A Tale Оf Two Kitties

chapter 17

“I’m sorry, Victor, the library is closed,” I said. I looked down for Owen but he had disappeared.

Literally.

“Yes, I know,” Victor said.

I wrapped my fingers around my keys and began to move toward the door, making a wide path around him. “It’s not a problem. I can let you out.”

It took about three steps for him to plant himself in front of me. “Don’t waste your time and mine, Kathleen,” he said. “I saw you. You went through the garbage cans.”

I didn’t see any point in keeping up the pretense. “You killed Leo,” I said. “You use your right hand but you’re ambidextrous like he was. You used your left hand when you hit him even though most of the time you do things right-handed.”

Victor laughed. It was a harsh sound in the empty library. He looked exactly like his brother but there was no way anyone who had met Leo could confuse the two.

“So we’re going to play a game of Clue?” he said. “The killer was Uncle Victor in the foyer with a sculpture?”

“Yes, it was,” I said. The only thing I could think was to stall, to keep him talking. “How did you fake your alibi? You weren’t actually in that chat room.”

He gave me a smile that made the hairs come up on the back of my neck. “The wonders of modern technology. I have this slick little app that lets me connect with my computer even when I’m somewhere else, like now, for instance. Makes it look like I’m there when I’m not.”

“You had a second phone, a prepaid one that you got rid of.” I studied his face, looking for even a hint of remorse. I didn’t see any. “It wasn’t a coincidence that the battery on what was supposed to be your only phone overheated that exact day, was it?” I remembered what Avis had said about her old tablet: Heat isn’t good for rechargeable batteries.

Victor shrugged but didn’t say anything. It was as close to an admission as I was going to get.

“I don’t understand why you killed your own brother, though.”

“You can call it sibling rivalry.”

“You wanted his wife.” I moved my left leg a little to the side. Was Owen still next to me? No.

Victor smiled. It just made his face more ugly. “I had his wife.”

I shook my head. “No, you didn’t. Meredith was afraid of you, afraid enough that she was waiting for you to go out of town so she could get away from you. The night she died she was on her way home to her husband and her son. She didn’t want you.”

“Is this where I’m supposed to get angry and then you take advantage of my emotions to escape?”

“She was going to tell Leo what you’d done, how you’d stolen money from your own father. That’s why you killed her,” I said. I saw a flash of anger in his eyes.

“I didn’t kill Meredith,” he said emphatically. “I just wanted to talk to her. That’s all. I wanted her to pull over so I could talk to her. It’s not my fault that she wouldn’t slow down.”

“She found the key to your father’s strongbox,” I said. “She knew then what you’d done, what kind of person you really were. I’m guessing you almost caught her, so she dropped the key in an envelope and mailed it to Leo. She didn’t want you to find it on her. And she knew she could explain everything when she finally saw him. Except she never did.”

Victor took a deep breath and seemed to get his emotions under control again. “What I did was take what was mine. What I did was secure a future for the two of us. Which I could have made her understand if she’d just pulled the damn car over!”

“You must have wondered what happened to that key,” I said. “She didn’t have it on her. Then as the weeks went by you must have figured you were safe.” I gave him a smile I didn’t feel. “Then after all this time you saw the story about the mail found in the wall at the post office.”

There had been a small story about it on the evening news, which had been picked up by the Today show. “You realized Meredith could have mailed the key to Leo and, if he got it, he’d know what you did—everything you did. That’s why you came here. Not to reconcile with your brother. You came to see what he knew.”

“He changed,” Victor said, and for the briefest moment I thought I saw something—maybe a flash of regret—but it was gone and his face hardened again. He pulled a hand over the back of his neck. “He never used to be able to keep a secret. But he didn’t let on that he’d hired someone to look into Meredith’s accident. I thought . . . I thought we were actually going to be brothers.” It was hard to miss the bitterness in his voice.

“Leo was trying,” I said. “He invited you to come. He was urging Simon and Mia to give you a chance.”

“He couldn’t leave the past where it belonged.”

“You mean that key.” I glanced down at the floor. There was still no sign of Owen. “Your brother knew what it was for.”

Victor nodded. “But he didn’t know who’d sent it. Not at first. Then he looked at the damn postmark.”

“And then he knew who had mailed the key. And when.”

“Why couldn’t he just let it be?” Anger gave his voice a hard edge. “Meredith’s death was an accident and I didn’t take anything from my father’s strongbox that shouldn’t have been mine.”

He’d found a way to rationalize everything.

“What happened?” I asked. “I know you didn’t go over there intending to kill Leo.”

“I didn’t.” His jaw was tight, teeth clenched. “He told me that he was going to give me a choice. I could turn myself in to the police or he’d tell them what he knew.” Victor gave me a long, searching look. “Do you have any siblings, Kathleen?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “A brother and sister.”

“Would you sell them out? Would you put them in jail?”

“Neither one of them would ever put me in the position to have to even think about that,” I said. I made a mental promise that when I got out of this I was going to call both Sara and Ethan and tell them just how much I loved them. I imagined Ethan laughing and saying, “Yeah, yeah, big sister. I love you, too.”

“Aren’t you perfect,” Victor said.

“No. I’m not,” I said. “But I can promise you I would have made a different choice. And you still have the chance to make a different one now.”

“You aren’t leaving me any reasonable choice. Neither did Leo. I’m not going to jail. Leo backed me into a corner. I had to kill him. Don’t think I won’t kill you.”

I heard a strangled sound behind me, like a half-choked-off sob. I turned to find Mia standing there. One hand was pressed over her mouth as tears ran down her face.

Victor was faster than I was. Even as I started to say, “Run,” he grabbed her shoulder, yanked her body against his chest and snaked his arm around her neck.

I held up my hands. “Let her go,” I said. “You have me. You don’t need her.” I kept my eyes locked on Mia, trying to somehow let her know that we would get out of this. At the same time I took a couple of steps closer to them while I had the chance.

“Stop!” Victor said sharply.

I stopped moving. “Okay.” I dropped my hands to my sides.

There was a large atlas of the world on the low shelf next to me and a wire rack of paperbacks level with my shoulder by the end. Behind Victor and Mia was a higher set of shelves. I noticed the end book on the shelf just above his head was moving. Now I knew where Owen was. And now I had a plan. All I needed was for Mia to move the right way when the time came, away from Victor, away from me and toward the door.

On the end of the low shelf beside me I caught a glimpse of a fire-safety poster and I knew what to do.

“Give me your cell phone,” Victor said.

“Why?” I asked, trying to keep my tone even and neutral. At the same time I folded one arm across my midsection and laid my index finger against the arm of my sweater.

One.

Victor tightened his arm around Mia’s neck. I added my middle finger.

Two.

“You don’t need to hurt Mia,” I said.

“Then give me the damn phone.” I hoped Mia had noticed. I hoped she knew something was about to happen.

“All right,” I said. And my ring finger.

Three.

I made a movement as though I was going to give him my phone, then I grabbed the wire book stand and swung it at him. At the same time I yelled, “Stop! Drop! And roll!” as loudly as I could.

The words echoed around the library. Mia went limp, dropping out of Victor’s grasp onto the floor, where she rolled to the left just the way she had when we’d practiced with the kids. At the same time Owen materialized and launched himself onto Victor’s back, digging in with four sets of claws. It was all the distraction I needed.

I picked up the heavy atlas and swung it with every ounce of strength I had. It made very satisfying contact with the side of Victor Janes’s head, a little karmic justice. His eyes rolled back and he fell backward onto the floor.

“Run!” I yelled to Mia, pushing her toward the front entrance. Then I grabbed Owen and ran after her.