Sleight of Paw

by Kelly, Sofie

  “Go,” I said. I pointed toward the trees at the far end of the open yard. He crouched down and looked back through the window.

  I coughed again. There was way more smoke coming down through the floorboards now. I put my face close to Owen’s. “Go. I’m right behind you, I swear. Please go.”

  I think he heard the urgency in my voice. He started across the snow. I braced my palms on the window ledge and tried to pull myself up. Bits of glass cut into my hands and the gash in my left palm began to bleed. I didn’t have time to do anything about that. I had to get out while I could.

  “Keep going,” I called to Owen, who looked back at me. “I’m coming.”

  On the third try I got up on the window ledge. I stuck my head and shoulders out through the window. I could see Owen almost to the cleared parking area. At least he was safe. I stretched my arms out over the snow and try to move forward, but I couldn’t.

  I couldn’t get through.

  I clawed at the frozen snow, but I couldn’t get a grip on anything. I twisted and kicked my feet, but the window was just too narrow.

  I pushed myself back in and dropped to the floor. I could see the smoke now, swirling in the basement. Panic warred with anger, and anger won.

  “I am not going to die in this place,” I yelled.

  I hauled off my coat and peeled away my snow pants, tearing the button at the waist. I folded the papers from Agatha’s envelope as small as I could and jammed them into my bra. Off came my sweater and my long underwear. I was down to tights, a T-shirt, underwear and my heavy socks.

  I braced my hands on the windowsill and pushed myself up. I dug my hands into the frozen snow. My feet kicked. I blew out every last bit of air and sucked in my stomach, and I started to move.

  I didn’t think about my hands or the cold. I pulled and I scrambled and I flailed, and in some miracle of physics my hips pulled loose from the window and I was free.

  I half ran, half fell over the snow. The icy crust cut through my tights. I kept going, scrambling for purchase on the snow.

  I was almost at the tree line when the propane tank blew up.

  The impact propelled me into the brush. I wrapped my hands over my head as branches whipped my upper body. I landed flat on my back in a pile of snow, under a tree, cocooned in silence.

  There was truly no sound, not so much as a rustle of pine needles. I pushed up on my elbows. Where was Owen? I couldn’t see him.

  The cabin was a ball of fire and smoke. And then I caught sight of Owen coming toward me, bits of tree bark and snow crystals clinging to his fur, meowing his anger all the way. I lay there in the snow, trying to catch my breath. The cat climbed up onto my chest and licked my face.

  I blinked away tears and grinned at him. “We did it,” I said. The cut on my hand was still bleeding. Looking at it made me dizzy. So I didn’t look. I could see blood soaking through both socks and there wasn’t anything I could do about that, either.

  Shaking with cold, I got to my feet, holding Owen against me with my good hand.

  “We have to stay in the trees,” I told him, “just in case Justin comes back.”

  I might’ve been bruised and bloody and cold, but if Justin suddenly appeared I was pretty sure I would’ve beaten him into unconsciousness with just my good arm, assuming Owen didn’t get to him first.

  Every part of my body shook and I couldn’t feel my feet. I looked around and decided which way the road likely was, and we started in that direction. It felt like someone was driving those slivers of glass into my feet with every step. But I took each one, anyway.

  I talked to Owen, my face against his fur as I walked, although I did’t have a clue what I said. The snow was above my knees but I kept on walking, slowly and painfully breaking a trail to the road.

  I have no idea how much time passed. When I heard my name called, I thought hypothermia had caught up with me. I thought I was hallucinating.

  Then I heard it again. It wasn’t Justin.

  “Here,” I called. Yelling made me almost double over with coughing.

  “I’m here.”

  “I’m coming,” a voice answered. “Stay there.”

  In a moment I could see Marcus coming through the trees, his long legs breaking easily through the snow, his eyes locked on me. If I were hallucinating, he was the best damn hallucination I’d ever had.

  “Kathleen, are you all right?” he asked as he got close to me. Was I imagining the slight catch in his voice?

