Two Tall Tails (4 page)

“Do you think Eddie would agree to come to the party?” Rebecca asked. “He's so good with children.”

“I think he probably would,” I said, getting up to refill my cup. Now that he didn't have all of Rebecca's attention, Hercules had started nosing around the canvas bag next to her chair.

“Leave that alone,” I said quietly to him.

Hercules immediately sat down, the picture of innocence, but when I turned back to the counter, from the corner of my eye I saw him nudge the bag with his nose once more. I swung around again. “Cut that out!” I said sharply.

“Oh, he can't hurt anything,” Rebecca said.

“You spoil him and Owen,” I said, frowning in mock annoyance at her.

Since my attention was diverted, Hercules decided it would be a good time to give the tote a poke with his paw. That was enough for me. I moved to pick him up just as the bag slid down the chair leg and toppled over. A small plastic baggie fell out. Hercules swatted it with a paw and it skidded across the floor, stopping at my feet.

“Very, very bad,” I said to the cat, who didn't look the slightest bit repentant. I bent down to pick up the baggie. Inside were five chocolate-dipped chocolate chip cookies that I recognized as coming from Fern's Diner. I straightened up and looked inquiringly at Rebecca.

She didn't quite meet my gaze.

“What's going on?” I asked.

There were two spots of color high on her cheekbones. “I don't suppose you would believe that I doesn't know how those cookies got in my bag?” she said. The look on her face reminded me of Owen the last time he'd decapitated a Fred the Funky Chicken and scattered bits of dried catnip all over the living room.

I pointed a finger at Hercules. “There will be consequences.”

He made a soft murp and seemed to shrug, almost as though he were trying to say he didn't really think so.

I sat down again, setting the cookies on the table, and reached over to catch Rebecca's hands in mine. “What's going on?” I asked again.

Rebecca pursed her lips and met my gaze this time. “I'm a weak old woman.”

I shook my head. “You are not old and you most definitely are not weak. You're one of the strongest women—one of the strongest people I know.”

That got me a small smile. “Do you remember me telling you that my doctor wants me to cut back on the sweets a little? And by the way, my mother had a sweet tooth and she ate cookies until the day she died and she was just fine.” Her chin jutted out just a little. I'd seen that defiant pose before.

I waited without speaking. Rebecca cleared her throat. “I guess that isn't really relevant,” she said after a minute. “I'm, uh . . . I'm having a hard time following his instructions.”

“You've been buying cookies at Fern's.” I tapped the baggie with a finger.

She nodded. “I can't make cookies at home. Everett has a nose like a bloodhound. I've been getting half a dozen at a time and . . . having them when I'm not home so he doesn't find out. He'd be so disappointed in me.”

“You can't really believe that,” I said, giving her hands another squeeze and then sitting back in my chair. “That man is bear poop crazy about you. You could go downtown right now and rob the Wells Fargo Bank and Everett would say it was their fault for having all that money inside.”

“Bear poop crazy?” Rebecca said, a smile pulling at her lips.

“Harrison Taylor's description, not mine,” I said. “But the words are accurate.”

Her expression grew serious again. “I'm disappointed in myself, Kathleen.”

“I get it,” I said. “I really do. I've never met a brownie I didn't like.”

“Merow,” Hercules said, adding his two cents to the discussion.

I smiled. “And Hercules would not want to have to give up sardine crackers. He's always trying to find a way to sneak a couple more as it is.” And as simple as that, I knew what had happened.

“You haven't been eating cookies at home, so where have you been eating them?” I asked.

Rebecca blushed again. “I've ducked into the co-op store several times as well as the library. I'm sorry. I promise I didn't touch any books with my sticky fingers.”

Internally, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I got up and put my arms around her shoulders. “How about this weekend we try a couple of cookie recipes with less fat and sugar than what you've been sneaking, cookies even your doctor would approve of. I have a couple of new cookbooks at the library.”

“You are a darling, darling girl,” Rebecca said, leaning her cheek against my arm.

