Лори Касс - Cat With A Clue

Retreat to a smaller space? One that had a single door and zero windows? Only the dumbest potential victim in the lowest-budget movie would do something like that, and, since I liked to think of myself as smart and resourceful, now would be a good time for that to actually be true.

“You can come out now, Minnie,” said a male voice. “I know you’re in there.”

My last hope, that I’d been mistaken about the killer being in here with me and that the museum’s electricity had been shut off because someone had neglected to pay the electric bill, fizzled away into nothing.

“Who else is down here?” he asked. “I know you’re not alone; I heard you talking to someone.”

Eddie, in a bizarre act of appropriate behavior, remained quiet.

So did I.

“There’s no point in hiding.” A flashlight beam started dancing around the room. I moved quickly and quietly, and crouched behind a stack of boxes.

What I needed was a plan, and I needed it fast. Ten minutes ago would have been best, so that Eddie and I could have left the basement before the killer even arrived, the killer being . . . who? Shane, aka Angry Guy? Paul Utley? Jared, the used-book store guy? Steve Guilder? Bob Parmalee? Of the five, I hadn’t even met Bob, and I didn’t know the other four well enough to recognize their voices.

“Come on, Minnie, there’s no need to be scared.”

If I hadn’t been so scared, I would have snorted derisively. No one who barges into a closed museum, tiptoes down to the basement, and turns the lights off on the unsuspecting occupants of said basement had good intentions.

“All I want to do is talk.”

And all I wanted was to get out of that basement, cat in hand, but I didn’t say so out loud.

The flashlight’s beam played over the stacks of boxes, sending long, complicated shadows around the room as it went. “I hear,” he said, “that you’ve figured out that Chastain’s Wildflowers is down here somewhere.” He sighed. “All these boxes! I hope I gave you enough time to find the book. The last thing I want to do is spend my Saturday night digging through a bunch of old dusty crap that should have been thrown away generations ago.”

The cone of light came to an abrupt halt. “For crying out loud. Would you look at that? It’s one of those hair wreaths. What did some woman do, cut off all her hair to make this thing? Must have taken weeks to make something this complicated, but at the end of the day, it’s just creepy to have some dead chick’s hair hanging on your wall, don’t you think?”

I wanted to ask him if he thought the DeKeysers should have thrown away Wildflowers a generation or two back, but managed to keep my mouth shut. He was trying to get me to talk, and I wasn’t going to play his game.

Think, I told myself. Figure this out. Come up with a plan A, have a plan B for backup, then start working on implementation. Shouldn’t be that hard.

In theory.

“Why on earth do people hang on to old crap like this?” The flashlight played over a box I’d opened early on. I saw a hand reach down to flip through the contents. “And then donate it to a museum?” He made a rude noise. “You must have some kind of ego if you think strangers would be interested in your old family photos.”

Clearly, the man had no sense of history. I continued to keep my mouth shut and silently vowed one more time to keep Wildflowers from this guy. Not that I’d found the book yet, but that wasn’t the point.

“So, where is it?” he asked. “You’ve been down here for hours—you must have found it by now. And I must say, I’m pleased you never noticed me following you the past week. I kept hearing you were asking all sorts of questions. I didn’t worry too much about that, but once I found out you’re dating Ash Wolverson, I had to make sure you didn’t cause me any trouble.” He laughed. “On the contrary, I’d say you led me straight to the book.”

He moved around the room, but slow enough that I was able to back away, undetected, by hiding behind boxes, old countertops from the pharmacy, and old shelving units from the hardware store. Once again, being under-tall was working to my advantage, since it didn’t take much to hide me. Hooray for getting the short end of the genetic stick!

Short end?

My inane thought was suddenly so funny I almost laughed out loud. I slapped my hand over my mouth to keep my nervous laughter inside, and the small noise must have alerted him.

“Heard that,” he said casually. His flashlight speared the darkness, and I tried to make myself smaller than I’d been since I was twelve years old. “Look,” he said. “We both know you’re down here, so why are you bothering to hide?”

I figured the answer to that was obvious, so this time it was easy to keep my mouth shut.

“Come on, Minnie,” he said. “All I want is that book. Sure, it was donated to the museum, but they don’t even know what they have, so clearly they don’t deserve it. We’re the only ones who know the value of Chastain’s book, so let’s talk about this.”

I watched the flashlight shift away from me. If I ran now, he wouldn’t see the movement. The open stairway was about fifteen feet to my left and it was . . . too far. He was bigger, faster, and stronger than I was, and he’d be on me before I got three steps up the stairs. I had to get closer before I ran.

A lot closer.

Slowly, so very slowly, I stood and wedged myself behind a set of freestanding shelves; old wooden ones with a solid back. If I could inch behind it all the way to the other end, I’d be close enough to the stairs to make a run for it.

“So, here’s the deal,” my enemy said. “Let’s work on two assumptions. One, that the book is here. Two, that we both want the money it will bring if we sell it to the right person.”

I almost yelled at him then and there. Any money the book might bring didn’t belong to him and it didn’t belong to me. It belonged to . . . well, I wasn’t sure who it belonged to, considering that Talia DeKeyser had given it away while in the grips of Alzheimer’s, that Chandra Wunsch had given it away without knowing what she had, and that the museum hadn’t a clue about its value, but that was for the attorneys to figure out.

And speaking of attorneys, the more this guy talked, the more I was sure it was Paul Utley. Angry Guy Shane didn’t have this guy’s vocabulary, and, if my first impressions of Jared were anywhere close to being accurate, he didn’t have this kind of intensity. Then again, I didn’t know anything about Bob Parmalee and hardly anything about Steve Guilder.

“Let’s talk about a sixty-forty split,” he said. “Sixty percent for me, forty for you. Now, you might think a fifty-fifty split would be fair, or even sixty-forty to your benefit, but let’s look at the facts.”

This guy was definitely an attorney. It wasn’t possible that any other variety of human would talk that way.

“Yes,” Paul said, “you’ve found the book, or at least its approximate location, but would you have even known it existed without the inciting incidents that came before? Incidents that were the result of my knowledge? And Andrea’s?”

He had a point, but it didn’t matter. “Moron,” I whispered. If he thought a true librarian could possibly steal a valuable book, he could think anything.

Paul sighed audibly. “This is getting old.”

I edged farther along the back of the wooden shelves, stabbing myself with tiny bits of raw wood in the process, hoping that none of them were big enough to catch me tight. I had to get to the other end. There was no other choice.

“I’m stronger than you,” he said, “faster than you, and I’m certainly a lot bigger than you. There’s no way this will be a fair fight, which is the way we lawyers prefer things.” He laughed. “So, I ask you: Why are you making this so difficult? I asked Andrea the same the same thing, and look what I had to do to her.” He laughed again. “I even had to pretend to love her all over again, for crying out loud.”