by Sofie Kelly
I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. A headache was starting to throb behind my eyes. I knew it was possible that I was wrong. But I was pretty sure I wasn’t.
5
The library got busier as the day went on, and I overheard more than one person speculating on what was going to happen to Mayville Height’s pitch to Legacy Tours. At lunchtime I tried calling Maggie, but all I got was her voice mail. I left a message telling her I knew what had happened and I’d see her later at tai chi class.
Both cats were waiting by the kitchen table when I got home. They seemed to have put their differences from the morning aside. I hung up my coat and bent down to pet them both. Owen had the slightly loopy look that told me he’d been into his Fred the Funky Chicken stash. Rebecca, whose house backed up to mine, kept him in the neon-yellow catnip chickens, using any excuse to buy him one, including Hug Your Cat Day and the summer solstice.
“How was your day?” I said to Hercules. He held up one front paw. There was a jet-black feather stuck between two toes on his right paw. I bent over to pull it loose. “Did you and that grackle get into it again?” I asked. Hercules had been having a war for months with what seemed to be one bird that liked to dive-bomb his head when he was in the backyard. I had nicknamed him Professor Moriarty because he was an arch-nemesis if a cat ever had one. He and Herc had had a couple of run-ins, one of which had ended with Hercules as the proud possessor of another large black wing feather. The bird had disappeared for a while after that. I was guessing he was back.
I pointed to his paw. “Do I want to know what happened?”
He immediately put his left paw on top of his right and looked at me, blinking his big green eyes.
“That’s fine with me,” I said. “Whatever happens in the backyard stays in the backyard.”
I turned to Owen. “And how was your day?” I asked, reaching over to scratch under his chin. He gave me a blissful if slightly stoned-looking smile, and leaned in to my hand.
After I’d gotten some cat love, I went upstairs, changed into my tai chi clothes and came back down to get supper. I made a grocery list while I ate, making sure I put sardines on the list so I could make the cats’ favorite stinky crackers on the weekend.
When the dishes were done, I realized I had enough time to walk down to tai chi class. I put my shoes and a towel in my bag—after picking out a little clump of black fur—pulled on a sweater and called good-bye to the boys. They had disappeared as soon as I’d started the dishes.
Roma was coming up the sidewalk from the other direction as I got close to the artist’s co-op store. She waited for me by the door. “Hi,” she said. “I heard about this morning. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “And, technically, it was Hercules who discovered Mike Glazer’s body.” We went inside and started up the steps to the second-floor tai chi studio.
“Ruby told me she’s doing another painting of Hercules,” Roma said, running her hand through her sleek, dark bob. “I hope it brings in as much as the last one. Cat People needs the money.”
Cat People was a rescue group that worked with feral cats in this area. The fund-raiser Ruby was donating the painting to was for them.
At the top of the stairs, Roma dropped onto the bench near the coat hooks to change her shoes. I pulled off my sweater and draped it over a hook.
“How did Hercules end up over by the tents in the first place?” Roma asked, tucking her sleek brown hair behind one ear. She slid to the right and I sat down beside her.
“I didn’t have the zipper on the cat carrier closed all the way.” I felt my cheeks getting warm. “He hustled down the street, looked both ways at the curb and made a beeline for the tent.”
“At least he knew to watch for cars,” she said with a smile.
“Roma, do you think he really could have smelled . . . something at that distance?” I asked, swapping one running shoe for one of the purple canvas pull-ons I wore for class.
“It’s possible. A cat’s sense of smell is vastly superior to ours.”
“I know,” I said. “I swear Owen can sniff out a catnip chicken all the way across the backyard at Rebecca’s house.”
“And Owen and Hercules aren’t exactly typical cats either, Kathleen,” she said.
My stomach gave a little lurch. Did Roma know more about my cats’ abilities than she’d let on? “What do you mean?” I asked, as she stood up to pull her sweatshirt over her head.
