Cat Trick: A Magical Cats Mystery

by Sofie Kelly

  I grinned at Ruby. “I think you’re his new best friend.”

  She grinned back at me. “Fine with me.” Then her expression grew serious. “Did Detective Gordon show up?”

  I nodded and looked around for the cat carrier. “He’s coming over in a few minutes. I’m going to take Hercules and go wait down by the door for him.”

  Hercules put one paw on top of the dwindling pile of cat treats and shot me a warning glare.

  Which Ruby saw. “He’s not going anywhere,” she said. “And you don’t have to either.”

  “I know Marcus isn’t one of your favorite people . . ,” I began.

  “No, he isn’t,” Ruby said, folding her arms over her chest. “But you are, and I like the furry guy, too.” She inclined her head in the cat’s direction.

  Herc gave her an adoring look and dropped his head over his food again.

  Ruby shrugged. “And I figure it’s not really good karma to keep on holding a grudge.” She smiled then. “So help me choose which photo of Hercules to use.”

  We had the choice of photos narrowed down to three when Marcus knocked on the studio door.

  Ruby got to her feet. “Come in, Detective,” she said. Her voice was formal, but not unwelcoming.

  Marcus came into the room as far as the center worktable. Hercules gave him a curious look and went back to washing his tail.

  “I have a couple of questions, if you don’t mind,” Marcus said.

  I wondered what he’d do if Ruby said she did mind.

  But she didn’t. “It’s all right,” she said, dropping back down onto the wooden stool where she’d been sitting before he knocked.

  “Where was Kathleen when you got here?” he asked.

  “Across the street, standing on the grass in front of the tents, talking on her cell phone.”

  Marcus gave an almost imperceptible nod. “What did you do?”

  Ruby twisted the half-dozen narrow cord bracelets on her right arm around her wrist. “I walked over to her. When I got close, I could tell by her expression that something was wrong. She told me she’d found Mike Glazer’s body in the tent and she’d already called nine-one-one.”

  “Did you go see the body for yourself?”

  She shook her head. “No. Kathleen’s not the kind of person who would make something like that up. I got the cat carrier from her and brought Hercules over here.”

  At the sound of his name, Herc looked over at Marcus and meowed.

  I thought I saw something close to a smile cross Marcus’s face. He looked at me. “Kathleen, I need to look at his paws,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said, getting to my feet. “What are you looking for? He’s already washed the front two.”

  “Does Hercules need a lawyer?” Ruby asked. Her expression was serious except for the gleam in her eyes.

  Before Marcus could answer, the cat looked at him and meowed loudly again.

  “I think he just waived his right to counsel, at least for now,” I said.

  “I just want to make sure he didn’t pick up anything on a paw that might be evidence,” Marcus explained.

  I held up Hercules’s paws one at a time, and Marcus looked each one over carefully while the cat, in turn, seemed to be intently studying the detective’s face.

  “Thank you,” Marcus said when he was finished, and it almost seemed as though he were directing the words more to Hercules than to me.

  “Do you need anything else?” I asked. I’d almost asked if he had any questions for the cat.

  He shook his head. “That’s it for now.” He leaned sideways to look around me. “Thank you,” he said to Ruby.

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” Marcus said softly to me.

  I nodded, and he left. I spent a few more minutes with Ruby, and then I nudged Hercules back into the bag. I had just enough time to get back up the hill and get dressed for work before it was time to open the library.

  As soon as I pulled out of the parking lot, Herc poked his black-and-white head out of the bag, followed by one paw and then the other.

  “How did you know Mike Glazer’s body was in the tent?” I asked when we got to the stop sign at the corner.

  The cat wrinkled his nose and his whiskers twitched.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said, flicking on my turn signal and heading up Mountain Road. “Did you see anything—or anyone?” I shot a quick glance to the right just in time to see him put a paw over his face and duck his head. I had no idea what he meant—or if he’d even understood the question. Between their unique, magical talents and their ability to listen intently, it was easy to forget that Hercules and Owen were still just cats.

