Sleight of Paw

by Kelly, Sofie

  Lita and I both leaned in. The live image feed was clear and mostly showed an area of the downtown and the water.

  “There,” Lita said, pointing to the bottom right corner of the screen.

  I could see a slice of the studio parking lot. “That’s it,” I said. I touched the corner of the screen. “That’s part of the back wall of the building.”

  She nodded. “There is the edge of the door. Those are the first three parking spots.” She turned to me. “Which one is Ruby’s?”

  “Two,” I said. I turned to Brandon, who seemed to be trying not to look bored. “Brandon, were you recording last Wednesday night?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Is there any way to look at what you recorded?”

  He gave me that pitying look that computer-savvy kids give to adults like me. “Sure. What time?”

  Agatha had died sometime between two and three a.m. Eric had met Justin about ten.

  “Try nine thirty,” I said. Brandon started hitting keys again.

  Lita gave me a smile and held up two crossed fingers.

  “Okay, here is Wednesday night at nine thirty.”

  Lita and I exchanged glances and I looked at the screen. There it was. Ruby’s truck, or at least the back end, in the bottom corner of the image.

  “Can you fast forward that?” I asked.

  “You mean advance the time?” Brandon said.

  I nodded.

  “Where to?”

  “Fifteen minutes ahead.”

  “Sure,” he said, but I caught the eye roll as he ducked his head over the keyboard.

  Ruby’s truck was still there at the forty-five-minute mark. I felt a flicker of excitement. “Show me ten thirty, please,” I said.

  The quality of the image from ten thirty wasn’t as clear, and it cut out for a minute.

  “We’ve been having problems with the Wi-Fi signal,” Brandon explained.

  “How about two a.m.?”

  The truck was still in the spot.

  “Two thirty, please,” I said. I could feel my heartbeat thumping in the hollow at the base of my throat.

  Brandon looked up at me. “Sorry, no two thirty. The signal cut out.”

  “What about three?”

  He turned back to the keyboard. If he was curious about what we were looking at in his footage, he wasn’t asking. At three o’clock the truck was still in that spot. I stepped away from the computer, trying to sort things out in my head.

  Lita stood silently, hands clasped in front of her. Ruby’s truck hadn’t moved. There were gaps in the footage, but it sure looked to me like reasonable doubt. I turned to leave. “Lita, could you do something for me?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Call Ruby’s lawyer and Detective Gordon. Please tell them what we found.”

  Brandon’s head snapped up. “ ‘Detective,’ as in ‘police’?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Lita said.

  His eyes darted from Lita to me. Then he shrugged. “Cool.” He turned back to the computer.

  I headed for the door. “You’re not staying?” Lita asked.

  “There’s something I have to do,” I said. “I’ll see you this afternoon or I’ll call you, or something.”

  I hurried out to the truck. My mind was jumping from thought to thought faster than I could sort them into anything that made sense. But overriding everything was the thought that Ruby’s truck hadn’t moved. It hadn’t moved. Which meant there was another truck.

  All I had to do was find it.

  28

  Hercules was sitting on the bench in the porch, almost as though waiting for me. Which he probably was.

  “There’s another truck,” I said kicking off my boots and unlocking the kitchen door at the same time. I dropped my bag and jacket on a chair and raced into the living room. Hercules followed. “What did I do with the brochure Justin gave me about the camp?” I asked the cat.

  It wasn’t on the table next to the phone. I took the stairs two at a time and burst into the bedroom, almost giving Owen, who was stretched out on the chair by the window, a kitty coronary.

  He jumped down and hung his head. “I don’t have time to yell at you,” I said. “So we’ll all just pretend I didn’t see you.”

  I went through the papers next to my computer. Nothing. The brochure wasn’t in the drawer, either.

  “There’s another truck,” I said to Owen. “I don’t care what Roma found out. Justin didn’t drive Ruby’s truck. So there has to be another truck. And he has it.” I sat on the edge of the armchair. “Harry said that Sam’s old truck was junk. But what if it wasn’t? Or what if somehow Justin ended up with it?”