“Well, they were feral, or at the very least, abandoned as young kittens.” Her voice was muffled a little by the fabric. She pulled the shirt off the rest of the way and shook her head. Her hair fell back into its shiny bob. Even with Rebecca’s expert scissors styling my hair these days, it never quite behaved like that. “And they definitely don’t have a typical house cat’s digestive system,” she added with an eyebrows-raised, sideways glance.
I felt myself relax. Roma didn’t know that Owen could disappear like a rabbit from a magician’s hat or that Hercules hadn’t just walked into Burtis’s tent; he’d walked through it.
“By the way, what was the last treat you gave Hercules?” Roma asked, still eyeing me.
“One of those stinky sardine crackers I make,” I said. “And Ruby gave him a few organic fish-shaped treats this morning, which she said you okayed.”
“Good,” she said, putting her sweatshirt over one of the coat hooks.
We walked into the studio space. Maggie was standing in the center of the room with Ruby and fifteen-year-old Taylor King. Ruby was showing them something on her cell phone. Taylor was the newest student in the class. The teenager smiled when she saw Roma.
The Kings had bought an old horse for their daughter, and Roma had spent a lot of time nursing Horton back to health. Now Taylor was interested in becoming a veterinarian.
“Hi,” Ruby said, holding up the phone. “Want to see which photo I finally decided on?”
“Yes,” I said, leaning in for a look.
“Me too,” Roma added.
Hercules was looking directly at the camera in the photograph. He was standing on Roma’s worktable with his head turned just a bit to the left with what I recognized as his “serious” expression on his black-and-white face.
“That’s perfect,” Roma said, smiling at Ruby. “I can’t wait to see the finished painting.”
“I like it,” I agreed.
“I love your cat,” Taylor said shyly. “Ruby said he came from Wisteria Hill.”
I nodded. “That’s right. So did his brother, Owen.”
“Do they like people?” she asked.
Roma rolled her eyes. “They think they are people,” she said.
Both Maggie and Ruby laughed. “Roma’s right,” I said with a smile. “They do sometimes act like they think they’re people. They just don’t like to be touched for the most part, by anyone other than me. But, yes, both Hercules and Owen like people.” I elbowed Maggie. “Especially Owen. He loves Maggie.”
Mags wrinkled her nose at me. “Which just goes to prove how smart that cat is.”
Everyone laughed at that.
I turned to Roma. “Maybe Taylor could help feed the cats out at Wisteria Hill sometime.”
The teenager’s eyes lit up. “Could I?” she asked.
“That’s a good idea,” Roma said. “We can always use another volunteer.” She pointed to Ruby’s cell phone. “Do you still have a picture of Lucy?” Lucy was the matriarch of the feral cats that lived on the Wisteria Hill estate.
“I think so,” Ruby said, bending her red and blue pigtailed head over the screen. “Let me see if I can find it.”
Maggie narrowed her gaze at me. “Excuse us a second, please,” she said. “I need Kathleen for just a minute and then we’re going to get started.” She caught my arm and all but dragged me over to the small table where she kept a kettle and a selection of herbal teas. “You didn’t tell me you were the one who found Mike’s body,” she said, frowning and propping one hand on her hip.
“It didn’t seem like the kind of thing to share in a phone message,” I said, “and, technically, Hercules found the body.” I smiled at her. “I’m fine, Mags.”
She pulled her free hand through her short blond curls. “You know I didn’t like Mike, but this is awful.”
“What’s going to happen to the pitch for the tour?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Liam’s having a meeting”—she glanced at the clock over the door—“right now with the other people on the committee.” She exhaled, lifting her bangs off her forehead. “They’re hoping that either Alex or Chris Scott—they’re Mike’s partners—will come, but I doubt it. I think they’ll probably go ahead with the food tasting and the art show anyway. There’s been so much work put into it all.”
“If I can do anything . . ,” I said.
Maggie smiled. “I know. Thanks.” She held both arms out a bit from her body and shook them. Then she started for the middle of the room. “Circle, everyone,” she called.
