by Sofie Kelly
10
Hercules went back and forth from the bedroom to the hallway while I got dressed in the morning, which I didn’t seem to be doing fast enough for him. Now that he’d met Wren, he was clearly motivated to help her and he wanted to get going. The third time he went into the hall, he didn’t come back. I figured he’d given up and gone to wait for me downstairs.
I found him sitting next to my briefcase underneath the coat hooks. Since he knew my laptop was inside, I wondered if he was suggesting I get started on some research.
Owen seemed to have other priorities. He’d nosed his food dish into the middle of the floor and was waiting beside it.
Hercules meowed the moment he caught sight of me. Owen leaned over so I couldn’t miss seeing him and meowed as well, just a little louder. But Hercules was a cat on a mission. He stalked across the floor and sat in front of Owen’s bowl, looking up at me with serious green eyes.
They weren’t brothers for nothing. Owen immediately began pushing the dish around his brother. I could see the fur was going to be flying—literally—in just a minute if I didn’t step in. I held up one hand. “Stop, stop, stop,” I said sharply.
They didn’t even look at me. Owen was staring at Hercules through slitted golden eyes. Hercules glared back, unmoving except for his tail. I clapped my hands together, which made them both jump.
“Cut it out!” I said.
I pointed at Hercules. There was something a little self-righteous in the way he sat there perfectly straight, head up, neck a smooth expanse of white fur. “I know you want to help Wren,” I said. “So do I. But these are not the Middle Ages and we are not the Knights Templar. We have time for breakfast.”
He dropped his eyes and meowed softly.
“Your heart’s in the right place,” I told him.
Owen lifted his head, his eyes darting sideways to his brother. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Hang on a minute, Fur Ball,” I said.
He turned his attention to me, at the same time setting a paw on the edge of his bowl. “You are not starving to death. I know breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but you can wait five minutes while I figure out what I’m going to do first.”
I pressed my lips together and shook my head. Had I actually just told a cat that breakfast was the most important meal of the day?
Owen took a step forward then—or at least tried to—except he ended up putting his weight down on the side of the bowl where his left paw had been resting. I don’t know if it was all the stinky crackers he’d been eating, or the extra racing around the backyard, but he seemed to have more strength than he realized. The plastic dish somersaulted into the air end over end like it had been launched from a catapult. I lunged for it, but I was too slow. It landed, upside down, on Owen’s head and slipped a bit sideways so it looked like a jaunty, oversize beret. He gave a yowl of outrage and shook his head furiously, which just made the bowl dip down over his eyes. I grabbed it before he got any madder.
And he was mad. His gray fur was standing on end, one ear was turned inside out and a bit of something—a crumb of cracker maybe—was stuck to a whisker.
“Are you all right?” I asked, swallowing down the bubble of laughter that was threatening to get loose. Hercules had wisely become engrossed in sniffing the end of his tail and wasn’t even looking at us.
Owen bobbed his head and sneezed away whatever had been stuck to his whiskers. I reached over and fixed his ear, smoothing down his fur while he made huffy noises of indignation. His dignity was wounded, but otherwise he seemed to be okay.
I got breakfast for both cats, setting Owen’s dishes in the usual place, but moving Hercules’s a bit farther away. “You are the soul of discretion,” I whispered to Herc, giving him a little scratch under his chin as I put the food in front of him.
I washed my hands and stuck my oatmeal in the microwave. I turned around in time to see Hercules pick up a couple of pieces of cat kibble, carry them over and drop them by Owen’s bowl, then go back to his own food. After a moment, Owen sniffed the peace offering, moved each triangle a couple of inches and ate them.
All was well in my small corner of the universe.
I had more than an hour before I had to leave for the library, so after we’d all had breakfast and washed hands (me), and face and paws (Hercules and Owen), I got the laptop so I could do some research into Legacy Tours. It took some digging, but I finally found what I was looking for in a six-month-old article in the archives of an online business magazine.
“Listen to this,” I said to Hercules, who had been sitting patiently at my feet.
Legacy Tours had been started by Alex and Christopher Scott while the twins were still in university. The company had found its niche putting together all-inclusive getaways for corporate clients. Almost three years ago, Mike Glazer, an old friend from law school, had joined Legacy as a full partner. According to the article’s author, the new collaboration hadn’t worked from the start. About a year ago—six months before the piece had been written—the rumblings about Mike Glazer had turned from hints that the Scott brothers were planning to buy out their old buddy to whispers that Mike had been taking kickbacks from businesses the tours patronized and was about to be ousted. The author even cited a couple of his “questionable” deals. But in the six months since, nothing had changed. The rumors persisted, but Mike had remained at Legacy.
Hercules moved closer to my chair. I patted my thighs and he jumped onto my lap and immediately leaned forward, as if he wanted to read the article for himself. Feeling a little foolish, I scrolled down the screen.
“You think it’s possible his partners had something to do with Mike’s death?” I asked. Hercules didn’t seem to have an opinion.
“I don’t see it,” I said, stretching my arms over my head. “Why kill him? The business was doing well. If they wanted Mike out, they could have just bought him out. And if he was taking kickbacks, they could have had him arrested. Heck, they should have had him arrested.”
