Copycat Killing: A Magical Cats Mystery

by Sofie Kelly

  Maggie unlocked the front door and we headed up the stairs. Halfway from the top she suddenly stopped. “Kath, if that is Roma’s father, how did he end up buried out at Wisteria Hill?”

  I slid my bandaged thumb along the wooden stair railing. “I don’t know. Any of the explanations I can come up with aren’t good.”

  Maggie unlocked the door at the top of the stairs. She looked around the tai chi studio space, piled with boxes and everything else from the store downstairs, and her shoulders sagged.

  I reached over and gave her arm a squeeze. “The rain will stop, the basement will dry out, we’ll stop growing penicillin in our boots and things will get back to normal.”

  “Isn’t that what the neighbors said to Noah when he started working on the ark in his backyard?” she said.

  I smiled at her and pointed to the far corner. “Look. There’s the bubble wrap.”

  We threaded our way around stacks of boxes and disassembled shelving. Maggie eased past a metal cabinet and handed the long roll of green bubble wrap out to me.

  “Maybe next time Jaeger starts up I’ll just wrap him up in this stuff,” she said with a sly grin. “Stifle his objections so to speak.” It was good to see her sense of humor coming back.

  We found the rest of the packing supplies and the boxes with the artwork that had to be mailed. For all that the space looked chaotic, I was sure that Maggie knew where everything was. Once we’d carried the boxes out to the truck, Maggie did a quick circuit of the empty store. There was no water coming in, no leaks from the ceiling or windows anywhere.

  “Do you mind if I check the basement one more time?” she asked. “I forgot to tell you: I talked to Larry Taylor. He may be able to get us a pump.”

  Larry Taylor was an electrician, son of Harrison Taylor, Senior, and younger brother to Harrison Taylor, Junior, or as Larry always explained it; Larry, Harry and Harry.

  “Oh Mags, that would be great,” I said as I followed her to the back storeroom. With all the rain, pumps were at a premium. Maggie had called anywhere she could think of within a fifty-mile radius of Mayville Heights and hadn’t been able to find one.

  “I know,” she said. “Larry said it’s an old gas-powered pump, but I don’t care if it’s the pump Noah used on the ark. The Taylors will be able to get it working and if we can just get the basement dried out, maybe—maybe I can get Jaeger out of my hair.” She fished her keys from her pocket. “I know I shouldn’t let him get to me.”

  “It’s not you,” I said. “Ruby doesn’t like him either.”

  Maggie looked over her shoulder at me. “We were standing here this morning right after the meeting, because, of course, everyone had to see the basement for themselves, and there was a moment when he was on the stairs that I had the urge to push him in the water. I could actually hear the splash in my head.” She turned the key, opened the door and felt for the light switch.

  There was only one light fixture at the top of the stairs, but there was enough light to see Jaeger Merrill partly submerged, floating faceup in the water that half filled the basement.

  He was dead.

  6

  Maggie made a strangled sound in the back of her throat and scrambled down the steps, her foot skidding on the fourth one from the top.

  I grabbed the back of her sweatshirt. Momentum pulled us forward and for a moment I thought we were both going to end up in the cold, dirty water. I reached out blindly with my free hand for something to hold on to and found the top stair post, and Maggie somehow managed to keep her balance.

  I sucked in a breath. “You okay?” I asked.

  She sagged against the railing and nodded, her face pale. I let go of her shirt.

  Jaeger’s feet and the bottom half of his legs were on the stairs, the rest of his body was in the water. My left leg was trembling and I could feel my pulse thumping in the hollow just below my throat. I was pretty sure Jaeger was dead but somebody had to make sure. I sank onto the top step and eased my way down to the next one and then the next one.

  “Careful,” Maggie warned. Her voice was shaky. “It’s wet.” Her right hand hovered in the air, ready to grab me if I slipped.

