by Sofie Kelly
“Take your time,” I said, kissing her cheek.
I went back to the kitchen and started clearing the table. Owen was sniffing Mom’s purse, which she’d left on the floor next to her chair. “There’s nothing in that for you, nosy,” I said. One ear twitched, but that was the only indication I got that he’d heard me.
Hercules wound his way around my legs and I bent down and picked him up. “So Hugh Davis wasn’t a very nice person,” I said.
He murped his agreement.
“Mom’s right, you know. Those women must have family and friends who wanted Hugh to pay for what he did. So how do we find out if that’s what someone did?”
19
Maggie called about eight thirty that evening. She sounded tired but not at all worried. “It went well,” she said. “Now it’s in the hands of the universe.”
“My fingers are crossed.” Owen had climbed onto my lap when I answered the phone and he put one paw on the receiver. “And Owen sends his love.”
Maggie laughed. “Thanks. I know they’ll both help. Give Owen a scratch from me.”
Mom poked her head around the doorway to the kitchen. “Ask Maggie to join us for breakfast,” she stage-whispered.
“Mom would like to know if you can meet us for breakfast,” I said.
“Yes,” Maggie immediately said.
“Are you sure you don’t want to think about it?” I teased.
“I have been thinking about it,” she said. “I really want to meet your mother. I’ve heard so much about her from you. The fact that she’s on my show is just a bonus.”
We settled on a time and said good night. I gave Owen a scratch under his chin. “This is from Maggie,” I said. His golden eyes closed to slits and he started to purr.
It was the alarm clock that woke me in the morning, not a furry face with sardine breath. When I went downstairs I found Mom, sitting on the floor by the refrigerator. She had a fork in each hand with half a sardine speared on each one. Hercules was methodically licking fish oil off one chunk. Owen was biting off bits from the other and setting them on the floor so he could eat them.
Mom looked up and smiled. “Good morning, sweetie.” She gestured at the counter. “I made you coffee.”
“Oh, umm, thank you,” I said. Mom could do only two things in the kitchen and making coffee wasn’t one of them.
“My internal clock is completely out of whack,” she said. “I made some tea and fed the cats. I hope that’s okay. Owen seemed hungry.”
“What did you feed them?”
She tipped her head in the direction of the counter, where an empty can sat waiting to be washed and recycled. “That canned food.” Her right hand moved and Hercules’s head bobbed up and down as he tried to keep licking without missing a beat.
“They’re very intelligent cats,” Mom said. “Hercules took me right to the cupboard with the cat food and Owen showed me the sardines in the refrigerator.”
“Yes, they are something,” I said darkly, eyeing both cats as I moved to the fridge to get the cream for my coffee. “Why are you feeding them sardines like that?” Each cat was less than a foot away from my mother. Most people, with the exception of Maggie, didn’t get that close.
Mom looked up at me, frowning. “You did tell me not to touch them, Katydid.”
“I mean why are you feeding them sardines at all?”
She shifted slightly. “I was having my tea and half of one of those wonderful blueberry muffins. It just seemed wrong for me to have a treat and them to have nothing.”
Owen made a little murp of agreement.
“I didn’t think you’d want me to feed them a blueberry muffin. I can’t see how that would be good for them.”
Hercules glanced over at me then. Unlike his brother, he at least had the good sense to look a little guilty.
I got a mug out of the cupboard and poured a cup of the coffee for myself. It didn’t smell burned or have the consistency of molasses. That was good. As I added cream and sugar I realized I didn’t care if the coffee tasted . . . well, as bad as every other cup of coffee my mother had ever made. I was happy just to have her in the middle of my kitchen floor feeding sardines to my cats.
Owen had pulled the last bite of fish off his fork. Mom leaned sideways, set the fork on the table and grabbed her tea. “Cheers,” she said, holding up the cup.
“Cheers,” I echoed. I took a sip, aware that I was suddenly being watched by three sets of eyes. The coffee wasn’t too watery or too strong. It didn’t taste like it had been filtered through a pair of old sweat socks. “This is . . . good,” I said. I didn’t mean to sound so surprised but, well, I was.
Mom gave the boys a conspiratorial grin and got to her feet. She came over and kissed the top of my head. “See, sweetie?” she said. “You can teach an old dog new tricks.”
Herc’s head came up and he gave her a green-eyed glare.
She held up a hand. “I’m sorry, Hercules,” she said. “I meant no offense.”
The glare smoothed into a kitty smile. If offense had been taken, it had already passed.
Maggie was waiting for us at Eric’s, sitting at our favorite table in the window. She stood up to greet us when we came in the front door.
“I’m so happy to meet you,” Mom said, taking both of Maggie’s hands in hers. “I’ve heard nothing but good things about you.”
Maggie smiled. “I’m glad to meet you, too, Mrs. Paulson. I’ve heard good things about you also.”
Mom gave her a sly grin. “Well, then, you haven’t heard the best stories,” she said. She gave Maggie’s hands a squeeze and let go. “And please call me Thea.”
As soon as we sat down, Eric himself came over with the coffeepot and I did the introductions.
