Final Catcall: A Magical Cats Mystery (11 page)

I put the remaining treats on the seat. “I’ll be back,” I said. “Stay in the truck and stay out of trouble.”

He shot me a look and murped as he dropped his head over the crackers. I didn’t have to speak cat to know that meant
You too
.

A
s I rounded the corner, Hannah was just coming out of Eric’s—and Marcus was standing outside waiting for her. Neither of them noticed me until I literally stepped between them.

“Umm, hi, Kathleen,” Hannah said. She was confused, her eyes darting from me to her big brother.

“What are you doing here?” Marcus asked, his mouth pulled into a tight line.

“Same thing as you,” I said. “I came for some coffee.” I turned to Hannah. “By the way, Detective Lind is looking for you.”

“Me? Why?” She was a very good actress. Nothing showed in her face. On the other hand, I could feel the tension coming off of Marcus’s body like mist rising from the river.

There was no point in dancing around it. “I was going through Hugh’s papers, looking for some of his notes for Ben. There was a clipping stuck to a piece of paper. You wrote ‘Drop dead’ across the front of it.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I did.” She tightened the scarf at her neck. “I don’t know if you noticed, but the clipping was about a new play that’s going to be produced. I’m on the short list for a part. They lost their director and Hugh was at me to suggest him as a replacement.” She held up her hand. “I told him that I didn’t want to get involved in anything political like that and ruin my chances at the part. He wouldn’t let it go. He kept bugging me about it. It was a couple of days before the fire at the theater in Red Wing and I’d had enough. I picked up a marker from his desk and wrote ‘Drop dead’ right across that clipping. Then I stalked off.” She rolled her eyes. “It was very dramatic.”

I smiled. “Then you just need to tell Detective Lind that.”

Hannah shrugged. “All right.”

“And you probably should have a lawyer.”

“Because I wrote ‘Drop dead’ on an article from a newspaper? You can’t be serious?”

“Kathleen’s right, Hannah,” Marcus said behind me. “That’s how the system works.”

“Where am I supposed to find a lawyer?” she said. “I guess I could open up the phone book and play one potato, two potato.” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave both of us a slightly annoyed look.

“I can get you a lawyer,” I said. “Marcus is right. Let the system work the way it’s designed to work.”

Hannah held up both hands in surrender. “Okay. Find me a lawyer then.”

“It won’t take very long,” I said. I took a couple of steps away from them, pulled out my cell and dialed Lita Clarke’s home number. Everett’s assistant answered on the third ring. “Hi, Lita,” I said. “It’s Kathleen.”

“Hi, Kathleen,” she said. I could hear her smile through the phone. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for a lawyer.”

“Criminal or civil?”

“Criminal.”

“Brady Chapman,” she said at once.

“Chapman?” I said. “Any relation to Burtis?”

“His youngest.”

Burtis Chapman, the town bootlegger, had a son who was a lawyer? Why didn’t I know that? I glanced over at Hannah and Marcus. They were talking quietly about something.

“Lita, it’s Saturday. Do you have a number for Brady Chapman other than his office?” I asked.

“I have his cell.” She rattled off a phone number and I repeated it to myself so I wouldn’t forget it. “Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll call Brady,” she said, “and give him a heads-up that he’ll be hearing from you.”

It occurred to me that Lita was just about the only person I knew who, if I said I needed a lawyer, wouldn’t ask me why. “Thanks, Lita,” I said. “I owe you for this.”

“Oh, you’re welcome,” she said. “I’m glad I could help.”

I ended the call and looked at my watch. I watched the second hand make three circuits of the dial and then I punched in the number that Lita had given me.

“I just talked to Lita,” Brady Chapman said after I’d explained who I was. He sounded a little like his father. “She said you need a lawyer. What’s the problem?”

I explained about Hannah and the clipping.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Eric’s Place,” I said.

“Stay put. I can be there in about ten minutes.”

I put my phone in my purse and walked back to Hannah and Marcus. “You have a lawyer,” I said to Hannah. “Brady Chapman. He’ll be here in about ten minutes.”

