Sleight of Paw (36 page)

Had Justin been lying when he said he didn’t know about the will? It looked that way. The manager at Agatha’s new lawyer’s office described the young man who’d picked Agatha up. It sounded a lot like Justin. It seemed like he’d somehow been able to capitalize on Agatha’s love for Ruby and convince her that changing her will in his favor was something Ruby wanted.

Had he run her over on purpose? I didn’t like to think about that, but Marcus was certain he had.

I’d expected a long lecture about butting into the case, but all Marcus had said was, “You could have been killed.” That and his troubled expression had made me feel worse than anything else he could have said.

Eric closed the café early on Thursday evening and Maggie canceled tai chi class. We gathered at the restaurant to celebrate Ruby’s freedom. She was still grieving for Agatha and I knew she had some work to do over Justin. I’d seen Eric talking to her, and whatever he’d said seemed to help.

I sat at a table by the window, my bandaged feet on a pillow on the chair. Maggie dropped onto the seat beside me. “You okay?” she asked. She’d been asking that pretty much steadily for the past twenty-four hours.

“I am,” I said. I patted her arm with my good hand. Suspicious over my questions about Hardwood Ridge, Maggie had called Marcus when I didn’t answer my cell phone. Surprisingly, he’d also had a phone call from Peter Lundgren.

“You know, when I saw Marcus coming through the snow, I thought I was hallucinating,” I said.

As if he knew we were talking about him, Marcus turned from where he was standing across the room with Rebecca, smiled and lifted the hot chocolate he was holding in a toast.

I smiled back.

“He likes you,” Maggie said.

“He’s not my type,” I began, but I really couldn’t muster much of an objection.

The door opened and Roma came in. It was a good thing I was sitting down and had my feet up, because she was holding hands with Eddie Sweeney.

The real Eddie Sweeney.

“Am I hallucinating now?” I asked Maggie, as they made their way over to us.

“Nope,” she said smugly, looking like the Cheshire cat.

“You look a lot better,” Roma said. “How’s Owen?”

“He’s fine. Thank you for getting him home.” I looked at Maggie. “You, too.”

“I like the little fur ball,” Maggie said. “He’s got cojones.”

“Kathleen, this is Eddie,” Roma said, turning to smile at the big hockey player beside her.

“Hi, Kathleen,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” I said. I couldn’t stop staring at him.

He turned his million-dollar smile on Roma. “Would you like some hot chocolate?”

“Please,” she said.

Eddie looked at Maggie.

“I’m fine,” she said with a little shake of her head. She was enjoying my shock.

“Kathleen?” Eddie asked.

My mouth was hanging open and I had to close it to answer. “Um, yes, please.” I handed him my cup.

“I’ll be right back.”

All three of us watched him go. Eddie looked just as good going as coming.

Roma pulled up a chair and sat with just a tiny sigh of satisfaction. “So, how are you really? How’s your hand?” she asked.

“How’s my hand?” I sputtered. “Roma! You? Eddie? How?”

She grinned like a teenager. “The rumor about Eddie and me hit the Internet. He happened to see it. He e-mailed me. I e-mailed back. We e-mailed maybe two dozen times. Then we had coffee.”

Her smile got bigger. “We talked for two hours.”

“Some of those sightings of you and Eddie were—”

“Real,” she finished. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you two. It’s just that I told myself I was crazy. He’s younger than I am. We’re so different. Then one day I just decided, Why the heck not? And here we are.”

Eddie was on his way back with the hot chocolate. Maggie was saying something about playing matchmaker.

I could feel Marcus looking at me before I turned my head to lock eyes with him. I remembered how I’d felt when I’d seen him coming through the trees toward me, how he’d been there to catch me. I remembered how he couldn’t stop smiling at me in the ambulance. He kept looking at me, and then he started across the room, and I couldn’t help thinking,
Why the heck not?

 

 

I
’d never heard a cat laugh before—I didn’t think they could—but that’s what Owen was clearly doing. He was behind the big chair in the living room, laughing. It sounded a little like hacking up a fur ball, if you could somehow add merriment to the sound.

