A Tale of Two Kitties

by Sofie Kelly

  The front door of the restaurant opened and Rebecca came in. She smiled and came over to the counter. “I bet you’re on your way back from your meeting with Lita,” she said.

  I nodded. “I came in to get warm and get a cup of coffee. I’m just waiting for a new pot.”

  “I’m meeting Patricia Queen for tea,” Rebecca said. “I’m hoping she can repair an old quilt that Everett’s mother made.”

  Claire came out of the kitchen then. “Would you like a table, Mrs. Henderson?” she asked.

  “In just a moment I would,” Rebecca said as she pulled off her gloves.

  Claire smiled. “You can have the one in the window if you’d like or any other one along the back wall.”

  Rebecca smiled back at her. “Thank you,” she said.

  The door opened again and Elias Braeden and two other men came in.

  “I’ll just get these customers and then I’ll get your coffee, Kathleen,” Claire said.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Take your time.”

  Elias noticed me then. He gave a small smile and a nod of recognition, which I returned.

  “Kathleen, who is that?” Rebecca asked, a frown forming between her eyebrows.

  “His name is Elias Braeden. He’s here on business. He’s considering buying the Silver Casino.”

  “Oh, that explains it,” she said, her expression clearing.

  I turned to look at her. “Explains what?”

  “Nothing, really,” Rebecca said. “It’s just the day before Leo died I saw him out in front of the house talking to that man. Did you know Leo liked to play blackjack?”

  I nodded. “I did.”

  “That must be how he knew Mr. Braeden.”

  Claire came then with my coffee. Rebecca gave me a hug and headed toward the window table.

  I headed out for the library. So Elias had talked to Leo the day before he was killed. Interesting.

  Very interesting.

  • • •

  Oren Kenyon came into the library about four thirty. Oren was in his midfifties, tall and lean like a farm-boy version of actor/director Clint Eastwood. He was quiet and thoughtful, a child musical prodigy who had chosen a quiet life working in Mayville Heights rather than the fame and fortune of a concert stage that certainly could have been his if he’d wanted it.

  Mary was at the front desk. She beckoned Oren over. Some of the old photographs were spread across the counter.

  “I think I’ve figured out where some of these were taken,” she said as I joined them. “There used to be a summer day camp out at Long Lake when I was a girl.” She held up one of the photos. “I think this one is some of the boys from the camp.” She pointed at a little boy with a crew cut, sitting cross-legged on the ground with half a dozen other kids about the same age, all of them squinting at the camera. “Oren, isn’t that your cousin Ira?”

  Oren studied the old black-and-white image for a moment. Then he nodded slowly. “That’s Ira,” he said. “And I think that’s Thorsten’s brother behind him.” A small frown creased his forehead.

  Ira Kenyon was a little . . . eccentric. Back when Kingsley-Pearson had planned to develop the area around Long Lake, before the company’s problems with the IRS and before Simon had bought the land, Ira had been camped out there, insisting the land really belonged to the Kenyons. One of the first things Simon had done was hire the man as a caretaker for the property, which seemed to settle the issue, at least for the moment.

  Mary smiled. “Thank you.” She looked at me. “I’ll give Thorsten a call and get him to come take a look at these sometime in the next couple of days.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  She looked over toward the computer area, where one of the older Justason boys was working at a terminal. He had one hand on top of the backward baseball cap on his head and he seemed to be squinting in confusion at the monitor.

  Mary shook her head. “Excuse me,” she said. “I think Perry is having more problems formatting his bibliography.”

  She made her way over to the computers and I turned to Oren. He was carrying a brown envelope and I hoped that meant he’d brought the drawings of the porch swing he was going to make as a wedding gift for Roma and Eddie from Marcus and me.

  He had. He’d drawn a front view of the swing, a side perspective and a close-up of the detail along the arms. I spread the drawings out on the circulation desk.

  “I hope you like it,” he said shyly.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, tracing the lines of the sketch with one finger.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I think I have enough reclaimed black locust. It’s beautiful wood.”

  “Whatever you decide will work is fine with me,” I said. “I trust your judgment.”

  Abigail hung up the phone and leaned over to look at the drawing.

  “It’s for Roma and Eddie,” I said. “Their wedding gift.”

  “They’re going to love it,” she said.

  “The arms are based on a design my father did for a rocking chair,” Oren said.

  “Roma will love that,” I said. Roma and Oren were distant cousins.

  I put the drawing back in the envelope and offered it to Oren.

  He shook his head. “Those are for you,” he said. “I have another set.” He tapped his temple with one hand. “And the idea is here anyway.”

  We started toward the entrance. Then Oren stopped and looked back over his shoulder at the circulation desk. “Kathleen, there’s something I need to ask you,” he said. His expression was serious.

  “All right,” I said. “What is it?”

  “I saw you over at the hotel with Simon Janes and a woman named Celia Hunter?”

  “Yes,” I said, since he’d framed the sentence as a question.

