Curiosity Thrilled the Cat (19 page)

Larry appeared behind Mary. “Do you want me to call nine-one-one?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mary said.

I shook my head vigorously, which only made the wheezing squeaks sound worse. I was not going to the hospital, because if I did, I wouldn’t be here when Will Redfern came in from the parking lot or wherever he was. I wouldn’t be able to take a couple of swings at him with that three-foot roll of vapor barrier that had just whacked me on the shoulder. I closed my eyes for a second and had a Walter Mitty-esque moment, in which I imagined myself swinging the roll of plastic like I was Big Papi swinging for the stands, as I chased Will over the rock wall and down to the lake.

“Kathleen, you need to see a doctor,” Mary said.

“I . . . I’m . . . fine,” I managed to gasp.

“Mary’s right,” Larry said, pulling out his cell.

Without thinking I reached for the phone, grimacing as I moved my left shoulder.

“See?” Mary said.

I sighed, mentally, if not literally. Truth be told, I had a bit of a phobia about hospitals. When I was seven I’d gotten lost in an old hospital in Key West. My parents had been doing Alan Ayckbourn’s
Table Manners
. My dad had skidded on the edge of a rug during his entrance in act two. By the end of the play one side of his face was a gigantic bruise and his eye was swollen shut. We ended up at the emergency room, along with the rest of the cast, the stage manager and the young woman who worked the last shift at Dunkin’ Donuts and had a massive crush on the actor who played Tom.

In all the uproar, I went for a walk and got lost. Let’s just say that when you’re seven, it’s close to midnight and you’ve spent most of the evening hiding backstage with a big bag of cheese puffs, the sight of an artificial leg can scare the life out of you—or at least a lot of half-digested cheese puffs.

Larry flipped his phone open just as Roma came through the library doors. Mary caught sight of her at the same time I did and waved her over.

Roma knelt beside me on the tiled floor. “What happened?” she asked.

“That roll of plastic”—Mary pointed—“fell off the staging and hit her. She doesn’t want us to call an ambulance.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Roma said. She held up a hand. “Hang on a second and let me take a look.” She began to probe the back of my head with her fingers. “Kathleen, this is getting to be a habit and not a good one.”

“Not my head,” I wheezed, reaching for my right shoulder. “Hit my shoulder.”

Roma’s fingers moved down to my shoulder. “You had the wind knocked out of you, too,” she said. She laid the palm of one hand flat against the front of my shoulder, holding it steady, while her fingers felt around my shoulder blade and up along my neck. Then she took my arm and moved it slowly forward and back. “Does that hurt?” she asked.

I shook my head. She sat back on her heels and studied me. “You don’t need an ambulance,” she said.

Larry and Mary exchanged looks before he slid his phone back into his pocket.

“Thank you,” I whispered. I was just about breathing normally again.

“It doesn’t look like anything is broken,” Roma said, lightly touching the top of my shoulder. “But I’d feel more confident saying that if you had four legs instead of two.” She extended a hand to help me up.

Larry took my other arm. He looked over at the unwound plastic and shook his head, his face tight with disgust. “That’s vapor barrier,” he muttered. “Why did they need that up there?”

“Could you please roll that up before someone trips on it and get hurt?” I asked.

“Sure thing,” he said.

Gingerly, I rolled my shoulder slowly forward, trying not to grimace.

Roma folded her arms over her chest. “You’re going to have a nasty bruise,” she said. “Try an ice pack.”

“I will,” I said. The shoulder was making popping sounds. “Thank you for taking care of me again.” Embarrassingly, I felt a sudden prick of tears and had to blink them away.

Roma smiled and shook her head. “Oh, you’re not getting off that easy this time. This is the second time in just a couple of days that you’ve been hurt. You need to see a doctor—the kind that specializes in patients that don’t lick themselves clean. That shoulder needs to be X-rayed, just in case.”

I opened my mouth to argue and Roma held up a hand. “Save your breath, Kathleen,” she said. “I’ve held down a nine-hundred-pound cow in labor. Don’t make me toss you in my truck.”

