It wasn’t the first dead body I’d ever seen
so I didn’t scream. It also helped that I had been
expecting at least one—or possibly two. Owen looked up
at me, an expression of self-satisfaction on his face that
made him look rather smug—which I’m sure he was.
He had one foot on the corpse, his way of claiming credit
for the fact that it was lying there in the first place.
Since the body was that of a fairly large rodent and Owen
was a small cat, I had no problem with the way things had
worked out.
&nb
sp; Harry Taylor looked down at the little grey-and-
white tabby. “Nice work,” he said. Harry was in
his late fifties, his face weathered from working outside in
the sun and wind. Very little rattled him.
The cat dipped his head in gracious acknowledgement of
his skills.
A couple of days of colder-than-usual weather—even
for Minnesota in December—and a middle of the night
power failure downtown had caused a water pipe to burst in
the old building where the artists’ cooperative had
their shop. My friend Maggie, who helped run the business,
had been the one who’d gotten the call about the power
failure, and she’s discovered both the broken pipe and
the furry trespasser.
Maggie had called Harry, who was responsible for the
maintenance on the building, and me because Maggie had a
long-standing phobia of mice and other rodents. I knew it
was connected to something that had happened when she was a
child, but she had never shared any details and I had never
pushed. I’d brought Owen because no rat, mouse, vole
or mole was a match for him.
Harry glanced over at me. “Want me to take care of
this?” he asked, indicating the dead animal. “Or
is there someone you wanted to fling the dearly departed at?
”
&nb
sp; I’d been about to pick up Owen. I
straightened and eyed Harry, my gaze narrowing in surprise.
“How did you know about that incident?” I said.
He had to be referring to the last time I’d been
involved in disposing of a dead rodent, although I took
issue with his use of the word “fling.”
&nb
sp; He laughed. “Well, you did lob a dead rat at
Ruby’s head,” he said. “Not really the
kind of thing people tend to keep to themselves.”
&nb
sp; “First of all I didn’t throw it at her
head deliberately,” I said. “She just sort of
walked into the line of fire.” I could feel my face
getting red. “And second, it wasn’t actually
dead.”
&nb
sp; He was still laughing. “Doesn’t help
your case at all, Kathleen.”
&nb
sp; Harry’s laughter was contagious. The
incident Harry was talking about was the time the
building’s basement had been half-filled with water
and what I thought was one very dead rodent floating near
the stairs. Turned out it was only mostly dead. And
as any fan of the book and the movie, The Princess
Bride will tell you, mostly dead is slightly
alive.
&nb
sp; I had scooped the animal out of the water with a
snow shovel and then, because I hadn’t thought ahead
to what I was going to do next, ended up tossing it outside
just as Ruby Blackthorne—one of the co-op
artists—walked by. In my defense I didn’t hit
Ruby, who was startled but not at all angry, and the animal
had scurried away the moment it landed on the pavement. Ruby
had teased me about the whole thing for weeks.
&nb
sp; “I’d be happy for you to take care
of…this,” I said in answer to Harry’s
original question. I bent down and scooped up Owen with one
hand and raised an eyebrow at Harry as I headed for the
door. “It’s not like Ruby is in town.”
&nb
sp; Maggie was waiting in the entryway clutching a
broom in one hand with her other arm wrapped tightly around
her chest. “Is it…gone?” she asked. She
glanced over my right shoulder and then her green eyes came
back to my face.
&nb
sp; Owen gave a loud and very definitive meow. I set
him on the floor at my feet.
“Yes,” I said. Maggie’s shoulders
immediately slumped in relief.
&nb
sp; I gestured to the half-open door behind me.
“Harry’s just cleaning up.”
&nb
sp; Maggie leaned forward and smiled at Owen.
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re my
hero.”
&nb
sp; The cat smiled up at her. Owen adored Maggie.
&nb
sp; “So now what?” she asked, looking up
at me. I noticed she still had a tight grip on the broom
handle.
