No Cats Allowed

by Miranda James

  I debated whether to tell Helen Louise about the smashed windshield and the gunshot tonight, because I didn’t want her to get upset and not be able to get the rest she needed. She had enough on her mind without worrying about me. Then I realized how furious she would be if I didn’t tell her tonight and she heard about it from someone else first, so I decided I had better.

  Right after I told her about both incidents, I stressed the security measures we were taking, and she was relieved to hear that Haskell would be staying in the house for a few days.

  “As long as you don’t do anything risky,” she finally said, “you should be safe.”

  “I don’t plan to do anything risky,” I replied.

  “I know.” She yawned. “Sorry, honey, I’m about wiped out. Promise me you’ll be extra special careful until Kanesha and her officers have the killer behind bars.”

  “I will, love, I will. You go to sleep, and I’ll do the same.”

  We exchanged a few more words, then ended the call. I soon dropped off to sleep and slept soundly until morning.

  Diesel and I had our usual Saturday lunch date at Helen Louise’s place, and I ate a lighter breakfast than the one Azalea made for me during the week. Cereal, yogurt, and a couple of bananas. I felt virtuous for now, but that wouldn’t last past lunch, not with the thought of one of Helen Louise’s delicious pastries for dessert.

  I was at work in the den, cat at my side, by the time I heard Stewart and Haskell downstairs. I left them to their breakfast in peace, though Dante came in search of Diesel right away. The two of them played on the floor while I worked my way through the folders and files I had copied last night from the thumb drive.

  Other than the pictures of the jewels, I found nothing out of the ordinary. Spreadsheet after dreary spreadsheet, and one folder full of PDFs and scans of invoices. I took an occasional break to let my eyes rest and to rub my neck and shoulders, but I was determined to wade through as much of these documents as possible today.

  Diesel and I had a welcome break with Helen Louise. He scarfed down the boiled chicken she provided, while I enjoyed one of her delicious quiches and a salad. The bistro was busy, and Helen Louise didn’t have much time to chat, but at least we got to spend a little time together. She spent most of the time adjuring me to be careful and not put myself—or Diesel—in harm’s way again.

  “See you tomorrow, love. I promise I’ll be extra careful.” I gave her a quick kiss before Diesel and I left. She blew kisses after both of us.

  The house was quiet when Diesel and I returned. I attended to the alarm, and Diesel visited the utility room. Stewart’s car was here, and I supposed he and Haskell were upstairs. I headed straight for the den to resume work on those files.

  First, however, I decided to check my work schedule for the coming week. I wanted to see if Lisa, Delbert, and Cassandra had made appointments as I had requested. If they had communicated with Melba, the appointments would be on my calendar.

  I logged in to the college network and opened my e-mail. I scanned the messages, but there was nothing urgent. I clicked on the calendar and examined it. I focused on Wednesday. I saw appointments with Lisa and Delbert, but none for Cassandra.

  She was obviously determined to defy me. I had told her to make an appointment through Melba before the end of the day, and she hadn’t done so.

  I wasn’t going to put up with this.

  All right then, Ms. Brownley. Time for a little hardball.

  I composed an e-mail to her that wasted no words. I also copied Penny Sisson on it. The message read:

  You have failed to make the appointment for Wednesday as I requested. I will expect you in my office at nine o’clock Monday morning, and I will request that a representative from Human Resources join us to discuss your insubordinate and unprofessional behavior.

  I signed it simply, Charles Harris, Interim Director, and sent it. I sent a follow-up to Penny to explain why the message was necessary and to request her presence at the meeting.

  Cassandra could always claim she hadn’t seen the message, I realized, so I looked up her office number and called it. I left her the exact same message on her voice mail.

  The challenge had been issued, and I was curious to see what she would do.

  Would there be another incident like the smashed windshield? A bullet fired in my direction? Or perhaps something worse?

  I had better be on my guard.

  THIRTY

  The following day, Sunday, passed quietly, at least in terms of the murder investigation. Diesel and I had a leisurely morning with Stewart, Dante, and Haskell. Stewart insisted on cooking breakfast, and I didn’t argue. He made us bacon and cheddar omelets, one of my favorites. He made sure to fry extra bacon for Diesel and Dante. Everyone stepped away from the breakfast table thoroughly satisfied.

  I thought about opening the laptop and doing a bit of work, but then decided I deserved a day off, especially after the last several days.

  We had a delightful potluck family luncheon and had to put the leaf in the table to accommodate the four couples. Haskell appeared a bit uncomfortable at first, but my children and their spouses soon made him feel like a part of the family. Sean and Laura had accepted Stewart almost as an uncle. I tended to look on him as the younger brother I’d never had, and since Haskell appeared to be in the picture for the long run, he became part of the family, too. Diesel and Dante were beside themselves with so many hands willing to stroke and scratch and hand out tidbits.

  I looked at Helen Louise at the other end of the table and thought how beautiful she was, and how amazingly lucky I was that this exceptional woman cared for me as much as I cared for her. She caught me looking and smiled. We shared the moment while the conversation flowed around us.

