A Midwinter's Tail

16

I couldn’t do anything with my hair, probably because it had been smashed down weird under my hat. I finally got it lying more or less smoothly in a ponytail. Hercules sat by the bed and watched. Owen, as usual, had disappeared somewhere.

Since I was running behind and more than a little frustrated by my hair, I decided to stop into Eric’s for a breakfast sandwich and some soup to warm up for lunch.

“I’ll talk to Maggie tonight at tai chi and see what I can find out about Nic,” I said to Hercules as I pulled on my boots.

He gave me a blank look.

“I’m sorry. I forgot,” I said. “I didn’t tell you what I found online.” I shook my head and reached for my woolen beret. “Nic Sutton might have known Dayna Chapman. I don’t have time to bring you up to date. Ask your brother.”

I leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “Have a good day,” I said.

I locked the door and headed around the house for my truck thinking if anyone ever did hear me talking to the boys, they really would think I was a few marbles short of a game.

It was a busy morning at the library with both the seniors and the preschool story time. Harry had come in with the tree, a beautiful, bushy fir, about nine thirty. Abigail and I had helped him get it set in the stand, although Harry did most of the work.

“Would you like me to start with the lights after story time?” Abigail asked as we stood back to get a good look at the tree.

“Yes, please,” I said. “The boxes are in my office. I have to take the budget estimates over to Lita, but I’ll help you once I get back.”

She smiled and bumped me gently with her shoulder. “I don’t mind. I like decorating.”

“Good,” I said. “Come and do my house. All I have is a wreath on the front door and it’s plastic.”

She put her hands on her hips. “I’m pretty sure we can have you put in stocks down on the Riverwalk for that.”

“It was a plastic wreath or the head of a Fred the Funky Chicken, and putting a yellow chicken head on my front door just didn’t say peace and goodwill to me.” I grinned back at her. “Seriously, though, I spent so much time on the fundraiser, holiday decorations just kind of fell by the wayside.”

Abigail nodded. “Have you decided what you’re going to do about Reading Buddies?”

I twisted my watch around my arm. “Yes and no.”

“Which means?” she prompted.

“It means by the time we take care of the expenses for the fundraiser, we’ll have enough money to keep the program going until spring—if we’re careful and creative. We can’t really do anything with the holidays just a few weeks away, so I’ll wait until January and then we’ll start trying to come up with some new ideas for getting the money.”

She nodded. “That works for me.”

I looked at my watch. “I need to get over to see Lita,” I said.

Abigail made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go ahead. I’ll start on the tree first chance I get.”

I smiled. “Thanks.” I started for the stairs.

“Hey, Kathleen,” she called after me.

I stopped and turned around.

“I’m serious,” she said. “I’m good at decorating. I could come over this weekend and give you a hand.”

As far as Christmas decorations went, my house looked as if it belonged to Ebenezer Scrooge. I nodded and pressed my palms together. “Yes. Thank you. I’ll make brownies.”

Lita had a fresh pot of coffee made when I got to Henderson Holdings. The fact that everyone in town seemed to know that I liked a good cup of coffee—or a not so good one—made me feel even more certain that I’d made the right choice when I decided to stay despite the occasional pangs of homesickness.

We went quickly through the budget estimates I’d put together. When we got to the bottom of the last page, I put my pen down and picked up my coffee. “Thanks for your help,” I said to Lita. “I’ll get the final copy to you by Monday.”

“That’s fine,” she said. She seemed a little distracted. The bright red-and-silver scarf at her neck wasn’t bright enough to hide the fact that she looked as though she hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep.

“How’s Burtis?” I asked.

Lita gave me an approximation of a smile. “All right,” she said. “He told me the two of you had breakfast.” She straightened the papers in front of her and then she looked up at me. “Kathleen, I think the police suspect him.”

“Why?” I asked. “Has something happened?”

“They’ve questioned him twice.”

“He was married to Dayna.”

