A Midwinter's Tail

by Sofie Kelly

  I drank the last of my hot chocolate and stretched. Owen looked over at the counter and then back at me. That was his subtle way of saying, “How about a treat?”

  “You get too many treats,” I said.

  He blinked. In Owen’s world there was no such thing as too many treats.

  “You need to get down,” I told him, pointing at the floor. “I want to check my e-mail. Lise said she’d send me some photos. The band was playing in a club downtown over the weekend.”

  Lise was my best friend in Boston. My little brother’s band, The Flaming Gerbils, was developing a bit of a following in the Boston area, helped along by a music video they’d made for their song “In a Million Other Worlds.”

  Lise’s husband was a musician, a jazz guitarist, not grunge rock like the Gerbils, and Lise had been photographing his performances for years. She’d gone to see Ethan and his buddies on Saturday night and had promised to send me some photos.

  Owen made grumbling noises, but he jumped down to the floor. I got my briefcase and set my laptop on the table.

  I turned on the computer and Lise’s e-mail pinged in my in-box. At the same time Owen launched himself back onto my lap. He put one paw on the edge of the table and studied the screen as I scrolled through the photographs.

  They were fantastic.

  “Look at this one,” I said to Owen, touching the screen. Lise had caught Ethan in midleap onstage. I grinned as the cat leaned in, as though he actually was trying to take a closer look at the image.

  My favorite shot of the nine photos was the last one, of Ethan again, seated on a stool with his guitar. I knew that had to have been during “In a Million Other Worlds.” It was the only slow song the band did.

  I leaned against the back of the chair, one hand on Owen, who still seemed to be studying the screen, as a wave of homesickness rolled over me. I was happy with my decision to stay in Mayville Heights. It really did feel like home, and people like Rebecca, Maggie and the Taylors felt like another family. But I missed Boston: Ethan and Sara, my mom and dad, Lise. We e-mailed, we talked on the phone, we texted—Sara and I had managed to Skype a couple of times. But I missed the little things—lunch with Lise, shopping with Sara, going to see Ethan and the band perform, watching my parents rehearse. I reminded myself that the twins were away from Boston now more than they were there, and even my mother had spent several weeks in Los Angeles during the fall on the soap the Wild and the Wonderful. No matter where my family was, it was hard to be away from them.

  I thought about Dayna and what Harry had told me about his father’s suspicion that the cards and parcels from her to her children had really been orchestrated by Burtis. Could that really be true? I didn’t understand why she hadn’t come back to see her children. Where she had gone and what had she done after she left Mayville Heights all those years ago?

  Owen seemed to have gotten tired of looking at Lise’s photos. He put a paw on the keyboard.

  “Don’t do that,” I warned.

  Owen hit another key and suddenly Google was open. He turned and looked expectantly at me. I had said I was going to see what I could find about Burtis’s ex-wife.

  What I found was nothing.

  “How can someone leave no digital trail?” I said to Owen.

  His response was to poke at the keyboard again, adding three a’s and a q to Dayna Chapman’s name.

  “Owen,” I started. Then I realized what the problem was: I was spelling her name wrong.

  I kissed the top of his head. “You’re a genius,” I said.

  He dipped his head in a display of very false modesty.

  I’d been spelling Dayna Chapman’s name without the y. It was with Dayna Morretti—y—and her maiden name that I struck pay dirt.

  Six years previous Dayna had been a witness to a robbery at a Minneapolis pawnshop that had left the owner with a life-changing brain injury. I scrolled down through the online newspaper article, stopping when I got to the third paragraph. The pawnshop owner’s name was Sutton. Nicolas Sutton Sr.

  Owen and I looked at each other. It had to be Nic’s father. It was just too big a coincidence.

  15

  Marcus and I had cat feeding duty out at Wisteria Hill in the morning. Roma had taken a couple of days off to go meet Eddie on the road. Marcus probably already knew about the robbery and Nic Sutton’s connection—even indirectly—to Dayna, but I wanted to tell him what I’d learned.

