Faux Paw: A Magical Cats Mystery

by Sofie Kelly

  She shook her head. “No, I knew there wouldn’t be an exhibit here, but Margo was going to add all the Mayville Heights artists to the next stop on the tour.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I knew that Margo had already spent time at the other five stops on the tour. The layout of the artwork had already been planned. There was no way the artists from Mayville Heights would be part of the exhibit in some other place.

  Marcus put his phone back in his pocket and walked back over to us. He gave Rena a look, narrowing his eyes, and I realized something in his attitude had changed. I wondered who had been on the other end of the phone.

  “Do you know anything about the history of the Weston drawing, Detective?” Rena asked. She was still fingering the cardboard wrapped around her painting.

  “I know there’s some dispute about whether or not Weston himself is the artist,” Marcus said.

  “Margo believed, very strongly, that he wasn’t. She did a lot of research on Sam Weston and on that drawing in particular. She went to talk to his first wife’s great-great-grandson. I don’t know what she found out, but whatever it was, she was convinced that that particular drawing wasn’t done by Weston and that several others weren’t, either.”

  “She told you all that?” Marcus didn’t even try to keep the skepticism from his voice.

  Rena smiled, not particularly warmly. “Uh-huh. It’ll probably surprise you, but I agree . . . agreed with her.” She gestured in the direction of the computer area turned exhibit space. “These pieces should be in a controlled environment with proper security. They’re part of this country’s heritage—part of our heritage.”

  “We should get going, Ms. Adler,” Marcus said.

  Rena nodded. “I understand.” She turned to me, indicating the wrapped painting as she did. “Is it all right if I leave this here?”

  “Of course it is,” I said. “I’ll put it upstairs in my office.” I looked at Marcus. “Is that all right?”

  He nodded. “It’s fine.” He looked around. “I’m sorry, Kathleen,” he began.

  “I can’t stay here,” I finished. Once again I was shut out of my own library.

  Marcus took me by the arm and led me over to the main doors. Rena was putting a bit more tape on the cardboard-wrapped painting.

  “You don’t think she killed Margo,” I said.

  He shook his head. “How do you do that?”

  “That was Hope on the phone and she told you something that convinced you that Rena isn’t the killer.” I was only guessing, but his expression told me I was correct.

  He pulled a hand over his mouth. “Rena is left-handed,” he said.

  I glanced over at her. “I noticed that, too.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I turned back to him. “The killer wasn’t,” I said slowly. Then I gave my head a slight shake before he could speak. “I know. You can’t tell me that.”

  He shrugged. “I’m sorry.” He looked around. “There was no computer chip on that drawing,” he began.

  “But you want to search again.”

  “I do.”

  Another thought had just occurred to me. “Marcus, if Rena didn’t kill Margo, that means someone else got in here and did.”

  He nodded.

  “But if it wasn’t about the drawing, if she didn’t walk in on the thief, on Rena, then why would anyone want to kill her?”

  Marcus shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  I took Rena’s painting up to my office. While I was gone Marcus opened the cabinet and checked to make sure the drawing wasn’t inside.

  It wasn’t.

  “Is it all right if I let Lita and Everett know we’re going to be closed a bit longer?” I asked as we headed for the front door.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “But for now, everything else stays between us.”

  I nodded, then reached for his hand to give it a squeeze. He smiled and the gleam that flashed in his blue eyes sent a warm feeling flooding through my chest.

  I turned and walked back to Rena. “Think about a lawyer,” I said softly.

  All she did was smile at me.

  Curtis Holt was at the front doors. I realized Marcus had worked out the timing of that in advance. He and Rena headed for the police station and I walked over to Henderson Holdings and brought Lita up to date on what was going on. Then I headed home.

  Hercules was sitting in the blue Adirondack chair in the backyard when I got home. I scooped him onto my lap and sat down. “What are you doing out here?” I asked.

  He looked over at the big maple tree and meowed. Hercules had a love-hate relationship with a grackle that spent a lot of time in that tree. I thought of their perverse connection as love-hate because while Hercules had managed to snag one of the bird’s feathers, he’d never come any closer to the bird—something he was quite capable of doing. And the grackle, in turn, had dive-bombed the cat, but never, as far as I had seen, touched a single strand of fur on his head.

  “Where’s your friend?” I said, stroking his fur. It was warm from the morning sun.

  He responded with a sharp meow.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I meant your archnemesis.”

  Hercules made a grumbling sound low in his throat, shook off my hand, then jumped to the grass and headed for the house. He didn’t bother waiting for me; he just walked through the door into the porch.

  I watched him, thinking how much easier it would be if I could do that instead of stopping to fish out my keys all the time and unlock things. I couldn’t help laughing as I let myself into the porch the normal way. When had I gotten so blasé about the cats’ abilities?

  I spent the afternoon catching up on what work I could from home. Lita called with a message from Everett that in essence promised any resources I needed to get things back to normal at the library as quickly as possible. I called Maggie to let her know we’d need her space for a few more days if that was okay. I told her that Rena was answering some questions for the police, but it didn’t look like she’d killed Margo. I didn’t think that violated Marcus’s request not to talk about what had happened at the library. Gavin didn’t call and I didn’t call him, either.