Marcus nodded. “He’s good.” His blue eyes flicked to me. “Thanks.”

I nodded.

“Yes, thank you, Kathleen,” Hannah said. She looked around. “So should we just wait here?”

I pushed my bangs back off my face. “Why don’t we go have coffee while we wait?”

“All right,” she said.

We went inside. Eric raised a hand in hello from the counter. I pointed to a table along the end wall and he nodded. I held up three fingers, figuring he would know I meant three coffees.

Nicolas came over in a moment with the pot and filled our mugs. “Can I get you anything else?” he asked.

Marcus shook his head. “Not right now, thank you.”

“Just let me know when you need a refill,” he said and moved toward another table.

Hannah put both hands flat on the table. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have written that on the newspaper clipping. It was childish, but I was just so frustrated in the moment.” She glanced at her brother. “I forgot all about it. If I’d remembered, I would have told you.”

“It’s okay,” Marcus said. “Once Chapman gets here you can talk to Detective Lind and get this whole thing straightened out.”

I knew I needed to say something about the SUV Andrew had seen before Brady Chapman arrived. I traced the curve of my spoon handle with one finger. “Hannah, what time did you get back from Red Wing last night?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t look at the clock. It was late. Eleven thirty, maybe?” She nudged Marcus with her arm. “Do you remember?”

“Quarter to twelve, I think,” he said. “I’d only been home myself about ten minutes.” He stretched his long legs under the table.

“Okay, about quarter to twelve then,” Hannah said. “Why did you want to know?”

“Did you by any chance drive past the marina on your way to Red Wing?” I asked.

“No.” She pointed over her shoulder. “Red Wing is that way.”

“Why are you asking?” Marcus said. His hand had tightened around his cup. It was the only sign that he had slipped into police detective mode.

I took a sip of my coffee before I answered. “I talked to Andrew this afternoon. He remembers seeing a dark-colored SUV drive past the marina a couple of times while we were unloading the piece of the stage.”

“Why didn’t he tell me that last night?”

I shifted in my chair, eyeing the door and hoping that Brady Chapman would show up soon. “He probably forgot. And he didn’t even realize it was important.”

“Marcus, it doesn’t matter,” Hannah said. “It wasn’t me. I drove to Red Wing right after rehearsal and I spent hours going through everything that had been salvaged from the fire. There were boxes and bags of stuff and it all smelled like it had been barbecued.” She looked at me across the table. “Anyway, there has to be more than one dark-colored SUV like yours around here.”

She was a very good liar. She didn’t flush. She didn’t fidget. She remembered to look me in the eye. Her body seemed relaxed. But I was certain she was lying. She met my gaze just a little too much. She shared more details than she needed to and her explanations were a little too practiced.

Just then Brady Chapman walked in and looked around. I knew it had to be him—he looked so much like his father, a large man with broad shoulders and a square jaw. Burtis wore heavy work pants and flannel shirts, but Brady was dressed in an olive green fleece jacket over a black T-shirt and jeans.

I got to my feet. He caught sight of me and walked over.

“Kathleen?” he asked.

I nodded and held out my hand. He had a strong, firm grip, again like his father.

“I’ve discovered that you know my father,” he said with a smile. He had pale blue eyes—I’d once seen a husky with the same eye color—and salt-and-pepper hair.

“Yes, I do,” I said, smiling back at him. Burtis could be intimidating but I liked him. He wasn’t above playing the hick from Wild Rose Bluff when it suited him, but he was, in reality, a whip-smart, very well-read man. I didn’t remember ever seeing Brady in the library.

“I was at the house when Lita called. Dad gave me orders to make sure I helped you any way I can.”

“That’s very kind of him.” I made a mental note to thank Burtis next time I saw him.

Marcus had gotten to his feet.

“Good to see you, Detective,” Brady said. The two men shook hands and then Marcus introduced him to Hannah.