  Most of the top part of the body was underneath the water; just the eyes and nose were above the surface. Jaeger’s head was turned slightly to the right, his eyes were half closed, and his mouth was partly open.

  I reached forward, keeping most of my weight on my good leg and lifted his left arm, feeling for a pulse at the wrist. It was icy cold and his body already seemed to be stiffening. There was a cut on the fleshy part of his palm and the skin around it was puckered and wrinkled. Clearly he’d been in the water for a while.

  There was no pulse.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Maggie asked.

  I turned to look at her. “Yes,” I said.

  “Should we…pull him out of the water?”

  I shook my head. “No. I think we’ve already touched more than we should have.”

  She held out her hand and I grabbed it, stood up, and climbed carefully back up the steps. Maggie glanced back over her shoulder at the body and then we went out into the storeroom. I wiped my hands on my jeans and pulled out my cell phone. She slumped against the wall.

  “We should probably go wait by the front door,” I said after I’d made the call.

  Maggie nodded without saying anything and we made our way back to the front of the building. I leaned by the door, watching for the first police car. I was afraid if I sat down I wouldn’t be able to get back up again. She dropped onto the steps, leaning her elbows on her knees.

  “What was Jaeger doing in the basement?” she said after a minute.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Seeing how much water there was for some reason, maybe.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. We were just down there at the meeting a couple of hours ago.”

  “You said that you didn’t think Jaeger was going to let this sponsor thing go. Maybe he was looking for—something, I don’t know—something he could use to make his case.”

  Maggie shook her head. “In the basement? In four feet of water?”

  A police cruiser came around the corner then, no siren, pulling in at an angle behind my truck. The paramedics were right behind them. I wasn’t really surprised when Ric and his partner got out of the ambulance and grabbed their gear.

  I’d seen the police officer that had responded around town and in the library a few times with his kids. He was tall, with dark hair cut close to his scalp and the kind of posture and assured bearing that suggested he was ex-military.

  Heller? No. Keller. I couldn’t remember his first name.

  Maggie got to her feet and pulled out her keys. “I’ll take them,” she said as I opened the door. “You should sit down.”

  “Ms. Paulson?” the officer asked. I saw a flash of recognition in his eyes.

  I nodded. “The uh…body’s in the basement.”

  Maggie gestured toward the storage room. “This way.”

  Ric nodded hello, but didn’t say anything.

  “Please wait here, Ms. Paulson,” Officer Keller said. The three of them followed Maggie through the empty store to the back of the building.

  Movement out on the street caught my eye. Another vehicle had pulled in at the curb. I realized it was Marcus’s SUV just as he got out of the driver’s side.

  I met him on the sidewalk, trying hard not to limp. “Hi,” I said. I was uncomfortably aware of the fact that this was the second body I’d found in as many days.

  He gestured at the building. “Hi. What happened?”

  “Maggie and I found one of the artists—Jaeger Merrill—in the…uh basement. It looks like he fell down the stairs and drowned.”

  He exhaled slowly. “That’s two bodies in two days, Kathleen.”

  I shifted uneasily—and painfully—from one foot to the other. “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I wasn’t blaming you,” he said, quietly.

&
nbsp; I cleared my throat. “I thought you’d still be out at Wisteria Hill.”

  Marcus shook his head. “Dr. Abbott and her team are finishing setting up a grid to search the area where you found the remains. There isn’t anything I can do out there right now.” He gave me a quick, appraising once-over. “How are you?”

  “Just a little stiff.”

  His eyes narrowed as though he didn’t quite believe me but for once he didn’t challenge what I’d said.

  “Marcus, do you think those bones actually could be Roma’s father’s?” I asked.

  His mouth moved and he pulled a hand back over his hair before answering. “This stays between you and me,” he warned.

  I nodded. I’d kind of expected to get his stay-out-of-my-case speech. Maybe we were finally moving beyond that.

  “Dr. Abbott doesn’t think it’s a smallpox burial site. She doesn’t believe the bones are that old.”

