Curiosity Thrilled the Cat (21 page)

After breakfast we walked down to the farmers’ market, one street up from the hotel. The market was actually open all week. Like the artist’s co-op that Maggie was part of, the farmers’ market was a cooperative—vegetables, fruit, a small bakery, a butcher and a tiny cheese shop. But on Saturday morning the market expanded out into the parking lot, weather permitting. Farmers sold directly to customers from the backs of their trucks. Maggie was looking for Swiss chard and new potatoes. I wanted carrots for salad and maybe muffins.

“I think I see potatoes over there,” Maggie said, pointing to the far end of the lot.

“Okay, I’ll be there in a minute.” I’d caught sight of what I hoped was rhubarb jam being sold from the tailgate of a dusty old Ford.

I was trying to decide between plain rhubarb jam and rhubarb-strawberry jam when someone said, “Good morning, Ms. Paulson,” by my left ear.

I turned and looked up. Way up. “Good morning, Detective Gordon,” I said.

He looked different in jeans and a gray T-shirt. He had a flat stomach and wider shoulders than I’d noticed before, and . . .
What the heck was I thinking
?

“Looking for something for your sweet tooth?” he asked.

I flashed back to Andrew teasing me about my habit of putting jam on everything. Andrew, who’d married someone he’d only known two weeks. I wondered what Detective Gordon would think if he knew how many nights I’d sat in the dark in the living room and eaten jam right out of the jar.

I pulled my hand away from the bottles. “Umm, no.” I cleared my throat and caught sight of several dozen bunches of fat, red radishes, farther back in the truck bed. “I was looking for radishes.”
Why had I said that?

“Oh, well, let me reach a bunch for you,” he said. He stretched over the side of the bed and handed me a clump of plump radishes, each about the size of a jawbreaker.

“Well, thank you,” I said.

“My pleasure.” I waited for him to walk away so I could put the radishes back, but he just stood there, smiling at me. “I think you can pay right there,” he said, pointing to the other side of the truck.

“Ah, great.” I handed over the money for the radishes, tucking them in my bag next to a bunch of carrots and some peas. Then I turned. “Have a nice day, Detective,” I said, with a not exactly genuine smile.

“You too, Ms. Paulson.”

I threaded my way across the parking lot. He didn’t follow me. I found Maggie, who’d found her potatoes.

“Did you get your jam?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I . . . I changed my mind.” I pulled the radishes out of my cloth bag. “Here,” I said to Maggie, thrusting the bunch at her.

“You bought radishes instead of jam?” she said. “Why? You know how they make you burp.”

“Just take them,” I said.

Maggie shrugged. “Okay.”

We walked around a while longer. We both bought a couple of loaves of crusty French bread from the bakery inside, and Mags had a long conversation with one of the vendors about the upcoming fall harvest of Honeycrisp apples, which, she assured me, I was going to love. We parted company on the sidewalk.

I headed up the hill with the delicious smell of bread coming from the bag over my shoulder. Mentally I kicked myself for not buying the jam. Andrew had a new life, and so did I.

There was no sign of the cats in the yard. I stood on the back stoop for a moment. No sign of them in Rebecca’s yard, either. It was awfully quiet. I went inside and put everything away, after tearing the end off one of the baguettes. The crisp brown crust left crumbs down the front of my shirt. While brushing them off, I found a smear of marmalade from breakfast on my shirt. I went upstairs to change and gathered the laundry. I put in the first load and went back up to the kitchen.

Hercules was waiting at the top of the stairs. I bent down and picked him up. “Hey, fur ball,” I said. “Where were you?” He leaned in and licked my chin. “What?” I laughed. I’d had marmalade on my shirt. Did I have omelet on my chin?

I carried the cat out to the porch, set him on the bench and sat down beside him, rubbing at my chin, just in case there were remnants of my breakfast stuck to it. I reached over to scratch the side of Herc’s face.

“What am I going to do about Oren?” I asked him. He rubbed his head against my hand. “You’re no help,” I said. He shook his head, jumped down and went over to the porch door, where he turned and looked back at me. “Are you going somewhere?”

