Curiosity Thrilled The Cat

8

Step Back, Seven Stars

Crap on toast! She was right. The bag was moving, rocking from side to side the way a kid might rock a rowboat to try and tip everyone into the water. Or the way a restless cat might rock a nylon bag because he was bored.

“Kathleen, dear, is there something in your bag?” Rebecca asked.

“It’s my phone,” Maggie blurted.

I stared at her. What the heck was she doing?

“Your phone?” Ruby said.

Maggie nodded her head vigorously. “Uh-huh.” She caught my eye. “Sorry, Kathleen. I didn’t want it to get broken so I tucked it in your bag.” She held up both hands. “Who knew vibrate could be that vigorous?”

“That’s okay,” I said. I cleared my throat. “I’ll, umm . . . I’ll get it for you.”

I scurried over to the table. Keeping my body between the tote and everyone else, I squatted down and looked through the top mesh panel. Two green eyes met mine.

“Cut. It. Out,” I whispered through clenched teeth.

Hercules made a noise that sounded an awful lot like a snort.

“Stay still and stay quiet. We’re leaving in a minute.” I straightened, bumping into Maggie. “‘Who knew vibrate could be so vigorous’?” I said.

“You’d rather be known as the librarian who carries her cat in her gym bag?” she retorted.

“Good point,” I said. I slid the bag onto my shoulder and kept it against my body with an elbow. “I’m going to get you-know-who out of here.”

“Okay,” Maggie said. “I’ll see you in an hour or so.”

Violet and Roma were standing just outside the door. Roma pulled a water bottle out of her backpack as I slipped past them and grabbed my hoodie off the hook.

“Violet, what’s going to happen to the music festival now?” I asked as I tied the sweatshirt around my waist again.

Not a strand of Violet’s silver hair in its sleek French twist was out of place. “I don’t know,” she said. “The committee is meeting tomorrow to try to figure that out.”

“I’d hate to see the festival canceled,” Roma said. Her face was flushed.

“So would I,” Violet said. “But Gregor Easton was a last-minute replacement himself. I have no idea how we could get anyone of his caliber to take over at this point.”

“How did you get him to step in for the original music director?” I asked.

“Actually, he contacted us.”

Roma looked at her with surprise. “Really? I didn’t know that.”

“Oh, yes,” Violet said, brushing invisible lint off of her T-shirt. “He’d heard about Zinia needing emergency surgery—apparently they’re close friends—and he’d had an unexpected cancellation in his own schedule. So he told Zinia he’d step up. He got in touch with us, and that was that.”

“That was convenient,” I said.

“Yes, it was,” Violet said. “Somehow I don’t think we’re going to be that lucky twice.”

I heard the street door below open and someone started up the stairs. After a moment Ami appeared, in denim shorts and a tank top, eating what had to be a container of Tubby’s frozen yogurt. She licked the stubby wooden spoon—at Tubby’s they didn’t use plastic spoons—and smiled at us. “Hi,” she said. “I’m here to get Rebecca.” Her voice went up at the end of the sentence, making it sound like a question, like she wasn’t quite sure if she was at the right place at the right time.

“I’m ready,” Rebecca said from the doorway. I lifted her tote bag down and handed it to her. Thank you, she mouthed. She pulled her scarf out of the top of the bag and held it up. “I found my scarf,” she said to Ami. “I guess I left it here last time.”

“I told you it was probably here,” Violet said.

“Mmmm, good,” Ami said around a mouthful of yogurt and strawberries. “But I would’ve made you another one.”

“I like this one,” Rebecca said, tucking the length of fabric back in her tote. “It’s the first scarf you made.”

Ami smiled at her over the cardboard cup in her hand. “You’re such a mushball, Rebbie. You have everything I ever gave you—every present, every piece of paper.”

“She has every piece of paper everyone ever gave her,” Violet said tartly.

“Violet Cole, are you implying that I’m a pack rat?” Rebecca asked, hands on her hips in mock outrage, eyes twinkling.

“No,” Violet said. “I’m coming right out and saying it. Rebecca, you are a pack rat.”

Rebecca drew herself up to her full five-foot-threeinches. “I prefer to think of myself as an environmentalist and conservator of history.”

Violet shook her head slightly. “And I prefer to think of myself as twenty-five and hot as a two-dollar pistol. Doesn’t make it true.”

Everyone laughed. Hearing the elegant, composed Violet say “hot as a two-dollar pistol” was kind of like hearing a two-year-old repeat an off-color word. Maybe you shouldn’t laugh, but you couldn’t quite help it.

Ami came up the last couple of steps then and took Rebecca’s bag.

Rebecca turned to me, reached over and pushed back a few stray strands of hair that had fallen on my cheek. “I’ll get my scissors out this weekend and just give you a little more shape,” she said with a smile.

I smiled back at her. “Thank you.”

“Are you ready?” Ami asked. She held up her cardboard cup. “I have one of these for you, packed in some ice down in the car.”

Rebecca’s smile got even bigger. “You are a darling girl,” she said, hooking her arm through the younger woman’s. She gave me a little wave with her free hand and they disappeared down the stairs.

