Софи Келли - Hooked On A Feline

I shut off the laptop. What had he been trying to work out? And did it even have any connection to his and Leitha’s deaths? Maybe this was just a waste of time. I slumped in my chair and stared up at the ceiling. There weren’t any answers up there, either.

It was busy at the library in the morning. A couple of teachers came in to look around our reference section and get a jump on planning for fall assignments. Two boxes of new books were delivered, and Patricia Queen sent me a detailed plan for the proposed quilting workshops. I pulled one genetics reference, hoping I’d have a chance to look at it during my lunch break. Then I moved over to the local-history section. I was hoping to find an article about some event that John Finnamore Senior had attended. Many of them were written with a lot of extraneous detail, like the style of shoe a man had been wearing, the cut of his suit or the color of his eyes.

“Looking for something?” Susan asked as she came around the shelving unit. I was twisted sideways, reading the call numbers on the spines of the books.

I straightened up. My left shoulder had kinked and I rubbed it with my other hand. “We have a book about the so-called upper echelon of Mayville Heights’ society in the late 1800s. I can’t find it.”

“I think I saw it on one of the carts,” she said. Today there was one thin knitting needle and one black lacquered chopstick stuck in her hair. “Do you want me to set it aside for you?”

“Please,” I said.

“Are you finishing Mike’s research for his family?”

“Just trying to tie up a couple of loose ends.” That was true as far as it went.

“It’s quiet right now,” Susan said, pushing a collection of bracelets up her arm. “I could look something up if that would help.”

I hesitated. “All right. I’m looking for some reference to John Finnamore Senior’s eye color. I remember Mike saying he usually went by Jack.”

I waited for her to ask me why I wanted that information. She just smiled and said, “No problem. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

“And will you keep an eye out for any notes Mike might have left behind. Keith King found some papers that belonged to Mike in a book Keith had borrowed. I just want to make sure we haven’t missed anything else.”

“Will do,” Susan said.

Roma came by midmorning with four large zucchini. She handed them to me. “This is partly a thank-you for feeding the cats and partly a ‘please take these’ because I have so many.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “I’m thinking chocolate zucchini bread sounds good.”

She smiled. “I’m thinking I need to bring you more zucchini.”

“Rebecca would probably take some. She makes a wonderful vegetarian lasagna.”

“I’ll call her,” Roma said. “Or maybe I’ll just leave a bag on the front step, ring the doorbell and run.”

I laughed. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Oh, but it is. They’re taking over my garden. I get up in the morning and I swear there are twice as many of the things as there were the night before.” She looked around. “Is Mary here?” she asked.

“She is,” I said. “She’s putting out new magazines. Do you have zucchini for her as well?”

Roma smoothed a hand over her dark hair, tucking it behind one ear. “No. I need to talk to her. After I had lunch with you and Maggie, I called Sandra to talk more about doing another burlesque show. It looks like the shelter is going to need a new heating system.”

I made a face. “That’s not good.”

“The reality is that they need a new building, which means a major fund-raising push. I asked Sandra if she would talk to whoever Zorro was and see if he’d do another show as a way of launching a fund-raiser for a new home for the shelter. She refused.”

“Did she say why?” I asked. Working with Sandra on the library board, I’d found her to be a very reasonable, easy-to-get-along-with person.

Roma shook her head. “That’s the thing. All she said was no and that Zorro’s performance was a onetime thing. There’s no point in putting on the show without him, not if we want to generate a lot of attention for the fund-raising campaign, but Sandra won’t budge. I want to try to appeal to the person myself if Mary will tell me who he is. Sandra wouldn’t. It’s not just the heating system. When they were working on the roof, they uncovered some structural problems with the building. The shelter can probably get through this winter but beyond that they need a new home. As it is they’re going to have to close one room, which means they’re going to have to turn animals away.”

“C’mon,” I said. “I’ll walk you over to her.”

Mary listened to what Roma had to say but she wouldn’t budge.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll help you in any way I can, but as far as Zorro is concerned, that was something that isn’t going to be repeated.”

“If I could just talk to him,” Roma said.

Mary just shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

I walked Roma back to the front entrance. “I really thought she’d tell me who he is,” she said. “I don’t understand why they’re both being so secretive.”

“I can’t promise anything,” I said, “but give me some time. I’ll talk to Mary again.”

Roma hugged me. “Thanks, Kath,” she said.

I stood outside on the steps, trying to figure out who had played Zorro and why, after dancing onstage bare chested in a cape and tights, he did not want anyone to know who he was. I tried to think of who would bring out such unequivocal loyalty from both Sandra and Mary. The two most likely candidates were Everett and Burtis, and from what I’d seen of Zorro’s performance, it wasn’t either of them.

When I went back inside, Susan waved me over to the desk. “Blue,” she said with a smile.

“I thought we settled on gray,” I said. It had taken a month for us to come to a consensus on a paint color for the walls of the staff room, and now she was changing her vote?

She frowned at me for a moment and then the frown cleared. “I’m not talking about the staff room. I’m talking about John Finnamore. His eyes were blue. Light blue by all accounts. I read three of them.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She smiled again. “You’re welcome. I hope it helps.”

I nodded. “So do I.”

I went up to my office. There was a slim chance that Leitha’s blue-eyed parents could have had a green-eyed child. So what had Mike been trying to work out? Once again it seemed I was left with nothing but a handful of straw.

When I went back downstairs about an hour later, I spotted Mary shelving in the children’s department. I walked over to her.

“I know what you want and you’re wasting your time,” she said without preamble as she straightened a row of picture books. “If it were possible to help Roma, believe me, I would, but it’s not.”

“Could you at least ask Zorro if he’d talk to Roma?” I said.

She looked at me. “Do you think I like the idea of cats being put down because there’s no shelter for them to go to?”

“I know you don’t,” I said.

Mary might have been able to take someone down with just one well-placed kick, but she was very much a mushball inside.

“Then take me at my word when I tell you that there is no way Zorro will ride again and you just need to accept it.”

Lachlan showed up around two o’clock. He was dressed all in black again. “If it’s okay, I thought maybe I would see what I can find about the old music school in Red Wing after all. I mean, I wasn’t doing anything else.”

“Of course it’s okay,” I said. “I’m thinking the best place to start would be with the newspaper. The only problem is, the older issues haven’t been digitized, so you’ll have to use the microfilm reader.”