Curiosity Thrilled the Cat Read online

  “Do you miss Boston?” Rebecca asked.

  “Sometimes.” I ran my fingers over the rosy-purple flower petals. “My parents are actors, so I’ve lived all over the place. But Boston is where I lived the longest, so it feels like home.”

  “Your parents act?” Rebecca said. “Theater?”

  I nodded. “And my dad has done various commercials over the years. Other than that they’ve been onstage.”

  “Would I have seen your father in anything?” she asked.

  Should I tell her he was the middle-aged man shaking it like James Brown in a commercial for medication to treat erectile dysfunction? Or that he was also the golfer telling his friends he could play eighteen holes again, thanks to his disposable undergarments?

  “Do you remember the ad for the cereal Flakies—oat bran flakes and plump raisins?” I said, finally. “The leading competitor had the shriveled-up raisins.”

  “I do remember that,” Rebecca said, pulling off her glove. “In fact, I’ve eaten the cereal. The announcer had a wonderful deep voice. Was that your father?”

  I felt my cheeks getting red. “No, he was one of the shriveled-up raisins.”

  Rebecca struggled to keep from smiling, but couldn’t help it. “The raisins were good, too,” she said.

  Just then we heard footsteps coming up Rebecca’s gravel driveway. “That’s probably Ami, back from the store,” Rebecca said. “Have you met her? She’s interning at the theater and she’s also one of the lead voices in the festival choir. I’ve known her since she was a little girl.” She smiled. “She has an apartment near the Stratton, but you’ll see her here quite a bit. I’m teaching her to cook before she leaves for college.”

  “She’s been in the library a few times,” I said, as Ami Lester came around the side of the house.

  She had a canvas bag slung over one shoulder. A loaf of bread wrapped in brown paper and the dark green leaves of a head of romaine poked out of the top of the bag. Her red-blond hair was pulled into a high ponytail and she wore a gray T-shirt with a bust of Mozart silkscreened on the front. Mozart was wearing headphones, and I think his eyes were crossed.

  Ami’s eyes were troubled and her face was pale. She stopped beside us and Rebecca touched her shoulder. “Is everything all right, dear?”

  Ami swallowed a couple of times. “I, uh . . . I can’t believe it, but Mr. Easton is dead.”

  Rebecca’s mouth moved, but at first no sound came out. She dropped the glove she’d been holding. “Dead?” she finally whispered. Her color was worse than Ami’s. I took her arm. “Here. Sit,” I said, easing her down on to the top step.

  “I’m sorry,” Ami said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” She looked at me. “You’re the librarian, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I’m Kathleen.” I pointed at my house. “I just live right there.”

  Rebecca reached for Ami’s hand. “You didn’t upset me, dear. You just caught me by surprise,” she said. “It’s not as though I knew Mr. Easton. I just knew of his reputation.” She rubbed her wrist. “Are you sure he’s . . . dead?” Her voice wavered a little.

  Ami swung the bag off her shoulder and set it on top of her feet. “Uh-huh. Someone found his—him—early this morning at the theater.”

  “I, uh, did,” I said.

  They both stared at me.

  “You found him—at the Stratton? At the theater?” Rebecca asked weakly. She let go of Ami’s hand. “Oh, Kathleen, I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.

  “What were you doing at the Stratton?” she asked.

  “I was looking for Oren.” I picked up the dropped glove and handed it to her.

  “But why was he at the theater so early?” Ami said. “We never had early practice, because he said he only worked at a civilized hour.”

  “Do the police know what happened?” Rebecca asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “He was old,” Ami said. “I bet he had a heart attack.”

  I remembered the injury to Easton’s head. I wasn’t so sure it was a heart attack that had killed him. I felt a brush of fur against my leg. Owen. He sat beside me and looked intently at Rebecca.

  “Did you come to check on me?” Rebecca asked him.

  Owen meowed softly.

  “He’s beautiful,” Ami said. She leaned forward and held out her hand to Owen, who ignored her. He took a few steps closer to Rebecca and meowed softly again.

