by Sofie Kelly
We started walking again. “But what would anyone get out of that relationship ending?”
“Well, the professor was helping Emme with her application to that college she wanted to go to—not with the singing part but with the academic stuff. You know she wanted to learn French, right?”
I nodded. Ruby had told me that Emme had applied to the ultra-selective musical theater program at Penn State School of Theatre, and Emme herself had told me she wanted to study French.
“But who would benefit if Emme gave up the idea of college?” I said.
He gave me a “well, duh” look. “Her agent, Lucie Pope. Who else? You want to find the person who wanted those photos, talk to her.”
We were in front of Eric’s then.
“Thank you for answering my questions,” I said.
“Well, thanks for the coffee,” he said. He held up the cup. “At least this cup.”
I walked back to the library, thinking about what Alec had told me. Could Emme’s agent have gone to such extreme lengths to get her to change her mind? Could she have come to Mayville Heights to talk to her client and somehow been involved in Miranda’s death? It seemed like a stretch, but I knew people had been killed for less.
Mary was at the circulation desk when I got back. She’d been away at a kickboxing tournament—she’d won her division—and I hadn’t really had the chance to talk to her.
“Congratulations,” I said.
“Thank you.” She smiled. “I wasn’t so sure I was going to win anything this time. There were some tough boxers, but I finally managed to get a leg up on the competition.” Her blue eyes twinkled.
I groaned at the pun and shook my head and she laughed.
“I missed you,” I said. “It was way too quiet around here.”
The grin faded from her face. “I heard about that nice little Miranda Moore,” she said. “That’s so sad.”
“It was.”
“And she was here in the library just before it closed the day she was killed.”
Miranda had been at the library the day she died? Confused, I stared at Mary. “I don’t remember her coming in. Are you sure it was last Saturday?”
Mary frowned, brows knit together. Then her face cleared. “You had to go over to Henderson Holdings, remember?”
I nodded. Next spring I wanted to expand the gardening project Abigail and I had been doing with some of the kids in Reading Buddies. Harry Junior and I had put together a proposal, and Harry had done drawings to scale. I had taken it all over to Lita so Everett, who had offered to fund the project, could take it with him on a business trip to read.
“She asked about the Riverwalk,” Mary said. “She wanted to know if it went all the way to Wild Rose Bluff, because she wanted to walk out there and take some pictures.” She pressed a hand to her chest for a moment and I could see the sadness in her eyes. “I explained that the boardwalk went part of the way and the trail the rest of the way. It’s just so sad that those were the last hours of her life and she didn’t know it.”
It was true, I thought, but someone likely had known it. The question was who?
chapter 11
Marcus was sitting at my kitchen table when I got home, eating a pulled-turkey sandwich with the boys at his feet. I set my new coffee carafe on the counter, put my arms around his neck and kissed him. “Thank you again for the coffeepot,” I said. “I didn’t get a chance to properly show my full appreciation before.”
He trapped my arms with one of his and kissed me a second time. “I appreciate your appreciation,” he said with a grin.
I straightened up and went to the fridge for some lemonade.
There was no lemonade in the refrigerator, and then I remembered that I’d finished the last of the pitcher while I was doing the laundry.
Hercules rubbed against my leg and I bent down to scratch the top of his head. Owen gave an annoyed meow. I knew it had nothing to do with me paying attention to his brother. “Forget it,” I said over my shoulder. “Marcus isn’t going to feed you two any more turkey now that I’m home.”
Marcus looked down at his plate. Hercules looked over at his brother. Owen studied a spot on the floor. They all looked a little sheepish. Finally, Owen stretched and headed for the living room.
I gave Hercules one last scratch behind his ear and turned my attention back to Marcus.
“Do you want part of my sandwich?” he asked.
I nodded and he pulled the remaining half sandwich into two pieces and gave me the larger one.
“Thank you,” I said, dropping into the chair across from him.
“What do you want to drink?” he asked, getting to his feet.
“Hot chocolate, I guess,” I said. Hercules hopped up onto my lap and looked expectantly at me. “Hey, I already told you that you weren’t getting any more turkey.”
He put a paw on my chest and gave a low murp.
Marcus laughed. “He’s right, Kathleen.”
I frowned up at him. “What do you mean?”
“You said that I wasn’t going to give them more turkey, not you.”
Hercules looked from Marcus to me. “So the two of you are using semantics against me?”
The cat licked his whiskers, and I would have sworn there was just a hint of smugness on his furry black-and-white face. There definitely was more than a hint of smugness on Marcus’s face. They knew they had won.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said. I pulled a tiny bit of turkey from my sandwich. “Do not tell your brother,” I warned, shaking a finger at him. The cat took the bit of meat with a soft mrr of satisfaction.
Marcus brought me my hot chocolate and sat down opposite me again. “So how was the rest of your day?” he asked.
“I talked to Alec Kane,” I said.
