Free Faux Paw: A Magical Cats Mystery by Sofie Kelly Page B

minutes,” she said. She headed for the kitchen with our order.
    Gavin leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “Did you get in touch with everyone who was planning on being here for the opening of the exhibit?” he asked, gesturing at my phone, which was on the table next to my cup.
    I nodded. “Most people were very understanding, although there was an art historian from Chicago who seemed more concerned about not being able to see the Weston drawing than about Margo being dead.”
    Gavin rolled his eyes as he took a drink from his coffee. “There’s always someone whose priorities are all wrong.” He set the cup down. “I take it word’s getting out that the drawing is missing.”
    “How, I don’t know,” I said with a sigh. “But I think so. I hedged as much as I could.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “That’s not something we’re going to be able to keep quiet for very long. As I told your detective this morning, the questions are just going to get more pointed.”
    “How did things go at the library?” I asked.
    He gave an offhand shrug. “The Weston drawing is the only piece that’s missing. It’s pretty obvious that’s what the thief was after. And I think it’s too much of a coincidence to think Margo’s death isn’t connected.” He pressed his lips together for a moment and picked up his cup again. “I kept expecting her to walk in, you know.”
    I nodded. “Do you have any idea who turned off the security system?” From the corner of my eye I saw Claire approaching with our food. Gavin waited until she’d topped up our cups before he answered my question.
    “It was an inside job,” he said.
    I frowned at him. “Inside how? Are you trying to say it was someone who works at the library?”
    His mouth was full of Eric’s latest breakfast sandwich creation, so he held up a hand. I waited.
    “I mean inside as in someone shut down both systems from inside the building.”
    I had to let the words sink in for a moment. “You mean Margo turned off the alarm? She let her killer get into the building?” I broke a piece off the fat cinnamon roll on the plate in front of me but didn’t eat it. “C’mon, Gavin. That doesn’t make any sense. Margo didn’t think the Weston drawing should have been out of a museum setting. Why on earth would she turn off the security system that was protecting it?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know. When I left, Margo said she was going to be about another twenty minutes. She locked the main library doors behind me and I can guarantee that the rest of the building was locked up tight because I checked everything personally.”
    “So she let the thief in?”
    “It looks that way.” He looked around for Claire, pointing at his mug and smiling when she looked his way. Gavin drank more coffee than I did.
    I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Margo wouldn’t let anyone into the building. Not with the exhibit set up.” I didn’t say that I’d half been expecting her to sleep in the building once the artwork arrived.
    “I know it doesn’t make any sense,” Gavin agreed. “And it’s completely out of character for Margo from what I know of her, but I can’t find any other way that the thief could have gotten into the building. Nothing was tampered with at the keypads.”
    He paused, looked around the restaurant and then leaned across the table toward me. “Kathleen, I don’t imagine your detective would want this getting out, but it’s not just that it looks like Margo let someone into the building.” He cleared his throat. “You know I set up a perimeter alarm just around the area where the exhibit was?”
    “I know,” I said.
    The day the alarm had been installed, Mary had managed to set it off twice, both times by backing up with a cart of books for reshelving. We’d ended up moving a low unit of bookshelves and borrowing a set of brass posts and a black velvet rope from the Stratton Theatre to keep