I leaned over the back of the chair. “Okay, cut it out,” I said. “You’re being mean.”

He looked up at me, and it seemed as though the expression in his golden eyes was a mix of faux-innocence and mirth. “It’s not funny,” I hissed.

Okay, so it was kind of funny. Owen’s brother, Hercules, was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, wearing boots. Specifically, black and white boots, to match his black and white fur, in a kitty-paw-print design with fleece lining and antislip soles. They were a gift from my friend Maggie.

“Stick a paw in it,” I said to Owen. “You’re not helping.”

I went back into the kitchen. Hercules gave me a look that was part acute embarrassment and part annoyance.

“They are kind of cute,” I said. “You have to admit it was a very nice gesture on Maggie’s part.” That got me a glare that was all venom.

“I’ll take them off.” I crouched down in front of him. He held up one booted paw and I undid the strap. “You’re just not a clothes cat,” I told him. “You’re more of an au naturel cat.”

I heard a noise behind me in the doorway. “And Owen is very sorry he laughed at you. Aren’t you, Owen?” I added a little extra emphasis to the last words. After a moment’s silence there was a soft meow from the other side of the room.

I took the second boot off, and Hercules shook one paw and then the other. I stroked the fur on the top of his head. “Maggie was just trying to help,” I said. “She knows you don’t like getting your feet wet.”

Hercules was a total wuss about wet feet. He didn’t like going out in the rain. He didn’t like going out in the snow. He didn’t like walking across the grass in heavy dew. Maggie had seen the cat boots online and ordered them. I didn’t know how I was going to explain to her that boots just weren’t his thing.

I stood up, went over to the cupboard to get a handful of kitty crackers and made a little pile on the floor in front of Herc. “Here,” I said. “These’ll help.” Then I scooped up Owen. I could tell from the way his tail was twitching that he’d been thinking of swiping a cracker.

“Leave your brother alone,” I warned, carrying him upstairs with me. “Or I’ll put those boots on
you
and I’ll tell Maggie you like them.”

He made grumbling noises in his throat. I set him on the floor, and he disappeared into my closet to sulk. I pulled on an extra pair of heavy socks, brushed my hair back into a low ponytail and stuffed my wallet in my pocket.

Hercules had eaten the crackers and was carefully grooming his front paws. “I’m going to meet Maggie,” I told him, pulling my sweatshirt over my head. “I’ll figure out something to tell her.”

I locked the kitchen door behind me and walked around the side of the house to the truck—my truck. Sometimes I still got the urge to clap my hands and squeal when I saw it. It had started out as a loaner from Harry Taylor, Sr., and when I’d manage to retrieve some papers about Harry’s daughter’s adoption, he’d insisted on giving me the truck.

When I’d moved to Mayville Heights about a year ago to become head librarian and to oversee the renovations to the library building, I’d sold my car. The town was small enough that I could walk everywhere I wanted to go. But it was nice not to have to carry two bags of groceries up the hill. And with all the rain we’d had in the past week and all the flooding, I never would have been able to get to the library—or a lot of other places—without the old truck.

The morning sky was dull and the air was damp. We’d had a week of off-and-on rain—mostly on—and the downtown was at serious risk of major flooding. The retaining wall between Old Main Street and the river was strong, but it had been reinforced with sandbags just in case. We’d spent hours two nights ago moving those bags into place along a human chain of volunteers.

This was the second day the library was closed. The building was on relatively high ground, a rise where the street turned, and the pump Oren Kenyon had installed in the basement was handling what little water had come in, but both the parking lot and the street were flooded.

Maggie was waiting for me on the sidewalk in front of the artists’ co-op building. The old stone basement had several feet of water in it, and we’d spent most of the previous day moving things from the first-floor store into the second-floor tai chi studio, in case the water got any higher. There were still a couple of her large collage panels that needed to be carried upstairs.

“Hi,” I said. “How late did you stay here last night?”

“Not that late,” she said as she unlocked the front door.