Mags took her usual place with her back to the wall, facing the door. Ruby slid in beside her as everyone else spread out. Taylor stopped to pull an elastic from her pocket and pull her red hair up into a high ponytail. Roma smiled at me and patted the air to her left. I took the empty space next to her.
Rebecca was already hurrying across the floor. She joined the circle beside me. “Hi, Kathleen,” she whispered.
“Hi,” I whispered back as Maggie started the warm-up.
“Have you gotten the rocking chair back together yet?” Rebecca asked. Her arms were swinging forward and back and the light sparkled off the diamond ring on her left hand.
I was happy that Rebecca and Everett were getting their happily ever after, even though it had taken close to fifty years for it to happen. And I had a permanent little bubble of warmth in my chest knowing that the cats and I had played a very tiny role in helping the two of them find their way back to each other, though I couldn’t imagine that it wouldn’t have happened anyway. As Ruby liked to say, “What’s meant to be will always find a way.” I wasn’t a big believer in fate, but in the case of those two, I was willing to make an exception.
Before I could answer Rebecca’s question, Maggie called across the circle to me, “Kathleen, bend your knees.”
I gave a melodramatic sigh and everyone laughed. It was a running joke in the class. I thought I was bending my knees. I was trying to bend my knees. It just seemed that my knees didn’t know that.
I got down a little lower to the ground and Rebecca gave me a sympathetic smile, the way she always did. “To answer your questions, yes and no,” I said, keeping my voice low.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not the slightest bit out of breath even though she was twice my age. “I’m not following you.”
I was already a tiny bit winded. I made a mental resolution to leave the truck at home more often and walk to the library. “I got the rocking chair all together okay, but it had a decided list to one side,” I said.
“Oh, dear,” Rebecca said, two frown lines appearing between her blue eyes. “Maybe Oren could help you.”
Oren Kenyon was a jack-of-all-trades. He’d duplicated the old trim for the library restoration and created the beautiful carved wooden sun that was over the entrance. If Marcus couldn’t fix the chair, maybe I would ask Oren.
“Marcus is going to try to put it together for me,” I said.
Rebecca beamed at me. “He’s a very nice young man,” she said, with a gleam in her eye that even with her gray hair made her look about as old as Taylor King. “I’m glad the two of you have become friends.”
“You’re as bad as Maggie,” I said.
Rebecca gave me a look that was all innocence. She was much better at it than either Owen or Hercules.
Marcus had figured out that Maggie had been trying to get the two of us together. I wondered if he knew that it seemed as though everyone else in town was trying to do the same thing.
Maggie worked us hard. By the time we did the entire form at the end of class, the neck of my T-shirt was wet with sweat. Some of my movements still needed more practice, especially Cloud Hands, but I could go all the way through all one hundred and eight movements of the form.
I walked over to Roma and Taylor, who were standing by the table while Roma made herself a cup of tea that smelled like cranberries and cinnamon. “I’m never going to be able to do that,” Taylor was saying as she shook her hair out of its ponytail.
“If you mean the entire form, yes, you will,” Maggie said, joining us. She’d peeled off her T-shirt to uncover the red and purple tie-dye tank she had on underneath. I was pretty sure Ruby had made it. “Everyone was where you are when they first started. You just take it a movement at a time.”
Taylor shook her head. She didn’t look convinced.
“It’s just like eating an elephant,” Ruby said, walking over to us as she pulled the elastics off her pigtails.
Roma frowned at her over the top of her teacup. “I don’t get what you mean,” she said. “How do you eat an elephant?”
Ruby grinned. “A bite at a time.”
Everyone groaned, and Ruby made a face at us. Then she turned to Taylor. “If you keep at it and you practice, you’ll get it all. Anytime you want to come over to my studio and practice with me, you can.”
“Really?” Taylor said. “Because I know my right hand isn’t, well, right when I do White Crane Spreads Wings.”
“Show me,” Ruby said, draping the towel around her neck. She looked at Maggie. “You don’t mind?”
