Coffeehouse Angel (14 page)

A face peered down at us, through the windshield.

We sat up. Malcolm settled on the car's hood, cross-legged, his satchel resting between his legs. The golden letters of
Messenger Service
sparkled. Elizabeth stuck her key in the ignition so she could roll down the window. She leaned out. "Hey, will you deliver a message for me? I want it delivered to this guy at school. Have it say,

'Dear David, I regret to inform you that while waiting for your reply to my kind invitation, I received another offer. Which I accepted.

Regrettably'--no, 'Yours Truly'--no, 'Sincerely, Elizabeth Miller.' Can you do that?

Like, right now?"

"I can't do that, I'm afraid. The only messages I'm allowed to deliver are sent directly from my employer."

"I'll pay cash. You won't have to tell your boss."

"I'm afraid that is against the rules." Malcolm tilted his head and looked at me, his expression dead serious. "Why didn't you eat the second bean?" Though the windshield muffled his voice, his question slipped right into my ear. It tickled.

"How does he know that?" Elizabeth whispered.

No way could he have actually known that I hadn't eaten the second bean. Even if he had been spying through the front window of the coffeehouse, he couldn't have seen Ratcatcher. She'd been in the kitchen when she devoured the bean. He was bluffing, playing at his weird game. I rolled down the passenger window and leaned out. "What makes you think I didn't eat it?"

"I'll show you."

T
ruancy can get you into a lot of trouble at Nordby High, but we left campus anyway, intrigued by Malcolm's promise to show us something. "What's going on?" Elizabeth asked, pulling into the only available parking spot on Main Street.

A big crowd had gathered outside Anna's Old World Scandinavian Coffeehouse, which would have been great had they been waiting to buy Norwegian Egg coffee.

But that's not why the crowd had gathered. I recognized a bunch of Main Street shopkeepers and other locals. Joggers and dog walkers had stopped, as had toddlers and parents. Clutching expensive organic drinks, customers drifted out of Java Heaven's front door and squeezed their way into the crowd for a better view.

A better view of what?

Fear set in. Had something happened to my grandmother? Terrible thoughts ran through my mind, everything that can go wrong with an old person--a fall, a stroke, a heart attack. She hadn't been feeling well. Why hadn't I stayed home to take care of her? Why hadn't I paid better attention when Vincent gave that guy CPR? Where was the ambulance? Why wasn't anyone doing anything?

Officer Larsen stood at the edge of the crowd, near the shoe shop. I hurried over to him. "Officer Larsen, where's my grandmother?"

"She's in the coffeehouse, but you shouldn't go in there," he said, writing something on a notepad. His cell phone rang. He turned his back to me before I could ask more questions. "This is Officer Larsen. We've got a situation and it's not pretty."

I went kind of limp, like in those dreams when your legs won't work.
She's in the
coffeehouse.
Lying in the coffeehouse? Dying in the coffeehouse? For a moment, panic shut me down.

"Come on," Elizabeth said. I followed in her wake as she elbowed through the crowd.

"This is worse than an after-Thanksgiving sale. Let us through. We work here."

Malcolm had disappeared again, but I didn't dwell on that. All I could think about was losing my grandmother. As we forced our way through the crowd, the coffeehouse seemed out of reach. The odd thing was, the crowd wasn't silent the way a crowd is at an accident scene. Everyone was talking and even laughing. With my heart pounding in my ears, I only picked up fragments of conversation.

"Unbelievable."

"Is it dead?"

"Where'd they find it?"

Finally we reached the front windows. Grandma Anna stood inside, wringing her hands. Her apron had come untied. Other than that, she looked unhurt and very much alive. With a huge sigh of relief, my heart stopped its wild dance and my legs stopped shaking. I grabbed the doorknob, but the door was locked, the closed sign faced out.

"Grandma?"

"Don't let any of those people in," she said after cautiously opening the door.

Elizabeth and I slipped inside. Grandma Anna locked the door after us. "What's going on?" I asked. Irmgaard stood behind the counter, clutching our big carving knife as if preparing to defend herself.

"What's that smell?" Elizabeth plugged her nose. A stench, a bit like sewage, a bit like a wet dog, polluted the room.

"It's the cat," Grandma Anna said.