  On the other hand, every time I’d gotten mixed up in one of Marcus’s cases, they seemed to as well. Each time, the boys had found something that had helped me figure out the killer’s identity. Maybe it was all a coincidence. Maybe.

  There was no sign of Owen when we got home. I changed, grabbed the lunch I’d made earlier and drove down to the library. Susan was coming up the street as I pulled into the parking lot, and she waited for me at the bottom of the library steps. She was wearing her black cat’s-eye glasses, and her hair was in its usual Pebbles Flintstone updo, secured with a small cocktail fork. Sometimes I wondered if the twins did her hair every morning.

  “Good morning,” she said, a huge smile lighting up her face.

  I smiled back. “Good morning.” I went ahead of her up the stairs, opened the doors and disarmed the alarm system.

  Susan moved past me to snap on the lights. “So how was your night?” Her knowing tone told me she already had the answer to the question.

  I shook my head at her as I relocked the main door. “I know that you know I had dinner with Marcus Gordon last night.”

  The smile turned into a grin. “Eric told me,” she said. She clasped her hands behind her back and pushed her glasses up her nose. “So, did he sweep you into those strong, manly arms for a good-night kiss? And when are you going to see him again?”

  “Number one, none of your business. And number two, I’ve already seen Marcus this morning—and not because last night stretched into this morning.”

  It took a moment, but then Susan’s face grew serious as she made the connection. She’d obviously already heard what had happened to Mike. “Don’t tell me you found Mike Glazer’s body.”

  I shifted my leather briefcase from one hand to the other. “Technically, it was Hercules who found the body,” I said.

  “Hercules?” Susan’s eyes darted from side to side in confusion. “What was your cat doing down on the Riverwalk?”

  “We were at the studio building. Ruby wants to do another cat painting. Remember the one Maggie sold this summer?”

  She nodded.

  “We were a few minutes early. I didn’t have the zipper closed all the way on the carrier . . .” I gestured with my free hand.

  “And the cat’s out of the bag.”

  I nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “Do you think Hercules sensed . . . something?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Cats have a much better sense of smell than we do.” I didn’t add that both Hercules and Owen had an uncanny ability for poking their furry noses into things they shouldn’t. Marcus would probably say the same thing about me.

  “I guess this is the end of the pitch to Legacy Tours,” Susan said as we headed for the stairs to the second floor.

  “Probably,” I agreed.

  “Well, not to speak ill of the dead, but from what I heard, Mike Glazer was pretty much impossible to please, so I don’t think the idea had much of a chance anyway. I’m sorry to hear he’s dead, though.”

  Behind us, someone tapped on the front door. “That’ll be Mary,” I said.

  “I’ll go,” Susan said. She hurried over to the entrance and let the older woman in.

  “Hi, Kathleen,” Mary said, hustling into the library as though she were being pushed by a sudd
en gust of wind. “I’m sorry I’m running late.” She was a little out of breath, and I noticed that her jacket was buttoned wrong.

  “How did swimming lessons go?” she asked Susan. The boys had gone for their first swim class in the pool at the St. James Hotel.

  “Wet,” Susan said with a grimace. “Very, very wet. On the other hand, we haven’t been banned from the hotel property, so I take that as a positive sign.”

  “I really didn’t mean to be late,” Mary said, turning to me.

  “You’re not late,” I said. “We don’t open for another five minutes.”

  “Oh, good.” She patted her gray curls, which looked as though they’d been lacquered into place with about half a can of extra-strength hair spray. “I swear this whole tour thing is turning out to be way more trouble than it’s worth. Heaven help me for saying it, but there are moments I think Burtis is right; someone ought to smack a little sense into that Glazer boy.”

  Susan and I exchanged awkward glances.

  Mary saw the look that passed between us. “What?” she asked, blue eyes narrowing. “Something’s up. What is it?”

