Faux Paw: A Magical Cats Mystery

by Sofie Kelly

  Gavin shot me a puzzled look. I gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

  “Margo Walsh kept a date book,” Marcus continued.

  I nodded slowly. “She kept everything in it. It was a small book with a maroon leather cover.” Like Maggie, Margo had kept a paper schedule instead of using her phone or computer.

  “We found it today.”

  Hope looked at me for a moment before looking back at Marcus. Did that mean anything? I wondered.

  “So what does that mean?” Gavin asked, restlessly shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “Did Margo happen to make a note that someone wanted to kill her?”

  Marcus opened the folded sheet of white paper, looked at whatever was written on it, then looked at Gavin. “No. But she did make a note about having lunch with you three weeks before you told us you’d met her for the first time.”

  Gavin exhaled loudly and shrugged. “I should have guessed she’d write it down,” he said. “Margo wrote everything down.”

  “Why did you lie to us?” Hope asked.

  “Not because I killed her,” he said. “I was in the bar at the hotel. You know that. People saw me.” He looked from Hope to Marcus. Neither one of them said a word.

  “You told me this was the first time you’d worked with Margo,” I said.

  “It was,” Gavin said. “It just wasn’t the first time we’d met. I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you everything.”

  “So stop playing games and tell us everything now,” Hope said.

  He exhaled loudly. “Fine. Margo and I had lunch when the schedule for the exhibit was finalized.” His mouth moved like he was working on shaping his words before he spoke them. “She had big concerns about the artwork being out of a museum.”

  “Why did you let everyone think you’d never met before?” Hope asked.

  I glanced over at the stairs to the second floor of the building. Margo and I had been standing there when Gavin had walked into the library for the first time. I remembered her holding out her hand and saying, “Hello. You must be Gavin Solomon. I’m Margo Walsh.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Why did Margo pretend she didn’t know you?” I looked from Hope to Marcus. “I was here with her when Gavin arrived for our first meeting.” I turned to Gavin. “She introduced herself as though she’d never seen you before.”

  “That’s because I asked her not to let on we’d already met.” He exhaled loudly and looked up at the ceiling. “When we met for lunch it was to go over the security details for the exhibit. The insurance company had certain requirements that had to be met. Margo . . . had some questions.” He dropped his head and looked at me. “The thing is, I work for ILG Security as a consultant, which means I can also work for other companies in the same capacity . . . as long as there isn’t a conflict of interest.”

  “Which there was this time,” Marcus said.

  “Who else were you working for?” I asked.

  Gavin shifted restlessly again. “The insurance company.”

  “You were working for the company that required the security and the one that was providing it.” Hope’s tone and her body language told me that she and Marcus had already figured out his conflict of interest.

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Why on earth would Margo have gone along with keeping that a secret?”

  Gavin swiped a hand across his face in exasperation. “Oh, c’mon, Kathleen. You worked with the woman. You know what she was like. She was dead set against any of the artwork being displayed anywhere other than a museum where she could control everything from the way the lights were angled to the alarm system. We could have had laser beams crisscrossing the room like a James Bond movie and she was still convinced someone was going to steal one of her precious drawings.”

  “Someone did,” I said softly.

  “And maybe she helped whoever it was,” he retorted. “She wanted to know a lot of the technical details on how the system worked. She said it was so she could keep moving things around and not set it off. I didn’t have any reason to think she wasn’t telling me the truth.” He pulled a hand over the back of his neck. “Maybe I was wrong.”

  “Maybe,” Marcus said.

  Gavin looked directly at him, his jaw clenched and tight lines around his mouth. “I didn’t kill her.”

  Marcus came to stand next to me. “We should take this down to the station,” he said.

  “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “We just want to ask you a few more questions,” Hope said, her tone even and nonconfrontational.

  Gavin looked directly at Marcus. “So go ahead and ask them. I don’t need a lawyer if that’s what you’re worried about. I have the right to remain silent and anything I say can be used against me. I get that.” His dark eyes flicked to me. “Kathleen, you’re my witness.” He held up both hands. “Ask your questions.”

  “This is a bad idea,” I said softly. Hope shot Marcus a warning look.

  He ignored both of us. “Before you worked for ILG Security, who did you work for?” he asked.

  “Myself,” Gavin said. “I have a background in art and I’ve always been pretty good with electronics. People hired me to evaluate their security systems. It was pretty much a word-of-mouth business, but I can give you the contact information for some of my satisfied customers.”

  A muscle twitched in Marcus’s cheek. “What about dissatisfied customers?”

  Gavin smiled, although there wasn’t a lot of warmth in his expression. “There were none.”

  “Ever been in any trouble with the police?”

  The smile didn’t waver. “You wouldn’t ask the question unless you knew the answer. Yes. When I was a kid.” He emphasized the word “kid.”

  He looked away from Marcus then, over to me. “I was fourteen. I broke in to a teacher’s house. I got probation and community service. I wore an orange vest that was two sizes too big for me and picked up garbage along the highway for six weeks including the hottest July on record.”

