Final Catcall

by Sofie Kelly

  “Busted!” I hissed. I never won a staring contest with either Hercules or Owen. I wasn’t sure what it said about my character that I was tickled I’d won this one.

  I should have known I’d pay for this victory. I stepped into the hallway and Hercules wriggled his way out of the bag. He jumped to the floor, flicked the end of his tail at me and disappeared through the door to the workroom.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said.

  I put the empty carrier in my office and grabbed my keys. When I opened the workroom door Hercules was sitting on top of a cardboard box piled on a wooden storage crate, underneath the small stained-glass window in the far wall.

  I crooked my finger at him. “Get over here,” I said sternly.

  The only movement he made was to tip his head to one side. The distance between us made it look as though he was smirking at me.

  “I’m not kidding,” I warned. “Get over here right now or there will be consequences. Serious consequences.”

  The cat lifted one front paw, gave it a couple of licks, and looked at me again.

  I could see my ultimatum hadn’t scared him one bit.

  He scratched at the top of the cardboard box.

  “Hey, don’t do that,” I said. “There might be books inside and you could tear the covers.” I actually had no idea what was in the box. I hadn’t put it there under the window and I didn’t know who had.

  Hercules scraped the flap of cardboard again and meowed at me. I realized that maybe he was trying to tell me something. I threaded a path around a couple of partly assembled easels and the top half of the puppet theater that Abigail and Maggie had built and made my way over to the window. “Is there something you want me to see?” I asked him.

  He jumped down off the box onto the wooden crate and looked expectantly at me.

  I pulled open the top flaps and looked inside the carton. It was filled with papers. I knew at once they had nothing to do with the library. I recognized the tight, angular writing. The papers had belonged to Hugh Davis.

  “How did this box get in here?” I said to Hercules.

  He had no more idea than I did.

  I sat down on the edge of the packing crate and the cat climbed onto my lap. “When he showed up, all he had was that big pilot’s case. Marcus sent people over to get that and all the papers Hugh had spread on the table and the desk.”

  Hercules murped his agreement. I’d already told him that.

  “So where did this come from?” I shifted him sideways a little so I could take a closer look at the box. The contents may have belonged to Hugh Davis, but the box was one of ours. I could see Mary’s handwriting on the side. It was one of the cartons we’d used for packing books for the library book sale.

  I picked Hercules up and set him on the wooden crate. “Stay here for a second,” I said. “I just want to look for something.”

  Of course he followed me, jumping down to nose around the boxes and bags and other detritus that had accumulated in the space. In the end, he was the one who found the books, stacked underneath a pile of folded tarps.

  For some reason Hugh Davis had emptied a cardboard box and used it to hide his papers in my library. Why?

  “So what’s in here?” I said to Hercules, opening the top flaps on the carton again. He stood on his back paws, put his front ones on the edge of the box and peered inside. I took a look as well. On top I could see a couple of yellowed pages covered with messy handwriting. Were those the wedding vows Abigail had been looking for? “Do you think Abigail and Hugh’s marriage license is in here?” I asked.

  The only response was a muffled meow. It could have been a yes or a no.

  Was that what Hugh had done? Hidden his important papers here at the library where no one would think to look for them? Pretty devious, hiding them in the building where Abigail worked.

  I nudged Hercules very gently with my arm and after a moment he pulled his head out of the box and looked at me. His left ear was partly turned inside out.

  “Ear,” I said, touching the side of my head.

  He sat down and swiped at the ear with a paw, turning it right side out again, then made a move to take another look inside the carton.

  I put my hand in front of him. “No,” I said. “Now that we know what this is, we have to call the police. We can’t go through it. It might have something to do with Hugh Davis’s death.”

  Hercules glared at me for a moment. Then he jumped down and stalked off to my office. At least I hoped that’s where he was going.

  I closed the top of the box, resisting the urge to see what else was in it. In all good conscience I didn’t want to lie to Detective Lind if she asked me if I’d done anything more than look inside. After I locked the door I went downstairs to tell Susan, Mary and Mia that the workroom was off-limits until the police came and decided whether there was anything important in that box.

  I was about to go up to my office to call Detective Lind when Marcus walked into the library.

  “Do you have a minute?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “I just have to call Detective Lind.”

  His blue eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “I found a box in the workroom that I think belongs—belonged—to Hugh Davis.”

  He put his hand on my arm and steered me toward the stairs. “What’s in it?”

  “Papers, as far as I can tell,” I said.

  Marcus patted his pockets. I knew that gesture. He was feeling to see if he had a pair of disposable gloves.

  “No,” I said, moving to stand in front of the steps.

  He frowned at me. “What do you mean, ‘no’? I didn’t say a word.”

  “I said no because you were looking for gloves so you could go upstairs and go through those papers.”

  “I’m a police officer, Kathleen,” he said.

  “Who’s been taken off this case,” I replied. “Don’t do something stupid.”

  He looked around. “Could we go talk in your office?”

  I nodded. “All right.”