“I hear you make a chocolate pudding cake that’s almost as good as my favorite Death by Chocolate cheesecake,” Mom said.
Like everyone who met my mother, Eric was already charmed. “Come back for lunch and you can judge that for yourself,” he said.
She smiled. “I will.”
Mom ordered an omelet for breakfast while Maggie and I both chose our current favorite, Eric’s breakfast sandwich.
Eric went back to the kitchen and Claire came over with hot water and a couple of small teapots for Maggie and Mom. Once Mom had a cup of tea steaming in front of her, she reached for her bag and pulled out a small package wrapped in lavender paper and tied with silver ribbons. She handed it across the table to Maggie.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I brought this for you.”
Maggie looked from my mother to me. “Uh, thank you,” she said. She set the package on her lap, untied the ribbon bow, and carefully unfolded the tissue paper. When she saw what was inside, she put a hand to her mouth. She looked at Mom across the table. “I can’t believe you did this.”
She held up a T-shirt, the same pale lavender color as the wrapping paper. Across the front it read LIFE IS WILD AND WONDERFUL. The rest of the fabric was covered with signatures scrawled in permanent black marker.
“It has to be the whole cast,” Maggie said. “There’s Billy and Jack and Nicole. I just . . . oh wow!”
“Kathleen told me you like the show,” Mom said. “I thought you might enjoy the shirt.”
“I will.” She couldn’t stop smiling. “I can’t decide whether to wear it or frame it.”
Mom took a sip of her tea. “Wear it,” she said. “Enjoy it. Life is meant to be lived, not looked at from a distance.”
“Are you and Jack really having an affair?” Maggie asked, holding the T-shirt against her chest with one hand. “I mean, your character.”
Mom propped one elbow on the table. “Can you really see me with him?” she asked, eyebrows going up.
“I knew it,” Maggie said.
They started talking about the show and I leaned back in my chair with my coffee and let their voices wash over me. Having Mom and Maggie sitting at the same table was the best of both worlds. I wished I didn�
��t have to choose between Boston and Mayville Heights, and I was uncomfortably aware that I was going to have to make that choice soon.
The front door of the café opened then and Marcus stepped inside. He smiled when he saw me.
“Excuse me,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hi,” he said. He gestured toward the table. “Is that your mother with Maggie?”
I nodded. “Do you have time to meet her?”
“I’d like to, but do you have a minute first?”
“Sure,” I said. “What is it?”
“Hannah was telling the truth. She was at Barry’s Hat on Friday night. I talked to a friend of Liam’s.” He made a face. “He took her keys. Some of the crew from the festival were there. One of the women wasn’t drinking. She drove Hannah home.”
“You went to Barry’s Hat?”
“All I did was have supper at the bar,” he said. “I was talking to the bartender and he said he’d met my sister.” His eyes kept sliding off my face. He wasn’t a very good liar.
“Of course. Because you go to bars all the time to have supper.” Maybe my mother was right. He’d done exactly what I would have done and was saying just what I would have said.
“I can’t do nothing, Kathleen,” Marcus said quietly. He closed his eyes momentarily and shook his head. “And yes, those words do sound familiar.”
“Then I don’t need to say ‘stay out of it,’ do I?” I glanced over at the table. Maggie and Mom were still deep in conversation. “Well, at least now you know Hannah was telling the truth.” As far as it goes, I added silently. “That’s good.”
“Yes and no,” Marcus said. “Liam said Hannah got there about eight. Where was she between then and the time she left Red Wing? She says she wasn’t anywhere near the marina.”
There were deep frown lines between his eyes and I wanted to rub them away. “Do you believe her?”
He shook his head. “I want to.” He let out a long breath. “I know you don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He forced a smile. “I can tell you Abigail Pierce is in the clear. She’s on the hotel surveillance, breaking in Hugh Davis’s room at almost the same time Davis was making a call on his cell phone.”
“You’ll notice I’m not asking you how you know this.”
“I met her and her lawyer coming out of the station. She told me.”
“Marcus, please don’t do anything—”
“—stupid?” he finished.
I shook my head. “I was going to say don’t do anything that might get you in trouble.” My mouth was suddenly dry. “Call me instead.”
We stood there, eyes locked, for a long moment. Something we seemed to be doing a lot of lately. I cleared my throat. “Come meet my mother,” I said.
I took Marcus over to the table and made the introductions.
Mom stood up and held out her hand. “It’s very good to meet you, Detective,” she said. Her expression was serious. I knew her well enough to know she was appraising him, making a hundred tiny little judgments in just a few seconds.
“You as well,” he said.
Claire was on her way to the table with a loaded tray.
“I’ll leave you to your breakfast,” he said. He smiled at Mom and Maggie. “Have a good day, Kathleen,” he said quietly to me.
“‘From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life,’” Mom recited softly as Marcus walked away.
“Marcus and I are not star-crossed anything,” I said as Claire reached the table. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Maggie look across the table at Mom and nod, ever so slightly.
After breakfast I dropped Mom off at the Stratton and made my way to the library. There was more than half an hour before we opened, so I sat at my desk, turned on my laptop and started researching Hugh Davis’s history as a director. Mom had said he hadn’t done much of significance in the previous eighteen months, so I went back a year and a half and started from there.
