A Tale Оf Two Kitties

chapter 6

Saturday morning I had a meeting with Ruby and Taylor King at the library. We’d gotten a small grant from the state to offer a summer reading club for elementary school kids. Ruby was going to run the program with help from Taylor. Ruby had lots of experience with that kind of thing—she’d been doing various art programs in the local schools for several years. Taylor had helped with the Reading Buddies Halloween party and I’d seen firsthand how good the teen was with little kids.

We went over what I was hoping to accomplish with the program. Both Ruby and Taylor had some good suggestions to improve my ideas and when we wrapped up just before ten thirty I felt satisfied that when the time came, the summer reading club was going to be a big success.

I was just coming back downstairs from grabbing a quick cup of coffee around eleven thirty when Elias Braeden walked in the front door. I raised a hand in hello and he smiled and walked over to me.

“Good morning, Kathleen,” he said. “I was hoping I could take you up on your offer of a tour of the library. Is this a good time?” He was wearing a black quilted jacket with a standup collar over a gray sweater.

“All I was going to do was shelve some books,” I said. “So yes, it’s a good time.” We headed over to the front desk, where I introduced Elias to Abigail. “I’m going to give Elias a tour of the building,” I said.

“I like old things,” he said with a self-deprecating shrug.

“Me too,” Abigail said, smiling up at him. “They always have a story.” She gestured toward the entrance. “Make sure Kathleen tells you the story behind our sun.”

“Why don’t we start there?” I said. We moved a few steps closer to the entryway. A carved and pieced wooden sun, more than three feet across, hung above the door frame. Above it were stenciled the words “Let there be light.” A carving of the sun and those same words were over the entrance to the very first Carnegie library in Scotland.

Elias looked at me, a frown creasing his forehead. “Wait a minute, this is a Carnegie library?” he asked.

I nodded.

He tipped his head back to study the sun. “That’s beautiful work.”

“Oren Kenyon’s,” I said. “He lives here in Mayville Heights and he’s as much an artist as he is a carpenter.”

I took Elias outside onto the steps to show him the wrought-iron railing Oren had also fabricated. The center wrought-iron spindle on each side of the landing divided into a perfect oval about the size of my two hands and then reformed into a twist again. The letters M, H, F, P and L for “Mayville Heights Free Public Library” were intertwined, seemingly suspended in the middle of the circles.

Elias ran his hand over the metal. “Mr. Kenyon is an incredible craftsman,” he said.

We went back inside and I showed off the restored mosaic tile floor, the wide ornate woodwork and the stained glass window that made rainbow patterns of light on the floor when the sun streamed through it.

“I’m impressed,” Elias said. “It’s been a long time since I was in this building. You’ve restored it to its glory days.”

“Thank you,” I said. Renovating the library had been a massive project filled with massive headaches. There were times I doubted it would ever be completed, let alone completed in time for the centennial celebration, but we managed to make it happen. I loved showing off the finished product. “You’ve known Ruby her entire life,” I said. The words weren’t really a question.

He nodded. “Since she was five days old. She probably told you that I worked for her grandfather.”

I nodded. “Is that how you knew Leo Janes? When you were in here before I thought you seemed to recognize him.”

“Yes, I recognized him,” Elias said, glancing at his watch, a Citizen Eco-Drive, powered by light. It seemed to represent the man, understated and practical. “But not from when I worked for Idris. About six months ago I threw Mr. Janes out of my casino.”

I remembered what Simon had told me about his father being banned from several casinos. “What exactly did he do?” I asked.

If Elias thought I was nosy it didn’t show on his face. “He was cheating,” he said flatly.

“You don’t mean he was hiding cards up his sleeve, do you?” I said.

Elias shook his head. “No. At least I don’t think he was. I don’t actually know what he was doing. That was the problem.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I think he was counting cards and had people helping him, but I could never prove it.” He narrowed his eyes. “You know he was a math professor?”

I nodded.

