Sleight of Paw (23 page)

I wasn’t convinced of that, but I nodded. I picked up the nylon garment bag and followed Rebecca out to the kitchen.

My messenger bag was where I’d left it.
Please be inside,
I thought as I reached for the strap. The moment I lifted the bag I could tell Hercules was there. Or else I’d picked up a cat-sized hitchhiker. Surreptitiously, I slid the zipper closed, then put the strap over my shoulder

“Oh, that’s a nice bag,” Rebecca said. “Did you buy that here?”

“I did,” I said. “I only paid five dollars for it over at the thrift store.”

“I like it. Are those mesh panels?”

Okay, what was I going to do if she saw Hercules’s face through the webbing? “Um, yes,” I said. “I have a piece of fake fur in there right now. You can probably see it through the panel.” As long as Hercules didn’t make a sound, we were okay.

At the bottom of the steps Rebecca gave me a hug. “I’m sorry you didn’t find anything helpful,” she said.

“But things will work out. They have a way of doing that.”

I handed her the garment bag, then headed down the driveway, giving her a little wave when I reached the street.

The library was closer than home, so I went in that direction. I needed to make sure Hercules was okay. I let myself into the empty building, and as soon as I was in my office I set the bag on my chair and unzipped it. He climbed out, jumped onto the top of my desk and shook himself.

“Are you all right?” I asked. He looked at me, almost . . . smugly? No, I was imagining that. “That was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done,” I said. “Letting you come with me. What the heck was I thinking? What if Rebecca had seen you?”

Hercules walked across to my side of the desk. I reached out to stroke his fur, but he twisted his head away, and spit a soggy piece of paper onto the dark polished wood of the desk.

“What is that?” I said.

He looked from the damp piece of paper to me. Then he lifted his paw and started washing his face. As far as I’d been able to figure out, if Hercules had something in his mouth, he could walk through a wall—or a door—with it.

I picked up a pen, flipped the bit of paper over and studied it. It was part of a photograph. It was the missing piece of the photograph that had been in Agatha’s bag; a dark-haired baby in a white sun hat smiled up at me. I couldn’t tell if the baby was a boy or girl.

“Did you tear that picture?” I asked him, folding my arms and frowning at him. He continued to wash his face.

I looked at the picture again. There was a bit of yellowed Scotch tape on the break. I held up a hand. “You didn’t chew it. I’m sorry.”

I held the fragment up to the light. The baby was sitting on a woman’s lap. The woman didn’t look like anyone I knew in Mayville. On the other hand, it was an old photograph.

I thought about the postcard Rebecca and I had found along with the bottom half of this photo. She was right. Agatha must’ve taken it from the display that had been at the shop. She’d probably found the photo there, too.

Maggie had had piles of photos in her studio for weeks while she was working on the collage panels for Winterfest. She’d spent days sorting, logging and then copying the ones she wanted. Maybe this had been with them.

A postcard, gloves from the lost and found, a scarf, this photograph. It was clear Agatha had been collecting things.

I pressed the knuckle of my thumb between my eyes and tried to rub away the frown lines I knew had to be there. “This doesn’t mean anything, except maybe to show that Agatha’s mind was slipping.” I was frustrated. “Maybe that envelope is meaningless, as well.”

I picked up Hercules and he stretched his front paws onto my shoulder so he could look out the window behind the desk.

“So, now what?” I asked him.

He looked blankly at me.

“Yeah, I don’t know, either.”

I
wasn’t quite as confident now about the contents of the envelope, since I’d seen the contents of the bag Agatha had been carrying around. On the other hand, it was all I had.

“You have to get back in the bag,” I said to Hercules. He didn’t move. “You can’t stay here. Too risky. And you wouldn’t want to miss one of Eric’s breakfast sandwiches, would you?”

Hercules jumped down onto the desktop, walked across my files and dropped to the chair, sending it spinning in circles. I leaned over the desk and caught the chair back halfway through the fourth circle.

He looked up at me woozily. I came around to his side and held open the top of the tote. He jumped in and lay down. I closed the zipper and got my coat on again, and we headed back out.

