Софи Келли - A Case Of Cat And Mouse

Kassie seemed . . . pricklier.

Eugenie had confided that Elias had wanted Camilla as a judge for the Baking Showdown but she’d just had a baby and had turned down his offer.

Kassie was a popular food blogger and social media influencer, but Rebecca had confided that none of the crew liked working with her. “She would do a lot better if she remembered how to say please and thank you,” Rebecca had commented. I had also heard that several crew members were quietly pushing for someone, anyone, to replace Kassie.

There was always a sharp barb, it seemed, under any of her words of praise. For instance, she had told Ray Nightingale that she had expected him to fail spectacularly at the patisserie challenge and she was surprised to see he hadn’t. When Kate Westin, who was the youngest of the contestants, had paired banana and bacon in her open-faced sandwich, Richard had expressed his admiration for the way the sweetness of the banana cut through the fatty saltiness of the thick-cut bacon. Kassie had nodded her agreement while at the same time making a bit of a face as she took a bite. My father would have said she gave backhanded compliments.

Eugenie scanned the last page of the notes I had given to her and then looked up at me and smiled. “The information is on point and well organized,” she said. “Not that I had expected anything less from you.”

“Thank you,” I said. I got to my feet. “I’ll see you later tonight with the calendar.”

“I’m not putting you out, now, am I?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Not at all. As I said, it’ll be sometime after eight.”

“I’ll see you then,” Eugenie said.

As I headed back down the hallway I could hear voices arguing. They were coming from one of the offices that I thought was being used by an associate producer. As I got closer I realized that the voices were those of Richard and Kassie, but I couldn’t make out their actual words until I was just about level with the half-open door. Richard had his back to it. I didn’t see Kassie but I did hear her.

“Don’t play games with me, Dickie,” she said in a voice laced with equal parts honey and venom. “Or I promise, I will end you and your career!”

chapter 3

I thought about what I had overheard Kassie saying to Richard as I drove over to Fern’s Diner. Her words just seemed to confirm what I’d observed and the rumors I had heard about her. Whatever Kassie’s issues were with Richard, whether they were justified or not, people liked him, and when it came to taking sides they were all going to be lined up on his.

I was going to Fern’s to pick up an order of cupcakes—devil’s food chocolate with mint-chocolate-chip buttercream. Usage numbers were up again at the library and I thought we should celebrate. Georgia Tepper, who owned Sweet Thing bakery, had made them for me. She had been doing all of her baking for the last two days in the diner’s kitchen after a small fire on top of a power pole on her street had caused more damage than anyone had realized.

“Hi, Kathleen,” Peggy Sue said when I walked in. She was wearing hot-pink pedal pushers and a pink-and-white short-sleeved polka-dot blouse with the collar turned up, along with her retro cat’s-eye glasses. With her bouffant hair and a hot-pink scarf tied at her neck she looked like everyone’s idea of a 1950s diner waitress. She even had a pair of roller skates that she would put on for special occasions. Peggy was co-owner of the diner and a very savvy businesswoman.

She reached down behind the counter. “I have your cupcakes,” she said. “They smell terrific.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking the cardboard box with the Sweet Thing logo on the top from her. “Is Georgia here?”

Peggy shook her head. “The power is back on in her kitchen. She left about an hour ago.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “Thanks for hanging on to these for me.”

“Anytime,” she said with a smile.

It was a quiet Friday afternoon and evening at the library. I put the box of cupcakes in our staff room—minus the one I took for myself. I knew they would be gone by the end of the day. I set our newest student employee to work cleaning gum from under the table and chairs in the children’s department. It was a tedious, neck-knotting job but Levi had actually offered to take it on.

Levi Ericson had worked part-time as a waiter at the St. James Hotel before I’d hired him. He was a voracious reader, at the library at least once and often twice a week. When he had applied for the part-time job I’d had a good feeling that he might be the person we had been looking for.

We all missed our former student staff member, Mia Janes, who had left to attend college. We’d had a couple of students since then but neither of them had the rapport with the rest of the staff or our patrons that Mia had had. It was looking like Levi was going to be a good fit. The quilters and the members of the seniors’ book club were already trying to fatten up the lanky teenager. The little ones crawled all over him at story time and he didn’t seem to mind. And he read everything from graphic novels to War and Peace , which meant he could suggest a book for pretty much any reader who came in. I was hoping he would stay with us for a while.

Marcus called during my supper break. “How’s the paperwork coming?” I asked. The Mayville Heights Police Department along with the police in Red Wing had broken up a group smuggling counterfeit blood-sugar-monitoring devices.

“I swear someone is rearranging it all whenever I get up for a cup of coffee.” He raised his voice and I knew the words were being directed at someone besides me.

I pictured him standing at his desk, his tie loosened, his dark hair mussed because he’d been running his hands back through it.

“I have to drop something off to Eugenie after the library closes but it shouldn’t take long.” I broke a bite off my biscuit. “Any chance you’ll be done by then? We could go to Eric’s for chocolate pudding cake or just sit in the truck and make out like a couple of teenagers.”

“I thought you loved me for my sharp intellect,” he teased.

“Nope,” I said. “Turns out I’m way more shallow than that.”

Marcus laughed. “You’re many things, Kathleen, but shallow is not one of them.”

We agreed I’d call him when I finished with Eugenie and we said good-bye.

I was just bringing one of the book carts back to the front desk after my supper break when Kate Westin and another contestant from the show came in through the front doors. They both looked around in surprise. We often got that reaction from first-time visitors. The building, a Carnegie library, was more than a hundred years old. It had been restored to its original glory in time for its centennial, and I still took pride in showing off the mosaic tile floor, the refinished trim, the huge windows and the beautiful carved sun with the inscription Let There Be Light over the main doors, reminiscent of the original Carnegie library in Dunfermline, Scotland.

I walked over to say hello. “Kathleen, this is a beautiful place,” Kate said with a shy smile.

“Thank you,” I said. “A lot of people put in a lot of work to restore the building.”

“That railing outside on the steps, is it original?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s actually a reproduction. The original had deteriorated so much it had been replaced with a wooden railing about ten years before we started the restoration of the building.” It had been one of the things that had struck me as “wrong” the first time that I saw the building

Oren Kenyon had installed the new railings and had done a lot of other work inside including making several pieces of trim to match the original woodwork. The metalwork had been done by a blacksmith in Red Wing with a lot of help from Oren on the design. Wrought-iron spindles supported the flat handrail. The center spindle on each side split apart into a perfect oval and then reformed again. The letters M, H, F, P and L for Mayville Heights Free Public Library were intertwined and seemed suspended in the middle of the iron circles.