Cat Trick (12 page)

“Do you mind if I start cleaning out those flower beds at the front tomorrow and getting
them ready to get the bulbs in?”

“That’s fine with me,” I said. “Do what works best for you, but don’t forget it’s
story time tomorrow. You might end up with some little helpers.”

Harry smiled. “I don’t mind.” He glanced at Elizabeth. “The other thing is, I was
wondering if Elizabeth and one of her friends could come meet your cats sometime.
They’re thinking about helping out at Wisteria Hill.”

I was guessing the “friend” was Wren Magnusson and this was Harry’s way of giving
me a chance to talk to her.

“Absolutely.” I turned to Elizabeth. “Owen and Hercules came from Wisteria Hill. The
only thing you have to remember is that they don’t like to be touched by pretty much
anyone but me. But they do like company.”

“Did one of them really go and get Harry when someone broke into your house?” She
shot her big brother a skeptical look.

I nodded, my hand automatically going to rub my left wrist. That encounter just over
a year ago was when it had been broken. “Hercules,” I said. “Harry was mowing the
lawn at my backyard neighbor’s house. Hercules got in front of the lawn mower and
made so much noise, Harry came to see what was going on.”

“I figured either something had happened to Kathleen, or Timmy was stuck in the well
and the cat fancied himself to be Lassie,” Harry said dryly. Abigail handed him the
two books and he thanked her.

Elizabeth smiled and made a face at her brother before shifting her gaze back to me.
“Is after supper tonight too soon?”

“No, it’s not,” I said. We settled on a time and I gave her directions. “Tell your
dad the other book he wanted should be here next week,” I told Harry.

“I will,” he said. His eyes darted sideways to Elizabeth for a moment. “Thank you.”

I spent most of the morning teaching our new student intern—whose name was Mia—how
the computerized card catalogue worked. Like most teenagers, she had good computer
skills and she picked it up easily. She was well spoken and well read, conservatively
dressed in a black skirt and long-sleeved white blouse. After working with her for
a couple of hours, I felt Mia was going to fit in just fine, although her neon blue
hair was probably going to get more than a second glance. I sent her to shelve books
with Mary and walked over to the circulation desk.

“What time is Susan bringing lunch?” Abigail asked.

I glanced up at the clock. It was almost eleven thirty. “About an hour,” I said.

She swept her braided hair over one shoulder. “I don’t suppose there are any muffins
in the lunchroom, are there? I’m hungry now.”

I shook my head. “Sorry. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, the only crumbs in our lunchroom
are crumbs that are even too small for a mouse.” Then I remembered that description
pretty much described my kitchen and I’d invited Elizabeth and Wren over. I made a
face. “Crap on toast!”

“It’s okay,” Abigail said. “I’m not going to pass out from hunger in the next hour.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “But I just realized that I invited Harry’s sister and her friend
over tonight, and there isn’t so much as a brownie crumb in my kitchen.”

Abigail smiled. “I could call Georgia and see what she has for cupcakes. I don’t mind
holding the fort here so you could run over there. She’s just over on Washington Street.”

That sounded a lot better than having to make coffee cake the moment I stepped through
the door. “Please,” I said.

She reached for the phone. “And if you decided to reward my brilliance with a double-chocolate
cupcake, I would be filled with gratitude.”

I smiled and shook my head. “You’re full of something.”

Good fortune was on my side. Georgia had just finished frosting a batch of cupcakes
and I could have half a dozen. And Washington Street was close enough that I could
walk. “I shouldn’t be much more than half an hour,” I told Abigail. “Mia is helping
Mary.”

“Take your time,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to smush the icing or anything. You
know, for your guests.”

I waved at her and headed out the door.

Washington Street was a couple of streets above Main, two blocks east of the library.
Georgia was working out of a blue-shingled two-story house that, like most of the
other buildings on the street, had a business on the main level and apartments on
the second floor. Abigail had told me to go to the back, and as I stepped onto the
small verandah, I could see Georgia through the screen door, filling a pastry bag
with what looked like chocolate frosting.

She looked up when I knocked on the doorframe and beckoned me inside. The kitchen
smelled of a delicious mix of chocolate, vanilla and caramel.

“Mmm, it smells good in here,” I said.