  I couldn’t get Rena’s story out of my head. Margo had hired her to break in to the library and take the Weston drawing out of its case and hide it? That made no sense. The case we kept the rare books in would make a good temporary hiding place, but I couldn’t believe that Margo would do anything that might put the fragile piece of artwork at risk of damage. This whole thing was so out of character for the person I’d gotten to know.

  But why would Rena make up a story like that? Even though Margo was dead, there were parts of her tale Marcus and Hope would be able to check on.

  When I got to tai chi, Maggie took me aside to tell me that Rena was out on bail and had to stay in town, but she didn’t seem concerned about the time she’d spent at the police station. “Did Marcus say anything?” she asked.

  “I haven’t talked to him,” I said, wondering if he hadn’t called so I wouldn’t have to be evasive with Maggie—or anyone else.

  I was restless when I got home. Roma had an early surgery at the clinic so I was driving out to Wisteria Hill to feed the cats in the morning. Now that Roma lived in the old farmhouse full-time, I fed the feral cats only when she was out of town or tied up with a patient. I hung my old jacket on the doorknob and went down to the basement for my heavy rubber boots. Roma had warned me that the path around the side of the old carriage house was wet and muddy.

  While I was down there I decided to try to figure out why Owen was spending so much time in the basement. A waist-high workbench took up almost half of the back wall of the cellar. Harry Taylor had told me it had been built by the previous owner of the little farmhouse. Owen had taken over part of the knee-level shelf. It looked like the stash of a ho
arder. He’d dragged down the old sweatshirt I’d told Maggie he’d swiped from me. There was a mitten that I recognized as belonging to her, several catnip chicken body parts and three black feathers. They looked like they might have come from a grackle.

  I leaned against the bench holding the feathers, trying to make sense of how and why Owen had them. The little “war” between Hercules and the large bird was exactly that: between the two of them only. The bird hadn’t so much as lifted a wingtip in Owen’s direction, probably because it was Hercules who liked to hang around the maple tree the grackle considered to be its territory. Owen was generally prowling the yard or rooting in Rebecca’s recycling bin.

  So how had Owen gotten those feathers? From another bird? I didn’t think so. From what I’d seen, the big black grackle kept all other similar birds at bay.

  Could Owen have taken a run at the bird? I thought about the various squabbles he and Hercules had been having the past several months. There was an element of tit for tat in all of it.

  I blew out a breath. No, it was just too preposterous to think Owen and Hercules were fighting because Owen had gone after the bird Hercules had been jousting with for the past year. They were cats, after all, not people.

  I took my boots and the three feathers and went upstairs.

  Owen wandered into the kitchen from somewhere carrying the disembodied head of a yellow funky chicken. He dropped it next to his water dish.

  “Why do you have these?” I asked, holding out the black feathers.

  He blinked at me.

  I leaned forward, one hand on my knee. “If you’ve been after that bird, you have to stop.”

  “Mrr,” he said, dropping his head to study a spot on the floor.

  “Hercules and the bird are like . . . like Austin Powers and Dr. Evil.”

  I shook my head. What was I doing? Trying to explain to one cat that he had to stay away from the so-called archenemy of another cat by referencing a movie from the 1990s, albeit one both cats had watched with Maggie and me.

  I straightened up. No, this was crazy. I held up the feathers. “Bad,” I said sternly. “Very bad.” Then I dropped them in the garbage can.

  Owen gave a snippy meow and turned his head so he wasn’t looking at me.

  “Don’t do that again,” I warned, glaring at him. I wondered if as far as he was concerned all I’d been saying was “blah, blah, blah,” for the last minute.

  I went to the sink and washed my hands. When I turned around again Owen was studying my things by the door.

  “Mrrr?” he asked.

  “I’m going out to feed the cats in the morning,” I said in answer to what I was assuming was his question. “And before you ask, no, Marcus isn’t going with me.”

  He cocked his head to one side.

  “He’s working. Some new information in the case.” I blew out a breath. “I’m starting to think we’re never going to find Margo’s killer.”

  “Mrr,” Owen said again.

  “It’s not Rena and I’m glad about that. I don’t know her very well, but I like what I know.” I checked the back door, making sure it was locked.

  Owen was still watching me.

  If anyone heard me having a one-sided conversation with a cat, they probably would have thought I was more than a little delusional, but the fact was, saying it all out loud helped me make sense of things. And the conversation didn’t usually feel so one-sided, although I wasn’t going to admit that to anyone.

  I made myself a cup of cocoa, put three marshmallows on top and sat at the table with my cup, quickly giving myself a marshmallow mustache. As much as I enjoyed a cup of coffee, you couldn’t put marshmallows on top.

  “Everything seems to be tied to that picture,” I said. “Everything comes back to that.”

  Owen launched himself onto my lap and sniffed in the direction of my mug. “Freeze, mister,” I warned, putting one arm around him.

  He looked up at me, all furry gray tabby innocence.

