Cat With a Clue Read online

  Then I actually did hear her say to someone, “You shouldn’t have come here at all.”

  A deep voice rumbled back, “Dear lady, you must not judge yourself. Leave that to me.”

  I pushed her office door open wide. “And me. I’ve had lots of experience, you know.”

  Kristen and Trock Farrand turned to face me. Kristen’s expression was one I’d seen many times before, one that combined anger at herself with deep despair. Trock, on the other hand, was nothing but smiles.

  He lumbered to his feet. “Dearest Minerva! I had hoped to see you this fine day.” He leaned forward in a half bow, reaching out for my hand and lifting it to his lips. Postkiss, he straightened his rotund body and released my hand.

  “You missed an exceptional day of filming,” he said grandly. “This will go down in history as the episode of Trock’s Troubles that absolutely cannot be missed. From beginning to end it was perfection. Nothing went wrong. The food was exquisite, and the presentation was superb. Kristen here could take over my job without blinking her deep blue eyes. Which,” he added, beaming, “will show up brilliantly. I ordered as many close-up shots as they could manage.”

  “Nothing went wrong?” Kristen asked. “What about the strawberries? There was mold. Mold!” she practically shouted.

  I winced, knowing that Harvey, poor soul, would have borne the brunt of her anger.

  “Piffle.” Trock waved away the problem. “Easy to drop that on the cutting floor, as it were. My dear, the magic of television has an infinite capacity to show what it wishes to show, and I wish to only show the best.”

  “Mold,” she muttered. “I can’t believe it. They were fine this morning.” She sat up straight, her chin lifted. “If you want to cancel airing this show, I’d understand completely. I won’t hold you to the contract.”

  “Good gad.” Trock blinked. He turned to me. “Is she serious?”

  “As a chocolate soufflé.”

  Both Kristen and Trock frowned in my direction. “What’s so serious about a chocolate soufflé?” Kristen asked.

  I shrugged. “Didn’t want to say heart attack, and I’ve heard a chocolate soufflé is hard to make. Seriously hard, see?”

  The twosome stared at me a moment, then went back to their discussion. “My darling restaurateur,” Trock said, “love of my son’s life and highlight of my own, please believe me when I tell you the finished product will be wonderful.”

  Kristen crossed her arms across her chest. “Why should I believe you? You exaggerate from morning to night. You probably talk hyperbole in your dreams.”

  Which was most likely true, but there was one difference. “Not this time,” I said.

  “How can you possibly say that?” she asked.

  “Because he never exaggerates about his show.” She started to object, but I held up my hand. “He may talk on and on about a restaurant he’s featured, and he may wax lyrical about a particular entrée that he made, but he never deviates from the absolute truth about an episode of the show itself.”

  Kristen’s mouth opened, then shut. She stared at the ceiling and tapped her fingers together. “You’re right,” she finally said.

  “Which means . . .” I held my hands out, palms up.

  Her smile became a wide grin. “We’re going to be famous.”

  “And rich,” I added. The two looked at me again, and I amended my statement. “Well, maybe not rich rich, but you’re certainly going to the most popular fine-dining establishment in northern lower Michigan for months, if not years.”

  “Bubbly!” Trock called out at the top of his robust lungs. “We must have bubbly! Scruffy, where are you, son? Get the glasses. Get the champagne. We need to celebrate.”

  Kristen laughed as Trock continued to yodel out commands, and I felt myself grinning like a jack o’-lantern, because there was nothing like a friend’s success to make you feel happy inside.

  * * *

  “It was horrible,” Holly said the next morning. “Just awful.”

  I looked at Josh, who nodded.

  “She’s right,” he said. “It was horrible.”

  “Scary bad.” Holly shuddered.

  “What was his name?” I asked.

  “Theodore,” she said dolefully.

  “Well, he can’t help the name he was born with,” I said. “And Ted isn’t so bad. I have a neighbor named Ted and he’s—”

  But Josh was shaking his head. “He doesn’t go by Ted. It’s Theodore.”

  He spoke the syllables in a round, full, sonorous tone, and I got a mental image of what Theodore must look like. Which was ridiculous, because who ever looked like their name?

  “Minnie!” Donna hurried into the break room. “Did they tell you?”

  “About what?”

  “About Thee-o-door,” she said. “He was awful. You can’t let the board choose him as the new director—you just can’t.”

  Holly and Josh, when grouped together during the morning break time, had a tendency to exacerbate any given situation. I’d been taking their comments about yesterday’s interviewee with a large grain of salt, and had been thinking about stringing them along with hints that the board had thought highly of Theodore. But if Donna was agreeing with the Dual Voices of Doom, I had to take the situation seriously. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Thee-o-dore,” Donna said, “was too friendly.”

  “Way too,” Josh said. “The guy was creepy. Pretending like he knew us, calling us by our names even though he’d never met us before.”

  Okay, that was weird. It meant the guy had done his homework—there were pictures of the staff on the library’s Web site—but it was weird not to let yourself be introduced first.