  Owen seemed to be thinking about what I was saying.

  I stood up and walked around the bed. “If Justin had or has the missing truck, it’s not in town. Maybe it’s out at the campsite. That would be the perfect place to hide an old truck. I just need to find that brochure so I can figure out where the camp is.”

  I turned to pace back around the bed, and Hercules was standing in the doorway with a piece of paper in his mouth.

  “You found it?” I said.

  He walked over and dropped the folded paper at my feet. I bent down, cupped his black-and-white face in my hands and kissed the top of his furry head. “You’re a genius. Thank you.” He stretched forward and licked my chin.

  The paper smelled of garlic and tomato. Clearly I’d stuck it in the recycling bin.

  I scanned the brochure for the camp’s location. It was there in the last paragraph of the last page, “several acres on Hardwood Ridge.”

  Where the heck was Hardwood Ridge?

  I had a map of the area in the drawer. I pulled it out and spread it on top of my laptop. There was no Hardwood Ridge on the map.

  I smacked the top of my head with my open hand in frustration.

  This was one of the idiosyncrasies of Mayville Heights. Like having two different Main Streets. It seemed charming until you were trying to get directions to somewhere. Just because the place was called Hardwood Ridge didn’t mean it was going to show up on the map under that name.

  “I’m going to have to call Maggie,” I said. Owen immediately looked at the phone. I wasn’t sure if she was home, at the studio or at tai chi. So I called her cell.

  “Hello,” she said, sounding out of breath.

  “Hi,” I said. “Did I take you away from something important?”

  “Just burpees. What’s up?”

  “Do you know where Hardwood Ridge is?”

  “Yes.” She still sounded a bit breathless. She was probably working out and talking to me at the same time. “Remember there was a road just this side of the Drink? Well, you just—” She suddenly stopped. “Why do you want to know? Does this have anything to do with you wanting to know about security lights on the studio?”

  “I was looking at the proposal Justin gave me and I wondered where the camp was going to be.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she said. “You figured something out. You should call Marcus.”

  “I did figure something out. One of the kids from the co-op program has a webcam at Everett’s offices. It picked up part of the parking lot down at the studio building. And it doesn’t look like Ruby’s truck moved at all the night Agatha was killed.”

  “That’s wonderful. Did you tell Marcus?”

  “Lita did.”

  “So why do you want to know where Hardwood Ridge is?”

  “I’m just curious. It’s no big deal. Forget it.”

  “Kath, you can’t walk that far.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “Go back to your burpees. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “Promise me you won’t try to walk way up there.”

  “I promise I won’t walk up to Hardwood Ridge,” I said solemnly.

  “Fine. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I hung up the phone. Two furry faces were at my feet glaring at me. “Don’t look at me like
that,” I said. “I told Maggie the truth. I’m not going to walk up to Hardwood Ridge.” I gave them the Mr. Spock eyebrow. “I’m going to drive.”

  Both cats followed me downstairs. Ruby had said Justin was going to be in Minneapolis for a couple of days. Now was my chance to look for the truck.

  I got my old jacket and snow pants from the closet, pulled on an extra pair of heavy socks and got my big boots. As I put on the snow pants I looked up to see both cats standing by the messenger bag.

  “No, no, no,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t take you with me.” They exchanged some kind of wordless cat telepathy. Then Hercules walked over to me while Owen used a paw to push open the top of the bag and climb in. “Very funny, Owen,” I said. “But when I said ‘I can’t take you with me’ I meant ‘I can’t take either of you with me.’ ”

  Owen gave a snippy meow and pulled his head down inside the bag. I finished putting on my things, put my wallet and phone in my pocket. And started out. Hercules stepped in front of me. I moved to go around him and he did it again. This time with a loud yowl.

  “What do you want?” I growled. He looked over at the bag. “I’m not taking Owen. All I’m going to do is look for the truck. That’s all.”

