Final Catcall: A Magical Cats Mystery

by Kelly, Sofie

  I pulled them out of my pocket and handed them to her. She unlocked the door and as she did I suddenly figured out what she was up to.

  There was no way it was going to work. But there was no stopping Susan now. For the first time I had a sense of where her twins got their fearless spirit.

  She walked across the room and opened the door to a large storage closet. Packed carefully beside a pile of boxes there was in fact a small desk, wrapped in padded mover’s blankets.

  It could have been an antique, although I doubted it. Harry Taylor Junior’s brother, Larry, had found the desk in the back corner of the basement. Susan wasn’t lying when she said that she had no idea of its value. What I did know was that no one had been willing to pay five dollars for the thing when we’d had the library’s yard sale.

  Susan carefully removed the coverings. The old desk had been varnished at one time but more than half the finish had worn off. It had intricate turned legs, a small writing surface and a back that went up about two and a half feet. There were two rows of tiny drawers on the back unit and two small doors in the center.

  The desk was dinged and battered and it wobbled, but Susan unwrapped the thing like it was a treasure.

  Hugh Davis laid a hand on the worn desktop. “F. Scott Fitzgerald?” he said.

  “I can’t in all good conscience tell you that I have proof that he used this desk,” Susan said. She ran one finger along the side of the banged-up writing surface and smiled. “But . . .” She let the end of the sentence trail off.

  Hugh turned to me. “This will work.” He gestured at the desk. “We should get this upstairs. I’ve already wasted too much time today.”

  Hugh’s “we” actually meant Susan and me. The desk may have been banged up, but it was likely made of black walnut, according to Larry Taylor, and it was heavy. Still, we managed to get it up the stairs and set it down in the center of the workroom.

  Hugh pulled his chair over and sat down. He looked up at me. “My briefcase is in the hall.”

  It took me a moment to realize he expected me to go out and get it.

  His briefcase turned out to be a huge black leather pilot’s flight case. I set it beside his chair and realized that his chair was actually my office chair.

  Hugh followed my gaze. “I had to switch chairs with you,” he said, with an offhand gesture. “The other one didn’t have the right support for my back.”

  I took a deep breath, imagining my frustration filling a balloon coming out of the top of my head. It was a technique my mother used with her acting students.

  Hugh leaned over to open his case. “I’m going to need that table in here,” he said without looking up. “I need to spread out my papers and I guess that’s going to have to do.”

  I looked at Susan and inclined my head in the direction of the hallway. Once we were out there I flicked at the imaginary balloon with my finger and pictured it spiraling down the wide wooden steps to the main floor. The thought made me smile.

  “What are you grinning at?” Susan asked, grabbing one end of the table. It was a lot lighter than the desk.

  “Your ability to spin a line of you-know-what,” I said, taking hold of the other end of the table.

  “I wasn’t spinning anything,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “Everything I said was the truth. The library is a hundred years old, F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, and we certainly have no idea what that old desk is worth. It could be a valuable antique.”

  “And I could be a talking duck,” I countered, backing toward the door with my end of the table.

  Susan wrinkled her nose at me. “I don’t think you’re a duck. Your feet aren’t big enough.”

  We moved the folding table about an inch to the left and then forward and back until Hugh was happy with where it sat. Susan got him a cup of coffee—with cream and exactly half a packet of sweetener. I adjusted the blind at the window so there was no direct sunlight shining on his workspace. Then we left him alone.

  Susan shook her head. “How do people work with him? He’s so picky.”

  “He’s not that bad,” I said. “He’s just . . . creative.”

  She slid her glasses down her nose with one finger, frowned at me over the top of them and then pushed them back up again. “Honestly, Kathleen, you’d try to find something nice to say about Attila the Hun.”

  “All right, he might be a bit of a challenge.”

  She gave a snort of derision and went back downstairs.

