A Midwinter's Tail

9

Marcus told me he’d stop by later just to say good night if he could. Then we ended the call and I tucked my phone back in my pocket. At least I had Owen and Hercules for dinner companions.

Except neither cat was anywhere to be seen. They weren’t in the kitchen. They weren’t in the living room. I went upstairs to change my paint-spattered clothes, and there weren’t any cats nosing around in the closet or sitting in the big chair by the window, either.

The bulb had burned out in the ceiling light at the top of the stairs. As I padded down the steps in my sock feet in the dark, I made a mental note to ask Marcus to put in a new bulb for me.

Three-quarters of the way down the stairs, I saw movement just inside the living room doorway next to the bookcases. There was enough illumination from the streetlight outside that I could catch a glimpse of gray fur.

Owen was so focused on what he was doing that he didn’t notice me come behind him until I flicked on the light. He started and looked up at me, guilt written all over his gray tabby face.

He was standing on his back legs, one paw on the first shelf up from the bottom of the bookcase. I’d seen him drop whatever he’d been carrying in his mouth on the shelf and put one paw on it. Now he tried to casually rest his other front paw next to the first one. If he’d been able to lean against the side of the bookcase and whistle, I think he would have done that, too.

I looked down at him. “Hello,” I said.

“Murr,” he said softly, his golden eyes not quite meeting mine.

“What’s that?” I asked, nodding my head at whatever he was trying to hide with his front paws.

“Merow?” he said, blinking at me as though what I’d said made no sense at all to him.

I wasn’t fooled. “Nice try,” I said, folding my arms over my chest. “What’s under your paws?”

He lifted a paw, giving me his confused-kitty expression. At the same time he seemed to be surreptitiously trying to bat whatever he was hiding toward the back of the shelf. Sometimes I thought that if Owen hadn’t been a cat he could have been some kind of criminal mastermind—Lex Luthor or the Joker, maybe.

“Owen!” I said, sharply.

To his credit he knew when he was caught. He dropped down onto all fours and dejectedly hung his head. I leaned over to see what he had been trying to hide from me. Sometimes he liked to swipe things from Rebecca’s recycling bin, although I was fairly sure there was too much snow on the ground for him to do that now.

A tiny purple mouse lay on its side on the dark wooden shelf.

“What are you doing with that?” I asked sternly, narrowing my eyes and glaring at him.

He kept his head down, and his shoulders seemed to sink just a little more.

The little purple mouse belonged to Hercules. It had been a gift from Rebecca, who loved to spoil the boys no matter what I said to her. She kept Owen in yellow catnip chickens, but Hercules was pretty much indifferent to catnip. He wasn’t the only cat who felt that way, I’d learned. Rebecca had found the little mouse at the Grainery where she bought Owen’s chickens and other cat treats. Once it was wound up, all you had to do was press down on it and the mouse would run in a circle on the floor, randomly changing direction and occasionally doing a loop or a figure eight.

Roma thought the toy was a wonderful idea, the feline equivalent of a person doing the New York Times crossword puzzle or a Sudoku puzzle to keep their mind sharp.

I crouched down on the floor beside Owen. “This is not yours,” I said. “You did a very, very bad thing.”

He muttered almost under his breath, like a child making excuses for his behavior.

“Were you trying to hide this from your brother?” I asked.

He turned his head sideways a little and one half-lidded eye looked at me.

I sighed in exasperation. It had become pretty clear to me from the beginning that Owen and his brother weren’t ordinary cats, even without taking into account their extraordinary abilities. Among other things they seemed to have a nose for, well, crime solving, as preposterous as that seemed. And Owen, at least, seemed to have a bit of a larcenous streak.

I tried to imagine how Marcus would react if I told him that the cats seemed to have helped me every time I’d been connected with one of his cases. Oh no, that wouldn’t make me seem crazy.

The problem in front of me at the moment, thankfully, had to do with a lesser crime.

“Owen, you must have five or six funky chickens—or parts from them—hidden in this house,” I said. “This belongs to Hercules. You can’t have it.”