I saw her eye the bag of cookies on the table. I reached over and pushed the plate of fruit closer. “It would probably be better if someone else finished those cookies.”

Right on cue, Hercules meowed loudly. Rebecca laughed as I looked down at the cat and said, “Not you.”

After Rebecca left, I changed for work, packed the last of the chicken and dumplings for lunch—along with Rebecca's cookies—and headed over to Riverarts to tell Maggie what I'd concluded about Rebecca's furtive behavior in the shop.

“I'm sorry,” Maggie said. I'd found her in front of her easel, working on the sketch she'd shown me the day before.

I looked at her, confused. “For what?”

“For getting you mixed up in this. For thinking, even for a moment, Rebecca would have taken anything. Or Susan for that matter.” There was paint on the tip of her index finger and she scraped at it with her thumbnail. “I'm not so sure that Nic could be the thief, either.”

“Maybe there's another explanation.”

Maggie nodded. “I like Nic. Maybe it was just a tourist.” She picked at the paint on her finger again. “I don't like this, thinking the worst of people.”

I tucked a stray strand of hair behind one ear. “I think I've told you before that my mother has an expression that involves”—I made a hurry-up gesture with one hand—“getting on with things or getting off the pot.” My mother, Thea Paulson, was an actress and director, with a group of intensely devoted fans thanks to her appearances on the soap,
The Wild and The Wonderful
. She could be a little dramatic at times, but she was usually right.

Maggie laughed. “You have told me that before and I get it.”

“So why don't we get off the pot and go see if Nic is in his studio so we can put an end to this?”

“Good idea,” she said.

The door to Nic's art studio was open and he was working by the window, cutting some kind of street map out of heavy paper with an Exacto knife. He turned and smiled at us when Maggie knocked. “Hi, what's up?” he asked.

“Did you steal from the store?” Maggie asked before I had time to even move beyond the threshold of the door.

Nic's eyes widened and his mouth came open a little. He swallowed and set his knife down with a tight, precise motion. “What did I do that makes you have to ask that question, and for the record, the answer is no,” he said.

“You were working at the store a couple of days ago,” I said, “and you were acting a little . . . odd.”

His expression changed then. “Yeah, I was.” He looked at Maggie. “I didn't want you to know. Until I was sure.”

“Know what?” she said.

Nic smoothed a hand over his closely shaven head. “I'm still not positive, but I think there might be mice in the store.”

Maggie took a step backward and folded her arms over her midsection like she was wrapping herself in a hug. She was afraid of small, furry creatures—mice, rats, moles, voles, even gerbils and hamsters.

I put a hand on her shoulder. “What makes you think so?” I said.

“You know the display shelves where we have the scarves and the placemats?”

I nodded.

“I was straightening things up and I noticed the end of one of the scarves looked a little bit chewed. And I saw some bits of dried leaves on the same shelf with the placemats.” He cleared his throat. “My dad had a problem with mice in his pawn shop and we saw the same thing. I wanted to be sure, though, before I said anything. If word got around that we had mice in the store . . .” He held up both hands. “I didn't want to say something that would cause the tourists to stop coming, especially if it turned out I was wrong.”

“But you don't think you're wrong,” I said.

Nic shook his head. “Probably not. Sorry.”

Maggie was holding on so tightly to the sleeve of her T-shirt with one hand, I was surprised she hadn't actually ripped a hole in it. “I'm the one who should be sorry,” she began. “I'm sorry for thinking you had . . . I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions.”

Nic held up a hand. “No. I should have told Ruby what I suspected right away.”

I gave Maggie's shoulder a squeeze. “This is fixable,” I said. “I have to go to work in a few minutes, but I'll go home at the end of the day and get a certain furball who will take care of any mice foolish enough to venture into the shop.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Unless you wanted to just get a shovel.” She pressed her lips together but it didn't stop a grin from spreading across her face.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “So not funny,” I said.

Nic's eyes darted between us. “Am I missing something?” he asked.

Maggie's shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter.

