A Case of Cat and Mouse Page 5

  When I had asked her about the origin of the story she’d just smiled and said, “Sometimes perception is just as important as reality,” and left it at that.

  Susan held out her arm, hand folded into a fist. She tipped her head in the direction of the three boys. “Rock, paper, scissors?” she asked.

  I smiled. “It’s okay. I have this.”

  “You’re taking all the fun out of my workplace,” she said, wrinkling her nose at me.

  “You would have won,” I said. “You always win when we do rock, paper, scissors.”

  She grinned. “I know. That’s the fun part.”

  I shook my head and walked over to the three boys.

  * * *

  Lita came into the library about quarter to eight. Everett’s assistant sometimes worked late hours. Kate and Caroline had left by then and I had helped the three boys find the books they needed for their English papers. Now I was dealing with a temperamental computer monitor, muttering to myself under my breath.

  Lita frowned at the computer. “Does this happen a lot?” she asked.

  “More frequently than I’d like,” I said. “That’s why I’m looking at starting to replace them all over time, beginning with the next budget. One of these days, banging on the side with the heel of my hand is going to stop working.”

  “I’ll talk to Everett about this,” she said.

  “I appreciate the offer.” I grunted as I leaned over the top of the monitor so I could attach a new cable at the back. “But Everett can’t rescue the library every time we need something. We need to make the budget work.”

  Lita nodded. “I agree, but when Rebecca finds out, I can’t guarantee that she’ll agree.”

  I sighed. “I know.” Rebecca loved the library. It was where she had indulged her love of books as a child and she was happy to spend money for whatever we needed. And if Rebecca was happy then so was Everett. I, on the other hand, felt we needed to run things without Everett always riding to the rescue.

  “What I can do is make sure Everett knows what’s going on and how you feel about money falling from the sky, so to speak.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  A lot of people in the town and the surrounding area depended on our public-access computers. Even on a quiet Friday night all but the one I was working on were in use. I finished attaching the cable I’d just switched in for what I believed was one with a wonky connection somewhere. I held my breath—at least mentally—and then gave a sigh of relief when the monitor came back to life.

  “We’re good for another day,” I said to Lita. I grabbed the balky old cable and for the first time noticed that she was holding a large white envelope. “You found one.” I knew the envelope had to contain a calendar.

  She smiled. “Two, actually, in my bottom desk drawer. I set them aside for some reason but I’ll be darned if I know why.”

  I took the envelope from her. “Thank you for finding this and for bringing it over.” On the phone I had explained what Eugenie wanted to do. “I don’t know if the calendar will generate any interest in Mayville Heights, but it can’t hurt.”

  “You’re very welcome,” Lita said. There was a teasing gleaming in her eye. “Burtis wants to know when you’re coming out for a rematch.”

  We started walking toward the front doors. “That man is a glutton for punishment,” I said.

  “He’s bone-headed stubborn. No argument there.”

  Lita had been “keeping company” with Burtis Chapman for quite a while now. She was elegant and calm, the kind of person you wanted in your lifeboat. Burtis was larger than life, a self-made man who had worked for the town bootlegger when he was barely a teenager. He and Lita were crazy about each other, and anyone who had dared to comment on their relationship to their faces had been stared into silence.

  I considered Burtis a friend and not just because he’d once helped Marcus save me from a burning building. He was loyal and dependable and his word was his bond. That was more than enough for me.

  His son, Brady, had bought a pinball machine a while back that he was keeping at his father’s house. I had beaten Burtis twice at the game after giving him fair warning that I was a pretty good player. I’d spent a lot of time playing pinball when my parents were doing summer stock when I was a kid. For a while I was making enough money to indulge my comic book habit and then my father found out what I was up to and my days as a pinball shark were over.

  “He says the third time is a charm,” Lita said. She shook her head.

  I smiled. “I love an optimist. Not that optimism is going to help his game. Tell Burtis I’ll be out as soon as the show stops taping.”

  She pulled her keys out of her pocket. “Do you think Rebecca has a chance of winning?”

  I nodded. “I really do, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep your fingers crossed, just in case,” I said. “And tell that big optimist to keep his crossed as well.”

  Lita laughed. “I will.”

  * * *

  It stayed quiet until closing time. I said good night to Susan and Levi and drove over to the community center. Zach Redmond was at the back door security desk. Zach also worked part-time as a bartender at The Brick. He was taking several of the evening shifts at the desk because he was also taking a couple of online college courses. It was quiet enough most evenings that he had lots of time to study.

  Zach had thick brown hair pulled back in a man bun and dark skin. His most striking feature was his deep blue eyes. Most of the time he dressed in black jeans and one of his collection of rock and roll T-shirts.

  “How’s the chemistry course coming?” I asked as I signed in. I noticed that someone had signed out as just “camera crew.” Thorsten was going to get on Zach about that.

