by Sofie Kelly
Owen’s response was to knead my stomach with his front paws—“Claws!” I reminded him as one foot snagged skin through my shirt.
“Do you think maybe Gregor Easton wasn’t a total stranger here?”
Owen gave a loud meow.
“You could be right,” I said. “Violet was a music teacher. Could she have known him?” It was hard to imagine elegant, confident Violet luring Easton to a clandestine rendezvous at the public library.
I shifted in the chair so I could stretch out my legs. “And then there’s Ruby. She’s in the festival choir.” I couldn’t picture her enticing Easton to a private meeting, either. Ruby was more likely to call someone out in public. At great volume
The paper had said Easton had done a graduate degree at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Hadn’t Everett told me that the University of Cincinnati was where he’d studied business? I couldn’t imagine Everett tied up in Easton’s death, either. I couldn’t imagine anyone I knew involved. But the truth was, someone I knew had used my name to get Gregor Easton to meet him or her. And wasn’t admitting it. Someone I knew was willing to let me be tied up in a murder. In the few months I’d been in town I thought I’d made friends. Now? Maybe I was still more of an outsider than I’d realized.
Owen was stretched out on my lap, eyes closed. I stroked his fur. I couldn’t take feeling this kind of suspicion about everyone I knew. I had to do something. The most logical place to start was with the dead man himself. Maybe if I knew more about Easton I’d be able to figure out whether he did have a connection to someone in Mayville Heights and whether that someone wanted him dead.
Owen suddenly opened his eyes, shook himself and jumped off my lap. He headed for the front yard.
I got up, as well, stuffing the note Owen had swiped into my pocket along with the bit of fringe he’d taken from Rebecca’s scarf.
I started for the house just as Harry came from the front yard, pushing a lawn mower. I detoured over to him. “Good morning,” I said.
Harry mowed the lawn at the library and at my house. I had no idea how old he was, but if I had to guess, I’d say late fifties. His face was lined from years of working in the sun, and the one time he’d taken off his Twins cap to mop his sweating forehead, I’d noticed he was mostly bald with just a little salt-and-pepper hair.
“Morning,” Harry said. “Do you mind if I get at the lawn early? It’s going to rain later.”
I shook my head. “No.”
The sky overhead was clear, bright blue with only a few puffy clouds like little bits of cotton batting that had been blown up into the sky by the wind. Still, if Harry said it was going to rain, it was going to rain. It didn’t matter what this morning’s forecast said. He judged the weather by the birds, the leaves, the smell of the wind and how his left leg—which had been broken twice—felt.
He was also very well-read. He’d borrowed Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and renewed the book twice, which made me think he’d actually read it all.
Harry had the kind of face that somehow smiled even when he wasn’t actually grinning. I smiled at him now. “Thank you for telling the police you saw me Tuesday night.”
“I did see you,” he said.
I felt a little awkward. “I know,” I said, sliding my hands into my back pockets, “but you didn’t have to get involved.”
Harry pulled off his cap and ran a hand over his scalp before pulling the hat back on again. “Kathleen, I don’t know what happened to Mr. Easton, but I know whatever it was, you had nothing to do with it. You love books and you’ve spent months working on restoring the library building. There’s no way on God’s green earth you’re going to whack someone over the head and let him bleed all over your library.” He shook his head from side to side for emphasis. “And I told that to Detective Gordon,” he added.
Was that why the detective had seemed less suspicious? Did Harry’s words carry that much weight?
“Well . . . thank you.” I cleared my throat. “I met your brother yesterday.”
Harry nodded. “Said he’s doing some work for you.”
“Oren says he’s a good electrician.”
“He is. And if he gives you any trouble, let me know.” Harry bent over the mower. “He’s not so big that I can’t hang him off the roof by his ankles.” He grinned, which I hoped meant he was kidding, and pulled the starter cord on the mower.