“I did a background check on Mr. Janes. I found photos online of him with several of his students. Some of those same students turned up on the surveillance footage when Mr. Janes was in my casino.” He paused. “At my blackjack tables.”

I didn’t know what to say, and that did seem to show on my face. “Kathleen, Leo Janes cost me more than a million dollars, money that I don’t believe he won fair and square.”

I realized then that Elias had been talking about Leo in the past tense. “You know that Leo is dead,” I said.

“Yes.” The smile disappeared from his face. “Kathleen, I know that he was murdered. I think you’re far too polite to ask the next obvious question but I’m not nearly that well-mannered. For the record, I didn’t kill Leo Janes.”

I thought it was a little strange for him to say that.

“I did come to this area on business. Ruby may have told you I’m thinking about buying the Silver Casino.”

“She did.”

“I did want to talk to Leo once I learned the man was in Mayville Heights, too, but I give you my word that I didn’t kill him. I didn’t even see Leo the day he died.” He gestured with one hand. He seemed relaxed, confident. “And for the record, I was on the road between Minneapolis and Mayville Heights on Friday night.”

“I’ve offended you,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Elias shook his head. “No offense taken, Kathleen. I know the rumors and the stories about businessmen like me, but I don’t beat people up in back alleys when they cheat me. That’s what lawyers are for.” He glanced at his watch again. “I have to get going,” he said. “Thank you for the tour.”

I watched him make his way to the main doors, raising a hand in acknowledgement to Abigail at the front desk. Elias Braeden was an intriguing mix of bluntness and charm, but he had worked for Idris Blackthorne, so no matter what he said about leaving his problems to be handled by his lawyers I couldn’t shake the feeling that he could be “hands-on” if he felt the situation warranted it. Could he have gotten hands-on with Leo Janes?

• • •

Roma and Maggie showed up at five to one. “Hi. What are you two doing here?” I asked.

“We came to steal you for lunch,” Maggie said, grinning and holding up a take-out bag from Eric’s.

“Do you have time?” Roma asked.

“She does,” Susan said, moving behind me with an empty book cart. She smiled at me and pushed her cat’s-eye glasses up her nose. “Abigail and I can close. There isn’t that much to do. It’s been dead quiet all morning.” She made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go!”

“I have time,” I said.

Maggie smiled at Susan. “Thanks,” she said. She turned to me. “It’s beautiful outside. How about a picnic in your gazebo?”

“I’d like that,” I said.

I’d met Maggie when Rebecca convinced me to try her tai chi class. Mags was the instructor, tall and slim and unbelievably flexible, with cropped blond curls and green eyes that reminded me of Hercules. Our friendship had begun the night I arrived early for class and found her online at the website for the popular celebrity dance show Gotta Dance, voting for the Today show’s Matt Lauer. I was a fan of the show as well, although cutie Kevin Sorbo had been getting my votes.

Tai chi was also where I’d met Roma. When the class had formed a circle to begin our warm-ups Roma had been beside me. She was new to the group as well and we’d bonded over our mutual inability to master White Crane Spreads Wings. I sometimes wondered if Mayville Heights would have started to feel like home so quickly if I had turned Rebecca’s invitation down.

We walked around the building to the tall wooden gazebo in the back overlooking the water. Maggie had brought turkey-and-bacon sandwiches on thick slices of honey-granola bread. Roma handed me her insulated travel mug. “Coffee,” she said with a smile.

“Because how could we forget that?” Maggie said drily. She and Roma were drinking lemonade.

I ate about half of my sandwich and then eyed the two of them. “So what’s up?” I asked.

Roma set down her lemonade. “There’s something I’d like to ask you.”

“If you’d like me to feed the cats for you next week the answer is yes.”

She smiled and shook her head. “No. Kathleen, I know you already said you’d be a bridesmaid, but I’d like you to be my maid of honor.”

I stared at her. I hadn’t expected the question. “But what about Maggie?” I said. “She’s the reason you and Eddie met. She should be your maid of honor.”