I said each word slowly and clearly and shook the purple mouse for emphasis. His eyes followed my hand.

Maybe I was crazy. Maybe Owen didn’t understand one word I said. Maybe as far as he was concerned, I could have been speaking Italian or pig Latin. His eyes moved to my face and he gave me his best innocent/repentant look. I thought of it as his “I didn’t do it and I’ll never do it again” expression.

“How the heck am I supposed to discipline you?” I asked, sinking down onto my knees. Owen put a paw on my leg. I couldn’t exactly stick him in the corner or tell him he couldn’t go out in the yard. That wouldn’t work with a normal cat, let alone one who could disappear whenever he felt like it. I knew some animal training experts advocated using a spray from a bottle of water to discourage bad behavior. Maybe I was treating Owen and Hercules too much like people, because my first thought when I’d read that advice was that I wouldn’t shoot water from a spray bottle at Susan or Abigail at the library, so why would I do it to Owen or Herc?

“Don’t do this again,” I said, shaking a finger at him. I was very glad there was no one around to hear what I was saying. “If you do, those sardines in the refrigerator will magically disappear faster than you do.”

Owen’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, and he turned and looked toward the kitchen. I used to threaten to give Owen’s kitty treats to the Taylors’ German shepherd, Boris, but I’d made that threat one time too many without following through, and it had lost its effectiveness.

I reached over and stroked the top of Owen’s head. “I love you,” I said, “but sometimes you make me crazy.”

“Merow,” he said, wrinkling his nose at me. For all I knew, that was his way of saying, “You make me crazy sometimes, too.”

I got to my feet, putting the little purple mouse in my pocket. “Are you hungry?” I asked as we went into the kitchen.

“Murp.”

Cat for “I could eat.”

Owen looked at the back door and meowed inquiringly. I’d told him Marcus was joining us for supper. Had he remembered?

“Marcus isn’t coming,” I said. I checked the slow cooker. It had just switched over from “cook” to “keep warm.”

I turned back to Owen, who was sitting by the table looking at me. “He has a case,” I said. I got a bowl down from the cupboard. It was all I needed. I’d set the table before I left. “Dayna Chapman’s death wasn’t an accident. It looks like someone might have killed her on purpose.”

I heard a meow from the other side of the room. Hercules was poking his black-and-white head around the basement door.

“Hello,” I said. “One, supper is almost ready. Two, Marcus isn’t coming. Three, it looks like Dayna Chapman’s death wasn’t an accident. And four”—I pulled the purple mouse out of my pocket and set it on the floor, sending Owen a warning look that I hoped was sufficiently intimidating enough that he wouldn’t so much as twitch a whisker in the direction of the toy—“this is yours.”

Herc nudged the basement door open a little more and started across the kitchen floor toward Owen and me.

“You know, Boris closes the door for Harrison,” I said, taking the lid off the slow cooker. I liked Harry’s big German shepherd, and I’d been impressed the first time I saw him close the back kitchen door in Harry Senior’s small house.

Hercules made a face as though he’d just caught the scent of something bad, even though the aroma from the stew was filling the kitchen. Both he and Owen were smart enough to close any door in the house—although for Hercules it was easier to walk directly through a door—but being cats, they just didn’t.

Herc picked up his mouse and set it next to his food dish. Then he came back over, sat down beside his brother and looked expectantly at me.

“Okay, you can both have a little chicken,” I said. “But just a little.”

The little black tuxedo cat licked his lips.

“Oh, and I almost forgot, Maggie sends her love,” I said to Owen.

I swear he smiled.

I put a little chicken in each of their dishes and then filled a bowl with stew for myself. Since my only dinner companions were furry and were eating without using forks, I had no problem propping my feet on the chair opposite me and leaning an elbow on the table.

I wished Marcus was sitting in the chair opposite me. Things had been so good for the past three months. But we had a history of his cases coming between us. I didn’t want that to happen with Dayna Chapman’s death.

Hercules had finished his chicken. He came over, sat next to my chair and began to wash his face.