I went inside, cleaned up the kitchen and made a turkey salad sandwich to take to work with me. The necklace Ruby had given me was lying on the table. I slipped it on over my head. I didn’t know if the crystal could keep negative energy away or not, but it couldn’t hurt.
Harry and the mower moved from the back to the far side of the house. I went out into the porch to look for Owen and Hercules.
There was no sign of the cats, but Santa Claus was in the backyard, sitting in my blue Adirondack chair.
12
Fair Lady Works at Shuttle
Okay, it wasn’t really Santa in my Adirondack chair, but the elderly gentleman in my backyard definitely looked like Saint Nick, minus the belly that shook like a bowlful of jelly. He had thick white hair and a white beard that looked as soft as dandelion fluff.
I opened the door and walked across the grass to find out why Santa Claus’s doppelganger was sitting in my favorite chair. He struggled to get to his feet when he saw me approaching—Adirondack chairs are not always easy to get out of.
“Hello, my dear,” he said, offering his hand. His grip was strong and his blue eyes actually seemed to twinkle.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen the man before; still, there was something very familiar about him.
“You’re trying to decide if we’ve ever met,” he said.
Okay, not only did he look like Santa Claus, he seemed to be able to read minds like the Amazing Kreskin. The old man was still holding my right hand and now he covered it with his left. I could feel the warmth of both of his hands, sinking into mine.
“I’m Harrison Taylor,” the Kriss Kringle look-alike said. “But everyone calls me Old Harry.” He gestured at the chair behind him. “I hope you don’t mind me making myself at home.”
“Not at all.” I gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m so glad to finally meet you.”
“I’m happy to meet you, as well,” he said. “I was feeling a little like someone’s big, old, smelly dog, left in the truck with the window cracked just a little. Plus, I’m a nosy old man and I wanted to see what you’ve done back here.” He patted my hand before letting go of it.
“So what do you think?” I asked.
He looked around and slowly nodded his approval. I felt a small, warm bubble of pride spread inside me. Young Harry kept the yard mowed and trimmed, but I’d cleaned out all the overgrown flower beds.
“Those roses are from the homestead,” Old Harry said, gesturing with a heavily veined hand.
“Yes, they are. So are the blackberry canes.”
“How was the rhubarb this year?”
“Delicious,” I said. It had been, once I’d figured out rhubarb needed a lot of sweetening.
The mower stopped in the front yard, replaced in a moment by the sound of the trimmer.
“Please sit down,” I said, dipping my head at the chair. Old Harry eased back into the seat and I sat on the grass.
He patted the wide arm with one hand. “I didn’t like this color, you know, when Harry started painting the chairs. I thought all the colors he chose looked like something from a box of those fancy little mints you get at the end of a la-di-da dinner party.” He smiled, which made him looked more like Santa than ever. “Turns out he was right.” His gaze shifted to something behind me. “Well, bless my soul,” he said. “Hello there, puss.”
I shifted to see which cat was coming. It was Hercules, probably returning from Rebecca’s gazebo, stalking across the lawn like one of his jungle cousins. He paused beside me for a moment—long enough for a quick stroke of his fur—then we
nt to stand in front of the old man. Old Harry patted his leg. I opened my mouth to explain about the cats, and Hercules jumped up onto his lap.
My lips moved—I could feel them—but no sound came out. If someone had poked me with a feather I probably would have fallen over onto the grass. In fact, I almost did fall over when Owen came out of nowhere and brushed against my back. I turned, but like his brother he moved around me, stopping in front of the big wooden chair.
“Hello. I didn’t realize there were two of you,” Old Harry said. He didn’t even have to pat his lap. Owen jumped up without an invitation. As usual, it took him a moment to get settled. He shifted, kneading Old Harry’s leg, apparently without claws, nudging Herc a tiny bit sideways.
I just sat there, staring at the three of them, wondering when I’d fallen down Alice’s Wonderland rabbit hole. I didn’t say a word. I wasn’t sure I could trust my voice to work, anyway.