  “It’s a lot of work,” Zach said, gesturing at his laptop. “And there’s a lot of stuff to remember. But it’s not as bad as I expected—at least so far. All those years of keeping drink orders straight have given me a pretty good memory.”

  I went up the stairs and down the hall to Eugenie’s office, hoping that Rebecca would have a loaf of bread still warm from the oven waiting when I got home. I knew I had a bottle of the Jam Lady’s marmalade in my refrigerator.

  The door to Eugenie’s office was open and the lights were on but she wasn’t there. She had said there was a production meeting scheduled, I remembered. It was possible everyone was in the community center kitchen. If no one was working on a recipe in the space, it was where everybody tended to congregate, probably because that’s where the coffeemaker was.

  I headed for the kitchen hoping maybe there would be a pot of coffee going.

  The old brick building had a rabbit’s warren of hallways around the main gym/stage area. The double doors to the kitchen were closed. I eased the left one open as quietly as I could in case the meeting was still going on but there was no one inside.

  That was odd.

  I scanned the room. Only one overhead light was on. I could see a pair of jeans-clad legs in the far right corner of the kitchen. It looked as though someone was bent over the table.

  “Hello,” I called.

  The person, whoever it was, didn’t straighten up. Maybe they were wearing ear buds, I thought.

  I took several steps into the room. An uncomfortable feeling had settled heavy in my chest. I walked around the large island in the middle of the space. My stomach pitched.

  The person I had seen wasn’t working at something on the table. She—it was a woman—was facedown in a bowl full of what looked to be whipped cream. She wasn’t moving. I made a strangled sound and bolted the rest of the way across the kitchen.

  I grabbed the woman by the shoulders. Her body sagged against mine. Somehow I managed to balance her body weight and lower her to the floor. Whipped cream covered her face and the front of her shirt. It clung to her hair.

  I looked around
for something to clean her head with. There was a folded tablecloth on the end of the island. I grabbed it and wiped the whipped cream off of her face. It was Kassie, I realized once I could make out the woman’s features. At the same time it registered that she wasn’t breathing.

  Where was everyone?

  “Help!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

  No one came.

  “Help!” I screamed again, hoping that somehow Zach would hear me down at the back door even as I knew it was a futile effort.

  I noticed a scrape on Kassie’s lip as I used my fingers to scoop whipped cream out of her mouth so I could start CPR. She didn’t respond. She wasn’t breathing. I couldn’t find a pulse in her neck. It seemed to me that her skin was cool.

  I pulled out my phone and called 911.

  Where was everyone?

  I was still doing CPR when the paramedics arrived I had no idea how many minutes later.

  They took over and I stood up and backed out of the way. I wiped my hands on my pants and watched the two medics work on Kassie. She didn’t move. She didn’t make a sound. I knew she was dead.

  chapter 4

  Zach had come in with the first police officer who was now checking out the kitchen area. He pulled a hand over the back of his neck. “Kathleen, what the hell happened?” he asked, shock etched in the lines around his mouth and eyes.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the two paramedics working on Kassie. I wrapped my arms around myself. It was cold in the kitchen. “I don’t know,” I said. “I came in and found her facedown at the table. She wasn’t breathing. I, uh, I called for help but no one heard me.” I turned to look at him. “Where is everyone?”

  Zach shook his head. Like me, he was finding it hard to look away from the paramedics. “They went down to Eric’s to have some kind of meeting. One of the production assistants or somebody was going on and on about the pudding cake that Eric makes and the next thing you know they decide to move the meeting over there. They were supposed to be back about now.” His eyes darted from Kassie’s body to me. “Is she . . . dead?” he asked.

  I let out a breath. “I think so.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know,” I repeated, a lot sharper than I’d meant to. I swiped my hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry, Zach,” I said. “I don’t know any more than you do.”

  He nodded. “I’m going back out to the door. There’s going to be more police and stuff coming.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  One of the two paramedics looked at her partner and shook her head. I should know her, I thought. She’d taken care of me once. I couldn’t think of the woman’s name. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything.

  The second paramedic reached for the defibrillator. They shocked Kassie once, twice, a third time. I pressed one fisted hand against my mouth, flinching every time her body jerked at the shock. I could see it wasn’t working.

  Kassie was dead. Kassie had been dead before I found her. They stopped CPR long enough to put her on the stretcher they’d brought in with them.

  Marcus walked in then with a uniformed officer. He touched my shoulder with one hand as he passed me. “You okay?” he asked softly.

  I nodded without speaking. We’d been in this situation before.

  Marcus spoke to the paramedics briefly and they left. He had an even shorter conversation with the two police officers. They both left the room, too, probably to secure the area. Marcus came over to me. He took my hands in his. “What happened?” he asked. His blue eyes were narrowed in concern. He looked down at our hands. “Why are you sticky?”

