by Sofie Kelly
“So you don’t have any obligation to keep all the photos?”
I leaned back in my chair. “No.”
She smiled. “Great. Then why can’t we auction off some of them to buy new books for the library? There are several gorgeous shots of the bluff.”
“I’d have to run it by Everett and the board,” I said slowly.
“We could put the framed photos up on the co-op’s website—I’m sure Ruby would agree. That would get you a wider audience.”
“I like it,” I said, grinning across the table at her.
We talked about the auction idea for a few more minutes and then Maggie looked at her watch. “I need to head for the store.”
“Lunch is on me,” I said.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Yes,” I said. “This was library business.” I got to my feet and reached for my jacket.
“I’ll get you photos of some of the frames that are already done, and I’ll talk to Ruby.”
I hugged her and she headed for the door while I went over to pay the bill. When I stepped outside I remembered what Mia had told me about her memory stick possibly coming from the bookstore. I had time. I decided I’d stop in and see if I could find one of the Hershey bar ones for Sara.
I was about to step inside the bookstore when the door opened and Victor Janes came out. He smiled when he caught sight of me. “Hello, Kathleen,” he said. “How are you?”
“Hello, Victor,” I said. “I’m well, how are you?”
“Under the circumstances I’m . . . I’m all right.”
He looked so much like his brother and yet I never would have confused the two. Where all the lines on Leo’s face had seemed to go up so that it looked as though he was smiling even when he hadn’t been, Victor, I’d noticed, had a bit of a dissatisfied expression on his face, like a toddler who had just been told no. As soon as I had the thought I felt guilty. Victor seemed to bring out that emotion in me, guilt because I didn’t like him, guilt because, for a moment I’d actually entertained the thought that he’d killed his brother. The man had a serious illness and had just lost his only sibling. Why wouldn’t he feel unhappy with the world?
I was about to move past him into the store when he put a hand on my arm. “Kathleen, would you have a moment?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
We moved away from the doorway.
“Simon told me you were the one who found my brother,” Victor said.
An image of Leo Janes’s body slumped on the floor flashed across my mind. I swallowed and nodded.
“I don’t want to cause you any more distress than you’ve already been through, but I’m wondering if you can . . . tell me what you saw.”
I hesitated. What was there to tell him? I’d seen Leo dead, blood on the back of his head.
Victor pressed his lips together for a moment. I noticed his complexion seemed pale. “Kathleen, I know it sounds gruesome, but Leo was my twin and we always had a connection, even during all the years we didn’t speak. I had this feeling that something was wrong that night.” He shook his head. “I keep thinking that if I hadn’t ignored it . . . maybe Leo would still be alive. Please. Whatever you tell me can’t be worse than what I’ve been imagining.”
“There isn’t really much to tell you,” I said slowly, trying to choose my words with care. “Your brother was on the floor and I don’t think he suffered. I think his death was . . . quick.”
Victor exhaled slowly. “I was hoping that somehow he’d left me a message. I know that doesn’t make sense.”
I shook my head. The conversation was making me very uncomfortable and it was hard not to back away. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see any kind of note or message.”
“Well, you’ve put my mind at ease, at least,” he said, reaching out to touch my arm again. “I wouldn’t want Leo to have suffered. Thank you.”
I nodded.
He headed down the sidewalk and I turned in the direction of the library. I didn’t feel like going into the bookstore anymore. I felt bad for Victor Janes. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose Sara or Ethan. But it was hard to like him, unlike Leo, who had made me smile from the first moment I met him. I wondered if my opinion of Victor was colored by what I knew about his relationship with Simon’s mother and how much pain that had caused Simon. I didn’t like thinking I was that judgmental, but maybe I was.
• • •
When I got home after work Hercules was waiting for me on the back steps. “Hey, handsome,” I said, leaning over to stroke his fur. The top of his head was warm from the afternoon sun. “What are you doing out here?”