  Oren nodded. “I went to talk to the manager about restoring an old walnut desk that had been stored in the basement. It has some water damage. I thought it was her.” He looked down at his feet for a moment, then his blue eyes met mine. “I wasn’t sure if I should say anything or not, but maybe that old photo of Ira is a sign that I should.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I don’t like to speak ill of people, but Celia is not someone who should be trusted.”

  I knew that Oren never spoke ill of anyone, so I knew I could trust what he was saying even as I was surprised by the comment. “How do you know this?” I asked.

  He had taken off his cap when he’d stepped inside the building and now he twisted the brim in his hands. “Ira and Celia went out when they were young. Celia broke up with him to go after Leo Janes, who had a lot more money.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “I don’t think a lot of people do,” Oren replied. “It didn’t work. Leo was interested in Simon’s mother, and Celia didn’t get anywhere with him. She went after his brother, Victor, next but that didn’t work out, either.” Oren cleared his throat. “You’re friends with Simon, so maybe you could tell him he shouldn’t trust Celia. Before Leo Janes’s marriage broke up Ira insisted that Celia was telling Victor things about Meredith. Private things.”

  I remembered Meredith Janes’s letter: He seemed to know what I was thinking in a way Leo didn’t, she had written. Could that have been because Celia Hunter had been feeding Victor information?

  Oren’s expression was serious. “Kathleen, sometimes the things Ira says are just things he’s imagined, but sometimes, sometimes they aren’t.”

  I thanked Oren for coming to talk to me, and he left. In the last two hours I’d learned that Elias Braeden had seen Leo the day before he died and Celia Hunter may not have been the friend to Leo’s ex-wife that she’d seemed. The problem was I had no idea how any of that could help me figure out who had killed Leo.

  chapter 13

  I couldn’t get what Oren h
ad told me about Celia Hunter out of my mind. Was his cousin Ira right? Had Celia conspired with Victor Janes to end his brother’s marriage so she could have Leo for herself? The whole thing reminded me of a gothic romance. All we needed was a lonely mansion and a dark and stormy night. I had no idea how this new piece of information fit into the puzzle. Based on the letter from Meredith it seemed as though she hadn’t known about her best friend plotting to break up her marriage. Had Leo known? And did it have anything to do with his death?

  I took the later supper break. I carried my bowl of vegetable soup back to my office instead of eating in the staff room. My mind was going in circles. I had all these pieces of information and no way to tie them all together or tie them to Leo’s killer.

  I wished I knew a little more about blackjack. I’d played poker before, but all I knew about blackjack was the basic rules. On the other hand, I did know someone who knew a lot more about casinos and gambling than I did. My mother. My mother was primarily a stage actor, but she did take on small film and TV roles if the part captured her fancy.

  For the past month Mom and Dad had been in Los Angles. They’d originally only planned to stay for two weeks while my mother did a brief guest stint on The Wild and Wonderful. She was incredibly popular with fans of the racy soap opera, who had been lobbying for a return performance since her last visit. On her second day on the set her visit had been extended by an additional three weeks.

  Several years ago, Mom had had a small role in a movie set in a casino in Las Vegas. She’d flirted shamelessly—on camera—with Denzel Washington. The two of them had a chemistry that surprised everyone, except Dad and me. My mother had chemistry with everyone she worked with.

  I checked the time. Los Angeles was two hours behind Mayville Heights. If I was lucky Mom was back from the set. If she wasn’t I could try her when I got home. It was Dad who answered. “Hi, sweetie,” he said. “It’s wonderful to hear your voice.”

  “It’s good to hear yours, too,” I said. “How’s Los Angeles?”

  “Busy. They’re using your mother as much as they can, because we’ll be leaving in another week. And everywhere we go someone recognizes her. Not to mention men half my age are putting the moves on her right in front of me.”

  “He’s exaggerating,” I heard Mom call in the background.

  I laughed. It didn’t matter how many men tried to charm my mother. She only had eyes for my father. She told me once that being divorced from Dad showed her that she didn’t need a man she could live with. She needed a man she couldn’t live without.

  “May I talk to her, please?” I said.

  “Of course,” he said. “I love you.”

  “Love you, too, Dad.” I leaned back in my chair and my mother’s voice came through the phone, just as full of warmth as if she’d been in the room with me.

  “Hello, Katydid,” she said. “How are you?”

  The sound of my mom’s voice always made me smile. She could be dramatic and aggravating and she’d never been the make-cookies or take-me-to-girl-scouts kind of parent, which I’d longed for at times growing up. But she loved me and Sara and Ethan with the ferocity of a mama grizzly bear and I knew no matter what any of us did in life, she always had our backs. “I’m fine,” I said.

  “And how are Owen and Hercules?”

  “They’re both all right now, but Owen did have a bit of an altercation with a stray dog last week.”

  “Is Owen all right?” she asked, and I could hear the concern in her voice. Mom and the cats had bonded the first time she came for a visit.

  “He had to have stitches and wear a fabric cone for a few days, but he had Marcus feeding him things he probably shouldn’t have had and me carrying him everywhere, so he survived. And for the record, according to Roma the dog looked worse.”

