Curiosity Thrilled the Cat

by Sofie Kelly

  “Thank you,” she whispered back.

  “Kathleen, bend your knees,” Maggie called.

  I blew my bangs out of my eyes and bent my knees a little more. Across the circle Violet smiled at me. Her form always looked so smooth and fluid. Like Rebecca she was in her midsixties. She was tall and slim and the only time she didn’t wear heels was in class.

  Next to me Roma Davidson was already starting to sweat. I envied her dark hair cut in a smooth bob that never seemed to fall in her face. She gave me a sly smile and mouthed, Bend your knees just as Maggie said it again. Roma was the only vet in Mayville Heights. It struck me that I should ask her about Owen’s catnip addiction, just to be sure he wasn’t going to turn into a little kitty junkie. As far as his hypothetically invisible antics, I’d keep those to myself.

  By the time class was over Maggie had told me to bend my knees at least half a dozen times. I was more awkward than usual and my hair kept flopping in my face. At one point Maggie had passed behind me and touched the back of my head with two fingers. “Empty your mind, Kath,” she’d whispered.

  Easy for her to say. If I emptied my mind where was I going to put everything?

  We always ended with the complete form. Only Maggie and Ruby can do all 108 movements. One by one the rest of us moved to the side to watch them. When they were finished Maggie gave a slight bow and said, “See you all on Thursday. Practice.”

  Ruby stretched both arms out to her sides. She painted huge abstracts and she was the most flexible person I’ve ever seen. She had more piercings than anyone I’ve ever seen, either.

  Ruby always had a couple of historical romances among her books on organic gardening and back issues of Mother Earth News. A woman of eclectic interests. She was also in the festival choir. “How’s practice for the final concert going?” I asked.

  “Okay, considering the world-famous conductor is a creepy old perv,” she said. She stretched her arms up over her head, then bent forward and put both hands on the floor. “And he’s not that great a conductor,” she added, turning her head sideways to look at me. “I’ve had twelve years of voice and I know the difference between an okay conductor and one who can really feel the music.” She walked her hands out away from her feet, the tips of her spiky hair just brushing the floor. It was blue this week.

  I couldn’t help thinking that if I were in that position it would sound a lot like someone deboning a turkey.

  “And worst of all, he’s a feelie.”

  “A what?” I said, pulling at the neck of my T-shirt. I was sweating.

  “A feelie. You know, he has to put his hands on your shoulders to fix your posture. He has to put his hands on your diaphragm to check your breathing. A feelie.” Ruby laughed, which sounded more like a snort because she was upside down. “I had to put my elbow in his diaphragm a couple of times. To check his breathing, of course.” She began walking her hands back to her feet again. “If I were Ami Lester . . . boy.”

  Ami Lester? Right. A pretty strawberry blonde who’d borrowed all of Diana Gabaldon’s books from the library. She was one of the summer interns at the Stratton. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Ami has two solos,” Ruby said. She pulled her head in against her tanned legs, and her voice was slightly muffled. “Easton likes her. I don’t mean holy-crap-can-she-sing likes her. And yeah, she can. I mean, he’s-a-dirty-old-man likes her.”

  She slowly unrolled so she was standing up again. “I told her if it were me, he wouldn’t be a baritone anymore. He’d be singing soprano.” She grinned, shrugged and then walked over to the table in the corner where Maggie kept the cups and tea.

  There was a noise at the door. Rebecca was standing there. She bent to pick up the shoe she’d dropped. I walked over to her. She watched Ruby choose a mug and take a chamomile tea bag from the box before she turned to me. She looked tired.

  “Thanks for taking care of the house for me, Kathleen,” she said.

  “Anytime.” I pushed my hair back and sighed in frustration. Why had I cut it? Oh, right. Because I’d changed; new place, new job, new life, so new hair.

  Rebecca reached over and ran her fingers through my straggly layers, lifting the hair and letting it drop. Her hand trembled a little and her scarf brushed my cheek. “You have lovely hair, dear,” she said. “It’s grown down over your ears now, which is the hardest part. Come over this weekend and I’ll shape it up a little.”