Roma and Eddie had gotten together after Maggie had made a full-sized, very lifelike Eddie Sweeney mannequin for a display about the history of sport in this part of the state for Winterfest a couple of years ago. The only way she’d been able to get Faux Eddie from her studio to the community center was in the front seat of Roma’s SUV. That had started a rumor that Roma and the Minnesota Wild star were seeing each other, and pretty soon it wasn’t just a rumor.

“I may have indirectly gotten things started, but there wouldn’t be a wedding if you hadn’t urged Roma to throw caution to the wind and listen to her heart.” Maggie paused, a dill pickle halfway to her mouth. “And that was a lot of clichés in one sentence.”

“I wouldn’t be marrying Eddie if it weren’t for both of you,” Roma said. “Which is why I want you both to be my maids of honor.” She looked from Maggie to me. “Please say yes.”

“Yes!” Maggie and I said in unison.

Roma threw an arm around each of us and hugged us. Then she straightened up and gave me a sly smile. “And when you and Marcus get married Maggie and I will be your maids of honor.”

I felt my face flood with color. Roma and Maggie exchanged a look. They were getting a kick out of my flustered reaction. I held up both hands. “Okay. I might, might have been thinking about spending the rest of my life with Marcus.”

“So ask him,” Maggie said, popping the pickle in her mouth.

Roma tucked a stray strand of hair behind one ear. “I highly recommend it,” she said with a smile.

I took a sip of my coffee and eyed Maggie. “What about you and Brady? And don’t give us that ‘we’re just friends’ speech.”

Maggie shrugged. “I don’t know if I want to get married at all, let alone if Brady would be the guy.” She took a bite of her sandwich, chewed and then realized we were waiting for something more from her. “What if you get married and then you wake up some morning and realize you don’t love that person anymore?” She gestured with her sandwich and little bits of shredded lettuce fell onto her lap.

“What if you get married and then you wake up every morning for the rest of your life thinking how lucky you are to be able to spend one more day with that other person?” Roma asked. “Except for the mornings that you want to smack them with a burned bagel because they’re all cheery and full of sunshine and don’t need coffee to turn into a human being.”

I laughed. “I hope Eddie knows how lucky he is,” I said.

“Because most days I resist the urge to hurl burned breakfast food at him?” Roma said with a laugh.

“No, because he gets to spend all the rest of his days with you.” I held up a hand. “And yes, I know I sound like the heroine of some romantic novel. It’s still true.”

“I’m the lucky one,” she said, looking down at the ring on her left hand.

“What kind of wedding dress are you going to wear?” Maggie asked.

Roma made a face. “Do I really need one?”

“You don’t need one, but you’d look beautiful in one,” I said.

I caught Maggie’s eye. “Shopping trip!” we both said.

“Maybe,” Roma said, “but nothing lacy or poufy or big. And I don’t know about white. I’d just like something very plain and simple.”

Maggie made a sound in her throat that made me think of Owen when he was annoyed.

“Roma, you do know you’ve pretty much just described those big recycled paper bags Harry uses out here when he collects the dead leaves and plants, don’t you?”

She laughed. “I just want to marry Eddie. I don’t have a clue what to choose for a dress.”

“We’ll find you the perfect dress,” Maggie said, licking mustard off her little finger. “I promise, no pouf, no white.” She frowned. “There are lots of possibilities. There’s ivory, vanilla, linen.” She studied Roma. “Cornsilk would look good with your hair. Or maybe ecru.”

I reached for my coffee. “I have no idea what ecru is but I’m sure you’d look good in it. And maybe those big sleeves. I don’t know the name of them.”

“Mutton,” Maggie said. She looked at Roma, all seriousness, although I saw the glint in her green eyes. “How do you feel about hoopskirts?”

Roma folded her arms over her chest and smiled at us. “You do realize that as the bride it’s my prerogative to choose the maid-of-honor dresses? How do you two feel about chartreuse?”

“When I was in art school I dated a guy with a chartreuse Volkswagen Microbus,” Maggie offered, seemingly unconcerned about wearing a yellow-green maid-of-honor dress for Roma’s wedding.

