Curiosity Thrilled the Cat

by Sofie Kelly

  I let the cats out, let them back in again, got dressed, sighed at my hair in the bathroom mirror, packed lunch and set out down the hill in plenty of time to meet the officer to get my keys. I glanced back at Rebecca’s house and made a mental note to check on her later.

  Oren’s truck was in the library parking lot. He got out and walked across the grass to meet me. I felt the tension ease out of me.

  “Oren, I’m so glad to see you,” I said.

  “Good morning, Kathleen,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine.” We walked the rest of the way across the grass and turned up the stone walkway to the main entrance.

  A branch had blown onto the path. Oren bent and moved it onto the grass. Then he straightened and looked at me. “I heard what happened. I’m sorry you had to find Mr. Easton,” he said. “I should have been there.”

  “I was worried something might have happened to you.”

  “I had some personal business in Minneapolis.” We stopped at the bottom of the steps. “You were looking for me yesterday.”

  I nodded. “I was hoping you’d have time to put the chairs and the computer carrels together. I’d like to get at least one computer working.”

  “I can do that for you.” He looked up at the library. “Are we allowed in the building?”

  “Yes. But the meeting-room area is off-limits for now.”

  Oren swiped his hand over the back of his neck. “Then I can’t finish the painting. That’s where all the paint is stored.” He thought for a moment. “Do you mind if I work at the Stratton today? That building’s open. I could come about four thirty to put those things together for you.”

  Below us a patrol car pulled into the library parking lot.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Four thirty is fine.” My shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.”

  The young police officer who’d driven me to and from the police station the day before got out of the car and started toward us.

  Oren pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Kathleen, Will Redfern is a good builder,” he said, quietly. “He’s also really good with excuses.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

  He headed back to his truck, exchanging a “Good morning” with the young policeman as they passed. Even though the officer had taken me to be fingerprinted the day before, I still had to show him ID and sign a receipt before he handed me a small brown envelope containing my keys.

  The library was stuffy and smelled faintly of sweaty bodies. I opened a couple of windows, dropped my things in my office and went into the staff room.

  Detective Gordon—or someone—had washed the coffee machine. The mugs and plate had been left to dry in the wire dish rack, and the counter and table had been wiped clean of crumbs and coffee rings.

  I started the coffee machine, rationalizing that Susan would want a cup when she arrived for work. Every so often she would decide she was going to give up coffee. She’d given it up for peppermint tea with honey. That lasted about ten days. She’d given it up for water from an underground spring in a cave in Michigan—for a week. Currently she was drinking “green” juice she made with a Richard Simmons Superjuicer she’d bought at a yard sale. It smelled like lawn clippings that had been sitting in the sun for a week. She’d been on the juice kick for five days. It was only a matter of time before her twins tried to flush a ficus or each other, and Susan would stalk into the library, pour coffee into the largest mug she could find, add half the sugar packets and drink the entire thing before she said a word.

  I was checking in the last few books from the book drop when Susan tapped on the main door.

  “Well, remind me not to piss you off,” she said when I let her in.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The maestro. One minute he’s in here being a jerk and the next he’s dead.” She looked at me over her tiny glasses with mock seriousness. “You didn’t sic your cat on him again, did you?”

  I relocked the door and closed the security gate. “No, I didn’t sic my cat on him. And Owen jumping on Mr. Easton’s head the other day was an accident.”

  “Whatever you say,” Susan said with a smile.

  I followed her upstairs. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” I asked as she put her things in her locker and pulled out the vibrant pink sweater she wore when she was working.

  “Oh, screw it. Why not? I had two devil’s-food cupcakes for breakfast.”

  I poured a cup for her and one for myself and set Susan’s on the table. “Why?” I asked.

  She poured three packets of sugar into the cup and stirred. So much for green juice.

  “Eric’s on a chocolate kick,” she said. “Brownies, cupcakes, chocolate mousse, chocolate cheesecake. He’s making some changes to the menu at the café and he’s trying everything at home first.”

