Marcus came to stand beside me, leaning over to see where I was pointing.
“I think it’s a button,” I said. It looked as though it had fallen on the grass and then been stepped on, pushing it down into the ground. It was metal, and at first glance, it looked to be vintage. Handmade, maybe.
He bent down for a better look. He didn’t say anything, but I caught an almost imperceptible nod of his head. Then he straightened and felt for his phone.
I reached for Owen. “Good job on the button or whatever it is,” I whispered. “Don’t think you’re not in trouble, though.” He rubbed the side of his face against my neck and shifted in my arms so he could watch Marcus.
Once Marcus had finished his call, he looked at me. “You can take him outside,” he said, inclining his head toward the cat while his eyes were already drifting back to the tent wall.
I pointed at the small patch of torn-up grass and earth. “Do you think that button belongs to the person who killed Mike Glazer?”
That got me all of his attention. “I didn’t say anyone killed Mike Glazer,” he said. He hadn’t, but I knew him well enough to hear the tiniest edge in his voice, and I knew that just because he hadn’t said it didn’t mean I wasn’t right.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “Owen and I are just going to wait out there for you.” I’d said I was going to stay out of his case and I was, even though it seemed as though the cats were on a mission to drag me into it.
I used my shoulder to nudge the tent flap out of the way, and then I ducked under the yellow tape and stood on the grass next to the sidewalk. Owen twisted in my arms.
“If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, don’t,” I warned, but all he did was shift around until his paws were on my shoulder and he could watch the tent.
Marcus came out in a minute or two. He stood next to me, feet apart, hands in his pockets. “Start from the beginning. Tell me what happened.”
I did, starting from when I’d stepped out of the River Arts building. Marcus’s eyebrows rose when I explained how Owen had figured out how to slide the zipper pull from the inside of the bag. The cat, in turn, seemed to pull himself up a little straighter in my arms, as if he were proud of his ingenuity—which he probably was.
“You can go, Kathleen,” Marcus said when I finished. “If I need to know anything else, I’ll call you. You’ll be at the library?”
I glanced at my watch. There wasn’t time to take Owen home. “Yes,” I said.
He reached out and touched my arm as I started for the curb. “Thanks for calling me. You could have just gone in and grabbed Owen.”
I made a face and shook my head. “No, I couldn’t.”
I got a smile for that. “I’ll see you tonight, if I don’t talk to you before then,” he said.
A police van pulled in behind Marcus’s SUV.
“Okay,” I said. I made sure I had a secure grip on Owen, nodded to the two officers who had gotten out of the van and crossed the street.
The cat carrier was still sitting on the pavement by the back door of the studio building. I bent down and snagged the strap with one finger. Once we were next to the truck, I set it down again, got out my keys and unlocked the driver’s side. Then I put Owen on the seat. He walked across to the passenger side and sat, the picture of a well-behaved cat. I set the bag beside him and got in. “Why did you do that?” I asked
He meowed and scraped a paw on the seat cover.
“Yes, I know you might have found a clue,” I said. “You also trespassed on a crime scene.”
Two wide eyes stared blankly at me. Either he didn’t understand what I’d just said to him, or he didn’t care.
I was betting on the latter.
8
At the library, I took Owen straight up to my office. He climbed out of the bag onto my desk, shook himself and gave me a pointed look. I knew what he was looking for.
“Ruby already gave you a treat,” I said, trying to keep my tone stern. “And after what you did, you should be on bread and water.”
Defiantly, he pawed at the top of my desk. So he was going to try righteous indignation instead of cute and adorable.
“Just because you might, might have found some kind of clue doesn’t mean you weren’t wrong,” I said, lowering my voice because I didn’t want Mary or Susan to come in and hear me arguing with a cat.
Owen stared at me. I glared back at him. “You drive me crazy sometimes,” I said after a couple of minutes of the eyeball-to-eyeball routine. I sat on the edge of the desk, and he came and put his front paws on my lap. I stroked the top of his head. “I’m serious,” I said. “What if someone had seen you disappear? How would I have explained that to Marcus?”
Owen lifted a paw and swatted one of the buttons on my sweater.
“That did look like it could have been a button you dug up,” I said. “Doesn’t mean it was dropped by whoever killed Mike Glazer.”
Owen made a low murp. “I know,” I said, scratching behind his right ear. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t, either.” I leaned over so my face was inches from Owen’s soft gray one. “You’re making it really hard to stay out of Marcus’s case, you know.”
I gave Owen some water, a couple of sardine crackers and an emphatic warning not to leave my office. Then I locked the door for good measure. I was back downstairs just as Susan and Mary arrived. I let them in and followed them up to the staff room. “Oh, before I forget, Owen is in my office,” I said.
Susan pushed her glasses up her nose. “Because?” she prompted.
“Because he was over posing for Ruby. She’s going to paint him. It’s for the Cat People fund-raiser.”
“I thought she was painting Hercules,” Mary said, pouring water into the coffeemaker.
“She’s doing both of them.” I got the coffee out of the cupboard and handed it to her.
“That’s really nice,” Susan said, shrugging off her jacket and pulling on a cropped black cardigan. She stopped with one arm half in a sleeve. “I have chicken salad, if he’s hungry. He probably wouldn’t like the arugula or the black olives, but the chicken isn’t too spicy.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Owen’s fine. Ruby had some organic fish crackers for him.” I didn’t bother telling her I’d just recently learned that Owen apparently loved black olives.
Susan and I spent most of the morning unpacking two boxes of books that had been donated to the library—a mix of children’s picture books, graphic novels and reference books, including a huge atlas and a book of star charts—and entering them into our system. I called Abigail at home to talk about plans for a Halloween puppet show and installed a new math game on the two computers we kept reserved for kids.
As far as I could tell, Owen spent the morning napping in the sunshine on my desk chair. That’s where I found him after we’d closed down the library at one o’clock. I knew that didn’t mean he hadn’t nosed all over my office, just that he hadn’t left any obvious evidence. There was a good chance that sometime next week I’d find a clump of hair behind a book or in one of my desk drawers. I was glad that we closed early on Saturday. How much mischief would he have been able to get into if he’d spent the whole day alone in my office?