A Tale Оf Two Kitties

chapter 9

Simon was waiting for us in the entrance of the brick building that housed his office and several others. He was wearing a brown leather jacket over jeans and a rust-colored sweater. He smiled when he caught sight of Mia. She went right over to him and gave him a hug. “Kathleen said someone tried to rob you but they didn’t get into the office.”

He nodded. “They tried my office and two other ones on this floor.” He smiled at me over his daughter’s head. “Thanks for picking her up.”

“Anytime,” I said. “I got to see Harrison, so it was good for me, too.”

“Police are almost done and then we can head home,” Simon said to Mia. He pointed at a wooden bench near the doors. “Go sit and we’ll be leaving in about fifteen minutes.”

She cocked her head to one side and studied her father. “You just want to talk to Kathleen without me listening.”

Simon swiped a hand over the stubble on his chin. “Yes, I do, so please go sit over there so I can do that and she can go home.”

Mia grinned at her dad. “Okay.” She went over to the bench and opened her backpack.

“I don’t know what I would have done without your help,” Simon said.

“I’m happy to do anything for Mia,” I said. And I was, although I suspected picking up Mia was a bit of a contrivance on Simon’s part. I could see that he was interested in me and this was a way for the two of us to spend time together, even if just for a few minutes. Simon knew Marcus and I were together but he wasn’t the type of man to just walk away without at least trying to get what he wanted.

Down the hallway behind us Marcus came out of Simon’s office. He stopped when he noticed me standing with Simon. I raised a hand in hello and for a moment I thought he was going to join us, but he just nodded and moved to speak to another police officer in the hall.

“Kathleen, can I ask you something?” Simon said.

“Sure,” I said, pulling my attention back from Marcus.

“The police still consider me a suspect, don’t they?”

I looked away from him for a moment, studying the exposed brick wall to my right. “At this point everyone is a suspect.”

“So yes.”

“They’re still gathering evidence,” I said, finally shifting my gaze back to him.

“There’s something I need to—want to—tell you,” he said. His expression was serious and one hand was playing with the band of his watch. “My father and I had an argument a couple of days before he was killed. We had more than one, actually.”

“Okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure why Simon was telling me this. I already knew he and Leo had had a relationship that was contentious at times and Marcus had told me about their disagreement at the hotel bar.

“This was a very public argument in the parking lot over at Fern’s.” He shifted restlessly from one foot to the other.

Fern’s was Fern’s Diner, home of Meatloaf Tuesday and also where Harrison Taylor’s lady friend, Peggy Sue, worked.

“Families have arguments,” I said. “Even the police know that.”

The lines in his face seemed to deepen. “One of the last things my father said to me was, ‘You’re killing me.’”

It took me a moment to find the right words to say what I wanted to say. “Simon, I only met your father once, but he didn’t seem like the kind of person who would want you to get stuck on something he said when he was angry.”

He studied me for a long moment, as though he thought he could find some answers on my face, and then his expression softened. “Mia’s right,” he said.

I was lost. “About what?”

“About you being nice.”

I shook my head. “I’m starting to dislike the word,” I said, giving him a wry smile.

Simon shook his head. “You shouldn’t. We act like being nice is somehow a bad thing. It’s not. The world needs more nice people.”

“Well, this so-called nice person thinks that the police aren’t going to arrest you because you had an argument with your father in the parking lot of Fern’s.”

I glanced over at Mia. She was bent over her notebook, holding her cell phone with one hand.

“It isn’t any of my business, but what were you arguing about?” I asked. “I know it’s been difficult having your uncle here.”

Simon nodded. “Dad and I did have words over that more than once, but it’s not what the fight at Fern’s was about.”

I waited. Simon’s mouth moved but it took longer for words to come. Finally he said, “You have to have heard about my mother. Mayville Heights is a small town, after all.”

“I’ve heard,” I said.

“We never talked about my mother—my choice, not his.” His fingers played with his watchband again. “I knew that Dad was angry and hurt for a long time, but I really thought he’d put that part of his life to rest a long time ago.” He looked past me for a moment and then shook his head. “He hadn’t.” He focused on me once more. “A few weeks ago I found out that he had hired a private investigator to look into the car accident that killed my mother.”

Meredith Janes’s death. Was it possible it was connected to what happened to Leo?

“Did you ask him why?” I said.

