Shards and splatters and splinters and sarcasm, and it was only Monday.
I sighed and got up to hunt down the mop and vacuum cleaner. My happy library world was falling apart and I had no idea what to do about it.
• • •
When I left work at six, light rain was still coming down. I stood in the front doorway, backpack in hand, staring out at the sodden world.
“Want a ride?” Mitchell appeared at my side, jingling a set of keys. “I’m parked right over there.” He pointed to a maroon pickup that had a beige driver’s door and a yellow hood.
“No, thanks.” I smiled. “I have a couple of errands to do on the way home.” In my youth, I’d owned cars that had looked worse than Mitchell’s, but mine had never had stacks of empty pizza boxes piled so high on the passenger’s seat that you could read “Fat Boys Pizza” from fifty feet away.
“You sure?” Mitchell squinted out into the rain. “It’s coming down pretty good.”
“Thanks, anyway.” I pushed the door open and went out into the wet.
To make good on my statement of having errands to run, I stopped at the grocery store for cheese and fresh lettuce and at the fudge store for a slab of chocolate with walnuts. Both got shoved unceremoniously into my backpack at the point of purchase, and both were slightly dented when I got home and put them on the kitchen counter. Sugar and salad. The ideal dinner to soften the edges of a cranky day.
I cut open the cheese and nicked off a small corner. “Hey, Eddie, I have a treat for you.”
No padding of cat feet, no sleepy mrrs.
“Hey. Ed.”
Silence.
I picked up the cheese and started the Eddie hunt. “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”
No Eddie under the kitchen table, no Eddie behind the bench seat’s two small throw pillows. No Eddie under the kitchen sink, no Eddie under the bathroom sink.
I trod down the three steps to the bedroom . . . and found pieces of paper strewn everywhere. White bits on the floor, white bits on the bunks, white bits magically stuck to the walls.
“Eddie!” I shrieked. “What have you done?”
I crouched down to pick up two crumpled sheets of paper that looked largely intact. Underneath was Eddie, sleeping in a meat loaf shape. When the light hit his face, he blinked, yawned, and rolled over onto his side, purring.
“You are a horrible cat,” I said, scratching him behind the ears. “And as soon as I think up a suitable punishment, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Mrr,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at me intently.
“Oh. Right.” I placed the piece of cheese directly under his chin. “This is for you.”
He didn’t even sniff at it. Instead, he continued to look at me with an unpleasantly direct gaze.
“Cut that out.” I put my hand over his eyes. “You know I can’t think when you do that.”
“Mrr.” He jerked his head away.
“Yeah, to you, too.” I knelt and started gathering up his mess. “What did you destroy, anyway?” Since the boat didn’t have a second cabin, I used the second bunk as office space. Laptop in the middle, printer on a bed tray behind the laptop, papers for filing on the right, bills to pay on the left. But what Eddie had shredded was neither.
“Huh. I thought I’d thrown these away.” It was the papers I’d printed when I was trying to find a genealogical link between me and Caroline Grice. “Wasted effort,” I told a recumbent Eddie. “I found a better way to talk to her.”
Of course, that way had ended up with her accusing Aunt Frances of Stan’s murder.
He flopped down onto the two intact sheets of paper. “Mrrrrowww!”
“Chill a little, will you? No need to scare the neighbors.” I reached to gather in the biggest bits of Eddified paper. Mr. Ed scrambled to his feet, stalked to a small pile of clawed-up paper, turned to face me, and sat in the middle of it.
“Fine,” I said. “Your work, your toy. But just until bedtime.”
“Mrroww.”
“Back at you.” I snatched the unwanted cheese offering from the floor and went to make dinner.
Cats.
Chapter 12
After I left the library the next day, I strolled down the sidewalks outside the gallery and loitered long enough to see Caroline walk out the door. I’d called the gallery earlier and Lina had told me she was there and when she’d likely be leaving.
“Caroline,” I called, hurrying up to her while trying to look as if I weren’t hurrying. Short people have this down to a science. It’s all in the arms.
“Minnie.” She smiled politely. “How are you this evening?”