Curiosity Thrilled the Cat

by Sofie Kelly

She hesitated.

  “Call him, please, Roma,” Rebecca said. “No more secrets.” Her eyes never left Everett’s face. It was like a scene from a romantic old movie.

  Roma stood up, pulled out her cell and walked over to the railing. Behind me Violet got out of her chair and moved over to the far side of the gazebo, and I followed. Everett and Rebecca moved toward each other.

  “You sent the pictures to Rebecca and to Phoebe Michaels,” I said. “Rebecca was your best friend, the sister you never had. As for Phoebe, she’d been very sheltered. I think you felt sorry for her.” Rebecca had told me Violet was deeply loyal to the people she cared about. I didn’t think Rebecca realized how deep that loyalty ran.

  I pictured Violet as a lonely only child, without parents as a young woman and widowed shortly after that. Rebecca was, in many ways, the only constant, the only family in her life. I’d do anything for Sara and Ethan. Was it so far-fetched for Violet to feel the same way about Rebecca?

  “I guess there’s no harm in telling you,” she said. “Yes, I did.”

  “How did you get them?”

  “I got them. Does it matter how?”

  “I think you made it your business to find out where Williams—who had become Gregor Easton—had gone after he left Oberlin. I think you’re a very patient woman. You waited months, maybe a year. You tracked him down and you seduced him.” I was guessing, but her expression told me I was right.

  It made my skin crawl to think about what a young Violet had probably done to gain Easton’s trust and swipe those photographs. “I think you let him take pictures of you, a lot more explicit than the ones he took of Rebecca and Phoebe, so you could win his confidence.” I remembered the photos I’d seen at her house. “You were interested in photography, too.” Their common interest had likely disarmed any suspicions Easton had about Violet.

  Her shoulders stiffened and her chin went up slightly. Other than that there was nothing else to indicate my guess had been right. Still, I was certain it was.

  “That’s a fascinating story, Kathleen,” she said. “But that’s all it is.”

  I put both hands on the railing. “I think you did give Easton aspirin, and I think you did it deliberately.”

  “I already told you, he said he had a headache.”

  “And you gave him aspirin for that headache.” I gripped the railing tightly. “Aspirin wouldn’t have been in that first-aid kit. I’m guessing you had some in your purse. My mother takes a low-dose aspirin every day, and I bet you do, too.”

  “Lots of people my age take an aspirin a day,” she said, evenly. “Maybe Mr. Easton did.”

  “How many did you give him?” I asked, turning to look at her then, keeping one hand on the railing.

  “I’m not a doctor, Kathleen. I didn’t give him anything. If he did take something for his headache, who’s to say how many pills that might have been? He was a man given to excess.” She continued to look out over the backyard.

  “You didn’t really tell him who you were, did you?” I said. “Otherwise he never would have trusted you.”

  “You don’t think he should have trusted me, Kathleen?” she asked.

  I rubbed my hand back and forth over the rough wooden railing. “I think you convinced Easton not to go to the hospital. You probably told him he didn’t need a doctor and he’d look like a clumsy old fool. He was arrogant. It would have been easy to use that against him. I think you gave him aspirin and I think you stayed at the Stratton until he was unconscious. Once you knew it was too late to save him, you left. You took Rebecca’s scarf from him, but your chain caught on something and the charm came off. Ironic that charm was the one that came off.”

  She turned to face me. “I can tell you’ve spent a lot of time with books, Kathleen,” she said with the cool smile I’d seen before. “As I said, you’ve created a fascinating story. The only person who knows what happened is me.”

  She smoothed the front of her shirt. “Of course, I’ll be happy to tell the police my story.”

  “You left a man to die,” I said. “I don’t care what he did. You left him there to die.”

  She took a step closer to me. “No, Kathleen. I didn’t.” Hate sharpened her voice. “Yes, I gave him aspirin. Yes, I convinced him not to go to the hospital. But I didn’t leave him to die.” Something in her face, in her smile, made my stomach clench. “I made sure he was dead before I left,” she hissed.

  She turned to look at Everett and Rebecca and her expression changed. She looked . . . pleased. “Look at them,” she said.

  My hands were shaking.