I could feel Hercules wriggling inside the bag again. “I have to get going, too,” I said to Violet and Roma. “See you next time.” I started down the steps, holding my bag close to my hip. “Okay,” I whispered. “We’re going.”

I walked quickly to the library. There were a lot of people out in the downtown, but it was deserted at the library. Jason was at the checkout desk.

“Quiet night?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, brushing a lock of blond hair out of his eyes. “Nobody’s been in since suppertime.” He pointed to the book carts behind him. “All those new kids’ books are ready to go on the shelves.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s a big help.” Jason was my summer intern, and a real find. He looked like a teen-magazine heartthrob, with blond hair and an easy smile, but he lived and breathed books. He wanted to be a writer and he was working his way through the classics—Faulkner, Dostoyevsky, Hemingway.

“Where’s Abigail?” I asked.

Jason pointed over his head. “She’s in the workroom, getting all those magazines ready for the yard sale.”

I headed for my office first and let Hercules loose. He poked his head out of the bag, blinked and sniffed my desktop, then came all the way out and walked over a stack of files to the edge of the desk, where he jumped into my chair. Which set the chair spinning.

I darted around the side of the desk and stopped the chair. Hercules looked woozily up at me.

I reached down to pat his head. “Stay here,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

I started for the second floor but couldn’t resist detouring over to the computer room. True to his word, Oren had assembled all six carrels and chairs. I ran my finger over the closest table. There was no dust, no dirt on the light wood. That was Oren. A computer box sat next to each workstation. As soon as Larry had the wiring fixed and the new outlets working, I could set up the computers, and after a hundred years the Mayville Heights Free Public Library would be part of the electronic age.

Abigail was in the workroom next door to the staff lounge. She was sitting on the floor, two rows of stacked and tied magazines behind her. “Hi,” I said.

She looked up and smiled. Her gray hair was pulled back in a tight braid and her rimless reading glasses had slipped down to the end of her nose. She’d told me she’d started going gray in her twenties. Now, a couple of decades later, her hair was a beautiful mix of red and silver. Somehow it didn’t make her look old—just smarter. Self-consciously I touched my own mussed hair.

“Did you do all this tonight?” I asked.

She pulled a knot tight in the string around a stack of magazines and set them behind her. “Yes, I did,” she said. “It’s been very quiet.” She gestured to the back of the room. “I found some foam board in the cupboard. Do you mind if we use it for posters?”

“No. That’s a great idea.”

Abigail stood up and surveyed her work. “If it’s like this tomorrow night I should be able to finish these and start on the hardcovers,” she said.

“That would be great,” I said.

I headed back downstairs. It was almost eight o’clock, closing time. Jason was going through each section on the main floor, turning off lights and shelving the occasional book as he went. I walked over to the magazines and gathered up a couple of issues that had been left out of their slots. Then I lined up the book carts at the desk and shut down the computer.

Abigail came down the steps carrying her bike helmet as Jason turned off the last bank of lights. Only the overhead above the circulation desk stayed lit. I walked Abigail to the entrance, let her out, and waited for Jason, who was gathering his knapsack, jamming even more books inside. He swung it up onto his shoulder and hurried over to me.

“See you tomorrow,” he said.

“Have a good night,” I said. I locked the doors and shut the ironwork gate, but left it unlocked.

Hercules was on the floor in front of the desk when I opened my office door.

“Do you want to look around before we leave?” I asked. He came right over to the open door and looked out, checking right and left. I crouched beside him. “No hiding, and you come when I call,” I said, wagging my finger at him. He batted it out of the way, so I stood up and headed for the stairs. Herc padded behind me.

Except for a bit of trim the new reception and checkout desk was finished. There was some painting to do and lots more books to be shelved, and of course we didn’t have a meeting room, but for the first time I had a sense of how the building was going to look when it was finally finished.

Herc prowled the computer area, twining in and out around the carrels, sniffing each cardboard box.

“Okay. Are you ready to go?” I said.

He looked back at me, then started purposefully across the library. “Hercules, where are you going?” I said. He ignored me.

I hurried after the cat, but when I bent to scoop him up he darted away. Only one of the large sheets of plastic that Will Redfern’s men had hung was still in place. It was a blurry wall on one side of the door to the storage area/someday-to-be meeting room. The heavy paneled door was closed and locked and the space was marked off with yellow police tape.

“Don’t you even think about it,” I called.

Nonchalantly, Hercules walked past the police cordon toward the door.

“Hercules, come back here right now,” I said sharply.

All I got for an answer was a low, rumbly “Meow.”

“C’mon, puss,” I coaxed. “Time to go.”

His attention was focused completely on the heavy wooden door.

“You are never going to eat another spoonful of Tubby’s yogurt in your life if you don’t get over here right now,” I said.

He tossed a quick glance back over his shoulder but didn’t move. Okay, so the no-yogurt part was a bluff. Why was I standing on one side of a strip of plastic yellow tape when I could just duck underneath it and grab the cat? No alarm bells were going to go off. Detective Gordon wasn’t going to rappel down from the ceiling and arrest me.

Still, I couldn’t help checking around—for what, I didn’t know—before I ducked under the tape.

“C’mere, you,” I said, bending down for the little black-and-white cat, who walked out of my reach, through the closed door in front of us, and disappeared.