“I asked him why, all right. Why he was doing it, why he hadn’t told me, why he thought there was any point to digging up such a painful part of both our pasts after all this time. Just before he hired that investigator Mia was doing a school project, a family tree. I know they talked about . . . my mother. Dad started reading some of the old news coverage. He said he’d never been satisfied with the investigation.”

He sighed. “Kathleen, a few years ago I went to Chicago, to the police station. I talked to the detective who investigated my mother’s car accident. I looked at the reports. There was no big conspiracy. The road was wet, she was speeding—which according to everyone she knew was something she’d done since she got her driver’s license. She went off the road and over an embankment. She died. End of story.” He shook his head. “You’re the only other person aside from Dad I’ve told this to, and I waited a long time before I told him. I hate that my mother still has so much power in my life.”

Mia looked up and smiled over at us then dropped her head over her phone again.

“He wanted me to be part of this ridiculous investigation. This fool’s errand. I said no. He tried to change my mind. That’s what we were fighting about.” He shrugged.

“Simon, you don’t actually think your mother’s accident and what happened to your father are connected, do you?” I said. I didn’t say that I did.

“I don’t want to, but . . .”

“But what?”

The lines around his mouth tightened again. “He told me he’d hired an investigator. The day before the funeral I went all through his apartment. Victor had asked Everett if he could stay there for a few days. He said it made him feel closer to Dad.” He sighed softly. “I didn’t want Victor to know what Dad had been doing. I found the contact information for that investigator and I called him. He said my father told him that he’d found something out about my mother, something that was key.”

“But he didn’t say what that was.”

Simon shook his head. “I hired him, Kathleen, the detective. He says there may have been a witness, a woman who was walking her dog the night my mother’s car went off the road. If there’s any chance what happened to my father is connected to my mother’s death, I have to know.”

“Have you considered talking to your uncle?”

He shook his head. “Not a chance in hell. My father may have been giving Victor a second chance but that didn’t mean he would have ever confided in him.”

I put a hand on his arm. “Simon, tell the police,” I said.

A smile pulled at his mouth but there was no warmth in it. “I already did. I don’t think they’re taking me very seriously.”

I raked a hand back through my hair. I cared about Mia and I cared about Simon. “How can I help?”

Simon glanced down the hallway. There was no sign of Marcus. “I don’t want to interfere in your life,” he said.

“How can I help?” I repeated.

He looked over at his daughter again and his face softened. “I know that Dad and Mary Lowe go way back. Someone saw them together at a place out near the highway. They looked like they were having a pretty serious conversation.”

“The Brick,” I said, nodding my head.

Simon frowned. “How did you know?”

Mary may have looked like the stereotypical sweet, cookie-baking grandmother, which in fact she was, but there were a lot more layers to her, including her love of dancing, corsets and feathers. “That’s a story for another time,” I said.

“Would you talk to Mary?” he asked. “See if she knows anything? I think she’d be more likely to tell you before me.”

“I can do that,” I said. “She’s working tomorrow. I’ll see what I can find out.”

Simon smiled then. “How many times are you going to come to my rescue?” he said.

I smiled back at him. “How many times do you need?”

Mia had gotten to her feet and now she walked over to us. “Excuse me,” she said. “Are you done? Because I’m hungry.”

“Yes, we’re done,” I said.

“Thank you for coming to get me,” she said, wrapping her arms around me in a hug.

“Anytime,” I said.

“Thank you,” Simon said. “For everything.”

I smiled. “Like I said, anytime.”

Hercules was waiting for me in the truck. “Thank you for being so patient,” I said, sliding behind the wheel. He yawned and I realized he’d probably been napping the whole time I was gone.

We headed up the hill and I filled Hercules in on what Simon had told me about his father hiring an investigator to look into Meredith Janes’s death.

“This means something,” I said.

“Merow,” the cat said.

I glanced over at him. “Okay, so now all we have to do is convince Marcus.”

• • •

We’d only been home about twenty minutes when my phone rang. Hercules was just eating the last of the four crackers I’d given him. He meowed at me but didn’t even lift his head.

“Yes, I heard that,” I said.

It was Marcus.

“Hi,” I said. “Where are you?”

“At the station,” he said, “wrestling with paperwork.”

He sounded tired. I tucked one leg underneath me. “You want to know what I was doing at Simon’s office.”