Georgia made a swirl of dark chocolate on the top of a dark-chocolate cupcake and
set the pastry bag on the counter. “That’s probably my cupcakes and Liv’s caramels,”
she said with a smile.

“You share this space with Olivia Ramsey,” I said. “I thought the address sounded
familiar.”

She nodded, icing sugar dusting her dark curls. “Actually, there are three of us:
Decadence—that’s Olivia— me, and Earl of Sandwich. I’ve been here only a month.”

Olivia Ramsey was a chocolatier who specialized in handmade truffles and caramels.
Decadence’s reputation was beginning to spread outside the state. Earl of Sandwich
ran two lunch wagons that serviced pretty much all the construction sites in the area.
And yes, the owner’s name really was Earl.

I looked around the kitchen. The walls were painted a pale creamy yellow, like whipped
butter. The appliances were all gleaming stainless steel. At the far end of the space,
I could see two brick ovens built into the wall.

Georgia followed my gaze. “They still work,” she said. “This was a pizza place at
one time, I guess.” She gestured at two wire racks to her left on the long butcher-block
table. “What would you like? The ones with the green frosting are Chocolate Mint Madness
and the others are Devilishly Decadent Chocolate.”

“Could I have half a dozen of each?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” Georgia said. She brushed off her hands and reached for a couple of
flattened boxes from a nearby shelf.

“Are you ready for the food tasting?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said, glancing up from the box she was folding into shape. “I’m
doing six different cupcakes. And Liam rearranged things so now I’m next to Molly’s
Coffee, which should be good for both of us.”

“I hope everything works out,” I said.

Georgia set the finished carton aside and started bending the other one into shape.
“I think it will . . . now.”

“Mike Glazer made things difficult.”

She nodded, keeping her head bent over the half-formed box. “Nothing seemed to satisfy
him. He was on Liam about every little thing. Then he started in on Mr. Chapman about
the style of the tents and if looks could kill—�� She realized then what she’d said.
“I’m sorry. That was insensitive.” There were two blotches of red high on the cheekbones
of her otherwise pale face. She wiped her hands on her long white apron.

I gave her a small smile. “It’s okay,” I said. “I think Mike had alienated pretty
much everyone who was involved with the tour project.”

Georgia finished the box and reached for the cupcakes. “He stuck his nose into things
that were none of his business, and now he’s dead.” She exhaled slowly and looked
at me. “He just shouldn’t have done that.” I was a bit taken aback by the intensity
in her voice.

Georgia finished boxing the cupcakes, and I paid her and put them in the canvas shopping
bag I’d brought with me. She walked me to the door.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll look for you at the food tasting. I hope it goes well.”

She wiped her hands again on the front of her apron and gave me a small smile. “I
think it will, now,” she said.

Walking back to the library, I thought again how sad it was that Wren Magnusson was
the only person who seemed to feel any grief about Mike Glazer’s death. Georgia certainly
didn’t seem sorry, although to be fair, she’d barely known the man. I thought about
the tension in her voice when she’d commented that Mike had been sticking his nose
into things that were none of his business and the way that she’d kept wiping her
hands nervously on her apron. What had happened had clearly left her feeling unsettled.

Back at the library, I stashed the cupcakes in my office and took over from Abigail
at the front desk. Susan came in at twelve thirty, carrying a large crock of soup—the
lunch Eric had reminded me about. He was testing a new recipe and we were going to
be his guinea pigs. She smiled sweetly as she passed me on her way to the stairs.
A small feather duster with Kool-Aid-orange feathers was stuck through her topknot.
Obviously Eric had repeated my threat about dusting all the shelves.

“So not funny,” I called after her. She didn’t even turn around, but I saw her shoulders
shake with laughter.

The soup—chicken with spinach dumplings—was delicious, no surprise. So were Georgia’s
cupcakes. I spent the afternoon doing paperwork and working on the list of new books
I wanted to order.

It was raining when I left the library, fat drops that splattered on the windshield
of the truck. As I hurried around the side of the house, I could see Hercules’s black-and-white
face peering through the porch window. I shook my umbrella before I stepped inside
the porch; then I picked him up off the bench under the window. He didn’t even object
to the dampness of my jacket. Instead he peered at my face and then looked over at
the door to the kitchen. Something was up.

