Library Cat Magical Mysteries Box Set (Books 1-3), page 24
“I hope not,” Rend said. “But if he does, you know who to call.” Rend stalked away down the street, his boots thudding on the hot concrete.
And they say women are the emotional ones.
Chapter 5
When I got home, Sophie was pleading with Kong. “Hold on,” she said. “I’m looking online. It says to use one milligram per kilogram of bodyweight.”
“I’m well aware,” Kong said.
“Get on the scale so we can weigh you,” she said.
“I know exactly how much I weigh,” he said. “I’ve been… ahh… ahh… ah-choo!”
“My dad gets allergies,” Sophie said. “He takes a hot shower to rinse off the pollen and unclog his sinuses.”
I crept inside the house so I could eavesdrop. It might have made me a bad person to listen for my amusement, but for once, it was nice to let someone else deal with Kong’s shenanigans.
“I’ll step on the scale before I step foot inside a shower,” Kong said.
“It’s medicinal,” Sophie said.
“I am perfectly clean, thank you very much,” he said. Then sneezed again.
“You got snot all over me,” Sophie said.
“You are in my way of the medicine cabinet,” he said. “I am exactly ten and a half pounds, which translates to five milligrams.”
“Kong,” Sophie said sternly. “I just carried you in from the backyard. If you’re ten pounds, then we transported to a planet with a higher gravity than earth. You’re twenty pounds if you’re an ounce. Ten milligrams.”
“Child, are you trying to drug me? You want to knock me out so you can dress me up in human clothes and take photographs for the internet?” He sneezed three times in quick succession. “I am wise to you.”
“Then step on the scale and prove me wrong,” Sophie said. “Twenty pounds minimum.”
As amusing as this was, I couldn’t let Sophie suffer any longer. “Okay, nobody’s drugging anybody,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Thank heavens you’re here, Francescza,” Kong said. He trotted out of the bathroom and jumped onto the couch. “She tried to poison me.”
“It was a potion,” Sophie said. “A cooling potion to counteract the inflammation.”
“What’s wrong, Kong?” I asked.
“That infernal grass-based cat litter is utter chaos on my allergies.” I could see from here that his eyes were red and glassy. He even sounded congested.
“Allergies are when your immune system goes haywire,” Sophie said. “The cooling potion calms it down. But he refused. He said there was Benadryl in the bathroom.”
“And since I was too smart to fall for the poison,” Kong said, “she’s trying to drug me with a Benadryl overdose. I don’t know what nefarious things she’s got planned, but one thing’s for sure. Ah-choo. She wants me to pass out so she can take advantage of me. I’ve seen her WitchTube search history. It’s loaded with cat videos. I’ll probably wake up wearing a birthday hat and sunglasses and fifty thousand likes. But I will not allow her to make a mockery of me.”
“Kong, with all due respect, you’re at least twenty pounds.”
“The two of you are in league!” he said. He darted out of the room and into the small space between the television stand and the wall.
“It’s dusty back there,” Sophie said. “It’s going to make your allergies worse.”
“No it… ah-choo!”
“Just leave him,” I told Sophie.
“I wasn’t trying to poison or drug him,” she said.
“I’ve lived with Kong long enough to take your side on this one,” I said. “You really have a cooling potion that works?”
“On little things like allergies,” she said. “I was messing around one day when my dad was lying on the couch, moaning and sneezing in equal quantities. I researched the biology of allergic response and based my potion off what I thought would calm it down.”
“That’s amazing,” I said. “You came up with it all by yourself?”
“Well, Mom helped a little with the measurements. I didn’t know what a dram was.”
“I’m really impressed,” I said. “When you start at the Academy, you can work with Professor Buttonwood if you’re interested in potions. She’s a genius.”
“Maybe,” Sophie said.
“But whatever you do, don’t team up with the Jibbleson Sisters. The three of you together will blow up the town.”
- - -
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I asked Fintan. He pulled his car out of the parking spot and back onto the road. We’d eaten dinner at a barbecue restaurant in town, and despite washing my hands, my fingertips still smelled like hickory.
“It’s a surprise,” he said. “Just like watching you eat an entire rack of baby back ribs.”
“You thought I was going to get a garden salad at a barbecue joint?” I asked. “I can think of no worse torture.”
“Maybe,” he said. “If you wanted to be ladylike.”
I couldn’t help let out a laugh. “There're times for decorum and manners,” I said. “But a barbecue joint is definitely not one of them.”
“Can’t argue with that,” he said. We only drove a few blocks before he parked in front of the town’s hardware store.
“Are you going to buy me a new socket set?” I asked. “I had my reservations about tonight, but it turns out you really know how to treat a lady.”
He put the car in park and turned off the ignition, but didn’t open the door just yet. “If you’re in need of a socket set, then your wish is my command. But I thought you’d be more interested in talking to the owner.”
“Why?” I asked. I racked my brains trying to remember who owned this place. I could imagine his face—a tall man in his seventies, gnarled hands of a woodworker, always wearing overalls. But I couldn’t think of his name.
“Phil Towersmith,” Fintan said. “He came to me a few weeks ago. He wanted me to write an article.”