It occurred to me that there was someone else I could ask about that envelope: Peter Lundgren. His law office was just up by the Stratton Theater. “Detour,” I said to Hercules.

There was no one at Peter’s office. It was probably too early. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and Eric will be working,” I said to Herc. Well, actually I said it to the bag slung over my shoulder. Thankfully there was no one on the sidewalk.

As we turned toward the restaurant Hercules shifted in the bag. I stopped and peered through the top panel. Two green eyes looked up at me. “Not a sound,” I hissed. “And no jumping around. The last thing I need is to have to explain why my bag is moving.”

That had happened to me once at tai chi with Owen. Luckily, Maggie had saved me by saying her phone was in my bag, set to vibrate.

The restaurant was almost empty, but Eric was back behind the counter. I resisted the urge to unzip the tote and high-five the cat. Or do a fist-paw bump.

Eric nodded hello when I walked in, but then turned away. He still looked a little ragged, and I wondered how much of that was due to Agatha’s death.

Jaeger, who usually worked weekends for Eric, was wiping down the counter. He was a mask maker. I’d seen him a couple of times in his studio at the River Arts Center when I’d gone to visit Maggie. He smiled and gestured around the room. “Anywhere you’d like,” he said. “I’ll be there with coffee in a second.” I picked a table for two in the far corner under the window, but against the side wall.

When Jaeger came over I ordered a breakfast sandwich and set Hercules by my feet, between the wall and my chair. The top of the bag was open a crack. After I’d taken off my coat, I put cream and sugar in my coffee and took a drink. It was good, hot and strong.

I felt the bag moving between my feet. I looked down just in time to see Hercules wiggle out of the bag and make a mad dash along the wall, disappearing down the hall to the restrooms.

Crap on toast!
What was I going to do now? I grabbed the bag and bolted from the table, turning the corner just in time to see the cat go through Eric’s office door, the door with the PRIVATE sign on it. And I did mean “through.”

“Hercules!” I hissed. Waste of time. He was already gone and it wasn’t very likely he’d have listened, anyway.

I stood in the small hallway and took several deep breaths. Hercules was in Eric’s office, yes, but Eric and Jaeger were still out front. All I had to do was not panic, wait until the cat came out, and get him back in the bag. How hard could that be?

I tried not to think about all the things that could go wrong, like Hercules walking through the very solidlooking door just as someone else was on their way to the washroom.

“Hey, Kathleen.”

Or Eric needing to get into his office.

I turned around.

“Is there a problem with the restroom?”

“Um, no,” I said. “I wanted to talk to you in private.”

His expression was instantly guarded. “This really isn’t a good time.”

I took a step closer so he couldn’t go around me easily. Then I pushed the bag behind me with one foot. “You, uh, you look tired,” I said gently. Whatever was wrong with Eric, I didn’t want to make him feel worse.

“Yeah, well, I had a tooth that was giving me problems.” He wiped a hand on his apron. “Like I said, this isn’t a good time.” He moved to go around me.

Maybe being gentle wasn’t going to work. “It’s a heck of a lot worse time for Ruby.”

That stopped him in his tracks. He turned. “Look,” he said. “I’m sorry that Ruby was arrested. And for the record, I don’t think she had anything to do with Agatha’s death. But neither did I.” He pulled a hand over the back of his head and his eyes slid off my face. “Is that what you wanted to know, Kathleen?”

Since he was being direct, there was no reason for me not to be the same. “The night she died Agatha was in here. She was carrying an envelope,” I said. “It was an old brown envelope with a metal tab closure, probably from a report card.”

“If you say so.”

“You argued with her about it.”

“I didn’t argue with Agatha about anything.” His body language said different. He shifted uneasily from one foot to another.

“You weren’t the only one,” I said. “It had to mean something.”

“We didn’t argue,” he said again.

“Call it a discussion, then. Call it whatever you want. I think whatever was inside the envelope might have something to do with Agatha’s death. And now, very conveniently for someone, it’s disappeared.”