“I do, but I don’t want to sound like a suspicious boyfriend or an equally suspicious cop by asking. You can see I’m on the horns of a dilemma.”

I laughed. “So you were going to do what, just dance around the subject?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “I’m tired; all my creativity has checked out for the night.”

“It’s not that complicated,” I said. “Simon was supposed to pick up Mia out at Harry’s. I went to get her.”

“That was nice of you,” he said.

I wondered if he was at his desk or leaning against the wall in the hallway for a bit more privacy.

“Marcus, have you looked into the possibility of a connection between Leo Janes’s death and the accident that killed his wife?”

“Simon mentioned that.”

I pulled up my other leg and propped my chin on my bent knee. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“What if there’s a connection?”

“A connection how?” he asked.

I blew out a breath. “I don’t know how. Simon told me his father had hired someone to look into his ex-wife’s accident. Don’t you think it’s an awfully big coincidence that Leo Janes started asking questions about what happened all those years ago and suddenly he’s dead?”

“Coincidences do happen, Kathleen.” I recognized that reasonable tone. When we’d first met it had frustrated me.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” I said.

“So you think what?” Marcus asked. “That Meredith Janes’s death wasn’t an accident and now after twenty years the killer decided to get rid of her husband?”

The idea sounded better in my head than when he said it out loud.

“How do you know Victor Janes didn’t do something to his brother?” I said.

The idea had been in the back of my mind like a wisp of a song.

“He has an alibi. He was in a cancer survivors’ chat room when Leo was murdered.”

“Which he could have accessed from his smartphone,” I countered.

“Victor had one of those phones with the battery problems. His actually overheated and stopped working that day. The company had to overnight a replacement. He was close to twenty-four hours without a phone.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a little deflated.

“I know you care about Mia, Kathleen, and I know you like Simon.”

I got the sense that he was choosing his words carefully, which told me I probably wasn’t going to like what he said next.

“Simon didn’t kill his father,” I said, speaking each word slowly and carefully.

Marcus cleared his throat. “Look, Kathleen, I trust your instincts. You have to know that by now. But I can’t just ignore the evidence because of those instincts.”

“And I can’t ignore what my instincts tell me just because you believe your evidence says something else.”

There was silence for a moment, then he said, “I’m sorry I called your cell phone.”

I hadn’t expected him to say that. “Umm, why?” I asked.

“Because you could have hung up on me. Regular phones can be very satisfying to hang up . . . so I’ve heard.”

I laughed. “I wouldn’t hang up on you,” I said. “Pour coffee on your shoe? Maybe.”

He laughed as well. He’d gotten my reference to a time in our past when I’d come very close to doing just that.

“I love you,” he said. I could feel the warmth of his smile as though he was in the room with me.

“I love you, too,” I said.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he said. “Sleep well.”

I set the phone on the table and sighed. Hercules was watching me, pensively it seemed, his head cocked to one side. “How am I going to convince Marcus that there are other people who could have wanted Leo Janes hurt if not dead?”

“Mrr,” the cat said, his green eyes narrowing a little.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m thinking about Elias Braeden.”

“Merow?” Hercules said. It almost seemed like there was a question in the sound.

“I know what Ruby said and I’m not saying Elias wanted Leo dead. Maybe . . . maybe things just got out of hand. He was killed with that piece of sculpture. It wasn’t premeditated.” I picked up my mug. It was empty. I set it back on the table again. “What I’d like to do is talk to someone other than Ruby about Elias.”

Hercules yawned and stretched, seemingly bored with the conversation. He made his way over to the refrigerator and used one paw to push his food dish toward me.

“You just had a snack,” I said. “That’s it until breakfast.”

He stared at me without blinking, his green eyes locked on my face for a good thirty seconds.

I got to my feet, picked up the empty bowl and set it back beside the refrigerator. “Like I said, that’s it until breakfast.”

As I turned around my gaze passed over the front of the refrigerator. I had a coupon for half a dozen cupcakes from Sweet Thing stuck there along with a notice about a Christmas arts and crafts market in Red Wing and a flyer about the holiday cookie-decorating contest being sponsored by Fern’s Diner.

Fern’s Diner, where I’d had breakfast with Burtis Chapman more than once. Burtis, who had also worked for Idris Blackthorne as a young man and likely knew Elias Braeden.