  “I’m fine, Owen,” Rebecca said. “At my age I should be a little more accustomed to people dying.” She stood up and managed a smile for Ami. “Let’s make brunch.” She looked at me. “Kathleen, would you like to join us?”

  “Thank you,” I said. “But I have a pile of paperwork I need to start on.” I turned to Ami. “It was nice to see you again.”

  “You, too,” she said.

  Rebecca took a couple of steps toward me, reached up and laid a hand on my cheek. “My dear, I’m so sorry that you had to be involved in that man’s death.” She was still very pale.

  “It’s all right,” I told her. “Take care of your arthritis, and call me if you need anything. And thank you for the flowers.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  I started across the yard to the house. Hercules had disappeared from his perch on the gazebo railing. Behind me Owen meowed. I stopped and turned back to him, tucking Rebecca’s flowers under my arm. He looked at me and then at Rebecca’s house.

  “She’s fine,” I said. Owen took a step toward Rebecca’s and stopped. “She’s fine,” I said again. “Ami is with her.”

  He started back across the grass toward the small white house. I followed, scooped him up and started for home again.

  Owen squirmed until he was turned around and could look over my shoulder. I opened the porch door, set the cat down inside and grabbed my cup from the railing. There was a fat, green-and-black-shelled bug doing the backstroke in my coffee. I picked it up and dropped it down into the grass. Three cups of coffee today, and I’d barely had one sip.

  In the kitchen I put the flowers in water, got another cup of coffee, then almost dumped it on my bare feet when Hercules came up behind me and licked my ankle.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that,” I said. He rubbed his face against my leg in apology. “How did you get in? Did I not close the screen door?” I padded out to the porch again. Herc followed. The screen door was closed. Somehow he’d come in behind Owen and me and I hadn’t noticed.

  I was trying really hard to distract myself, to not think about Gregor Easton’s body slumped at the piano at the Stratton. Or about the detective’s questions. He didn’t really think I’d done something to the conductor, did he?

  In Rebecca’s backyard Ami was spreading a yellowflowered tablecloth on the table in the gazebo. Rebecca came out the back door, carrying a tray. Ami scurried to take it from her. I watched the two of them set the table, and I felt a sudden ache of homesickness settle in the middle of my chest like a lumpy blob of cold potatoes.

  I went back into the kitchen and sat at the table with my coffee. Boston suddenly seemed a long way from Minnesota. My mother and father were doing Shakespeare in the Park again this summer. This year it was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My mother was directing, with my father in the role of Nick Bottom.

  On any given day, if they weren’t rehearsing or performing, they were reading a play to each other. So they might be completely in sync, grinning at each other like a couple of love-struck teenagers, or they might be going through “artistic differences” where they’d only speak to each other through other people. I wasn’t sure which version of their marriage was worse.

  My parents had married each other twice. My younger brother and sister, Ethan and Sara—twins—were the result of their reconciliation. I was fifteen and mortified by the undeniable proof that my mother and father, whom I thought weren’t even speaking to each other, were instead having sex, and u
nprotected sex at that.

  They were crazy . . . and I missed them. They drove me crazy . . . and I missed them. I felt the ache in my chest press up into my throat. I had eighteen more months in the contract I’d signed with Everett. Eighteen more months in Minnesota.

  Hercules went to the living room door, stopped and looked back at me, then disappeared. After a minute, when I didn’t follow him, he came back to the door, stared at me and went back into the living room. “What?” I said. I set my cup down and went into the next room to see what the cat was up to.

  He was sitting next to the cabinet that held the CD player and CDs. He swatted the door with a paw.

  “Okay, I get it,” I said, reaching inside for a CD. “But it’s going to make Owen crazy.”

  I picked up Herc as the first notes of “Copacabana” came through the speakers. About a week after I’d adopted the cats I’d discovered Hercules shared my love for Barry Manilow. When I’d put on a Manilow CD he would sit blissfully in front of the CD player, eyes closed to slits, bobbing his head to the music. Owen, on the other hand . . .