  I rubbed my fingers over my bandaged thumb, picking at a loose edge of adhesive tape with one nail. “So it’s possible?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just way too soon to tell.” He gestured toward the co-op building. “So why were you here?”

  By now I was used to the way the conversation could abruptly change course with him. I looked back over my shoulder. “I brought the truck down to help Maggie take some things over to her studio at River Arts. She had some orders from the co-op Web site to pack.”

  “Okay.”

  “After we had the truck loaded, she wanted to check on the basement again. Larry Taylor may have a line on a pump, but there’s more rain in the forecast and there’s a lot of water down there already.”

  “Who found the body?”

  I stuffed my hand in my pocket before I could pick off the tape that was holding the gauze in place on my thumb. “We both did. When I realized Jaeger was dead, Maggie and I went out into the storeroom and I called 911.”

  He nodded and looked around as though maybe there was something important here on the sidewalk. “The body was in the water?” he asked.

  “Partly. His…feet were on the stairs. He…uh…was faceup, just the eyes and nose out of the water. There was water on the steps. They’re old—just painted wood—without any safety treads so they get slippery.”

  He nodded again. Marcus never wrote anything down, that I’d ever seen, but he remembered everything. His blue eyes were focused on my face, but I could see that his mind was already working, shifting through my words. Just then Ric came out the door, stopping to pull off a pair of blue latex gloves. He looked at Marcus and gave a quick shake of his head.

  “Do you want Maggie and me to stay around?” I asked.

  Marcus patted his pocket. Looking for his phone, maybe? “No you can go. Where are you going to be?”

  “At River Arts for a while,” I said, pointing down the street. “Then the library. Then home.”

  “I suppose I’d be wasting my time to suggest you take it easy for the rest of the day?” he said, almost smiling at me.

  “Pretty much,” I agreed, and I did smile back at him.

  Ric joined us. Like Marcus he looked me over quickly. “How’s the ankle?” he asked.

  “Better, thank you,” I said.

  “What about your thumb?”

  I pulled my hand out of my pocket and held it up so he could see the bandage was still in place.

  “Try to keep it dry,” he said.

  I nodded. Ric turned to Marcus and Marcus looked at me. I was about to be dismissed. “I’ll talk to you both later,” he said.

  “All right,” I said. Maggie was waiting by the door and I walked over to her.

  “I thought you said Marcus was out at Wisteria Hill,” she said.

  “He was, but the anthropologist has more work to do out there. It’s going to be a while before they figure out…” I wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.

  “Before they figure out if it’s Roma’s father.”

  I thought about what Marcus had said. “They need to be certain how old the remains are first.” I was picking at the tape on my thumb again without realizing it. I jammed my hand back in my pocket.

  Maggie looked past me at Marcus and Ric still talking on the sidewalk.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “Is it okay?”

  “Uh huh. Marcus said we could leave. He’ll have some questions later.”

  “I should give him my keys,” Maggie said, running a hand back over her short blond hair so she looked a little like a poodle that had just had its head scratched.

  The men stopped talking as we came level with them. Maggie held out her key ring. “The silver-colored one is for the front door,” she said. “The gold one is the basement lock. You might have to wiggle it a bit. It sticks sometimes.”

  Marcus took the keys from her. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll talk to you both later.” His eyes slid briefly over to my face. I wasn’t sure whether I should say anything or not. Not getting the third degree from him felt a little strange. I settled for a slight nod and a tiny smile.

  Maggie got in the passenger side of the truck. I checked the boxes we’d loaded into the back and then squeezed between the truck bumper and the side of the police car to get around to the driver’s side.

  Once I’d eased the truck out from between the police cruiser and Marcus’s SUV and started down Main Street, I glanced over at Maggie. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She stared at me blankly for a moment. “What? Oh, yeah, I’m all right.” I watched the road and waited for her to find the words she needed for what she wanted to say. “It just doesn’t make sense,” she said finally. “There was no reason for Jaeger to be down in the basement. None.”