  She drank a mouthful of coffee and pushed her blackframed glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. “So, is the rumor true? Did you really find Easton’s body at the Stratton?”

  I nodded. “I was trying to catch up with Oren. He wasn’t there. But I did see him this morning.”

  Susan stirred another packet of sugar into her coffee. “So if Easton died at the theater, what were the police doing here? Why did they close the building yesterday?”

  I took a sip of my own coffee. “I’m not sure. A detective came to ask me a few more questions. I told him he could look around. He found something over where the meeting room is going to be.”

  Susan leaned back in her chair and cupped her mug with both hands. “What were they looking for in here in the first place?” she asked. “The maestro had a heart attack, didn’t he?”

  I shrugged. “He had a cut on his head. That’s all I know.”

  “So they think what? You whacked him with a big old Encyclopædia Britannica, or something? That’s crazy.” She drained her cup and got up for more coffee. “What did they find, anyway?”

  I ran a hand back through my hair. “I’m not sure. There were some . . . stains . . . on the floor.”

  Susan froze, hand on the coffeepot. Today she had a chopstick in her updo. “Blood?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said again.

  “Can’t be. Easton wasn’t bleeding when he left and he wasn’t even over there. Do they think he came back?” She refilled her cup, then came around the table and topped up mine.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I don’t see how he could have come in again without me seeing him.” Susan sat across from me again. “I didn’t leave the desk, Kathleen.”

  “I know that.” I poured a packet of sugar in my cup before it all ended up in Susan’s.

  “And I don’t see how he could have snuck in. Or even why he would.” She shook her head. “Easton wasn’t subtle. He struck me as the kind of person who always made an entrance, who sucked all the air out of the room.”

  I tried to get a mental picture of Gregor Easton slinking back into the library, creeping past the circulation desk while Susan was busy. And to do what? Go bleed on the floor of a half-finished meeting room? What would that accomplish? From my one encounter with Easton while he was alive, I felt sure a showy, melodramatic scene was more his style. “You’re right,” I said to Susan. “Gregor Easton didn’t seem like the kind of person to do anything unobtrusively. We don’t know what the police found on the floor downstairs. We certainly don’t know it was blood. And if, if it was, it’s probably from one of the workmen.”

  “Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. One of those guys was carrying a piece of wood and almost took my head off last week. Then he turned around so fast he took out an entire shelf of paperbacks with the other end of the board.”

  “Not everyone is Oren,” I said.

  Susan grinned. “You’ve got that right.”

  I looked at my watch. It was five minutes to nine. “That reminds me,” I said, as I stood up and took my cup to the sink to rinse it. “The rest of the reference books are coming from Everett’s warehouse this morning. Could
you get them shelved, please?”

  “Sure.” Susan chugged the last of her coffee and set her mug in the sink.

  “Mary will be here at ten,” I said. “She can cover the desk and the phones. I’m going to see if I can figure out what we have for the computer room and what we still need. Oren will be here late this afternoon to at least get the furniture together.”

  The truck from Everett’s warehouse pulled up to the back door of the library at exactly nine thirty. The driver used a small, wheeled dolly to move the crates of books into the building. He took off the tops with just a hammer and his hands, as if they were pull tops on cans of tuna, had me check each crate, sign for everything, ma’amed me half a dozen times and was gone in less than fifteen minutes.

  Susan started unpacking the books as soon as Mary arrived to handle the desk.

  I got my trusty five-in-one, multipurpose Ginsu tool from my office. (It’s a knife! It’s a screwdriver! It’s a corkscrew! It’s scissors! It’s a blade for opening anything encased in plastic! Wow!) And, yes, I’d bought it from a late-night infomercial—in between ads for spray hair in a can and the amazing panini press—but it really worked. It was great for cutting open boxes, hermetically sealed plastic packages and the occasional coffee cake from Susan’s husband, Eric. And I liked knowing that if I ever needed to saw through a soda can, I could do that, too.