  It was just getting light when Marcus’s SUV pulled into the driveway. I climbed into the front seat and leaned over to kiss him before I fastened my seat belt.

  “I like this,” I said as he backed out of the driveway.

  “The bracing cold or going to feed the cats when it’s still dark?” he asked. He was wearing his old navy parka and a red knit hat. He was as cute as a bug’s ear, to use Mary’s expression.

  “Neither,” I said, feeling my cheeks get warm. “I just meant that I like being able to kiss you.” I suddenly felt awkward and tongue-tied. “I like that we’re . . . us.” I swallowed and looked out the windshield. I sounded like a love-struck teenager.

  “You could have gotten in and kissed me any time you wanted to before we were us,” Marcus said. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

  I glanced over and saw his lips twitch as he tried and failed to hold back a smile. “You would have thought I was trying to get information out of you about one of your cases,” I said.

  We headed up the hill toward Wisteria Hill. “Wasn’t that why you were always getting me coffee?” he asked, darting a quick sideways glance in my direction.

  “No!” I said, a little more hotly than I’d meant to.

  Did he really believe that?

  “I got you coffee because . . . because the first time you showed up to question me at the library, I’d just made a pot for myself. It would have been rude not to offer you a cup.”

  “Okay, so the first time was good manners. What about all the other times?”

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “See?” he said, eyebrows disappearing under his red hat. “You were trying to get information out of me with a cup of coffee.”

  “You’re so dense,” I said softly, jiggling Roma’s keys in one hand.

  He looked confused. “About what?”

  I felt my face get warm again. “I brought you coffee or made you coffee because I wanted an excuse to be where you were.” It was the first time I’d admitted it to anyone, let alone myself.

  Marcus kept his eyes straight ahead, but he took one hand off the steering wheel for a moment, felt for my hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “I always drank slowly,” he said after a minute or so of silence.

  I didn’t say a thing, but he couldn’t have missed the grin that spread across my face.

  Marcus turned up the long driveway and parked the SUV in the cleared area by the house. I used the key Roma had given me to get the cats’ dishes, food and water. Marcus took the water jugs and the bag with the cans of cat food. I carried the dishes.

  Harry had cleared a wide path from the driveway to the carriage house. As we headed around to the door, I told Marcus about Smokey. Roma had managed to entice him into the cage with some shredded chicken. He had a long gash on his leg that had gotten infected.

  “I told Roma I’d stop by the clinic and check on him,” I said as Marcus held the side door open and I ducked under his arm to slip inside. “She said he was sleeping a lot. I thought it might help to hear a voice he recognizes, at least while she’s away.” I gave a little shrug. “It’s silly, isn’t it?”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s not. I think it’s kind.”

  We put out the food and water and retreated to the door the way we always did. Instead of leaning against the rough wood of the old building, I leaned against Marcus and he wrapped his arms around me. If there was somewhere better to be, at that moment I couldn’t think of where it was.

  After a minute Lucy poked her head out, caught sight of us
and headed purposefully in our direction. I slipped out from under Marcus’s arms and took a couple of steps away from him. Lucy stopped maybe four feet away from me. I knew she wouldn’t come any closer and I didn’t try to move any nearer to her.

  She looked up at me and meowed. Behind her I could see the other five cats peeking out from where their shelters were. No one would head over to eat until Lucy did.

  “Smokey’s all right,” I said. “He has an infection in his leg, but Roma is taking care of him.”

  I felt certain she understood. I only ever talked to Lucy when Marcus was around. I knew he didn’t believe the small cat knew what I was saying. But even he couldn’t explain why Lucy seemed to prefer me to all the rest of Roma’s volunteers.

  Lucy meowed again and then turned and headed to the feeding station. I moved back to Marcus and leaned against his side. He wrapped one arm around my waist and we watched the cats eating, looking for any sign of illness or injury. They all looked fine. When they’d finished eating and retreated to their shelters, we cleaned up, put out more fresh water and headed back to Marcus’s SUV.

