“Owen!” I yelled. When he didn’t appear—literally or figuratively—I called his name again. “I’m putting Fred’s head in the garbage if you don’t get in here right now.”
I heard a meow from the living room and after a moment Owen appeared in the doorway. He made his way across the kitchen and took the chicken head from my hand.
Rebecca and Maggie kept the cat in a steady supply of the little yellow catnip toys known as Fred the Funky Chicken. Owen in turn destroyed them almost, it sometimes seemed, on some kind of schedule of his own.
“Why do you do this?” I asked pointing at the bits of dried catnip all over the kitchen floor. He looked up at me, blinked twice and headed for the basement, the yellow chicken head firmly in his teeth. I couldn’t exactly make him go get the vacuum and clean things up. Behind me Hercules sneezed again. He had never been enthralled by catnip the way his brother was.
By the time I cleaned the kitchen floor, ate supper and changed, I was running very late for tai chi class, so Maggie was announcing “Circle,” as I walked into the studio. She worked us hard and it wasn’t until class was finished that we got a chance to talk. “Nice job, everyone. See you on Tuesday,” she called as she walked over to me.
I blotted sweat from my neck with the edge of my T-shirt, which was damp with perspiration in places.
“Your Push Hands are looking better,” she said. “Remember to think about your weight and where your center is.”
I nodded. “Aren’t you going to tell me to bend my knees?” It was a running joke in the class that Maggie told me to bend my knees at least once per session.
“You’re getting better at that,” she said with a smile.
I bumped her with my shoulder. “See?” I said. “I do listen to you.”
“I told Owen to remind you when you practice.”
I started to laugh.
Mags frowned. “What’s so funny?”
“I was working on the form a few days ago and Owen kept making these little murping noises the entire time.”
“Did any of those noises sound like ‘Bend your knees’?” Maggie asked.
“No,” I said, stretching one arm over my head. “They sounded more like ‘Where’s my breakfast?’”
We walked over to the table where Maggie kept supplies for tea. I gestured at the wall behind the table. “I like the color.” Oren had painted the walls in the studio a very pale yellow.
Maggie smiled. “Me too. I probably looked at two dozen colors but I kept coming back to this one. She leaned over to plug in the kettle then reached for a box of chamomile tea bags. “Was John in the library today?” she asked.
I shook my head. “He went back to Red Wing with Travis to check on something.” I studied her face. “Did you find the plant?”
She nodded. “I think so. Brady and I went out to Roma’s yesterday after supper. I took some photos to show John but I’m pretty sure it is Leedy’s roseroot.”
“And you found the plants on Roma’s land, didn’t you?” She would have been more excited if they had been growing anywhere else.
Maggie dropped the tea bag in a cup and reached for the kettle. “Yes. Brady said we were definitely on Roma’s land.”
I let out a sigh. So there wasn’t going to be any way to stop the development after all. Then I noticed that Maggie was humming to herself as she finished making her tea.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You don’t seem that upset. What’s going on?”
“When we went out to Wisteria Hill we walked around that little piece of land that Ruby owns. I asked her first and she said it was okay.”
Considering that Ruby stood to benefit from the development I thought it was generous of her to tell Maggie she could look around her property.
“Did you know there’s a cave just beyond that old cabin that Ruby’s grandfather owned?”
Goose bumps puckered my skin. I didn’t like small tight spaces. I’d been that way since I was a kid. Owen and I had been trapped in the dark, damp basement of a camp in the woods not that different from the old building on the Blackthorne property a couple of winters ago. The experience hadn’t made my claustrophobia any better.
“I was going to say I didn’t know that, but I think maybe Marcus told me about it.” He’d spent a lot of time checking out those woods after a body had turned up at Wisteria Hill a year and a half ago when an embankment collapsed after a week of seemingly endless rain.
“We were dive-bombed by a bat,” Maggie said with a shudder. She felt the same way about small, furry animals as I did about small dark spaces.
“Oh, Mags, I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” She took another sip from her tea. “Brady said the bat was more afraid of me than I was of it but I don’t think that’s true. The bat did not hurl itself at Brady and pull his jacket over its head.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I said, reaching out to give her arm a squeeze.
“Yes, I’m okay,” she said, “because I think the bat may help us stop the development.”
“How?” I asked just as Rebecca came across the floor to join us.
She looked at Maggie, curiosity in her blue eyes. “Did you have any luck last night?” she asked.
“I was just telling Kathleen,” Maggie said, leaning over to plug the kettle in again. She related her story about being bat-bombed while Rebecca looked at the selection of teas and made her choice.
“Bats have gotten a bad reputation thanks to all those myths about vampires,” Rebecca said. “Did you know that just one little brown bat can eat up to a thousand mosquitoes an hour? They provide pest control without all those nasty chemicals. And during World War Two the US government considered using bats to drop bombs on the enemy.”
“How do you know these things?” I asked as she reached for the now steaming kettle.
“I visit my public library,” she said primly and then laughed, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. She turned her attention to Maggie. “So tell me about the bat cave. Did you find Alfred there?”
Maggie gave her a blank look. She wasn’t into comic book heroes.
“Batman’s butler,” I explained exchanging a smile with Rebecca. “Tell us what you found.”
“Brady thinks the bat may have been a long-eared bat. I didn’t know because I didn’t get a very good look at it.”
Rebecca paused with her cup in midair. “Wait a minute, wasn’t the long-eared bat on one of those lists John had?”
Maggie nodded.
“So it’s endangered?” I said.
“Threatened,” Maggie said.
“White-nose syndrome,” Rebecca interjected. “It’s killing bat populations all over North America.” She glanced at me. “That’s from PBS, not the library.”
“So if Brady is right about the type of bat and if they’re living in that cave—” I began.
“It might be enough to at least slow the proposal down for a while,” Maggie finished. “Brady said there is some precedent for protecting the bat’s habitat.”
“That’s wonderful news.” Rebecca smiled. “Have you told John yet?”
“He was in Red Wing all day, but I know he’s planning on being at the library in the morning,” I said. “There are a couple of things he wants to check in the herbarium again.”
“I could text him,” Maggie said, setting her cup down on the table. “But I really wanted to talk to him face-to-face.”
“Come over about ten,” I said. “I’ll be there. I changed shifts with Abigail.”
Rebecca touched my arm. “How’s Marcus?” she asked.
“He’s all right,” I said. “Thank you for asking. Dani’s family is waiting to have a funeral service until the investigation is wrapped up so Marcus—and John and Travis—are still hanging.”
“They need to say a proper good-bye,” Rebecca said. “That’s understandable. I’m sure Detective Lind will have things wrapped up very soon.” She glanced down at her watch. “Oh, I better get going,” she said. “I have a date with my husband and some Tubby’s frozen yogurt.”