Brady took the chair where I’d been sitting and I slid into the seat opposite Marcus. He pulled a small notebook and a mechanical pencil from his pocket. “Okay, tell me what happened.”

I explained how I’d found the newspaper clipping in the box of papers and recognized Hannah’s handwriting. Brady held up his hand. “Not one word,” he said to Hannah. He looked at Marcus and me. “We’re going to move to another table and you two are going to stay here.”

“I already explained things to them,” Hannah said.

Brady shook his head. “Doesn’t change anything,” he said. He got to his feet. After a moment’s hesitation Hannah followed him.

We sat in silence for at least a couple of minutes. Marcus watched his sister and Brady and I drank my coffee. Finally Brady pulled out his cell phone and made a brief call.

Hannah got up and came over to us. “We’re set,” she said. “Detective Lind is at the police station. We’re going to talk to her.”

“I’ll come with you,” Marcus said, getting to his feet again.

She shook her head. “No, you won’t. I agreed to a lawyer, but I’m not taking you with me. I’m not six, Marcus.”

“I’m a police officer,” he said. “I know how things work.”

She gestured toward Brady. “And he’s a lawyer. I’m guessing he knows how things work as well.” She took a step back from the table. “I’ll see you later.” She turned to me. “Thank you, Kathleen, for all your help.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

Marcus stood there without speaking until they were gone. “I’ll take care of the check and I’ll walk you out,” he said.

“I’ll get it,” I said, zipping up my hoodie, but he was already on his way to the counter.

I waited and we walked outside together.

“And thank you for calling Brady Chapman,” he said once we were on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

“Thank Lita next time you see her.”

He nodded. “I will.”

I checked my watch. I had just enough time to go home, have a shower and go to Maggie’s—after I gave Hercules the sardines I’d promised him.

“Hannah shouldn’t be very long,” I said to Marcus.

“Why didn’t you tell me what your friend saw?” he asked.

I should have seen that conversational detour coming. “I didn’t exactly have a chance,” I said. “I didn’t realize Andrew had seen anything until a few hours ago. He didn’t know that what he’d noticed was important.”

Marcus jammed his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “You could have called me.”

I tipped my head to one side and looked up at him. “I could have, but I was hoping somehow that I was wrong.”

“Hannah said it wasn’t her.”

I exhaled slowly. “I think she’s lying. I don’t know why and I wish she wasn’t, but I think she is.” I tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. “I didn’t want to put you in a difficult position because your sister was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“You really think it was her who drove past the marina last night?”

“How many navy blue SUVs with roof racks are there in this town, Marcus? Most people drive cars or half-tons.”

He looked past me out toward the water. “You don’t know that for sure,” he said.

“It was Hannah, Marcus,” I said. “You think it was, too.”

It took another long moment before he looked at me again.

“So now you know what I’m thinking?”

I tipped my head back for a moment and stared up at the clouds coming in from the river. When I looked at him again I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice. “No. I never know what you’re thinking. But I noticed you said, ‘Hannah said it wasn’t her,’ not ‘it wasn’t her.’” I swallowed the lump in my throat. This was what we always did and it always ended the same way. “Maybe I was trying to protect you, Marcus. Did you think of that?”

He opened his mouth as though he was going to say something and then closed it again.

His cases were always going to come between us. How could we be friends? How could we be anything? For the first time I wondered if maybe I should go back to Boston with Andrew.

“I’m sorry,” I said, then turned and walked away down the sidewalk.

“Kathleen, hang on,” he called after me.

“My cat’s waiting for me,” I said.

I didn’t look back over my shoulder and, as usual, he didn’t come after me.

H
ercules was asleep on the passenger side of the truck, with his head on one paw and the other curled around his nose. He lifted his head and gave a curious “Merow” when I got in.

“Marcus is a dipwad,” I said darkly.

He put his head back down on the blanket that covered the front seat. Clearly that wasn’t news to him.

There was no sign of Owen when we got home. I got Hercules half a sardine as payment for keeping me company and put out fresh water for both cats. Upstairs I grabbed my robe and headed into the bathroom for a quick shower. I gave a squeak of surprise when I discovered Herc had followed me and was sitting on the top of the toilet tank.