He looked up at the sky. “Ah, yes, grackle patrol,” I said. “Isn’t that over for the season?”
Hercules looked at me as though he were surprised I was asking. I held up one hand. “Sorry,” I said. “I just thought the grackle would have flown south by now. Though, now that I think about it, I’m not sure they do fly south.”
I unlocked the door and Hercules followed me inside. “Where’s your brother?” I asked. I glanced over at the basement door. “Down in his lair in the cellar?”
Hercules looked up at the ceiling.
Owen was upstairs somewhere, probably poking around in my closet. “I better not find a chicken head in my new boots,” I said.
“Mrr,” Hercules replied, which likely meant “Don’t count on it.”
By the time I’d changed into jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt the chicken soup I’d left simmering in the slow cooker was done. I put it in the refrigerator after having a taste—and sharing it with the boys. I was going to have supper with Marcus but that wasn’t for another hour and a half. I was restless, unsettled by what I’d learned from Sandra Godfrey and still a little uncomfortable about that encounter with Victor.
“I’m going to vacuum,” I announced to Owen. He was headed for the basement but changed course and made his way toward the back door instead. I let him into the porch and then opened the door to the backyard.
Hercules was already sitting on the footstool in the living room, eyes fixed on my iPod dock. I got the vacuum cleaner out then slipped my iPod in the dock and started our favorite playlist.
Hercules bopped his head from side to side and I vacuumed as we sang along to the music of Mr. Barry Manilow, which always managed to put both of us in a good mood. Owen, not so much. We did rousing versions of “Copacabana” and “Daybreak” complete with a little choreography, and by the time we were halfway through “I Made It Through the Rain” I felt better.
Once the entire house had been vacuumed I shut off the iPod and made some hot chocolate. I sat at the table with Hercules on my lap and told him what I’d learned from Sandra. I’d set my messenger bag and my keys on the table when I’d come in and now Hercules reached up and batted the keys onto the floor. He looked at me.
“You’re a little heavy-handed with the symbolism,” I said. “But you’re right. We need to find that key.”
chapter 15
As she often was, Micah was waiting for me on Marcus’s back deck. She seemed to share the same prescience that I’d seen in Owen. Her whiskers twitched and she sniffed at the canvas bag I was carrying.
“Chicken soup,” I said. “He’ll probably let you taste it.”
She made a satisfied “Mrr,” jumped down and led the way over to the back door.
Marcus was at the sink, washing lettuce. For a moment I just enjoyed looking at him. I thought about what Mary had once said about him: “I know what really matters about a person is what’s inside, and he is a good man inside, but that candy shell outside looks pretty dang delicious!” I had to admit she was right.
Micah meowed loudly then, as if to announce me, and Marcus looked up and smiled. “Hi,” he said. He dropped the lettuce into the strainer and wrapped me in a slightly wet hu
g. His mouth covered mine and I forgot all about his wet hand on the back of my neck.
I forgot about pretty much everything.
He finally let me go and I noticed that his face was as flushed as mine felt. “I have to stop doing that if we want supper,” he said. “And we do want supper, right?”
“Yes?” I said. The fact that I’d answered as a question made him laugh. I set my bag on the chair, lifted out the two Mason jars of chicken soup and handed them to him. “For lunch next week,” I said.
“Chicken noodle?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
I nodded.
“Thanks.” He dropped a kiss on the top of my head as he moved to put them in the fridge.
For the first time I noticed that the small table in the middle of the room had been set with extra care, a tablecloth instead of placemats, and four fat pillar candles. “This is beautiful,” I said. “Is this for me?”
“It is,” he said, moving back to the sink to finish washing the lettuce. “Given the past couple of weeks I thought maybe you could use a little romance.”
“I definitely could,” I said as I slipped out of my jacket.
“Good. We have about forty minutes until we eat, which means we have about forty minutes to talk about the case.” He glanced at me. “I know that you want to.”