  After lunch, with the table clear and the kitchen clean, my children and their spouses departed. Stewart and Haskell headed upstairs with Dante, leaving Helen Louise and me to ourselves. With Diesel, too, of course.

  We snuggled on the sofa in the den and chatted. Diesel lay beside Helen Louise with his head in her lap. I kept the conversation away from anything to do with work, either hers or mine. Instead we talked about a trip we hoped to take in mid-May. Neither of us had been to Italy, and we planned to see Florence, Siena, and Rome.

  Late in the afternoon Helen Louise reluctantly took her leave. She had to plan her menus for the coming week, and Diesel and I walked her to her car on the street. We nodded at the policeman sitting in the car near hers, and I was thankful for the extra security.

  Once Helen Louise was under way, Diesel and I hurried back into the house. I had debated calling off today’s lunch, but none of the family would hear of it. They all insisted on coming as usual. I prayed for a quiet day, and a quiet day we had.

  I only hoped it wouldn’t be the calm before the storm.

  * * *

  Diesel and I made it into the office on the dot of eight thirty. Melba was there before us. After we exchanged greetings, I told her about the situation with Cassandra Brownley.

  “Let me check my e-mail,” Melba said. “She might have e-mailed me after we left the office on Friday.”

  I was willing to bet she hadn’t. She certainly hadn’t replied to my e-mail from the weekend. I had checked this morning before breakfast, and again a few minutes ago, on my phone.

  “Did you get a response from your friend in accounts payable? I really need to see those files this afternoon.”

  “I’ll check that, too,” Melba said. “I’ll get the coffee started and be right back.”

  I nodded. Diesel accompanied Melba to make the coffee, and I unlocked my office door and turned on the lights. I halfway expected to find it in shambles or filled with bugs, either live or plastic, but everything appeared to be as I had left it on Friday afternoon.

  Once my computer was awake and I could log on, I checked e-mail again. Still no
response from Cassandra. I checked for voice mail on the office phone, but there was none. I glanced at my watch—eight thirty-nine. I opened my briefcase and pulled out my own thumb drive, onto which I had copied from my laptop all those files I’d found on Reilly’s thumb drive. I had decided earlier I didn’t want to lug my laptop to work and back.

  Melba appeared in the doorway. “No e-mail from Cassandra, but Margie Flaxdale, my friend in accounts payable, did e-mail back to say she would have the files ready for you to look at. You won’t be able to remove them from their offices, but you can look at them there.”

  “Thanks for checking,” I said. “Have a seat for a moment. I need to bring you up to date on a few things.”

  Diesel came around the desk to meow at me. I was sure he wondered why we were here, instead of in the archive office. The window here didn’t have the wide sill he was accustomed to upstairs.

  “You’ll have to find a new place to nap for a while,” I told him. “We’re going to be in this office for at least a couple of months.”

  He meowed again, as if to express his displeasure, and then walked back around to the desk to stretch out on the floor by Melba.

  She grinned at the cat. “What’s been going on?”

  I filled her in on the weekend’s events, and she paled when I told her about the gunshot.

  “Lunatic,” she said. “Thank the Lord you weren’t hurt.”

  We discussed the incident a few minutes longer, and then I noticed the time. Four minutes before nine. I mentioned it to Melba, and she rose.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for her,” she said before she walked back into her office.

  Moments later I heard another person speak to Melba, but it didn’t sound like Cassandra. Then Penny Sisson walked into my office.

  “Good morning, Charlie,” she said.

  I returned the greeting and asked her to have a seat. “Thank you for coming, but as you can see, Ms. Brownley has not shown up.”

  “No, she hasn’t,” Penny responded. “She called me fifteen minutes ago to inform me that she was ill and would not be at work this week, nor the first part of next week. Her physician has put her on complete bed rest for the next seven to ten days.”

  To judge by Penny’s stony expression, she was not pleased with Cassandra’s delaying tactics. Diesel lightened that expression, however, by greeting Penny with a meow and a rub against her legs. Penny patted him and smiled.

  “I reminded her, of course,” Penny went on, “that she would have to have a note from the doctor before she would allowed to return to work after an extended period of sick leave, and she assured me she would have one.”

  I shook my head. “If she is really ill—which I doubt—I am truly sorry. But this gamesmanship of hers is trying what little patience I have left.”

  “I understand how you feel,” Penny said. “After I received your e-mail to her, I did some digging in her personnel file. Some of this you can find out yourself by looking at annual reviews of her performance, so I will share that with you now. During the time she has been here, she has had several of these episodes that required bed rest. These episodes appear to have always coincided with times that she was in conflict with her supervisor.”

  “I see.” I thought for a moment. “Tell me realistically, Penny, do we have any firm ground for firing her? We can’t keep tolerating behavior like this, although she’s evidently gotten away with it for years.”

  “I would be happy to see her gone,” Penny said, “because she has caused trouble for years. Unfortunately, the documentation we have isn’t strong enough for us to be able to fire her for cause. Now, if we could find proof, for example, that she was behind any of the recent incidents, well, we would certainly have cause.”