“What did your brother do?” I asked. Herc looked back over my arm as though there
were something incredibly fascinating all of a sudden on the floor behind us. “It
can’t be that bad.” I stuck the key in the lock. He rested his chin on my shoulder
and made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sigh of resignation.

It was that bad. It looked liked catnip-loving zombies had attacked. There were bits
from at least two—or maybe three—of Owen’s Fred the Funky Chickens spread all over
the kitchen. Yesterday I thought I’d found—and gotten rid of—all the chicken parts
he had hidden around the house. Obviously I was wrong.

Tiny bits of Big Bird–yellow fabric littered the floor, and there were flecks of dried
catnip everywhere, as though an overzealous chef had been flinging herbs wildly into
the air. A yellow feather was floating in Owen’s water dish. The end of his tail was
in Herc’s bowl. Owen himself was on his back, gnawing on what I was guessing was part
of a chicken head, held in his two front paws, while his hind feet circled lazily
through the air as though he were aimlessly pedaling a bicycle.

Hercules made a sour face as I set him on the floor. He didn’t like mess and he didn’t
like catnip, either. He headed out of the room, working his way around the mess, stopping
twice to lift up a paw and shake it.

I set down my briefcase and the cardboard boxes of cupcakes, crossed my arms over
my chest and glared at Owen, who hadn’t seemed to register that I was actually home.
“Owen, what the heck do you think you’re doing?” I said.

He looked over at me, his eyes not really focusing. He shook his head, rolled over
and got to his feet, the chicken head hanging out of his mouth. He looked like a drunken
sailor after a raucous night of shore leave.

“Bring that over here,” I said.

He squinted up at the ceiling as though I hadn’t spoken.

I walked over to him, bent down and held out my hand. “Let’s have it, Fuzzy Wuzzy.”

He made a growly noise and bit down even harder on the bright yellow fabric.

I leaned sideways, looked past him and said, “Whoa, big mouse!”

Owen’s furry head whipped around so fast, he had to take a step so he didn’t fall
over. The dismembered chicken head dropped out of his teeth, and I scooped it up before
it hit the kitchen floor.

He yowled his anger, but it was too late. I took a couple of steps sideways and the
late Fred’s head was resting in the garbage can. I turned around and crouched down
so I was at the cat’s level. His eyes were almost slits and his mouth was pinched
into a sour pucker. He looked liked a sulky child, and he wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“You are in so much trouble,” I told him. “Why did you do this?” He kept his focus
on the cupboards. “Is this because I threw away the two chicken heads I found under
the sofa yesterday?” I didn’t say I’d also tossed a whole chicken that was in my winter
boots and a body minus a head that had been behind a box in the bedroom closet.

Owen made a huffy noise out through his nose. I sighed and shifted sideways so I was
in front of him again. “Okay, I’m sorry I did that without telling you, but those
things were covered in cat spit and they’d already been overpowered by the dust bunnies.
And they smelled.”

One ear twitched, but it was the only sign he was listening. “You could have made
your point without spreading catnip and chicken bits all over the kitchen.” I reached
over to stroke the fur on the top of his head with one finger. “I’m going to get the
vacuum and clean this up,” I said. “Then we’re going to have supper and maybe, maybe
you can have a taste of that new kitty kibble I bought.”

He rubbed his head against my hand without looking at me; then he headed for the living
room, walking slowly and deliberately because he still had a little catnip buzz going.

I sat back on my heels and looked around. Owen had flung catnip chicken bits all over
the kitchen, so why was I the one doing the vacuuming and coaxing him back into a
good mood? In my next life, I was going to be the cat, I decided as I got to my feet.

Thirty minutes later, the kitchen was more or less cleaned up and I was at the table
with a plate of spaghetti. Hercules was next to my chair, watching me eat and probably
hoping I’d drop a meatball, while Owen was sprawled under the other chair, making
a halfhearted effort to wash his face. I’d already told them what I’d learned at the
café. Owen’s ears had perked up when I’d shared Claire’s story about Liam arguing
with Mike Glazer out on the street in front of the diner, but I suspected that was
mostly because I’d also mentioned Maggie’s name.