Curiosity Thrilled the Cat (17 page)

“Delicious,” I said. It had been, once I’d figured out rhubarb needed a lot of sweetening.

The mower stopped in the front yard, replaced in a moment by the sound of the trimmer.

“Please sit down,” I said, dipping my head at the chair. Old Harry eased back into the seat and I sat on the grass.

He patted the wide arm with one hand. “I didn’t like this color, you know, when Harry started painting the chairs. I thought all the colors he chose looked like something from a box of those fancy little mints you get at the end of a la-di-da dinner party.” He smiled, which made him looked more like Santa than ever. “Turns out he was right.” His gaze shifted to something behind me. “Well, bless my soul,” he said. “Hello there, puss.”

I shifted to see which cat was coming. It was Hercules, probably returning from Rebecca’s gazebo, stalking across the lawn like one of his jungle cousins. He paused beside me for a moment—long enough for a quick stroke of his fur—then went to stand in front of the old man. Old Harry patted his leg. I opened my mouth to explain about the cats, and Hercules jumped up onto his lap.

My lips moved—I could feel them—but no sound came out. If someone had poked me with a feather I probably would have fallen over onto the grass. In fact, I almost did fall over when Owen came out of nowhere and brushed against my back. I turned, but like his brother he moved around me, stopping in front of the big wooden chair.

“Hello. I didn’t realize there were two of you,” Old Harry said. He didn’t even have to pat his lap. Owen jumped up without an invitation. As usual, it took him a moment to get settled. He shifted, kneading Old Harry’s leg, apparently without claws, nudging Herc a tiny bit sideways.

I just sat there, staring at the three of them, wondering when I’d fallen down Alice’s Wonderland rabbit hole. I didn’t say a word. I wasn’t sure I could trust my voice to work, anyway.

“I see the rosebushes and the blackberry canes aren’t the only thing you have from Wisteria Hill,” Old Harry said. He was scratching Owen behind his ears and Herc just at the top of his white face patch. How he knew what each cat liked was beyond me. The whole thing was so . . . weird. The White Rabbit in his waistcoat, glasses and watch could have come around the rosebushes muttering, “I’m late, I’m late for a very important date,” and I wouldn’t have been surprised.

Old Harry smiled kindly at me. “It’s all right, my dear,” he said. “They know.”

From somewhere I found my voice. “Know what?”

“That I’m dying,” he said, in the same matter-of-fact tone you might use to say it’s Tuesday.

“But . . . but you look fine,” I said stupidly, shifting on the grass so I could pull up my knees and wrap my arms around them.

“You’ve probably heard the expression ‘Looks can be deceiving.’” Both cats were purring now. Loudly. “What are their names?” the old man asked.

I pointed. “That’s Hercules and that’s Owen.”

“This one looks like Anna’s cat, Finn.”

I rubbed my damp hands on my shorts. “Everett’s mother? You knew her?” I asked.

“My first job was out at Wisteria Hill,” he said. “Everett’s father—Carson—built the place for Anna when she said she’d marry him. He was older than she was and hard as nails, except when it came to her.” He smiled. “She had that effect on people.”

I leaned forward. “What happened? Why was everything just abandoned?”

For a moment I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. He gave Hercules a last scratch under his chin and said, “Time to go.” The cat jumped down, shook himself and came to lean against my leg. “You too, puss,” Old Harry said to Owen. Owen yawned, stretched and hopped down, as well. He came across the grass and leaned against my other leg, pushing his head under my hand in a not-so-subtle attempt to get me to pet him.

The old man finally looked at me. “I don’t know why Everett gave up on the place. I was in St. Cloud—had been for six months.” He shook his head and I could see the sadness in his eyes. “By the time I got home again Anna was . . . gone. Everett didn’t completely abandon the house, mind you—there was a caretaker—but I don’t think he ever went near the place again.”

He stroked his beard with his gnarled fingers. “There was a lot of loose talk, but nothing you could hang your hat on. And by the time Everett came back to stay”—he shrugged—“he wasn’t saying anything, and nobody liked to push.”

