Kelly Sofie - Curiosity Thrilled The Cat

“It’s all right,” I told her. “Take care of your arthritis, and call me if you need anything. And thank you for the flowers.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

I started across the yard to the house. Hercules had disappeared from his perch on the gazebo railing. Behind me Owen meowed. I stopped and turned back to him, tucking Rebecca’s flowers under my arm. He looked at me and then at Rebecca’s house.

“She’s fine,” I said. Owen took a step toward Rebecca’s and stopped. “She’s fine,” I said again. “Ami is with her.”

He started back across the grass toward the small white house. I followed, scooped him up and started for home again.

Owen squirmed until he was turned around and could look over my shoulder. I opened the porch door, set the cat down inside and grabbed my cup from the railing. There was a fat, green-and-black-shelled bug doing the backstroke in my coffee. I picked it up and dropped it down into the grass. Three cups of coffee today, and I’d barely had one sip.

In the kitchen I put the flowers in water, got another cup of coffee, then almost dumped it on my bare feet when Hercules came up behind me and licked my ankle.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” I said. He rubbed his face against my leg in apology. “How did you get in? Did I not close the screen door?” I padded out to the porch again. Herc followed. The screen door was closed. Somehow he’d come in behind Owen and me and I hadn’t noticed.

I was trying really hard to distract myself, to not think about Gregor Easton’s body slumped at the piano at the Stratton. Or about the detective’s questions. He didn’t really think I’d done something to the conductor, did he?

In Rebecca’s backyard Ami was spreading a yellowflowered tablecloth on the table in the gazebo. Rebecca came out the back door, carrying a tray. Ami scurried to take it from her. I watched the two of them set the table, and I felt a sudden ache of homesickness settle in the middle of my chest like a lumpy blob of cold potatoes.

I went back into the kitchen and sat at the table with my coffee. Boston suddenly seemed a long way from Minnesota. My mother and father were doing Shakespeare in the Park again this summer. This year it was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My mother was directing, with my father in the role of Nick Bottom.

On any given day, if they weren’t rehearsing or performing, they were reading a play to each other. So they might be completely in sync, grinning at each other like a couple of love-struck teenagers, or they might be going through “artistic differences” where they’d only speak to each other through other people. I wasn’t sure which version of their marriage was worse.

My parents had married each other twice. My younger brother and sister, Ethan and Sara—twins—were the result of their reconciliation. I was fifteen and mortified by the undeniable proof that my mother and father, whom I thought weren’t even speaking to each other, were instead having sex, and unprotected sex at that.

They were crazy . . . and I missed them. They drove me crazy . . . and I missed them. I felt the ache in my chest press up into my throat. I had eighteen more months in the contract I’d signed with Everett. Eighteen more months in Minnesota.

Hercules went to the living room door, stopped and looked back at me, then disappeared. After a minute, when I didn’t follow him, he came back to the door, stared at me and went back into the living room. “What?” I said. I set my cup down and went into the next room to see what the cat was up to.

He was sitting next to the cabinet that held the CD player and CDs. He swatted the door with a paw.

“Okay, I get it,” I said, reaching inside for a CD. “But it’s going to make Owen crazy.”

I picked up Herc as the first notes of “Copacabana” came through the speakers. About a week after I’d adopted the cats I’d discovered Hercules shared my love for Barry Manilow. When I’d put on a Manilow CD he would sit blissfully in front of the CD player, eyes closed to slits, bobbing his head to the music. Owen, on the other hand . . .

At that moment there was a loud yowl of cat outrage as a gray streak flashed by us and dove into the closet by the front door.

Herc and I looked at each other. I shrugged. Mr. Barry Manilow is not everyone’s taste.

Herc and I followed “Copacabana” with our kickline version of “Can’t Smile Without You.” By the time that song was over I felt a little better. I kissed the top of Hercules’ furry black head and set him on the floor, turned down the CD player and went to make lunch.

I worked all afternoon at the kitchen table. By suppertime I had made up the staff schedule through the end of September, ordered the books I wanted for the children’s section, and arranged to have several crates of reference material brought back to the library from one of Everett Henderson’s warehouses, where they’d been stored during the messiest part of the renovation. Plus, there was a pan of double-chocolate brownies cooling on the counter for when Maggie arrived to watch Gotta Dance .

She tapped on my back door at quarter to eight. “I heard what happened,” she said, kicking off her shoes. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “I’m fine.”

“I hope Mr. Easton will be welcomed by the light,” she said, bending down to look for something in her backpack. “But if what I’ve heard about him was true, I think he has a few more lessons to learn.” She pulled out a bottle of wine and stood up.

“Ruby’s latest vintage,” she said with a grin. “I volunteered us as taste testers.”

She followed me into the kitchen. I got a plate from the cupboard for the brownies, while Maggie got the corkscrew from the drawer by the sink and set to work opening the wine.

“What is this wine made from?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Maggie said. “Maybe rhubarb. Maybe dandelions.”

“Do brownies go with rhubarb wine?” I said as she popped the cork.

Maggie’s grin got wider. “Brownies go with everything.” She swiped one from the plate as she passed behind me to get the wineglasses. “How long will the library be closed?” she asked as she poured.

“I don’t know.” I said. I picked up the brownies and headed for the living room. “I just assumed we’d be able to open tomorrow.” For the first time it dawned on me that the police could keep the library closed for days, putting the renovations even further behind schedule.

Maggie followed with the glasses. The TV was already on and Owen and Hercules were waiting by the footstool. “Hi, guys,” she said to the cats. She knew better than to try to pet them.

I set the brownies on the footstool and sat down, tucking my legs underneath me.

Maggie handed me my glass and curled up in one corner of the sofa. “What were the police doing at the library, anyway?” she asked.

I took a sip of my wine. It was light and fruity. “They—or at least the detective in charge—seem to think Easton and I were involved.”

She set her glass on the floor by the arm of the sofa and reached for a brownie. “Involved? You mean?” She waggled her eyebrows at me.

“Uh-huh. Apparently, onstage at the theater at six thirty in the morning.”

“They have to ask questions like that,” Maggie said, picking chocolate crumbs off the front of her T-shirt. “It doesn’t mean they think you actually did anything . . . or anyone.”

“They found blood at the library,” I blurted.

She sat up straighter. “Blood? Where?”

“In the part of the library that’s not finished, where the meeting room is going to be.” I took another sip of my wine.

Maggie relaxed against the cushions again. “So? With all the work that’s been going on and all the things that have gone wrong, I’m surprised they didn’t find part of an ear and a couple of fingers. Anyway, you said Easton was in the computer room.”