“All right,” I agreed, dropping onto the closest chair. Micah came to lean against my leg. “Did you know the day before he died Leo got one of those pieces of mail they found at the post office?”
Marcus hesitated for a moment. “Yes,” he finally said.
“Did you know there was a key in the envelope?”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “A key?”
“Sandra Godfrey delivered the letter and Leo opened it in front of her. She said the only thing inside was a silver key.”
“What kind of a key?” he asked. “A house key? A car key? One of those little keys for a diary?”
“I don’t know. All Sandra said was that it was a silver key. Marcus, what if it was a car key?”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s say it was.” He grabbed a carrot from the counter. “What are you thinking? That another car caused the accident that killed Meredith Janes twenty years ago and that someone, somehow got the key to that car and instead of talking to the police put it in an envelope and mailed it to her estranged husband?”
“No,” I said, reaching down to stroke Micah’s soft fur. She seemed to be following the conversation, which didn’t really surprise me. Like Owen and Hercules, Micah was a Wisteria Hill cat. “Even Owen wouldn’t let me get away with a theory as far-fetched as that.” I sighed. “It’s just that I can’t seem to let go of the idea that there’s a connection between what happened to Meredith Janes all those years ago and Leo’s murder.”
Marcus turned to look at me. “Why?” He gestured with the carrot. “Go ahead. Make your case.”
I tucked one leg up underneath me, getting a little more comfortable. Micah nuzzled my hand as if in encouragement. “All right,” I said. “First of all, there’s nothing that suggests what happened to Leo was some random act—a robbery gone wrong, for example.” I leaned sideways for a moment so I was in his line of vision. “I’m assuming I’m right about that.”
“Keep going,” was all he said.
“So it was personal. Thanks to that video Mariah Taylor filmed, Simon has an alibi.”
Marcus smiled as he chopped the carrot. “You can say ‘I told you so’ if you want.”
I smiled back at him. “I thought that was implied,” I teased. I was getting a kink in my back so I lifted Micah onto my lap. She immediately stretched across my legs. “Harry had a reason to kill Leo—at least in theory.” I held up a hand before Marcus could object. “Yes, I know killing someone over an old watch is a pretty weak reason for murder, but people have been killed for less.”
“Agreed,” he said, dropping the chopped carrot into what I was guessing was our salad.
“More important, no one who knows Harry would ever believe he could kill anyone and he also has an alibi. That leaves two people: Elias Braeden and Leo’s late wife’s best friend, Celia Hunter.”
Marcus turned to face me. “I don’t see how Celia Hunter could have killed Leo. I doubt she has the upper-body strength to swing that piece of sculpture. As for Elias Braeden, he was on the road between Minneapolis and here.”
I held up one finger. “Just because she’s a woman doesn’t mean Celia couldn’t have the strength to have swung that sculpture. Look at Mary. People mistake her for just a sweet, cookie-baking grandma but she could probably take you down with just one roundhouse kick.”
“Point taken,” he said.
I held up a second finger. “And Elias’s alibi is weak. He could have left a little bit earlier than he says he did or driven a lot faster. There’s some wiggle room. I think we need to look at both of them anyway.”
Micah meowed loudly.
“See? She agrees with me,” I said, smiling at the little cat.
Marcus snapped on the oven light and bent down to look through the door. I was so busy watching him that I completely missed what he said. He turned and looked expectantly at me.
“I’m sorry, I got sidetracked. What did you say?”
“I said okay; let’s start with Celia Hunter.”
“All right,” I said. “Didn’t you think it was odd she came here just to show Leo that letter she received? I don’t see why she thought it was so important.”
He nodded. “I had the same thought.”
“And she was at Leo’s apartment no more than half an hour before his murder.”
