Cat's Quill (15 page)

"Like hell," Tomas muttered, giving Blackthorn another glare just because he could.

Blackthorn purred loudly and sauntered slowly down the corridor toward the sound of Donovan's voice. A patch of red caught Tomas's eye, sitting in the shadow of the doorframe as the cat walked away. They must have fallen there out of his jeans pocket earlier. The thud of Donovan's footsteps against the wooden stairs grew louder and closer together.

Grabbing the key ring, Tomas shoved the key into the door, stumbling into the room and slamming it behind him. It wasn't until he got to his bed that he realized that he'd dropped his jeans in the corridor on the other side of the door.

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Chapter Nine

It was easier to focus on the food than the smirks Donovan kept shooting in his direction. Tomas had pulled on a pair of boxers quickly before answering the door, thanking Donovan very curtly for his jeans while trying to ignore the way in which he'd been looked up and down. The comment about "no offense, but you're not my type," he hadn't been sure how to answer. In the finish he'd mumbled something about being downstairs shortly and closed the door in Donovan's face, barely avoiding catching Blackthorn's tail in it as she tried to dive into the room.

"Don't dress for dinner on my account," Donovan had called through the door, the wood between them barely muffling his laughter. Tomas waited until Donovan's footsteps had receded to a safe distance and then opened the door a crack to make sure he'd gone.

Heidi grinned when Tomas finally entered the kitchen. "Sit down and I'll get your dinner for you. Donovan and I already started. He said you might be a while."

Thanking her, Tomas sat down obediently, placing his notebook and pencil on the table beside him. Pausing from shoveling mouthfuls of food into his mouth, Donovan had given Tomas a wink and then continued eating as though nothing had happened.

"There you go, Tomas." Heidi placed a large plate of casserole in front of him. "There's bread to go with it, just help yourself." She returned to her seat. "I hope you found the towel I left out for your shower okay."

Tomas choked on a piece of sausage and grabbed the water jug, pouring himself a glass quickly. Donovan grinned but said nothing. Heidi glanced between the two of them and rolled her eyes. "I'm not sure whether to be pleased or scared that you guys are getting on so well," she announced.

"Yeah, we're way scary, Heidi." Donovan attempted to spear a piece of carrot which was refusing to surrender despite his repeated efforts to capture it with his fork.

The best form of defense wasn't attack in this case but distraction, Tomas decided, and preferably before Donovan passed any more smartarse remarks. Reaching for a piece of garlic bread, he pulled off a bit and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully and trying to decide how to introduce a conversation subject of his choosing.

"I see you still have quite the appetite after eating all the scones for afternoon tea," Heidi said, mopping up the gravy on her plate with a piece of bread. "I hope that cat didn't convince you to feed her. She was hanging around the kitchen earlier watching them come out of the oven."

"No, but C--" Tomas stopped himself in time, not wanting to talk about Cathal just yet. He took a gulp of water to cover his slip. "The hedgehog seemed to like the crumbs."

"Was there one in the field by the tree?" Heidi paused mid-swipe of her plate. "I've seen one or two out there in the middle of the day. They pretty much keep to themselves rather than come near humans. I'm surprised one got brave enough to come out for crumbs."

"It did seem a little confused," Tomas remembered. It had rolled out of its ball to eat the crumbs Cathal had thrown it. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen the hedgehog since Cathal had disappeared. Absently, he picked up his notebook and pencil and hastily scribbled that fact. The more pieces of this puzzle he collected, the less sense it made.

"Is there a hedgehog in your book?" Donovan gestured toward the notebook with his fork. "That's why you're carrying the notebook, right? So you can remember crap you might use later?" He shrugged when Tomas looked at him blankly. "I went through college with a guy who was a writer. He used to carry a notebook everywhere and write notes about the weirdest shit for that reason. Even wrote on a napkin once when he'd forgotten the book. He said you had to grab inspiration when it struck because if you ignored it too often it would stop bothering."

"Did he use a lot of the ideas?" Tomas tucked his pencil behind one ear, a habit he'd picked up when he'd been working for the university magazine.