  I nodded, because all of a sudden I couldn’t speak. He unzipped his parka and put it around me, zipping it up with my arms tucked inside instead of in the sleeves. It smelled like Marcus and it was so, so warm it made me dizzy.

  “What the hell happened?” He bent over and looked into my face.

  “Justin . . . Justin killed Agatha,” I said through chattering teeth.

  “I know.”

  He knew? How did he know?

  My hand was still bleeding. I eased the zipper down with my thumb because I wanted to stick my arm out and not get blood all over Marcus’s coat. I watched the blood run down my arm like a tiny river.

  He was still talking, but I couldn’t hear him for some reason. It began to get dark from the edges in. Those big hands reached out for me. And that was the last thing I remembered.

  I woke up on a stretcher in an ambulance down on the road. I was wrapped in blankets, a paramedic was sitting beside me and a very pissed-off Owen was perched on my stomach. Below the foot of the stretcher, another paramedic was cleaning several long gouges on the back of a police officer’s hand.

  The paramedic beside me smiled. “Hi,” he said. He leaned sideways. “Detective Gordon.”

  Marcus poked his head into the ambulance.

  “Hi,” he said. I was ridiculously happy to see him smiling at me. What the heck had that paramedic given me?

  “What did Owen do?” I croaked.

  “Don’t worry about that.” He pointed at the police officer. “I told him not to touch the cat.”

  The young officer and Owen glared at each other like a couple of grizzled gunfighters.

  “Justin had the missing truck,” I said hoarsely.

  Marcus nodded. “I know.”

  Then I remembered the explosion.

  “It’s gone, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Yeah, it is, but we’ve got him, anyway.”

  I struggled to get up, and the inside of the ambulance swirled like a kaleidoscope. The nice paramedic eased me down, careful to keep his hand away from Owen.

  “You got him?”

  “We got him.”

  I let myself relax against the pillow and felt the papers inside my bra crinkle. Ruby was in the clear, and maybe Harry would find his daughter.

  Marcus started telling me how stupid it had been for me to come out here without telling anyone where I was going, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from smiling every time he looked at me. I closed my eyes.

  I didn’t even hear him.

  29

  They kept me at the hospital overnight, against my objections. Roma came and coaxed Owen into a cat carrier, with some help from Maggie and two Fred the Funky Chickens. Maggie took Owen home and fed both cats. Since I was missing two cans of tuna and a fair amount of peanut butter, I could pretty much guess what they ate.

  Everyone just assumed Owen had stowed away in the truck and I hadn’t wanted to leave him there in the cold, so I’d taken him to the cabin with me. Since it was pretty close to the truth I didn’t say anything.

  The papers I’d taken from under Justin’s mattress, from Agatha’s envelope, were about the baby. Harry Senior and Junior had come to the hospital and I got to put the documents in the old man’s hands. He hugged me so tightly I squeaked, and he insisted I keep the truck.

  It turned out that Marcus had been suspicious of Justin from the moment he’d found out about the half million dollars. It had seemed like too much of a coincidence that Agatha would leave Justin, whom she barely
knew, so much money just when he needed it. It was enough to get Marcus to start digging. And he had taken what I’d told him about the other trucks seriously. He’d tracked down the junkyard owner that had sold Sam’s wreck to Justin.

  Had Justin been lying when he said he didn’t know about the will? It looked that way. The manager at Agatha’s new lawyer’s office described the young man who’d picked Agatha up. It sounded a lot like Justin. It seemed like he’d somehow been able to capitalize on Agatha’s love for Ruby and convince her that changing her will in his favor was something Ruby wanted.

  Had he run her over on purpose? I didn’t like to think about that, but Marcus was certain he had.

  I’d expected a long lecture about butting into the case, but all Marcus had said was, “You could have been killed.” That and his troubled expression had made me feel worse than anything else he could have said.