  At that moment there was a loud yowl of cat outrage as a gray streak flashed by us and dove into the closet by the front door.

  Herc and I looked at each other. I shrugged. Mr. Barry Manilow is not everyone’s taste.

  Herc and I followed “Copacabana” with our kickline version of “Can’t Smile Without You.” By the time that song was over I felt a little better. I kissed the top of Hercules’ furry black head and set him on the floor, turned down the CD player and went to make lunch.

  I worked all afternoon at the kitchen table. By suppertime I had made up the staff schedule through the end of September, ordered the books I wanted for the children’s section, and arranged to have several crates of reference material brought back to the library from one of Everett Henderson’s warehouses, where they’d been stored during the messiest part of the renovation. Plus, there was a pan of double-chocolate brownies cooling on the counter for when Maggie arrived to watch Gotta Dance.

  She tapped on my back door at quarter to eight. “I heard what happened,” she said, kicking off her shoes. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine.”

  “I hope Mr. Easton will be welcomed by the light,” she said, bending down to look for something in her backpack. “But if what I’ve heard about him was true, I think he has a few more lessons to learn.” She pulled out a bottle of wine and stood up.

  “Ruby’s latest vintage,” she said with a grin. “I volunteered us as taste testers.”

  She followed me into the kitchen. I got a plate from the cupboard for the brownies, while Maggie got the corkscrew from the drawer by the sink and set to work opening the wine.

  “What is this wine made from?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Maggie said. “Maybe rhubarb. Maybe dandelions.”

  “Do brownies go with rhubarb wine?” I said as she popped the cork.

  Maggie’s grin got wider. “Brownies go with everything.” She swiped one from the plate as she passed behind me to get the wineglasses. “How long will the library be closed?” she asked as she poured.

  “I don’t know.” I said. I picked up the brownies and headed for the living room. “I just assumed we’d be able to open tomorrow.” For the first time it dawned on me that the police could keep the library closed for days, putting the renovations even further behind schedule.

  Maggie followed with the glasses. The TV was already on and Owen and Hercules were waiting by the footstool. “Hi, guys,” she said to the cats. She knew better than to try to pet them.

  I set the brownies on the footstool and sat down, tucking my legs underneath me.

  Maggie handed me my glass and curled up in one corner of the sofa. “What were the police doing at the library, anyway?” she asked.

  I took a sip of my wine. It was light and fruity. “They—or at least the detective in charge—seem to think Easton and I were involved.”

  She set her glass on the floor by the arm of the sofa and reached for a brownie. “Involved? You mean?” She waggled her eyebrows at me.

  “Uh-huh. Apparently, onstage at the theater at six thirty in the morning.”

  “They have to ask questions like that,” Maggie said, picking chocolate crumbs off the front of her T-shirt. “It doesn’t mean they think you actually did anything . . . or anyone.”

  “They found blood at the library,” I blurted.

  She sat up straighter. “Blood? Where?”

  “In the part of the library that’s not finished, where the meeting room is going to be.” I took another sip of my wine.

  Maggie relaxed against the cushions again. “So? With all the work that’s been going on and all the things that have gone wrong, I’m surprised they didn’t find part of an ear and a couple of fingers. Anyway, you said Easton was in the computer room.”

  She was right. Gregor Easton hadn’t been anywhere near the space still being renovated, as far as I knew. I felt my stomach unknot.

  Owen had been quietly moving across the floor toward Maggie’s glass. Now he stuck his nose in the top, sniffed and jumped back at the aroma. “Back off, furry face,” she said, picking up the glass.

  Owen made low, grumpy sounds in his throat and moved back in front of the TV.

  Maggie shifted position on the couch. “Kath,” she said, “Gregor Easton wasn’t a young man. He probably had a heart attack. There’s no way anyone would seriously believe you had anything to do with his death. And as for the blood at the library—assuming it is blood and not paint—it’s more likely one of the workmen cut himself.” She gestured at Owen, sprawled on his side now in front of the television, intently watching a talking dog sell baked beans. “And no one is going to believe you set your attack cat on Easton or that you two were . . .” She paused, looking for the right word. “. . . Getting funky with each other. C’mon!”