  We went upstairs. I saw Marcus glance in the direction of the workroom, but I knew there was nothing he could do. The door was locked and I didn’t think he’d try to wrestle the keys away from me.

  On the other hand, I didn’t have quite as much control of Hercules. He wasn’t in my office and I had a sneaking suspicion I knew where the little fur ball had gone.

  Marcus stood in the middle of the floor. I leaned against my desk. “Kathleen, I went to Red Wing this morning. I know the building inspector, Jeff Harris. He said Hannah was there on Friday to collect some boxes that hadn’t already been picked up.”

  “So Andrew didn’t see her drive by the marina.” Either Andrew had been mistaken about the color of the SUV or someone else had the same car as Marcus.

  “Jeff told me that she was there Friday afternoon. No one remembers seeing her Friday night.” He stressed the last word.

  My stomach seemed to flip over and tie itself into a knot.

  “He was at the theater. He helped her load everything in the back of the SUV. She told him she was heading back here, but she let me think she was in Red Wing all evening, including when Davis was killed.”

  “She didn’t shoot Hugh Davis,” I said.

  He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I know that. But if she was here when he was shot, maybe she saw something or she’s protecting someone.”

  I didn’t have an answer for him and I was very aware how much he sounded like me. I walked over to him and laid my hand on his arm. “Have you talked to her?”

  He looked down at me and his blue eyes were troubled. “I tried. She was angry when she found out I’d been to Red Wing. She said I was a jerk and I’d been a police officer too long and then she left.”

  “So let Detective Lind figure this out. Just be Hannah’s big brother.”

  He gave me a wry smile. “That sounds like something I’d say to you.”

  I squeezed his arm. “Must be good a
dvice, then.”

  “It’s been a long time since I saw Hannah that angry.”

  “She’ll get past it.”

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  I smiled at him. “Positive.” I wanted to throw my arms around him but I didn’t. I gave his arm another squeeze and then I dropped my hand and stepped back. “I didn’t always do everything right,” I said. “Maybe you can learn from my mistakes.”

  The start of a smile played across his face. “Are you saying you should have listened to me?”

  “I decline to answer on the grounds that . . . I don’t want to.”

  He did smile at that. Then he reached out and touched my shoulder, just for a moment. “I’m going to go so you can call Detective Lind. Maybe I can find Hannah somewhere.”

  “Give her a little bit of time,” I said.

  He nodded. In the doorway he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Kathleen,” he said, “maybe you can learn from my mistakes, too.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Then I went down the hall to see if I could find Hercules. I unlocked the door to the workroom and looked inside. I couldn’t see him anywhere and I really didn’t think he’d be stubborn enough to walk through the door—so to speak—just because I’d told him not to. That was more Owen’s style.

  I relocked the door, went back to my office and called the number I’d memorized from Detective Lind’s card. She told me she would send someone over for the box. When I stepped back into the hall, Hercules was standing in the staff room doorway.

  “What were you doing in there?” I asked.

  He looked back over his shoulder.

  “Let me guess: being nosy, looking for something to eat that Roma has not okayed, and walking through walls just because you can.”

  He gave an offhand meow. I took it as a yes to all three.

  I leaned forward. “Come here. You need to go back into my office. The police are on their way.”

  Hercules leaned sideways and looked toward the stairs.

  “No. Marcus is gone. Someone is coming to get that box.” I wasn’t sure if that was what he’d been asking, but I like to keep him in the loop.

  He yawned and walked past me into the office. I knew there was no point in locking the office door, but I did it anyway.

  “Stay here. Please,” I said as I left. Hercules was sitting in the middle of my desk again, meticulously washing his face. He gave no sign that he’d heard me say anything at all.

  The afternoon passed in a blur of activity. When school let out there was a rush of eighth-grade students from two middle school history classes whose teachers had specified they had to use at least one real book as part of the research assigned for an essay on the First World War.

  “Is there a DVD or something?” I heard one boy ask Mary as she handed him a book I knew was a young soldier’s diary from the last days of the war.

  “Read five pages,” she said, holding up one hand. “And use your imagination.”

  “I wouldn’t have to if there was a DVD,” he muttered.

  She shooed him toward a chair by the window and rolled her eyes at me. Half an hour later he was still in the chair, bent over the book, engrossed in the story.

  I put my arms around Mary’s shoulders and gave her a hug. “You’re good,” I said.

  “Consider me a superhero of reading,” she said with a grin.

  About half an hour before closing I went upstairs to clean off my desk. Hercules wasn’t sitting on top of it anymore, but he was in the room, curled up on my desk chair. He jumped down when I came in.

  “Where are you going?” I said.

  He ignored me, stopping only long enough to open the office door a little wider with one paw. At least he hadn’t walked right through it.

  I followed him down the hall to the lunchroom. “There’s nothing in here you can eat,” I said.

  He shot me a condescending look and kept going. Inside the room he went immediately to the metal shelving unit against the wall. It was going in the workroom one of these days. I made a mental note to get Mia to start sorting through all the stuff piled on the shelves.

  Hercules put one paw under the bottom shelf, which was only a couple of inches above the floor, and batted a piece of paper into the middle of the room. It was almost as though he’d known it was there.