  I smiled. “Thank you. I will.” She went out to the bench to change her shoes.

  Maggie walked over to me, carrying a mug of tea. “Matt’s ahead in the voting,” she said with a grin.

  “There’s no way you can know that,” I told her.

  “He is going to win the coveted crystal-globe statue,” she said.

  “Never going to happen.”

  “I suppose you think that would-be superhero in a loincloth is going to win,” Maggie said.

  “Mr. Kevin Sorbo is not a would-be superhero. He was the very yummy Hercules, and he can dance Matt Lauer under the table.”

  She just rolled her eyes and shook her head at me.

  “I have to get back to the library,” I said. I looked around and lowered my voice. “Owen’s in my office.”

  “Was today Bring Your Cat to Work Day?” Maggie said. “I thought that was next week.”

  “Very funny,” I said. “He climbed into my bag. I didn’t know until we got to the library and he jumped out.”

  “Not on the checkout desk, I hope.”

  I tugged at the hem of my T-shirt. “No,” I said. “That would have been all right. He jumped onto someone’s head.”

  She really did try not to laugh. “Owen jumped onto someone’s head. I wish I’d been there.”

  “No, you don’t. The someone was Gregor Easton.”

  Maggie almost choked on her tea. “You’re kidding.” Then she saw my face. “You’re not kidding.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sending breakfast over to his suite. I hope that’s enough.”

  “Poor Owen,” Maggie said. “He’s probably traumatized.”

  “I’m traumatized,” I said. “I better go. I’ll see you tomorrow night.” I started down the stairs, then stopped half a dozen steps down and turned back to Maggie. “Veggie sticks or brownies?” I asked.

  “Brownies,” she said.

  Of course.

  “And don’t try to sneak any pureed prunes in these, either,” she called after me.

  I walked back to the library as fast my achy legs could move. Susan was at the desk. “How’s everything?” I asked.

  “Not a meow out of anyone,” she said with a grin.

  I hurried upstairs and unlocked the office door, wondering what I was going to find. Owen was sitting on my desk chair. “Hey, fur ball,” I said. “I didn’t figure you’d stay on the floor.”

  I opened my bag and pulled out my shoes. “C’mon,” I said, offering him the empty case. Owen jumped onto the desk and walked across to peer inside. He looked up at me as if to say, What—you expect me to get in there?

  “You came down here that way and that’s how you’re going home.” I gave his backside a gentle nudge. He meowed what I was fairly sure was a swear word in cat and climbed in. I left the zipper partway open.

  It was almost dark by the time we’d walked up the hill to the house. Now that it was August I could see the days getting shorter. I turned on the lamp in the living room and let Owen out of the bag. He glanced at me, shook himself and sauntered in to the kitchen. I sat on the edge of the black leather chair and picked up the phone. I knew the number for Will Redfern, the contractor on the library renovation, by heart. The call went to voice mail. Calls to Will always went to voice mail. I couldn’t decide if the man was avoiding me or the job, or if he was just a totally disorganized person. I left my name and number and wondered what excuse he’d use for not getting back to me. He’d already used Dead Grandmother twice.

  Hercules twisted around my legs. I picked him up and went out
to the kitchen. “Do you know what your brother did?” I asked him. Herc tipped his head to one side and looked at me quizzically. I told him what had happened with Owen, and he made sympathetic meows every time I paused.

  I put him down on the floor and he watched while I poured a glass of milk and made toast with peanut butter. Then I sat at the table, feeding bits to Hercules and Owen, who had appeared the second the toaster popped.

  “I need that computer room set up,” I told them. “If the rest of the carrels and the chairs were put together I could at least unpack one computer and get it up and running.” I broke off another couple of bites of toast, one for Owen, who immediately dropped it on the floor, and one for Hercules, who licked off the peanut butter while I held the bread.

