Софи Келли - Final Catcall

The start of a smile played across his face. “Are you saying you should have listened to me?”

“I decline to answer on the grounds that . . . I don’t want to.”

He did smile at that. Then he reached out and touched my shoulder, just for a moment. “I’m going to go so you can call Detective Lind. Maybe I can find Hannah somewhere.”

“Give her a little bit of time,” I said.

He nodded. In the doorway he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Kathleen,” he said, “maybe you can learn from my mistakes, too.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Then I went down the hall to see if I could find Hercules. I unlocked the door to the workroom and looked inside. I couldn’t see him anywhere and I really didn’t think he’d be stubborn enough to walk through the door—so to speak—just because I’d told him not to. That was more Owen’s style.

I relocked the door, went back to my office and called the number I’d memorized from Detective Lind’s card. She told me she would send someone over for the box. When I stepped back into the hall, Hercules was standing in the staff room doorway.

“What were you doing in there?” I asked.

He looked back over his shoulder.

“Let me guess: being nosy, looking for something to eat that Roma has not okayed, and walking through walls just because you can.”

He gave an offhand meow. I took it as a yes to all three.

I leaned forward. “Come here. You need to go back into my office. The police are on their way.”

Hercules leaned sideways and looked toward the stairs.

“No. Marcus is gone. Someone is coming to get that box.” I wasn’t sure if that was what he’d been asking, but I like to keep him in the loop.

He yawned and walked past me into the office. I knew there was no point in locking the office door, but I did it anyway.

“Stay here. Please,” I said as I left. Hercules was sitting in the middle of my desk again, meticulously washing his face. He gave no sign that he’d heard me say anything at all.

The afternoon passed in a blur of activity. When school let out there was a rush of eighth-grade students from two middle school history classes whose teachers had specified they had to use at least one real book as part of the research assigned for an essay on the First World War.

“Is there a DVD or something?” I heard one boy ask Mary as she handed him a book I knew was a young soldier’s diary from the last days of the war.

“Read five pages,” she said, holding up one hand. “And use your imagination.”

“I wouldn’t have to if there was a DVD,” he muttered.

She shooed him toward a chair by the window and rolled her eyes at me. Half an hour later he was still in the chair, bent over the book, engrossed in the story.

I put my arms around Mary’s shoulders and gave her a hug. “You’re good,” I said.

“Consider me a superhero of reading,” she said with a grin.

About half an hour before closing I went upstairs to clean off my desk. Hercules wasn’t sitting on top of it anymore, but he was in the room, curled up on my desk chair. He jumped down when I came in.

“Where are you going?” I said.

He ignored me, stopping only long enough to open the office door a little wider with one paw. At least he hadn’t walked right through it.

I followed him down the hall to the lunchroom. “There’s nothing in here you can eat,” I said.

He shot me a condescending look and kept going. Inside the room he went immediately to the metal shelving unit against the wall. It was going in the workroom one of these days. I made a mental note to get Mia to start sorting through all the stuff piled on the shelves.

Hercules put one paw under the bottom shelf, which was only a couple of inches above the floor, and batted a piece of paper into the middle of the room. It was almost as though he’d known it was there.

I bent down to pick it up. It looked like part of a page that had been torn from a magazine. The paper was crumpled and damp, like it had been in a cat’s mouth.

“Did you steal this from the box that was in the workroom?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

Hercules, to his credit, didn’t even try to bluff me. He looked at me, head up, furry chin jutting out, obviously proud of himself.

I studied the torn page, wondering what about it had caught the cat’s attention. Was it the image of the bowl of steaming jajangmyeon in the Korean restaurant ad? Or was it the article written by a young woman who worked with teenage alcoholics? I couldn’t see what either one could have had to do with Hugh Davis’s death.

I looked down at the little tuxedo cat. Just because he could walk through a solid wooden door into the workroom and swipe a piece of paper didn’t mean that piece of paper was important. Both Hercules and Owen had found “clues” before, but I didn’t see how this scrap of a magazine page was going to help me figure out what Hannah was hiding or who had shot Hugh Davis up at the Spruce Bluff lookout.

I bent down and picked the cat up. “Let’s go home,” I said.

He twisted in my arms and swatted the paper with one paw. “Yes, I see that,” I said. I frowned at him. “You shouldn’t have taken it.”

He made a huffy sound of indignation in his throat and refused to look at me. I folded the page, put it in my pocket, and went back to my office with my sulky cat.

I couldn’t help wishing that Hercules had found something that would help me make sense of everything. What I didn’t realize was that he had.

17

Maggie had moved tai chi class from Tuesday evening to Monday, so I didn’t have a lot of time when I got home. I put the crumpled magazine page on the counter.

Hercules was still miffed. I crouched down next to him. He stared past me, aloof and unmoving like a black-and-white statue. I scratched his head just above his nose. “I’ll look at what you found when I get back tonight. I promise,” I said.

He made a disgruntled noise to show he still wasn’t happy with me, but he stayed for the head scratch so I knew I was pretty much back in his good graces.

I took the truck to tai chi class instead of walking, which meant I had to find a parking spot. That should have been easy on a Monday night, but I ended up on a side street partway up the hill and made it to the tai chi studio, half out of breath, just before Maggie was about to start class.

Everyone had made it, even with the change of day. Maggie was going to Minneapolis on Tuesday afternoon to present her application for a grant so the artists’ co-op could renovate the store. If they got the money, they would be adding space where the various artists could give classes in the summer and fall, along with a small workspace so tourists could stop and see an artist at work.

Ruby had come up with the idea and Maggie had spent hours and hours on the grant application. I could see Ruby had lots of nervous energy—probably because of the upcoming presentation. She was walking around the studio space swinging her arms and flicking her fingers.

Maggie, on the other hand, was the picture of Zen-like calm, standing in the center of the room in a green tie-dye tank top and yoga pants, talking to Taylor King.

I walked over to them. “Taylor, that book you requested about accessories from the 1960s came in,” I said. She beamed at me. “That’s great. I could probably come get it after school tomorrow.”

“It’ll be at the front desk,” I said.

Taylor had a good eye for vintage bags. She’d found several classic bags at different flea markets and thrift stores in the area. She was trying to learn more, she’d confided to me, because she wanted to start selling bags online. She was determined to show her dad that her interest in fashion wasn’t just some teenage girl thing, but could actually be a career for her.