in fact a she, something he’d gently teased Roma about.

  Just as Owen and Hercules, who were also from Wisteria Hill, had bonded with me, Micah had bonded with Marcus. Roma was certain she had had a home somewhere before Wisteria Hill. She was happy to let other people stroke her fur or scratch under her chin. If anyone other than me tried that with Owen or Hercules they would go from charming house cats to Tasmanian devils in about a second and a half.

  There was no sign of Marcus, but something smelled wonderful. Micah wound around my legs and I bent and picked her up.

  “Lasagna?” I asked.

  “Merow,” she said.

  The cat tipped her head to one side and looked at me, whiskers twitching. Her sense of smell was as good as Owen’s.

  “I brought you something,” I said quietly. I pulled a small bag of the same sardine kitty treats I made for my own cats out of my pocket. I took two out and held out my hand.

  Micah made a soft thank-you meow before leaning over to eat one of the small crackers.

  “You’re spoiling my cat,” Marcus said behind me.

  I turned around to face him. “Look who’s talking,” I said with a laugh. Marcus had snuck so many “treats” to Owen and Hercules, Roma had finally given him a stern lecture about what constituted “cat food” and what didn’t.

  Micah took the other cracker from my hand and I reached over and stroked the top of her head. “And she’s not spoiled. She’s an angel cat.”

  As if she’d understood every word I’d just said, Micah leaned her furry face against my cheek. We both looked up at Marcus.

  He laughed and shook his head. Then he leaned down and gave me a quick kiss and ran his hand over the little cat’s fur.

  I handed him the bag of fish crackers and put Micah down on the floor. She licked crumbs off her whiskers and looked up at Marcus.

  “One,” he said, his voice edged with warning.

  The cat bobbed her head as if in agreement. I knew he’d give her more than that and so did she.

  Marcus opened the bag and fished out two crackers. He bent down and held them out to the cat, who took them both in her mouth and then set them on the floor.

  He brushed his hands on his jeans, straightened up and pulled me into his arms for another, longer kiss. I still felt the same rush of giddiness I’d felt the first time he’d kissed me, standing out in the driveway next to my old truck.

  “How was your day?” he asked.

  “Long,” I said, pulling off my jacket and hanging it and my purse over the back of one of
the kitchen chairs.

  Marcus turned to look at the timer on the stove. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  My stomach growled loudly then, as if in answer to his question.

  “You skipped lunch again,” he said, reaching for an oversize pair of oven mitts. I noticed that he hadn’t phrased his comment in the form of a question.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said, just a little defensively, as I pulled out a chair and sat down. “I had one of Rebecca’s muffins.”

  “A muffin is not lunch,” Marcus countered. He opened the oven door, mumbled something and closed it again.

  “It was a big muffin.”

  He turned to look at me then, and I gave him my best innocent expression. It was the same kind of look Owen gave me, generally when I’d caught him doing something he shouldn’t have been. It worked about as well on Marcus as it did when Owen used it on me.

  “Kathleen, this is the third time in the last week and a half that you’ve missed lunch.”

  Actually, it was the fourth, but I wasn’t stupid enough to correct him. Micah was at my feet, looking from one to the other of us as though she was following the conversation. For all I knew, maybe she was.

  Marcus waved an oven mitt at me. “I’m bringing you lunch tomorrow.”

  “Leftover lasagna?” I asked. That was assuming there was any left over by the time I’d finished my supper.

  “How did you know I made lasagna?”

  “Merow,” Micah said then. She had the same uncanny sense of timing that both Owen and Hercules seemed to possess.

  “She told me,” I said, gesturing at the little cat and trying to keep a straight face.

  Marcus set a multicolored pottery bowl of salad on the table. “The cat told you that we’re having lasagna?”

  I shrugged. “I asked. She confirmed.”

  Once again, the “meow” was perfectly timed.

  “See?” I said.

  He laughed.

  I gestured at the little marmalade tabby. “She seems happy here.”

  He nodded. “I actually took her over to Roma today. She’s gained a little weight.” He smiled. “I mean the cat, not Roma.” He went back to the refrigerator for the salad dressing, his own secret concoction. I’d been trying for months to wheedle the recipe out of him.

  I watched Marcus move around the kitchen for a moment, just enjoying the view, so to speak. “Does she still think that Micah was abandoned?” I asked. The little cat leaned against my leg and I bent forward to pet her, wondering how anyone could have left her out at Wisteria Hill to fend for herself.

  “Uh-huh,” Marcus said. “And it makes sense. All the carriage house cats have been neutered. And she’s definitely socialized.” He gestured at Micah, still leaning against my leg, eyes half closed, purring as I stroked her ginger-colored fur.

  “I’m glad you decided to take her,” I said.

  He smiled. “I think it was more like you and Roma decided I should take her.”

  I smiled back at him. “Potato, potahto.”

  He grinned as he turned back to the stove.

  “There’s no way I could have taken her,” I said. “As it is, Owen and Hercules are squabbling over—” I exhaled loudly and shook my head. “I don’t know what. Bacon, possibly.”

  Marcus took the lasagna out of the oven and set it on a tile trivet on the countertop. “Bacon?” he asked, glancing back over his shoulder at me.

  I thought about Hercules eating Everett’s treat with what had seemed to me to be a somewhat smug expression on his furry black-and-white face. “Maybe,” I said. “Hercules has been eating bacon nearly every morning with Everett, and Owen loves bacon almost as much as he loves Maggie. But he’s slow in the morning. I think it’s just sibling jealousy, although you may be called in at some point to investigate the decapitation of one Fred the Funky Chicken.”