She gave me a tight smile. “I’ve lived here all my life, Kathleen. I know what people think about Burtis. And I know what they say behind his back.”

“I think Burtis is stubborn,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “And I don’t think I’d want to play poker with him. But I know he didn’t have anything to do with Dayna’s death. I’m not the only one.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Does he have a lawyer?”

Lita nodded. “Brady got him one. Someone he went to law school with who’s practicing in Minneapolis.”

Her expression changed, tightened just a little when she said Brady’s name.

“Lita, is Brady all right?” I asked. “Dayna was his mother. It had to have been painful to lose her, even if they weren’t really close.”

She played with the scarf at her neck. “I think it might have been better if they were a little closer,” she said.

I looked uncertainly at her.

“You saw her, at the café.”

I nodded.

“She’d just gotten into town, I guess. She asked me where Brady’s office was and I told her. I’m not so sure I should have. She went to see him.” Lita took a deep breath. “Brady was very angry. I think more for his brothers than himself.”

I thought about what I’d seen at the fundraiser—Brady brushing his mother’s hand off his arm. “You think he regrets what he said.”

She sighed. “Or maybe he doesn’t.”

I thought about Brady as I walked back to the library. I didn’t know him that well, but I liked what I knew. And no matter what she said, Maggie certainly did. He was a lawyer, though. Was it possible that Brady knew anything about his mother’s connection to that pawnshop robbery?

Abigail had the lights up on the tree when I got back. “Thank you,” I said. “We’ll start on the ornaments after lunch.”

I covered the phones and the circulation desk while Susan had lunch. I ate the soup I’d gotten at Eric’s at my desk and spent some time online seeing what else I could find out about Dayna Chapman. The only thing that really caught my interest was the fact that her family was pretty much broke. Her father had died just six months ago and Dayna and her older sister, who lived in London, had inherited very little.

It felt a little uncharitable to be thinking it, but I wondered if that was why she’d come back to Mayville Heights after having been away for so long. Maybe it had to do with money, especially since Dayna and Burtis were still married.

Abigail and I worked at the tree on and off all afternoon. By the time it was time for me to leave, we had most of Ruby’s ornaments hanging on the tree.

“It looks beautiful,” I said to Abigail as I leaned against the front desk and surveyed our work.

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at the big fir, nodding with satisfaction. “It’ll be even better when I get the snowflakes.”

“What snowflakes?” I said.

“The seniors from the morning reading group are going to crochet snowflakes for the tree. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” I said. “But aren’t we going to need a lot of snowflakes to go all around that tree?”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’d be surprised how fast some of them can crochet.”

I brushed lint off the front of my sweater. “Wait a minute. Where are we going to get all the crochet thread?”

“Remember when Abigail was trying to teach me how to knit?” Susan said behind me.

I turned to look at her. A tiny snowman wired to something was poked into her topknot.

“I remember,” I said slowly.

“Well, that didn’t work so well,” she said. “So I thought maybe crocheting, because you only have to think about one needle instead of two.” She gestured with her hands.

“And?” I prompted.

“If I was supposed to knit myself a scarf or crochet a dress, then there wouldn’t be a Land’s End catalogue, would there?” she said with a shrug.

Abigail was trying not to grin and not really succeeding.

I smiled at Susan. “Since I pretty much used the same logic to justify one of Eric’s breakfast sandwiches instead of a bowl of oatmeal and fruit, I’m going to agree with you.”

She held out both hands. “Which is why you now have more than enough crochet thread for the seniors to make snowflakes. Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?”

I laughed. “Yes, I do.”

It was snowing when I headed home. All the way up the hill I thought, for maybe the twenty-fourth time, how glad I was that Harrison had loaned and then given me the truck.

I drove over to Roma’s clinic, picked up the cat cage and checked on Smokey. Roma’s friend and colleague David Thornton, who was covering for her, said that the infection in Smokey’s leg wasn’t responding well to the antibiotics. The old cat raised his head when he heard my voice and I talked to him for a while. After a few minutes he put his head down again and went back to sleep. I told David I’d be back in the morning to check on the big gray tom.