Old Harry gestured to the cats, both still leaning against me, and his face softened. “Now, they’re most definitely descendants of Anna’s Finn.” He pointed at Hercules. “That one looks just like the old cat. And that one”—he gestured at Owen—“has the same eyes.” He pulled himself forward in the chair. “The old mother cat, she picked Anna, you know. Showed up one day at the back door of the house. Didn’t care much for anyone but her. Just the way these two chose you. They know how things are meant to be.”

Before I could ask him what he was talking about he started getting to his feet. I jumped up to help him and saw Young Harry was headed toward us.

“Time to put me back in the truck,” the old man said, giving one of my hands a squeeze. “It was a pleasure to finally meet you.”

I squeezed back gently. “For me, too.”

“Are we headed down the hill?” he asked Young Harry, who had joined us.

“Yes, we are. I have to mow at the Stratton and the library.”

“Good,” Old Harry said, his blue eyes twinkling. “Maybe I’ll crank down my window, stick my head through with my tongue hanging out, and see if it’s as much fun as it looks when Boris does it.”

His son was unfazed. “Yeah, well, try not to shed all over my front seat, Dad,” he said as they headed for the street.

I crouched down so I could talk to the cats at their level. Owen put a paw on my knee. Hercules, on the other hand, decided it would be a good time to catch up on his grooming. “What was that all about?” I asked. Owen suddenly decided that he should wash his face, too.

Was Old Harry really dying? Was it possible the cats could tell? Neither cat so much as twitched an ear in my direction. I sat back on my heels. I was turning into one of those people who talked to their cats and actually expected an answer.

I got up and went back to the house. It didn’t take long to get my things together, change and fix my hair. I put fresh water out for the cats. When I went to the back door, they were waiting to come in. They moved past me, avoiding eye contact. I locked up and headed down the hill.

The library was deserted—again—but two of Will Redfern’s men were there, pulling the temporary desk into sections so they could take it out. Mary waved at me from the new circulation desk, where she was getting organized.

“Isn’t this great?” she beamed, pointing to the new book drop with separate slots for fiction, nonfiction and other media like CDs and DVDs.

“It looks good,” I agreed.

“What are you doing here so early?” she asked.

“I have some paperwork I need to get at,” I said. “Is Jason here?”

She nodded. “He’s shelving, and Abigail is upstairs, sorting books for the sale.” She looked at the boxes piled on either side of the counter. “I could stay an extra couple of hours, if it would help,” she offered.

I looked at the boxes. “It would help, yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

Mary nodded with satisfaction. Organizing things, making labels, setting up files were her idea of fun—aside from kickboxing. She’d be able to get the circulation desk organized faster and better than anyone else.

I let myself into my office, closing the door behind me. I had an open-door policy, generally, but I had only an hour to see what I could dig up on Gregor Easton.

I turned on my laptop, spreading lunch on the far right side of my desk, and started Googling.

The basics were easy to find—concerts Easton had given to great acclaim, a catalogue of his CDs, a bibliography of the music he’d written. There were photos of the man at Carnegie Hall, at the Grammys, joining an eclectic group of other musicians to record a song for charity—always with some beautiful, younger woman on his arm. But I could find very little about his early life. It was almost as though Gregor Easton hadn’t existed before graduate school. What little information I could find was sketchy and one source seemed to contradict the next. There was lots of information about the public Gregor Easton. But I wanted to know about the private man. How could I get the personal details, the rumors, all the things that didn’t seem to make it into the public record?

Then it hit me. Who knew more about music—classical and contemporary—than Dr. Lise Tremayne, curator and librarian for the music collection at Boston University? I didn’t even have to look up the number.

It was early afternoon in Boston. “Dr. Tremayne,” she answered on the third ring. The sound of Lise’s voice, with its perfect enunciation and touch of French accent left from the years she worked and studied in Paris, immediately made me homesick.

“Hi, Lise. It’s Kathleen,” I said.

“Kath! How’s life in the land of a thousand lakes? You haven’t been carried off to become the consort of Bigfoot, have you?”