I picked up the dill pickle spear that was lying on the wax paper that had been around my sandwich and set it next to the bit of crust left from Maggie’s sandwich. She smiled a thank-you at me.

“The color chartreuse gets its name from a type of liqueur made by a group of French monks starting back in the eighteenth century,” I said.

“It’s a tertiary color,” Mags added.

“That means you mix a primary and a secondary color together?” I asked.

She smiled at me. “Exactly.”

Roma rubbed the space between her eyebrows with two fingers. “Okay, you can stop with the history of chartreuse. We’ll go wedding dress shopping next week. But no hoopskirts and no sleeves named after meat.”

“Deal,” I said, grinning at Maggie over the top of Roma’s head.

Roma took a drink of her lemonade and gestured at me with the bottle. “Have you spoken to Thorsten?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“Because I think he found the dog that tangled with Owen. Yesterday afternoon he brought in a stray he found running loose a little farther up Mountain Road from your house.”

I reached for my coffee. “What makes you think it’s the dog Owen encountered?”

“It had several infected scratches on its muzzle and one shoulder. They look like something a cat’s claws did.”

“Is the dog going to be all right?”

Roma nodded. “Yes, but if you hear of anyone who wants a dog, please let me know. He’s thin and he’s obviously been on his own for a while, but he’s a good-natured dog.” She gave me a sheepish grin. “Don’t tell Owen I said that.”

We sat there for another five minutes talking and then Roma stood up. “This was fun,” she said. “And I hate to go, but I do need to go check on a horse.” She hugged Maggie and me, promising she’d call to work out a time for our shopping trip.

“Do you think I could take another quick look at the photos?” Maggie asked as we walked around the side of the building.

“Sure,” I said. “And you don’t have to hurry. There are some things on my desk I need to take care of.”

“Did Keith get a price for you on the glass to cover the photos if you decide to put them out on a table for people to look at?” Maggie asked as I unlocked the building and we stepped inside.

I nodded. “It’s a lot more expensive than I expected. I don’t have much money left in my discretionary budget.” I put my keys in my pocket. “And I still think we need some kind of hook, some kind of enticement to people who aren’t regular library users to come in and see the photos.”

“Maybe Bridget would do a story about them for the paper.”

“Mary said Bridget’s already working on an article for the paper about the letters.” Mary’s daughter owned the local newspaper.

“Do you know anyone who got one of them?”

We started up to the second floor. “No,” I said. “And no one who has been in has talked about getting one.” I nudged Maggie with my elbow. “Do you think there were any misplaced love letters hidden behind that wall?”

“Probably not,” she said. “I know whatever was walled up in that little anteroom has been there for more than twenty years, but I think handwritten love letters went out of style long before that.” She smiled. “I think you just have romance on your mind because we were talking about Roma’s wedding dress.”

I unlocked the door to the workroom and Maggie walked over to the table, where I spread out the photos. Her green eyes lit up. “Oh, Kath, these are incredible. I didn’t really get a good look at them at the meeting.”

“I know,” I said. “Just based on the clothing some of them are from the early 1960s.”

“You don’t have any idea how they got walled up in that room?”

“Not a clue.”

“So all these photographs belong to the library now?”

“Uh-huh. Unless we can figure out whom they’re of and return them—which would be the best outcome. I don’t want all of these photos to just end up in a box on a shelf. I’d like to know who all those people are.”

Maggie picked up a five-by-seven image of a group of kids standing arm in arm at the water’s edge. “We could see if Lita recognizes anyone. And maybe Harrison Taylor.”

I leaned against the long worktable. “If we show the pictures to enough people we probably could figure out who they’re all of, but as I said at the meeting, I don’t think they’d stand up to being handled so much.”

Maggie was staring off into space. I knew there was an idea rolling over in her mind. That’s why I’d asked her to get involved in the first place. I knew she’d probably be able to come up with some way to display the photographs and entice people to come in to see them. “I have an idea, Kath,” she said, “but I need to check on a couple of things first.”