  A group of kids from the after-school program came in around four to pick out some books and videos. By then I was so tired of being Hugh’s personal minion that I was entertaining the idea of taking my limited computer skills over to the Stratton and trying to fix the wi-fi myself.

  He came down the stairs just as I was about to show the kids our newest DVDs. I sighed, a little louder than I’d intended to.

  Susan smirked at me. “Remember, he’s creative.”

  “What’s creative?” a little girl with brown pigtails and red-framed glasses asked me. She was probably about seven.

  “‘Creative’ means you have a good imagination,” I said.

  Hugh spotted us and walked over. The little girl looked at him, frowning. “Do you really have a good imagination?” She pointed at me. “She said you did.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said, his expression serious.

  She twisted her mouth to one side. “You’re kind of old.”

  Hugh smiled then. “Old people can have good imaginations.”

  The child shook her head. “You’re older than my dad, and my mom says he has no imagination.”

  I struggled to keep a straight face. Hugh suddenly dropped down onto all fours, arched his back and stretched.

  The little girl grinned with delight. “You’re a cat!” she said.

  Hugh nodded. “Very good. I was using my imagination. Now you try it.”

  She got down on her hands and knees and meowed at us. With some gentle nudges, Hugh soon had her stretching just the way Owen and Hercules did.

  “Great,” Susan said against my ear. “Kind of makes it hard to dislike the guy when he’s good with kids.”

  Hugh stood up and brushed bits of lint off his pants. The little girl—whose name was Ivy—went back to the rest of her group.

  “You were great with her,” I said.

  He ran a hand over his beard. “I like kids. They’re more enjoyable to spend time with than most adults.” He held up the sheaf of papers in his hands. “These need to be stapled.”

  I smiled at him. “Mary has a stapler at the circulation desk.”

  He nodded. “Good.” He handed me the papers and went back upstairs.

  Susan smirked at me. “I was wrong,” she said, shaking her head so her topknot, secured with a red plastic pitchfork, bobbed at me. “It’s really not that hard to dislike him after all.”

  Hugh left for an early supper about half an hour later. I made sure that he knew what time we closed and I crossed my fingers that the wi-fi would be working at the theater in the morning.

  Andrew came in about six thirty, just as I was going to warm up some chicken soup in the staff room. There was a day’s worth of stubble on his face, but he was one of those men who look good with a bit of scruff. “Hey, Kathleen,” he said, “you think I could borrow your truck for half an hour? I have to move a piece of staging. Oren’s gone somewhere with his truck and I have no idea where Abigail is. She’s not answering her cell.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Where are you taking it?”

  “The marina.” He looked around. “It’s that way, right?” he asked, pointing upriver.

  “No. That way,” I said, indicating a hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction.

  He sighed loudly. “Explain to me the difference between Main Street and Old Main Street. I can’t keep the two of them straight. I take it Old Main Street is the original street and Main Street is some kind of extension.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. M
ain Street is the original.”

  He frowned. “That makes no sense.”

  “It does when you know the history of the names. Old Main Street used to be Olde Street, with an E at the end. It was the main route from the lumber camps to where the marina is now. Over time it turned into Old Main Street.”

  “Okay, so how do I get there?”

  “Just turn left and go straight until you see the sign for the marina.” I pulled my keys out of my pocket. “No, wait a minute,” I said. “You can’t do that. There was a water main break right in front of the hotel. The street’s dug up. You’ll have to go around.”

  He groaned. “Kathleen, please don’t make me drive around town in circles.”

  I held up a hand. “Hang on. Let me see if Mary can stay a little longer and I’ll just come with you.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I can’t believe how easy it is to get turned around in such a small place.”

  Mary was happy to stay later. I grabbed my sweater and purse and Andrew and I went out to the truck.

  “I’ll drive,” he said, holding out his hand for the keys. “You can direct me.”

  “Or, since I know where we’re going, I can just drive.” I made a shooing motion and reached around him to unlock the driver’s-side door.

