A Case of Cat and Mouse Read online

  So many people together in the café like that would make it hard for the police to figure out timelines for everyone.

  “Hindsight being what it is, I’m second-guessing that decision now,” Eugenie said.

  “There’s no way you could have known what was going to happen,” Rebecca said.

  “Damn straight!” Charles nodded. “Kassie was a grown woman. It’s not your job to keep track of where everyone is all the time. Not everyone went for supper in the first place and some folks left before the meeting even started.”

  “So I’m guessing this meeting is to tell us the show is over?” I said.

  Charles laughed, the sound bouncing around the room. People turned to look. Humor seemed out of place under the circumstances. “Not likely,” he said. “You ever hear that old saying, the show must go on?”

  “But Kassie is dead,” Rebecca said.

  “And that’s awful, but stopping the show isn’t going to make her any less dead. People have a lot of time and money tied up in this production and I don’t see something like this keeping the show from going forward.”

  I looked at Eugenie and she gave a small shrug.

  “But what about the fact that the show is now short a judge?” I asked.

  Charles gave a snort of derision. “Not a problem.” He jabbed a thick finger in the air. “Mark my words. Braeden already has a replacement lined up.”

  Elias Braeden walked in then, as though our talking about him had somehow conjured him out of thin air. The man was a bit above average height with wide shoulders and a muscular build that even his dark suit couldn’t hide. His hair was a mix of brown and gray. He had piercing dark eyes and a lined, lived-in face. His presence alone could be intimidating.

  Charles turned in his chair, raising an eyebrow as he did. “You watch,” he said, confident in what he had decided was going to happen.

  Rebecca leaned toward me. “Do you think he’s right?”

  I caught sight of the person who had come in with Elias and was now standing off to one side. “Yes,” I said. “I think he is.”

  And Charles Bacchus was right. The show was going on, Elias explained. A mention of Kassie’s passing would be added to the opening credits of the show that had just been taped and a brief tribute would be part of an upcoming episode.

  “Several of you will be asked to share your remembrances of Kassie,” Elias said.

  Charles gave another snort of contempt and from the corner of my eye I saw Eugenie and Russell exchange a look.

  Then Elias looked to his left. “Obviously the show can’t continue without two judges. I’m happy to report that local business owner Marguerite LeClerc is stepping in to help us. If you’ve been out to eat at Fern’s Diner, you’ve already met Marguerite, better known as Peggy Sue.”

  From the sidelines Peggy Sue walked over to join him. Instead of her fifties carhop outfit, she was dressed in slim black trousers with black heels and a crisp white shirt with the cuffs turned back. She looked competent and professional and it struck me that this might just work. Peggy was knowledgeable about food. For several years she had written a column for Food & Wine magazine. She had a bachelor’s degree from the New England Culinary Institute and had worked in several restaurants in Chicago and Minneapolis before coming home to Mayville Heights. She was savvy about business and people. She had a great sense of humor. And most importantly, she was available.

  Charles looked over his shoulder. “You heard it here first,” he said, a huge grin on his face.

  Elias turned the microphone over to one of the associate producers, who quickly explained the changes to the schedule for the next two weeks. Then the meeting was over.

  Eugenie and Russell already had their heads together. Charles was making his way toward Ray. I turned to Rebecca. “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I can’t say I wasn’t surprised at Peggy being chosen as the new judge,” she said, “but the more I think about it, the more it strikes me as being an excellent choice. Did you know she has a degree in culinary arts?”

  I picked up my messenger bag that I had set at my feet. “I did. And I agree with you. I think Peggy is the perfect choice. She’ll be very easy to work with.”

  Rebecca wrapped a long, multicolored scarf around her neck. “That will make the transition easier,” she said. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but Kassie could sometimes be . . . challenging.” She tucked the ends of the scarf inside her jacket. “I’m guessing the autopsy is today?”

  “It is,” I said. “By the end of the day we might know exactly what happened.”

  “It would be good to have some answers. I wonder if Kassie has . . . had a family.”

  Kate Westin was standing behind Rebecca. “She has . . . had a son who is about twelve or thirteen.”

  I hadn’t pictured Kassie as someone’s mother.

  Rebecca frowned. “I didn’t know Kassie had a child. I never heard her talk about him.”

  Kate folded her arms over her midsection, her shoulders once again hunched up around her ears. “She . . . she mentioned it once.”

  “It’s sad, nonetheless,” Rebecca said. She turned her attention to Kate. “Do you know if anyone has collected her things, her clothes, her makeup?”

  Kate shook her head. “I don’t, but I can ask around.”

  Rebecca smiled at her. “I know Kassie had some things over at the community center. Her son might want them.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” Kate said.

  “You might want to wait until the police have finished their investigation,” I said.

  “Kathleen’s right,” Rebecca said. “I didn’t think about the police.”

  Kate nodded. “Okay. I’ll wait.” She glanced across the room. “Excuse me. I see someone I need to talk to.”