I laughed. Lise might seem like a big-city intellectual, but I knew she’d grown up in rural Maine, so far north that the next stop was Canada. She’d dug potatoes and stacked firewood and could dress a deer. Her highbrow friends would have been shocked to find out that the braised partridge they’d savored at one of Lise’s elaborate dinner parties had been running around the Maine woods right before her annual “fall retreat.”

“No, I haven’t been abducted by Bigfoot.” I swiveled in my chair so I could look out over the lake. Even though there were more clouds—which meant Harry was probably going to be right about the rain—the sun still sparkled on the water. The grass, which Harry must have come and cut right after he left my house, was a deep, rich green and the flower bed was an artist’s palette of color. My homesickness eased a little.

“It’s beautiful here, Lise,” I said. “I’m sitting here at my desk, looking out over the lake. The sun is shining. The air is clean—”

“—and all the little forest animals come into the library to help you shelve books while you whistle a happy tune,” she said drily.

“No, but you’d be surprised how useful squirrels can be for getting books up on the top shelves.” She must have known what was coming next. “And,” I added, “they work for peanuts!”

“I miss you, Kath,” Lise said, laughing.

“I miss you, too.” I had to swallow a couple of times to get rid of the sudden lump in my throat.

“So, tell me about your library.” I pictured her leaning back in her chair, propping her feet, in some ridiculously expensive pair of sandals, on the edge of her desk. “Is it really one of the original Carnegie buildings?”

“It is,” I said. I told her about the stone building and the renovations. I left out the fact that it was a possible crime scene and I was a possible suspect.

I took a deep breath. “Lise, the reason I called is I’m looking for some information. Do you know anything about Gregor Easton, the conductor?”

“I know he died just a couple of days ago.”

“He died here, Lise.”

“There? What was Easton doing in Smallville, Minnesota?”

“Mayville,” I said. I held the phone with one hand and stretched my other arm over my head. “He was here for the Wild Rose Summer Music Festival. He’s—he was—guest conductor and clinician.”

“I’ve heard of the festival.” Lise’s voice turned pensive. “I didn’t realize that was where it was.” I could hear her tapping a fingernail against the side of the phone. “But what was Easton doing there? It’s not his usual type of venue.”

I shifted in the chair and pulled my legs up under me. “He was a last-minute replacement for Zinia Young.”

“Now, your festival would be Zinia’s type of event.”

“She had to bow out at the last minute, so Easton volunteered to fill in.”

“Volunteered? I don’t think so.”

“That came straight from someone on the festival board,” I said. “I guess he offered because he and Zinia are close friends.”

An inelegant snort of laughter came through the receiver. “Gregor Easton doesn’t have friends,” Lise said. “He has—had—sycophants and people he was using. Easton and Zinia were not friends. Trust me, if he volunteered, there was something in it for him.”

The man Lise was describing did sound like the man Ruby and Maggie had talked about in class, like the man I’d encountered at the library.

“What else do you know about Easton?” I asked. I kept waiting for Lise to ask me why I was asking for information about the man.

“He wasn’t well liked in the classical music world,” Lise said. “He was arrogant—even for a conductor.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Now, to be fair, he was considered to be a first-rate composer, deservedly so, from what I’ve heard. But technically he wasn’t anywhere near as gifted.”

“What do you mean, technically?” I asked. I heard Lise’s feet drop to the floor and I knew she was probably reaching across her desk for her coffee.

“His playing—and conducting, too—weren’t close to the caliber of his composing. Do you remember Dr. Mitton?”

I thought for a moment. “Wasn’t he musician in residence a couple of years ago? He was English.”

“That’s him.” I imagined Lise nodding on the other end of the phone. “He once compared Easton’s piano playing to that of a three-year-old on a toy keyboard.”

“That’s harsh,” I said.

“That’s the kind of response Easton generated in people,” she said. “I heard him play once, years ago, and while he was good, he wasn’t great. The music was beautiful, but he didn’t seem to connect with it. It was almost as though he hadn’t written his own score. It was so much better than his playing. The best versions of his compositions have been played by other people.”

That was interesting, though I had no idea how it might help me. I glanced at my watch. There was a lot more I wanted to know, but I was running out of time.