  Eric closed the café early on Thursday evening and Maggie canceled tai chi class. We gathered at the restaurant to celebrate Ruby’s freedom. She was still grieving for Agatha and I knew she had some work to do over Justin. I’d seen Eric talking to her, and whatever he’d said seemed to help.

  I sat at a table by the window, my bandaged feet on a pillow on the chair. Maggie dropped onto the seat beside me. “You okay?” she asked. She’d been asking that pretty much steadily for the past twenty-four hours.

  “I am,” I said. I patted her arm with my good hand. Suspicious over my questions about Hardwood Ridge, Maggie had called Marcus when I didn’t answer my cell phone. Surprisingly, he’d also had a phone call from Peter Lundgren.

  “You know, when I saw Marcus coming through the snow, I thought I was hallucinating,” I said.

  As if he knew we were talking about him, Marcus turned from where he was standing across the room with Rebecca, smiled and lifted the hot chocolate he was holding in a toast.

  I smiled back.

  “He likes you,” Maggie said.

  “He’s not my type,” I began, but I really couldn’t muster much of an objection.

  The door opened and Roma came in. It was a good thing I was sitting down and had my feet up, because she was holding hands with Eddie Sweeney.

  The real Eddie Sweeney.

  “Am I hallucinating now?” I asked Maggie, as they made their way over to us.

  “Nope,” she said smugly, looking like the Cheshire cat.

  “You look a lot better,” Roma said. “How’s Owen?”

  “He’s fine. Thank you for getting him home.” I looked at Maggie. “You, too.”

  “I like the little fur ball,” Maggie said. “He’s got cojones.”

  “Kathleen, this is Eddie,” Roma said, turning to smile at the big hockey player beside her.

  “Hi, Kathleen,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, too,” I said. I couldn’t stop staring at him.

  He turned his million-dollar smile on Roma. “Would you like some hot chocolate?”

  “Please,” she said.

  Eddie looked at Maggie.

  “I’m fine,” she said with a little shake of her head. She was enjoying my shock.

  “Kathleen?” Eddie asked.

  My mouth was hanging open and I had to close it to answer. “Um, yes, please.” I handed him my cup.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  All three of us watched him go. Eddie looked just as good going as coming.

  Roma pulled up a chair and sat with just a tiny sigh of satisfaction. “So, how are you really? How’s your hand?” she asked.

  “How’s my hand?” I sputtered. “Roma! You? Eddie? How?”

  She grinned like a teenager. “The rumor about Eddie and me hit the Internet. He happened to see it. He e-mailed me. I e-mailed back. We e-mailed maybe two dozen times. Then we had coffee.”

  Her smile got bigger. “We talked for two hours.”

  “Some of those sightings of you and Eddie were—”

  “Real,” she finished. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you two. It’s just that I told myself I was crazy. He’s younger than I am. We’re so different. Then one day I just decided, Why the heck not? And here we are.”

  Eddie was on his way back with the hot chocolate. Maggie was saying something about playing matchmaker.

  I could feel Marcus looking at me before I turned my head to lock eyes with him. I remembered how I’d felt when I’d seen him coming through the trees toward me, how he’d been there to catch me. I remembered how he couldn’t stop smiling at me in the ambulance. He kept looking at me, and then he started across the room, and I couldn’t help thinking, Why the heck not?

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  I’d never heard a cat laugh before—I didn’t think they could—but that’s what Owen was clearly doing. He was behind the big chair in the living room, laughing. It sounded a little like hacking up a fur ball, if you could somehow add merriment to the sound.

  I leaned over the back of the chair. “Okay, cut it out,” I said. “You’re being mean.”

  He looked up at me, and it seemed as though the expression in his golden eyes was a mix of faux-innocence and mirth. “It’s not funny,” I hissed.

  Okay, so it was kind of funny. Owen’s brother, Hercules, was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, wearing boots. Specifically, black and white boots, to match his black and white fur, in a kitty-paw-print design with fleece lining and antislip soles. They were a gift from my friend Maggie.