Hercules touched the screen with one paw.
I leaned in to see what had caught his attention. It was a photograph of Mike Glazer at some kind of travel conference, smiling at the camera. He was flanked by his partners, who, it turns out, were identical twins. But that wasn’t what made me stare at the computer and then click on the picture to enlarge it so it filled the screen.
I had no idea which one, but one of the Scott brothers had been in Mayville Heights. I’d spoken to him. He was the man I’d talked to at the library, the same one I’d seen at Eric’s getting directions from Claire the night Marcus and I had gone for dinner.
The night Mike Glazer had died.
“Holy molars, Batman,” I said to Hercules, who looked at me blankly.
My brother, Ethan, had reintroduced me to the campy sixties TV show when I was back in Boston. Unlike his brother, Herc didn’t see the fun in watching old episodes of Batman online, although I suspected what Owen really liked was sprawling across my stomach and getting scratched behind his ears.
Owen wandered in from the living room, pretending he needed a drink. I knew what he really wanted was to see what Hercules and I were doing. Seeing him reminded me about the button he’d found. Like I’d told Marcus, it didn’t look like something plastic or mass-produced.
I closed my eyes and tried to picture the jacket whichever Scott brother I’d seen had been wearing—red and black wool and denim collar and cuffs. It had struck me as being something Ethan would wear. I was pretty sure it hadn’t been mass-produced either.
Finding photos of Alex and Christopher Scott online was surprisingly easy. Scrolling through to see if I could find one of them wearing that jacket wasn’t. Hercules’s furry black-and-white head kept getting in the way.
“I appreciate your help, but you need to get down,” I told him. Muttering, he jumped to the floor.
I found what I was looking for on the fourth page: Alex Scott wearing the red and black jacket at a fundraiser for the chil
dren’s hospital. I enlarged the picture and studied the buttons. I’d gotten only a quick look at the one Owen had found, but these seemed to be the right size and color.
As I sat there staring at the screen, Owen leaped into my lap. He looked expectantly from the computer to me. He was the one who’d discovered the button and gotten the best look at it. Feeling more than a little silly, I pointed to the photograph. “Does that look like the button you found?”
He squinted at the image, his face just inches from the screen, and then he pulled his head back and looked at me kind of cross-eyed. It could have been a yes.
I looked at my watch. It was almost time to leave. “Thank you,” I said. I set him on the floor and he headed for the living room. “And thank you, too,” I told Hercules. “You were a big help.”
He rubbed against my leg and then went through the kitchen door into the porch. I wondered what it said about me that seeing him literally go through a door had just become a regular part of my day. I shut down my computer, put it back in my briefcase and got my sweater from the living room closet.
“I’m leaving,” I called. After a moment, there was a muffled meow from Owen. He was either in the living room closet or looking under the couch for more catnip chicken parts.
Hercules was on the bench by the window in the porch. I stopped to pet the top of his head. “Have a good day,” I said. He jumped down and walked me out, waiting for me to open the porch door instead of just walking through it. With the sun shining and the grass dry, I knew he’d probably walk over and take a nap in Rebecca’s gazebo.
Abigail and Mia were waiting for me by the steps when I pulled into the library lot. Tuesday meant story time, so the first thing we did was get the puppet theater out of the storage room and set it up in the children’s section.
“Could I borrow Mia?” Abigail asked. “I could use an extra set of hands with the little ones.”
“Absolutely,” I said. I figured Mia, with her electric-blue hair, would be a big hit with the preschoolers.
With story time, a group of seniors checking out our meeting room to see if it would work for their Spanish class and what seemed like more traffic than usual for a Tuesday, it was noon before I realized it. I’d worked for Susan a couple of weeks earlier and she was repaying the favor, which meant I could go out to Wisteria Hill for a late lunch with Roma. She was standing by her SUV as I bumped my way up the rutted driveway, and she walked over to meet me as I got out of the truck.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” She had a grin that matched the sunny day. She held up both hands and looked around. “I still can’t believe this place is mine. I have the urge to jump up and down and squeal. Is that silly?”
I shook my head. “No. I think it’s wonderful that this place isn’t going to be lonely and empty anymore.” I’d worried that Roma might regret her decision to buy the property. After all, her biological father’s remains had been found in the field out behind the carriage house. But putting him to rest—literally and figuratively—had been good for her.
In a misguided attempt to keep Rebecca from learning about her mother’s part in the death of Roma’s father, Everett Henderson had left the old estate unoccupied for a very long time after his mother died and the caretakers of the old house retired. But when Tom Karlsson’s remains were unearthed back in the spring, the truth about Ellen Montgomery had been exposed as well. There were no more secrets to hide. Everett and Rebecca had decided to make their life together in town, and now Wisteria Hill would be Roma’s home.
“Do you want the tour first, or do you want to eat first?” Roma asked as we walked across to the old house.
“Tour, of course,” I said. I’d been inside more than once while I was helping Rebecca clean everything out, but I wanted to walk around with Roma and hear what her plans were.