Hercules was waiting for me inside the porch “Twice in the same week,” I said. “I’m flattered.” He jumped down from the bench, made his way to the back door and meowed loudly and insistently.

“Give me a minute,” I said, juggling my keys, my purse and my briefcase.

I got the door unlocked and as soon as I opened it Hercules was inside. He headed for the living room door, clearly a cat with a purpose. He stopped in the doorway, looked over his shoulder and meowed again.

“Hang on,” I said. “I haven’t even taken my boots off.”

He gave me a look of impatience. I half expected him to start tapping one paw on the floor.

I set my purse and briefcase on the floor, hung up my jacket and stepped out of my boots. “Okay, what is it?”

Hercules turned around again and headed for the stairs. Whatever he was so insistent about was on the second floor of the house.

I followed the cat upstairs. He went directly to the bathroom, sat down beside the tub and meowed.

“What? You want a bath?” I asked.

He closed his jade green eyes for a moment and dropped his head in annoyance.

I looked in the tub. Herc’s tiny purple mouse lay almost in the middle. There was a small patch of water just to the right of it. Given his intense revulsion for wet feet, I knew there was no way Hercules would jump in and get his mouse.

I leaned over, picked it up and set it on the floor in front of him. Gingerly he reached out one white-tipped paw and touched the little purple rodent.

“It’s dry,” I said. Hercules, being Hercules, didn’t take my word for it. Very tentatively he touched his toy again.

“You wouldn’t have to worry about that being wet if you hadn’t dropped it in the bathtub in the first place,” I pointed out.

He shot me a daggers look, picked up the mouse in his mouth and stalked out of the bathroom, muttering under his breath all the way.

I changed my clothes, brushed my hair and went down to the kitchen. No sign of Hercules or his brother. I stuck a bowl of pea soup with carrots and ham in the microwave and while it warmed I retrieved my laptop from my briefcase. I wanted to see what else I could find out about the pawnshop robbery that Dayna Chapman had witnessed. Was I right about Nic Sutton?

I couldn’t find out much more than I already knew, so I stuck the name of the investigating detective—Leah Webster—in a search engine. There had to have been some kind of charges against the shooter.

I was hoping I could find an article about the court case. Maybe there would be photos. Instead all I discovered was a brief article that told me the shooter—who was a juvenile at the time—had taken a plea deal. I tried looking up Nicolas Sutton Sr. Again, I couldn’t find any photographs.

I set the computer aside for a minute and concentrated on my bowl of soup. I looked around the kitchen. Hercules was miffed, but it wasn’t like Owen not to be lurking by my chair to mooch a piece of ham. Then again . . .

“Owen, I know you’re there,” I said. “I can hear you breathing.” I couldn’t, but he didn’t know that.

I waited.

Nothing.

“Fine,” I said, focusing all my attention on my supper. “I can’t share with someone I can’t see.” I counted under my breath, “One . . . two . . .”

He popped into sight on three. It wasn’t as disconcerting as it had been the first time I saw the cat disappear and then reappear again, but I still had the sensation of being Alice in Wonderland tumbling down the rabbit hole.

I looked down at the floor. “Hello,” I said.

“Murp,” he replied.

I fished a bite of ham out of my soup with two fingers and set it on the floor so Owen could scrutinize it the way he did everything he ate. Then I pulled the laptop closer again and scrolled through more images. I had a few more minutes before I needed to leave for tai chi class.

I tried everything connected to the pawnshop robbery that I could think of. I was about to give up when at the bottom of a screen full of photos, I discovered something that I realized just might be very helpful. It was a photo of Detective Leah Webster taken at a first responders appreciation night at a Minnesota Wild game.

With her cousin.

Eddie Sweeney.

Marcus had said sometimes it was a small world. Suddenly, I was very glad he was right.