  “It doesn’t have to have been a reason that would make sense to anyone else,” I said. “Just to him.”

  “How did he end up down there?”

  “The stairs were wet. He didn’t have boots on.” I pictured Jaeger’s feet on the steps. He’d been wearing leather shoes—black, with red laces and red stitching. Not gum rubbers or anything with a good tread.

  She slumped back against the seat. “No, I don’t mean how did he end up in the water. I mean how did he get into the basement in the first place. The door was locked. I remember locking it after the meeting, Ruby was standing beside me, and”—she gestured with one hand—“you saw me unlock it before we found…before we found him.”

  “Does anyone else have keys to the building?” I asked, turning into the narrow alley that led to the art center’s parking lot.

  “Ruby. But I don’t see her giving them to Jaeger.”

  Ruby’s truck, the twin to mine, was parked in her assigned spot. “Neither do I,” I said. “But she’s here. We can ask her.”

  I backed up to the rear door of the building and got out to help Maggie unload, moving stiffly around the side of the truck. It showed how preoccupied Maggie was that she didn’t notice.

  We piled the boxes at the bottom of the stairs and I pulled the truck into Maggie’s parking spot—she’d left her bug at home.

  “I can carry this stuff up, Kath,” Maggie said, setting the roll of green bubble wrap on top of the stack of boxes.

  “I’m okay,” I said. I was starting to sound like a broken record.

  She frowned and looked pointedly at my left hand with the overbandaged thumb.

  “I’ll take the bubble wrap and the brown paper,” I said. “Neither one of them is very heavy.” I wanted to make sure Ruby actually was in her own studio. I didn’t want to leave Maggie by herself to brood about Jaeger and I did need to get to the library at some point.

  I grabbed the roll of paper and tucked it under one arm. After a moment Maggie surrendered the bubble wrap. She took the top two boxes from the stack and headed up the stairs.

  Ruby must have heard us. As we came out of the stairwell she stepped out of her studio, holding a mug of what I guessed was herbal tea. It smelled like lemon and cranberries.

  “Hi,” she s
aid. She was wearing a paint-spattered denim shirt with the sleeves cut off over her jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt. She looked from Maggie to me, and her smile faded. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “Don’t tell me that there’s more water coming in at the store?”

  Maggie sighed and set down her boxes. “No, it’s Jaeger,” she said.

  “Good dog!” Ruby said, shaking her head, which made her little pigtails bounce. “What did he do now?”

  I held up a hand before she said something that in another minute she might be sorry had come out of her mouth. “Ruby. Jaeger’s dead,” I said quietly.

  Her mouth fell open. “Dead? But…but how? We were all just at the meeting. Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said.

  I nodded.

  For a moment Ruby didn’t seem to know what to do with her free hand. Finally she wrapped her arm around her midsection, like she was hugging herself. “What…what happened?” she asked.

  I glanced at Maggie. Her face was gray and there were tiny, pinched lines between her eyebrows.

  “He, uh, fell down the basement stairs.”

  “You mean at the co-op?” Ruby shook her head slowly from side to side. “No. That’s not possible. I saw him come up the steps and…and…I saw him leave.” Her face had gone pale as well.

  Maggie looked down at the floor for a moment. “He came back,” she said, finally. “I don’t know why. And I don’t know what he was even doing down there.” She bent and picked up the boxes again. “I’m going to put these in my studio.” She moved past us, fished out her key to unlock the door and then went inside.

  Ruby was still shell-shocked. She took a couple of steps toward me. “Kathleen, did Maggie find…” She didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what she was asking.

  “We, uh, we both did.”

  Her face softened. “I’m sorry,” she said. Then finally she noticed my scraped forehead. “What happened to you? Are you okay? You didn’t fall down the stairs too, did you?”

  I shook my head. “No. I slipped out at Wisteria Hill. I’m all right.”