  Gavin continued to focus his attention on me. “You’re the only one who doesn’t know the rest of the story, Kathleen, so here it is. I took a drawing from that teacher’s house. I guess that constitutes some kind of pattern.” He shrugged.

  “Was that the only time you ever took something that didn’t belong to you?” Marcus asked. He continued his laser focus on the other man.

  “I picked up a quarter from the sidewalk,” Gavin said. “Strictly speaking it didn’t belong to me. And last week I ate a muffin from the staff room here in the library, although they were on a plate in the middle of the table so you could argue there’s a reasonable assumption they were intended for everyone.” He looked away from me then, and the look he gave Marcus was a mix of flippant and defiant.

  Marcus sighed softly, so softly I was probably the only person who heard him. I knew he didn’t like Gavin. He’d admitted something about the man bugged him, but did he really think the security expert had had anything to do with the theft and Margo’s death? How could he? More than one person had seen Gavin in the bar at the hotel.

  Hope looked at Marcus. Something passed between them.

  “Mr. Solomon, do you know a man named Alastair Darby?” Marcus asked.

  I’d heard the name somewhere but I couldn’t remember where.

  “He’s a collector,” Gavin said. “Fancies himself a patron of the arts.”

  “You were at a fundraising event hosted by Alastair Darby a couple of years ago.”

  Gavin nodded. “I was. It was a garden party at his summer home. Mediocre wine, excellent food.”

  “You and Alastair Darby got into an argument at the party.” Marcus squared his shoulders and crossed his arms over his midsection. He tipped his head to one side and studied Gavin as though he was some kind of science experiment.

  If Gavin was intimid
ated, it didn’t show. “Actually, I got into an argument with the mountainoid who worked for him. He got a little frisky in a pat down. He wasn’t my type.” He raised an eyebrow at Hope and gave her a sly smile.

  “Darby thought you’d taken something that belonged to him,” Marcus said.

  “He was mistaken,” Gavin said. “Which he learned after his gorilla felt me up.”

  Hope smiled back at him. “You didn’t take a painting that belonged to Mr. Darby?”

  Gavin laid a hand over his chest. “I promise you, Detective, I didn’t take anything from that party that belonged to Alastair Darby.”

  “Two people saw you stuff something in your pants.”

  He laughed. “That was all mine.”

  “So you’re not a thief?” Marcus said.

  Gavin held up both hands again in a gesture of surrender. “I’m just a security expert. I’m not a thief. I didn’t take anything of Mr. Darby’s. And for the record”—his eyes flicked to me again—“I wasn’t a thief at fourteen, either. The teacher? He took a piece of artwork that had been done by a student, that she didn’t give to him and that he lied about having. All I did was retrieve it.” He shrugged. “I have some unique skills. I use them to prevent things from being lost. A few times, in the past, I acted as a retrieval agent for people whose artwork had, let’s say, been borrowed without their permission. I was paid a fee when that artwork was returned to its rightful owners. I don’t think that’s against the law, Detective.”

  “Mr. Solomon, were you in the bar all evening the night Margo Walsh was killed?” Hope said. “Because nobody seems to remember seeing you after about quarter to eight.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “So where were you?” I asked. This game of cat and mouse had been going on too long for me.

  “With Mary,” he said, gesturing at the checkout desk.

  “Mary Lowe?” I said.

  He nodded. “Uh-huh. It turns out we have an interest in common.”

  I should have known. I really should have known at that point. But instead I frowned and said, “You’re interested in kickboxing?”

  Gavin threw back his head and laughed. “No. Mary and I were at The Brick.”

  I got it then. I felt my cheeks flood with color. Marcus and Hope hadn’t figured out what Gavin was talking about, and before I could say anything he spoke again.

  “It was amateur night. We performed.” One eyebrow went up and the sly smile returned to his face.

  “To ‘Proud Mary,’” he said. “Together.”

  14

  There was no reason for Gavin to stay, so he left. Marcus got on his cell phone and moved a couple of steps away. Hope walked over to me. “Mary Lowe and Gavin Solomon dancing at The Brick.” She shook her head. “My mind just won’t go there.”

  “I was there once for amateur night,” I said.

  Her eyebrows went up.

  “Not to perform. It was during the investigation of Agatha Shepherd’s murder.”

  Hope grinned. “Sure it was, Kathleen,” she teased.

  “Mary’s act was very popular.” I didn’t add that I had only seen a moment of her performance because I was so embarrassed at seeing one of my staff members on The Brick’s stage in high heels, fishnets, a corset and pretty much nothing else that I’d grabbed Maggie and literally dragged her to the parking lot.

  Hope put her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear this,” she said.

  I leaned my head close to hers. “I have one word for you. Feathers.”

  She made a face and dropped her hands. “Okay. You’re going to have to start delivering books to my house because I’m never going to be able to come into the library and look Mary in the eye ever again.”

  Marcus stuck his phone in his pocket and walked over to us. “I have to go back to the station,” he said to Hope.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “I want to go out back and see how the crime scene techs are doing.” She smiled at me. “I’ll see you later, Kathleen.”