When I started he jumped, almost losing his footing.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked, hanging my robe on the hook on the back of the door.

His response was to look around at the pale cream walls as though he was thinking about redecorating.

“I’m going to have a shower.” I put the shower curtain inside the claw-foot tub. “You can stay if you want to.”

I figured Hercules would leave as soon as the water started, but he was perched in the same place when I got out. Looking at him sitting there, I remembered Ruby’s invitation to see his portrait. “Ruby finished your picture,” I said. “She’s going to show it to me on Monday.”

He jumped down, making a wide circuit around any possible damp spots on the floor, sat in front of me—albeit far enough away that no stray drops of water would get on him—and meowed loudly.

“Do you want to go with me?”

He looked over his shoulder at the door.

“You’ll have to spend the morning at the library.”

He licked his lips.

“No,” I said firmly, shaking my head for emphasis. “I’m not buying you a breakfast sandwich from Eric’s.”

His shoulders sagged and he hung his head. He was the picture of cat dejection, except that I’d witnessed this little act before. Plus I could see one green eye watching me.

“It’s not working,” I said, pushing past him to go back into the bedroom.

After a moment he followed, rubbing against my leg as I put on my favorite purple sweater. Since the woebegone-kitty approach hadn’t worked, he’d decided to try sucking up. He hadn’t considered the body lotion Maggie had made for my dry skin. The rich cream was infused with lavender.

Hercules screwed up his face as he got a noseful of the scent. He sneezed and jumped because he always scared himself when he did that. He sneezed three more times in rapid succession, starting at the sound each time.

I made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go downstairs and get a drink.”

He glared at me and stalked out of the room. I heard him sneeze one more time on his way down the stairs.

When I went down to the kitchen, he was sitting by the refrigerator, washing his face with more vigor than usual.

“I’ll see you later,” I said. “I won’t be late.”

No acknowledgment. I’d been put on Ignore.

I found Owen on the porch bench, looking out into the backyard. I sat down beside him. “I’m leaving,” I said. “Time to go inside.”

He climbed onto my lap and nuzzled my neck.

“I love you, too,” I said, scratching the top of his head. “But I need to get going. Maggie’s waiting.” The moment the words came out I realized what a mistake I’d just made. Owen jumped down from my lap and went to sit by the back door.

I stood up and brushed a clump of gray cat fur off my sweater. “You’re not coming with me,” I said.

He didn’t even twitch a whisker. I knew what was coming next. I swooped down and scooped him up before he could wink out of sight. He yowled and tried to wriggle out of my arms.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I set him just inside the kitchen door and closed it in his face. He yowled again in angry protest.

I went out to the truck. Now all the men in my life were mad at me.

“C’mon up,” Maggie called when I knocked on her apartment door. The aroma of sausage and onions floated down the stairs to meet me. She was at the counter, tearing a ball of mozzarella into small pieces. And Roma was sitting on the sofa.

“I was hoping you’d be here,” I said, dropping down next to her on the couch.

“I bribed her,” Maggie said. There was a blob of sauce on the end of her nose and a dusting of flour in her hair. And there wasn’t a bare bit of counter space for me to put the brownies down. I set the square plastic container on the chair next to the sofa.

Roma smiled. “She did. She promised me half a pizza to take home.”

“You get the other half,” Maggie said to me.

“Good.” I took off my heavy blue cable knit sweater and tossed it over the back of the chair. “I can use it to bribe my way back into Owen’s good graces.”

Maggie frowned. “What did you do to Owen?”

“I didn’t do anything. He wanted to come with me and I said no.” I kicked off my shoes, pulled a foot up underneath me and settled in one corner of the couch.

“You could have brought him,” she said. She frowned and looked around the cluttered kitchen.

“No, I could not have brought him. It would have set a precedent and I swear to you Owen would know that.”