  I exhaled slowly. “Mary,” I began, “Mike is . . . dead.”

  “Lord love a duck,” she said softly.

  4

  I told Mary about discovering the body in the tent. She sighed and shook her head. “He hasn’t been home in years, and now this happens—as if that family hasn’t already been through enough.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked as we headed up to the second-floor staff room.

  Mary gave me a half smile. “That’s right. You weren’t here when it happened.” Her forehead furrowed in thought. “Let me see. It must be close to ten years ago now. The Glazers lost a son—Michael’s older brother, Gavin—in a car accident.”

  “That’s horrible,” I said.

  “It gets worse,” Mary said. “His parents were away for the weekend. Gavin hit a guardrail and rolled his car down an embankment. He died in the hospital, and they didn’t make it back in time to say good-bye.”

  Susan nodded in silent confirmation.

  “That’s why Mike has no family here anymore.” I fished the keys to my office out of my pocket.

  Mary slipped her bag down off her shoulder. “He left for Chicago maybe a month or so after the accident. His mother and father eventually moved as well, just to get a little space from their memories, I think.” She shook her head. “No one deserves this.”

  I touched her arm. “If you’d like to take the day, Susan and I can handle things here and I can call Abigail to come in.”

  Mary gave me a small smile. “Thank you, Kathleen. That’s very thoughtful, but I’m fine.”

  Susan patted her canvas tote. “I have a piece of lemon-blueberry coffee cake. Want to split it?”

  “Oh, that does sound good,” Mary said. She might have claimed she was fine, but there were tight lines around her eyes and mouth.

  “It is,” Susan said, pushing her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose with one hand and linking her other arm through Mary’s. “But I keep telling Eric that I’m not sure so he’ll keep trying the recipe.”

  They started down the hall to the staff room. I unlocked my office door, put my things away and then went back downstairs to officially open the building for the day.

  It was about ten thirty and I was at the checkout desk, looking at a picture book that Susan had discovered in the book drop with every page covered in glitter glue, when Wren Magnusson came in. She looked around, almost as though she wasn’t sure if she was in the right place, and then she walked over to us.

  I didn’t know Wren very well. She’d been away at university, living with her older brother in Minneapolis. Her mother had died suddenly about six months ago, and Wren had taken the fall term off to sort through the things in her mother’s house and spend some time back in Mayville Heights.

  Wren was tiny, with white-blond hair and fair skin that seemed even paler this morning. She was twisting her left thumb tightly with her other hand, although she didn’t seem to really be aware of it.

  “Excuse me?” she asked in her soft voice. “Is Mary Lowe here?”

  “She is,” I said. “I’ll get her for you.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Mary was shelving books at the far end of the nonfiction section. While her hands were working, her thoughts were clearly somewhere else, and she jumped when I came around the end of the metal shelving unit and spoke her name.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Mary said. “I was woolgathering when I should have been paying more attention to what I’m doing.”

  “Wren Magnusson is at the checkout desk, looking for you.”

  Mary made a face and pressed a hand to her forehead. “I forgot all about the child being back in town. How could I do that? She must have heard what happened.”

  Clearly the fact that I had no idea what she was talking about was showing on my face.

  “Wren knows”—she shook her head—“knew Mike. She was close to all the Glazers when she was a kid. It’s . . . complicated.”

  A lot of the relationships in Mayville Heights were, I’d come to learn. So was my own background, for that matter. My mother and father had married each other twice, with my brother and sister, Sara and Ethan, front and center with my mother, so to speak, at the second ceremony.

  “Go talk to her,” I said. “Take half an hour. It’s not busy. Susan and I will be fine.”

  “Thank you, Kathleen,” Mary said. She patted my arm as she squeezed past me. “You have a good heart.”

  I followed Mary as far as the children’s reading area and watched her fold Wren Magnusson into her arms. Mary was the one with the good heart.