I scooped up Hercules. “You are a furry genius,” I said.

He nuzzled my cheek and tried to look modest but didn’t quite get there.

• • •

By five forty-five the next morning I was on my way over to Fern’s Diner. Burtis’s shiny black truck was in the parking lot behind the squat, brown-shingled building. I found Burtis inside perched on a stool with his elbows on the counter and his hands wrapped around a heavy china coffee mug. He was wearing a blue plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled back over a long-sleeved gray T-shirt and his Twins ball cap was sitting on the counter at his elbow.

Burtis Chapman was a massive man, with wide shoulders and a barrel chest, intimidating if you didn’t know him. His face was lined and weathered and the little bit of hair he had left was snow white. He was good friends with Marcus’s father, Elliot Gordon. In fact, the two of them had gotten more than a little intoxicated just a few weeks ago when Elliot had been in town. They’d hijacked the jazz trio playing in the bar at the St. James Hotel and sung Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll.” The other bar patrons seemed to enjoy the impromptu concert; hotel management, not so much, and I’d had to go rescue them before the police were called.

Burtis looked up and smiled when I stepped into the diner. “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he said. He slid off his stool and gave me a hug.

“Feel like some company for breakfast?” I asked, shrugging out of my jacket.

“You, girl? Always.”

He patted the empty stool beside his, then took my jacket and hung it on a nearby hook.

Peggy Sue came out of the kitchen and slid an oversized oval plate in front of Burtis. “Hey, Kathleen,” she said with a smile. “What can I get you besides a cup of coffee?” She was wearing her regular uniform of red pedal pushers and a short-sleeved white shirt with Peggy Sue stitched over the left breast pocket. Her red-framed glasses had been replaced with a black cat’s-eye style a lot like Susan’s pair. Her hair was in a bouffant updo with sidewept bangs, lacquered in place I was guessing with half a can of hair spray.

I pointed at Burtis’s plate. “That looks good to me.”

“It’ll be ready in a jiff,” she said. She relayed my order to the kitchen and poured me a cup of coffee. Peggy and Harrison Taylor (Senior, not Junior) had been, as he liked to call it, “keeping company.” The age difference between the two had made his family a little nervous, especially Harrison’s daughter Elizabeth, who was fiercely protective of her biological father. But they—and the rest of us—quickly came to see how good Peggy was for the old man. She made him laugh, and she got him to have his blood pressure checked more frequently. She hadn’t been able to get him to cut down on his coffee consumption, but that was an impossible task no matter who was trying.

Burtis had already started in on his breakfast. I added cream and sugar to my coffee and took a long sip. It was hot and strong, just the way I liked it.

“What are you doin’ here so early?” he asked. “And don’t tell me it’s for the pleasure of my company, because I may have been born at night but it wasn’t last night.”

“I do like your company,” I said, “but there is something I wanted to talk to you about. Actually, someone.”

“Leo Janes.” He nudged a bite of scrambled egg onto his fork with the half slice of toast he was holding in his massive left hand.

“Sort of,” I said.

That got me a smile. “Now, how exactly are we ‘sort of’ going to talk about Leo Janes?”

“By talking about Elias Braeden.”

“I heard he was in town on some kind of business,” Burtis said, spearing a chunk of fried potato. It disappeared into his mouth.

“Did you know him when you worked for Idris?” I asked.

Peggy came back with my plate then. It held bacon and sausage, fluffy scrambled eggs, Yukon gold potatoes fried with onions and whole wheat toast. She topped up our coffee and then headed toward the booths with the pot.

“I knew Elias back in the day,” Burtis said. “We don’t run in the same circles now.” He grinned at me.

“Do you think he could have had anything to do with Leo Janes’s death?” I asked. I picked up my fork and started eating. The eggs were fluffy and the potatoes tasted of onion and dill.

“Not likely,” Burtis said. “From what I know of Elias now, he’s more likely to bury you with lawyers and paperwork than he is to just have you buried somewhere.” He reached for his coffee cup. “I take it Leo was still playin’ cards.”

“Enough to get banned from more than one casino in the state.”

“And one of them belonged to Elias.”

I nodded. “Leo had some kind of system worked out. And it looks like there were other people involved.”