  “Do you want to see if we can feed Micah?” he asked, pushing back the sleeve of his jacket to check his watch. “We have time.”

  “I would,” I said, pulling my hat down over my ears a little better. “Roma said she’s been coming to eat about every second day.”

  “I take it she hasn’t had any luck with the cage,” he said.

  I shook my head. “No. She asked me if I’d try.”

  Marcus smiled and pulled off his gloves to help me get the food ready. “You’re the Cat Whisperer. Maybe you can catch her.”

  I fished the two extra dishes out of the bag. He filled one with water while I opened the can of food and put it in the other bowl.

  “Wait here,” I said to Marcus, handing the bag of used dishes to him.

  I put the food and water down in a small area Roma had shoveled out at the base of a large tree near the carriage house. Then I backed away, stuffed my hands in the pockets of my old brown jacket and waited. Two, maybe three minutes passed and I saw movement in the snow behind a tangle of bushes.

  It was Micah.

  At the same time I realized that Marcus was behind me, not over by the steps. I reached one hand behind me and caught his arm. The small ginger cat continued to creep slowly forward until she reached the food. She began to eat, watching us between bites.

  “Don’t stare at her,” I whispered to Marcus.

  “Why?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t want to spook her. You wouldn’t like it if someone stared at you while you were having breakfast, would you?” I took a couple of steps backward, which meant he had to take a couple of steps back as well.

  He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me back against him. “Is it okay with you if I do this instead?” he teased in a low voice.

  I looked up at him and nodded wordlessly.

  We stood there while the little cat ate and I watched her out of the corner of my eye. When she finished she seemed to take a minute to study us and then she meowed softly.

  “You’re welcome,” I whispered.

  As soon as the cat was out of sight, I collected the dishes and added them to the other ones I was taking with me to wash.

  “I’ll take the empty cans with me,” Marcus said, walking over to the steps to pick up the empty water jugs. “They can go in my recycling bin.”

  We got into the SUV and I retrieved the thermos I’d left on the floor on the passenger side. I poured a cup of coffee and handed it over to Marcus, then poured a second for myself.

  He had peeled off his heavy gloves and the goofy red hat and now he wrapped his fingers around the plastic cup and smiled at me. “Thank you for this,” he said. “It’s colder than I thought it would be out here.”

  The warmth was soaking into my own fingers, thawing them out a little. I took a long drink of coffee and then shifted sideways. “There’s something I wanted to tell you that I found about Dayna Chapman.”

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Did you know that she was a witness in a robbery about six years ago?”

  He nodded, head bent over his cup. “The pawnshop. Yeah, I knew.”

  “The owner, the man who was shot, did you know his son is here in Mayville Heights?”

  His blue eyes narrowed, just slightly, and the muscles along his jawline tightened. Again, it was barely noticeable. Most people probably wouldn’t have noticed it, but I knew every angle of Marcus’s face, every line.

  “What makes you think so?” he asked.

  I had another sip of coffee before I answered. “You didn’t know,” I said. “Did you?”

  After a moment he shook his head. “Why are you so sure about this?”

  “The owner’s name was Nicolas Sutton Sr.,” I said. “The guy who works for Eric, the new artist in the co-op, the one who did the chocolate boxes for the fundraiser, is Nic Sutton. He came from Minneapolis.” I exhaled softly. “I might be wrong.”

  “I’ll check it out,” he said. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “Nic bumped into Dayna at the party,” I said. “She gave him the brush-off. I didn’t think anything of it until I discovered that they have a connection.”

  Marcus pulled his free hand back through his hair. He did that when he had a lot on his mind. “Sometimes it’s just a small world,” he said. “But I’ll check that out, too.”

  I checked my watch. “We should get going,” I said.

  He drained the last of his coffee and handed me the cup. “Thanks.”