  “And he kept talking about what he’d like to do here,” Holly burst out.

  “What’s so bad about that? Any library director will have goals.”

  “You’re not getting it,” Josh said. “He was talking about the changes he was going to make.”

  That was different.

  “Want to know the first thing he’s going to do?” Holly asked. I didn’t, not really, but short of running out of the room and locking my office door behind me, I wasn’t sure how to avoid hearing. “He wants to get rid of the—”

  I steeled myself to hear the word “bookmobile.”

  “—sculpture garden.”

  My mouth dropped open. The library’s sculpture garden was a labor of love for the entire town. Local artists had submitted designs, school art classes had constructed the pieces, and the installations had been celebrated events attended by hundreds.

  “He doesn’t know what it means to Chilson,” I finally said. “That’s all. Once he finds out, he’ll change his mind.”

  Josh made a rude noise. “He said it was a waste of maintenance dollars.”

  I blinked. Gareth, our maintenance guy and my fellow junk-food maven, loved the sculptures. He took care of them on his own time, saying that it was his civic contribution to Chilson. The sole cost to the library was the occasional bolt or small can of paint, and I wasn’t sure Gareth charged even that to the library.

  “And,” Holly ruthlessly went on, “he said it would save money to move the sculptures to commercial venues. That we’d be better off with a bigger parking lot.”

  “After that,” Donna said into my look of stunned disbelief, “the next thing he wants is to get rid of all the DVDs. Says they have no place in a library.”

  “Are you sure he wasn’t just nervous?” I asked. “That could make anyone act unusually.”

  “When he walked out,” Holly said, “he was whistling.”

  It was hard to imagine a whistle coming out of someone who was anxious. “What was he whistling?” I asked, still trying to find a way to make excuses for this guy.

  “The theme music to that last Superman movie.”
/>
  Oh, dear.

  “Minnie, you have to apply,” Josh said.

  “You mean you haven’t?” Donna practically shrieked. “We need you. Thee-o-dore was horrible. What’s-her-name wasn’t much better. I’m not holding out much hope that the other interviewees will be any improvement.”

  “If you love us even a little,” Holly pleaded, “put in your application. You have it ready, don’t you?”

  “Apply,” Donna said. “Please?”

  It was the question mark at the end that got me. Donna wasn’t big on asking for favors, even when she really needed the help. I needed to tell them what I’d decided, and I needed to stop putting it off.

  “Sorry, but I’m not going to,” I said. “If I’m director, I can’t drive the bookmobile, and that’s too important to me.”

  There was a long silence.

  Holly heaved a huge sigh. “I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand.”

  “I get it,” Josh said, nodding slowly. “But I’m with Holly. I don’t like it.”

  I looked at Donna, who grimaced. “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Same as those two.”

  I smiled, glad to have the bad news delivered and done with. “Don’t look so gloomy. Things will work out.”

  “Or not,” Donna muttered, but I chose not to hear her comment, and went back to my office.

  * * *

  At lunchtime, I pushed back from my computer. I’d been staring at the screen for two hours straight and needed a break. Outside, I looked around, smiling at the high white clouds, blue sky, and sidewalks that were beginning to crowd up with the summer folks. It wouldn’t get avoid-downtown-at-all-costs busy until the Fourth of July, but there was enough foot traffic to make it impossible to walk in a straight line.

  I stopped outside Pam’s store and peered in. Her clerk was showing off a collection of antique aprons, and Pam herself was at the register, totting up purchases with one hand faster than I could have with two.

  When she finished, I popped my head in the front door and waved at her. When she waved back, I asked. “How about lunch?”

  She looked around her store. At least half a dozen customers were milling about, and I moved aside to let two more inside. “How about tomorrow?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Bookmobile day.”

  One of the women who’d just walked in whirled around. “You have a bookmobile here? How wonderful!” She elbowed her female companion. “Did you hear that, Susie? They have a bookmobile.”

  “That settles it,” Susie said. “I’m moving up here next week.”

  I laughed. “Hope you like snow.” I looked back to Pam. “Lunch on Friday? No? Saturday is probably too busy for you. How about . . .” I had plans for Sunday, didn’t I? And it seemed as if I had something on Monday. Tuesday was another bookmobile day, which left—

  “How about September?” she asked, laughing.

  I smiled at her ruefully. “Sounds about right.”

  “We’ll figure out a day soon,” she said. “And I’m paying. I owe you big-time for Sunday—don’t think I’m going to let you forget it. All that work, not to mention the hospital trip.”

  Susie and her friend, who were still standing close by, looked at the two of us curiously. “Hospital?” Susie asked. She gestured at Pam’s sling. “That’s recent?”

  “Fresh as a daisy,” Pam said. “And it’s all thanks to Minnie here that the store is even open today.”

  I could see where this was going, and I didn’t want any part of it. “Nice to meet you,” I said to the two women, “but I hear the library calling.” I smiled and hurried off before I was forced to listen to any of Pam’s tall tales about my good deeds.