"The cat?" I went into panic mode again. Add to my checklist under talents:
Panics
Easily.
"What happened to Ratcatcher?"

My grandmother pointed. I gasped. Elizabeth gasped. Ratcatcher lay at the base of the picture window, stretched out in all her black-and-white glory. She turned her chubby chin up and meowed a greeting.

"Oh. My. God." Elizabeth grabbed my arm. "What is she lying on?"

"That's a wharf rat," Ingvar said from the corner table. "Wharf rats can grow to three feet in Norway. Never seen one that big, though."

A stiff black rat body lay on the floor, its long rubbery tail stretched to the wall. Its mouth had frozen in a grimace, its limp tongue hung over a row of sharp teeth.

Ratcatcher stretched across the rat's midsection, purring like a proud lioness.

"Ratcatcher actually caught a rat?" I couldn't believe it. For a moment I felt proud of the old girl. Then I thought I might barf. Rats give me the creeps. I don't even want to touch them in a pet store, and those are the little ones. This rat was so big it could have been my dance partner.

"Caught it
and
killed it," Lars said, jabbing his cane in the air. "Look at it. I'm guessing it's a forty-pounder."

"I'm guessing it'll get into that book of world records," Ingvar said. "That cat's going to be famous."

Elizabeth pulled me aside. "Where'd Malcolm go?" she whispered. "We've got to find him."

"Why?"

"Look at what your cat did. Look at all those people." She squeezed my arm. "Don't you see what's happening? Fame."

"It wasn't the bean," I told her.

"Of course it was the bean." She bounced on her toes, her boobs nearly knocking me over. "Don't you get it? Those beans actually work. This is like a fairy tale. We've got to find him and get another one." She stopped bouncing. "Oh crud, I've got to get back for my last class because we have a quiz. If I flunk one more quiz, my dad is going to take away the car. And then I have to go to my mom's stupid holiday work party.

Double crud. I'll call you as soon as I can." She started to leave, then came back and whispered, "If you get another bean, don't you even think about eating it without me."

Over the next few hours I learned a lot about rats. Never, according to a
Nordby News
reporter, had a rat that size been found in Nordby or anyplace in the entire world.

Some museum in the Midwest owned a prehistoric rat skeleton, from the days when rats had shared caves with saber-toothed tigers. According to the
Guinness Book of
World Records,
the largest modern-day rat ever found was a Gambian pouch rat, but it was much smaller than this rat. Our rat. The rat found in Anna's Old World Scandinavian Coffeehouse.

My pastry-loving kitty cat had brought home the World's Largest Rat.

My awe was short-lived. While catching a beaver-sized rat was great for newspaper sales, catching it inside an establishment that serves food and beverages was not so great for that establishment's sales. It was bad. Real bad.

With no curtains to draw or blinds to pull, we had to endure the onlookers. A menagerie of faces continued to press against the picture window--eager, fascinated, disgusted faces. Mr. Darling's face appeared. He smiled, then started talking to Officer Larsen. "Go out there, Katrina, and see what that horrid man is saying," my grandmother said.

Cold air cleared the rat's stench from my nostrils as I stepped outside. Mr. Darling spoke to Officer Larsen in a voice that reached the edges of the crowd. "The Health Department needs to be notified. Rats carry all sorts of communicable diseases--

plague, botulism, mad cow disease."

"That place must be filthy," a local said.

"I'd never eat in there," her friend said.

You don't eat in there anyway,
I wanted to say.
You lousy traitors. You turned your
backs on us the minute Java Heaven moved in.
But instead I said, "It's not filthy. We don't know how the rat got inside." They shook their heads, burning holes through me with their disapproving glares.

Could I blame them? I'd be a bit hesitant to buy sandwiches at the home of the World's Largest Rat. Nothing worse than finding one of those wiry black hairs sticking to a tomato slice, or a rat footprint on your bread, or a rat turd floating in your soup. A beaver-sized rat makes a cockroach infestation seem like a walk through one of those butterfly gardens.

"Anna's is clean," I pleaded. "Very, very, very clean. There's no reason to--"

"Officer Larsen," Mr. Darling interrupted. "I insist that you close Anna's Coffeehouse before someone gets sick."

"No one's going to get sick," I said, but nobody was listening because Mr. Darling had started to pass out Java Heaven coupons.

