Paws and Effect Read online

  I ended the call and leaned back in my chair. I didn’t want the development—at least the way the plans were at the moment—to happen, either. But more than that I wanted the whole debate settled. It was beginning to affect the town. Rebecca and Everett were on different sides of the issue but they had somehow found a way for that to not affect their relationship—probably because in the end Everett would do anything for her if she asked. But they were the exception. Even at the library we’d agreed to disagree. Abigail and I were in the no camp, but Mary was for the proposal, pointing out that Mayville Heights would benefit from more tourists so close by.

  “I grew up swimming in Long Lake, picking blueberries and getting a Christmas tree out there every year,” she’d told me one morning about a week and a half previous, standing in the upstairs hallway. “And in a perfect world none of that land would ever be developed. But it’s far from a perfect world.” She’d brushed a stray bit of lint from the front of her blue sweater, which was decorated with huge yellow-and-brown sunflowers. “Time only runs in one direction, Kathleen. Forward,” she’d continued, her expression serious, which was rare for Mary. “I believe it’s because we’re supposed to keep moving forward, not live in the past.”

  I hadn’t argued with Mary’s reasoning—but I knew that Harrison Taylor had had a fairly heated conversation on the subject with her. Harrison and Mary had been friends for years and I felt sure their friendship would withstand this disagreement, but I still hated seeing them squabble instead of blatantly flirting with each other the way they usually did.

  When Maggie arrived I took her in to meet John and promised I’d bring her back lunch from Eric’s.

  “I’m going home to change,” I told Mary. “I shouldn’t be long.” Generally I didn’t start until lunchtime on Fridays.

  Mary nodded. “The young man who came in with you, he’s looking for something to stop the plans for the resort, isn’t he?”

  I turned back around to face her. “Yes, he is,” I said. “Will that be a problem for you?”

  The moment the words were out I regretted saying them. I held up my hand. “I’m sorry, Mary. I shouldn’t have asked that. I know that you don’t let personal feeling interfere with your work.”

  She gave a snort of laughter. “Yes, I do. All the time. But I promise you I won’t go into the meeting room where he’s working loaded for bear.”

  I smiled. “I appreciate that.”

  When I got home I found Hercules in the backyard sitting on the wide arm of my favorite Adirondack chair. “What are you doing out here?” I asked. He looked in the direction of the gazebo in Rebecca’s backyard. Rebecca and Everett’s backyard, I mentally corrected myself. Rebecca had been my neighbor since I’d moved to Mayville Heights. She’d been the first person to welcome me. Then I’d met Maggie and Roma when Rebecca invited me to try her tai chi class. She was one of my favorite people. Both Owen and Hercules adored her and not just because she spoiled them with kitty treats.

  Now that Rebecca and Everett were married Hercules had taken to joining Everett for coffee—and the occasional (I hoped) slice of bacon in the gazebo a couple of times a week.

  “So have you solved all the town’s problems?” I asked, scooping up the little black-and-white cat and heading for the back door. Hercules pretty much came and went as he pleased. That was because he had a very unique ability. He could walk through the door—walls, too. The first time I’d seen him do it—at the library while it was under construction—I didn’t know if I was hallucinating or having a stroke. I wasn’t sure what it said about me that seeing my cat walk through an otherwise solid wooden door or an equally solid brick wall was pretty much commonplace for me now.

  I unlocked the back door and set Hercules on the porch floor. At least Owen didn’t walk though walls. I opened the kitchen door, letting Hercules go ahead of me. “Owen,” I called. “Where are you?”

  Hercules cocked his black-and-white head to one side and looked toward the cats’ food bowls next to the refrigerator. Owen winked into view, materializing like Captain Kirk getting beamed onto the bridge of the starship Enterprise.

  No, Owen couldn’t walk through walls and doors the way his brother could. His superpower, as it were, was the ability to make himself invisible. Which he generally did at the worst times for me.