“Please tell me you’re not really going to feed Owen pizza,” Roma said. “He’s a cat. He’s not supposed to eat people food.”

“You tell him that,” I said.

“I have.”

“So that explains why the cats don’t like you,” Maggie said with a grin, bending down to peer into the oven.

“I won’t give Owen any pizza,” I said. “I promise.”

Roma smiled. “Thank you.”

I’d been guilty in the past of letting the cats eat all kinds of people food. Roma had been horrified when she found out. Owen and Hercules weren’t typical cats by any standards and I didn’t think they had a typical cat’s digestive system, but I was still trying to stick to cat food and not people food.

Neither Owen nor Hercules was very happy about the change in their eating habits. If they’d known that Roma was behind it they would have had even more reason to be cool to her. Roma wasn’t one of their favorite people, probably because whenever they saw her at the clinic they were invariably on the business end of a needle and she was the one doing the poking.

“How’s Eddie?” I asked.

Roma’s boyfriend, Eddie Sweeney, played for the Minnesota Wild in the NHL. Plus he could cook, and he handled a hammer about as well as he did a hockey stick. And he was as gorgeous as a
GQ
cover model.

She fingered the antique rose gold locket Eddie had given her and the smile got a little wider. “He’s great. They have a preseason game tonight in St. Louis.” Her expression grew serious. “Maggie told me about you and Andrew finding that director, Hugh Davis. You all right?”

I nodded. “I’m okay, thanks. It was worse for Andrew, I think.” I gave her a wry smile. “It wasn’t my first dead body.”

She leaned back against the sofa cushions. “Did you see Marcus?”

“I did.”

She reached across the back of the sofa and patted my arm. “I’m sorry things turned out the way they did.”

“You and me both,” I said.

Maggie was scraping dishes and loading them into the dishwasher.

Roma leaned sideways to see what she was doing. “Could we help?” she asked.

“You could set the table,” Maggie said. “Place mats are in the second drawer.” She gestured with one elbow.

“What could I do?” I asked.

“Come scratch my nose. Please.”

I got up and went over to her. She tipped her head to one side and I scratched the bridge of her nose.

“Up a little bit more,” she urged. She sighed when I hit the itchy spot. “Ahh, that’s better. Thank you.”

“You sound like Hercules,” I said. I stuck the plug in the sink and started running some hot water so I could wipe the counter.

“That reminds me,” Maggie said, waving a plate at me. “I forgot to tell you. Ruby showed me the painting she did of him last night. It’s fantastic.”

“Good,” I said. “She’s going to show it to me Monday morning.”

“I thought you had a planning meeting for Winterfest last night,” Roma said as she folded napkins to put at each place.

Maggie was on the organizing committee for the Mayville Heights winter festival.

“It was canceled because of the water-main break down in front of the James—excuse me—the St. James Hotel.” Maggie made a face. “I’m never going to get used to the new name.”

The St. James Hotel, formerly the James Hotel, had undergone a major refurbishment in the late spring and early summer, and the owners had decided to go back to the name the hotel originally had when it opened in 1902: the St. James. Most people in town still called it the James. It had to be confusing for tourists.

“Andrew and I had to go the long way around to get to the marina.” I added soap to the water in the sink.

“So did I,” Maggie said, putting two large bowls in the dishwasher. “I mean, to get to my studio. They even had the sidewalk closed. I was carrying one of those big rolls of bubble wrap and the darn thing kept unrolling.” She held out her arms like she was going to hug me. “I ended up having to carry it like this and peer around the side of it.”

“Oh, Mags, I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish I’d seen you. I would have given you a ride.”

She smiled. “It wasn’t that far.” She peeked at the pizza through the oven window and seemed to be happy with what she saw. “Did Abigail go out to the marina with you and Andrew?” she asked as she straightened up.

“No.” I rinsed a cloth and started wiping the counter to the left of the sink. “Why?”

“I saw her when I was walking. She came from that direction and she was driving Burtis’s old truck.”

“Abigail was driving Burtis Chapman’s truck?” Roma said. She frowned at the place mat she’d put in the middle of the table and turned it a hundred and eighty degrees.