“I see the rosebushes and the blackberry canes aren’t the only thing you have from Wisteria Hill,” Old Harry said. He was scratching Owen behind his ears and Herc just at the top of his white face patch. How he knew what each cat liked was beyond me. The whole thing was so . . . weird. The White Rabbit in his waistcoat, glasses and watch could have come around the rosebushes muttering, “I’m late, I’m late for a very important date,” and I wouldn’t have been surprised.
Old Harry smiled kindly at me. “It’s all right, my dear,” he said. “They know.”
From somewhere I found my voice. “Know what?”
“That I’m dying,” he said, in the same matter-of-fact tone you might use to say it’s Tuesday.
“But . . . but you look fine,” I said stupidly, shifting on the grass so I could pull up my knees and wrap my arms around them.
“You’ve probably heard the expression ‘Looks can be deceiving.’” Both cats were purring now. Loudly. “What are their names?” the old man asked.
I pointed. “That’s Hercules and that’s Owen.”
“This one looks like Anna’s cat, Finn.”
I rubbed my damp hands on my shorts. “Everett’s mother? You knew her?” I asked.
“My first job was out at Wisteria Hill,” he said. “Everett’s father—Carson—built the place for Anna when she said she’d marry him. He was older than she was and hard as nails, except when it came to her.” He smiled. “She had that effect on people.”
I leaned forward. “What happened? Why was everything just abandoned?”
For a moment I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. He gave Hercules a last scratch under his chin and said, “Time to go.” The cat jumped down, shook himself and came to lean against my leg. “You too, puss,” Old Harry said to Owen. Owen yawned, stretched and hopped down, as well. He came across the grass and leaned against my other leg, pushing his head under my hand in a not-so-subtle attempt to get me to pet him.
The old man finally looked at me. “I don’t know why Everett gave up on the place. I was in St. Cloud—had been for six months.” He shook his head and I could see the sadness in his eyes. “By the time I got home again Anna was . . . gone. Everett didn’t completely abandon the house, mind you—there was a caretaker—but I don’t think he ever went near the place again.”
He stroked his beard with his gnarled fingers. “There was a lot of loose talk, but nothing you could hang your hat on. And by the time Everett came back to stay”—he shrugged—“he wasn’t saying anything, and nobody liked to push.”
Old Harry gestured to the cats, both still leaning against me, and his face softened. “Now, they’re most definitely descendants of Anna’s Finn.” He pointed at Hercules. “That one looks just like the old cat. And that one”—he gestured at Owen—“has the same eyes.” He pulled himself forward in the chair. “The old mother cat, she picked Anna, you know. Showed up one day at the back door of the house. Didn’t care much for anyone but her. Just the way these two chose you. They know how things are meant to be.”
Before I could ask him what he was talking about he started getting to his feet. I jumped up to help him and saw Young Harry was headed toward us.
“Time to put me back in the truck,” the old man said, giving one of my hands a squeeze. “It was a pleasure to finally meet you.”
I squeezed back gently. “For me, too.”
“Are we headed down the hill?” he asked Young Harry, who had joined us.
“Yes, we are. I have to mow at the Stratton and the library.”
“Good,” Old Harry said, his blue eyes twinkling. “Maybe I’ll crank down my window, stick my head through with my tongue hanging out, and see if it’s as much fun as it looks when Boris does it.”
His son was unfazed. “Yeah, well, try not to shed all over my front seat, Dad,” he said as they headed for the street.
I crouched down so I could talk to the cats at their level. Owen put a paw on my knee. Hercules, on the other hand, decided it would be a good time to catch up on his grooming. “What was that all about?” I asked. Owen suddenly decided that he should wash his face, too.
Was Old Harry really dying? Was it possible the cats could tell? Neither cat so much as twitched an ear in my direction. I sat back on my heels. I was turning into one of those people who talked to their cats and actually expected an answer.
I got up and went back to the house. It didn’t take long to get my things together, change and fix my hair. I put fresh water out for the cats. When I went to the back door, they were waiting to come in. They moved past me, avoiding eye contact. I locked up and headed down the hill.