“We’re going to interview him?” I asked.
“Sure,” Fintan said.
“What’s the article going to be about?” I asked. The baby back ribs had been delicious. Smoky and pink and flaky. They were also settling like a brick in my stomach. If I had to listen to a half hour of Tool Talk I was going to fall asleep.
“He came to the Bugle office and demanded that I write a tell-all. He had a huge secret that was going to be front page news.”
“Don’t tell me. He’s really the Philip that they named the screwdrivers after?” I asked.
“You’re closer to the truth than you think,” Fintan said. “Do you have secret mind-reading powers?”
Just secret voidwitch powers, I thought. “Not that I know of.”
“He claimed that before settling in town and opening up the hardware store, he’d served in the Rogue Rangers. He’d been friends with Walter Crabtree too, when they both lived in Devil’s Nosehair, Texas. Phil claims he was the real-life inspiration for Crabtree’s series of books. He said that they swapped stories while drinking at the local bar, and several of these stories found their way into Crabtree’s books. He was irate. I’m glad he came to my office because if we’d been in the hardware store where he had easy access to mallets and pipe wrenches, there’s no telling how it would have ended.”
“He was that mad?” I asked.
“He was beyond mad. He was already red-faced by the time he made it to my desk. Mid-rant, he was purple.”
“You think he could have killed Walter,” I said.
“He’s got an excellent motive,” Fintan said. “Not only did Crabtree make a boatload of money off Phil’s stories, but Phil felt betrayed. Like Walter had been pumping him for material all that time.”
“So you took me here on our date to interrogate a murder suspect?” I asked.
“You game?”
“I maintain what I said earlier. You definitely know how to treat a lady.”
We got out of the car and went inside the hardware store, cleverly called Sawtooth and Nail. Fintan opened the glass door for me. The glass was plastered with several different stickers advertising the owner’s philosophical beliefs.
Phil was behind the counter working on something. He’d mounted a vise on the sales counter and had a length of pipe clamped inside while he filed down one end. “Fintan,” Phil said. “Are you ready to write that article yet?”
“I can,” Fintan said. “But it will make you sound guilty now that Crabtree is dead.”
“I don’t care,” Phil said. “Because I didn’t do it.” He looked up from his filing for the first time and noticed me. “Who’s this, your secretary?”
I was about to answer when Fintan said I was an apprentice. “You’re the librarian?” Phil asked. “You ask me, it’s better to get your head out of those nonsense fairytales and grounded in reality.”
“That’s why I’m apprenticing at the newspaper,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“Huh? Speak up. Sounds like your jaw’s wired shut.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just so excited to get my first byline on the newspaper. Isn’t that right, Fintan?”
He smiled and rolled his eyes. “Sure,” he said. “As long as you get two thousand words on my desk by seven in the morning.”
“You run a tight ship,” Phil said. “Just like old Sergeant McCreary. Or you might know him from the books as Sergeant McLeary. That old fraud Crabtree couldn’t be bothered to come up with a better fake name. What a hack.”
“So you were in the Rogue Rangers?” I asked.
“Sure was,” he said. He pulled up his sleeve to show his tattoo of the Rangers emblem. The Rogue Rangers were a real-life branch of supernatural law enforcement. While the werewolves specialized in small-town crimes because their intimate knowledge of a town’s unique smells, the Rogue Rangers were bounty hunters who traveled to supernatural towns looking for fugitives. I thought back to what Hortensia had said, that they were not very skilled and she’d evaded their capture several times. “Once that first book came out, I went straight to a lawyer.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“You’re not writing this down?” Phil asked.
“Um, sure,” I said. I rummaged in my purse, but the only paper I had was a paperback copy of Rogue Rangers and the Conestoga Caper.
“I’ll take notes,” Fintan said. He produced a stubby pencil and a small wirebound notebook from the back pocket of his faded jeans.
Phil told us numerous wild tales about how his unit in the Rogue Rangers had captured criminals, had adventures and saved the day, time and time again. Honestly, his stories did sound more like the plots to paperback novels than real life.
As he spoke, I remembered why Phil seemed familiar. His wife had health problems and was a resident of Saguaro Estates. He could have easily been there and given Walter a poisoned donut.
“And look at this,” Phil said. He reached under the counter and brought out an old shoebox. He took the lid off and started pulling out yellowing old papers. “This is a receipt from 1975 when we drank a pitcher of Pentacle Pilsner and I told him the story of how my unit saved the governor’s niece. And this is a picture of us from 1976 when our team won second place in the bowling league.”
“This is hardly proof,” Fintan said.
“That’s what the no-good lawyer told me,” Phil said. He picked up his file and began working on the pipe again. He was really going to town on it, taking out his anger on the piece of metal. If he wasn’t careful, the pipe would end up as short and stubby as Fintan’s pencil.
I could see this guy having motive and opportunity. But poisoning didn’t seem like his style. Maybe it was the fact that he was handling a large blunt object, but I couldn’t imagine Phil sitting down with a donut and a jar of arsenic, then sneakily offering it to Walter.