Mary gave me a triumphant smirk. I felt like sticking my tongue out at her, but that didn’t seem very responsible and I was supposed to be the one in charge. “All right,” I said. “But it’s Friday afternoon. It’ll be next week before I can get an appointment at the clinic.”

“Who’s your doctor?” Roma asked. I told her. She pulled out her phone and punched in a phone number, walking a few steps away from us.

I turned to Mary. “Thanks for being so concerned,” I said. “I’m okay—really. You can go back to the desk.”

She glanced over at Roma. “Okay.”

Larry had rolled up the plastic vapor barrier and leaned the roll up against the side of the circulation desk.

“Eddie knows better than to leave something like that up above people’s heads and then just take off,” Mary said. “So does Will. You could have been badly hurt.”

I could have. Or Mary. Or Abigail or Jason or anybody coming into the library. I’d let Will get away with too much because I’d wanted to be reasonable. “I’ll take care of it,” I said to Mary. She didn’t look convinced, but she went back to the desk.

Roma walked back to me, slipping her phone into her pocket. “You’re all set. Four thirty at the clinic. They’ll X-ray your shoulder and then the doctor will take a look at it.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling a little overwhelmed by her kindness. “How did you manage that?”

Roma stifled a yawn. “Sorry,” she said. “Early start to the day. As for the appointment, I used to babysit your doctor.” She laid a hand on my shoulder. “So go to the clinic and take care of that shoulder.”

“Thank you, Roma,” I said, “for looking at my shoulder and getting the doctor’s appointment for me. I owe you.”

She smiled and turned toward the music department. “Yes, you do,” she said over her shoulder.

Mary was back behind the desk, on the phone. I went over to the entrance and looked outside. There was no sign of Will’s truck in the lot. I walked back to the staging and circled it slowly, checking it carefully from every angle. There was nothing else that could fall on someone, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

There were four yellow plastic sandwich boards that said DANGER, WET FLOOR in the janitor’s closet. I dragged them out and roped off the scaffolding by linking the sandwich boards with a roll of fluorescent orange streamers from a box of Halloween stuff in my office.

The leak in the computer room had slowed to a trickle. “Larry, did you by any chance come past the Stratton on your way here?” I asked the electrician.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Why?”

“Was Oren’s truck there?”

He thought for a moment. “Yeah, it was. Are you going to see if he’ll take a look at this window?”

I nodded. With my right hand flat against my chest I bent my arm and moved it up and down and back and forth. It didn’t hurt that much, or maybe it was just that I didn’t want it to.

“I’ll keep an eye on the bucket for you,” Larry said.

I smiled. “Thanks.” I went back to my office for my raincoat, and stopped at the desk to tell Mary where I was going. “If Will Redfern comes back while I’m gone, don’t let him leave,” I said.

Mary eyed the roll of plastic still leaning against the desk and a slow, mischievous smile stretched across her face. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t.”

It had stopped raining completely. I started down Old Main Street. The breeze was blowing in off the water and the air smelled clean.

Oren’s truck was in the parking lot at the theater. I felt like doing a happy dance right there on the sidewalk. The stage door was unlocked. I hesitated, feeling a sense of déjà vu. The image of Gregor Easton slumped over the piano flashed in my head. I remembered how unnaturally still he’d been. Even in sleep our bodies move. We breathe and shift, our eyelids flutter, our fingers twitch. The stark paleness of his skin made the bruised gash on the side of his head look almost as if it had been painted on by some makeup artist.

I shook my head to clear the picture from my mind, but it wouldn’t go. The injury to Easton’s head—I’d almost forgotten how severe it was. And Detective Gordon hadn’t asked me about it, either. I closed my eyes for a moment and concentrated on picturing the side of Easton’s head. Yes, it had reminded me of stage makeup, probably because I’d seen gallons of fake blood and so many “gruesome” wounds—decapitations, amputations, prop knives buried in gaping chest wounds—over the years that horror movies generally put me to sleep.

The surprising thing about Easton’s wound was that it was clean. His head had been bruised and the cut was raw and red-edged, but there was no dried blood on his skin or in his silver hair, no bits of dirt or grit in the scraped skin. I was certain it would have been a difficult spot for Easton himself to see and care for easily.