  I thought about the gash on the side of Easton’s head. Of course, just because he’d hit his head didn’t mean that was what had killed him. He still could have had a heart attack. I leaned into the sofa cushions and stretched out my legs onto the footstool. “Why are you always so sensible and logical?” I asked.

  “You forgot my winning personality and stunning good looks,” Maggie said with a grin. The grin faded to a smile. “Seriously, Kath, this will be over in another day or two. Don’t worry about it.”

  The opening music for Gotta Dance began and Maggie turned to the TV. In the recap of the previous episodes there was a shot of rocker Pat Benatar with a gash on one side of her forehead from a fall when a lift went wrong. I pictured the wound I’d seen on the side of Gregor Easton’s head. There had been no blood around the injury or in his hair. Had someone cleaned it? And what had Detective Gordon picked up off the library floor as he’d moved me out of the way? And why had a police car driven by my house at least three times in the last few hours? It was hard to concentrate on the TV.

  I wanted to believe Maggie was right. I wanted to believe that this would all be over in a day or two. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were just getting started.

  5

  White Crane Spreads Wings

  Hercules woke me up. Unlike Owen, who just lurked and breathed on me, Herc preferred a more direct approach. He’d stand on his back legs by the side of the bed and swat my face with a paw, no claws. If that didn’t work he’d lean over and meow loudly in my ear. He’d never needed to do anything beyond that.

  I got up, made coffee and fed Hercules. There was no sign of Owen. I took my coffee cup and stood by the front door, looking down the hill.

  The sun, climbing in the sky, sparkled on the river. It was so quiet, so peaceful. It was another one of the things—to my surprise—that I’d discovered I liked about being in Mayville Heights. Hercules came to sit at my feet and started washing his face. A glass and a half of Ruby’s wine—which was a lot more potent than its light, sweet taste suggested—had had me yawning by the time G
otta Dance ended. Matt Lauer and his partner were still, inexplicably, in first place, but the talented Kevin Sorbo and his partner were safe in second.

  “Would it be wrong to get a couple hundred different e-mail addresses so I could vote more than once?” I asked Hercules. He meowed loudly once, and went back to washing behind an ear without even looking up.

  A glass and a half of wine had also made Maggie’s belief that Detective Gordon’s suggestion that I’d been involved with Gregor Easton was just a routine question seem perfectly logical. It didn’t seem so logical now.

  Owen yowled from the kitchen. “Your brother’s up,” I said to Hercules, who continued to wash his face.

  In the kitchen I found the tabby sitting by his dish. The fur on the top of his head was standing on end, and there were a couple of dust bunnies stuck to his tail. I filled his dish and gave him fresh water. After yesterday it was pretty clear Owen had parts of more than one Fred the Funky Chicken hidden somewhere. Which made sense. The cat knew every inch of the little farmhouse. How many times had he appeared out of nowhere and scared me half to death?

  I leaned against the counter and watched Owen eat. No matter what Maggie had said, I couldn’t stop thinking about Gregor Easton. Detective Gordon hadn’t said I was a suspect or told me not to leave town, but the police car that kept driving by my house since yesterday afternoon didn’t do it because Easton had died of a heart attack.

  There was nothing I could do about that, no matter how unsettled it left me. But I did need to do something about the library renovation. I’d committed to seeing it finished on schedule. Probably not a good idea, in retrospect. I couldn’t let things get any more behind.

  Owen finished eating and nudged his bowl aside. He twisted sideways, trying to get at the dust bunnies stuck to his tail. “Step one: See if I can get into the library today,” I told him.

  I went back to the living room, sat on the footstool and pulled out the phone book. I was transferred to three different people at the police station before I got an answer: Yes, the library could reopen today. An officer would meet me there to return my keys. The meeting-room area would remain closed off for at least another day.