  “See? The Big Bad Wolf is dead. And everyone’s going to live happily ever after.” She turned back to me. “I’m sorry, Kathleen. No one is going to believe your little story. I grew up here. I’m a respected member of the community. You’ve been here a few months. No one is going to believe you over me.”

  I reached into the pocket of my shirt with my shaking fingers and pulled out the tiny voice-activated digital recorder. “I think they will,” I said.

  25

  Conclusion

  Owen looked up from under the table, where he was chewing on a yellow catnip chicken.

  I bent down to peek at him. “I don’t want to come home and find that you’re into the stinky crackers and watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” I warned.

  He rolled over and went back to chewing. Herc came in from the living room, sat at my feet and looked expectantly at me. I bent to scratch his head.

  “I can’t pick you up,” I said. “I don’t want to get cat hair on my dress.”

  He made an annoyed grumble and stalked into the porch.

  I got my purse, locked up and headed for the Stratton and the last concert of the Wild Rose Summer Music Festival.

  The concert was sold out. That was because composer, conductor and brilliant pianist Michel Demarque had stepped in as guest clinician.

  I wasn’t sure what she was talking about when Lita had called to thank me and pass on the festival committee’s thanks to my mother—my mother—for convincing Demarque to step in. Baffled, I’d called Boston.

  “You know Michel Demarque?” I’d asked.

  “Yes,” she’d said. “So do you.”

  “I do?”

  “You remember Uncle Mickey.”

  I’d had to search my memory. Vermont. A Stephen Sondheim musical. A blond Hugh Jackman look-alike who slow danced with my mom while my father seethed with jealousy.

  “Uncle Mickey is Michel Demarque?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you,” I said. “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “If it matters to you, Katydid, it matters to me,” she said.

  An usher showed me to my seat in the theater. Oren had finished working at the Stratton just days before the first performance. The building looked wonderful. At Everett’s request Oren was supervising the rest of the library renovations.

  I looked at the empty seat beside me. Where was Maggie? I spotted Everett and Rebecca on the other side of the theater. Rebecca hadn’t been charged with anything connected to Gregor Easton’s death. As a member of the centennial committee, she had a right to be in the library and she’d clearly been defending herself from Easton when he’d injured his head. No one believed she’d planned to hurt the man when she’d sent him the note asking him to meet her, even though she’d been pretending to be me. Violet, however, had been arrested. Everyone expected she’d take a deal to avoid a trial. It was clear she had some serious psychological problems, and I hoped she’d get the help she needed.

  The overhead lights flashed—five minutes until the concert began. Where the heck was Maggie?

  “Excuse me,” a voice said from the aisle. I looked up to see Marcus Gordon standing there. He pointed to the empty seat. “I think that’s my seat,” he said.

  I shook my head. “No, that’s Maggie’s seat,” I said. “She’ll be here any minute.”

  “No, I think it’s mine,” he
said, holding out his ticket. He was right.

  I stood up to let him pass. I’m going to kill Maggie, I decided. It wasn’t enough that Matt Lauer had won the coveted Gotta Dance crystal trophy over the divine Kevin Sorbo; now she was trying to set me up with Marcus.

  Yes, he looked very nice in an open-neck blue shirt and tan jacket. And he smelled yummy. But he wasn’t my type. Not. At. All.

  “How’s your arm?” he whispered, bending his head close to mine.

  When I’d finally gotten to the clinic, I’d discovered my wrist was broken. Now I had a cast from my fingers halfway to my elbow. “The cast comes off in a couple of weeks,” I said. “And at least it doesn’t hurt.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said.

  He had a nice smile. Not that it made any difference to me. He wasn’t my type. He didn’t have a library card, I’d noticed. The man had never borrowed a single library book, as far as I could tell.

  “Rumor has it you had a lot to do with the festival getting this conductor,” he whispered in my ear as the lights went down.

  “I really didn’t do anything,” I whispered back. Which was true. I hadn’t.

  “What other superpowers do you have?” he said softly. I could see his grin, even in the dark. “Can you walk through walls or magically disappear?”

  The curtain rose and Uncle Mickey lifted his baton. I looked at the detective, put my finger to my lips and just smiled.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sofie Kelly is an author and mixed-media artist who lives on the East Coast with her husband and daughter. In her spare time she practices Wu-style tai chi and likes to prowl around thrift stores. And she admits to having a small crush on Matt Lauer.