  Outside, I walked past the insurance agency and the shoe store, pausing only to use a stranger’s cell phone to take a picture of said stranger’s family, all of whom were posing under the new clock. As I handed the phone back and listened to their thanks, I eyed the large store across the street. Speaking of deeds, good and bad, there was Benton’s, the store the DeKeyser family owned. And, I’d recently learned through a text from Rafe, still owned through a granddaughter whose name I’d come up with in a minute.

  As I crossed the street, I remembered her name. “Rianne,” I said out loud, and earned a sideways glance from a man wearing shorts, a polo shirt, and deck shoes. “Howe,” I added, nodding.

  “How do you do?” he asked pleasantly enough, but he kept to the far side of the sidewalk and didn’t slow down.

  Since I’d clearly spent enough time that day making tourists uncomfortable, I opened the store’s front door. Once inside, I stopped and did what I always did when walking into Benton’s: just stood there and breathed deep with my eyes closed.

  Instantly I was transported back in time, back to the days of stores with wood floors and tin ceilings, when penny candy was sold from glass jars and herbs could be purchased in bunches that hung from a rack.

  I opened my eyes and there it all was, from tin ceiling to wood floor, to candy in a jar and hanging herbs. The penny candy cost more than a penny and the herbs were for decoration only, but still.

  A few customers milled about in the housewares section, exclaiming over the glass butter dishes and wire fly swatters, just like grandma’s. A young man about twenty years old was standing behind the wooden counter, bagging up a small collection of toys and candy for a girl half his age. “There you go, miss,” he said, pushing the paper bag toward her outstretched hands. “Would you like help carrying that to your car?”

  She giggled. “No, thank you. Bye, Brian. See you next week!” She ran past me, flew out the door, tossed her purchases into the front basket of her bicycle, and was pedaling off in seconds.

  “Next week?” I asked, coming up to the counter. “She’s a regular?”

  “She’s in here once a week through mid-August,” he said, nodding. “Her family spends the summer up here, and this is allowance day.”

  “Which is now all gone?”

  He glanced at the cash register. “She has thirty-two cents left.”

  “Maybe Cookie Tom will give her a cookie for that much,” I suggested.

  “When I did the same thing when I was her age, he’d give me two.” We laughed, and he asked, “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for Rianne Howe. Does she have a minute?” I gave him my name.

  “Hang on.” He picked up the phone, asked my name, and punched a few sleek buttons. The anachronism of a twenty-first-century telephone in a late-1800s general store bothered me a little, so I averted my eyes and studied the massive brass cash register instead.

  “She said come on back.” Brian clunked down the phone and nodded to the rear of the store. “See that curtain? Through there. There’s a door on the right—that’s her office.”

  I thanked him and made my way past the shelves of office supplies, then past the T-shirts, work boots, and overalls. I glanced at the far side of the store toward the colorful selection of fabric and kitchen supplies and strong-mindedly marched past the books. I pushed my way through the navy blue burlap curtain panels Brian had indicated and knocked on Rianne’s office door.

  “Come on in,” she called.

  “Hi,” I said, and stopped short. I’d assumed her office to be one of two things: full of the castoffs from a store that had been in existence for more than a hundred years, or city sleek and modernistic. “Wow. This is . . .”

  Rianne grinned. She was probably in her early forties, and her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes attractively. “What do you think?” she asked, pushing her reddish brown hair back behind her ears. “I love hearing people’s first impressions.”

  “It’s amazing,” I said, soaking it all in. “And I mean that in the best possible way.”

  There were wide windows and wood-paneled walls and a high ceiling made of wood. There were
built-in cabinets that looked like they’d been designed by a master, and brass light fixtures that harked back to the days of kerosene lamps. There was a wood floor and scattered area rugs and framed diagrams of Janay Lake and Lake Michigan.

  But, above all, there was a massive wood ship’s wheel attached to the front of Rianne’s desk. My hands itched to take hold of one of the spoke handles and give it a spin, but since I was working on being a fully functioning adult, I kept my hands at my sides.

  “Did you do this?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “The only addition of mine is a dent in the desk when I was five, from riding my tricycle too fast. It was the last Benton to own the store, my great-grandfather, who did all this.”

  “By himself?”

  “Pretty much, or so the family story goes. He’d wanted to go to sea, but as the only male Benton, he was obligated to take over the store. Back then they ran tabs for people and would sometimes trade. One of their customers paid for a full year of groceries with maple planks cut from trees he’d felled on his land. Great-grandpa sold some, but used the bulk of it for this.” She smiled. “Or so the story goes.”

  “You don’t believe the story?”

  “In my family, the stories get better with every generation, so it’s hard to know the truth.” She tapped the desk. “Take this, for instance. I grew up hearing it had been given to Great-grandpa by President Roosevelt for saving his life during some hunt.”

  “Not true?” I asked.

  “When I took over the store, I crawled underneath the desk during a cleaning frenzy and found the manufacturer’s label. Made in 1923.”

  “Didn’t Roosevelt die just after World War I?”

  “In 1919.”