  The soon-to-be computer room was piled with boxes and unassembled furniture. I set the three printer cartons under the window. The monitors were already stacked in the corner. I left them there. The chairs were shrouded in yards of plastic film, one upside down on another, as though someone had gone a little crazy with a giant-sized roll of sandwich wrap. I pushed those against the end wall. Leaning up against the last pair of chairs was a long, flat box—the other table for the children’s department. I’d been looking for that for almost a week. I knew if I left it Oren would put that together, too, but all it needed was to have the legs attached to the top. How hard could that be for a woman with a multipurpose, five-in-one Ginsu tool?

  Harder than I thought. It took the better part of an hour to attach legs A1 through A4 to top B with screws DD, nuts FF and washers EEE. There were bits of plastic and bubble wrap all over the floor and clinging to my shirt when I was finished. I went upstairs and got the small vacuum we kept in the staff room, and prowled the walls looking for an outlet to plug it into. The rewiring of that section of the library obviously hadn’t been done. Another thing to talk to Will about when he showed up. Assuming he showed at all today.

  Finally, under the end window, behind a printer box, I found an outlet. I leaned over the box and stretched to push in the plug. There was a loud snapping sound and sparks flew up. So did I, backward onto the floor. I lost a few seconds, maybe half a minute. I opened my eyes and looked up into Detective Gordon’s blue ones. I struggled to sit up.

  “Take it easy, Ms. Paulson,” he said.

  “I’m all right,” I said. And I was, except for the tingling in my fingers, the buzzing ache in my arm and the high-pitched sound of crickets in my ear.

  “I don’t think you are.”

  At that moment Roma came around the end of the bookshelves. “Kathleen, what happened?” she asked. “I came in the door and Mary said you were hurt.”

  “I got a little shock when I plugged in the vacuum cleaner,” I said.

  “A little shock?” exclaimed Susan. I hadn’t seen her standing behind Detective Gordon. “There were sparks and a big bang, and she went flying.”

  “Would you take a look at her, please?” Detective Gordon asked, getting to his feet.

  “She’s a vet,” Susan said. She gave Roma an apologetic look. “No offense.”

  Roma smiled. “None taken. You’re right. But I do have first-aid training.” She knelt beside me.

  “Roma, I’m all right, really,” I said.

  She laid a hand on my shoulder. “Kathleen,” she said, “stop talking just for a moment, please.” She began feeling my scalp, probing gently under my hair for bumps. “Did you hit your head?”

  “No,” I said. I shifted position and winced. “I did bang my hip.”

  She fished in her pocket, pulled out a set of keys and held them up to Susan. “My car is in the lot—it’s the dark blue four-by-four. There’s a black bag behind the driver’s seat. Would you get it for me, please?”

  “Sure,” Susan said, taking the keys.

  Roma turned back to me, reached for my arm and pressed two fingers to my wrist while she checked her watch. After that she sat back on her heels. “What happened?” she asked.

  “I was plugging in the vacuum cleaner. There was a loud snap, sparks and I went over backward.”

  She glanced up at Detective Gordon, who nodded his agreement. “Which hand?” Roma asked.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “Which hand was holding the plug?”

  “Oh. This one.” I held up my right hand.

  Susan came back then with Roma’s bag and set it beside us. “Thank you,” Roma said. She opened the bag and pulled out a stethoscope. As she put the round metal end on my chest I hoped the last place it had been wasn’t a horse’s rear.

  “Take a deep breath and bark,” Roma said. Vet humor, I figured.

  She listened in several places, then pulled the ends of the stethoscope out of her ears. “Let’s try standing up,” she said.

  Detective Gordon offered his hand. I took it and got to my feet. My arm still felt numb, but the high-pitched whine in my ear was almost gone. “See?” I said, holding out both hands. “I’m all right.” I turned to Roma. “Thank you.”