The library was deserted—again—but two of Will Redfern’s men were there, pulling the temporary desk into sections so they could take it out. Mary waved at me from the new circulation desk, where she was getting organized.
“Isn’t this great?” she beamed, pointing to the new book drop with separate slots for fiction, nonfiction and other media like CDs and DVDs.
“It looks good,” I agreed.
“What are you doing here so early?” she asked.
“I have some paperwork I need to get at,” I said. “Is Jason here?”
She nodded. “He’s shelving, and Abigail is upstairs, sorting books for the sale.” She looked at the boxes piled on either side of the counter. “I could stay an extra couple of hours, if it would help,” she offered.
I looked at the boxes. “It would help, yes,” I said. “Thank you.”
Mary nodded with satisfaction. Organizing things, making labels, setting up files were her idea of fun—aside from kickboxing. She’d be able to get the circulation desk organized faster and better than anyone else.
I let myself into my office, closing the door behind me. I had an open-door policy, generally, but I had only an hour to see what I could dig up on Gregor Easton.
I turned on my laptop, spreading lunch on the far right side of my desk, and started Googling.
The basics were easy to find—concerts Easton had given to great acclaim, a catalogue of his CDs, a bibliography of the music he’d written. There were photos of the man at Carnegie Hall, at the Grammys, joining an eclectic group of other musicians to record a song for charity—always with some beautiful, younger woman on his arm. But I could find very little about his early life. It was almost as though Gregor Easton hadn’t existed before graduate school. What little information I could find was sketchy and one source seemed to contradict the next. There was lots of information about the public Gregor Easton. But I wanted to know about the private man. How could I get the personal details, the rumors, all the things that didn’t seem to make it into the public record?
Then it hit me. Who knew more about music—classical and contemporary—than Dr. Lise Tremayne, curator and librarian for the music collection at Boston University? I didn’t even have to look up the number.
It was early afternoon in Boston. “Dr. Tremayne,” she answered on the third ring. The sound of Lise’s voice, with its perfect enunciation and touch of French accent left from the years she worked and studied i
n Paris, immediately made me homesick.
“Hi, Lise. It’s Kathleen,” I said.
“Kath! How’s life in the land of a thousand lakes? You haven’t been carried off to become the consort of Bigfoot, have you?”
I laughed. Lise might seem like a big-city intellectual, but I knew she’d grown up in rural Maine, so far north that the next stop was Canada. She’d dug potatoes and stacked firewood and could dress a deer. Her highbrow friends would have been shocked to find out that the braised partridge they’d savored at one of Lise’s elaborate dinner parties had been running around the Maine woods right before her annual “fall retreat.”
“No, I haven’t been abducted by Bigfoot.” I swiveled in my chair so I could look out over the lake. Even though there were more clouds—which meant Harry was probably going to be right about the rain—the sun still sparkled on the water. The grass, which Harry must have come and cut right after he left my house, was a deep, rich green and the flower bed was an artist’s palette of color. My homesickness eased a little.
“It’s beautiful here, Lise,” I said. “I’m sitting here at my desk, looking out over the lake. The sun is shining. The air is clean—”
“—and all the little forest animals come into the library to help you shelve books while you whistle a happy tune,” she said drily.
“No, but you’d be surprised how useful squirrels can be for getting books up on the top shelves.” She must have known what was coming next. “And,” I added, “they work for peanuts!”
“I miss you, Kath,” Lise said, laughing.
“I miss you, too.” I had to swallow a couple of times to get rid of the sudden lump in my throat.
“So, tell me about your library.” I pictured her leaning back in her chair, propping her feet, in some ridiculously expensive pair of sandals, on the edge of her desk. “Is it really one of the original Carnegie buildings?”
“It is,” I said. I told her about the stone building and the renovations. I left out the fact that it was a possible crime scene and I was a possible suspect.