"Nah." Donovan shook his head. "All he ever did was scribble in notebooks." He was silent for a moment, tracing a path through his leftover gravy with his fork. "He died the year after we left college. Swerved to miss a drunk driver and his bike went out of control." Heidi laid a hand on Donovan's arm, but he pulled away.

"I'm sorry," Tomas said finally, not sure what else to say.

"It was years ago." Donovan shrugged again. "Life goes on." Heidi got up from the table, turning her back to them while she busied herself making coffee. "So, what's your book about?" he asked Tomas a little too brightly. "Or is it a secret?"

"It's not a secret," Tomas admitted, "but I'd prefer not to share the details." Talking to Cathal about it had felt different for some reason. "However, I did wonder if you could help me with some background information."

"What kind of information?" Heidi collected their plates, motioning Donovan to stay seated when he offered to take them to the sink for her.

"Setting, mainly," Tomas revealed. "I...." He took a deep breath before continuing. "I'm kind of using the village as inspiration."

"Cool!" Donovan leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table. "What about the characters? Are we going to see versions of ourselves in print? After all," he straightened into a mock-heroic pose, "the main character has to be this guy who runs the local inn, right?"

Heidi snorted. "You're forgetting his best friend who does all the work," she quipped. A cup of coffee was set down in front of Tomas along with a plate containing a slice of carrot cake with cream cheese icing.

"Actually," Tomas said, "the main character is a writer." He hunted around for his pencil and then remembered it was behind his ear. "But," he added hastily when both their faces fell, "he stays at the local inn."

"Right." Donovan nodded. "So this writer guy's best friend runs the local inn." Heidi cleared her throat loudly. "He runs the local inn with
his
best friend," he amended.

So much for not sharing the details.

Tomas sighed, turned over to start a new page, and noted that down as well. This was going to be more complicated than he'd first thought. "I need some background information about the village. It doesn't mean that everything is going to end up in the story, but I'm curious about a few things."

"We can help with that, can't we, Donovan?" Heidi tapped the table with her cake fork. "Mrs. O'Neil would be a good person to ask. There isn't anything in this village that she doesn't know about."

"That's what she'd like us to believe"--Donovan rolled his eyes--"although she doesn't know the answers to everything." He gestured around them. "There are rumors that this place and that field out there are haunted."

Tomas's pencil hit the table with a clatter. "Haunted?"

"The inn is not haunted," Heidi said firmly. "Donovan and I have been here for about five years now, and we've never seen anything we couldn't find an explanation for."

"There was that time you thought you felt someone watching you," Donovan reminded her. "The summer we first moved in there was a freak storm. The lightning lit up the whole sky, and we thought that old oak was going to come down, but it only ended up losing a few branches. One of the upstairs windows shattered. I went to clean up the glass, and there were petals from those climbing roses all over the floor; the wind had ripped most of them off. It took another season before they bloomed again."

"That someone ended up being a certain cat." Heidi dug her fork into her slice of cake. "She was wet through and looking very sorry for herself. I asked around to try and find her owner, but no one would take her and she didn't want to leave."

"She acted like she owned the damn place and has done so ever since." Donovan ran one finger across the center of his cake, dividing the icing into two mounds before proceeding to lick his finger clean with an expression of pure bliss.

"Blackthorn?" Tomas glanced around for the cat, but for once she was nowhere in sight. No, it couldn't have been her. Heidi had said they'd been here five years, and Blackthorn was definitely a kitten, not a full-grown cat.

"Yeah." Heidi shoved a napkin in Donovan's direction when he piled his finger up with cream cheese again, a big blob of it landing on the table in front of him. "She owns us rather than us owning her, but then that's the way with most cats. Apparently this inn attracts stray cats; it has a history of them."

"Blackthorn's only a kitten," Tomas told her. He'd seen enough cats to know. "You must be mistaken."

"She's been that size since forever," Heidi confirmed. "I took her to the vet to get checked out when we realized she wasn't growing. She's perfectly healthy and would eat us out of house and home if we'd let her, but she's never gotten any bigger. The vet offered to run more tests to try and figure out what was the cause, but it would have cost money we didn't have, so we didn't pursue it."

