Cat With a Clue

Chapter 18

I edged backward, deeper into the dark, trying to get as far away from the killer as possible, but stopped almost immediately, because the stupidity of that particular action was apparent even to me.

Retreat to a smaller space? One that had a single door and zero windows? Only the dumbest potential victim in the lowest-budget movie would do something like that, and, since I liked to think of myself as smart and resourceful, now would be a good time for that to actually be true.

“You can come out now, Minnie,” said a male voice. “I know you’re in there.”

My last hope, that I’d been mistaken about the killer being in here with me and that the museum’s electricity had been shut off because someone had neglected to pay the electric bill, fizzled away into nothing.

“Who else is down here?” he asked. “I know you’re not alone; I heard you talking to someone.”

Eddie, in a bizarre act of appropriate behavior, remained quiet.

So did I.

“There’s no point in hiding.” A flashlight beam started dancing around the room. I moved quickly and quietly, and crouched behind a stack of boxes.

What I needed was a plan, and I needed it fast. Ten minutes ago would have been best, so that Eddie and I could have left the basement before the killer even arrived, the killer being . . . who? Shane, aka Angry Guy? Paul Utley? Jared, the used-book store guy? Steve Guilder? Bob Parmalee? Of the five, I hadn’t even met Bob, and I didn’t know the other four well enough to recognize their voices.

“Come on, Minnie, there’s no need to be scared.”

If I hadn’t been so scared, I would have snorted derisively. No one who barges into a closed museum, tiptoes down to the basement, and turns the lights off on the unsuspecting occupants of said basement had good intentions.

“All I want to do is talk.”

And all I wanted was to get out of that basement, cat in hand, but I didn’t say so out loud.

The flashlight’s beam played over the stacks of boxes, sending long, complicated shadows around the room as it went. “I hear,” he said, “that you’ve figured out that Chastain’s Wildflowers is down here somewhere.” He sighed. “All these boxes! I hope I gave you enough time to find the book. The last thing I want to do is spend my Saturday night digging through a bunch of old dusty crap that should have been thrown away generations ago.”

The cone of light came to an abrupt halt. “For crying out loud. Would you look at that? It’s one of those hair wreaths. What did some woman do, cut off all her hair to make this thing? Must have taken weeks to make something this complicated, but at the end of the day, it’s just creepy to have some dead chick’s hair hanging on your wall, don’t you think?”

I wanted to ask him if he thought the DeKeysers should have thrown away Wildflowers a generation or two back, but managed to keep my mouth shut. He was trying to get me to talk, and I wasn’t going to play his game.

Think, I told myself. Figure this out. Come up with a plan A, have a plan B for backup, then start working on implementation. Shouldn’t be that hard.

In theory.

“Why on earth do people hang on to old crap like this?” The flashlight played over a box I’d opened early on. I saw a hand reach down to flip through the contents. “And then donate it to a museum?” He made a rude noise. “You must have some kind of ego if you think strangers would be interested in your old family photos.”

Clearly, the man had no sense of history. I continued to keep my mouth shut and silently vowed one more time to keep Wildflowers from this guy. Not that I’d found the book yet, but that wasn’t the point.

“So, where is it?” he asked. “You’ve been down here for hours—you must have found it by now. And I must say, I’m pleased you never noticed me following you the past week. I kept hearing you were asking all sorts of questions. I didn’t worry too much about that, but once I found out you’re dating Ash Wolverson, I had to make sure you didn’t cause me any trouble.” He laughed. “On the contrary, I’d say you led me straight to the book.”

He moved around the room, but slow enough that I was able to back away, undetected, by hiding behind boxes, old countertops from the pharmacy, and old shelving units from the hardware store. Once again, being under-tall was working to my advantage, since it didn’t take much to hide me. Hooray for getting the short end of the genetic stick!

Short end?