Hercules scratched the bottom of the screen. “Hey!” I said. His green eyes firmly on my face, he lifted one paw and raked his claws across the door’s kick panel. I opened my mouth to snap at him again and it occurred to me that he was trying to tell me something. “What?” I said. “I don’t understand.”

He smacked the screen with his paw and it came unlatched. Herc almost tumbled out the open door. Shaking himself, he stalked out, flipping his tail at me.

It would have been a lot easier if his superpower was talking instead of walking through walls.

I rubbed the space between my eyes with the heel of my hand. I was afraid Oren could be tied up in Gregor Easton’s death somehow, and I wasn’t completely convinced I’d dropped off Detective Gordon’s suspect list. Plus the cats were acting strangely. Well, more strangely than walking through walls and becoming invisible.

I stepped into the kitchen just as the phone rang. I headed into the living room, thinking for the hundredth time that I probably should get a cordless phone.

“Hello, Kathleen. It’s Roma.”

“Hi, Roma,” I said.

“How’s your shoulder?”

I hadn’t thought much about my shoulder since breakfast. I rotated it slowly forward and backward. It was stiff and a bit sore, but otherwise okay. “A lot better,” I said. “I have an ugly bruise, but nothing’s broken.”

“Glad to hear it,” Roma said. “I realize it’s short notice, but are you available to come out to Wisteria Hill with me this afternoon? My helper had to cancel.”

Stay home, clean house and obsess, or help Roma and maybe learn a little more about the cats?

“Yes,” I said.

“Wonderful. I can pick you up at two o’clock.”

“I’ll be ready.”

“I know it’s warm, Kathleen, but you’ll need long pants and long sleeves,” she warned.

“That’s okay. I can find something.”

“I’ll see you at two, then,” Roma said, and hung up.

I had laundry to finish. I needed to find some clothes to change into, and I had to have lunch.

I took the clean clothes out of the washer, threw in another load and headed for the clothesline, using the basket heaped with sheets and towels to bump my way out of the porch door. Which is why I almost tripped over Owen coming up the steps, carrying a paper bag in his mouth.

“O
wen! Not again,” I said, dropping the laundry basket on the stoop.

He held his ground and glared at me, the little brown bag clamped between his teeth.

Is there a twelve-step program for klepto cats
? I wondered. Then I caught sight of the logo on the bag: GRAINERY FEEDS & NEEDS.

“Owen, do you have a Fred the Funky Chicken in that bag?” I asked.

His furry gray face was unreadable.

I crouched down. “Let me see,” I said.

He sat down but didn’t let go of the bag.

“I’ll give it back, I swear.” I held out my hand.

After a long moment Owen dropped the bag in my outstretched palm. I unfolded the top. I’d guessed correctly. Inside the paper sack was a little yellow catnip chicken. Owen shoved his nose down into the top of the bag.

“Hey, hang on a second,” I said. I pulled the bag away from him, which got me a sharp meow in return. “I’m not taking it. I’m trying to get it out of the bag for you.”

I finally managed to fish out Fred the Funky Chicken despite Owen crowding me. I held it out to the cat, who immediately snatched the chicken from my fingers. I stood up and held the porch door open for him. “Please don’t leave fuzzy chicken parts all over the kitchen,” I said. Owen already had that glazed/gleeful look in his eye as he brushed past me. I was pretty sure he wasn’t listening.

I picked up the laundry basket again. As I pegged the last bath towel on the line Rebecca came through the hedge with Violet. I folded my arms across my chest. “Rebecca. You’re spoiling my cat,” I said, smiling to show I really wasn’t mad.

“I’m sorry, Kathleen,” she said, matching my smile with one of her own. “But it wasn’t me. It was Ami. She loves animals and she’s taken a great liking to Owen.” She pushed her glasses back on her nose. “And I think he likes her. He follows her around the yard.”

“That’s because he’s a moocher.” I dropped the clothespins into the empty laundry basket.

“How many cats do you have, Kathleen?” Violet asked.

“Two,” I said. “Owen and Hercules. Owen is the one with the catnip fetish.”

“They came from the old Henderson estate,” Rebecca said.

I nodded. “They were just kittens. They literally followed me home.”