“He was smart as a whip, you know. He’d figure the odds of a certain card turning up in his head and then bet according to that. It gave him an edge, not to mention he had a hell of a poker face. How much did he take Elias for?”

“Around a million dollars.”

Burtis shook his head. “I don’t care for cheaters myself and I can imagine how Elias felt. It’s a wonder he left Leo with a pot to”—he gave me a sideways glance—“bake beans in,” he finished. “So you think what, Kathleen? That Elias had Leo killed over what he won?”

I reached for my coffee again. “I don’t know. Elias told me what he wanted to know was how Leo was cheating. He’d figured out that Leo had some of his students involved but beyond that . . .” I shrugged. “Do you think it’s possible they had an argument and things just got out of hand?” The image of the back of Leo Janes’s head flashed in my mind. “Tell me I’m crazy,” I said.

“You’re not,” he said. “Elias has come a long way from the days when he used to move beer through the back wood for old Blackie. I told you before, it wasn’t what the old man did, it was what people thought he did that kept ’em in line. Elias learned that lesson. He’s a respectable businessman now—more or less—but just because you take the boy outta those woods doesn’t mean you take the lessons he learned outta him.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Thank you.”

We ate in silence for a couple of minutes. Then I felt Burtis’s eyes on me. “I hear you’ve been bragging about hanging around a few arcades in your younger days.”

I knew he was referring to my telling Marcus I could beat him at PAC-MAN. I gave an offhand shrug. “My mother always said it’s not bragging if you can do it.”

Burtis gave a snort of laughter. “That it isn’t,” he said.

We finished our breakfast and I told him about the box of photos from the old post office that the library had “inherited.” I lost the argument about paying for my own breakfast and I promised Burtis I would come out to the house to play a game of PAC-MAN with him, although I may have said I’d come out to beat him at a game of PAC-MAN. He left with a promise that he’d stop by the library once the photos were on display to see if he recognized anyone.

• • •

I took Celia Hunter’s scarf with me to the library and Marcus called midmorning to tell me she’d arrived at the station first thing, just the way she’d said she would. “It wasn’t her,” he said. “She’s too tiny to have hit Leo Janes.”

I made a face, glad that he couldn’t see me. Everything seemed to point back at Simon.

Mia came in right after school. Mary had brought in an album with the photos of Meredith Janes that she’d promised to show Mia.

“Is that your mother?” I asked Mary, pointing to a young woman leaning on a hoe and squinting into the sun in one photograph. It wasn’t so much that they looked alike, it was something about the way the young woman in the photo was standing, her unselfconscious stance, that made me think of Mary.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “She lived to be ninety years old, you know, and she was sharp as a tack until the day she died. In fact, if she’d stayed off the roof of the barn when it was raining she’d probably have made it to one hundred.”

Mia and I exchanged looks.

“But that’s a story for another day,” Mary said, making a dismissive gesture with one hand. She flipped several pages in the album. “That’s your grandmother, Mia.”

Mia and I both leaned in for a closer look. Meredith Janes looked to be about sixteen in the photograph. She reminded me of Simon. She had the same challenge in her dark eyes.

“She was so beautiful,” Mia said softly.

“Inside and out,” Mary agreed.

We spent the next few minutes looking at the rest of the photos. There were several more of Meredith and one of Mary in a bathing suit with one hand on her hip and the other behind her head in a bathing beauty pose.

“Wow! Look at those legs,” I said admiringly. Harrison would have said Mary had legs up to her neck. In fact I recalled him using those exact words about her once.

“I’ve always been told they’re my best feature,” Mary said with a sly smile. She pulled an envelope out of her sweater pocket and handed it to Mia. “I made copies of the pictures of your grandmother. I thought you’d like to have them.”

“Thank you,” Mia said, her voice suddenly husky with emotion. She turned to me, both hands holding the envelope. “I’m just going to put these upstairs and then I’ll get started on the shelving.”

I nodded. “That’s fine.” I watched Mia head up the stairs. Then I turned to Mary. “That was really nice of you,” I said.

“I’m sorry she never got to know Merry. She really was special.”

“She must have been,” I agreed, “if she was friends with you.”

“You’re really shoveling it today,” Mary said, waving away my words with one hand, even as she was smiling at me.

About quarter to five, Victor Janes came into the building. I was dealing with a balky keyboard in our computer area. He stopped at the circulation desk to speak to Mia and I could see from her body language that she was uncomfortable. I got up and joined them.