  “Do you need a ride home?” I asked Rebecca.

  “Thank you, but I have a meeting with Lita and then Everett is taking me out to dinner.”

  “Lucky Everett,” I said, smiling back at her.

  Rebecca winked. “That’s what I keep telling him!” She headed toward the back of the set.

  I fished my keys out of my pocket and turned toward Eugenie and Russell. When I’d taken over the research position, Eugenie had given me a filming schedule for the show so I knew in advance what the theme for each week was. She had added notes for each week letting me know what information she needed. If there was a mystery ingredient for a particular week, I’d find that out just a couple of days before filming and Eugenie was happy with two or three details she could use.

  During Pie Week the mystery ingredient had been bison meat and Eugenie had explained to the show’s future audience that what we think of as buffalo roaming the plains out west are really bison.

  I touched her shoulder now to get her attention. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” I said. “I’m going to get started on next week’s research this weekend. If you think of anything else that you need, please let me know.” Cake Week was coming up next. Eugenie had already asked me to find out if Marie Antoinette really had said, “Let them eat cake,” or the equivalent in French. (There was no record of it.)

  “I will,” she said. “And thank you for the calendar. Now that I know we’re going to be continuing I’ll make sure it gets hung on the set as soon as possible.”

  I stared at her, feeling a little confused. “You got the calendar?”

  “Yes. It was on my desk this morning. I just assumed you left it.”

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t me. But I’m very happy you have it.”

  “It must have been elves,” Eugenie said with a smile.

  I had a feeling it had been one tall, blue-eyed, dark-haired elf in particular.

  We said good-bye and I walked out to the truck.

  * * *

  I was just setting the table for supper when
Marcus came in the back door.

  “Something smells incredible,” he said, leaning over to kiss me.

  “Merow,” Owen commented loudly from his place by my chair.

  “In case you don’t speak cat, that meant spaghetti and meatballs,” I said.

  Marcus took a step toward the stove where the tiny meatballs were still sizzling in a pan. He didn’t take a second step because Owen had jumped down and was blocking his way.

  “You’re wasting your time if you think you’re going to be able to swipe one of those meatballs,” I said. “If Owen isn’t getting one, nobody is.”

  The cat meowed again loudly as if to emphasize the point.

  Marcus looked down at him. “I would have shared,” he stage-whispered.

  Owen wrinkled his nose as though he might be rethinking his actions.

  “So how was your day?” Marcus asked.

  “When I got to work there was a tire from a road grader in the gazebo.” I gave the sauce a stir. “And that wasn’t the worst part of my day.”

  “Should I ask what was the worst part of your day?” he said, trying and failing to stifle a smile.

  “I got out of the truck in the parking lot and dropped my travel mug. And it was holding my first cup of coffee because some furball managed to unplug my clock.” I shot a look at Owen over my shoulder. He decided to play innocent and look over his own shoulder.

  “Did you dent it?”

  I shook my head. “No. The top didn’t even come off. Of course, it did when Harry drove over the mug with his truck.” I held up my thumb and forefinger about an inch part. “It’s that thick now.”

  Marcus leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Oh, the story’s not over yet.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “Okay.”

  “Harry apologized, of course, but I still didn’t have my coffee.”

  “Why didn’t you just make coffee?”

  “Because there wasn’t any to make.” I lowered the heat on the meatballs just a little. “Abigail had taken money from petty cash to get a bag. I sent a text to Susan and because she is a kind and good person she got me the largest take-out cup of coffee Eric has. She was just coming up the steps with it when Harry came out the front door carrying the stepladder.”

  “I’m sensing a theme here.” His lips twitched.

  “Apparently the cup hit every one of the steps on the way down and then went top over bottom all the way to the parking lot.” I held my hand up once more. “But, the lid stayed on.”

  “So the coffee was okay?”

  “You’d have to ask the two squirrels that dragged the cup away.”

  “Hold on a second,” he said, holding up a hand. “Squirrels?”

  “Uh-huh. To be fair, it was hazelnut flavored. And for the record, Harry and Susan did try to stop them. There was a broom and one, possibly two, knitting needles involved. It did provide a fair amount of entertainment for the Seniors’ Book Club when they arrived. It seemed the smart money was on the squirrels.”

  Marcus was shaking with laughter. “So did you ever actually get a cup of coffee this morning?” he asked when he got himself under control again.

  “About half an hour after all that Harry arrived back at the library with another take-out cup from Eric’s, a new travel mug and a pound of ground coffee from that micro-roaster in Red Wing.”

  “Poor Harry,” Marcus said, still grinning.

  “There’s a small postscript to the story,” I said.

  “I love postscripts.”

  “When I went out to the truck at lunchtime I found the empty take-out cup sitting on the hood.”

  Marcus held up both hands. “So to sum up your morning, Harry destroyed your coffee not once but twice and you were flipped off by two squirrels.”

  “Don’t forget there was a road grader tire in the gazebo.”

