I gave her a crooked smile. “You bet,” I said.
* * *
After I’d dried and put away the last fork from dinner, I hung the dish towel on its wooden rod and went to see what Aunt Frances was doing.
I found her sitting on the end of the couch, her long legs out in front of her, a blanket and a book on her lap. I flopped on the couch across from her and tipped my head to see what she was reading. The First 20 Minutes, by Gretchen Reynolds.
It was a book on exercise, a very odd choice of reading material for my aunt. As far as I knew, she’d never exercised in her life. She stayed active with housework and gardening and spent a lot of time on her feet, but I couldn’t make my brain visualize her in running shorts.
She turned a page. “I like to know what I’m missing,” she said. “And from what I’ve been reading, I’m not missing much.”
Personally, I enjoyed working up a sweat every now and then, but I’d once heard Aunt Frances say that perspiration meant you should stop working so hard. I was pretty sure she was joking, but I also wasn’t sure I wanted to find out and remove all doubt.
I kicked off my shoes and tucked my short legs up underneath me. “I’m surprised Eddie isn’t on your lap.”
“He was,” Aunt Frances said, “but I think my choice of reading material disturbed him. He abandoned me a few minutes ago.”
There was an odd thump, thump, thump noise. Frowning, I turned, trying to pinpoint its origin. “What’s that?”
Aunt Frances flipped another page. “It started soon after your cat left me, so your guess has to be better than mine.” She looked at me over the top of the book. “Do you have a guess?”
We sat there listening to the nonrhythmic thumping. “Not a clue,” I said. “Five bucks says it involves paper products.”
My friend Rafe and I regularly made five-dollar bets on everything from the price of a cup of coffee in Australia to the date the last bit of ice on Janay Lake melted. And I suddenly realized it had been a while since I’d seen Rafe. Since he was a principal, this often happened when school started, but it was almost Thanksgiving.
“No bet,” Aunt Frances said. “I think he’s in the bathroom.”
Where there were all sorts of paper products available for shredding purposes. And “shred” was indeed the word; Eddie didn’t just yank the toilet paper off the holder; he ripped great paper chunks off it all the way down to the core. If there was a newspaper or a magazine handy, he sank his claws into the middle and dragged them out to the edge. And he didn’t just claw at the top tissue that poked out of a box; he reached inside with his slinky paws and pulled out as many small pieces of tissue as he could.
Aunt Frances put her book down as I stood. “Why do you think he shreds that stuff?” she asked. “Is he trying to teach you a lesson?”
I snorted. “If he is, the only thing I’m learning is to be grateful that he hasn’t started ripping up books.”
But as I walked down the hall, getting ever closer to the thumping noise, I wondered. What, exactly, did Eddie get out of clawing and biting apart paper products? Was he sharpening his claws? Was he acting out some kitty aggression?
“Or,” I said, walking into the bathroom, “do you just like making a mess?” The large room was painted in periwinkle blue from the waist up and was white beadboard from the waist down. A Hoosier cabinet held towels and soaps and various Up North memorabilia that the summer boarders had accumulated over the years, but the room’s focal point was the biggest claw-foot bathtub I’d ever seen in my life.
Eddie’s head popped up over the edge of the tub.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Mrr,” he said, and dropped back down.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I eyed the small stack of magazines on the corner of the Hoosier cabinet’s counter. All were intact. “What do you have in there?” I walked closer. “Because if you’ve taken some of those skipping stones from the jar over here, Aunt Frances is going to have your hide. Those things will chip the porcelain something fierce.”
As I neared, I realized that the sound was more like a roll . . . thump . . . roll . . . thump . . . roll. “Eddie,” I said, looking down, “if you’re not the weirdest cat on the planet, I don’t want to meet any who are weirder.”
My furry friend ignored me and continued to thump a rubber ball against the tub. He’d whack it with his paw, sending it rolling across the tub’s floor, watch it thump against the tub wall, then watch it roll back toward him.
The small red, white, and blue ball had been a giveaway to kids during Chilson’s annual Fourth of July parade, and, until recently, it had been part of the Hoosier cabinet’s memorabilia collection. How a cat could have moved it from the cabinet to the tub was another thing I probably didn’t want to know.
Eddie batted the ball one more time, then looked up at me.
“You know,” I said, “if you don’t pay attention, that ball’s going to—”
The ball thumped Eddie in the foot. He jumped high and fast, his tail fluffing up to three times its normal size.
I shook my head, returned to the living room, and reported to Aunt Frances.
“Hmm.” My aunt got a faraway look on her face. “That tub. For years I’ve thought about enclosing it with a beadboard surround. Lots of room for the bubble bath bottles and soaps. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Eddie jumped up onto the couch, the ball in his mouth. “Mrr,” he said, dropping the ball onto my lap.
Aunt Frances looked at him. I looked at him.
“Does he want to play fetch?” she asked.
I picked up the ball and tossed it underhanded across the room. It bounced and eventually rolled to a stop in the doorway to the dining room.
Eddie plopped down, his back to me.
“I’m guessing no on the fetch thing,” I said.
“Mrr,” Eddie said.
“Glad I could help,” I told him.
“Mrr.”
“Anytime.”
“Mrr.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said.
“Mrr.”
“Not a problem.”
“Mrr.”
“That’s what—”
“Shhh!” Aunt Frances said. “I’m trying to read over here.”
“Sorry,” I said meekly.
“Mrr,” Eddie said quietly.
“Isn’t that what I said?” I asked.
“Mrr.”
“Well, sure, but—”
With a sigh, Aunt Frances got up. “When you two are done playing Abbott and Costello, let me know. I’ll be in the bathtub.”
I grinned at Eddie, and I could have sworn he grinned back.
Chapter 11
I was at my desk the next morning, busy with work schedule readjustments of the “I’ll work every Saturday in December if I can have the day after Christmas off” variety, when my phone rang.
“Minnie, you need to come upstairs,” Stephen said.
I looked at the ceiling. “Okay. When—”
“Now,” he barked, and the phone went silent.
“Huh,” I said, replacing the receiver. The last Wednesday morning of the month had been the library’s board meeting time since there’d been a library. I got along with all the board members and willingly appeared before them when I requested things, from a new copy machine to the bookmobile, but never once had I been summoned.
I slugged back the last of my coffee as I glanced at yesterday’s postcard from Kristen. Key West: shorts, flip-flops, tank top. Chilson: insulated boots, down coat, wool hat, lined mittens. Duh. Somehow this reminded me to check for Eddie hair. I picked the most visible ones off my clothes and headed upstairs, trying not to guess why my presence was being requested, and not doing a very good job.