He nodded. “ I know.”
“I mean after you released him.”
He picked up the remains of his sandwich, which Hercules had been eyeing across the table. “I know,” he said again.
I frowned at him. “What do you mean you know? Were you lurking by the police station door?”
He pulled a slice of dill pickle out of his sandwich and popped it in his mouth. Hercules watched his every move.
“Forget that,” I told the little black-and-white cat. “It will give you pickle breath.”
He made a disgruntled mutter.
“No, I wasn’t lurking anywhere,” Marcus said. “But I was the one who told you when Alec Kane was going to be released. So what did he tell you?”
He’d told me on purpose. Just when I thought I knew everything about the man, he’d do something to surprise me.
I put a hand on Hercules to steady him and tucked one leg up underneath me. “Alec Kane took the photographs of Emme and her former boyfriend, Derrick. The ones that might have derailed her chances to get into the music program she was applying to.”
“He has an alibi for the time Miranda Moore was killed. And frankly that would give Emme Finley a motive to want to hurt him, not the other way around.”
“Someone paid him for those incriminating photos,” I said, reaching for my cup.
“I don’t see how that connects to whoever killed Miranda. Someone from the club probably bought the pictures.” Marcus ate the last bite of his sandwich. “I did a little digging, and it got some decent publicity from the scandal—free publicity—or maybe not quite free.”
I found myself shaking my head.
“There was no other reason for someone to want those photos,” he said. “No one benefitted.”
I remembered that Alec had pointed out that Emme’s agent could have benefitted.
I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t that late in Boston. “I need to call my mother,” I said to Marcus.
“This has something to do with the murder, doesn’t it?”
“
Yes.”
He got up and took his dishes over to the counter.
“I promise I’ll tell you everything I find out,” I said.
He leaned over and kissed me. “I’m going to have a shower.” He dropped another marshmallow in my cup. “You know you wanted three,” he said. He smiled and headed for the stairs.
I watched him go, thinking how well he’d gotten to know me. Hercules shifted on my lap. I looked down at him and felt a twinge of guilt because Marcus didn’t know all of my secrets.
I gathered the cat and my hot chocolate and headed for the living room. I curled up in the big chair with Hercules settled on my lap and my drink close by. It was my favorite spot for calling Mom and Dad, and I’d usually end up with a cat on my lap, making it even more cozy.
My mother answered on the fifth ring. “Hi, Mom,” I said.
“Katydid! I was just talking about you,” she said, and I could hear the pleasure in her voice. “Your ears must have been burning.”
I felt a small twinge of homesickness the way I almost always did when I called. “So what were you saying about me?” I asked.
“Your brother and I are going through photos to make a photo book for your father’s birthday, and we found one of you dressed as Dr. Dolittle for Halloween with Ethan and Sara dressed as monkeys. You’re all so adorable.”
I laughed. “I remember that. While I may have been able to talk to the animals, it didn’t mean those two monkeys listened!” I felt a pang that I couldn’t be in Boston to help them with this gift for Dad.
“Sweetie, will you look through your own photos and see if there are any you want to add?” Mom asked.
“I will,” I said, thinking that there was a photograph of the five of us on the Boston Common that my friend Lise had taken that would be a perfect addition to the photo book.
“I wish you were here, but when we get the book put together I’ll send you and Sara the link so you can look at it before it’s printed.”
“Thanks,” I said. I felt better knowing I could be a small part of the project.
“So what’s up?” Mom asked.
Hercules laid his head on my chest and as I stroked his fur he began to purr. “I’m guessing you read about Miranda Moore’s death in the Chronicle?” Mom had been reading the Mayville Heights paper online every day since I’d moved here.
“I did.”
“Do you know a woman named Lucie Pope? She’s Emme Finley’s agent.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.” I imagined Mom shaking her head. “Maybe your brother does.”
Ethan knew a lot of people in the music business.
“I’ll let you talk to him,” Mom said. “I love you. Give Marcus a hug from me.”
“Love you, too, Mom,” I said.
After a moment Ethan came on the phone. “Hey, what’s up?” he asked.
“I hear Mom found a photo of you in your monkey suit,” I teased.
He laughed. “Yeah, well, it’s not as much fun as the one she found of you in your birthday suit.”
“You better not be serious,” I said. Hercules lifted his head and gave me a curious look.
Ethan was still laughing. “I am dead serious, big sister,” he said. “You’re running down the hall holding a pair of socks in one hand, and that’s the only clothing you have.”
“That picture is not going in any photo book,” I said hotly.
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” he said. Then his voice grew serious. “So Mom says you wanted to ask me something about some music agent.”
“Lucie Pope. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of her.”
“Sure I have,” he said. “Remember that festival we played at last year up in Maine?”
My foot was going to sleep so I shifted my leg, which annoyed Hercules. He glared at me before settling himself again. “The all-acoustic one. Sara filmed you, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Pope had a singer and I think a band performing. She’s your age, I’d guess.”