My inane thought was suddenly so funny I almost laughed out loud. I slapped my hand over my mouth to keep my nervous laughter inside, and the small noise must have alerted him.

“Heard that,” he said casually. His flashlight speared the darkness, and I tried to make myself smaller than I’d been since I was twelve years old. “Look,” he said. “We both know you’re down here, so why are you bothering to hide?”

I figured the answer to that was obvious, so this time it was easy to keep my mouth shut.

“Come on, Minnie,” he said. “All I want is that book. Sure, it was donated to the museum, but they don’t even know what they have, so clearly they don’t deserve it. We’re the only ones who know the value of Chastain’s book, so let’s talk about this.”

I watched the flashlight shift away from me. If I ran now, he wouldn’t see the movement. The open stairway was about fifteen feet to my left and it was . . . too far. He was bigger, faster, and stronger than I was, and he’d be on me before I got three steps up the stairs. I had to get closer before I ran.

A lot closer.

Slowly, so very slowly, I stood and wedged myself behind a set of freestanding shelves; old wooden ones with a solid back. If I could inch behind it all the way to the other end, I’d be close enough to the stairs to make a run for it.

“So, here’s the deal,” my enemy said. “Let’s work on two assumptions. One, that the book is here. Two, that we both want the money it will bring if we sell it to the right person.”

I almost yelled at him then and there. Any money the book might bring didn’t belong to him and it didn’t belong to me. It belonged to . . . well, I wasn’t sure who it belonged to, considering that Talia DeKeyser had given it away while in the grips of Alzheimer’s, that Chandra Wunsch had given it away without knowing what she had, and that the museum hadn’t a clue about its value, but that was for the attorneys to figure out.

And speaking of attorneys, the more this guy talked, the more I was sure it was Paul Utley. Angry Guy Shane didn’t have this guy’s vocabulary, and, if my first impressions of Jared were anywhere close to being accurate, he didn’t have this kind of intensity. Then again, I didn’t know anything about Bob Parmalee and hardly anything about Steve Guilder.

“Let’s talk about a sixty-forty split,” he said. “Sixty percent for me, forty for you. Now, you might think a fifty-fifty split would be fair, or even sixty-forty to your benefit, but let’s look at the facts.”

This guy was definitely an attorney. It wasn’t possible that any other variety of human would talk that way.

“Yes,” Paul said, “you’ve found the book, or at least its approximate location, but would you have even known it existed without the inciting incidents that came before? Incidents that were the result of my knowledge? And Andrea’s?”

He had a point, but it didn’t matter. “Moron,” I whispered. If he thought a true librarian could possibly steal a valuable book, he could think anything.

Paul sighed audibly. “This is getting old.”

I edged farther along the back of the wooden shelves, stabbing myself with tiny bits of raw wood in the process, hoping that none of them were big enough to catch me tight. I had to get to the other end. There was no other choice.

“I’m stronger than you,” he said, “faster than you, and I’m certainly a lot bigger than you. There’s no way this will be a fair fight, which is the way we lawyers prefer things.” He laughed. “So, I ask you: Why are you making this so difficult? I asked Andrea the same the same thing, and look what I had to do to her.” He laughed again. “I even had to pretend to love her all over again, for crying out loud.”

His words sent my blood pressure soaring. If there was one thing I hated more than people turning down the corners of pages in library books, it was condescension, and this guy reeked of it.

“Come out, Minnie,” Paul said, “and let’s discuss this like reasonable adults. After all, nothing has happened yet, correct? I haven’t done a thing except frighten you, and that was pure accident.”

It was?

I sidled sideways a little bit more. The end of the shelves were close now. If I leaned to the left, maybe I could see where Paul was and what he was doing. After all, maybe he did just want to talk. Maybe I’d jumped to a conclusion that I’d laugh about later. Maybe my instincts had been wrong.

Moving slowly, carefully, and quietly, and always, always watching the path of the flashlight’s beam, I eased left.