“Everyone is going to think it was Burtis,” I said thoughtfully.

He paused for a moment, seemingly considering the idea. Then he resumed washing his face.

“I know his reputation,” I said.

Burtis was the town bootlegger and as a younger man he’d worked for Idris Blackthorne, Ruby’s grandfather, a hard and ruthless man who ran pretty much every illegal enterprise in a hundred-mile radius around Mayville Heights.

“Just because he could squash someone like a bug doesn’t mean that he would,” I said, as much to myself as the cats.

Owen lifted his head and looked around when I said the word “bug.”

I exchanged a glance with Hercules.

“There are no bugs in here, Owen,” I said. He looked over at me. “No bugs,” I repeated. “It’s just an expression.”

He dropped his head over his food again.

Burtis had to have known that he’d be the main suspect if Dayna’s death wasn’t an accident. Maybe that was why he’d been encouraging me to get involved. I thought about what he’d said about the times I’d gotten mixed up in Marcus’s cases. “He isn’t going to want you to stop being who you are.”

Owen had joined his brother and was carefully washing his face, too.

“Okay, so we’re eliminating Burtis. Who else would want to kill Dayna Chapman? She hadn’t even been in town for twenty-four hours.”

They didn’t have any more idea than I did. Aside from what I’d learned from Burtis, I really knew nothing about his ex-wife.

“Maybe it’s time we learned a little more about the former Mrs. Chapman,” I said to the boys.

“Merow,” Owen said.

Okay, so he was in.

I looked at Hercules. “What do you think?” I asked. He was washing the white fur on his chest. He raised his head and looked in the direction of the hooks by the back door where I hung my jacket and briefcase.

My briefcase.

“Crap on toast!” I said, slouching lower in my chair. I’d left my briefcase with my laptop in my office. “Okay, as soon as I have my computer again we’ll see what we can find online about Dana. In the meantime maybe we can use that other information superhighway.”

Hercules frowned at me. Clearly he didn’t know what I was talking about. Or he’d just noticed a knot in the fur on his tail. He started working on his tail, but I decided to believe it was the former anyway.

“The Mayville Heights grapevine,” I said.

Marcus knocked on my back door a little after nine thirty. I was curled up in the big chair in the living room with the cats stretched across my legs watching a movie. They weren’t happy about having to move.

“Hi,” I said as Marcus stepped into the porch and knocked the snow off his boots.

“I saw your light on. It’s not too late, is it?” he said, leaning down to kiss me. The man could kiss. I tended to forget where I was and what I was doing when his mouth was on mine. I hoped the day never came when that didn’t happen.

I smiled up at him and then remembered that he’d asked me a question. “No. We were just watching a movie on TV,” I said, pushing my hair back off my face.

Marcus followed me into the kitchen. He draped his jacket on the back of a chair and then sat down. I was wearing a pair of old stretched-out sweatpants, heavy woolen socks and a baggy sweatshirt, and my hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. I felt self-conscious for a moment. Then I remembered that Marcus had seen me covered in mud when the embankment behind the carriage house collapsed, and when I was half-frozen with a mild case of hypothermia, wandering the woods with a bleeding arm wearing only long underwear after making it out of a cabin just before the building exploded.

“Hi, guys,” he said.

I realized he was talking to Owen and Hercules, who were looking around the living room doorway.

“Have you had any supper?” I asked, leaning my hip against the table.

He pulled both hands through his hair. “I had three cups of coffee and some beef jerky.”

“That’s not supper.”

I heard a meow of objection from the doorway. “No, beef jerky is not supper, Owen,” I said. I kissed the top of Marcus’s head. “I’ll warm you up some stew.”

He reached for my hand as I moved past him. “You don’t have to do that.”

I smiled. “I know.”

I got the stew out of the refrigerator, put a bowl of it in the microwave and poured Marcus a glass of milk. When I turned around he had a couple of “friends” sitting next to his chair.

“I said I would warm up some stew for Marcus, not you two,” I said.

In perfect synchronization both cats leaned their heads to the right. Marcus noticed and did the same thing so all three of them were in their most adorable poses.

