Herc prowled the computer area, twining in and out around the carrels, sniffing each cardboard box.
“Okay. Are you ready to go?” I said.
He looked back at me, then started purposefully across the library. “Hercules, where are you going?” I said. He ignored me.
I hurried after the cat, but when I bent to scoop him up he darted away. Only one of the large sheets of plastic that Will Redfern’s men had hung was still in place. It was a blurry wall on one side of the door to the storage area/someday-to-be meeting room. The heavy paneled door was closed and locked and the space was marked off with yellow police tape.
“Don’t you even think about it,” I called.
Nonchalantly, Hercules walked past the police cordon toward the door.
“Hercules, come back here right now,” I said sharply.
All I got for an answer was a low, rumbly “Meow.”
“C’mon, puss,” I coaxed. “Time to go.”
His attention was focused completely on the heavy wooden door.
“You are never going to eat another spoonful of Tubby’s yogurt in your life if you don’t get over here right now,” I said.
He tossed a quick glance back over his shoulder but didn’t move. Okay, so the no-yogurt part was a bluff. Why was I standing on one side of a strip of plastic yellow tape when I could just duck underneath it and grab the cat? No alarm bells were going to go off. Detective Gordon wasn’t going to rappel down from the ceiling and arrest me.
Still, I couldn’t help checking around—for what, I didn’t know—before I ducked under the tape.
“C’mere, you,” I said, bending down for the little black-and-white cat, who walked out of my reach, through the closed door in front of us, and disappeared.
9
Slant Brush Knee
My knees started to shake. I sat down. Hard. Hercules had vanished. He hadn’t darted past me. He hadn’t run around the corner. He’d walked through a solid wooden door just as if it wasn’t there. I could see it again in my head without closing my eyes. He’d vanished through that door and it was almost as though there was a faint pop as the end of his tail disappeared.
I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. “Be there,” I whispered. I opened my eyes again. No cat.
Leaning forward, I laid my hand against the door. It was solid. I felt all over the panel, pushing at the curved wood. Maybe there was some kind of secret opening. Maybe Hercules had activated a hidden panel. Maybe the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew would show up. The door was thick and unyielding.
“Hercules,” I called. “C’mon, puss. Where are you?”
There was silence and then a faint “Meow” from the other side of the closed door.
He was in there. Somehow he was in there. I grabbed the doorknob. Locked. I twisted the knob in frustration. Of course it was locked. The room was part of a murder investigation. And I’d just been trying to get inside. I yanked my hand away from the door like it was suddenly on fire.
Crap on toast! Now my fingerprints were all over the door. I used the hem of my T-shirt to rub the doorknob. Then I dropped to my knees and polished the bottom section of the door where I’d looked for some kind of hidden access panel.
I caught a bit of my reflection in the brass kick panel and realized what I was doing. “You’re nuts,” I said aloud, sitting back on my heels.
I shouldn’t have touched the door at all. I took a couple of deep breaths. I should call the police, I realized. How else was I going to get Hercules out? Then I thought, Oh, sure, call Detective Gordon and tell him my cat just walked through the door into the room. No, that won’t make me look like a nutcase.
Was that what was wrong? Was I crazy? I remembered a psych prof in first year telling the class that if you could ask the question, then you weren’t. Of course, three-quarters of the time he came to class in his pajama bottoms.
Then I remembered how Owen had seemed to just materialize on Gregor Easton’s head, just the way he’d suddenly seemed to appear in midleap, chasing that bird in the backyard.
I couldn’t breathe. Was it possible? Did the cats have some kind magical abilities? I pressed my head to my knees and made myself take several shaky breaths. Okay, no climbing on the crazy bus, I told myself. I was tired. I needed glasses. There was a rational explanation for all of this.
I leaned close to the door and called Hercules again.
Nothing.
I could picture him on the other side of the door, one ear twitching at the sound of his name. I also knew he wasn’t coming out until he felt like it.
I pulled the crystal Ruby had given me out of my shirt. If there was any negative energy around, maybe the crystal would keep it away. Then I shifted into a sitting position on the floor, wrapped my arms around my knees and waited. And waited.
Maybe five minutes went by, although it seemed a lot longer. Then I felt . . . something I couldn’t define. It was as if the air around the door suddenly thickened and pushed against me, the way water pushes against your hand if you try to press it over the end of a garden hose.
And then Hercules walked through the door as if there wasn’t any door there at all. He blinked and gave me an Oh, you’re still here look. I grabbed him in case he got the idea to take another look inside the room.
“You are in so much trouble,” I said sternly, heading for the steps.
He ducked his head. Translation: No, I’m not.
“That isn’t going to work,” I said, shifting him to my other arm so I could open the office door. Herc tilted his head to one side and looked, wide-eyed, at me. “Don’t bother with any of that I’m-so-cute stuff,” I said. I bent my face very close to his. “It’s. Not. Working.”
He licked my nose.
I pushed the door closed with my hip and set the cat on the floor. Closing my eyes for a moment, I rubbed the space between my eyes. It felt like something in my head had twisted into a pretzel, trying to make sense out of what I’d seen. I blew out a breath and opened my eyes. Herc was watching me as though I was the one who’d done something bizarre. I dropped into my desk chair and he immediately jumped onto my lap.
“How did you do that?” I asked. “Is there a kitty version of ‘abracadabra’? Do you click your back paws together or wiggle your whiskers?” I was asking a cat how he walked through a solid door. Maybe I was losing my mind.
I stroked the top of Herc’s head. What if the police weren’t finished in the room? Could the cat have left any DNA or hair behind? I felt a knot clench in my stomach to match the one pressing behind my eyes. He was a cat. How could he not leave hair behind?
And Will Redfern had been using that space for storage for weeks. It was a messy, dusty space. Would the police find paw prints?
Or worse?
I scratched the side of Herc’s face so he’d turn toward me. “Please tell me you didn’t hack up anything in there?” I said.
He looked at me, almost . . . smugly, nudged my hand away with a push of his head, then bent over my hand and spat out a small green glass bead.
My mouth went dry. I stared at the tiny glass sphere. There were a few threads caught on it. Hercules had found that in the storage room. How had it ended up there? Before the damaged floor in the room had been repaired, the baseboards had been pulled off and the tile had been steam cleaned. It had been clean enough to eat off of. Literally. And I couldn’t picture any of the burly workmen wearing anything with tiny, green glass beads. Had Hercules found something the police missed?
“How did you get this?” I said. He jumped off my lap and stood in front of the window. He seemed to be studying the wall. After a moment he started scratching at the edge of the trim—where the old wood met the floor—with one paw.