&nb
sp; “Harry’s going to pull down the rest
of the drywall on that back wall. He wants to see how much
water damage there is and he wants to get things dried out
before you end up with mold in there.”
&nb
sp; “There’s never a good time for
something like this to happen but this close to
Christmas…” Maggie shook her head. “I can
think of three people off the top of my head who make as
much of their income in December as they do during the
summer tourist season.”
&nb
sp; “Is there somewhere you could set up a
temporary shop until Harry gets this space useable again?
” I asked.
&nb
sp; “So far I’ve had no luck finding
space. The Christmas Market is set up in the Community
Center so that’s out.”
&nb
sp; Ruby was the president of the co-op, but she was
in Minneapolis getting ready for an exhibit of her
paintings. Since Maggie had had the job before Ruby,
she’d stepped in to handle the water leak.
&nb
sp; Maggie finally seemed to realize that she was
still holding the broom. She leaned it against the wall
behind the front door and folded her arm up over her head,
fingers playing with her blonde curls. “I’m
hoping Harry can put some kind of tarp or plastic over that
wall and we can re-open early next week.”
&nb
sp; I could hear Harry moving around inside the shop.
He must have disposed of the “dearly departed”
as he’d put it, by now. “Owen and I are going to
help Harry,” I said to Maggie. “Why don’t
you go upstairs and have a cup of tea?”
&nb
sp; “Maybe in a minute,” she said.
“I’d really like to get a good look at the
damage. When I saw that flash of fur earlier I didn’t
spend any time looking around.” She gave me a sheepish
smile. “I’m sorry I woke you up so early.”
&nb
sp; “Merow!” Owen said.
&nb
sp; I smiled. “Like he said, we don’t
mind. And I was awake anyway. Hercules has been waking up
early and seems to think if he’s up he should be
having breakfast.”
Owen meowed loudly again. Hercules was his brother. If
one of them had something the other wanted it, the only
exception being catnip chickens, which Owen loved and
Hercules was bored by.
“And if Hercules is having breakfast then Owen is
having breakfast. And since neither one of them have figured
out how to use a can opener, that means I have to get up
too.” I’d woken up at ten to six to find
Hercules breathing his kitty morning breath in my face. When
Maggie had called at five past I was downstairs in the
kitchen wrapped around a large cup of coffee while the boys
ate their breakfast.
I put my arms around her shoulders now. “And even
if you had woken me up I wouldn’t have minded.
That’s what friends are for.” Owen murped his
agreement. “Let’s go see if Harry is ready to
get started.”
Harry was set to tackle the rest of the old drywall. He
had taken off his jacket but he was warmly dressed
underneath it in heavy brown canvas pants and a red-and-
brown plaid flannel shirt over a long sleeve tee shirt. He
handed me a mask. “You got gloves?” he asked as
he pulled on his own pair.
I nodded as I pulled mine out of the back pocket of my
old, paint-smattered jeans. Like Harry I was wearing a
flannel shirt over a double layer, long sleeve T-shirt.
There was heat on in the building but since the electricity
had only come back on half an hour ago, it was going to take
a while to get the old structure warmed up again.
Maggie stood several steps behind us with Owen next to
her as though he were her bodyguard, which in his little
kitty mind he probably was. Neither Owen nor Hercules was
exactly what you’d call an ordinary housecat.
I adjusted the mask Harry had handed me and we got to
work. The old drywall was wet and crumbly in some places and
broke apart in small pieces in our hands. Harry had spread a
couple of large tarps on the floor so we just dropped
everything we pulled loose onto the floor. He grabbed the
edge of a piece of Sheetrock, and braced one foot against
the wall for leverage. Harry had pulled off most of the trim
in the room before I’d gotten down the hill. Once Owen
and I had arrived to do rodent patrol, Harry had removed the
last piece because the cat had scratched insistently at it.