  I wasn’t sure if he meant for the coffee or the information.

  “Can you get one of the cages from the clinic when you go to see Smokey?” Marcus asked as we headed down the driveway. “We could bring it up tomorrow and see if we can catch Micah.”

  “I can do that,” I said. “I should bring something a little more enticing than regular cat food, though.”

  We spent the rest of the drive home debating the merits of cooked chicken versus sardines, settling in the end on the little fish, mainly because of the enthusiasm Owen and Hercules had for them.

  Marcus pulled into my driveway, put the SUV in park and leaned over to kiss my cheek. “Have a good day, Kath,” he said.

  I smiled. “You, too.”

  “Let me know what you find out,” he added.

  I frowned uncertainly at him.

  He held up one hand. “I know you’re not going to stay out of this, so I’m not going to waste my time telling you to. If you come up with anything, call me. Deal?”

  I nodded. It felt a little odd not to be arguing about this.

  I slid out of the SUV and headed for the back porch with my thermos and the bag of cat food dishes. It seemed to me that I had two pretty much impossible tasks—capture a small and extremely skittish cat and figure out who killed Dayna Chapman. I had the feeling that catching Micah was going to be a heck of a lot easier than catching Dayna Chapman’s killer.

  16

  I couldn’t do anything with my hair, probably because it had been smashed down weird under my hat. I finally got it lying more or less smoothly in a ponytail. Hercules sat by the bed and watched. Owen, as usual, had disappeared somewhere.

  Since I was running behind and more than a little frustrated by my hair, I decided to stop into Eric’s for a breakfast sandwich and some soup to warm up for lunch.

  “I’ll talk to Maggie tonight at tai chi and see what I can find out about Nic,” I said to Hercules as I pulled on my boots.

  He gave me a blank look.

  “I’m sorry. I forgot,” I said. “I didn’t tell you what I found online.” I shook my head and reached for my woolen beret. “Nic Sutton might have known Dayna Chapman. I don’t have time to bring you up to date. Ask your brother.”

  I leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “Have a good day,” I said.

  I locked the door and headed around the house for my truck thinking i
f anyone ever did hear me talking to the boys, they really would think I was a few marbles short of a game.

  It was a busy morning at the library with both the seniors and the preschool story time. Harry had come in with the tree, a beautiful, bushy fir, about nine thirty. Abigail and I had helped him get it set in the stand, although Harry did most of the work.

  “Would you like me to start with the lights after story time?” Abigail asked as we stood back to get a good look at the tree.

  “Yes, please,” I said. “The boxes are in my office. I have to take the budget estimates over to Lita, but I’ll help you once I get back.”

  She smiled and bumped me gently with her shoulder. “I don’t mind. I like decorating.”

  “Good,” I said. “Come and do my house. All I have is a wreath on the front door and it’s plastic.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “I’m pretty sure we can have you put in stocks down on the Riverwalk for that.”

  “It was a plastic wreath or the head of a Fred the Funky Chicken, and putting a yellow chicken head on my front door just didn’t say peace and goodwill to me.” I grinned back at her. “Seriously, though, I spent so much time on the fundraiser, holiday decorations just kind of fell by the wayside.”

  Abigail nodded. “Have you decided what you’re going to do about Reading Buddies?”

  I twisted my watch around my arm. “Yes and no.”

  “Which means?” she prompted.

  “It means by the time we take care of the expenses for the fundraiser, we’ll have enough money to keep the program going until spring—if we’re careful and creative. We can’t really do anything with the holidays just a few weeks away, so I’ll wait until January and then we’ll start trying to come up with some new ideas for getting the money.”

  She nodded. “That works for me.”

  I looked at my watch. “I need to get over to see Lita,” I said.

  Abigail made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go ahead. I’ll start on the tree first chance I get.”

  I smiled. “Thanks.” I started for the stairs.

  “Hey, Kathleen,” she called after me.