  He made his way across the kitchen floor toward me, making disgruntled little murps.

  I crouched down and stroked his fur. “I’m sorry it took so long. I took Marcus out to breakfast.” That got me a louder dissatisfied murp.

  “I need to change and head back down to the library.” My regular workday would be starting soon anyway and I wanted to see how John was doing in the herbarium. “And I need to call Rebecca,” I said aloud.

  Owen immediately headed for the back door. “No,” I said. “She’s not coming over for tea.” Owen stopped in his tracks and looked over at his brother. They exchanged a glance and then Herc nudged his food dish with his head, pushing it several inches across the floor. He looked over at me, his green eyes wide and unblinking. I didn’t need to turn toward Owen to know his golden eyes were also fixed on me.

  “Neither one of you knows the meaning of the word ‘subtle,’” I said as I got the container of sardine crackers out of the cupboard.

  “Merow!” Hercules said, which may have meant he did in fact know what the word meant, but in reality was probably his way of saying “Hurry up.”

  I gave each cat a small stack of the homemade crackers and a fresh drink of water and then went upstairs to change.

  When I came out of the bathroom after brushing my teeth I found Hercules in the hallway. Because Owen could be kind of finicky I knew it would take him a lot longer to finish his snack.

  Hercules followed me into the bedroom and poked his head in the closet. I sometimes got the feeling he’d been some sort of fashionista in a past life. He eyed every item while I was picking out my clothes as though he had an opinion on everything—which it sometimes seemed to me that he did.

  “Marcus has friends from college,” I said as I pulled the elastic from my hair and ran my fingers through it.

  “Mrrr,” Hercules said.

  “They’re here, three of them. In town, I mean.”

  I talked to the cats. A lot. For a long time I’d rationalized it by telling myself it helped me to work out things out loud—to hear what I was thinking. And that was true, but I also believed they understood most if not all of what I was saying. Given their other “skills,” it wasn’t that far-fetched.

  I told Hercules all about meeting Travis, John and Danielle. At one point in the conversation I looked over to see Owen in the doorway, carefully washing his face. He looked up at me when I stopped talking and meowed—cat for “Keep going,” perhaps?

  “It’s not like Marcus,” I said. Hercules leaned against my leg and I reached down and picked him up. If he shed any fur on my charcoal sweater it wouldn’t show. “He slept with his best friend’s girlfriend. Does that sound like Marcus to you?”

  The cat wrinkled his nose as though he was actually considering my question. “I know it was a long time ago, but . . .” I let the end of the sentence trail off because I didn’t know what else to say. Marcus hadn’t told me anything about these friends that he’d been very close to at one point in his life—in the case of Dani, extremely close. He was a very private person but this felt wrong, even for him.

  It had been hard for Marcus, who was accustomed to keeping things to himself, to share his life with me. And it had been hard for me, used to my let-it-all-hang-out family, to give him time to let me in. “I really do love him,” I said to Hercules.

  “Mrr,” Hercules said. It may have seemed silly, but I was glad both cats liked Marcus. I remembered the first time he had told me he loved me. He’d had a furry Greek chorus urging him on.

  “There’s some reason he didn’t tel
l me about them,” I said. “Something more than he slept with his friend’s girlfriend.”

  “Merow!” Owen chimed in from the doorway, one paw in the air as he paused in his fur care routine.

  “Owen agrees with me.” Hercules made a sound a lot like a sigh and nuzzled my chin. It seemed he was going to take more convincing.

  Before I left I called Rebecca. She readily agreed to come by the library and share what she knew about the area’s plant life with John. I called Marcus but the call went to voice mail. “I just wanted to check in,” I said after the beep. “I’ll be at the library if you need me.”

  Down in the kitchen I put a container of chicken soup and one of Rebecca’s rhubarb muffins in my insulated lunch bag. I grabbed my purse and the messenger bag that had been doubling as a briefcase and looked around for the boys. There was no sign of either furry face. “I’m gone. See you tonight,” I called. I waited but there was no answering meow from either one of them.