Harry had also sucked up the water on the floor with his
industrial shop vac. Maggie and I had moved everything
upstairs into the tai chi studio. The only water damage was
to some holiday decorations and several paintings that had
been hanging on the wall when the pipe burst.
Harry looked his shoulder at Owen, whose golden eyes were
fixed on the wall. I didn’t hear or see anything that
suggested there was anything else alive back there, but if
there was, it didn’t stand a chance against either one
of them.
“Ready?” Harry asked.
Owen bobbed his head and meowed.
Harry grinned at me. “I swear your cat knows what
I’m saying.”
&nb
sp; “Of course he does,” Maggie said.
“Owen is very smart.”
&nb
sp; The cat looked up at her and seemed to smile.
&nb
sp; Harry would have been shocked if he’d known
everything that Owen and Hercules as well could do. I
wondered what he’d say—what anyone in town would
say—if they knew that Owen could become invisible at
will and Hercules could walk through walls. They’d
probably wonder about my mental health. I glanced at Owen,
hoping he wouldn’t suddenly get the idea to
demonstrate his talent. He liked to do things like that.
&nb
sp; I grabbed a section of drywall next to the piece
Harry had just ripped down. It wasn’t quite as
saturated with water as the previous piece I’d pulled
loose had been but it was wet enough that I only managed to
yank down a piece about a foot wide.
&nb
sp; There was something in the wall cavity between the
studs, something behind the thin layer of old insulation.
Whatever it was, was wrapped in heavy plastic.
&nb
sp; “Harry,” I said.
&nb
sp; He turned to look at me. “Did you find
something?” he asked.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Owen move in front of
Maggie. “Not what you’re thinking,” I
said, realizing he probably thought I’d discovered
another rat. “There’s something wrapped up in
plastic in between the studs.”
“You sure it’s not just insulation?”
I pulled a bit more of the Sheetrock loose so I could get
a better look. “It’s definitely plastic,”
I said.
Harry leaned in closer.
“Do you think it could be some sort of time
capsule?” I asked, brushing dust from the front of my
shirt.
Harry shrugged. “Last time these walls were back to
the studs must be forty years ago now. I don’t
remember hearing about them putting anything like that in a
wall but it wouldn’t have been the kind of thing I
would have paid attention to back then. Might as well see
what it is.”
We worked together to pull the last of the drywall away
from the studs and peel back the wet insulation. The wall
cavity was deeper than I had thought. The plastic was thick
and heavy and I could see it was wrapped around something
but I couldn’t tell what. The bundle was easily five
feet long, wedged into the space between two wooden wall
studs. Harry moved to lift the whole thing out.
He frowned. “Whatever this is, it’s heavier
than it looks,” he said. I caught hold of the plastic
about halfway down and helped Harry lower it to the floor,
kicking some of the pieces of Sheetrock out of the way. I
knelt down on the tarp as Owen made his way over to me. I
pulled off my gloves and peeled back the first two layers of
plastic, bushing a layer of dust and dirt from the outside
one. Underneath the third one I could see what looked like a
heavy gray wool blanket. My heart began to pound and all at
once my mouth went dry. Owen meowed softly.
“I know,” I said softly. I tried to swallow
the lump at the back of my throat but I couldn’t.
“What is it?” Harry asked.
“I…um…can you help me get more of
this plastic undone?”
His eyes narrowed but all he said was,
“Sure.”
We managed to unwrap the third layer. I lifted up a
corner of the blanket and let it fall again. I sat back on
my heels and slowly let out a breath. Owen put a paw on my
leg. Harry said an oath almost under his breath.
“What’s wrong?” Maggie said. There was
an edge of uncertainty to her voice.
Harry swiped a hand over the back of his neck.
“I’ll make the call,” he said, pulling out
his phone as he moved several steps away.
“Kathleen, what’s wrong?” Maggie asked
again.
I got to my feet. My stomach was doing somersaults. I
turned to face her.
She looked past me at the…bundle on the floor.
“Is that asbestos or something dangerous?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s a body.”