  “And the police might have cause to haul her off to jail, too.” I grinned. “I’ll talk with Chief Deputy Berry and Chief Ford about this, try to find out whether they have any evidence for who pulled those pranks, including smashing my windshield.”

  “Good plan,” Penny said. “Let me know if you find out anything.” She rose to leave. “I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with her, Charlie, on top of everything else. Hopefully some good will come out of it.”

  I rose and came around to see her out. “Thanks, Penny. We’ll get through it somehow. I appreciate your help tremendously.”

  Diesel followed Penny into Melba’s office, and I returned to my desk. I had a meeting with the president and the deans of all the schools at ten, and I wanted to be prepared. I scanned the agenda that Forrest’s secretary had sent and reread an e-mail from Forrest outlining what he wanted me to present.

  I left the office ten minutes before ten, admonishing Diesel to be a good boy. He wanted to come with me, but I didn’t think it appropriate to take him along. Until the college found a permanent library director, I would have to leave him in Melba’s care frequently. I knew I could trust her to look after him, but I really couldn’t make him understand why he couldn’t go with me.

  My head ached by the time the meeting with the president and the deans had finished. I had just enough time to make a restroom stop and buy a can of diet soda from a vending machine before I met with the vice president in charge of finance. That meeting lasted only forty-five minutes, to my great relief. I came out of it with a clear understanding of the library’s finances, and we discussed the measures necessary to get the budget back on track after Peter’s disastrous overspending. I walked back to my office already tired and ready to go home for the day, but I had another meeting ahead of me.

  Diesel greeted me with a series of meows and trills, all of which told me how disgusted he was with having been left behind. Melba smiled while she listened to me repeat several times, “I’m sorry, Diesel.”

  When he lapsed into silence and smugly began to lick a front paw, I told Melba we were going home for a quick lunch. I had to be back in time for my two o’clock meeting with her friend in accounts payable.

  “I’m going to lunch, too,” she said. “I’ll be back in time to watch over Mr. Chatty here for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’re the best.”

  She grinned. “I know.”

  I had to make it a working lunch, although the thought of it annoyed me. I took my salad and sandwich to the den, where I powered up the laptop and logged in to the college network. I needed to catch up on e-mail. My first task was to compose a message to Kanesha and Marty Ford about Cassandra. The woman’s behavior was more than merely annoying. I also found it suspicious, despite her history. I had a hunch there was more to it this time than simply stonewalling her supervisor. If I couldn’t get through to her, perhaps Kanesha or Marty Ford could. Personally, I would love to watch Kanesha interrogate Cassandra. Ms. Brownley was a tough nut, but Chief Deputy Berry had cracked far tougher.

  * * *

  At three minutes to two, I knocked on the office door of Melba’s friend, Margie Flaxdale. A petite brunette, sixtyish and attractive, Ms. Flaxdale regarded me with a reserved expression from behind her desk.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Charlie Harris,” I replied and stepped into the room. “I’m here to go through those library purchase orders and invoices.”

  She nodded and pointed to a table in the corner. I saw three stacks of files, each about eight inches high. My heart sank. I’d never get through all those this afternoon.

  “I will remind you that you cannot remove any of those files from this department,” she said, her tone admonitory. I felt like a third-grader being told not to talk in class.

  “Certainly, I understand the rules.” I couldn’t hold back the note of frost in my words. The woman was a bit too officious for my taste.

  She merely nodded. I went to the table, pulled out the chair, and attacked the closest pile of file folders. One of the spreadsheets I had found consisted of a ten-year history of the library’s m
ajor resource purchases—electronic journal collections, databases, and print resources. I was particularly interested in the current fiscal year and Peter Vanderkeller’s sudden overspending. There was something about it that bothered me, and I hadn’t been able to figure out exactly what.

  The first pile of folders contained purchase orders and invoices from two fiscal years ago. I hunted through the piles and located those for the current year. I went through them, noting Peter’s signature on them. His handwriting had certainly deteriorated, I thought. His scrawl on these invoices was nearly illegible.

  I realized I couldn’t really accomplish what I wanted sitting there. I needed copies that I could take to my office. This was a huge task and could take days. I closed the file and returned it to the stack.

  I stood abruptly. “Thank you, Ms. Flaxdale. I appreciate your help.”

  She looked startled. “That didn’t take long.”

  “No, it didn’t. I have what I need,” I replied. I thanked her again and walked out of her office. I headed for the main library building. Despite my earlier intention to avoid going through the department head’s files there, in order not to arouse suspicion, I decided I had no choice. If I did alarm someone, that might not be a bad thing.

  THIRTY-ONE

  In the main library building I made straight for the staff area at the rear of the building. The files I wanted would most likely be in Cassandra’s office. As head of collection development and acquisitions, she was responsible for overseeing the purchase order and invoicing processes for library resources.

  I greeted staff members as I passed through the public areas and continued into the technical services area. I saw Delbert Winston in his office, and the staff members appeared busy at their desks.

  Cassandra’s door was locked, and I approached the ranking staff person in her department, Terrie Hall, and asked her if she had a key.

  “No, sir,” she said, looking somewhat taken aback. “Delbert has one, though. It’s the same key that opens all the librarians’ doors.”