Cat With a Clue

by Laurie Cass

  Of course, we had yet to decide what constituted an official date, but it’s hard to get everything right on the first try.

  “That used-book store,” I said.

  “What used-book store?” Ash gestured for me to sit in the boat’s front seat, across from Tank, and dropped into a backseat.

  “It just opened a couple of months ago.” Used-book stores had a hard go of it financially. Their margins were thin, and most advertising was beyond their budgets. I had high hopes for this one—their selection of mysteries and thrillers was outstanding—but only time would tell.

  “Huh,” Ash looked thoughtful.

  “Too late, pal,” Tank said. “You already placed your bet. Minnie, you betting?”

  I shook my head. Putting down money on someone’s future misfortune wasn’t anything I’d want my mother to know about. Not that I told Mom a tenth of the things I did, but anticipating her reactions was a good way to judge how I should act.

  “Maybe there won’t be any more break-ins,” Ash said.

  “Who gets the pot if there aren’t?” I asked.

  Tank started the boat’s engine. “Ash, man, you really got to talk to your girlfriend more.”

  “What?” I looked from one to the other. “Why?”

  “Because he”—Tank jerked his thumb over his shoulder—“said if no one wins, the pot goes to the library.”

  He slapped the throttle forward and we zoomed across the lake.

  * * *

  A few hours later, back on the houseboat, I asked my cat a simple question: “Is Ash the nicest guy in the world, or what?” I opened a kitchen cabinet and, standing on tiptoes, rooted around in the back. “Ha! Found it.” The vase was dusty, so as I cleaned it out I talked to Eddie, who was supervising my efforts from the dining booth. The back of the booth, to be exact, upon which he’d arranged himself into a three-dimensional rectangle.

  “Do all cats do that?” I asked. “Make themselves into a meat-loaf shape?” There was probably a proper mathematical term, but to me he looked like a furry meat loaf. “And how do you do that, exactly?”

  He blinked at me.

  “No, seriously,” I said. “When you stand up, you look like a normal four-legged mammal. But when you’re like that, your legs disappear, your tail disappears, and sometimes—yeah, like that—you sink your head down and you’re almost completely rectangular.”

  “Mrr,” said the geometric shape.

  “I suppose that’s some sort of an answer.” I poured water into the vase and opened a drawer. Once upon a time, my mother had given me a pair of kitchen scissors. I still didn’t know what normal people did with them. I’d asked Kristen once, but her explanation had involved the naming of parts of chickens and turkeys that I hadn’t known existed.

  “Scissors work great for this,” I told Eddie, clipping off the ends of the flowers Ash had presented as he’d dropped me off. “He’d had these in a cooler in the back of his SUV the whole time we were out water-skiing. Aren’t they pretty?” I popped the flowers into the vase and arranged them as artfully as I could.

  “Mrr,” said the meat loaf.

  “What kind are these? Well, those are daisies,” I said, pointing. “And those are . . . are yellow flowers, and those are blue ones.” Maybe it was time to start studying the wildflower book that was in the bookmobile. I’d learned a lot about birds over the past year while driving around the county, and there was no reason I couldn’t learn more things.

  “Not that these are wildflowers,” I told my critical cat. “I’ve heard you’re not supposed to take wildflowers from where they grow.” Why, I wasn’t exactly sure, but it probably had something to do with native and protected species and public lands, and that removing the blooms could hurt the flower’s reproduction possibilities.

  I moved the vase to the middle of the dining booth’s table and turned it this way and that, admiring the colors. “Sounds weird, though, doesn’t it? Flowers reproducing, I mean. Kind of makes you think about them sneaking around after dark and making out.”

  The image amused me. “Maybe that’s how we get new species—adolescent flowers doing what Mom and Dad warned them not to do, and suddenly there’s a brand-new flower in the family.” Smirking at myself, I turned back to the sink and washed off the scissors. “Then there’s this new flower, and it’s not accepted by any of the other flowers and—”

  Crash!