  We drove back to the Stratton and I helped Andrew get the extra section of staging into the back of the truck. Luckily it wasn’t that heavy. We drove across town to the marina, managing to avoid most of the detoured traffic.

  “Where are you putting this thing?” I asked as I turned into the marina driveway.

  “Right down there at the far end of the parking lot.” Andrew pointed to a grassy space just beyond the pavement. “Just by those stairs. You can’t see them, but the other pieces are already there.”

  I backed the truck up to the edge of the grass so we didn’t have far to carry the load. The view over the river was beautiful as the sun sank in the evening sky. Three sailboats bobbed in the water, their masts bathed in amber light.

  I knew that Burtis Chapman and two of his sons would be at the marina the next morning with the crane to lift the boats out of the water. Abigail had persuaded Burtis to do the job a week early so it wouldn’t interfere with any of the festival performances.

  Andrew came to stand beside me. “It is a pretty spot. I’ll give you that,” he said.

  “What? No speech about the sunsets over Boston Harbor?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nope. But they are pretty spectacular.”

  I poked him in the ribs with my elbow, but he just laughed.

  “Where do they go?” he asked, pointing at the stairs.

  “They’ll take you up to the first lookout.”

  “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s climb up and watch the sunset.”

  I shook my head. “I have to get back to the library.”

  “Don’t be a stick in the mud, Kathleen,” he said. “Come with me. Watch the sunset. See the pretty colors.” He reached for my hand. “Please?”

  He was extremely annoying, but I knew the sunset would be gorgeous from the lookout and there really was no big hurry to get back to the library. Friday was almost always our quietest night.

  “Fine,” I said.

  Andrew gave me a self-satisfied smile and pulled me toward the steps. It felt odd, holding his hand again, and I let go of it to grab the railing.

  “You getting soft?” he teased. “Do you need to hold on to pull yourself up?”

  I stopped a step below him. “Who are you calling soft?” I challenged. Andrew had always brought out my competitive side. “Seems to me I heard a lot of heavy breathing while we were unloading that piece of staging.”

  He leaned forward, raising one eyebrow in a leer. “That heavy breathing was just because I was so close to you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What a load of . . . lumber,” I said. Then before he knew what was happening, I faked left, darted around him on the right and tore up the steps.

  “Hey!” he yelled.

  I took the stairs two at a time, glad that I had long legs because I could hear him gaining on me, his feet pounding on the weathered wooden treads.

  I lunged for the top step, sticking my arm out to the right so he couldn’t dart past me the way I’d done with him. When I looked back over my shoulder, he was maybe a couple of steps behind me, laughing and breathing hard. I reached blindly for the top of the railing that ran along the edge of the lookout and stumbled over something I couldn’t see clearly in the waning light. Instead of landing on wood, weathered smooth by rain and snow, my hand landed on something soft.

  Hair. Skin.

  I jerked away and Andrew banged into my back, grabbing my shoulders to steady himself.

  “Whoa! You okay?” he said.

  I nodded, and took a second to catch my breath.

  Then Andrew saw what I’d fallen over. “Is that . . . ?” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  It was Hugh Davis.

  It was pretty clear that he was dead.

  5

  Andrew swore under his breath and fumbled for his cell phone. “We need an ambulance.”

  I caught his arm. “No, we don’t,” I said. “We just . . .” I swallowed. “We just need the police.”

  The color drained from his face. “Is he dead?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  Andrew was already punching in 911 on his phone.

  “Tell them we’re at the first lookout on Spruce Bluff,” I said.

  He swallowed and put the phone to his ear. “Okay.”

  I looked at the body—Hugh’s body—again. It was half sitting, slumped sideways against the lookout railing at the top of the stairs, almost as though his legs had given out after climbing up and he’d had to sit down fast. His eyes were closed and I could see what looked like blood on the collar of his jacket. There was some kind of ragged open wound just below his left ear.