“Roma has spent hours and hours at Wisteria Hill, taking care of the cats that are still out there. She’s managed to trap and neuter all of them so there won’t be any more kittens,” Rebecca said, rolling her sore wrist under her opposite hand.

I leaned against the stoop railing. “I’m going out with her this afternoon to see if I can help.”

Rebecca smiled. “Make sure you wear long pants and long sleeves. It’s really grown up out there, especially around the outbuildings.”

“I will,” I said, returning her smile.

“Kathleen, Rebecca and Roma are coming for dinner tonight,” Violet said. “Please join us.” She was all smooth elegance in a pale green shirt and flowered skirt.

“Thank you, Violet. I’d like that.”

“Do you know how to find my house?” she asked.

Violet lived in a historic two-story house downtown, Llŷn House. I nodded. “Yes, I do. I’ve passed your house several times. I’m eager to see the inside.”

Violet smiled. “Don’t let me forget to show you around, then. We’ll see you tonight, about six.”

“Give Roma a nudge so she doesn’t keep you out at Wisteria Hill too late,” Rebecca said.

“I will,” I promised.

“We’ll see you later,” Rebecca said.

I grabbed the laundry basket and went back inside. Owen lay on his back in the middle of the kitchen floor, eyes closed, blissed out. The body of Fred the Funky Chicken was strewn in pieces around him. The chicken’s head was on Owen’s belly, the yellow fabric bright against his white fur. And he was purring.

I stepped over him without comment. At least if he was decapitating chickens, he wasn’t raiding the neighborhood recycling bins.

By the time Roma pulled into the driveway all the laundry was on the clothesline, and I’d eaten lunch and changed into a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt, paint-spattered pants and a denim ball cap. Owen had wandered off with his chicken head, and Hercules was sleeping on the bench in the porch.

“I brought my gardening gloves,” I said. “In case I need a pair of gloves for . . . well, anything.”

“Good idea,” she said.

“And I brought my big thermos. I made lemonade.”

Roma glanced over at me. “When you say you made lemonade, you mean the powder in the can, not the fizzy stuff in the bottle?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, I made lemonade. Lemons, sugar syrup, cold water, ice.”

“You’re kidding.”

I shook my head. “Roma, my mother knows how to make only two things, if you don’t count toast”—I held up a warning finger—“which you shouldn’t count, because most of the time she either forgets to press the little lever so the bread doesn’t toast, or she forgets about the bread altogether and it burns.”

I couldn’t help grinning, thinking about my mother’s efforts at cooking. “However, she makes the best lemonade—from scratch—and the very best bakingpowder biscuits.”

“In other words, your mother is a picnic looking for a place to happen,” Roma said. “I think I’d like her.”

I smiled. It was a pretty good description of my mom.

Roma jerked her head toward the backseat. “I brought a thermos of ice water. Lemonade sounds a lot better.”

“How long have you been going out to Wisteria Hill?” I asked.

“A bit more than a year.” She raised her hand in greeting as we passed a woman walking a large black lab. I recognized the woman’s face, but I couldn’t think of her name. She was working her way through the various ethnic cookbooks we had at the library—Indian, the last time I’d checked her out.

“I worked with a cat-rescue group in Des Moines,” Roma continued.

“You lived in Des Moines?”

“For years. I’ve only been back here about a year and a half.”

“Why did you come back?” I asked. “If that’s not too personal a question.”

She didn’t take her eyes off the road, but her smile grew wider. “I don’t mind. I guess it was mostly because I was homesick.”

I knew that feeling. On the other hand, there was a lot I’d miss about Mayville Heights if I left—when I left.

We waited while two cars and a pickup, most likely headed for town, went by; then Roma turned left onto the road that would take us out to the old estate. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “This is a small place. And everyone seems to know what’s going on in your life. But everyone knows who you are, too. When someone asks, ‘How are you?’ they truly want to know. It’s not just some meaningless pleasantry. I missed that.”

She put her window down a couple of inches. “So when I heard Joe Ross was retiring it seemed like divine providence. I sold my practice, bought this one and here I am.”

There were no houses on this stretch of the road, just trees, huge, old trees. Except for the asphalt, it probably didn’t look much different from how it had when Everett’s mother was alive.