Maggie nodded. “Uh-huh. I cut across Jefferson because it was faster. It’s a one-way street now and Abigail was actually going the wrong way. Of course, so was Marcus’s sister. When you said you and Andrew had gone out to the marina I just assumed Abigail had gone to help you.”

I scrubbed at a bit of dried dough stuck to the granite countertop. “What do you mean, so was Marcus’s sister?” I asked, trying to keep my tone casual.

“I mean she was going the wrong way, too,” Maggie said, peering at the pizza again.

She was almost as obsessive about her pizza as she was about her artwork. That was probably why they were both so good.

“I was just about to head down the hill when I saw her. At first I thought it was Marcus, because it was his car and I thought
Why is he going the wrong way?
and then I saw that it was Hannah. She probably didn’t even realize she was on a one-way street. I think Abigail was just in a hurry and wasn’t really paying attention.”

I kept my head down over the counter. Maggie had seen Hannah, which meant it definitely had been her that Andrew had noticed driving past the marina when we were unloading the staging. Hannah was lying when she’d said she was in Red Wing all evening. Somewhere in the back of my mind I’d been hoping it was someone else—anyone else—that Andrew had seen.

So why had she lied? I didn’t want to think about the obvious reason. There had to be another explanation. But right now wasn’t the time to figure it out.

Mags squinted through the glass and reached for her oven mitts. “I think they’re done,” she said. She flapped a hand at me. “Kath, would you get the plates, please?”

The pizza was wonderful—sausage, caramelized onions and long strings of chewy mozzarella on a crisp, fragrant crust. The promise I’d made to myself to have just one slice evaporated.

We moved into the living room for dessert.

“I think I have chocolate overload.” Roma groaned, licking icing off her thumb after her second brownie.

“There’s no such thing,” Maggie countered, stretching her long legs onto the footstool. She looked at Roma. “Did I hear you say you’re going to see Eddie next weekend?”

“I am,” Roma said, a huge smile lighting up her face. It happened every time Eddie’s name came up.

Maggie folded her hands over her stomach. “Does he have any cute hockey player friends? They don’t have to be Eddie cute, just, you know, ordinary-human-being cute.”

“What happened to Liam?” I asked. Maggie had been casually dating the bartender-slash–grad student for a couple of months.

She sighed. “After everything that happened with Legacy and the tour proposal, he decided to go back to Minneapolis and work on his thesis this term.”

Liam had been part of a group pitching Mayville Heights as a fall tourist destination to Legacy Tours from Chicago. The proposal had fallen apart when Mike Glazer, one of the three partners in the tour company, had been found dead down on the Riverwalk.

“I’d just like to go out with someone who’s fun,” she said. “No drama, no dead bodies.”

I leaned against the back of the sofa and tucked both feet underneath me. “That sounds good,” I said. “Could you see if Eddie has two friends?”

“You really can’t work things out with Marcus?” Roma asked. She liked Marcus. He’d been her first recruit when she’d decided to put together a group of volunteers to care for the feral cat colony at Wisteria Hill.

“No. We keep . . .” I took a deep breath. “It’s like running into a stone wall. We have different ideas about loyalty and friendship.”

I stopped to swallow down the lump that had suddenly settled in my throat. “It’s not going to work.”

Maggie flashed me a look of sympathy.

Roma reached over and gave my arm a squeeze.

“Too much negative energy,” Maggie said, shifting upright a little in her chair. “Let’s talk about something else.” She turned to Roma. “Tell us what’s happening at Wisteria Hill.”

Roma had bought the old Henderson estate a few weeks before.

“Is Oren going to do the work for you?” I asked.

Roma held up a finger. “I just need to call and check on a patient and then I’ll you what we’ve figured out.” She smiled at me. “And yes, Oren’s going to do the work.” She got up from the couch and took her cell phone out of her pocket.

I leaned forward toward Maggie. “Mags, are you sure it was Hannah you saw last night?”