“I knew you’d be able to figure something out.” I looked in the direction of my office. “I have about an hour or so’s worth of paperwork to do if you want to hang around for a while and look through those.”

She nodded, blond head already bent over the pile of pictures in front of her on the table.

I’d been working for about half an hour when Marcus called. “Would you mind if I bailed on our plans and went to Minneapolis with Eddie?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I’d probably spend the evening sobbing into my pillow.”

“Even if I promised to make it up to you by cooking dinner tomorrow night at your house and making pudding cake and doing all the dishes?”

“Hmmm,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “That does sound delicious. Okay, you have a deal. Why are you and Eddie headed to Minneapolis?”

“Guy he played with retired a couple of years ago from the LA Kings. He’s been doing hockey-skills workshops all over the country. He’s in Minneapolis for some kind of meeting. Eddie’s going to take him to dinner and pick his brain about running a hockey school. I’m going along to drive and think of things that Eddie forgets.”

Eddie had plans to start a hockey school in Mayville Heights now that he was retired and he and Roma were getting married.

“Have fun,” I said. “I’ll be sad and lonely while you’re gone but I’m pretty sure that pudding cake you mentioned will cure that. You will be making a double batch, right?”

Marcus laughed. “For you, absolutely.”

“I could go out and check on Micah,” I said. “It’ll be late when you get back.”

“Umm, yeah, if it’s not too much trouble. I was gone all morning and she gave me the silent treatment when I came back. I gave her some of your sardine crackers. I’m not sure I’m back on her good side, though.”

“I think she’s like Owen. He’ll milk being miffed as long as he can to get as many treats as possible,” I said, swinging slowly from side to side in the chair. I was almost positive it wasn’t the only thing the two cats had in common.

Marcus said he’d call me in the morning and I said good-bye. It took me another twenty minutes or so to finish up my paperwork. I drove Maggie over to her studio and went in to take a look at her latest collage.

One my way out I met Ruby coming up the stairs. “Hi, Kathleen,” she said. “How’s your day going?” She was wearing her Ginger Did It Backward in High Heels T-shirt.

“Good,” I said. “Elias came in this morning. I gave him a tour.”

She smiled. “Thank you. He has this thing for old buildings. He grew up in some pretty bare-bones places. I think that’s why.”

“You’ve known Elias a long time.”

“All my life.” She frowned. “Is there some kind of problem?”

I shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “When he was in the library before—the first time—Leo Janes was there and I had the feeling they knew each other.”

Ruby shrugged. “So? Elias lived here years ago. It’s a small town. A lot of different people know each other.”

“I know, but he told me one of the reasons he came to town was to talk to Leo.”

“Maybe they knew each other when they were kids.”

I shook my head. “He thought Leo had cheated him out of a lot of money—more than a million dollars.”

She laughed. “Good dog, this isn’t some mobster movie, Kathleen. Elias didn’t have Leo Janes whacked. He’s a reputable businessman. He belongs to the Chamber of Commerce. He sponsors a kids’ hockey team.”

“Hey, I like Elias,” I said, holding up a hand. “And I’m not saying he had Leo killed, but is it possible that someone who worked for him went to see Leo and things got out of hand?”

She shook her head. “No.” She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Look, I’m not saying that Elias doesn’t have a bit of a reputation for being hardheaded, and yeah, some of that probably does come from working for my grandfather, but there’s a line he wouldn’t cross and hurting someone is it. Trust me.”

I didn’t see any point in continuing the conversation. “Thanks,” I said.

Ruby smiled. “Hey, no problem,” she said. She moved past me and I continued down the stairs.

“Trust me,” she’d said. I wanted to. I did. I wanted to trust Elias Braeden, too. I just wasn’t sure if I should.