  Mom laughed. “That’s probably the last cat he’ll tangle with,” she said. “And how’s Marcus?” There was a teasing edge to her voice that made me blush even though she couldn’t see me.

  “Perfect as always,” I said.

  “You’re happy.” It wasn’t a question.

  “We are.” I pictured her probably curled up in a big chair, elbow on the armrest and her head propped on her hand, and a wave of homesickness rolled over me.

  “I have a feeling you didn’t call just to tell me how terrific Marcus is,” she said. “So what’s up?”

  “I’m hoping you can teach me about playing blackjack.”

  “Are you planning a career change you haven’t told me about?”

  I laughed and propped my feet on the edge of my desk. “No. Do you remember me telling you about Mia Janes, who works for me at the library, and her dad?”

  “Simon,” Mom said. “The developer.”

  “Yes.”

  “This has something to do with his father’s death, doesn’t it?” My mother read the Mayville Heights Chronicle every morning online. I should have guessed she’d make the connection.

  “Leo—Simon’s father—played blackjack. He was pretty good.” The brownie I’d brought for dessert was still sitting on top of my desk next to a half-warm cup of coffee. I broke off a piece and popped it into my mouth.

  “Did it get him killed?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “All I can tell you is that he won around a million dollars at one particular casino and no one seems to know for sure exactly how he did it.”

  “I’m surprised he wasn’t banned from the tables.”

  “He was. And not just at that casino.”

  “How much do you know about the game?” Mom asked.

  “I understand the rules,” I said. “Players compete against the dealer but not against each other. The object of the game is to beat the dealer, by getting twenty-one points with your first two cards, say with an ace and a queen, or having your final score be more than the dealer’s without going over twenty-one, or by the dealer going bust.” I had another bite of my brownie.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Face cards are worth ten and an ace can be worth one or eleven. The dealer deals two cards to everyone from the shoe.”

  “The shoe holds the cards, right?” I said.

  “Yes.” I could picture my mother nodding on the other end of the phone. “Invented, by the way, by John Scarne, one of the most incredible magicians I’ve ever seen. Before that the game was dealt from a single deck. The shoe can hold between two and eight decks of cards.”

  I did a little math in my head. “So, wait a minute; using more cards is going to give an advantage to the casino.”

  “Exactly,” Mom said. “And it works against someone like Mr. Janes, who had to have been counting cards to have won that much money.”

  “He did have a PhD in math,” I said.

  “So he probably had math skills that were better than the average person.”

  “Yes.” I checked my watch. I only had a few minutes left on my supper break.

  “After those first two cards are dealt a player has several choices. ‘Hit’ means take another card from the dealer.”

  “And ‘stand’ means you don’t want any more cards.”

  “That’s right,” Mom said. “‘Double down’ means you can increase your original bet. If your first two cards are worth the same you can split them into two hands. That’s called a split.”

  “So if Leo was counting cards, what was he doing?” I said. “I’m guessing it means keeping track of what’s been dealt and what cards are left to be played.”

  “Essentially that’s it. A good card counter knows what the odds are of getting the card he needs. But keep in mind not only is the dealer watching, there are also cameras overhead watching. Card counters get in trouble when it’s obvious what they’re doing, for instance when everyone can see them looking around. I take it Mr. Janes didn’t do anything to give himself away.”

 
“I guess not,” I said.

  “Smart man,” Mom said, and I caught a hint of approval in her voice. “Keep in mind,” she continued, “it may be considered to be wrong by the casinos but card counting isn’t illegal, not unless the player is using something other than his own mental acuity—some kind of computer for instance.”

  “So why was Simon banned from playing anymore?”

  “Because a casino is private property. Just the way you can refuse to let someone in your house, a casino can refuse to let someone play. If I’m in your house after I’ve been told I’m not welcome, that’s considered trespassing and that is a crime. The same would be true in a casino.”

  I checked my watch again. It was almost time to get back to work. “Thanks, Mom,” I said. “This helps a lot.”

  “You’re welcome, Katydid,” she said. “Stay safe. Tell Marcus I said hello. And tell Maggie there’s a surprise wedding coming on the show.”

  To my surprise Maggie had turned out to be a huge fan of The Wild and Wonderful. “Whose?” I asked. “Wait a minute, are you getting married? Is that why they wanted you for more shows?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that,” she said. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I said. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

  I ended the call and set my cell on top of the desk.

  Card counting was a lot harder than I’d realized. Leo had been good enough that no one knew how he was doing whatever it was he’d been doing. I could see why Elias wanted to figure that out, why any casino owner would. Had Leo taught his technique to some of his students? He’d already cost Elias a million dollars. How much money had they, or could they, win as well?

  I headed back downstairs and joined Mary at the circulation desk. She was putting books to be reshelved on the cart while I sorted through the ones that had come in on reserve. The third book I picked was for Leo Janes.

  “We can cancel this one,” I said to Mary. “It was for Leo.”