  I bent down to pick it up. It looked like part of a page that had been torn from a magazine. The paper was crumpled and damp, like it had been in a cat’s mouth.

  “Did you steal this from the box that was in the workroom?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

  Hercules, to his credit, didn’t even try to bluff me. He looked at me, head up, furry chin jutting out, obviously proud of himself.

  I studied the torn page, wondering what about it had caught the cat’s attention. Was it the image of the bowl of steaming jajangmyeon in the Korean restaurant ad? Or was it the article written by a young woman who worked with teenage alcoholics? I couldn’t see what either one could have had to do with Hugh Davis’s death.

  I looked down at the little tuxedo cat. Just because he could walk through a solid wooden door into the workroom and swipe a piece of paper didn’t mean that piece of paper was important. Both Hercules and Owen had found “clues” before, but I didn’t see how this scrap of a magazine page was going to help me figure out what Hannah was hiding or who had shot Hugh Davis up at the Spruce Bluff lookout.

  I bent down and picked the cat up. “Let’s go home,” I said.

  He twisted in my arms and swatted the paper with one paw. “Yes, I see that,” I said. I frowned at him. “You shouldn’t have taken it.”

  He made a huffy sound of indignation in his throat and refused to look at me. I folded the page, put it in my pocket, and went back to my office with my sulky cat.

  I couldn’t help wishing that Hercules had found something that would help me make sense of everything. What I didn’t realize was that he had.

  17

  Maggie had moved tai chi class from Tuesday evening to Monday, so I didn’t have a lot of time when I got home. I put the crumpled magazine page on the counter.

  Hercules was still miffed. I crouched down next to him. He stared past me, aloof and unmoving like a black-and-white statue. I scratched his head just above his nose. “I’ll look at what you found when I get back tonight. I promise,” I said.

  He made a disgruntled noise to show he still wasn’t happy with me, but he stayed for the head scratch so I knew I was pretty much back in his good graces.

  I took the truck to tai chi class instead of walking, which meant I had to find a parking spot. That should have been easy on a Monday night, but I ended up on a side street partway up the hill and made it to the tai chi studio, half out of breath, just before Maggie was about to start class.

  Everyone had made it, even with the change of day. Maggie was going to Minneapolis on Tuesday afternoon to present her application for a grant so the artists’ co-op could renovate the store. If they got the money, they would be adding space where the various artists could give classes in the summer and fall, along with a small workspace so tourists could stop and see an artist at work.

  Ruby had come up with the idea and Maggie had spent hours and hours on the grant application. I could see Ruby had lots of nervous energy—probably because of the upcoming presentation. She was walking around the studio space swinging her arms and flicking her fingers.

  Maggie, on the other hand, was the picture of Zen-like calm, standing in the center of the room in a green tie-dye tank top and yoga pants, talking to Taylor King.

  I walked over to them. “Taylor, that book you requested about accessories from the 1960s came in,” I said. She beamed at me. “That’s great. I could probably come get it after school tomorrow.”

  “It’ll be at the front desk,” I said.

  Taylor had a good eye for vintage bags. She’d found several classic bags at different flea markets and thrift stores in the area. She was tr
ying to learn more, she’d confided to me, because she wanted to start selling bags online. She was determined to show her dad that her interest in fashion wasn’t just some teenage girl thing, but could actually be a career for her.

  “Is there anything else I could do to help with the festival?” she asked.

  “I’m not certain,” I said. “But Abigail might need some help with the costumes she got from the theater in Red Wing.”

  Maggie made a face. “Everything probably smells like smoke.”

  “It does.”

  “Kitty litter’s really good for getting the musty smell out of purses and things you can’t put in a washing machine,” Taylor said. “I use it sometimes if I find a bag that’s been stored in, like, a basement or an attic for a long time.”

  “Abigail could probably use you, then,” I said. I fished an elastic out of the pocket of my yoga pants.

  “Do you think it would be okay to call her and ask?”

  “I think she’d be very happy to hear from you.”

  Taylor smiled. “I’ll call her right after class. Thanks, Kathleen.”

  Maggie looked around the room. “I think everyone made it,” she said. She clapped her hands and called, “Circle, everyone.”

  Just then Hannah appeared in the doorway. She was wearing gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt. Since she was dressed in workout clothes I guessed she’d decided to take Maggie up on her offer to try a class.

  “I’ll go,” I said softly to Maggie.

  “Thanks,” she mouthed, touching my arm as she moved to take her place in the circle that was already forming in the middle of the room.

  I walked over to Hannah. “Hi,” I said. “I’m glad you came. We’re just about to get started.”

  “I haven’t done any tai chi in a while,” Hannah said, looking around. “My form is a little wobbly.”

  I smiled. “Come stand next to me, then. My form is a lot wobbly.”

  We joined the circle, Roma moving sideways to make room for us.

  “Everyone, this is Hannah,” Maggie said. “She’s here to try a class with us.”

  Hannah raised one hand in a little wave of acknowledgment.