"Come try our newest drink, the Vincent Mocha, in honor of our hometown hero." He beamed the most joyous smile I'd ever seen as he basked in our crisis. Just when he wanted to buy us out. How
coincidental.

I followed Officer Larsen into the coffeehouse and he delivered the bad news to my grandmother. "I'm sorry, Anna, but I'm going to have to call the Health Department."

"Don't be such a nincompoop," Lars hissed at his son.

"Dad, I'm just doing my job."

"Why do you have to call the Health Department? That rat didn't live in here,"

Grandma Anna said, her face turning blotchy. Irmgaard shook her head furiously.

"See, Irmgaard is my witness. No rats in here. There's never been a rat in here."

"She caught it outside," I lied, "then brought it in."

"Now, Katrina, there's no need to fib," Officer Larsen said. "I know you don't let your cat outside." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm sorry, Anna, but I have to call the Health Department. Besides, if I don't, Mr. Darling will. He's got everyone riled up about communicable diseases."

"There are no diseases in my coffeehouse. Ask The Boys. They've been coming here for twenty years. Have they ever caught a disease?"

Ingvar fiddled with his pipe. "I got nothing to report."

Ralph sipped his coffee. "Doctor says I got acid reflux disease."

Odin moved a game piece. "You don't get that from a rat."

I cleared my throat. "I think Mr. Darling put the rat in here."

My grandmother turned her worried face up at me. "Katrina? What are you saying?"

"He must have put that rat in here. It makes perfect sense. He wants us to close down and move."

"That's a serious accusation. Do you have any evidence?" Officer Larsen asked.

"No. But who else would have done this?" I searched the faces of everyone in the room, but no one nodded or backed me up.

The
Nordby News
photographer pressed his camera against the window and a flash of light lit up the shop. Officer Larsen made his phone call. After the call he told us not to move the rat. He hung yellow tape around, as if it were some sort of murder scene.

"Someone from the Health Department will be here tomorrow. In the meantime, call me if you need anything. Dad, I'll pick you up later." Then he left. The Boys bade their good-byes and wandered to the pub. Evening, brittle with cold, crept down Main Street and the nosey onlookers drifted off.

"I can't stand looking at that thing," my grandmother said. She threw a towel over the carcass. Ratcatcher peeked out from under the towel, purring louder as Grandma collapsed into a chair. Irmgaard rushed over with a cup of coffee. "Put a little rum in it, will you please?"

As I stared at the long rubbery tail, my suspicion of Mr. Darling grew. How else could this have happened? He could have bought the rat from a circus. How could I prove that he was behind this? Can a rat be dusted for fingerprints?

Irmgaard started tidying in kitchen. "Why bother?" my grandmother asked. "Did you see the looks on their faces? No one will ever set foot in here again. Over forty years in this town." She took a long sip of her coffee, then sighed. "Go on home, Irmgaard.

Take tomorrow off. I'll call you and let you know what the Health Department says."

After a long hug, Irmgaard left. I sat across from my grandmother. Surrounded by Ratcatcher's purring and the rat's stink, we sat for a long time, stunned. What had been most important to me that morning--Vincent's betrayal-- seemed totally unimportant.

We had a bigger rat to deal with. "Don't you think that Mr. Darling did this?"

Grandma Anna frowned. "You shouldn't say things like that, Katrina. He may be arrogant and a bit of a bully, but putting a rat in our shop would be below even his standards. I just can't believe he'd be capable of such cruelty. It's just bad luck, sweetie. Either that or..." She looked at the ceiling. "Or someone up there is trying to tell us something."

M
y grandmother didn't sleep much that Friday night. Neither did I. I kept thinking that the mutant rat might have some mutant friends with revenge on their minds. I swear that at one point during the night, something walked across my legs. The night-light stayed on after that.

They say it's always darkest just before the dawn. Here's how dark it got.

Saturday morning's headline in the
Nordby News
read:
Ratcatcher, the Coffeehouse
Cat, Catches World's Biggest Rat.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, that article spread all over the world with the click of a Send icon. Isn't that great? Readers in London and Cairo shivered when they read that a rat with a six-foot tail had been sleeping in our pantry. Of course there was no proof that it had been sleeping in our pantry, but an unnamed owner of a certain organic coffeehouse speculated that it had been sleeping there.