Cat Trick

by Sofie Kelly

  Georgia smiled. “Yes, I am.”

  Abigail nudged me with her shoulder. “And she’s doing some of the baking at Fern’s, too.” Fern’s was the fifties diner where I’d had breakfast with Burtis Chapman. “You’ll love her devil’s food cupcakes.” She knew about my penchant for anything chocolate. “With dark-chocolate frosting and bittersweet shavings,” she added with a sly grin.

  “You’ll be my first stop,” I promised Georgia.

  “Wait a minute,” Abigail said. “Does that mean the food tasting is still on?”

  Georgia and I both nodded.

  “That’s great,” Abigail said. Her gaze shifted to Georgia. “So you’re not dropping out?”

  “No, I’m not,” she said. She flushed and gave me an embarrassed look. “I was thinking about not doing the tasting, but I’m a new business and this is a great opportunity for me.”

  “And now that Mike Glazer is . . . well, gone, things should run a little more smoothly,” Abigail said. She shrugged her shoulders and looked from Georgia to me. “I mean no disrespect, but from what I heard, he was making everything—the food tasting and the art show—difficult.”

  “I know,” I said, nodding slowly. “I heard that he was . . . challenging to work with.”

  Georgia’s cheeks got pinker. “Mr. Glazer had some very strong ideas about how things should be done. He said that chocolate was so last year. He wanted me to make something trendy like peanut butter jalapeño cupcakes.”

  Abigail made a face. “Peanut butter and jalapeño cupcakes. For that fiery sensation that sticks to the roof of your mouth? I don’t think so. Trendy isn’t what people are looking for when they come here.”

  “What are people looking for when they come to Mayville Heights?” I asked.

  “Clean air, gorgeous scenery and charming eccentrics like me,” she retorted. Her stomach growled before I could answer. “And good food,” she added, patting her middle.

  “Go have lunch,” I said. “Everything’s under control here.” I smiled at Georgia. “I’m glad we met.”

  “Me too,” she said. “I’ll see you at the tasting. I’ll save you a chocolate cupcake.”

  I headed for the checkout desk, where Susan was answering the phone.

  Mary was just coming in. “Hi,” she said, walking over to me. “You can go for lunch anytime.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “How was your morning?”

  She set her quilted bag on the counter. “Very good. Burtis made some adjustments to the tents, and we have more than half the stalls set up in the second one.” She laced her fingers together on top of the bag. “Go have some lunch, Kathleen,” she said. “Susan and I have things under control.”

  Susan leaned over, resting her head against Mary’s arm, and they gave me the same kind of faux-innocent look that Owen and Hercules sometimes used. It didn’t fill me with any more confidence than I had when the cats did it.

  “That’s what scares me just a little,” I said, holding up my right thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.

  They both smirked at me.

  “I’m going upstairs to get my purse and my sweater,” I said. “I’ll be at Maggie’s studio if you need me.” I started for the stairs. “Don’t do anything outlandish to my library while I’m gone,” I warned. I was only half joking.

  “Would we do that?” Mary asked. I knew she was pretending to talk to Susan even though she’d raised her voice a little so I’d hear her.

  “Yes,” I answered, not bothering to turn around.

  “Well, not on purpose,” Susan called after me.

  I let that one go.

  The sun was shining and there were just a few fluffy clouds, looking like puffs of cotton, floating in the blue sky overhead. I walked over to River Arts, glad to have the time to stretch my legs. Maggie was waiting for me at the back door. “Hi,” she said. “Roma called. She can’t make it. She has to do emergency surgery on a golden retriever. But she did get the keys to Wisteria Hill.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “I’m so glad the place isn’t going to be turned into a subdivision.”

  Maggie nodded. “Me too. So how was your morning?”

  “Busy,” I said. “I think half of Mayville Heights was looking for something to read.”

  “Good,” she said as we headed up the stairs to her top-floor studio. “That means the user numbers will be up, and Everett and the board will be so impressed, they’ll offer you whatever you want to sign a new contract and stay.”