“Hello, Victor,” I said.

He turned to me with a smile that seemed a little forced. “Good afternoon, Kathleen,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m well, thank you. Could I help you find something specific?” I asked in my best friendly, helpful-librarian tone.

“I was hoping that Mia could help me,” he said.

I felt a surge of annoyance followed by a twinge of guilt. I didn’t like the man. Maggie would have said his energy was off and I felt the same way. On the other hand, I felt guilty for feeling that way about someone who had been fighting a serious illness.

Mia was so tense her shoulders were hunched up to her chin and Mary was openly looking daggers at Victor from across the room.

“I need Mia here,” I said. “But I can help you with whatever you’re looking for.”

Victor hesitated, then he nodded. “Thank you, Kathleen. I was wondering what you could recommend for some escapist reading. I like mysteries with some kind of historical connection.”

“I can think of several series you might like,” I said.

He glanced at Mia again. “I hope we can spend some time together before I leave.”

“School takes up a lot of my time, Uncle Victor,” Mia said in a tight voice.

I led Victor over to the shelves and showed him two different authors’ books. He chose one but since he didn’t even look at the back cover or flip through the pages I doubted that he’d really come for reading material. He seemed desperate to connect with what family he had left, which was understandable given that he’d just lost his only brother.

I wanted to tell him not to try so hard, but it wasn’t any of my business.

It wasn’t any of Mary’s business, either, but that didn’t stop her. Mia was gone when we got back to the checkout desk. Mary took the book and Victor’s temporary card and checked the book out for him.

“Victor, let the child be,” she said when she handed them back to him.

I shot her a warning look, which she ignored.

“She’s my niece, Mary,” he said.

“That you’ve seen how many times in the last seventeen and a half years?”

“And you know who prevented that.”

She nodded. “I know whose actions did.”

His jaw muscles tightened. He took a deep breath and let it out and then swallowed down whatever had been his first impulse to say. “I can’t argue that with that, Mary,” he said. “But I don’t exactly have a lot of time to right all the wrongs.”

Mary’s expression softened. “Don’t push, Victor,” she said. “It’s not going to get you anywhere.” She looked at me then. “I’m just going to straighten up the magazines.” She came around the desk and headed across the room.

Victor looked at me. “I’m sorry, Kathleen,” he said. “My family is . . . messy.”

“All families are messy,” I said.

“You’ve probably heard that I have some time constraints as far as fixing my relationships.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t have enough time to fix things with my brother,” he continued. “I knew that could happen but I never thought Leo would be the one who would end up dead.” He gave his head a shake and held up the book. “Thank you for your help,” he said, and with that he made his way to the front doors.

Mary must have been watching for Victor to leave. She came back to the desk. “I owe you an apology, Kathleen,” she said.

“If you’re trying to apologize for looking out for Mia you’re wasting your time,” I said, “because there’s nothing to apologize for.”

She smiled and patted my arm. “I like you,” she said. She looked over at the front doors. “I don’t like Victor. I’m sorry he’s sick and I’m sorry he lost his brother but I can’t pretend I like him.”

“Were you ever friends?” I asked. “I mean when you were kids?”

She gave a snort of disgust. “No. To use an expression of my mother’s since we were talking about her, he’s always been as useless as a bag of smoke.”

“But you and Leo were friends.”

Mary nodded and brushed a bit of lint off the front of her sweater.

“You know, we actually went out for a bit. Nothing came of it and I’m glad we were able to stay friends because we were much better friends than anything romantic.”

I knew I could beat around the bush to try to find out what I wanted to know or I could just ask. It seemed easier to do the latter.

“Did Leo tell you that he was looking into his wife’s death?” I asked.

Mary wasn’t one for prevaricating, either. “Yes,” she said. She narrowed her eyes. “How did you find out? Did Simon tell you?”

I nodded. “Do you know what happened that made Leo think there was something to find?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. He said time has a way of catching up with you sometimes. I asked him what the heck did that mean? He laughed and said, ‘You might say I came upon a key fact that changed everything.’ That’s all he’d say.”

The phone rang then and she leaned over the counter to answer it.

Based on what he’d told Mary, Leo had found some new piece of information, something that had changed his opinion about the accident that killed his estranged wife. But how had he found that piece of information? And more important, what was it?