  I went to step over him and he darted backward so quickly I almost fell trying not to step on him. “You’re crazy,” I said in frustration. “Both of you are crazy, and you’re making me crazy because I’m standing in the middle of my kitchen in twenty pounds of clothes, arguing with one cat about another.”

  I stalked over to the bag and grabbed the strap. “Happy?” I snapped. A small meow came from inside.

  There was a flashlight on the floor by the vent. I’d used it when the bulb had burned out in the porch light. I picked it up and slipped it into the bag next to the cat. “Here, hold this,” I said.

  Inside the truck I slid the messenger bag along the seat. Owen immediately climbed out and put his paws on the door to look out the window. I leaned over to double-check that the door was locked, and I set the bag on the floor.

  “I take it you’re riding shotgun,” I said. His response was to come back over, sit angelically on the seat and look straight ahead.

  I started the truck, backed out of the driveway and headed for the highway, hoping the same karma that had given me a truck on the one day I really needed it would also help me find another truck.

  I overshot the road to the camp the first time and had to turn around in the bar’s empty parking lot. We bounced over the icy ruts and a wide-eyed Owen went sliding across the seat. I thought I was on the wrong road and was about to give up and try to turn around when I spotted the handmade sign with an arrow pointing down a dirt track nailed to the tree.

  I stopped in the road—there was no one behind us—and looked down the trail. It was plowed, but I didn’t dare chance getting stuck. “We’ll go up there and turn around,” I said to the cat, pointing to the slight rise ahead. “And I’ll be able to pull off to the side.”

  So we did that. I got the truck off the road as far as I could. “What are the chances of you staying here?” I asked Owen. He jumped off the seat and dove into the bag. About what I had figured.

  I picked up the bag, locked the truck and made my way to the turn off. One benefit of the cold temperatures was that the road was dry and frozen, although the ruts were more like trenches.

  I stayed close to the edge just in case someone did start down, although I couldn’t see who would. Justin was the only person working out here and he was in Minneapolis.

  The road cut into the woods in a slow arc, coming out into a cleared area amid the trees. There was a small log cabin and in back of it, off to one side, some kind of old metal-sided storage building

  No one was there. I walked slowly around the cabin. The truck was behind the storage shed. Justin hadn’t even made the effort to hide it. I wasn’t sure if it was stupidity or arrogance.

  I didn’t touch the truck, but even from a distance I could see the broken headlight and the front-end damage. It looked exactly like Ruby’s truck, even more so than the truck Harry had loaned to me, which had the primed replacement fender. This truck was dented and dirty and old.

  “We got it,” I said to Owen. I pulled out my cell phone and took three pictures of the front of the truck. Then I called Marcus’s number. Nothing happened. I looked at the phone. The reception was almost nonexistent. I’d have to walk back out to the road and try there. I slung the bag back onto my shoulder and started around the building, past the cabin. Something stopped me.

  Justin had killed Agatha. Had he taken the envelope? Whatever documents Agatha had in the old brown envelope could be Harry’s only chance to find his daughter. And as soon as the police came to the cabin the envelope would be part of the investigation and anything inside would be off-limits.

  “We have to take a look inside the cabin,” I said to Owen. “If Justin has that envelope . . .”

  The question was, How was I going to get inside? The answer was apparent as soon as I walked closer to the back door of the log cabin.

  The back door was fastened with an old-fashioned padlock. I could pick a padlock in my sleep. It was one of the many skills I’d learned hanging around backstage at all those theaters my parents had performed at, along with street hockey, counting cards and a pretty decent fake British accent.

  I hesitated. No matter how good my motives were, I was still breaking into Justin’s place. I remembered Agatha’s body, lying crumpled in the alley while tears slid down Ruby’s face. I swallowed and fished in my pockets. There was a paperclip in my jeans and another in my coat, along with Roma’s roll of duct tape that I kept forgetting to give back to her.