  Maggie was waging an unapologetic campaign to convince me to stay in Mayville Heights. Truth be told, it made me feel good that she cared so much.

  “How was your morning?” I asked.

  “Also busy,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder at me. “You must have heard by now everything’s a go.”

  “I did.”

  “Liam had to change the date to a week from this coming Monday instead of Sunday, but otherwise we’re still on schedule.”

  “So Liam saved the day.”

  “He really did,” she said.

  We came out into the top hallway and started down to Maggie’s studio.

  “And will he be appropriately rewarded?” I asked.

  Maggie rolled her eyes at me. “Maybe by the town council, but not by me. I told you, there’s nothing serious between us. We’re mostly just friends.”

  I stopped and put both hands on my hips. “Oh, c’mon, Mags,” I said. “Liam is funny, he’s smart, he’s working on a PhD and this proposal for Legacy Tours, he’s still tending bar and he’s majorly cute.”

  “Majorly cute?”

  “We had a ninth-grade class in this morning for a tour,” I said. “I picked up a few phrases to expand my vocabulary.”

  She pulled her keys out of her pocket. “Yes, Liam is smart, and he makes me laugh, and he is, as you put it, ‘majorly cute,’ but we’re just friends. You’re wasting your time if you’re trying to play matchmaker.” She opened the studio door and I followed her inside.

  “Why is it that all the times I told you that you were wasting your time playing matchmaker with Marcus and me, you just ignored me?”

  The high worktable in the center of the room was set with two place mats and cutlery. I pulled out a stool and sat down while Maggie plugged in the kettle and started taking food out of her little refrigerator. “That’s different,” she said, moving between the table and the fridge.

  I leaned an elbow on the paint-spattered tabletop and propped my head on my hand. “Why? Because it’s you?”

  “No,” she said. “Well, yes, at least partly.” Her expression turned serious. “I’m good at this kind of thing. I got Roma and Eddie together.”

  “That was an accident,” I protested. “People saw Roma with the mannequin you made and thought she was dating the real Eddie. He never would have gotten in touch with her if it hadn’t been for that.”

  Maggie set a large bowl on the table between our plates. She’d made her pasta salad with sun-dried tomatoes. It was one of my favorites. “Exactly,” she said. “Roma ended up with the real Eddie because of the Eddie I made. The universe was working through me.”

  I would have laughed at that, but I knew she was serious. “You said ‘partly,’” I said. “What’s the other part?”

  “You and Marcus are perfect for each other. You’re yin and yang.” She added hot water to her teacup and brought it over to the table.

  I groaned. “Oh, please don’t say we’re soul mates. I don’t want to lose my appetite before I’ve even had one bite.”

  Maggie slipped onto the stool opposite me. “I’m not saying that,” she said.

  I knew that didn’t mean she wasn’t thinking it. “I’m officially changing the subject,” I said. “Let’s talk about the art show or the food tasting or the Gotta Dance reunion tour. They’ve added three more stops to the schedule.”

  I glanced over at the Matt Lauer doll perched on a chair by the windows. I’d found the eight-inch-high knitted doll
wearing a dark blue suit and a gray fedora in the same store where I’d bought the I Matt Lauer T-shirt. It seemed as though the Today Show host had a lot of fans in Boston.

  “There are rumors that as a former Gotta Dance champion, Matt’s going to join the others for a few dates to show off his moves,” I said.

  “I know.” Maggie made a face. “But they aren’t coming anywhere close to here, and so far Matt hasn’t said for sure that he is going to be part of the tour.”

  “Maybe that’s for the best,” I said.

  “You’re just saying that because the beefcake didn’t win the crystal trophy.”

  The “beefcake” was Kevin Sorbo, aka Hercules from the syndicated TV show Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and Gotta Dance runner-up to Matt Lauer. I shook my head. “No, I’m saying it because I’m pretty sure if we went to see Matt Lauer in person, you would rush the stage and end up in jail, and I’d have to call my so-called soul mate to pull some strings to get you out.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Maggie said. Then she laughed.