The house was more than a hundred years old, and like a lot of homes of that vintage, pieces had been added to it over the years. Roma pointed to a small porch on the far side of the building. “That’s coming down,” she said. “Oren said it’s not even on a proper foundation, and the floor is half-rotten anyway.”
We stepped onto the verandah that ran across the front of the house and down one side. Roma reached over and put a hand on the railing. “This needs to be replaced as well, but Oren says he can duplicate the original design.”
Oren Kenyon was an extremely talented carpenter. He’d created a beautiful sunburst to hang above the main door just inside the library entrance. He was also Roma’s cousin in the convoluted way that everyone seemed to be related to everyone else in Mayville Heights.
Roma unlocked the side door and we stepped into what I guessed had originally been the pantry. “I may make this into a mudroom,” she said. “Or I might just knock the wall down and make it part of the kitchen.”
The country kitchen was a big, bright space with windows that looked out over the backyard, or would once the overgrown garden was cut back. There was also a dining room, a living room and a small parlor on the main floor. Upstairs, I knew there were four bedrooms and a big bathroom with a huge claw-foot tub.
Structurally, the house was sound. The old stone foundation didn’t leak, and there was no rot in the floor joists. The ceilings were high, and the wide wooden floors just needed to be refinished. The rooms were filled with light, and if there were any ghosts, well, they must have been friendly ones, because there was nothing foreboding about the place.
I stood in the middle of the living room floor and turned in a slow circle. “I love this house,” I said to Roma, smiling because her grin seemed to be contagious. “If you don’t jump up and down and squeal, I might.”
“How about we eat first?” she said. She led the way back into the kitchen, where she’d left a small cooler on the round wooden table in front of the window overlooking the backyard.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Rebecca gave you the table and chairs.”
Roma nodded, opening the lid of the cooler. “She said Old Harry made them for Everett’s mother—he turned the legs on a hand lathe—and the table belonged here. Eddie said he’ll refinish it for me.”
“Is there anything he can’t do?” I teased.
Her cheeks turned pink. “No,” she said with a smile, setting salad and a corn bread muffin in front of me. “He’s just about perfect. Well, except for the spiders.” She handed me a napkin roll of utensils and took a thermos and a couple of cups out of the cooler.
“Spiders?” I said. “What does he do? Raise them as a hobby?” I took a bite of my salad. It was good: turkey, apple and dried cranberries mixed with lettuce and carrots and tossed with a citrus dressing.
Roma gave a snort of laughter. “No. I’m pretty sure he has a bit of a phobia about them.”
“Why?” I asked, breaking my muffin in half.
Roma hooked her chair with a foot and pulled it closer so she could sit down. “Because I caught him stomping on something in one of the upstairs bedrooms. He said he was trying to push a nail back into one of the floorboards.”
“Maybe he was,” I offered. “Or maybe he’s auditioning for the road company of Riverdance and didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”
She shot me a skeptical look and picked up her fork. “Of course. That sounds so much like Eddie.”
The thought of Eddie Sweeney—all six foot four inches of muscled hockey player—being afraid of a little spider made me smile. He was so perfect in every other way; he cooked, apparently he could refinish furniture, he was a star hockey player for the Minnesota Wild and a romantic boyfriend, plus he looked like he should be on the cover of GQ, not Sports Illustrated.
“Have you talked to Marcus?” Roma asked.
“We’re taking it really slowly,” I said. “We’ve had dinner a couple of times, but that’s all.” Except for a kiss that had made me forget, momentarily, the thirteen times table, my own name and how to breathe. But I didn’t say that out loud.
“Good to know,” she said. “
But I meant, have you talked to him about Mike Glazer?”
“I think he’s waiting for something official on the cause of death,” I said.
She frowned, chewing on her bottom lip.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Probably.” She reached for the thermos and poured iced tea for both of us.
“Tell me.”
“I feel like an old busybody.”
“You’re not an old busybody,” I said. Roma knew more about what was going on around town than most people did. Half the town was in and out of her clinic with their pets and she still made house calls, but she kept what she heard and saw to herself. “C’mon. What is it?”
She exhaled slowly. “Okay. Last Wednesday night, I was late getting out of the clinic, and Eddie’s at training camp, so I decided to have supper at Eric’s. I parked the truck and I walked down to the corner first to mail a letter. When I turned around, Mike Glazer was outside the restaurant and he was arguing with Liam, Maggie’s boyfriend or whatever he is.”
“I know,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean ‘you know’?”
“Claire was working that night. Liam was so distracted by whatever happened out on the sidewalk that he left his coffee mug behind. She gave it to me to give to Maggie.”
“Did Claire hear what they were saying?” Roma asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, I did. They were pretty loud, and I felt awkward about just walking up to them, so I stepped into the alley.” She ran a finger up and down the side of her glass. “I wish I hadn’t, because even from there I heard Liam tell Mike to leave town—except he didn’t put it quite that nicely. He told Mike to forget about the food tasting and the art show—everything—it was all over.”
“You think he was serious?” I asked.
“Very.” Roma traced a scratch on the tabletop with two fingers. “He said if he saw Mike on the street, he might just forget what the brakes on his truck were for.”
“And the next morning . . .”