  I nodded.

  “I’d better get home and see what Owen and Hercules have been up to,” I said to Marcus. I reached out for his hand and gave it a squeeze.

  He looked around, then leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “You’ll find some papers kind of spread around the living room. Don’t give Owen a hard time about them, because really, he was the one who found Margo Walsh’s date book.”

  “Owen found Margo’s date book?” It occurred to me that if anyone heard us talking they would have thought that Owen was a person. Of course, he seemed to think he was.

  Marcus nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  We started for the door. “I have a feeling this is going to be good,” I said. “How exactly did my cat find a piece of your evidence?”

  “I stopped at your house just before lunch to check on the cats. I realized I’d forgotten the drawing I’d made of the cabinet.”

  Maggie and I had found an old 1960s vintage wooden cabinet at the same flea market where we’d gotten Roma’s bench. I’d sanded off the old finish and Marcus was going to add shelves and legs before I painted it.

  “It’s on the counter by the toaster,” I said.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I know. I found it. But I checked the living room first.”

  Marcus locked up the building and set the alarm and we stepped outside into the afternoon sunshine.

  “So exactly how did these papers end up spread around my living room?” I asked.

  “You had a couple of boxes next to that big chair.”

  I bent to pick up a candy wrapper on the second step. “Those were my files about the exhibit. “Don’t tell me Owen got the top off one of the boxes.”

  “I think he just wanted to see what was inside.”

  I stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “What did he do?” I said.

  Marcus hesitated.

  “What did he do?” I repeated.

  “He kind of spread everything around the living room . . . a little,” he said somewhat sheepishly.

  “That little fur ball isn’t going to see a stinky cracker for a very long time,” I said, shaking a finger for emphasis. “I just got those files finished and organized so I could bring them down here and put them away. Now I have to start all over again. I can’t believe he got that lid off the box.”

  Marcus smiled. “He’s pretty resourceful.”

  I shook my head. “Oh no.”

  He looked surprised. “What do you mean, no? I didn’t ask you anything.”

  “You want me to let Owen off the hook. In fact, you probably want me to give him a treat.” I stopped at the edge of the parking lot and squinted up at him.

  “I wouldn’t have found Margo’s date book if Owen hadn’t gotten into that box. Do you have any idea how it ended up there, by the way?”

  “Margo helped me put all those files in the boxes. It probably got mixed up with one of the piles of paper and got put in by mistake.”

  “If I hadn’t found Margo’s date book I wouldn’t have known Gavin was lying about when he and Margo met. And I might not have found out that his alibi was a fake.”

  “Which doesn’t do you any good because he has another alibi, which I’d just as soon not know about.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes. “You and me both. But my point is, Owen helped me find that date book. Once I finish going through it, who knows what other bits of evidence I might get from it.”

  “You make it sound as though he knew the date book was in the box and opened it so you’d find it.” I had an uncomfortable feeling, niggling away at the base of my brain, that that was exactly what had happened, which meant I’d just made Marcus’s point.

  “Okay, I know that didn’t happen, but he did help.” Marcus raised his eyebrows and smiled at me. He had a gorgeous smile that still had the ability to make m
e feel like a love-struck teenager when I wasn’t imagining what it was like to kiss his equally gorgeous mouth.

  I realized then that he was waiting for me to say something while I was focusing on his mouth instead of the words coming out of it.

  I let out a small sigh. “You win,” I said, reaching up to brush back the lock of dark hair that had fallen down onto his forehead.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “That little fur ball owes you,” I said.

  Marcus laughed. “A cat in my debt,” he said. “Now, that’s useful.”

  Given what Owen was capable of, it really was, but I didn’t say that.

  Marcus gave me a drive up the hill because my boots weren’t really made for walking up Mountain Road.

  “Thank you for the ride,” I said as I undid my seat belt after he’d pulled into my driveway.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, leaning over to kiss me. “I’ll call you later. And by the way, you look beautiful.”

  I felt my cheeks flood with color as I got out of the car.

  Owen was sitting by the table in the kitchen. He meowed the moment he saw me, coming over to wind himself around my legs. I bent down and picked him up and he immediately nuzzled my cheek.

  “Never mind trying to get on my good side,” I said. He tipped his head to one side and looked at me, the absolute image of adorable kitty.

  Hercules appeared in the living room doorway. “Mrrr,” he said softly; then he looked back over his shoulder.

  I kissed the top of Owen’s head and set him down. “I know,” I said to Hercules. “Marcus told me.” I crossed the kitchen to him and leaned over to stroke his dark fur. “I heard he helped Marcus find some evidence.”

  I know cats can’t shrug, but it almost seemed that he did. Then he took a few steps into the living room, turned and looked at me. I went to stand beside him. The contents of one file box were strewn all over the living room. All over. There were papers on the floor, under the wing chair and on the footstool. I blew out a breath and looked at Hercules.

  “Was this all Owen?” I asked.

  “Merow,” he said.