  “Marshmallows are not cat food,” I said, frowning at him. “Not in this life or any other.”

  He made a sound a lot like a sigh.

  “Yes, I know, your life is so hard.” I leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “And I meant what I said before: Stay away from that grackle or your brother is going to destroy every chicken you have. Think of it this way: Maggie is your friend and the grackle is Hercules’s friend . . . sort of.”

  Owen made a face, which could have meant he was considering my words or that he was wondering when I was going to stop talking.

  I picked up my mug and took another drink.

  My computer was still on the table. With both of my hands occupied, Owen took the opportunity to stretch out a paw and touch the keyboard, waking the laptop up. He looked at me again, expectantly, it seemed to me.

  “Okay, maybe we should see what we can find out about the history of that drawing,” I said, pushing my mug to one side and pulling the computer closer.

  Owen immediately turned to look at the counter. He meowed softly.

  “Yes, I suppose the research would go better with a couple of stinky crackers,” I said. I got up, set him on the chair and got the crackers for him. When I turned back around he was up on his hind legs, looking at the computer screen with one paw on the edge of the keyboard.

  I swept him onto my lap again and held out a cracker. He took it from me and murped a thank-you.

  I opened my Web browser and typed in my favorite search engine. “You have marshmallow on your whisker,” I said, keeping my eyes on the screen.

  He dropped his head and took a couple of furtive swipes at his furry face.

  The history of the Weston drawing was, I discovered, a little murky. It had turned up almost fifty years ago in the private collection of a New York businessman, although there was no provenance with the piece and no record of where or when he’d purchased it. It had been believed that the drawing was part of a collection of Weston’s work housed at the Butler Institute of American Art. Since there were photographs of the drawing from more than one exhibit at the museum, some people believed the piece had been stolen, but the institute had no paperwork to back up the claim.

  “Interesting,” I said to Owen, raising an eyebrow, Mr. Spock style.

  His response was to paw at the touch pad and bring up another site.

  Charles Holmes had purchased the drawing for his private collection, although he had been generous about lending it and other artwork in his collection for exhibit as long as the displays were accessible to as much of the general public as possible. Before his death, Holmes had agreed to loan the Weston drawing and two other watercolors for this tour because it was taking the artwork to an audience that didn’t usually get to see such pieces.

  There had been rumblings about the authenticity of the drawing for decades, I discovered, but if Charles Holmes had been aware of it—and it was hard to believe he hadn’t—I couldn’t find any public comments he’d made on the subject.

  I leaned back in my chair and picked up my mug. My cocoa was cold. I got up to warm it up and set Owen on the seat again. “What do you think?” I said as I waited for the microwave. “Should we look up this generation?”

  “Merow!” he exclaimed with great enthusiasm, which was probably more for the jar of peanut butter I’d just taken down from the cupboard than for my idea.

  Once I had a cup of hot chocolate that was actually hot and a piece of peanut butter toast, I went back to the computer to see what I could find about Marshall and Diana Holmes.

  Marshall Holmes was Charles’s only child. He’d taken over his father’s grocery store chain and managed to make the business even more successful, something that often didn’t happen when a business was handed down from parent to child.

  Diana Holmes was the senior Holmes’s stepdaughter, the only child of his secon
d wife, Catherine. Charles Holmes had raised Diana from the time she was eight years old and by all accounts considered her to be his child in every way. Diana Holmes ran the Charles and Catherine Holmes Charitable Foundation and had increased its endowment by almost thirty percent in the five years she’d been in charge.

  There were so many photos of both Marshall and Diana online. Marshall sweaty and beaming after a marathon, cutting a ribbon at the opening of a new store, and giving the eulogy at his father’s funeral wearing a dark suit and somber expression. There was Diana in a short sequined dress with a ventriloquist’s dummy in a variety show for charity, and serving at a downtown Chicago soup kitchen.

  “So we know both Diana and Marshall Holmes are successful,” I said to the cat, letting him lick a dab of peanut butter from my finger. “But what are they like as people?”

  He was too busy getting every bit of peanut butter to have an opinion.

  I thought about my encounters with Marshall and Diana. They had both been very pleasant and well spoken, but something about the way they had interacted had made me wonder if they were in agreement on how to handle Charles Holmes’s art collection. According to what I was reading online, it had been left equally to both of them.

  I lifted my hair and let it fall against my neck. “So. Any ideas?” I said to Owen.

  His response was to hop down off my lap and head for the back door. It was a warm evening so I’d left it open. He headed purposefully into the porch. After a moment I heard him meow. Clearly he wanted out and didn’t really care if I learned any more about the Holmes siblings.

  “I’m coming,” I said.

  Owen was sitting in front of the outside door. I opened it for him, but instead of going outside he just poked his head out, looked across the back lawn and meowed.

  “Go if you’re going, please,” I said.

  He didn’t move.

  “Owen,” I said sharply. “I’m not you’re doorman . . . doorwoman, doorperson, whatever the politically correct term is. In or out.”

  He looked up at me, his tail whipping across the floor in annoyance. Then he looked across the yard again and meowed once more.