I followed her inside. Mags and I had met at her tai chi class and bonded over our love of the cheesy reality show
Gotta Dance
. She was an artist, a tai chi instructor, and she ran the co-op store.

Her two collage panels were up on a table, carefully wrapped and padded. We carried them up the steps without any problems.

I was about to suggest that we walk over to Eric’s Place for coffee and one of his blueberry muffins, when we heard someone banging on the front door.

“Please tell me that isn’t who I think it is,” Maggie said. Before I could ask who she meant, she was on her way downstairs.

Jaeger Merrill was outside, his back to the door. Maggie let out a soft sigh and went to unlock it. He turned at the sound.

“Good morning,” she said.

Jaeger stepped inside. “The window in my studio is leaking,” he said. There were two deep frown lines between his eyebrows. Jaeger was a mask maker. He sold both his masks and some of the elaborate preliminary sketches he made for them in the store.

“Ruby told me,” Maggie said. “Someone’s coming to take a look at it this morning.”

“I wanted to get some work done and instead I had to waste a lot of time sticking my stuff in boxes. Again.” He dragged his fingers back through his blond hair. A couple of weeks ago he’d cut off a good six inches. It made him look more serious, less bohemian. “The building needs a manager.”

“River Arts does have a manager,” I said. “The town owns the building.”

“Too much bureaucracy and too little money,” Jaeger said derisively. “The center should have a corporate sponsor. So should the store.”

Maggie placed a loosely closed fist against her breastbone and took a slow deep breath. I knew that was her way of staying calm and in control. “The artists own and run the store,” she said, “so they can make the decisions.”

He gave his head a slight shake. “Like I said before, what the hell does the average artist know about running a business?”

Maggie was the current president of the co-op board. I thought about how hard she’d worked to promote the artwork and the artists at the shop in just the year I’d known her.

“I’m sorry about the leak,” she said. “There isn’t anything anyone can do about all the rain. Everyone is frustrated and tired, Jaeger.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “This is a ridiculous way to run a business,” he started.

“The weather and how we run the co-op are two different things,” Maggie said. Her tone hadn’t changed at all but there was something just a little intimidating about the way she stood there so perfectly straight and still. “If you have problems with River Arts, go to the town office, call public works, call the mayor. Save everything else for the meeting later this morning.”

She tipped her head to the side and looked at him. If it had been an old Western this would have been the point where the audience did a collective “Ohhh.” Maggie could outstare anyone, even my Owen and Hercules, who were masters of the unblinking glare.

Jaeger’s mouth opened and closed. He shook his head. “This is stupid,” he muttered. He pushed past us and headed upstairs.

“What was that?” I asked once he was out of sight.

Maggie gave me a wry smile. “Mostly Jaeger being Jaeger. Did you know he’s been pushing for the co-op to find a patron almost since he first got here?”

I nodded.

“With the flooding and having to move everything in the store, he’s just gotten worse.” She let out a breath, put one hand on the back of her head and stretched. Then she looked at me. “I should check the basement.”

“Okay,” I said. I followed her through the empty store to the back storage room. She flipped the light switch and unlocked the door. Three steps from the top of the basement stairs she stopped, sucking in a sharp breath.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Is he dead?” Maggie asked in a tight voice.

I leaned around her to get a better look at the body. “Yeah, he’s dead.”

“Are you sure?”

I moved past her on the steps so I could see better. The corpse of a large gray rodent was floating on its back near the stairs railing, in the four feet of muddy, smelly water that filled the basement. “He’s not doing the backstroke, Maggie,” I said. “He’s dead.”

She shivered and ran a hand through her short blond hair. “I’m not touching that thing.”

“I’ll get it,” I said. It wouldn’t be the oddest thing I’d ever done in the name of friendship. I grabbed the yellow plastic snow shovel that was hanging on a nail to the right of the cellar door and went down a couple more steps so I could scoop up the dead rat. Behind me I heard Maggie make a faint squeaky noise in her throat, probably afraid that it had just been floating, eyes closed, in the filthy water, like some rodent spa-goer, and was now going to roll over and run up the steps.