Mags made a sweeping movement with one hand. “Go ahead.”
Taylor followed Ruby over to a spot near the middle of the studio.
Roma took another sip of her tea and turned to Maggie. “Do you have any idea what’s going to happen with the food tasting and the art show now that Mike Glazer is dead?”
Maggie shook her head. “I was telling Kathleen earlier that Liam was having a meeting with the others on the committee while we were doing class.” She glanced over at the clock above the door. “They’ve probably decided what to do by now.”
“You think they’ll go ahead?” Roma asked.
“With the show and the tasting?” Maggie said, grabbing a cup to make herself some tea. “I think they might as well. We were only a few days from it all coming together. I hate to see everyone’s hard work go to waste. As far as the pitch to the tour company, I think that’s done.” She reached for the box of chocolate-spice tea bags. “I don’t think it was going to work anyway, even if Mike hadn’t had a heart attack or whatever it was.”
For a moment I could almost feel the man’s cold skin under my fingers. I swallowed as my stomach tightened. “Why do you say that?” I asked.
Maggie dropped a tea bag into her cup and added hot water. The tea smelled delicious—like cloves and chocolate. “I hope Mike was welcomed by the light,” she said, “and I don’t like to be critical of someone who isn’t here to defend himself anymore, but most of the time, he acted like he thought we were all a bunch of small-town hicks.”
I thought about Burtis fingering the sledgehammer while Mike ranted at him and about Mary saying she was going to kick Mike’s backside between two light posts like a placekicker going for three points. Given what I suspected about how Mike Glazer had died, I didn’t like knowing how many people had disliked working with the man.
“I noticed that last night,” I said carefully.
“But maybe it was just that he knew what kinds of things his customers were looking for in a getaway,” Roma offered.
Maggie shook her head. “It was more than having high standards. I don’t have a problem with that. I have very high standards for how my art is displayed.” She sighed. “I got the feeling Mike thought we didn’t know how to do things properly, let alone well.”
Roma drank the last of her tea and set the cup on the table. “It sounds as though he’d forgotten where he came from.”
“Maybe he didn’t want
to remember,” I said quietly.
Maggie and Roma both looked at me. “What do you mean?” Maggie asked.
“Wren Magnusson came into the library looking for Mary,” I said. “Susan told me about Mike’s brother.”
Maggie laced her fingers around her cup of tea. “I’d forgotten about that,” she said. She turned to Roma. “You were gone when Gavin Glazer was killed in that car accident, weren’t you?”
Roma nodded. “But I remember reading about it. His car went off the road. It was up on the bluff, wasn’t it?”
Maggie sighed again. “He was on his way into town. Celia”—she looked at me—“that was Wren’s mother—was a different person after the accident, colder, closed off. She . . . she didn’t want to have anything to do with Gavin’s family.”
“I can’t fault her for that,” Roma said, twisting the silver ring she wore around her index finger. “When Luke died, it was hard for me to be around his family at first; all I saw was reminders of what I’d lost. We’d been married such a short time. More than once I’d catch sight of his brother—at the counter in the kitchen, or coming down the stairs—and I’d think, ‘Here’s Luke,’ and for a split second it was as though the accident hadn’t happened. And then I’d remember that it had.” She exhaled slowly. “But they were Olivia’s family—her grandparents, her aunts and uncle. Over time it got”—she shrugged— “not exactly easier, just not so raw. I’m sorry Celia was never able to get to that place.”
“Mary said that Mike left Mayville Heights not long after his brother died,” I said.
Maggie nodded. “This was literally his first visit back.”
“And his last,” Roma added softly.
I wondered what it had been like for Mike to come back to the place where he’d grown up after almost ten years, to see people he hadn’t seen in all that time. I’d had an aching attack of homesickness when my plane had landed in Boston, and I’d been away for only a little more than a year. When I caught sight of my mother and father and Ethan and Sara waiting for me, I’d almost burst into tears.