  She bent to stuff the stethoscope in her bag. “You’re welcome. But you should see a doctor—one who specializes in people, not pets and farm animals.”

  I thought about spending the rest of the morning sitting at the clinic, waiting to be seen by a doctor who wouldn’t do anything more than Roma had done. “I promise if I feel sick or off in any way, I’ll go,” I said. Susan, standing with her arms crossed, shook her head.

  “Kathleen, do you know why I became a vet?” Roma asked.

  “No.”

  “Because my patients never second-guess me.” She smiled to soften the criticism. Then the smile faded. “If you feel funny at all, go to the hospital. Don’t wait around.”

  “I will,” I said.

  Roma swung the strap of her bag over her shoulder. She nodded at Susan and Detective Gordon. “I’ll see you tonight,” she said to me, and headed back to the checkout desk.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Susan asked. “You hit the floor pretty hard.”

  “I am, really,” I said, rubbing my hip. “Just a bit sore.”

  “Okay. I’m going back to shelving. If you need anything, yell.” She grinned. “Maybe not as loudly as last time, though.” She disappeared around the corner.

  I turned to Detective Gordon. “I won’t ask you if you’re really okay,” he said.

  “Thank you.” I rubbed my arm. It still had a faint pins-and-needles feeling.

  He walked over to the window to take a closer look at the outlet. There was soot on the wall plate and an ashy black scorch mark arced a good six inches above it on the wall.

  “I don’t think that’s going to work anymore,” he said, pointing to the electrical cord on the vacuum. The plastic plug had melted into a misshapen blob.

  “I think we have a broom somewhere,” I said. Then I remembered that the somewhere was the half-completed meeting room.

  Detective Gordon was crouched down, studying the scorched outlet. He looked up at the ceiling. “I’m surprised you didn’t blow a fuse,” he said. “Still, I don’t think it’s a good idea to plug anything in here until it’s checked out by an electrician.”

  I nodded. “You’re right.”

  “Do you have any masking tape? We should mark this off so no one else uses it, either.”

  “I think there’s a roll at the circulation desk. Let me check.”

  I w
alked around to the desk. Mary was just hanging up the phone. “Kathleen, are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’m fine, Mary,” I said, forcing a smile. “It was just a little shock.” I didn’t handle it well when people fussed over me. I was used to looking after other people, not the other way around. “Do we have any masking tape?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh. Right here.” She pulled open the drawer below her computer monitor and handed the tape to me with a smile. She smelled like cinnamon and Ivory soap and looked just like someone’s sweet grandma—which she was. She was also state champion for her age and weight class in kickboxing.

  “Mary, did Mr. Easton come back to the library Tuesday night after I walked him out?”

  “No. Not while I was here.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I took the tape back to Detective Gordon. He crossed two pieces over the outlet in a large X. Then pulled a pen out of his jacket pocket and wrote DANGEROUS! DO NOT USE! on a third piece and stuck that above the X. “That should do it,” he said, standing up and brushing off his hands.

  “Thank you.” He must have come to the library for a reason, I realized then. What was it?

  “Was there something you wanted, Detective?” I asked. “You didn’t just stop by to pick me up off the floor and safety-proof the building.”

  “No, I didn’t.” His smile disappeared. “Ms. Paulson, you said Mr. Easton was looking for an Internet connection when he came in Tuesday evening.”

  “That’s right.” Suddenly I felt cold. I folded my arms over my chest.

  “So you would have been standing . . . here?” He held out his hands, palms up.

  “Yes.”

  “Did Mr. Easton go anywhere else in the library?”

  I shook my head. “Other than out the door, no.”

  He looked me straight in the eye and I met his gaze head-on. I didn’t know where the conversation was going, but I didn’t have anything to hide.

  “Did Mr. Easton come back to the library?”

  “No. He didn’t come back while I was here. Susan and Mary covered the desk after that and they didn’t see him.”