  She pulled out of the hug, keeping her hands on Wren’s shoulders as she studied the young woman’s face. After a moment Mary hooked her arm through Wren’s and they headed for the library entrance.

  I walked over to Susan. She looked up at me. “That poor kid.”

  “She knew Mike,” I said.

  She nodded. “She was almost part of that family.”

  I frowned at her. “What do you mean ‘almost’?”

  Susan pushed the seafood fork a little more tightly into her topknot. “You know that older brother of Mike’s Mary was telling you about?”

  I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “Wren’s mother was going to marry him.”

  I blew out a breath. “So Gavin Glazer was going to be Wren’s stepfather,” I said.

  Susan traced a finger around the outside edge of the heavy hardcover book she was holding. “The Glazers already treated them as though they were family. Wren’s mother never really got over what happened. She cut off all contact with the family even before they moved away. I think it was just too painful for her.” She sighed. “But it had to be hell for Wren. She didn’t just lose Gavin. She lost that entire family.” She set the book on the counter.

  “Sometimes life isn’t very fair,” I said.

  “You got that right,” Susan agreed.

  “I’m going to finish shelving that cart Mary was working on,” I said. “Yell if you need me.”

  I was putting back issues of Scientific American into their cubby when Mary returned about twenty minutes later. She walked over to me, and I got to my feet, brushing my hands on my black pants.

  “How’s Wren?” I asked.

  “A little shaky, but all right, considering,” Mary said. “If her brother wasn’t up in Alaska until the end of the month, I would have suggested she go back to Minneapolis.”

  “Susan told me about Wren’s connection to the Glazers.”

  “She was so happy to get the chance to reconnect with Mike. She’d been going to see him today. She was even talking about getting to see his mother.” She tucked her hands into the pockets of her peach-colored cardigan. “Kathleen, do you have any idea how Mike died?”

  I hesitated, unsure
how to answer.

  Before I could say anything, Mary held up a hand and gave her head a little shake. “I’m sorry. How could you know that?” She sighed softly. “It doesn’t make any difference how he died,” she said. “It doesn’t make him any less dead. I just thought maybe it would help Wren if I could tell her that he didn’t suffer.” She shook her head again as if to clear it. “Not a very nice way to go, alone in that big old tent of Burtis’s.”

  “Is there a good way to die?” I asked, picking up another book from the cart.

  “Well, I darn sure know how I plan on going,” Mary said, a saucy gleam suddenly lighting up her eyes.

  I put one hand on my hip and looked skeptically at her, happy to have the subject changed. “I don’t think that’s something you can really plan, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear what those plans of yours are.”

  She pulled herself up straight to her full height, which wasn’t actually that tall. “I plan to live to be one hundred and be shot in bed by the jealous girlfriend of a much, much younger man.” She smiled at me. “And since I’m nowhere near the century mark right now, I’m going to go wash my hands and then come back and finish those books.”

  I watched her head for the stairs. She was in excellent shape. If anyone was likely to make it to a hundred, it was Mary. And even though she was very happily married, I’d seen her get admiring looks from men a lot younger. Those long, strong legs of hers tended to turn men of any age into mush.

  I went back over to the desk to see if Susan needed anything, and when she didn’t, I headed upstairs to my office. I dropped into my chair and swung around to look out the window.

  How had Mike Glazer died? That question had been rolling around in my mind since I’d stepped into the tent and caught sight of his body slumped in that plastic lawn chair. There had been no blood, no signs of a fight. The body had been cold and stiff.

  But when I’d felt for a pulse, my fingers had brushed over something—a small bump, a little smaller than an egg, on the back of Mike Glazer’s head, behind his left ear.

  I wasn’t sure that even mattered. Not compared to what I’d noticed on his face. Tiny red marks barely bigger than a needle prick—petechial hemorrhages was the medical term for them—and I knew they were a sign of suffocation, among other things. Which meant Mike Glazer’s death probably wasn’t an accident.