Phil finished up his story and we thanked him. It was almost nine and I had to get Sophie in bed for school tomorrow. “Thanks for a fun-filled evening,” I told Fintan as he drove me back home.
“I wanted to visit Crabtree’s widow too, but it’s too late,” he said.
“She’s a good suspect,” I said. “Conveniently away when her husband died. Didn’t seem to be upset when she found out he was dead.”
“She also inherits everything. All the intellectual property rights to his books and movies. She’s the second wife too. They’ve only been married three years.”
“You’ve done your research,” I said.
“Indeed I have,” he said. “Nothing wrong with small-town reporting. But I always wanted more. I mean, this murder, I can’t stand not knowing who did it, but that’s not why I’m doing this.”
“You want to be the one to figure it out,” I said.
“Exactly. You get it, Francie.”
“Do I really need to give you two thousand words by tomorrow morning?” I asked.
“Only if you want your name on the byline.”
“I think my journalistic debut can wait a little longer,” I said.
Later, when Sophie was asleep and Kong was curled up at the foot of my bed, snoring like a freight train because of his clogged sinuses, I was thinking about all those stories Phil had told us. There was something about his store, though, that stuck in my brain like a popcorn kernel between your teeth. Something important.
But I was too tired. The bony hands of sleep were pulling me under.
When I woke up the next morning, I’d completely forgotten it.
Chapter 6
The next morning, Sophie was giggling at me between bites of her cereal. “What?” I asked.
She put her hand over her mouth, looked down at her bowl and muttered, “Nothing!” She used a sarcastic voice that let me know it was indeed something.
“I’m allowed to go on a date,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything,” she said.
“It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it,” I said. Oh no. I thought I’d be at least in my seventies before I used that line on a kid.
“I’m going to be late for school,” Sophie said. She tilted her bowl to her mouth and drank the last dregs of the milk and then rinsed it in the sink.
“I’ll forgive your giggling since you rinsed your bowl,” I said.
“I was thinking of something funny on TV,” she said.
“Yeah, I bet,” I said.
After I dropped her off at school, I walked down Canal Street, hoping that Penny’s shop would be open. And, no, not so I could get a donut. Because I was concerned about my friend’s wellbeing.
“Someone’s got some spring in their step this morning!” I turned around to see Wren with her tote bag over her shoulder, unlocking the door to Monkey Business.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“It means I hope I’m playing the field like you when I’m your age.”
“Playing the field?” I said. “Sweetie, if you think I’m playing the field, then you must have a very, very depressing love life.”
She winked at me with the one eye that wasn’t covered up by her thick black bangs. “Oh, I almost forgot.”
“You mean you didn’t strike up a conversation in order to make suggestive comments about my love life?” I asked. Truth was, I wasn’t mad at Wren. More like annoyed at small-town life where nothing can stay a secret for longer than fifteen minutes. Nothing except murder, of course.
“That Fintan is a tall, cool drink of water,” Wren said. “You could do worse.”
“We had dinner together, that’s it,” I said. And interrogated a murder suspect.
“Anyway, tell Kong that I got the silica pellet litter that he ordered.”
“Or you can give it to me?” I said. “I am his owner, after all.”
“Owner.” She laughed. “Cute.”
“You know what I mean,” I said.
“Kong wanted to test it out first,” Wren said.
“You mean test it out?”
“Not literally,” she said. “But he said he needed to evaluate the aroma and paw-feel before committing to buy.”
“It’s like he doesn’t realize he’s an animal,” I said.
“That’s what the animals say about us,” Wren said. “Gotta go, though. Tell Kong to come by later today.”
I opened the library, and at ten my half-sister Whitney came in to help shelve books. “Did you get a new moisturizer?” she asked me as she wheeled a cart of books towards the Ancient Mesopotamian Potions section.
“Huh?” I asked.
“You’ve got a glow about you,” she said.
“Good grief,” I said. “No glow. No moisture unless you count my oily t-zone.”
“If you say so,” she said. And I swear I heard her giggling as she walked away.
It was a slow day, and I found myself thinking about Walter’s widow, Patrice. She’d been stoic to a fault, even after being informed of her husband’s death. She could have easily poisoned him—who wouldn’t trustingly accept a donut from their wife? And statistically speaking, wives were most likely to poison their husbands.
If only I had an excuse to talk to her. I didn’t want to go alone, in case she was the murderer. Fintan wanted to talk to her too—I bet we could team up. My cheeks reddened as I realized that what I was feeling towards him might be best described as a Schoolgirl Crush.
I finished up my morning work and then told Whitney to hold down the fort while I went out for lunch. If this went well, I’d be back with plenty of time.
- - -
Fintan met me outside the Scarlet Hedgehog Hotel. “I knew you couldn’t get enough of me,” he said. He took my hand and pulled me close. My breath caught in my throat and if I hadn’t been holding his hand, there was a genuine possibility that I would have fallen down.
Was this swooning?
I’d read about it in books a million times.
Swooning. Knee-buckling. Butterflies in the stomach. And now all these clichés were actually happening in real life.
He leaned in close and gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek. At least, it would have looked chaste to anyone walking down the street.
Inside my secret heart? I was on fire.