“The woman has an alibi, Kathleen,” Marcus said. “Leo Janes got a phone call from a former colleague at the university where he used to teach just as she was leaving. He heard Leo say good-bye to her, not to mention Mrs. Hunter isn’t tall enough or strong enough to have killed him.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He set down the cast-iron frying pan he’d just picked up and gave me a puzzled look. “Unless she was wearing stilts, yes, I’m sure. So is the medical examiner. The murder weapon was that piece of abstract metal art. It’s heavy. Too heavy for Celia Hunter to have picked up. And even if she happened to have a bionic arm that we didn’t know about she was too short to have delivered the blow that killed Leo.”
Micah sat up then and jumped down to the floor. She moved over to sit next to the stove, either to see what was going to be happening there next or because she’d decided to switch sides in the discussion.
I pulled my other leg up and rested my chin on my knee. “What if he was bending over?” I said.
Marcus picked up the pan again, set it on the burner and turned on the heat.
“Think about it. This wasn’t a planned murder or the killer would have had a weapon with her—or him. What if Leo bent down to pick something up and Celia saw her opportunity?”
“Except that piece of artwork is solid metal.” He frowned at the pan. “Could you swing a twenty-pound bag of potatoes at my head?” he asked without looking at me.
“No,” I said. “But Maggie probably could.”
Marcus did glance at me then. “Okay, but how about Rebecca?”
I shook my head. “No, but I think Celia’s stronger than we both know. I found photos online of her from this past spring as part of a medal-winning dragon boat team.” I put my hand around the upper part of my left arm. “She has actual muscles here. I don’t think it’s that unrealistic that she could have lifted that statue.”
“So what’s her motive?” He added a little butter and some olive oil to the pan.
“That’s where I’m stuck,” I said with a shrug.
“Okay, so what’s your case for Elias Braeden?” He set two small bacon-wrapped filets into the pan. Micah’s whiskers began to twitch as the smell of sear
ing beef filled the kitchen.
“Leo took his casino for about a million dollars. And Elias doesn’t know how he did that so it leaves him open for it to happen again, or at least it did while Leo was alive. Add to that he worked for Idris Blackthorne at one time. Idris had a reputation, and not all of that was just talk.”
“So his motive is?”
“Money. Or in the heat of the moment, anger, especially if Leo wouldn’t explain how he’d managed to win so much money.”
“I’ve seen those motives before,” Marcus agreed. He gave the pan a little shake and then turned the meat. “Do you happen to know if Celia or Elias are right-handed or left-handed?”
I closed my eyes for a moment and pictured Celia picking up things at the flea market. “It’s possible that Celia is left-handed,” I said. “I don’t know about Elias.”
“I think you need to give up on the idea that Celia Hunter is the killer,” he said. “And I know you think there’s some connection to what happened to Leo’s former wife twenty years ago, but I think your connection is just a coincidence.”
“Wait a minute, the killer is left-handed?”
Marcus held up both hands like he was surrendering. “I didn’t say that.”
I grinned at him. “You didn’t have to.”
He put our filets in the oven to finish cooking then pulled me up out of my chair so he could kiss me again, and for a while I forgot all about Elias Braeden and Celia Hunter.
• • •
Sunday dawned cold and wet. Eddie was coaching at hockey camp in Red Wing and Marcus was going along to help and to rub elbows with some former Wild players. I had been supposed to spend the afternoon with Roma but she called about ten to tell me a truck towing a trailer full of Angora show goats had gone off the road just outside of Lake City. She was on her way there to help with the injured animals.
I was at loose ends after lunch so I decided to go down to the library to repair some of the books that I knew had been piling up in the workroom. Neither Owen nor Hercules was willing to dash through the rain to the truck but I didn’t mind having the library to myself. As much as I loved it when the hundred-year-old-plus building was full of life, I liked the occasional moment when I could walk through and appreciate all the beautiful details that made the library feel like my second home: Oren’s carved sun over the doors, the mosaic tile floor, the intricate, wide woodwork that Oren had matched so well it was impossible to tell where old ended and new began, and of course shelf after shelf of books.