“A couple of springs ago there was some major flooding in the downtown,” I said stiffly. “There was a rat in the basement of the store.”

Nic made a face. “What happened?”

Maggie looked at me. “Oh, let me tell him. Please.” Her green eyes were sparkling with mirth.

I wrinkled my nose at her. “Go ahead,” I said, “but the next time you find a rodent using your basement as a swimming pool, you're on your own.”

She grinned at me. “No, I'm not.”

“Somebody tell me,” Nic urged.

Maggie turned sideways so she could see both me and Nic. “Like Kathleen said, there was a lot of flooding in the downtown two springs ago, and there was about four feet of water in the basement at the shop—it was before we got the pump. Kathleen was with me when I went to check things out.”

“And you found a rat?”

Mags nodded. “Floating in the water.” She shuddered.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“I didn't do anything,” Maggie said. “Kathleen scooped the rat out of the water with a snow shovel.”

Nic looked at me. “That was nice,” he said. He still looked confused.

“Oh, it was.” Maggie's gaze darted to me for a moment. “Until she used the shovel like a lacrosse stick and flung the rat at Ruby.”

“That was an accident,” I said, trying not to sound huffy.

“We think Kathleen was some kind of Scottish Highlander in a past life,” Maggie teased. “She was probably very good at the caber toss.” She gave me a sweet and totally fake smile.

Nic held up a hand and looked at me. “Okay. Why did you throw a dead rat at Ruby?”

“Like I said, it was an accident.” I shot a daggers look at Maggie, who was having way too much fun telling the story. “I tossed the rat outside. I didn't even see Ruby.”

I hadn't. The rat had gone whizzing past Ruby's head, just inches from hitting her, much to my embarrassment. She'd been a very good sport about the whole thing. In retrospect, I shouldn't have flung it out on the sidewalk in the first place, but I was trying to get the thing out of the shop, away from Maggie.

Maggie was shaking with laughter now. She gestured at Nic with one hand. “And that's not the best part. The rat wasn't dead.”

Nic frowned. “What?”

“It wasn't
exactly
dead,” I said.

“So it was what, just partly dead?”

That made Maggie laugh harder.

“It was—I don't know—unconscious, stunned.” I pressed a hand to my forehead. I was laughing now, too, because the whole scenario had been just like something out of a Monty Python movie. The rat had zipped by Ruby's head, landed on the sidewalk with an audible splat and then gotten up, shaken itself and scurried away.

Nic turned to Maggie. “Yeah, you definitely wanna get the cat,” he said, deadpan.

Once Maggie got control of herself, she apologized again to Nic.

“Let me know what happens,” he said. “If the cat doesn't catch anything, I can set some traps—the humane kind.” He grinned at me. “Because I don't even know where the snow shovel is.”

Maggie and I walked back up to her studio. She bumped me with her hip. “Are you mad at me because I told that story to Nic?”

“Yes,” I said.

“No you're not,” she retorted. “Because that's one of the things that made Marcus fall for you.”

I stopped and stared at her. “What?”

“He didn't tell you?”

I shook my head. “No. He told you?”

She smiled. “Uh-huh. He said he saw how kind you were.”

“Because I flung what I thought was a dead animal at Ruby?”

Maggie's grinned. “Because you were worried that Ruby might have been hurt and you were worried about the rat, too.” She nudged me again. “I'm glad you didn't go back to Boston.”

I bumped her back. “Me too.”

“So what do we do now?” she said as we started up the steps again.

“First we deal with the furry intruders,” I said, “then we'll find the thief.”

I headed straight up the hill at the end of the day. Owen was waiting by the kitchen door,
almost
as though he knew I was coming for him, which of course he didn't.

“Okay, Fuzz Face,” I said, bending down to pick him up. “Maggie needs you to do rodent patrol at the store.”

“Merow,” he said loudly. Translation: “Let's do it.”

As we drove down to the shop, I explained about the possible mice incursion at the co-op store. Owen listened intently, and when I finished talking, he licked his whiskers. I was pretty sure he knew exactly what was expected of him.