  “You know, Micah may not be a true Wisteria Hill cat, but I think she’s one in spirit,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. The lasagna smelled wonderful and my stomach growled audibly again. It had been a long time since Rebecca’s muffin.

  “You know how Owen is always sneaking into your truck?” Marcus reached for the plates on the counter.

  “Uh-huh,” I said slowly. Marcus didn’t know about the boys’ “superpowers,” so he didn’t know that Owen was able to “sneak” into my truck by making himself invisible.

  He tipped his head in Micah’s direction. “She’s done the same thing to me. Twice I was halfway to work before I realized that she was sitting on the backseat.”

  I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. “Really?” I said slowly. “You didn’t see her jump in the back?”

  “I didn’t even see her follow me out of the house.” He set a steaming plate in front of me and leaned down to give the top of Micah’s head a little scratch. “I guess she shares that stealth-ninja gene with Owen.”

  “I guess she does.” I stared down at the cat, who looked up innocently at me and then began to wash her face.

  It wasn’t possible. Micah didn’t share Owen’s ability. I was overreacting, I told myself sternly as I unfolded my napkin. Over. Re. Acting.

  If I repeated the words enough times, maybe I’d start to believe them.

  3

  Mia was waiting by the main entrance when I pulled into the parking lot in the morning. She had convinced both her history and art teachers to let her shadow Margo, which meant that she’d been Margo’s unpaid grunt on Tuesday and Thursday mornings for the previous two weeks.

  I pulled up the hood of my raincoat and sprinted across the pavement, dodging the puddles, grateful for my new red rubber boots. Once we were inside, Mia pushed back her own hood and I got a good look at her hair, which was now lime Jell-O green.

  “I like your hair,” I said.

  She smiled shyly. “Thank you.” Then she took her coat out into the entryway and shook it over the rubber mat. Mia was a study in contrasts. Her hair was always some neon crayon color, but she dressed conservatively. Today she was wearing a black pencil skirt with black tights and a pale blue shirt.

  I smoothed a hand over my own hair, which I had pulled back into a low ponytail. “Maybe I’ll go green,” I said.

  Mia tipped her head to one side and studied me. “I think blue would suit you better,” she said. “Or orange.” She headed for the stairs.

  Orange? I was never quite sure when Mia was kidding and when she was serious.

  Harry Taylor and his sister, Elizabeth, came into the library just after ten o’clock. Elizabeth was carrying a large mason jar. I walked over to meet them. She held the jar out to me.

  “I made a new batch of yogurt,” she said. “And I added the rest of last year’s rhubarb.”

  Harry and Elizabeth had different mothers but they’d both gotten the Taylor stubborn streak from Harrison. Elizabeth had been placed for adoption when she was born and had gotten to know her birth family only in the past year, but she was already in league with her brother to make their father’s diet healthier, hence the yogurt making. This would be the third batch I’d gotten to try, and while I had no idea if Harry Senior liked it, I certainly did.

  “Thank you,” I said. Marcus was bringing lunch and now I had something to enjoy with my late-afternoon coffee.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, and I caught a look pass between the siblings.

  “Kathleen, do you have a minute?” Harry asked.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Margo was standing in the exhibit area talking and gesturing. Mia was beside her, silently making notes.

  I held up three fingers. “I probably have about three. What do you need?”

  Before he could say anything, Elizabeth spoke.

  “Harrison met a woman online.” She folded her arms over her chest. “He’s going to meet her.”


  I’d seen the same determined expression on her father’s face more than once.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Harry swiped a hand over his chin. “Talk to him. He isn’t listening to either one of us.”

  “He could be meeting a con artist, someone who could hit him over the head and take his money,” Elizabeth interjected.

  “Your father is very . . . stubborn.”

  Harry gave a snort of agreement. Elizabeth opened her mouth to say something else, but I held up a hand to stop her. “He’s also one of the savviest people I’ve ever met. If some woman thinks she can take advantage of him, well . . .” I shook my head and tried not to smile too broadly. “I feel sorry for her.”

  Elizabeth sighed softly.

  “But I will talk to him.”

  “Really?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Thank you,” Harry said. He took off his hat, ran one hand over his balding head and put the cap back on again.

  “I can’t promise that I’ll have any more success than you two did,” I said.

  Elizabeth made a face and her mouth pulled to one side. “He gets an idea in his head and he’s so”—she made a growl of frustration that sounded so like her father I had to bite my cheek so I wouldn’t laugh—“unreasonable.”

  I held the container of yogurt to my chest with one hand and touched her arm with the other. “Let me see what I can do.” I shot a look back over my shoulder. Margo caught my eye and lifted a hand. “I need to get back to work,” I said. “But I’ll give Harrison a call at lunchtime.”

  “I appreciate that,” Harry said.

  I smiled at them both and then walked over to Margo. “I talked to Oren last night,” I said.

  Her eyebrows went up and she gave me an expectant smile. “And?”

  I turned to Mia before I answered. “Would you take this upstairs and put it in the refrigerator for me, please?” I knew that Margo could easily work Mia all morning without a break.

  “Of course,” she said, taking the glass jar from me. “Is that homemade yogurt?”

  “And the fruit on the top is rhubarb.” I smiled at her. “You’re welcome to try it.”