  “Redfern’s not going to call me back, is he? He’ll say a raccoon stole his phone or his tools fell off the back of his truck.” I slumped in my chair. “Should I call Everett?” Everett Henderson had hired me to supervise the library renovation. He was financing the entire project. His gift to the town for the library’s centennial.

  “Merow!” Owen didn’t even stop chewing.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m supposed to deal with this kind of thing, not Everett.”

  Hercules pulled the soggy bit of toast he’d been licking from my fingers and dropped it on the floor. Owen looked at him, whiskers twitching. Herc nudged the bread toward his brother, then went around the table and sat in front of the refrigerator.

  “What? You don’t like peanut butter anymore?” I asked.

  “Merow!” Owen yowled, louder than the last time, again without even bothering to stop eating.

  Hercules looked over his shoulder at the other cat. Why did I have the feeling they were talking about me?

  Then suddenly Herc jumped, swiping his paw at the Gotta Dance magnet on the refrigerator door. The magnet went skittering across the tile in one direction and the scrap of paper it had been holding floated to the floor at my feet.

  “Hercules!” I shouted. “What did you do that for?” The paper had Oren’s address. I bent to pick it up.

  Oren. Of course.

  “Oren could get everything put together,” I said. I swear I saw the cats exchange a look. I’d started talking to them just to have someone to talk to, but pretty quickly I’d realized that they seemed to be listening. Not that I told anyone that. “He’s working on the stage setup at the Stratton. He’ll be there early in the morning. You know Oren.”

  Herc looked up at me. “Is that what you were trying to tell me?” I said. He had a dab of peanut butter on the end of his nose. I reached down to wipe it off. He batted my finger away with a paw.

  “That’s what I’ll do,” I said. “I’ll go see Oren first thing. And I think I’ll take him some of those banana muffins.”

  The toast was gone. Owen yawned and so did I. Hercules began to wash his face. Nine thirty on a Tuesday night and here I was, sitting with my cats, ready to go to bed. I definitely was the crazy cat lady.

  Owen woke me up at quarter to six the next morning, just before the alarm went off. He put one paw on the edge of the mattress and his face about an inch away from mine. He had a very bad case of morning breath. I wondered if Listerine made a version for cats.

  By six thirty I was on my way to the Stratton with four banana muffins in a brown paper bag. I didn’t see Oren’s truck in the staff parking lot at the back of the building. Maybe he was in the main lot on the other side. I tried the stage door. It was unlocked. I stepped inside and followed the hall to the side stage entrance. Something was spilled on the wooden floor. Paint, maybe?

  “Oren!” I called. “Are you here?” I pushed through the heavy red curtains and came out onto the stage proper. There was a tiny charm on the floor in front of me, a musical note hanging from a circle of silver. I picked it up and caught sight of someone at the piano, upstage. “Oren, are you all right?” I called again. “It’s Kathleen.”

  I crossed the stage to the piano. The person slumped over the keyboard wasn’t Oren. It was Gregor Easton. And he wasn’t okay.

  He was dead.

  3

  Grasp Bird’s Tail

  I’ve seen a lot of stage bodies. From a distance makeup and fake blood can be pretty convincing, but up close it’s impossible to hide the fact that Colonel Mustard, who was hit with a candlestick in the library, is really a living, breathing person.

  Gregor Easton wasn’t living or breathing. His skin had a waxy paleness and there was a gash on the side of his head, an ugly red-and-purple wound that stood out in stark relief almost as though it had been painted on by some makeup artist. But there was no blood. I touched his wrist to feel for a pulse and jerked my hand away. His arm was stiff and cool.

  My hands shook as I fumbled for my cell phone. Then it hit me that I was in an empty theater with a body at quarter to seven in the morning. I backed across the stage, felt for the opening in the curtain and all but ran down the corridor. Outside I sat on the step and called 911.

  The paramedics arrived first—a man and a woman. Him I didn’t know, but I’d seen her at the library. Jane. No, Jaime—Sandra Boynton board books, and several on potty training.