  There was a stray dried leaf on the windshield of the truck. Harry Taylor had been over earlier in the week to clean up my flowerbeds. He’d covered the two new bushes he’d planted the previous summer and some of the dried, wizened leaves that had been caught at the base of the shrubs had blown around the yard, much to the delight of Owen, who had chased them like he was a kitten again.

  I leaned over and brushed the crumpled maple leaf off the windshield before climbing into the truck and setting my various bags on the passenger floor mat.

  I adjusted the rearview mirror, looked around to make sure I had everything and said, “I know you’re here, Owen.”

  Nothing. No murp, meow or hiss. I folded my hands in my lap and waited. A minute went by—maybe—it seemed longer but I knew it couldn’t have been, given Owen’s impatience.

  “I have the rest of the morning,” I said, a warning edge creeping into my voice. Both cats may have been smarter than the average feline, but neither one of them could tell time as far as I knew. I looked at the “empty” bench seat beside me and in a moment Owen winked into sight. I had no good words to explain what it was like, suddenly seeing the little tabby in a spot that had previously appeared to be empty. It seemed to me that there was the softest of pops as he appeared, but I wasn’t even certain that it wasn’t just my mind filling in a blank because I thought there should be a sound. Owen fixed his golden eyes on me and tried to look innocent. That was a waste of time. We both knew he was trying to sneak down to the library, probably because he’d heard me say Maggie was there.

  Owen adored Maggie. Like Rebecca she spoiled him with catnip chickens. In return Owen could be counted on to dispatch any small, furry vermin that made the mistake of intruding in Maggie’s life. Maggie was one of the kindest people I’d ever met. I’d seen her rescue a seagull with a broken wing and carefully carry a spider out of her studio, but she was terrified of any kind of rodent. She wouldn’t see the humor in the dead vole in Marcus’s boot at all.

  I stuck the key in the ignition and reached for my seat belt. “Buckle up,” I said to Owen.

  To my delight he actually scanned the seat. Then he took a couple of steps toward me and meowed, studying me with narrowed eyes.

  I backed out onto Mountain Road. “Didn’t see that coming, did you?” I said with a grin.

  3

  Owen continued to eye me with suspicion, even looking back over his shoulder as though he expected me to pull back into the yard, tuck him against my elbow like a football and sprint for the house.

  The cat sneaking into the truck had happened more than once. I’d put him back in the house and then try to squeeze into the truck again without leaving any space for him to slip by me.

  It didn’t work. He was fast, more than a little devious and his ace in the hole was being able to make himself invisible. I couldn’t win, so this time I wasn’t even starting the contest.

  “You may come to the library on two conditions.” I held up a finger. “One, no wandering around the building. And two”—I held up a second finger—“after you see Maggie you stay in my office.”

  Owen’s whiskers twitched.

  I waited and tried not to think about the fact that I was negotiating with a cat.

  “Mrr,” he finally said.

  We were agreed, I decided.

  I started down the hill, braking suddenly for a soccer ball that came out of nowhere, bouncing into the street. One of the Justason boys—my up-the-hill neighbors—came out of a yard, waved at me when he recognized the truck, retrieved the ball and disappeared around a dense cedar hedge.

  Owen looked out through the windshield, a sour expression on his face. He’d almost landed on top of my messenger bag when I jammed on the brakes.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  He shook himself, stretched out on the seat and grumbled the rest of the way down the hill. I stopped at Eric’s Place for a chicken salad sandwich and a cinnamon roll for Maggie. Owen sniffed the takeout bag when I set it on the seat between us but otherwise he ignored me.

  I parked at the far end of the library lot and before I did anything else fished my phone out of my bag. Marcus hadn’t called. I kept a couple of cloth bags under the seat of the truck in case I needed them for groceries—and wayward cats. Owen climbed in without complaint. Maggie was inside. I think he would have climbed in a container of garbage if it meant he’d get to see her.