Eric looked me in the eye then. “Look, Kathleen. I don’t know what you think you saw, but Agatha and I didn’t fight over an old envelope or whatever might or might not have been inside. You misunderstood what you saw.” He looked away just a little too quickly.

I took a couple of steps sideways, trying to turn Eric away from his office door, and waited, hoping the silence would nudge him into saying more.

“After Agatha had that stroke, she got argumentative over things that didn’t matter, like how many packets of mayo I gave her with her sandwich.”

I shook my head ever so slightly. I knew what I’d seen. Eric hadn’t been arguing with the old woman over mayonnaise.

“And she started collecting things—junk, really—things she tore out of the newspaper, things she found around town.”

I thought of the collection in the canvas bag—the gloves, the postcard. Maybe he was right. Then I remembered how protective Agatha had been about that brown envelope. She hadn’t felt the same way about the bag and its contents because she’d left it behind at the community center. And no matter what Eric was saying now, he had argued with her about that envelope.

Eric crossed his arms and ran one hand up and down his upper arm. “Kathleen, no offense, but you’re not from here, and you haven’t known us that long. You didn’t know Agatha at all.”

You’re not one of us.
I’d heard that before. It used to make me feel left out, but this time all I felt was angry. Eric was lying; that was clear by the way he couldn’t look at me for more than a few seconds at a time. He was using the fact that I wasn’t Mayville born and bred to avoid being honest with me.

I felt a faint change in the air, in the energy of a small hallway.

Hercules.

Eric didn’t seem to notice. He was turned away from the office, and over his shoulder I saw Hercules come through the door. The cat blinked, looked around and then disappeared into the bag.

“You’re right,” I said to Eric, my heart pounding with relief. “I haven’t been here nearly long enough to know everyone. But I do know Ruby didn’t kill Agatha and she doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her.” I moved behind him and grabbed the strap of the bag.

“Please think about that, Eric,” I said. I walked back to the table, setting the messenger bag on my chair. “You are in deep, deep trouble,” I whispered to the cat. I could see one green eye watching me through the top mesh panel.

Jaeger had my order ready. I paid and walked back to the library with Hercules slung securely over my shoulder and my hand on top of the bag.

Inside my office with the door closed, I let Hercules out.

“I can’t believe you did that,” I said, pulling off my coat and hat. “Twice in the same morning. How would I have explained why I had a cat in Eric’s restaurant? Huh?”

His response was to poke the take-out bag with a paw. “I’m not surprised you’re hungry,” I said, pulling out the toasted English muffin sandwich and fishing out some of the egg for him. “The life of a cat burglar will do that to you.”

I ate a bite of the muffin, then pulled out a strip of crispy bacon. Hercules spit a piece of paper at me, snatched the bacon from my fingers and jumped to the floor in one smooth motion.

“Hey!” I yelled. He was already under my desk.

I bent down and peered underneath in time to see the last bit of bacon disappear into his mouth. “This isn’t a funny,” I said. “No sardines for you for the rest of the week.”

He licked his lips. The piece of paper he had swiped from Eric’s office had fallen on the floor. I picked it up, straightened it and smoothed it flat on the desktop. There was a rushing sound in my head, like I’d held a seashell up to my ear.

The piece of paper was the top part of an envelope.

An old brown report-card envelope.

I
dropped into the closest chair, trying to make sense out of something that wasn’t making any sense at all.

Agatha had been carrying around an old brown envelope. That envelope had disappeared just before or just after her death. Eric claimed he knew nothing about it.

Except Hercules had found a piece of the same kind of envelope in Eric’s office. The same kind of envelope, or a piece of the envelope Agatha had been carrying around?

No matter what Eric said, I was certain of one thing: Whatever had been inside that envelope was important. Important enough that Eric would lie and Old Harry would stay silent.

Hercules poked his head out from under the desk. “Come on out,” I said. “I’m not mad.” I put the remaining slice of bacon and the rest of the egg on the floor on the waxed-paper sandwich wrapper. I kept the English muffin for myself.

So now what? I didn’t know. What I did know was that I knew very little about Agatha Shepherd. Maybe if I learned more about the woman, I’d be able to figure out what secret she’d been holding on to so tightly.