“Mr. Easton, I’m so sorry,” I began. I wasn’t sure whether to check his head for claw marks or rescue Owen from the shelf and stash him in my office.
“A cat?” Easton roared. He glared at Owen. “No wonder this building has vermin. If you believe that mangy, unkempt creature is capable of controlling an infestation of rodents, well, look at that—that thing!” He jabbed his finger in Owen’s direction.
Big mistake. Owen let out a loud yowl of indignation. He hissed at Easton and spat for good measure. Then he jumped to the floor, flicked his tail at the conductor—what I guessed was the kitty version of giving the finger—and stalked away. I needed to get him back in the bag and into my office as quickly as possible, but first I needed to deal with Gregor Easton.
I glanced at Susan, who wouldn’t meet my look. Her lips were twitching. Oh, Susan, please don’t laugh, I thought. It was going to take a lot to soothe Easton’s ruffled feathers without Susan giggling and making things worse. His face was an alarming shade of red and his thick hair was standing on end. I couldn’t see any scratches, so I hoped that meant Owen had kept his claws sheathed.
“Miss Paulson!” Easton’s voice boomed around the small space. “This library is woefully inadequate. Your service is simply not acceptable. There is no Internet connection, despite its being promised. And your selection of major newspapers is lamentable.”
Our newspaper selection? Where had that come from?
He continued. “And you have a vermin problem that you have tried—unsuccessfully, I must point out—to conceal by bringing in an obviously inbred alley cat, which probably spends most of its time rutting with the town population of female felines.”
I took a deep breath. Owen didn’t spend his time chasing female cats. He spent most of his time chasing the birds in the backyard and chewing the head off Fred the Funky Chicken. Information I probably shouldn’t share with Easton. I thought of what my mother’s advice would be in this situation: “Act it, darling. Act it.”
I stepped forward. “Mr. Easton, you have my profound apologies.” He wasn’t the only one who could sound pretentious. “Owen is my cat and he must have climbed into my bag before I left the house. I had no idea. I assure you he wasn’t chasing anything. We don’t have a vermin problem here at the library.” Well, not anymore, we didn’t.
I looked past Easton’s shoulder. There was a blur of movement over by the windows. Please let that be Owen, I prayed silently. Behind me Susan made a sputtering sound like someone trying to siphon gas from a car. So she’d seen it, too.
The conductor let out an exasperated breath. “Be that as it may, Miss Paulson, in the short time I have been at your library I’ve been denied basic service and attacked by an out-of-control animal. This was not what I was expecting when I agreed to rearrange my schedule and step in to help your little music festival at the eleventh hour.” He smoothed a hand back over his hair, but one clump continued to stand at attention.
He really was a condescending old goat. An old goat I needed to placate. “And the entire town is grateful that you agreed to step in at the last minute,” I said. Just saying the words made my teeth hurt. I took a step backward, lowering my heel slowly onto the toe of Susan’s right shoe, easing some of my weight down as a warning to her not to say anything, and especially not to laugh at my blatant sucking up. “Again, Mr. Easton, I’m so sorry for what’s happened here.” Susan wiggled her shoe under my foot. I pressed down a little harder. “Please allow me to send breakfast to your suite in the morning to make amends for this evening.”
He twisted a gold pinkie ring around his finger. The upright piece of hair bobbed at me. I kept the pressure on Susan’s foot. “Please, Mr. Easton. It’s the least I can do.” Well, that part was honest.
“Very well, Miss Paulson,” he said, “but it doesn’t excuse what happened here.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said, trying not to look at his hair, which seemed to have a life of its own now and was waving merrily at me.
I moved forward again and took Easton’s hand, sandwiching it between mine. “Thank you for your understanding.” I walked him toward the entrance as I talked.
He paused at the doors. “Miss Paulson, most people would make an issue of this. I, however, am not most people.”
“I appreciate your graciousness,” I said, smiling sweetly at him.
He pushed through the doors and disappeared down the stairs.
I sagged against the wall. I hated this kind of thing, charming and flattering people to defuse their anger.
“‘I appreciate your graciousness?’ ” Susan laughed behind me. “I’m going to use that on the preschool teacher the next time the twins glue themselves to the top of the monkey bars.”
“Okay,” I said. “Easton may be a bit of a pompous . . .” I hesitated.
“Windbag? Twit? Horse’s rear?” Susan asked.
“Person,” I said. “But he is right about the computer room. It should be ready by now.” I straightened and walked to the back of the library. “And he didn’t deserve to have my cat pounce on him. Where is that fur ball, by the way?”
“Did you see the man’s hair?” Susan asked. “It was like a little flag up there, waving in the breeze.”
I rubbed the space between my eyebrows with the heel of my hand. “That reminds me. Would you call Eric and ask him to send breakfast to Easton’s room tomorrow?” Susan’s husband, Eric, owned Eric’s Place, a café near the marina. He used local fruits and vegetables, and made everything in the café’s kitchen. “Ask him to send the bill to me, please. Not the library board. And could you ask him to make it . . .” I waved my hands in the air. “Make it elegant, please.”
“Will do,” Susan said. “Why did you bring the cat with you, anyway? Were you going to ask me to babysit—I mean cat sit?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t bring him on purpose. He just somehow snuck into my bag. I don’t know how,” I finished lamely.
“Owen? Where are you?” I called, walking back to the computer area. I looked behind a stack of boxes. A low murp came from the wall of windows. I pushed my way around a stack of chairs. Owen sat on the window ledge, seemingly looking out at a sailboat passing on the lake. He was chewing something. I looked around for a head or a corpse of some ill-fated rodent, but found nothing. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
“You are in so much trouble,” I told the cat as I picked him up. He gave my chin a gentle head butt, his way of pointing out to both of us that he really wasn’t in that deep. “Do you realize who that was?”
Owen yawned.
“I think he does,” Susan said. “Hey! I have half a tuna sandwich left. Would he like it?”
Owen’s ears twitched at the word “tuna.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” I said. “Maybe he’d stay in my office if he had something to eat, and I could still get to tai chi.”
I carried Owen upstairs, and Susan got the leftover sandwich from the refrigerator up in the staff room. Inside my office, with the door firmly closed, she unwrapped the waxed paper and set the half sandwich on the floor behind my desk. Owen sniffed the bread, then carefully licked the filling. His back end did a little wiggly dance of joy. “Thanks,” I said to Susan.
“Oh, that’s okay,” she said. “I like cats.” She watched Owen hold the bread with a paw so he could lick out more of the tuna filling. “I thought your cats didn’t let anyone but you touch them. So how come this one jumped on the maestro?”
“They don’t,” I said. “But I don’t think Owen meant to land on Mr. Easton’s head. I think maybe he was startled. He jumped and he just miscalculated.” I grinned at her. “Or, heck, maybe from his vantage point on the top of the cabinet, Easton’s head looked like the back end of a squirrel.”