  “Not a sound,” I warned sternly. “Not. A. Sound.”

  I gathered up all my various bags and headed for the steps, loaded like a Sherpa guide headed up the side of Mount Everest.

  Abigail was at the circulation desk, talking to someone on the phone. She raised a hand in hello as I passed her on my way to the stairs.

  “I’ll take you up to my office and then I’ll go get—” I didn’t get to finish the sentence. The cloth bag squirmed against my hip and Owen leaped out. He bolted across the mosaic tile floor and disappeared around a shelving unit. I looked around. The library was quiet. Maybe no one will see him. Maybe I can just give chase, corral Owen and no one will be the wiser.

  Wishful thinking on my part.

  I dropped everything but Maggie’s lunch on one of the low tables in the children’s department and gave chase. Owen wasn’t on the other side of the shelves. In fact I didn’t see so much as a twitch of whisker or a flick of his tabby tail.

  I headed for the meeting room where Abigail had gotten John settled. That’s where Maggie was, so that’s where Owen would be.

  And he was, already sitting on a chair, head cocked to one side while Maggie leaned down, talking to him in a low voice. Rebecca was seated on the other side of the long table next to John. Several of her mother’s journals were spread in front of them. John looked up and raised a hand in hello before dropping his gaze back down to the open notebook he’d been studying.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Maggie caught sight of me in the doorway and grinned. “Hi, Kath,” she said. “I see you brought us some help.”

  “I’m sorry.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “He snuck in the truck and I wanted to see how you were all doing. I should have turned around.” I glared at Owen as I said the last sentence. As soon as I got my hands on that furry little sneak I was taking him back home.

  And the furry little sneak knew that. He jumped up onto the table and walked across it to Rebecca, sitting down next to her elbow.

  “Hello, Owen,” she said, beaming at him. “You’re looking very handsome today.” She looked up at me. “Hello, Kathleen,” she said.

  “Hello, Rebecca,” I said. I handed Maggie the takeout bag with her lunch and started around the end of the table after Owen. “I’m sorry for the disruption.”

  “Owen’s not a disruption,” Rebecca said. The cat gave me a smug look and nudged her pencil with his paw.

  “Owen,” I said sharply. “Leave that alone!”

 
The pencil rolled across the tabletop. Owen walked behind it to the table edge and watched as Rebecca caught it before it ended up on the floor.

  I tucked a strand of hair that had fallen in my face back behind my ear. “He may not be a disruption but he has no business being here, either,” I said, trying and failing to keep the frustration I was feeling out of my voice. “I thought I could take him up to my office and he’d stay there.”

  “I think the cat’s out of the bag,” Rebecca said, eyes twinkling.

  Behind me Maggie gave a snort of laughter. I turned to look at her.

  “I’m sorry, Kathleen,” she laughed. “Rebecca’s right.”

  “Both of you are a big part of why that cat is so spoiled.” I had to stop myself from shaking my finger at them.

  John, who had been watching everything with a bemused expression on his face, reached over to stroke the cat’s fur.

  “You can’t pet him,” I said, sticking my arm in front of his hand.

  John looked confused. “I’m not allergic, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Owen was feral,” Maggie said.

  The cat turned at the sound of her voice and she smiled at him.

  “He isn’t good about anyone other than me touching him,” I explained.

  “So what does he do if someone else touches him?” John asked.

  “Have you ever seen any old Looney Tunes cartoons?” I said. While Owen was busy giving adoring kitty eyes to Maggie, I moved around to Rebecca’s side of the table.

  “Sure,” John said. “There was a local station that used to run them every Sunday morning when I was in college.”

  “Remember the Tasmanian Devil?”

  John looked at Owen, who was now sniffing the stack of books in front of Rebecca while she smiled indulgently at him. “You’re kidding?” he said.