  I leaned over for a closer look. Was it a bullet hole? My stomach clenched and I could taste something sour in the back of my throat.

  Had Hugh been shot? He’d left the library no more than about three hours before. What could have happened in that amount of time that had ended with him up here with a bullet hole in the side of his head? I shivered.

  Andrew put a hand on my shoulder. “They’re coming.”

  We moved a few steps away from the body. “Do you know who it is?” he asked.

  “It’s Hugh Davis,” I said.

  He frowned. “You mean that director from the theater festival?”

  I nodded.

  “He seemed like a bit of a control freak. He must have come over to check out the stage. You think he had a heart attack or something?”

  I could hear the sirens wailing in the distance. I shook my head. “I . . . No.”

  “So? What? You think he fell?” Andrew stared up at the jagged rock face of the bluff rising above us.

  “I think someone might have shot him,” I said quietly.

  “Shot him?” His grip on my shoulder tightened.

  I dug my fingers into the knots of muscle in my neck. “I . . . uh. It looks like there’s a bullet hole just behind his ear.”

  “Let’s go.” His hand moved to my back and he pushed me toward the stairs.

  “The police will be here in a couple of minutes,” I said. “I don’t think we should just leave the body.”

  Andrew shook his head, his mouth pulled into a thin line. “Kathleen, if he was shot, whoever did it could still be around. I’m sorry, but we can’t help him. It’ll be safer down in the parking lot.”

  I knew he was right. Still, it felt wrong to leave Hugh’s body slumped against the lookout railing. I took one last look over my shoulder for any sign of another person or any clue to what had happened and then I went down the steps.

  We stood against the side of the bluff at the bottom of the stairs. The automatic streetlights had come on, washing the parking lot in a weird pinkish-or
ange light. I remembered Maggie saying the odd-colored bulbs saved energy.

  The paramedics arrived first, but Officer Derek Craig was right behind them in his squad car. “Stay here,” Andrew said.

  I ignored him and started toward the police car.

  He stepped in front of me. “Kathleen, I can take care of this. Just wait.”

  “I’m not going to have an attack of the vapors,” I said, shaking off his hand. “This isn’t the first dead body I’ve seen, and I know these people. You don’t.” I stopped, realizing how abrupt my voice sounded. I took a deep breath. “It’s okay, Andrew. I can do this.”

  After a moment he nodded.

  I recognized one of the paramedics coming toward us. He’d taken care of me when an embankment out at Wisteria Hill had collapsed after days and days of rain this past spring. Ric nodded at me and I pointed back over my shoulder. “The top of the stairs.” I knew Hugh Davis was past any help Ric and his partner could give him.

  Derek Craig walked around the front of his police car. “What happened?” he asked as I reached him.

  “We—my friend Andrew and I—brought a piece of staging over in my truck for the theater festival. Then we decided to walk up to the lookout. The body was at the top of the steps.” I stopped to clear my throat. “It’s . . . His name is Hugh Davis.”

  He nodded as he made notes in a small ring-bound notebook, then looked up at me. “Did either of you touch anything?”

  I nodded slowly. “I did. I almost fell over hi—the body. My hand touched the top of his head.”

  Derek tucked the notebook back in his shirt pocket. “I’ll be right back. I need you and your friend to wait here.” He gave me a half smile. “You know how this works.”

  I did.

  I walked back to Andrew, who stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out over the water.

  “We have to wait a little longer,” I said.

  “How can you stay here?” he asked, not looking at me.

  I knew he didn’t mean here in the parking lot.

  “I like it here,” I said. “I have a life here.”

  He gestured toward the bluff behind us and his green eyes met mine then. “Kathleen, there’s a dead person up there. Dead.” There were two deep frown lines between his eyes. “This is the last place I would have expected to find someone shot.” He swiped a hand over the side of his face. “This is stupid. You need to come home.”