I opened my eyes. I was betting he hadn’t. So if Gregor Easton didn’t clean up his head wound, who had? Was that person with him when he got hurt? Was that how the blood had ended up on the floor at the library? Had someone hit him? I ran a hand down over the back of my head, sucking in a sharp breath as my shoulder reminded me of my own injury and the fact that right now I needed to find Oren and do something about the leak at the library.

The backstage lights were on inside the theater. I threaded my way down the hallway, past light stands and other equipment.

Someone was playing the piano onstage. I paused at the edge of the curtains. I didn’t know the music but it made me want to move, to start swirling and twirling in place the way the tune seemed to be dancing all around the stage. I forgot about Gregor Easton. I forgot about leaky windows and missing contractors. I forgot about my bruised shoulder.

I took a couple of steps forward, just past the edge of the curtains so I could see who was playing. Violet, maybe? Or Ruby. Or Ami. To my amazement Oren was at the piano, his strong fingers sweeping over the keys.

I couldn’t have moved even if the building had suddenly been on fire. I was both stunned and transfixed. That beautiful music swept around me and then it stopped. And Oren looked up and saw me.

He looked away. One arm went behind his head, fingers digging into the back of his scalp. He pulled into himself. I walked slowly across the stage, stopping at the back of the piano. He tipped his head sideways and looked up at me.

“That was wonderful,” I said. I was almost at a loss for words. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t know you played.”

Oren dragged his hand down over his neck and let it drop into his lap. “I . . . uh . . . don’t. Very much,” he said. His eyes kept sliding off my face. “What are you doing here? Is there a problem at the library?”

I nodded. “One of the windows is leaking. The end one in the computer room.”

“Did you call Will Redfern?” He shook his head. “If you could find Will, you wouldn’t be here. Would you?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you still have a lot to do here, but Will came and went before I could even lay eyes on him, and I can’t leave the window leaking all weekend.”

“No, you can’t. I’ll come take a look at it.” He stood up. “I need to get a few things.”

“I’ll head back,” I said. “I’ll see you there.”

I didn’t even zip up my coat to walk back to the library. Will hadn’t called or shown up. No surprise.

By the time I’d hung up my jacket Oren had arrived. He headed for the computer room, raising one hand in acknowledgment of Larry, on his way back down to the basement electrical panel.

The leak was even slower now, a steady
drip, drip, drip
. “Looks like the flashing,” Oren said.

“Larry had the same thought,” I said.

Oren nodded. “I’m going to get the ladder and take a look outside.”

I studied the window frame, hoping the problem was nothing more than a bent piece of metal or a missing bit of caulking.

“Kathleen,” Mary called.

I swung around.

“Everett Henderson for you.”

I nodded and pointed toward my office to let her know I’d heard and would take the call there.

I closed the office door and reached across the desk for the phone. “Hello, Everett,” I said.

“Hello, Kathleen. Lita said you needed to talk to me.”

I explained what had been happening with Will and the renovations. I tried very hard to keep my frustration out of what I was saying. “Oren’s outside on a ladder right now,” I said, “trying to find the source of the leak. I’ve left two messages for Will, and I didn’t want to let this go any longer.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Finally Everett spoke. “Kathleen, I apologize. Lita advised me very strongly not to hire Will.” He sighed softly. “I went to school with Will’s father and I let sentiment and nostalgia influence my decision.”

I chose my words carefully. “How Will is handling this job has nothing to do with you, Everett.”

“That’s very kind of you,” he said. “I have to go out of town on business. I’ll be back Monday. I’ll stop by the house Monday evening and we’ll figure out what to do about the rest of the renovations. Will that work for you?”

“Yes, it will,” I said.

“Good. Now, are you sure you’re not hurt? Have you seen a doctor?”

I rubbed the top of my shoulder, wincing as my fingers hit a tender spot. “I’m okay, Everett. Really,” I said. “Roma is pretty good with two-legged patients.”

“Good to know,” Everett said drily.

“And I’m going to the clinic to get checked out later this afternoon. I’m fine.”