Софи Келли: Final Catcall

“Well . . . thank you.”

His hand moved as though he was going to touch my arm and then he jammed it in his pocket instead. “I’ll, uh, I’ll see you, Kathleen,” he said.

I nodded without speaking and watched him walk over to pay Claire for his food. A moment later Eric stuck his head around the swinging door. “Hey, Kathleen,” he said. “Thank you for recommending me to Ben Saroyan to cater the opening reception for the theater festival.”

“Does that mean you got the job?”

He grinned. “Yes, it does.”

I grinned back at him and took the paper sack he held out to me. “I’m so glad,” I said. “Remember, if you need to test any recipes, all of us at the library are willing to act as your tasters.”

Eric laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said and disappeared back into the kitchen.

I walked over to Claire at the cash register.

“Detective Gordon already paid for your order,” she said.

“Oh . . . um . . . oh,” I said stupidly. It was the second time Marcus had done that recently.

Claire gave me a look of sympathy. Everyone seemed to know that whatever had been going on between Marcus and me wasn’t going on any longer. I wished her a good day and headed for the library.

Ben called just before lunch. “Good morning, Kathleen.” His big voice boomed through the receiver. “Is your wi-fi working over there?”

“I think so,” I said. “Let me check.” I reached for my laptop. “It’s working,” I said after a moment.

He exhaled loudly. “I need a favor.”

“Of course. What is it?”

“I’m at the theater and our wi-fi keeps cutting out. They’re sending someone to check it, but Hugh needs a place to work for the rest of the afternoon. Any chance you could find some space for him over there?”

I thought for a moment. The library’s workroom could be available if I moved the boxes of programs that were being stored there into my office. The room had a big table and I could give him one of the chairs from the computer area. There’d be coffee in the staff room, too. “I think we can make it work,” I said.

“Thank you.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

“Send him over,” I said. “We’ll get things ready.”

He thanked me again and hung up. I went downstairs and got Susan to give me a hand. We shifted the boxes into my office, cleared the table and managed to carry a chair up from downstairs.

“This should be perfect,” I said to her, smiling with satisfaction over how quickly we’d gotten the space ready.

It wasn’t.

Hugh Davis stood in the doorway of the workroom and made a face. “This won’t work,” he said, shaking his head. “I need a desk.” He looked over at me. “Don’t you have an office?”

“Yes, I do,” I said, “but I need it.”

“Well,” he said. He didn’t finish the sentence but the disparaging tone in his voice told me he didn’t like my answer.

Susan touched my arm. “Kathleen, what about the antique library desk?” She spoke in a low voice, but her eyes darted in Hugh’s direction and I knew she’d intended for him to hear what she said.

The problem was I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. Heaven knew, that was the truth.

Hugh looked at us, his eyes narrowed in curiosity. “Excuse me—do you have a desk I could use or not?”

Susan made a face. “We do have a writing desk, but, well, it’s very old. I can’t even begin to tell you what it’s worth. This building is a hundred years old, so you can understand the desk isn’t something that gets used on a day-to-day basis.”

I still had no clue what desk she was referring to.

Susan let her gaze slide away from Hugh’s face as though she was uncertain about what she was going to say next. “You know that F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul?” she blurted.

Whatever she was up to was going too far. “Susan,” I said warningly.

She nudged her cat-eye glasses up her nose. “I’m sorry, Kathleen,” she said. “I know I’m not supposed to talk about that.”

“If you have a desk somewhere here in the building, then let me see it,” Hugh demanded.

Susan looked at me.

I nodded. “Show him.” I was curious to see this “antique writing desk” myself.

Susan led the way downstairs and through the building to the larger of our two meeting rooms. “Do you have your keys?” she said to me.

I pulled them out of my pocket and handed them to her. She unlocked the door and as she did I suddenly figured out what she was up to.

There was no way it was going to work. But there was no stopping Susan now. For the first time I had a sense of where her twins got their fearless spirit.

She walked across the room and opened the door to a large storage closet. Packed carefully beside a pile of boxes there was in fact a small desk, wrapped in padded mover’s blankets.

It could have been an antique, although I doubted it. Harry Taylor Junior’s brother, Larry, had found the desk in the back corner of the basement. Susan wasn’t lying when she said that she had no idea of its value. What I did know was that no one had been willing to pay five dollars for the thing when we’d had the library’s yard sale.

Susan carefully removed the coverings. The old desk had been varnished at one time but more than half the finish had worn off. It had intricate turned legs, a small writing surface and a back that went up about two and a half feet. There were two rows of tiny drawers on the back unit and two small doors in the center.

The desk was dinged and battered and it wobbled, but Susan unwrapped the thing like it was a treasure.

Hugh Davis laid a hand on the worn desktop. “F. Scott Fitzgerald?” he said.

“I can’t in all good conscience tell you that I have proof that he used this desk,” Susan said. She ran one finger along the side of the banged-up writing surface and smiled. “But . . .” She let the end of the sentence trail off.

Hugh turned to me. “This will work.” He gestured at the desk. “We should get this upstairs. I’ve already wasted too much time today.”

Hugh’s “we” actually meant Susan and me. The desk may have been banged up, but it was likely made of black walnut, according to Larry Taylor, and it was heavy. Still, we managed to get it up the stairs and set it down in the center of the workroom.

Hugh pulled his chair over and sat down. He looked up at me. “My briefcase is in the hall.”

It took me a moment to realize he expected me to go out and get it.

His briefcase turned out to be a huge black leather pilot’s flight case. I set it beside his chair and realized that his chair was actually my office chair.

Hugh followed my gaze. “I had to switch chairs with you,” he said, with an offhand gesture. “The other one didn’t have the right support for my back.”

I took a deep breath, imagining my frustration filling a balloon coming out of the top of my head. It was a technique my mother used with her acting students.

Hugh leaned over to open his case. “I’m going to need that table in here,” he said without looking up. “I need to spread out my papers and I guess that’s going to have to do.”

I looked at Susan and inclined my head in the direction of the hallway. Once we were out there I flicked at the imaginary balloon with my finger and pictured it spiraling down the wide wooden steps to the main floor. The thought made me smile.

“What are you grinning at?” Susan asked, grabbing one end of the table. It was a lot lighter than the desk.

“Your ability to spin a line of you-know-what,” I said, taking hold of the other end of the table.

“I wasn’t spinning anything,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “Everything I said was the truth. The library is a hundred years old, F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, and we certainly have no idea what that old desk is worth. It could be a valuable antique.”