  I grinned at her across the table. “Okay, let’s talk about the art show and the food tasting. Things really are going okay?”

  She set down her fork, and a shadow slid across her face. “Uh-huh. They’re just better overall. I’m sorry to say it, but Mike rubbed people the wrong way. Now Liam’s basically in charge. Alex isn’t going to have his fingers all over everything the way Mike did.” She shrugged. “Liam says it’s far from a done deal, though.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” I said. I speared another corkscrew of pasta. “I met Georgia Tepper this morning.”

  “You’re going to love her cupcakes,” Maggie said, taking a sip of her tea.

  “She said Mike told her chocolate was ‘last year,’” I said. I waved my fork at her. “This is good, by the way.”

  Maggie smiled. “I’m glad you like it.” She frowned at her tea, got up and rummaged in the old pie safe until she found a small container of honey. “Yeah, Mike wanted Georgia to make some kind of ‘in’ cupcake with chili peppers or jalapeños. He told Mary white tablecloths were a throwback to the fifties, and I don’t know what the heck he said to Burtis to aggravate him.”

  “Burtis is not someone you want to be on the bad side of,” I commented.

  “True,” Mags said, drizzling a little honey into her tea. “But it was Georgia who almost took a swing at Mike with a serving tray.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  She twisted her mouth to one side. “I’m not.”

  Before I could ask her for more details, there was a knock on the half-open door and Ruby poked her head in. “Hi,” she said. “Got a minute?” She was looking directly at me when she asked the question.

  “Sure,” I said, setting my fork down again.

  “Could I paint Owen?”

  “You mean the same way you’re doing with Hercules?”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Maggie said, putting a little more pasta salad in her bowl. “Are you thinking of letting them go to auction as a set, or as two individual paintings?”

  Ruby wrinkled her nose in thought. “I’m leaning toward listing them separately just because I think that’ll bring in more money for Cat People. What do you think?”

  “Oh, definitely,” Mags said, waving her fork like a flag. “Are you going to do a frame?”

  I leaned sideways so I was a little more in Ruby’s line of vision. “You can paint Owen. It’s fine with me.”

  Ruby nodded and waved her hand absently at me. “I went with metal the last time, but I’m thinking about a black floater frame.”

  Okay, so she wasn’t talking to me.

  Maggie frowned. “What about charcoal instead of black?”

  Neither was Maggie.

  Ruby nodded slowly. “That might work. I don’t want a frame that screams ‘Look at me!’”

  I leaned a little farther sideways and waved my arms in the air, kind of like I was a flag person on a highway construction crew. “Hello,” I said.

  They both looked at me then. “Do you need something?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes,” I said, sinking back on my stool. “I need to tell Ruby that she can paint Owen.”

  Ruby and Mags exchanged glances. “I did get that,” Ruby said. “Thank you.”

  “Anything else?” Maggie said. I might have been imagining the tiny hint of impatience in her voice.

  “I could bring Owen down first thing tomorrow morning before the library opens, if that works,” I added.

  “That’ll work,” Ruby said.

  I turned to Maggie and made a move-along gesture with one hand. “I’m done.”

  “Thank you,” she said. No, that wasn’t impatience I was hearing; it was a tiny bit of sarcasm.

  Mags and Ruby went back to discussing possibilities for framing the cat portraits, and I went back to my pasta salad. By the time they had settled on a charcoal frame, I was done eating. I stretched my arms up over my head, which caught Maggie’s attention.

  “Do you have room for a cup of hot chocolate?” she asked. “I have more of those homemade marshmallows you like.”

  I glanced at my watch. “Okay,” I said. It was chocolate. I didn’t need much persuading.

  She looked at Ruby. “Rube? Hot chocolate? With marshmallows from the farmers’ market?”