I leaned down toward the cats. “Don’t encourage him,” I stage-whispered.

Behind me Marcus laughed.

Once his supper was hot, I made myself a cup of hot chocolate and joined him at the table. Owen had a dab of gravy on his whiskers and I caught Hercules licking his lips, so I knew Marcus had snuck the two of them a bit of chicken and maybe part of a dumpling from his dish.

I folded my fingers around my cup and watched Marcus eat for a minute. “You didn’t find anything in Olivia’s kitchen, did you?” I asked. “Or am I asking a question you can’t answer?”

He set his fork down. “No, we didn’t. And she insists she didn’t put nuts of any kind in the chocolates she made for your party because of her own allergy.”

“That was why she reacted to the chocolate that she ate at the theater.”

Marcus frowned at me.

“Cashews and pistachios are in the same family.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

I knew he’d file that little piece of information away in his head somewhere. It was like that with everything he learned.

He picked up his fork again. “Well, there were no pistachios in the kitchen where the chocolates were made, or any nuts, for that matter, or in her house, either, and she gave us permission to search both places.”

I leaned over, grabbed the container of marshmallows from the counter and dropped two into my cup. “Not the kind of thing someone would be likely to do if they had something to hide,” I said. “Did you talk to Georgia and Earl?”

“Uh-huh. Neither one of them uses nuts in anything.”

“According to Abigail, Georgia makes anything with nuts at Fern’s.” I leaned back in my chair with my mug and took a long drink. “I don’t think I told you. Abigail helped pack the chocolate boxes.”

Marcus finished half a dumpling before he answered, “I know. I talked to her and to Nic Sutton, who made the boxes.”

“I wish people could have taken them home,” I said.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said.

I smiled at him. “It’s okay.”

My cup was empty, so I got up to make another cup of hot chocolate. I knew where the other half of the dumpling would go as soon as my back was turned. I poured more milk into my cup along with a big spoonful of the dark chocolate cocoa mix I’d gotten at the Farmers’ Market and put the whole thing in the microwave. When I did turn back around, Owen was licking his lips, Hercules was washing his face and Marcus was spooning a carrot out of his bowl. It was cute how they actually thought they were fooling me.

I leaned against the counter while I waited for the milk to heat. “So the nuts weren’t in anything Eric served or even with the coffee or the tea?” I asked.

Marcus reached for his glass. “No. We checked the kitchen at both places. Nothing.”

“Wait a minute,” I said slowly, turning to get my drink from the microwave. “You didn’t actually say the nuts weren’t in the chocolates. You said there didn’t seem to be any way Olivia could have put them in.”

Marcus looked at me, just the tiny hint of a smile flickering across his face. “You’re right, that is what I said.”

I sat down across from him again with my cup and the marshmallows. “So? What haven’t you told me?”

He swiped a hand over his neck. At his feet both cats seemed to be listening intently. “All three of the chocolates in the box that Dana Chapman had were coated with pistachio oil. None of the other boxes that have been sampled had anything on the chocolates inside.”

There was one piece of chicken left in his bowl. He pulled it apart with his fork and leaned over to give half to each cat, not even trying to hide what he was doing.

“So that’s how you know somebody meant to kill Dana Chapman?”

Marcus nodded, wiping his fingers on his napkin. “Yes. I’m not telling you anything that won’t be common knowledge in a few hours. In fact, maybe it already is.”

He started to get to his feet and I stood up instead, reaching for his dishes with one hand and putting the other on his shoulder to tell him to stay put.

“The paper?” I asked. The Mayville Heights Chronicle was one of the few smaller newspapers in the state whose readership was actually on the rise.

“Yeah. Everywhere we went, one of Bridget’s reporters was right behind us.” He exhaled loudly. “Sometimes I think it’s impossible to keep anything secret in this town.”

Dayna Chapman had been murdered. Murdered, just a few hours after she’d arrived back in town. Why, and by whom?

Maybe it was impossible to keep some things secret, but clearly not everything.