Sleight of Paw (37 page)

It didn’t.

I tightened my grip on the shovel handle and turned, swinging it in front of me. “I’m coming up,” I warned. Maggie took a step backward. I grabbed the railing and something sliced into my hand. “Ow!” I yelled, yanking my hand back. There was blood welling from a small gash on the fleshy part of my hand below my little finger.

The end of the shovel dipped like a teeter-totter, and the plastic blade banged hard against the wooden step. The rat corpse somersaulted into the air like a high diver coming off a tower. I swiped my bleeding hand on the leg of my jeans and lunged with the shovel, but the rat had gotten a surprising amount of height and distance. It arced through the air and landed with a soggy splat on Maggie’s foot.

She shrieked and jerked backward, banging into the doorframe. I scrambled up the stairs. “I got it. I got it,” I said. “It’s okay.” I scooped up the dead rodent and squeezed past Mags, keeping the shovel low to the ground.

Out in the hallway I looked around. Okay, so what was I going to do? I couldn’t exactly drop the rat in the metal garbage can in the corner.

Holding the shovel out in front of me, I cut through the empty store, opened the street door, and tossed the body of the rat out toward the street. It didn’t do any elegant somersaults this time. It hit the sidewalk with the same wet splat as when it had landed on Maggie’s foot. Except this time the rat rolled over, shook itself and scurried away. I said a word well-mannered librarians didn’t normally use and then realized that Ruby Blackthorne was standing by the streetlight. The rat had gone whizzing right by her head.

Crap on toast!
“Ruby, I’m sorry,” I said, holding the door for her as she came across the sidewalk.

She looked at me. “Inventing a new sport?” she asked. “Because I don’t think it’s going to replace discus in the Olympics. And I’m pretty sure you just violated at least a couple of cruelty to animal laws.”

“It was floating in the basement.” I gestured behind me.

“And that was your version of rat CPR?”

I wasn’t sure if she was joking or serious. Then I noticed just a hint of a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. She was growing out her usually spiked short hair and it stuck out from the sides of her head in two tiny pigtails, one turquoise, one pink.

“I really thought it was dead,” I said. “It was on its back in the water. It didn’t move.” I went to swipe my hand across my sweatshirt, which is when I remembered it was bleeding.

“Hey, are you okay?” Ruby asked. “It didn’t bite you, did it?”

I shook my head and felt in the pocket of my hoodie for a Kleenex. “No. I did that on the railing.”

Maggie came out through the store then, holding a length of old pipe like a club, scanning the space as though the rat might come walking by. It didn’t seem like a good plan to tell her it was possible it could.

“It’s okay, Mags,” I said. “It’s gone.” That much was true. “I put it outside.” Also true.

She looked around again, then tucked the piece of pipe between her knees.

I shot Ruby a warning look, hoping she remembered how Maggie felt about small furry things.

“Is Jaeger still here?” Maggie asked, glancing at the stairs.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I just saw him putting boxes in his car,” Ruby offered. She rolled her eyes at Maggie. “So, what was it this time? The we-need-a-corporate-sponsor speech? Or the we-need-to-expand-our-horizons rant?”

“The first one,” Maggie said. Then she noticed my hand. “Did you do that on the railing?” She caught my wrist and rolled my palm over. “I think that needs stitches.”

“I don’t need stitches,” I said. “It isn’t even bleeding anymore. All I need is a Band-Aid.”

Maggie shook her head and mock glared at me. “C’mon upstairs. I’ll fix it.”

Ruby and I followed her up the steps. Mags knew I hated hospitals. It went back to when I was a kid. Blame it on a weak stomach, a dark examining room, an artificial leg and way too many cheese curls.

“So, it seems like Jaeger is really pushing this corporate sponsor idea,” I said to Ruby, while Maggie cleaned my cut.

Ruby made a face. “He thinks we should find some big business to subsidize the co-op, kind of like a patron of the arts.” Ruby painted huge abstracts and also taught art.

“What’s in it for the business?” I asked. “I’m guessing something more than just goodwill.”

“The use of our artwork for commercial purposes, among other things,” Maggie said, fastening a big bandage on my hand. “I’m not against that necessarily. But I’m not about to give up the right to choose how my art is used. Jaeger thinks I’m wrong.” She looked at me. “How’s that?”

I opened and closed my hand a few times. “Perfect,” I said. “Thank you.”

“He’s an asshat,” Ruby said.

“A what?” I asked.

“Asshat,” she repeated. “You know—someone whose head is so far up his . . . you know . . . that he’s wearing it for a hat.”

“Sounds uncomfortable,” Maggie said.

“Does Jaeger look like anyone else either of you have seen?” Ruby asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Uh-uh,” Maggie said. “Why?”

“I can’t shake the feeling I’ve seen him somewhere before, especially since he cut his hair.”

“Maybe a workshop or an exhibit,” I said.