“An accident.” Paul was crouching low, sending the cone of light around the room, looking for . . . what? My feet? “You understand that, right? Why would I want to scare you? Come on out, and we’ll talk about how to deal with the book.”

His lawyer’s voice was soothing and monotonous and almost sirenlike. Happily, a short stint as a telemarketer when I was desperate for cash in college had endowed me with a permanent immunity to sales pitches, and there was no doubt Paul was trying to sell me something.

Groaning, he put his hands on his knees to help push himself upright. As he did, the flashlight dropped out of his hand and clattered to the floor. He cursed and leaned down to pick it up.

But it was too late. When the flashlight had fallen and hit the floor, it had spun around and illuminated what he held in his other hand.

Illuminated the long, shiny, and very sharp-looking knife he was holding with a strong grip.

If there was ever a time to launch Plan A, it was now.

I braced my back against the wall, wedged my knees tight, placed my hands flat against the shelving. And pushed.

Creak!

Paul Utley whirled around, but since I was behind the shelving, there was nothing for him to see.

Though I was pushing for all I was worth, the freakishly heavy thing didn’t tip over. It swayed a little, though, and I moved instantly into Plan A-1, because I hadn’t spent the last four winters in northwest lower Michigan without learning something about how to get my car out of a ditch. The key was to rock it.

Push, release. Push, release. Push . . .

With each cycle, the arc of movement grew wider and faster.

Utley’s flashlight danced around the room, but too fast to catch the slow action of the shelves.

C’mon, I urged it. Tip!

Push, release. Push, release. Push . . .

Paul’s flashlight finally touched on the movement. “What the—”

It toppled over in superslow motion. I heard the boxes on the crowded shelves start to slide forward, heard one thud to the floor, heard Utley shout, and then finally, at long last . . .

Crash!

I didn’t wait to hear any more. I was scrambling for the stairs, tripping over boxes, hurling myself forward, trying to get away from that long, shiny, deadly knife. My cell phone was in the back room, but it was only a couple of blocks to city police station. If I ran fast, I could have someone back here in less than—

“It’s a freaking cat!” Paul Utley said.

I stopped dead.

“Hey,” he said, loudly, “I bet this is that bookmobile cat everyone talks about. What’s your name, kitty?”

“Mrr.”

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

Now Eddie decided to be Mr. Friendly? Now?

But maybe he’d see through Utley’s fake friendliness. Maybe cats really did have some of the traits ascribed to dogs. Maybe Eddie would sense Utley’s underlying intentions, claw the back of his hand, make him drop the knife, pick up the knife in his teeth, and scamper away with it, and I’d take it in my handkerchief to preserve the fingerprints and—

And that’s where my fast-forwarding fantasy came to a screeching halt. I’d never carried a handkerchief in my life.

My hand was on the front doorknob. Outside it was full dark; more time had passed than I realized. The sidewalks were empty of life, and the only car in sight was parked at the far end of the street. I pushed open the door and squinted, trying to see the time on the freestanding clock at the corner.

“That’s a good kitty,” Utley said.

My cat’s purrs were loud enough so that I could hear them from the top of the stairs.

“Just a little closer . . . No, come on now, just a few feet more . . .”

A few feet more and Utley would grab Eddie, my fuzzy friend, my pal, my napping buddy. He’d put that long knife to my cat’s white throat and use him as a hostage. Eddie would hiss and howl and claw and scratch, but Utley wouldn’t care, because he needed that book and he needed me to keep quiet about it and about him.

Time for Plan B.

Which was unfortunate, because I hadn’t had time to formulate more than a rough draft.

I scanned the sidewalk one more time, hoping against hope that I’d see someone coming, someone who could help us, someone who would instantly respond to a shriek for help.

But there was no one.

“Come here, you stupid cat!”

“Mrrrr-RRR!!” Eddie growled and hissed and spat.

I turned and ran pell-mell back down the stairs.