I left Riverarts and headed out to Marcus’s house. There was no sign of Micah in the backyard. I let myself into the kitchen and called for the little ginger tabby. Nothing. In the middle of the table there was a loaf of bread and a Mason jar filled with the Jam Lady’s marshmallows and a note from Marcus. I love you, the note said, and it was signed with several large X’s for kisses.

“I love you, too,” I whispered.

At that moment Micah appeared on the empty chair beside me. Not launched herself from the floor or jumped from another chair. Appeared, as in the opposite of disappeared.

For a moment the air almost seemed electric, the way it did before a thunderstorm. Micah cocked her head to one side and meowed at me.

“Does Marcus know you can do this?” I asked the cat and immediately felt foolish. Did I really think she was going to answer me?

The cat wrinkled her whiskers and meowed again almost as though she were saying, “Maybe.” And given what I’d just seen her do, who was I to say that she wasn’t?

I thought about all the times lately that Marcus had told me the little cat had “snuck” unseen into his SUV. “I’m going to have to tell him,” I said. “As soon as this case is over I’m going to have to tell him.”

I left Micah with some sardine crackers and a promise to bring an actual tin of sardines next time I came out. She licked her whiskers and I had the feeling that the ability to disappear wasn’t the only skill she shared with Owen.

When I got home there was no sign of Owen, but one of my hats was in the middle of the kitchen floor. I bent down to pick it up and discovered that there was a funky chicken head inside. I sat back on my heels. “Do you have any idea what this is all about?” I said to Hercules, who had just come in from the living room.

“Mrr,” he said, blinking his green eyes at me. In other words, he didn’t know, either.

Hercules had gotten his name from Roman mythology. At least that was what I told people. For the most part it was the truth. He had been named after Hercules, the son of Zeus. As portrayed by the very yummy Kevin Sorbo. Or as Maggie liked to teasingly describe him, Mr. Six-Pack-in-a-Loincloth.

Owen, on the other hand, was named because of the book A Prayer For Owen Meany—John Irving—which I’d been reading when I brought the boys home. Whenever I put the book down Owen sat on it. His name was either going to be Owen or Irving and to me he didn’t look like an Irving.

I dumped the soggy chicken head in the trash and shook my hat over the can to get the bits of catnip out. I went upstairs to change, trailed by Hercules. I told him about my day and he murped at intervals as though he was actually listening.

About twenty minutes later, I was peering in the refrigerator to see if I had any Parmesan cheese to top a plate of spaghetti when Owen came up from the basement. He walked past me, stopped in the middle of the floor and looked all around the kitchen. Roma had been keeping an eye on his ear ever since the collar had come off. It seemed to be healing well.

Owen looked at me. It was hard to miss the accusatory glare in his golden eyes. “Merow!” he said loudly.

“It wasn’t your hat, it was my hat,” I said, setting a Mason jar of spaghetti sauce on the counter. “And hats don’t belong in the middle of the kitchen floor.”

He looked around the room again and then seemed to zero in on the trash can. He stalked over to it and meowed again, turning back to look at me over his shoulder.

“Yes, I threw out your chicken head,” I said. “It was wet, it was disgusting and it was inside my hat.”

I saw his muscles tense and I knew he was about to launch himself at the can.

“Knock that can over and I will vacuum up every chicken part in this house.” It was an empty threat. My best guess was that I knew where maybe half of his stash was, but Owen didn’t know that. He glared at me. I folded my arms over my chest and glared back at him. Hercules suddenly became engrossed in checking out something on the floor under the chair next to where he’d been sitting. Who knows how long the standoff would have gone on except Hercules sneezed . . . which scared him the way it always did. Startled, he jumped, the way he always did. Except he was under the chair. His head banged the underside of the seat. He yowled in indignation and flattened himself against the floor, turning from side to side as though he thought someone had hit him over the head.

Owen sat up and took a few steps toward his brother. I immediately moved the chair and bent down to Hercules. “Let me see,” I said. He was still looking around suspiciously.

“You banged your head on the chair,” I said. “Let me take a look.”