  I whipped around. “Eddie!” I lunged forward, grabbing at the tipped-over vase with one hand and reaching for the flowers with the other. Water streamed onto the floor and puddled around my flip-flopped feet.

  Eddie, who was now sitting on the table, just watched.

  “Why on earth did you do that?” I shoved the flowers back into the vase before they could drip anywhere else. After refilling the water, I put the vase on the kitchen counter.

  “These,” I said, glaring at my cat and pointing at the flowers, “are not a cat toy. They are mine. Not yours. Understand?”

  Eddie stared straight at me, then yawned, showing long and white teeth.

  “Yeah, yeah.” I pulled off a length of paper towels and knelt on the floor, reaching under the table to get the far end of the puddle. “How did you get water way back here? You’re a mess maker—that’s what you are. Like a matchmaker, only different. We could make up new lyrics to the song. How about—”

  Crash!

  “Eddie!” I started to stand, bonked my head on the underside of the table, slid out of the danger zone, and spun myself around on the floor, holding my hand to my head. “What is with you, cat?”

  My furry friend was paying no attention to me. He was on the kitchen counter, his entire being focused on pushing a daisy out of the fallen flower arrangement and onto the floor. Plop.

  “Off,” I ordered.

  “Mrr!” he ordered back, but he did jump down.

  “And quit playing with my flowers.” I pulled the daisy away from his outstretched paw. “Not a cat toy, remember?” For the third time, I put the flowers in the vase. After adding some water, I looked around for a safe home and quickly decided there wasn’t anywhere both out of reach and viewable by those houseboat residents—which would be me—who would enjoy looking at the flowers.

  “You are horrible.” I put the flowers into the fridge. “I’ll have to take those to the library to get any pleasure out of them.”

  Eddie pawed at the refrigerator door. “Mrr!”

  “Really? How many times do I have to tell you? Not a cat toy.”

  He gave me a look of fierce disgust and stalked off.

  “You’re not going away mad, are you?” I called.

  “Mrr.”

  “I love you, you know!”

  He paused at the top of the short stairway and looked back. “Mrr,” he said, and hopped down the stairs, pushed open the door of my tiny closet, and flopped onto my shoes, where he stayed the rest of the night.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning I woke up sore in all sorts of odd places. I sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Mrr?” Eddie asked.

  “Hang on a second. I’m still trying to figure it out.” I stood, not bothering to stifle a whimpering groan, and hobbled around in a small circle. “Worst is probably the backs of my shoulders,” I said. The trapezius? I tried to remember the diagrams from a high school physiology class. No, that wasn’t right. I reached around with my fingers and tenderly poked at the sore parts. “Latissimus dorsi.” I eyed my cat, wondering if he had a corresponding muscle. If he did, would he be able to water-ski? There’d been that video of a water-skiing squirrel; maybe I could make Eddie famous.

  “Mrr,” he said, stretching out a long paw.

  “Sorry.” I nodded. “Back to the inventory. Shoulders hurt the most; thighs aren’t far behind. And my neck is stiff, although I’m not sure why.”

 
Eddie flopped over on his side with a soft thump.

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “It probably is from that last time I crashed. I hit the water pretty hard.” I rotated my head around, trying to loosen up the muscles. “And all that crawling around on the floor of Pam’s store, sorting out books, probably didn’t help, either.” Or the sleep I’d lost. But, hey, I was young and relatively fit, and I’d be able to catch up on sleep soon enough. All I needed was a hot shower and breakfast.

  Eddie yawned and drew himself into a ball that was half his size, a miracle achieved on a daily basis by cats around the world.

  “I wouldn’t get too comfortable,” I told him as I headed toward the bathroom. “It’s a bookmobile day, you know.”

  His eyes opened wide.

  “Would I mess with you about a thing like that?” I asked. “Yes, I might give you a hard time about your snoring, your tendency to sleep draped across my neck, and your complete disregard of the only ultimate demand I’ve ever had of you—you know, that one about staying off the kitchen counter—but I would never joke with you about the bookmobile.”