  Ruby smiled. “Mmm, that sounds good.”

  Maggie got up to put the kettle back on and get out the mugs and cocoa.

  “How’s the setup going for the art show?” I asked Ruby.

  “Better,” she said, leaning her elbows on the table.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You had problems with Mike Glazer as well.” There seemed to be no shortage of people who did.

  Ruby slid her bracelets along her arm and sighed. “Kathleen, I think everyone had problems with Mike. If he hadn’t died when he did, I swear someone would have smacked him with a two-by-four by now.” She shrugged. “Maybe me. Or Burtis. Wednesday night, Burtis was pounding in tent pegs with a sledgehammer and there was a moment when I actually thought he was going to take a swing at Mike.”

  “It’s sad,” Maggie said. “He spent the last days of his life arguing with people.”

  I thought about Wren Magnusson’s face when she came into the library. She seemed to be the only person who really felt bad about Mike Glazer’s death. “What was Mike like when he was younger?” I asked.

  Ruby smiled a thank-you as Mags set a steaming mug in front of her. “I don’t know. He was older and we didn’t have any of the same friends.”

  Maggie handed me a cup and sat down holding her own hot chocolate. I snapped the lid of the marshmallow container open and held it out to Ruby, snagging a couple for myself. They smelled like spun sugar and vanilla.

  “He was the kind of guy everyone liked, pretty much,” Maggie said. “Popular, smart enough to do well in school without having to work very hard.” She reached for the marshmallows, popped one in her cup and after a second’s thought dropped in two more.

  I leaned my forearms on the table and laced my fingers around my mug. “So when he came back a few days ago, he was different?” I said.

  She nodded. “It was like he had something to prove.”

  “Maybe he did,” I said.

  “Small-town boy makes good?” Ruby asked. “You really think it was that old cliché?”

  I shrugged. “Things become clichés for a reason: because they happen a lot.”

  “So you don’t think he’d been taken over by a malevolent entity or replaced by an evil twin?” Ruby asked, eyes twinkling.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  Ruby told me a little more about some of the artwork that was going to be on display and then available for sale online. I really hoped everything worked out.

  I finished the last of my hot chocolate and stood up. “Thank you. Lunch was delicious,” I told Maggie. “But I need to get bac
k to the library.”

  She wrapped me in a hug. “Anytime,” she said. “I wish Roma could have made it.”

  “Maybe we could have dinner sometime next week.”

  “Good idea.”

  I tugged on my sweater and slipped my purse over my shoulder. “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said to Ruby.

  She smiled. “Thanks for letting me paint the cats. Tell Owen I have fish crackers.”

  I grinned back. “And Maggie right across the hall. Two of Owen’s favorite things in the same place. You might never get rid of him.”

  I gave them both a little wave and headed out. As I came level with the tents set up by the Riverwalk, I felt a chill, like a cold finger trailing up my spine. What was going to happen when everyone found out Mike Glazer’s death hadn’t been an accident? Because no matter what Roma said, I couldn’t shake the feeling it hadn’t been.

  7

  Owen woke me the next morning by sticking his face about an inch away from mine, and when I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw were his golden ones. He meowed at me, so I got a blast of kitty morning breath, too.

  “What have you been eating?” I asked, rolling on to my back and stretching.

  He was already at the bedroom door. He stopped long enough to glance back over his shoulder. “Merow!” he said. Then he kept on going. I knew cat for “Get up” when I heard it.

  I yawned and sat up. Another meow, louder and more insistent, came from the hallway. Translation: “Now!”

  When I got down to the kitchen, Hercules was sitting by the cats’ food bowls. I bent down to pet the top of his head. “Good morning,” I said. Owen was sitting next to the table, carefully washing his face.

  He knew. I’d explained everything over supper last night, and I was certain that somehow he understood Ruby was going to take pictures of him and use them to paint his portrait. Now he was meticulously getting ready for that. It wasn’t something I’d ever be able to explain to someone who wasn’t a cat person.