He made grumbling noises in the back of his throat but he let me feel the top of his head. He didn’t pull away from my carefully probing fingers and didn’t even wince as I examined the top of his head. “I think you’re going to be okay,” I said. Could cats get concussions? I wondered. Hercules seemed all right; annoyed and a little embarrassed but otherwise fine.

I got him a couple of bites of cooked chicken from the fridge and gave one piece to Owen as well. I noticed Hercules gave the offending chair a wide berth as he made his way over to his water dish, shooting it a green-eyed glare as he passed.

Owen disappeared after supper, probably checking his various stashes of funky chicken parts to make sure they were still hidden. Hercules was still a bit out of sorts. He followed me around the kitchen as I cleaned up and did the dishes and twice I almost tripped over him. Once the dishes were put away I set my laptop on the table. “Want to help me look up a couple of things?” I asked the cat.

“Mrr,” he said after a moment’s thought. It sounded like a yes to me. I picked him up and settled him on my lap. He put one paw on the edge of the table as I pulled the computer closer and turned it on.

“I’m kind of curious about Simon and his family,” I told Hercules. “Let’s see what we can find.” Simon Janes had no Facebook or Twitter accounts but there was still a fair amount of information about him online. He’d started his development company in college when he rented a room in a run-down house about fifteen minutes from campus. On the weekends he went home to see baby Mia, who stayed with Leo. Simon persuaded the landlord to let him fix up the old house instead of paying rent. He did the same thing in another place the next year. In his third year he used the money he hadn’t spent on rent as a down payment on a tiny two-bedroom house, renovated it and then rented out rooms to his friends. By then Mia was living with him full-time.

I tried to imagine what Simon’s days had been like, going to class, going home to see Mia every weekend and then having her with him all the time, trying to make time to study and working on whichever old house he was living in. It had been all I could do to manage my classes and a very early breakfast shift at an off-campus diner that catered to early risers, hunters and people just getting off the night shift. “Simon wasn’t afraid of hard work, as my mother would say,” I said to Hercules.

The cat seemed less impressed. He pawed at the keyboard and somehow I found myself looking at a newspaper article about the death of Meredith Janes outside Chicago. Hercules leaned in toward the screen as if he was reading the copy. He paused for a moment, looked back at me and meowed. Clearly he thought this was important somehow. So was it?

“Fine, I’ll read it, too,” I said.

The piece was the second of a three-part series on accidents along a stretch of twisty road. The police had spent a lot of time investigating Meredith Janes’s accident. There was some question at the time that another car had been involved, possibly forcing her off the road, but in the end police found no evidence at the scene or on the car and the investigation was closed, the accident blamed on road conditions and excess speed.

But what caught my attention as much as the article was the photo of Meredith Janes. It was the photo I’d seen lying on the side table when I’d found Leo Janes’s body. Something had been bothering me about that picture, or more specifically, the frame. There had been one other photo on the table—of Simon and Mia. It had been professionally matted and framed in an expensive metal frame. The old photograph in the inexpensive plastic department-store frame had seemed oddly out of place next to the professionally presented image of Simon and Mia. I remembered Rebecca saying that Leo never forgave his brother or his wife. I wondered why he had a photo of her in a place he was only staying at for a few weeks if he felt that way. Did it have anything to do with Leo’s decision to give his brother a second chance?

I remembered what Marcus had said when I’d suggested the animosity between the two brothers gave Victor a motive to kill his brother: “He had nothing to gain.” Was that actually true?

Hercules seemed to finish reading before I did. He sat patiently on my lap and I could see him watching me out of the corner of my eye. When I finished I reached over and scratched the place above his nose where his black fur turned to white.

“Fine, you win, smarty pants,” I said.

He licked my chin, cat for “I told you so.”

I looked at the computer screen again. Marcus had said once that I had the mind-set of a detective. I wanted to know the what and the why about everything. I found myself wondering those things about the photo of Meredith Janes in her ex-husband’s apartment. What was it doing there and why did he have it? And was Victor Janes connected in any way?

Maybe I needed to find out.