"Weird," Tomas mumbled, retrieving his pencil and sucking on the end of it. "So what exactly are the local superstitions concerning the inn?" He flicked over a few pages, reading over the notes he'd made previously. "Alice Finlay's family owned it, right? Was she the one who planted the roses?"

"Yeah, Alice planted the roses after her husband died. Rumor has it he fought in the war and never came home." Heidi shook her head sadly. "It's a very sad story. She found out she was pregnant after he left, so he never got to see the child and she raised the boy by herself."

Tomas decided to go out on a limb. "I noticed the roses at the library were the same type as these. Is there a connection?" Phoebe had mentioned that the tapestry in the library had been a gift from their patron. It looked fairly old, almost timeless in its design, as was the quote on it about loving forever.

"Mrs. O'Neil is the person to ask about that." Heidi shrugged. "I'm still learning about the history of the area, although both of us are on the committee for the Historic Society. I believe Alice organized the rebuilding of the village library. The original building was gutted during a fire, but I'm not sure of the story behind that either." She tapped the side of her nose. "It's one of those things no one talks about. Either that or they figure you've lived here for so many generations so if you need to know about it you already do. They're bad for that. Even now I'm sure some of the elderly folks think I'm stepping in where I shouldn't by sitting in on their committees."

"Yeah, but they only tried to say that once." Donovan grinned, remembering. "Mrs. O. gave them a piece of her mind. She's way protective of Heidi. The two of them are like this." He crossed his fingers. "It's why I find shit to do when they get together." His voice took on a very serious tone. "Tomas, take it from someone who knows. Wednesday mornings, you get up early and you take yourself off somewhere before they start trying to organize your life for you. Been there, done that. Learned my lesson the hard way." Donovan shuddered. Heidi narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips.

"Mrs. O'Neil is a very dear friend," she said, "and she means well even if she does get a bit overzealous at times when she gets an idea in her head. Friends take other friends as they are, with all their quirks." Donovan examined his cake intently, suddenly very focused on eating the rest of it as quickly as possible. Heidi smiled at Tomas. "Tomorrow, being Wednes-

day--" A meaningful glance was directed at Donovan, who ignored it. "--she is coming here for morning tea. If you would like to join us for a while, I'm sure she'd be more than happy to answer any questions you have."

"I might do that." Tomas wrote a reminder in his notebook. It was an idea worth pursuing, especially if she could provide some answers. He was sure he could stand his ground with her for half an hour, although their meeting in the post office hadn't gone exactly smoothly. "You mentioned something about the Historic Society? Has it put out any pamphlets or books I could borrow?"

"No books, but we are putting together some pamphlets about the village. You can look through the box with all the bits and pieces in if you promise not to lose anything. I'll find it for you later this evening. I need it for tomorrow anyway." Heidi sighed. "This project is taking much longer than we'd hoped. The last lot of fundraising we did went toward maintenance on the church organ."

"I thought you were the Historic Society?" Tomas frowned, trying to make connections. "Shouldn't church organs be the responsibility of the parish?" The church was somewhere he hadn't visited yet. He made another note. Parish records could be useful. Often in these small villages the births, deaths, and marriage registers went back hundreds of years. He might be able to use them to trace Alice's family to the present day and also discover more about her husband and his family.

"The church is old; it's been there since the early 1800s, so we're responsible for it. Mrs. McPherson does her best keeping the parish accounts in order and things ticking over, but each year something needs doing on something or another." Heidi finished her slice of cake and poured herself a cup of coffee. "The village has a few buildings about that age, and if we split the money evenly, there's not quite enough for anyone to get anything done. The last few years there's been a ballot, with whoever got funds last time being removed from the equation until everyone's looked after, and then we start again from the beginning."

"Can't the owners pay for their own maintenance?" Tomas scribbled more notes. "Surely not all of those buildings belong to charitable organizations?" The pub would be about the same age.

"They do what they can," Heidi explained, "and we top it up." She ticked off on her fingers. "There's the church, the pub, and a couple of cottages outside town. It's not that many, and it's important to preserve history."