“No, I don’t think that’s it.” She shook her head and all the little hoops in her left ear danced. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I just came to see if you guys wanted to go get something to eat at Eric’s.”

I glanced at my watch.

“Is this a cat morning?” Maggie asked.

“Uh-huh.” I was one of several volunteers who helped tend a feral cat colony at Wisteria Hill, the old abandoned Henderson estate just outside town.

“Going by yourself?” She was all innocent sweetness.

“Maybe,” I said. I knew where the conversation was headed.

For months Maggie had been trying to play matchmaker between Marcus Gordon and me. Marcus was a police detective, and we’d gotten off on the wrong foot the previous summer when he thought it was possible I had killed conductor Gregor Easton, or at the very least been involved in some intimate hanky-panky with the man who was twice my age and a . . . well . . . pretentious creep.

But last winter Marcus had rescued me when I was left dazed and wandering through the woods in the bitter cold after an explosion. We’d gotten closer since then, though not close enough to suit Maggie. She was indirectly responsible for our friend Roma’s relationship with hockey player Eddie Sweeney, and it had just made her worse where Marcus was concerned. Maggie believed in happily ever after and she had no problem with giving it a nudge, or even a big shove.

“Meeting anyone out there?” she continued.

“Don’t start,” I warned.

“Start what?”

Ruby grinned. She’d heard us do this before. “Start on Marcus and me getting together. We’re friends. That’s all. He’s not my type. He doesn’t—”

“Even have a library card,” Maggie finished. “Is that the only thing you can find wrong with him?”

Okay, so I had probably used that excuse too much. I thought about Marcus for a moment. He was tall, with dark wavy hair, blue eyes and a gorgeous smile that he didn’t use nearly often enough. He was kind to animals, children and old people.

I caught myself and shook my head. I was supposed to be thinking of what was wrong with the man, not what was right. Maggie was smirking at me as though she could read my mind. I stuck my tongue out at her.

“So, how about breakfast?” Ruby said.

Maggie nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

“I have to get out to Wisteria Hill,” I said. “But I’ll drive you two over and get a cup of coffee to go.”

Maggie picked up the length of old pipe again.

“Are you taking that with you?” I asked.

“Would it look stupid?”

“Well, not exactly stupid,” I said. “More like you’re about to start looting and pillaging.”

“You know, I really do believe every creature has a right to exist. It’s just . . .” She blew out a breath. “I don’t want some of them for roommates.” She set the pipe on the floor against the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

Maggie locked the building, and then we piled in the truck and headed for Eric’s Place, farther up Old Main Street. Even though I knew the town pretty well now, I still found the whole Main Street versus Old Main Street thing kind of confusing.

“Is it ever going to stop raining?” Ruby asked, looking skyward as we got closer to the café.

“There’s more rain in the forecast,” I said.

“It could be wrong.”

“It could.” I rubbed my left wrist. It had been aching for days, and not just from slinging sandbags. I’d broken it the previous summer and now it was pretty good at predicting bad weather. Maybe the fact that it didn’t hurt so much today meant the forecast was wrong.

The restaurant was warm and dry and smelled like coffee, a nice change from the scent of wet feet. Eric’s wife, Susan, worked for me at the library, and I knew they had a heavy-duty sump pump in the basement.

I crossed to the counter. “Hi, Kathleen,” Eric said with a smile. “What can I get you?”

“Just a large coffee to go. Thanks,” I said.

He reached for a take-out cup, poured the coffee and added just the right amount of cream and sugar. As he passed me the coffee, he noticed the overly large bandage with which Maggie had wrapped my hand. “That doesn’t look good,” he said. “How did you do that?”

“She was scooping up dead things with a shovel and throwing them at me,” Maggie said.

“New hobby?” Eric asked dryly.

“More like a side job,” Ruby said with a grin. “Rodent wrangler.”

Eric nodded. “Yeah, the rain’s driving them out of their hiding places.”

Maggie put her hands over her ears and started humming off-key.

“Maggie has a hear no rodents, see no rodents, speak of no rodents policy,” I said.

“We tried that with the twins when they went through their streaker stage,” Eric said.

I handed him the money for my coffee.

“How’d that work?” Ruby asked.

“About as well as you’d expect. They may be four, but they have the tactical skills of Hannibal getting those elephants across the Alps. They always managed to be stark naked at the most embarrassing moments.”

He handed me my change. “Thanks, Eric,” I said.

Maggie dropped her hands. “Have fun with . . . the cats,” she said. Her lips were twitching as she tried not to smirk at me.

“Nothing’s going to happen out there,” I hissed at her. “Nothing.”

Of course, I was wrong.

Sofie Kelly
is an author and mixed-media artist who lives on the East Coast with her husband and daughter. In her spare time she practices Wu-style tai chi and likes to prowl around thrift stores. And she admits to having a small crush on Matt Lauer.

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