Лори Касс - Cat With A Clue

“You missed an exceptional day of filming,” he said grandly. “This will go down in history as the episode of Trock’s Troubles that absolutely cannot be missed. From beginning to end it was perfection. Nothing went wrong. The food was exquisite, and the presentation was superb. Kristen here could take over my job without blinking her deep blue eyes. Which,” he added, beaming, “will show up brilliantly. I ordered as many close-up shots as they could manage.”

“Nothing went wrong?” Kristen asked. “What about the strawberries? There was mold. Mold!” she practically shouted.

I winced, knowing that Harvey, poor soul, would have borne the brunt of her anger.

“Piffle.” Trock waved away the problem. “Easy to drop that on the cutting floor, as it were. My dear, the magic of television has an infinite capacity to show what it wishes to show, and I wish to only show the best.”

“Mold,” she muttered. “I can’t believe it. They were fine this morning.” She sat up straight, her chin lifted. “If you want to cancel airing this show, I’d understand completely. I won’t hold you to the contract.”

“Good gad.” Trock blinked. He turned to me. “Is she serious?”

“As a chocolate soufflé.”

Both Kristen and Trock frowned in my direction. “What’s so serious about a chocolate soufflé?” Kristen asked.

I shrugged. “Didn’t want to say heart attack, and I’ve heard a chocolate soufflé is hard to make. Seriously hard, see?”

The twosome stared at me a moment, then went back to their discussion. “My darling restaurateur,” Trock said, “love of my son’s life and highlight of my own, please believe me when I tell you the finished product will be wonderful.”

Kristen crossed her arms across her chest. “Why should I believe you? You exaggerate from morning to night. You probably talk hyperbole in your dreams.”

Which was most likely true, but there was one difference. “Not this time,” I said.

“How can you possibly say that?” she asked.

“Because he never exaggerates about his show.” She started to object, but I held up my hand. “He may talk on and on about a restaurant he’s featured, and he may wax lyrical about a particular entrée that he made, but he never deviates from the absolute truth about an episode of the show itself.”

Kristen’s mouth opened, then shut. She stared at the ceiling and tapped her fingers together. “You’re right,” she finally said.

“Which means . . .” I held my hands out, palms up.

Her smile became a wide grin. “We’re going to be famous.”

“And rich,” I added. The two looked at me again, and I amended my statement. “Well, maybe not rich rich, but you’re certainly going to the most popular fine-dining establishment in northern lower Michigan for months, if not years.”

“Bubbly!” Trock called out at the top of his robust lungs. “We must have bubbly! Scruffy, where are you, son? Get the glasses. Get the champagne. We need to celebrate.”

Kristen laughed as Trock continued to yodel out commands, and I felt myself grinning like a jack o’-lantern, because there was nothing like a friend’s success to make you feel happy inside.

* * *

“It was horrible,” Holly said the next morning. “Just awful.”

I looked at Josh, who nodded.

“She’s right,” he said. “It was horrible.”

“Scary bad.” Holly shuddered.

“What was his name?” I asked.

“Theodore,” she said dolefully.

“Well, he can’t help the name he was born with,” I said. “And Ted isn’t so bad. I have a neighbor named Ted and he’s—”

But Josh was shaking his head. “He doesn’t go by Ted. It’s Theodore.”

He spoke the syllables in a round, full, sonorous tone, and I got a mental image of what Theodore must look like. Which was ridiculous, because who ever looked like their name?

“Minnie!” Donna hurried into the break room. “Did they tell you?”

“About what?”

“About Thee-o-door,” she said. “He was awful. You can’t let the board choose him as the new director—you just can’t.”

Holly and Josh, when grouped together during the morning break time, had a tendency to exacerbate any given situation. I’d been taking their comments about yesterday’s interviewee with a large grain of salt, and had been thinking about stringing them along with hints that the board had thought highly of Theodore. But if Donna was agreeing with the Dual Voices of Doom, I had to take the situation seriously. “Tell me what happened.”

“Thee-o-dore,” Donna said, “was too friendly.”

“Way too,” Josh said. “The guy was creepy. Pretending like he knew us, calling us by our names even though he’d never met us before.”

Okay, that was weird. It meant the guy had done his homework—there were pictures of the staff on the library’s Web site—but it was weird not to let yourself be introduced first.

“And he kept talking about what he’d like to do here,” Holly burst out.

“What’s so bad about that? Any library director will have goals.”

“You’re not getting it,” Josh said. “He was talking about the changes he was going to make.”

That was different.

“Want to know the first thing he’s going to do?” Holly asked. I didn’t, not really, but short of running out of the room and locking my office door behind me, I wasn’t sure how to avoid hearing. “He wants to get rid of the—”

I steeled myself to hear the word “bookmobile.”

“—sculpture garden.”

My mouth dropped open. The library’s sculpture garden was a labor of love for the entire town. Local artists had submitted designs, school art classes had constructed the pieces, and the installations had been celebrated events attended by hundreds.

“He doesn’t know what it means to Chilson,” I finally said. “That’s all. Once he finds out, he’ll change his mind.”

Josh made a rude noise. “He said it was a waste of maintenance dollars.”

I blinked. Gareth, our maintenance guy and my fellow junk-food maven, loved the sculptures. He took care of them on his own time, saying that it was his civic contribution to Chilson. The sole cost to the library was the occasional bolt or small can of paint, and I wasn’t sure Gareth charged even that to the library.

“And,” Holly ruthlessly went on, “he said it would save money to move the sculptures to commercial venues. That we’d be better off with a bigger parking lot.”

“After that,” Donna said into my look of stunned disbelief, “the next thing he wants is to get rid of all the DVDs. Says they have no place in a library.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t just nervous?” I asked. “That could make anyone act unusually.”

“When he walked out,” Holly said, “he was whistling.”

It was hard to imagine a whistle coming out of someone who was anxious. “What was he whistling?” I asked, still trying to find a way to make excuses for this guy.

“The theme music to that last Superman movie.”

Oh, dear.

“Minnie, you have to apply,” Josh said.

“You mean you haven’t?” Donna practically shrieked. “We need you. Thee-o-dore was horrible. What’s-her-name wasn’t much better. I’m not holding out much hope that the other interviewees will be any improvement.”

“If you love us even a little,” Holly pleaded, “put in your application. You have it ready, don’t you?”

“Apply,” Donna said. “Please?”

It was the question mark at the end that got me. Donna wasn’t big on asking for favors, even when she really needed the help. I needed to tell them what I’d decided, and I needed to stop putting it off.