  “Mrr!”

  He jumped off the bed, galloped through the bedroom and up the stairs, and only screeched to a stop when he reached my backpack, upon which he sat upright until it was time to leave.

  * * *

  The bookmobile day was crowded with patrons who wanted information even more than they wanted books. We were making stops in this part of the county for the first time since Andrea’s murder, and by this time, even the people who eschewed newspapers had heard the news.

  But even though the concern about a murder was real, what seemed to be upsetting people the most was the attack on the bookmobile.

  “It’s all right, isn’t it?” asked seven-year-old Ethan Engstrom. He looked up at me anxiously, his face full of concern.

  I’d met Ethan on the first stop of the bookmobile’s maiden voyage, the one upon which Eddie had been a stowaway. Not wanting word of a cat hair–laden beast to get back to my boss, I’d emptied a storage cabinet and encouraged Eddie to stay inside during the stops.

  Young Ethan was curious and helpful, and he’d opened the Eddie cabinet in hopes of finding a place to store the things I’d taken out of Eddie’s cabinet and had to put on the floor. Eddie came out of the closet, and life hadn’t been the same since.

  “The bookmobile is fine,” I assured him.

  “They didn’t hurt Eddie, did they?” asked Cara, the middle of the three Engstrom girls.

  “Eddie was sound asleep in bed,” I told her, smiling. “He wasn’t anywhere near the bookmobile when it happened.”

  This, apparently, puzzled Emma, the youngest Engstrom girl. Emma was twin to Ethan. Cara was twins with Patrick, and the oldest of the statistically impossible Engstrom twins were Trevor and Rose, now thirteen. Last year Rose had been going through a princess phase, but she seemed to have grown past that and was now into horses.

  Their father, Chad, worked from home designing educational video games, and homeschooled the kids with the help of a retired neighbor who’d once taught high school biology. His wife worked for Tonedagana County as human resources director, and one of these days I hoped to actually meet the woman who’d given birth to such a great collection of intelligent young people.

  “Eddie doesn’t sleep here?” Emma asked, frowning.

  “Not at night,” I said, because denying that he slept in the bookmobile would be ridiculous. Right that very second, for instance, he was sprawled on the dashboard, overdosing on sunshine. “At night he comes home with me.”

  “Oh,” she said, her face drooping.

  I felt like a heel. I’d obviously just destroyed one of her illusions. Accidentally, but that didn’t matter. No one should have to suffer the destruction of an illusion without some compensatory relief, so I moved closer to her and whispered, “Do you want to know a secret?”

  Her lips curled up in a slow smile. She nodded.

  “Eddie knocked over a vase of flowers last night,” I said. “Twice.”

  She giggled and slapped her hands over her mouth. “He was a bad kitty?” she asked through her fingers.

  “The worst,” I said solemnly. “He didn’t even help clean up the mess afterward.”

  “Bad Eddie!” She giggled again.

  “Hey, now. No laughing,” her father said, mock sternly. “Not unless you share why you’re laughing.”

  I shook my head. “It’s a secret,” I told him.

  Still giggling, Emma ran off, singing, “Bad, bad, Eddie. Bad, bad, bad.”

  Her father watched her go. “Do you know what’s going on?” he asked. “A murder, two break-ins at the library, and now another burglary downtown?” His face was serious now, and it wasn’t a look that sat well on him. “Not that I really think crime in Chilson is going to spread over here, but you have to wonder, especially with six kids in the house.”

  “The police are . . .” I sighed. “Are exploring all avenues of investigation.”

  Chad squinted at me. “You did not just say that.”

  “Sorry.” I half smiled. “Would it help if I told you it was a direct quote from the detective working on the case?”

  “A little.” He studied me. “But it would help even more if I knew they were close to figuring out what’s happening.”

  “You’re not alone,” I said, and went to help Julia help Trevor find a book that would answer his questions about capacitors and inductors.