  “And there was a road grader tire in the gazebo.” He started to laugh again. “And to think some people believe the library is boring!”

  I pointed my spoon at him. “Go wash your hands because we’re almost ready to eat.” I shifted my attention to Owen. “And you move out of the way or you’re going to end up with a heap of spaghetti on your head.”

  They shared a look and then Marcus went to wash his hands and Owen moved back to where he’d been sitting before he felt the need to defend the meatballs. No arguing, no adorable cute faces from either of them.

  How did I do that? I asked myself.

  I was setting our plates on the table when Marcus returned. Both cats were enjoying one meatball each. I rationalized that one wasn’t going to cause them any harm, and given their other “attributes” it was quite likely they didn’t have ordinary digestive systems, either.

  “So are you mine for the evening?” I asked.

  Marcus smiled across the table. “I am. There’s a group playing in the bar down at the hotel—just a couple of guys with guitars—but they’re supposed to be pretty good. Do you want to go down later for a listen?”

  “I’d like that,” I said. “It’s been a crazy week. I’d like to just put my brain on idle.”

  “I’ll second that.” He picked up his fork and speared a meatball, rolling it through the sauce before he popped it in his mouth. “Oh, that is good,” he said after a moment.

  He leaned sideways and held up his hand to Owen as though they were going to high-five. The cat, who had finally finished checking out his own meatball and now was starting to eat it, lifted his head and gave Marcus a blank look. Marcus straightened up again, a grin on his face.

  “One of these days you’re going to do something like that and Owen is going to actually high-five you with one paw.”

  Marcus shrugged. “Hey, it’s not impossible. He can just become invisible anytime he wants to. How hard could a high five be?”

  I had kept the cats’ abilities secret for such a long time that it felt weird now that Marcus knew. He had taken the news a lot better than I had expected. I’d requested several physics textbooks for him via interlibrary loan. He was trying to find an explanation for both Owen’s ability to disappear and Hercules’s trick of walking through walls that depended on science, not woo-woo magic.

  “Have you seen my black pen?” he asked. “You know, the skinny one I bought at the bookstore?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t seen it. Where did you last have it?”

  He made a face as he twirled spaghetti around his fork. “That’s the problem. I don’t remember.”

  “It’ll turn up,” I said. It was probably buried on his desk at work.

  I told him about the meeting while we ate.

  “I think Peggy will be a great judge,” Marcus said.

  “That seems to be the general consensus.”

  “From what I’ve heard so far, Kassie Tremayne wasn’t that popular.” He leaned back in his chair. All that was left on his plate was a smear of sauce.

  “You know that expression that Burtis uses about someone being like the cow that gives a bucket of milk and then kicks it over?”

  “You’re saying Kassie was like that?”

  There was a lone strand of pasta in the middle of my plate. I picked it up with my fingers and popped it into my mouth. “I don’t like to speak ill of someone who isn’t here to defend herself, but yes, from what I saw she was.”

  “Some people are hard to warm up to.”

  I shook my head. “I think it was more than that. To me it was like she was . . . mean-spirited. She seemed to be happy when things went wrong for other people.”

  Marcus laced his fingers and rested his hands on top of his head. “That sounds like a pretty crappy way to go through life.”

  “Did you get the autopsy report?” I asked. It didn’t seem like dinner conversation but it wasn’t the firs
t time we had talked about a case at that table. The day we’d met we’d sat across from each other in the library’s staff room and talked about the death of Gregor Easton over mugs of coffee. Of course, Marcus had thought I had been having a torrid affair with the temperamental composer and conductor. And I had thought Marcus was, well, a jerk.

  We’d both been wrong.

  “Just some preliminary results,” he said. “There are some tests that will take a few days.”

  “She died from asphyxiation, didn’t she?” I said. It seemed to be the most logical cause of death given what I had seen.

  He nodded slowly.

  “I take it you don’t know exactly how it happened.”

  One hand rearranged the knife and fork on his plate. “No. We don’t. Not yet. You know I can’t get into a lot of details with you.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But hypothetically speaking, you—or anyone for that matter—would have to ask how Kassie ended up facedown in a bowl of food. Did she pass out? And if she did, what caused that to happen? The only injury I saw was that scrape on her lower lip.”

  Marcus nodded but didn’t say anything.

  I leaned back in my chair and pulled one leg up underneath me. “Continuing in this hypothetical world for a minute, you—”

  “—or anyone for that matter,” he interjected with a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

  “Or anyone,” I continued, smiling back at him, “would be looking for some indication that she passed out. Did she have a stroke or a seizure? Did she fall and hit her head? Did she choke on something? The answer to all of those questions has to be no.”

  “Because?”

  “Because you”—I held up my hand before he could interrupt me again—“hypothetical you, would have had both the cause of death and the manner of it if the answer to any of those questions was yes. So the manner of death isn’t obvious. That’s why you’re waiting for those test results.”