I waited for Ethan to make an old joke. He loved to tease me because I’d been a teenager when he and Sara were born, but for once he didn’t.
“Does this have anything to do with another murder you’ve gotten mixed up in?”
“Kind of,” I said. “Lucie Pope is the agent for a cabaret singer from Chicago named Emme Finley, but Emme may be going back to school and making a career change.”
“Yeah, well, Lucie might be making some changes herself. There’s a rumor going around that she has a deal pending for a reality show for one of her clients and as part of it she’s getting a producer credit. If it’s true, losing a singer wouldn’t be a big deal.”
“Do you think she’d talk to me?”
I knew I was getting fixated on those photos of Emme and Derrick, but like Miranda’s murder, the amount of effort someone had put into getting those images didn’t make sense to me. I knew at best it was a tenuous connection between the two events. I was hoping maybe Emme’s agent would know if the singer had made any enemies.
“I don’t see why not.” I imagined him shrugging as he perched on a stool at the kitchen counter, assuming he wasn’t actually sitting on the counter. “I think I still have her card. Want me to call her and see if she’ll talk to you?”
“Yes, please.” I recited the phone number at the library. “And you can give her this number and my cell as well.”
“Hey, no problem,” he said.
“I owe you.”
Ethan laughed again. “Oh man, I like that.”
And he’d make me pay up, I knew. Not that there was anything I wouldn’t do for him or Sara anyway. “I love you, brat,” I said.
“Love you, too,” he retorted.
We ended the conversation, and I got up with Hercules and my mug to warm up my hot chocolate, which was now more like lukewarm chocolate.
Marcus was just coming down the stairs wearing nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants. His hair was damp.
“Did you talk to your mother?” he asked.
“I did.”
“Did you find out anything useful?”
He had to ask twice because I was staring at his bare chest and didn’t hear him the first time. “Uh, maybe,” I said. “I’m not sure.”
He grinned and kept advancing on me as I tried to tell him that Ethan was going to try to put me together with Emme’s agent. I backed into the kitchen, managing to bump into the door frame and the table because I kept getting distracted because he was gorgeous without his shirt. Not that he wasn’t gorgeous with it.
Hercules wriggled in my arms and I set him down, putting my mug on the table as I straightened up. Marcus was directly in front of me now.
“Is there anything else you need to tell me?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“So are you going to tell me now?” he said.
I shook my head. “No.”
He pulled me into his arms, and just like that scene in Wuthering Heights when Heathcliff kissed Cathy, the birds flew over the heather.
chapter 12
It was quiet on Saturday morning at the library, so I decided it would be a good time to start choosing which books we were going to use for our Banned Books display in September.
Mia was helping me work our way down the list we’d made the previous year.
“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye for language, right?” Mia asked me. As usual, the teen was dressed in a conservative black skirt and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back.
“Absolutely,” I said, adding both titles to the pad in front of me. “And I think we should add Fahrenheit 451.” In more than one library Ray Bradbury’s classic had had words blacked out. “Did you know that the postal service refused to mail For Whom the Bell Tolls?” I asked.
She nodde
d. Her hair was shaded with purple streaks like a grape Popsicle. “We learned that in English class.”
“I bet you didn’t learn that the Captain Underpants books are among the most banned books in the country,” I said.
Mia looked surprised. “But why? I loved Captain Underpants when I was a kid.”
“I know,” I said, setting down my pen. “The series is one of the most popular with the Reading Buddies kids. The books have been challenged for, among other reasons, encouraging kids to disobey parents and teachers.”
“That’s why the books are so much fun,” she said. “Because the boys are always doing things they’re not supposed to do.”
Abigail poked her head around the workroom door. “There’s a call for you,” she said. “Someone named Lucie Pope?”
That was fast. I did owe Ethan.
I got to my feet. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll take it in my office.”
I sat on the corner of my desk and reached for the phone. “Ms. Pope, thanks for calling,” I said.
“Please, call me Lucie,” she said. She had a warm, husky voice. “Your brother said you have a couple of questions about Emme Finley.”
“I do. You probably already know what happened to her friend Miranda Moore.”
“Emme called me. I’m not sure how I can help you. I can’t share anything private with you.”
Behind me the sun was streaming through the window. It felt off to be talking about murder on such a beautiful day.
“I understand that,” I said. “I’m wondering if you can think of anyone who might have wanted to . . . hurt Emme. Does she have any enemies?”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying whoever killed Miranda was really after Emme?”
“Maybe,” I hedged. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve met Emme?” Lucie asked.
“Yes, I have.”
She made an approving murmur on the other end of the phone. “Then you know the kind of person she is. She doesn’t have any enemies, because she doesn’t make enemies. Yes, there were a few club owners and some fans who were disappointed by her choice to go back to school, but no one was so put out that they’d try to kill her. For the record, that includes me.”