  * * *

  As soon as we got back to Chilson, I hurried through the post-bookmobile routine as quickly as I could, even to the extent of leaving some tasks for the next day. Julia said she’d be willing to work late, but I shooed her off, saying it was too nice a night, and locked all the doors behind us, checking them twice. And then three times.

  I dropped Eddie off at the houseboat, sent him an air kiss, then hauled my bicycle out of my storage locker and hurried across town.

  The parking lot of the Three Seasons was packed with vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Vans, cars, trucks, and SUVs littered the lot with no regard for where the lines had been painted. Black cables thicker than my wrist snaked across the asphalt, a tripping hazard to the unwary, which explained why the lot’s entrance had been blocked off by bright yellow sawhorses.

  I leaned my bike against the restaurant’s white clapboard siding and went inside a way I rarely did: through the front door.

  People wandered hither and yon, hauling lights and clipboards and rolls of tape. Most of them were younger than I was and were wearing black pants and black T-shirts, looking extremely serious. I spotted two people I knew and made my way toward them.

  “Don’t tell me we’re actually going to finish on time,” said Scruffy Gronkowski.

  A wild-haired woman in capris, flip-flops, and a tie-dyed shirt nodded. “If we get this last part in the can in less than two takes, we’ll even be early.”

  “Lynn,” Scruffy said, “you are a marvel.”

  “Ha. It wasn’t me. It was your girlfriend. You sure she’s never done this before?”

  “Far as I know, she didn’t even do high school acting.”

  “She tried out for a nun in a production of The Sound of Music,” I said, “but it turned out she can’t sing for beans.”

  “Hey, Minnie,” Scruffy said, turning toward me and smiling. “You met Lynn last summer, didn’t you?”

  “Over pork tenderloin, if I remember correctly.”

  Lynn grinned. “And I’m still grateful that you steered Trock away from changing the menu.” A distant voice called her name, a note of panic clear in the single syllable. “What now?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “See you two later.”

  I looked up at Scruffy. “How did it go today?”

  He picked a piece of invisible lint off his tailored polo shirt. His nickname hadn’t come a
bout because of reality. “Outstanding. And would you please go tell her so?”

  “Pulling a Kristen, is she?”

  “Perfection is a worthy goal and all, but it’s also an unattainable one.”

  Uh-oh. “Are they done in there?” I tipped my head toward the kitchen.

  “If you walk fast, you might catch the last take of the sous chef cutting parsley into perfect tiny squares.”

  I blinked. “Harvey’s going to be on TV?”

  “Kind of,” Scruffy said. “He froze up if he talked or if the camera was on his face, but he was fine with a hands-only shot.”

  The world righted itself. Harvey was a great guy, but if I’d been asked to describe his social skills, I would have backed away from the conversation, pleading a dire emergency somewhere else. Harvey was quiet around men and tongue-tied with women, and the concept of his blossoming in front of a television camera was nearly impossible to comprehend.

  I went to the kitchen, where bright lights shone everywhere, highlighting everything to the point that I understood Kristen’s recent obsession with cleanliness.

  “And that’s it, Harve,” someone called. “We’re good. Thanks.”

  “Okay,” Harvey said, continuing to cut parsley.

  “Um, we’re all set, Harvey. You can stop now.”

  He shook his head, his attention on what he was doing. “It’s for tonight. Kristen wants all this cut up.”

  Grinning, I cut through the back corner of the kitchen. That was Harvey in a nutshell. Who cared if there was a national television show being filmed in the restaurant that day, who cared if his hands were going to be broadcast across the land? What mattered was taking care of what Kristen wanted.

  I walked along the wide hallway that led to her office, a little surprised to see that none of the boxes and trays and chairs and general restaurant miscellanea that always littered one side of the passage hadn’t been cleared away. Then again, it was just like Kristen not to change anything for the sake of a TV show. I could almost hear her saying, “They can take me or leave me. I’ll clean, but I’m not about to transform myself. If they don’t like who I really am, they shouldn’t have come here.”