What I very quickly found out was that there were just too many productions with too many actors for me to figure out who the two women were that Hugh had bullied. I leaned back in my chair and swung around to look out the window. There had to be a better way.
Chloe Miller came in just after ten with the book of poetry she’d borrowed. She walked over to the desk and held out the book. “Thank you,” she said. “The poem was perfect.”
“You’re so welcome. How are rehearsals going?”
“They’re going well. I met your mom, by the way. I like her.” She smiled. “Everything’s coming together.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Every time I’d seen Chloe she was alone. It struck me that the polished, put-together actress was a little shy. I remembered I’d heard that she’d sat down in the middle of the seniors’ reading group and answered their questions when she’d been in the building the other day. “Susan told me you spent half an hour the other morning getting peppered with questions when you were here. Thank you.”
“I didn’t mind,” she said, playing with a hammered-gold ring on her left middle finger. “They were fun. They asked some great questions about staging a production.”
“Chloe, are you free around one o’clock?” I asked. “I’d love to take you to lunch.”
“For taking a couple of minutes to talk to a few senior citizens?” She shook her head. “It’s not necessary, Kathleen.”
“It wasn’t just a couple of minutes or just a few senior citizens. But if you don’t have time, I understand.”
“I do have time,” she said. She smiled. “It would be fun to have lunch. How about I meet you here at one o’clock?”
“Perfect,” I said.
Around eleven thirty Susan poked her head around my office door. I was deep into the budget and started when she said my name. “Sorry,” she said. “Andrew’s here with some kind of panel thing that’s supposed to go in the gazebo. I thought we should check with you first.”
“I better take a look at this,” I said. “I’ll come down.”
Abigail and Andrew were in the parking lot with Burtis Chapman’s truck. There was a large latticework panel tied down in the bed of the truck.
“Hey, Kathleen,” Andrew said. “This is supposed to go at the back of the gazebo. Is that going to be a problem?”
Abigail came around the side of the truck. “Ben wants to use it as a backdrop,” she said. “If that’s okay.”
“How are you planning on keeping it in place?” I asked. The wooden panel was long and wide and I didn’t want the gazebo damaged in any way.
“Bungee cords,” Andrew said. “It’s actually two pieces, hinged. It stands up by itself. The cords are just for added stability.”
I leaned over the side of the truck bed. The backdrop looked sturdy enough. “How are you going to keep someone from just walking off with it in the middle of the night?” I said to Andrew.
He grinned at me. “You mean not everyone in Mayville Heights is a law-abiding citizen? I’m shocked.”
“Oh, people who live here are honest and law-abiding,” Abigail said. “It’s just that sometimes we get some ‘undesirables’ from out of town.” She said the whole thing with a completely straight face.
Andrew looked at her a little uncertainly. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll unload this and we can see if it’s going to work.”
Abigail caught my eye and winked.
He’d brought a wheeled dolly with him and with a little help he got the backdrop on it and around the building to the gazebo. It took only a few minutes to set it in place.
“What do you think?” Andrew said to Abigail.
“I’m just going to see how it looks from each side,” she said, heading across the grass.
He came to stand beside me and look at his handiwork.
“It looks fine to me,” I said. “But you didn’t answer my question. What are you going to do at night?”
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p; “Oren says there a basement and it’s dry.”
I nodded. “That would work.”
“I saw your mother,” Andrew said. He brushed some sawdust off his denim shirt.
“And?”
“She told me to go home. She told me I was a year and a half too late. And she called me a dipwad in Hungarian. At least I think it was Hungarian. And dipwad.”
I couldn’t help smiling at him. He was trying so hard to fix things between us. Once again I caught myself wondering if I was crazy not to give him a chance. He was funny and handsome, and unlike Marcus, he didn’t make a secret of how he felt about me.
He glanced over at Abigail, still studying the backdrop. “Have lunch with me, Kath. Take the afternoon off and we’ll play hooky and drive into Minneapolis.”
I shook my head. “I can’t play hooky. I have budget numbers to go over.”
“Then at least have lunch with me.”
I stuffed my hands in my pockets and took several steps away from him on the pretext of looking at the gazebo from another angle. “I can’t do that, either. I’m having lunch with Chloe Miller.”
“The actress from the festival?” he asked, running the palm of his hand over the stubble on his chin.
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you notice she has a bit of a limp?”
“I did,” I said. “I’m kind of surprised that you did, though. It’s not the kind of thing you used to pick up on.”
“You’re not the only person who’s changed, Kathleen,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Touché.”
He smiled. “Okay, so I didn’t actually notice the limp; Abigail did. But I did notice Chloe had scars on her arm. She was helping to waterproof the backdrop. I asked her what happened and she said she was in a car accident. She spent weeks in the hospital.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Didn’t know what?” Abigail asked, coming back across the grass toward us. She glanced at Andrew. “That’s fine, by the way, but I think Ben should take a look just to be sure.”
“Andrew said Chloe Miller was in an accident. I wondered why I hadn’t seen her in anything for so long.”