“You’re not late,” Abigail said. “It’s only five to.”
Susan pushed through the door behind us; her topknot, secured precariously with two bendy straws, waved at us like the top of a bobblehead doll. “I thought I was late,” she wheezed, half out of breath.
“You’re fine,” I said, flipping on the lights. Mia headed for the book drop without even being asked. She was turning out to be the most conscientious student intern I’d ever worked with. Abigail crossed her arms and squinted at the bag Susan was carrying.
“What’s in the bag?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows and grinning.
Susan swung it from side to side with a grin of her own. “Eric’s experimenting again. Cheese and bacon muffins.”
Abigail’s smile got wider. “You do know that I love your husband, don’t you?” She put one hand over her heart. “I seriously love him.”
Susan started for the stairs, shifting the bag up onto her shoulder. “He snores,” she said dryly.
Abigail followed her. “Music to my ears,” she said.
“He leaves his dirty socks all over the house.”
“I would be honored to pick them up and wash them,” Abigail countered.
“He has belly button lint. Lots of it.” They were headed up the steps then and I didn’t hear Abigail’s response, but I pretty much knew what it was going to be. They’d done this routine before.
It was a busy morning. I did a presentation to a group of seniors about the library’s e-lending program and got my notes ready for an upcoming meeting with the library board, fortified by one of Eric’s muffins that, incredibly, tasted even better than it smelled.
Unlike a lot of small-town libraries, we were doing well, but that was only because Everett Henderson had funded the building’s renovation as a gift to the town. Now that the building looked so good, I was determined to keep it running well.
Maggie brought the truck back right after lunch. “Thank you,” she said, giving me a quick hug. “I have a meeting, but I’ll see you tonight at class.”
Oren showed up about midafternoon, and Abigail and I walked around the library grounds with him, looking for the best place to put a raised planter box. Abigail had had the idea to start a small garden with the story time kids in the spring. Oren was going to build the box now so planting could start as soon as the snow was gone and the ground had thawed.
Abigail explained her idea and Oren listened and nodded, asking a few questions and making a couple of suggestions. Once we settled on the best place for the planter, Abigail went back inside. I held the end of Oren’s metal tape while he measured and made notations on the tiny sketch he’d drawn in the small black-covered notebook he kept in his shirt pocket.
“I should have a drawing for you in a couple of days,” he said. “And some idea of what it’s going to cost.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I’m sorry about this morning.” He pulled off his cap and raked his fingers back through his sun-bleached hair.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I was here in time. Did Marcus keep you very long?”
Oren shook his head. “No. I got the feeling he doesn’t think that knife really means anything.”
I brushed some dried grass off of my pants. “Why do you say that?”
He shrugged and fingered the brim of his cap. “He asked me twice how sure I was it wasn’t there when we were setting up the tent.”
“It wasn’t,” I said.
His gaze narrowed. “You found . . . the body, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “I did. And something else that turned out not to be important. There wasn’t any knife stuck in the ground there. I’m certain of it.”
“It was probably just kids or someone goofing around in there.”
“Probably,” I agreed.
Oren left with a promise that he’d get back to me in the next few days, and I went inside again.
Hercules was sitting on one of the Adirondack chairs in the backyard when I came around the side of the house after work. “What are you doing out here?” I said. He squinted up at the big maple and meowed. I leaned over and scooped him into my arms. “Is Professor Moriarty back?” I asked.
The grackle seemed to think Herc should sit somewhere other than the small wooden bench under the maple tree and dive-bombed the cat to make its point. Herc had pretty fast paws, and more than once he’d almost grabbed the bird. That hadn’t dissuaded it at all.
I’d thought that maybe the grackle had a nest in the tree, and once the babies were gone it would give up on trying to chase the cat, but so far that hadn’t happened. Hercules made a point of sitting on the bench at least once a day, and the bird, for its part, made at least one low-flying pass over the cat’s head whenever they were both in the yard, with appropriate sound effects from both sides. Both the grackle and the cat seemed to know how to hold a grudge.
One of these days one of them was going to win. I still wasn’t sure which one to put my money on.
“How was the rest of your day?” I asked as I carried Hercules into the house. He muttered and murped the whole way, so I guessed it had been busy. I set him on the kitchen floor, hung up my sweater and put my briefcase on one of the chairs.
The basement door opened and Owen appeared. He had the end of my favorite purple scarf in his mouth. I’d been looking for the thing for more than a week. He dragged the scarf across the floor and dropped it at my feet, looking up at me with a self-satisfied expression on his gray face.
I picked up the length of woven fabric. “Thank you,” I said. I reached down and patted the top of his head. “I searched everywhere for this. It didn’t enter my mind to check in the basement.” Owen ducked his head. “You don’t have any idea how this scarf ended up down there, do you?”
His furry head dropped even lower over his paws, as though they were suddenly the most fascinating appendages he’d ever seen.
“That’s what I thought,” I said.
I filled the boys in on Oren finding the knife inside the tent. Mostly I just wanted to say everything out loud to see if it made any more sense than when I just rolled what had happened around in my head.
“The knife wasn’t there when you found the button,” I told Owen. He was trying to snag part of a Funky Chicken that was poking out from under the stove and lifted his head only long enough to murp his agreement.
“Oren thinks it was probably just kids goofing around.” I picked up my fork and then set it back down again. “You know, I can see the attraction of sneaking into the tent for a look around, but what was the point of sticking that knife or whatever it is in the ground? What kid carries something like that around?”
Hercules had been carefully washing his face. He gave one last pass behind his right ear; then he walked over to the coat hooks, jumped in the air and with one swipe of his paw pulled down the scarf that his brother had brought up from the basement. He grabbed one end with his teeth and dragged it across the floor to me. He gave me what I would have called a pointed look if he’d been a person and not a cat, and then he went into the living room.