  “It’s whipped cream,” I said. “I found, uh, I found Kassie facedown in that bowl of it over there.” I tipped my head in the direction of the table where I had discovered her hunched over. “I did CPR but . . .” I shook my head.

  Marcus frowned. “Kassie?”

  “Kassie Tremayne. She’s one of the judges on The Great Northern Baking Showdown.”

  “I know. What were you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you were going home after work.”

  “I was,” I said. “I just stopped to drop off one of the cat calendars to Eugenie. She was going to hang it up on the set.”

  He looked around the empty kitchen. “She wasn’t here?”

  I shook my head. “She wasn’t in her office. I thought she might be here. Sometimes they have meetings in this room.” I made a vague gesture in the general direction of the back door. “Zach said they’d moved the meeting down to Eric’s. They should be back anytime, maybe even now.” My stomach rolled over. “Marcus, all those people worked with Kassie,” I said. “They knew her.”

  “It’s okay.” He gave my hands a squeeze. “I have an officer at the back door. No one is coming in for now.” He studied my face for a moment. “Okay, so you did CPR and you called nine-one-one?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It seemed to help settle my stomach a little. “I did. I called for help but no one heard me—there was no one to hear me.”

  “Think carefully,” he said. “Did you see anyone? Did you hear anything?”

  I closed my eyes for a moment and pictured myself walking down the hall to Eugenie’s office and then coming to the kitchen. All I could remember was how quiet the community center seemed. I opened my eyes again. “I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t see anyone. I’m sorry.”

  Marcus gave me a half smile. “It’s okay.” He let go of my hands and ran one of his through his thick dark hair. “You can go home,” he said. “I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  “If anyone asks, please don’t say anything more than Ms. Tremayne went to the hospital and that’s all you know.”

  “That is all I know,” I said. My hands and my jacket were sticky with whipped cream. I just wanted to go home and take a shower.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Marcus said. He was in what I thought of as police officer mode—focused and professional. It was one of the things that made him good at his job. I knew he would figure out what had happened to Kassie.

  “There is something I should tell you,” I said as we headed toward the back door. I explained about the bit of conversation I had overheard earlier between Kassie and Richard Kent.

  “You’re sure it was Ms. Tremayne?”

  “I’m certain,” I said. “I’ve talked to her several times. It was her voice.”

  “Okay,” Marcus said. “I’ll see what Mr. Kent has to say about their conversation. It probably doesn’t have anything to do with what happened here.”

  I raised a hand in good-bye to Zach, who was talking to the officer who had come in with Marcus. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I said to Marcus.

  He ducked his head toward mine. “Love you,” he said in a low voice.

  I gave him a brief smile. “You too.”

  A couple of other police officers had cordoned off a large section of the community center’s parking lot with sawhorses and two police cars. Eugenie, Russell, Richard and quite a few of the production crew were standing on the other side. I zipped up my jacket and walked over to them. I needed to get to my truck and I couldn’t just leave them hanging wondering what was going on.

  Eugenie put a hand on my arm. She gave me a long, assessing look. “Kathleen, are you all right?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I’m fine.”

  “What’s going on? Who was that in the ambulance?”

  I cleared my throat. “It was Kassie. I . . . I found her in the kitchen.”

  The color drained from Eugenie’s face.

  “What happened to her?” Richard asked. He looked even paler than Eugenie.

  “I don’t know,” I said. And I didn’t, I reminded myself. Not for sure.

  Eugenie looked at Richard and Russell. “We should go to the hospital,” she
said.

  I wanted to tell her they didn’t need to, but Marcus had asked me not to say anything other than Kassie was being taken to the hospital. I gave Eugenie directions. She gave my arm another squeeze. “I’m glad you were here, Kathleen,” she said. She turned to speak to a young man I knew was some sort of production assistant. I didn’t see Elias Braeden anywhere in the cluster of people. Marcus would get in touch with him, I knew.

  I turned toward the truck and Russell put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive, Kathleen?” he asked. There was genuine concern in his eyes. He might have acted like a goofball a lot of the time but Russell seemed like a good-hearted person. I had noticed how he quietly dispensed encouragement to every one of the contestants.

  I gave him a tired smile. “I am, but thank you for asking.”

  “No worries,” he said, smiling back at me.

  It wasn’t until I was on my way up Mountain Road that I remembered the calendar. I’d left it behind in the kitchen, probably on the floor. It didn’t matter now anyway. I didn’t think anyone involved in the production would want to keep the show going. I knew that Kassie was dead. The skin on her neck and face had been blotchy and her body didn’t have the warmth that a living person’s did. She hadn’t responded to my efforts at CPR or those of the paramedics. I swallowed down the lump in my throat. I wanted to be wrong but I knew that I wasn’t.