Herc looked up at me. “Is that what you were trying to tell me?” I said. He had a dab of peanut butter on the end of his nose. I reached down to wipe it off. He batted my finger away with a paw.
“That’s what I’ll do,” I said. “I’ll go see Oren first thing. And I think I’ll take him some of those banana muffins.”
The toast was gone. Owen yawned and so did I. Hercules began to wash his face. Nine thirty on a Tuesday night and here I was, sitting with my cats, ready to go to bed. I definitely was the crazy cat lady.
Owen woke me up at quarter to six the next morning, just before the alarm went off. He put one paw on the edge of the mattress and his face about an inch away from mine. He had a very bad case of morning breath. I wondered if Listerine made a version for cats.
By six thirty I was on my way to the Stratton with four banana muffins in a brown paper bag. I didn’t see Oren’s truck in the staff parking lot at the back of the building. Maybe he was in the main lot on the other side. I tried the stage door. It was unlocked. I stepped inside and followed the hall to the side stage entrance. Something was spilled on the wooden floor. Paint, maybe?
“Oren!” I called. “Are you here?” I pushed through the heavy red curtains and came out onto the stage proper. There was a tiny charm on the floor in front of me, a musical note hanging from a circle of silver. I picked it up and caught sight of someone at the piano, upstage. “Oren, are you all right?” I called again. “It’s Kathleen.”
I crossed the stage to the piano. The person slumped over the keyboard wasn’t Oren. It was Gregor Easton. And he wasn’t okay.
He was dead.
3
Grasp Bird’s Tail
I’ve seen a lot of stage bodies. From a distance makeup and fake blood can be pretty convincing, but up close it’s impossible to hide the fact that Colonel Mustard, who was hit with a candlestick in the library, is really a living, breathing person.
Gregor Easton wasn’t living or breathing. His skin had a waxy paleness and there was a gash on the side of his head, an ugly red-and-purple wound that stood out in stark relief almost as though it had been painted on by some makeup artist. But there was no blood. I touched his wrist to feel for a pulse and jerked my hand away. His arm was stiff and cool.
My hands shook as I fumbled for my cell phone. Then it hit me that I was in an empty theater with a body at quarter to seven in the morning. I backed across the stage, felt for the opening in the curtain and all but ran down the corridor. Outside I sat on the step and called 911.
The paramedics arrived first—a man and a woman. Him I didn’t know, but I’d seen her at the library. Jane. No, Jaime—Sandra Boynton board books, and several on potty training.
“He’s at the piano onstage,” I told them. “Go down the hall and through the curtain.”
A police car arrived next, lights flashing. The officer got out of the car and walked over to me. “Ms. Paulson?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You reported finding a body?”
“Inside. At the piano onstage.” I said, pointing. “The paramedics are in there.”
“Ma’am, what are you doing here?” he asked. “Are you involved with the festival?”
I explained that I was looking for Oren. A car and an SUV pulled into the small lot, followed by a police van. The woman in the car and the man driving the truck had to be police officers, I decided as they got out of their vehicles. They were both dressed in cop shoes—sturdy, heavy-soled black footwear. My father always said shoes are the key to a character. “Nail the footwear and you’ll nail the man.”
The woman had gotten out of her car, holding a stainless steel coffee mug. She took a couple of mouthfuls and bent to set it back in the car. The man said something to her and grinned. She made a face at him and took one more drink.
The patrol officer walked over to them.
There was a wood and wrought-iron bench at the end of the parking lot. I sat down and waited. No one had told me not to leave, but I figured I shouldn’t until someone told me I could. I couldn’t hear what the three police officers were saying, but at one point they all turned and looked at me. I tried to look innocent and not mess with my hair.
I was still holding the bag of muffins. What was I going to do with them? And where was Oren? Along with the work he was doing at the library, the festival committee had hired him to paint and make some repairs at the theater. He was always on the job by seven.
The male paramedic came out the stage door, pulling off a pair of purple disposable gloves. He stopped to talk to the three officers. The two new ones had gloves of their own in their pockets. They pulled them on and went inside. More police vehicles pulled into the lot.
I probably sat on the bench for another ten minutes or so before the officer who had driven the SUV came out of the theater. He walked over to me, pulling off his gloves. He was tall, with dark wavy hair about two weeks overdue for a trim. He had the tanned skin of someone who was outside a lot, which was probably why I’d never seen him in the library.
“Ms. Paulson?” he said.
“Yes.” I stood up.
“I’m Detective Gordon. You found the body?”
I nodded and tried not to shiver. It was cloudy and not as warm as it had been the past few days.
“What were you doing here so early?”
“I was looking for Oren Kenyon,” I said. All of a sudden I felt embarrassed, clutching my paper bag of muffins. “He’s been doing some of the renovation work at the library. I’m the head librarian and I needed to talk to him.”
“This early?” he asked.
What did he mean by “this early?” It wasn’t as though I’d wandered down in my nightgown and slippers before the sun was up. “Oren starts work by seven at the latest. I wanted to talk to him before he got involved in something here.” Did he nod, ever so slightly?
“What’s in the bag?”
“Muffins.” I handed the detective the bag so he could see for himself. He unrolled the top and looked inside. Then he looked at me again.
“Ms. Paulson, were you and Mr. Easton involved? Were you two meeting here at the theater?”
“Involved?” I said, and my voice actually squeaked, I was so surprised. “No. I told you, I came here looking for Oren.”
Detective Gordon looked around the small parking lot. “Was his truck here?”
I pulled my hand back through my hair, which probably only made it messier. “Well, no. But I thought maybe he was parked on the other side. The door was unlocked so I went in to see if he was working.”
Why wasn’t he writing any of this down? I looked at his hands. They were twice the size of mine and callused. He did more than not write down what people told him. No wonder I’d never seen him in the library. “I saw someone at the piano,” I told him. “I thought it might be Oren. I went over and realized it was Mr. Easton.”
“So you did know him?” the detective said.
I shook my head. “I only met him last night. He came into the library looking to use a computer. But the computer room wasn’t ready. That’s why I was looking for Oren this morning.”
The detective stared intently at me. Did he think maybe I’d break and admit that I’d been having a torrid affair with Gregor Easton and that he’d died while we were having wild monkey sex on the piano?
“When I realized he was dead, I came back outside and called nine-one-one,” I said.
He glanced back at the theater. “Did you touch anything?” he asked. He’d missed a tiny patch of stubble on the left side of his jawline when he’d shaved.
I thought for a moment. “The stage door,” I said. “The curtain. And I touched Mr. Easton’s arm.”