  “Stick a paw in it,” I said to Owen. “You’re not helping.”

  I went back into the kitchen. Hercules gave me a look that was part acute embarrassment and part annoyance.

  “They are kind of cute,” I said. “You have to admit it was a very nice gesture on Maggie’s part.” That got me a glare that was all venom.

  “I’ll take them off.” I crouched down in front of him. He held up one booted paw and I undid the strap. “You’re just not a clothes cat,” I told him. “You’re more of an au naturel cat.”

  I heard a noise behind me in the doorway. “And Owen is very sorry he laughed at you. Aren’t you, Owen?” I added a little extra emphasis to the last words. After a moment’s silence there was a soft meow from the other side of the room.

  I took the second boot off, and Hercules shook one paw and then the other. I stroked the fur on the top of his head. “Maggie was just trying to help,” I said. “She knows you don’t like getting your feet wet.”

  Hercules was a total wuss about wet feet. He didn’t like going out in the rain. He didn’t like going out in the snow. He didn’t like walking across the grass in heavy dew. Maggie had seen the cat boots online and ordered them. I didn’t know how I was going to explain to her that boots just weren’t his thing.

  I stood up, went over to the cupboard to get a handful of kitty crackers and made a little pile on the floor in front of Herc. “Here,” I said. “These’ll help.” Then I scooped up Owen. I could tell from the way his tail was twitching that he’d been thinking of swiping a cracker.

  “Leave your brother alone,” I warned, carrying him upstairs with me. “Or I’ll put those boots on you and I’ll tell Maggie you like them.”

  He made grumbling noises in his throat. I set him on the floor, and he disappeared into my closet to sulk. I pulled on an extra pair of heavy socks, brushed my hair back into a low ponytail and stuffed my wallet in my pocket.

  Hercules had eaten the crackers and was carefully grooming his front paws. “I’m going to meet Maggie,” I told him, pulling my sweatshirt over my head. “I’ll figure out something to tell her.”

  I locked the kitchen door behind me and walked around the side of the house to the truck—my truck. Sometimes I still got the urge to clap my hands and squeal when I saw it. It had started out as a loaner from Harry Taylor, Sr., and when I’d manage to retrieve some papers about Harry’s daughte
r’s adoption, he’d insisted on giving me the truck.

  When I’d moved to Mayville Heights about a year ago to become head librarian and to oversee the renovations to the library building, I’d sold my car. The town was small enough that I could walk everywhere I wanted to go. But it was nice not to have to carry two bags of groceries up the hill. And with all the rain we’d had in the past week and all the flooding, I never would have been able to get to the library—or a lot of other places—without the old truck.

  The morning sky was dull and the air was damp. We’d had a week of off-and-on rain—mostly on—and the downtown was at serious risk of major flooding. The retaining wall between Old Main Street and the river was strong, but it had been reinforced with sandbags just in case. We’d spent hours two nights ago moving those bags into place along a human chain of volunteers.

  This was the second day the library was closed. The building was on relatively high ground, a rise where the street turned, and the pump Oren Kenyon had installed in the basement was handling what little water had come in, but both the parking lot and the street were flooded.

  Maggie was waiting for me on the sidewalk in front of the artists’ co-op building. The old stone basement had several feet of water in it, and we’d spent most of the previous day moving things from the first-floor store into the second-floor tai chi studio, in case the water got any higher. There were still a couple of her large collage panels that needed to be carried upstairs.

  “Hi,” I said. “How late did you stay here last night?”

  “Not that late,” she said as she unlocked the front door.

  I followed her inside. Mags and I had met at her tai chi class and bonded over our love of the cheesy reality show Gotta Dance. She was an artist, a tai chi instructor, and she ran the co-op store.

  Her two collage panels were up on a table, carefully wrapped and padded. We carried them up the steps without any problems.

  I was about to suggest that we walk over to Eric’s Place for coffee and one of his blueberry muffins, when we heard someone banging on the front door.