  The back door opened into the kitchen. There was a small, round table with two chairs against the back wall, squeezed in between the refrigerator and a propane stove. Justin was clearly not spending much time at the cabin. There was nothing on the old wooden table. I checked the drawers and cupboards.

  Nothing. I stepped out of my boots and went into the next room.

  A sofa was against the end wall in the living room, along with a rocking chair and a banged-up rolltop desk. I went through everything on the desk, checking each piece of paper. All of it had something to do with the camp. Maybe Justin didn’t have the envelope. Maybe it really was gone.

  There was one more room. The bedroom. The only things in the room were a mattress and box spring on a metal frame. There was no sign of the envelope.

  Unless . . .

  “What do you think?” I said to Owen, setting the bag on the floor. I lifted the edge of the tan blanket and slipped my hand between the mattress and box spring. Please don’t let me feel anything creepy, I thought.

  The envelope was at the top edge of the bed. My hand shook as I slid it free. I did a little fist pump in the air and grabbed the messenger bag.

  “Let’s go call Marcus,” I said to Owen.

  I stepped into the other room just as Justin came through the front door.

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  I slipped the hand with the envelope behind my back and pasted a smile, albeit a fake one, on my face. “Oh, good. You are here,” I said. “I’m sorry for just walking in, but the door was open and I’ve been looking for you.” I held the envelope against my back with my index finger and tried to use my thumb and middle finger to fish out some of the papers.

  “Looking for me in my bedroom?” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was your bedroom. I thought this was some kind of office for the camp. That’s why I walked in. I wouldn’t have done that if I’d known you were living here.”

  I had some of the papers out of the envelope. I twisted my wrist to slide them under my coat and then behind the back of my snow pants. It was hard to move my hand without giving away the movement, and the envelope slipped to the floor.

  “What’s that?” Justin was across the room in a few steps. He grabbed my wrist and bent to pick up the env
elope. Most of the papers had at least made it under the waistband of my snow pants, the top edges hidden underneath my jacket.

  Justin straightened and smiled at me, but it wasn’t friendly. “Where did you get this?”

  There was no point in bluffing. “Under the mattress, where you hid it,” I said. “It doesn’t belong to you.”

  He squeezed my wrist, twisting outward just a little. I bit my cheek so I wouldn’t make any sound.

  “Yeah, well, it doesn’t exactly belong to you, either, does it?”

  The front door was in front of me, across the open floor. The back door was behind me, through another room. If I ran out the back door Justin could easily go out the front and head me off.

  I glanced down. He was wearing heavy boots, much like the ones I’d come in with, so stomping on his instep in my sock feet wasn’t going to work. I swung my foot, connecting with the side of his left knee. He shouted an obscenity and let go of my arm.

  I hugged the bag close to my body and ran for the front door, knocking Justin off balance and onto the floor. I grabbed the doorknob, twisted it hard and pulled, but the door didn’t give. I twisted it in the other direction, pulling with both hands, but nothing happened. Justin was already up. I bent my knees, braced my feet and frantically twisted the knob, willing down the panic that was spreading throughout my body.

  Justin caught me by my hair and yanked me back from the door. He winced as he shifted his weight onto the leg I’d kicked, and pulled a key from the pocket of his jeans.

  He dangled the silver key in front of me. “Ah, gee. I locked up behind myself.”

  My eyes flicked for a second from him to the back of the cabin. Justin pulled on my hair, hauling my head back so hard, my teeth came down on my tongue.

  “Oh, see, you’ve been thinking you should have gone for door number two,” he whispered, his mouth so close to me I could feel the warmth of his breath on my neck. “Just to make you feel better about your choice”—he turned my face toward him—“it’s only fair to tell you, I locked that one, too.”

  He kept his fingers laced through my hair, gripping tightly on my scalp, and frog-marched me to the sofa. He gave me a push and I landed sideways on the couch, shifting my weight at the last minute so I wouldn’t land on Owen in the bag.