  “He’s at the piano onstage,” I told them. “Go down the hall and through the curtain.”

  A police car arrived next, lights flashing. The officer got out of the car and walked over to me. “Ms. Paulson?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You reported finding a body?”

  “Inside. At the piano onstage.” I said, pointing. “The paramedics are in there.”

  “Ma’am, what are you doing here?” he asked. “Are you involved with the festival?”

  I explained that I was looking for Oren. A car and an SUV pulled into the small lot, followed by a police van. The woman in the car and the man driving the truck had to be police officers, I decided as they got out of their vehicles. They were both dressed in cop shoes—sturdy, heavy-soled black footwear. My father always said shoes are the key to a character. “Nail the footwear and you’ll nail the man.”

  The woman had gotten out of her car, holding a stainless steel coffee mug. She took a couple of mouthfuls and bent to set it back in the car. The man said something to her and grinned. She made a face at him and took one more drink.

  The patrol officer walked over to them.

  There was a wood and wrought-iron bench at the end of the parking lot. I sat down and waited. No one had told me not to leave, but I figured I shouldn’t until someone told me I could. I couldn’t hear what the three police officers were saying, but at one point they all turned and looked at me. I tried to look innocent and not mess with my hair.

  I was still holding the bag of muffins. What was I going to do with them? And where was Oren? Along with the work he was doing at the library, the festival committee had hired him to paint and make some repairs at the theater. He was always on the job by seven.

  The male paramedic came out the stage door, pulling off a pair of purple disposable gloves. He stopped to talk to the three officers. The two new ones had gloves of their own in their pockets. They pulled them on and went inside. More police vehicles pulled into the lot.

  I probably sat on the bench for another ten minutes or so before the officer who had driven the SUV came out of the theater. He walked over to me, pulling off his gloves. He was tall, with dark wavy hair about two weeks overdue for a trim. He had the tanned skin of someone who was outside a lot, which was probably why I’d never seen him in the library.

  “Ms. Paulson?” he said.

  “Yes.” I stood up.

  “I’m Detective Gordon. You found the body?”

  I nodded and tried not to shiver. It was cloudy and not as warm as it had been the past few days.

  “What were you doing here so early?”

  “I was looking for Oren Kenyon,” I said. All of a sudden I felt embarrassed, clutching my paper bag of muffins. “He’s been doing some of the renovation work at the library. I’
m the head librarian and I needed to talk to him.”

  “This early?” he asked.

  What did he mean by “this early?” It wasn’t as though I’d wandered down in my nightgown and slippers before the sun was up. “Oren starts work by seven at the latest. I wanted to talk to him before he got involved in something here.” Did he nod, ever so slightly?

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Muffins.” I handed the detective the bag so he could see for himself. He unrolled the top and looked inside. Then he looked at me again.

  “Ms. Paulson, were you and Mr. Easton involved? Were you two meeting here at the theater?”

  “Involved?” I said, and my voice actually squeaked, I was so surprised. “No. I told you, I came here looking for Oren.”

  Detective Gordon looked around the small parking lot. “Was his truck here?”

  I pulled my hand back through my hair, which probably only made it messier. “Well, no. But I thought maybe he was parked on the other side. The door was unlocked so I went in to see if he was working.”

  Why wasn’t he writing any of this down? I looked at his hands. They were twice the size of mine and callused. He did more than not write down what people told him. No wonder I’d never seen him in the library. “I saw someone at the piano,” I told him. “I thought it might be Oren. I went over and realized it was Mr. Easton.”

  “So you did know him?” the detective said.

  I shook my head. “I only met him last night. He came into the library looking to use a computer. But the computer room wasn’t ready. That’s why I was looking for Oren this morning.”

  The detective stared intently at me. Did he think maybe I’d break and admit that I’d been having a torrid affair with Gregor Easton and that he’d died while we were having wild monkey sex on the piano?