Cat Trick

8

At the library, I took Owen straight up to my office. He climbed out of the bag onto my desk, shook himself and gave me a pointed look. I knew what he was looking for.

“Ruby already gave you a treat,” I said, trying to keep my tone stern. “And after what you did, you should be on bread and water.”

Defiantly, he pawed at the top of my desk. So he was going to try righteous indignation instead of cute and adorable.

“Just because you might, might have found some kind of clue doesn’t mean you weren’t wrong,” I said, lowering my voice because I didn’t want Mary or Susan to come in and hear me arguing with a cat.

Owen stared at me. I glared back at him. “You drive me crazy sometimes,” I said after a couple of minutes of the eyeball-to-eyeball routine. I sat on the edge of the desk, and he came and put his front paws on my lap. I stroked the top of his head. “I’m serious,” I said. “What if someone had seen you disappear? How would I have explained that to Marcus?”

Owen lifted a paw and swatted one of the buttons on my sweater.

“That did look like it could have been a button you dug up,” I said. “Doesn’t mean it was dropped by whoever killed Mike Glazer.”

Owen made a low murp. “I know,” I said, scratching behind his right ear. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t, either.” I leaned over so my face was inches from Owen’s soft gray one. “You’re making it really hard to stay out of Marcus’s case, you know.”

I gave Owen some water, a couple of sardine crackers and an emphatic warning not to leave my office. Then I locked the door for good measure. I was back downstairs just as Susan and Mary arrived. I let them in and followed them up to the staff room. “Oh, before I forget, Owen is in my office,” I said.

Susan pushed her glasses up her nose. “Because?” she prompted.

“Because he was over posing for Ruby. She’s going to paint him. It’s for the Cat People fund-raiser.”

“I thought she was painting Hercules,” Mary said, pouring water into the coffeemaker.

“She’s doing both of them.” I got the coffee out of the cupboard and handed it to her.

“That’s really nice,” Susan said, shrugging off her jacket and pulling on a cropped black cardigan. She stopped with one arm half in a sleeve. “I have chicken salad, if he’s hungry. He probably wouldn’t like the arugula or the black olives, but the chicken isn’t too spicy.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Owen’s fine. Ruby had some organic fish crackers for him.” I didn’t bother telling her I’d just recently learned that Owen apparently loved black olives.

Susan and I spent most of the morning unpacking two boxes of books that had been donated to the library—a mix of children’s picture books, graphic novels and reference books, including a huge atlas and a book of star charts—and entering them into our system. I called Abigail at home to talk about plans for a Halloween puppet show and installed a new math game on the two computers we kept reserved for kids.

As far as I could tell, Owen spent the morning napping in the sunshine on my desk chair. That’s where I found him after we’d closed down the library at one o’clock. I knew that didn’t mean he hadn’t nosed all over my office, just that he hadn’t left any obvious evidence. There was a good chance that sometime next week I’d find a clump of hair behind a book or in one of my desk drawers. I was glad that we closed early on Saturday. How much mischief would he have been able to get into if he’d spent the whole day alone in my office?

Hercules was waiting in the porch when we got home. He looked from me to Owen, wondering, maybe, if we’d been off somewhere having fun while he was stuck at home.

“If you’re wondering why I didn’t bring your brother back earlier, it’s because he decided it was a better idea to go digging around in a crime scene,” I said.

Herc murped at Owen, who murped back. I wondered what they were talking about. Were they discussing the button or whatever it was Owen had uncovered? Or were they plotting how to get me to open a can of sardines?

For lunch, I heated the last of the chicken soup I’d made earlier in the week with my Crock-Pot. Hercules trailed me, making little rumbles and meows from time to time. Every once in a while, he’d stop and look expectantly at me and I’d say, “Really?” or “I understand.”

I spent the afternoon doing laundry and cleaning the house. Hercules and I had recently discovered Nickelback. It turned out Owen didn’t like Chad Kroeger any more than he liked Barry Manilow. We didn’t even get to the chorus of “Never Gonna Be Alone” before Owen streaked through the kitchen like Boris the dog was on his tail, vaulting the mop in his haste to get to the porch door and the backyard.

It took me a ridiculously long time to get dressed and do my hair for supper with Marcus. I stood in front of the closet door with Owen on one side and Hercules on the other, pulling out things and putting them back on the rod. Finally, I settled on jeans and a lavender shirt my sister, Sara, had convinced me to buy when I was back in Boston. Neither cat yowled or hid under the bed, so I figured I looked okay.

I double-checked to make sure there was fresh water in the boys’ dishes and a clean litter box downstairs. “I’m leaving,” I called as I pulled on my jacket. Hercules poked his head around the living room doorway. “Don’t wait up,” I told him, waggling my eyebrows. That got no reaction.

After a moment, Owen’s gray tabby head appeared on the other side of the doorway. “Stay off the footstool,” I reminded him. I knew he wouldn’t.

It was a beautiful evening, with just a bit of a chill in the air, a reminder that fall was here. The leaves were starting to turn and I could see splashes of gold and red in the trees around Marcus’s little house.

I knocked on the back door, and after a moment he called, “Come in, Kathleen.”

I stepped into the kitchen and immediately smelled chocolate. That was a good sign. I breathed in deeply. I could also catch the scent of oranges and something spicy as well. Marcus was at the counter, slicing a zucchini.

“Hi.” He smiled at me over his shoulder. He was wearing a denim shirt and jeans. The hair at the nape of his neck was just a little damp.

“Hi,” I said, suddenly feeling a little awkward. “It smells wonderful in here.”

He set down the knife. “That’s probably Eric’s pudding cake.”

I took off my jacket and hung it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “You made Eric’s chocolate pudding cake?” I asked.

Marcus shook his head. “No. Eric made Eric’s chocolate pudding cake. I just brought it home and stuck it in the oven.” He reached for the knife again. “Are you hungry? I can start cooking in about five minutes.”

I nodded. “Great. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I have it all under control,” he said, turning back to the counter. “Have a seat.”

I pulled out a chair and sat down while he made short work of the rest of the zucchini. “Marcus, could we talk about this morning and get that out of the way?” I asked. It wasn’t exactly the Sword of Damocles, but I didn’t want Owen’s sleuthing hanging over us all evening.

“Sure,” he said, wiping his hands and turning around.

“I’m sorry that Owen trespassed on your crime scene.”

Marcus leaned back against the edge of the counter, braced his hands on either side of his body and smiled at me. “Kathleen, I do know you didn’t send Owen into the tent on purpose.”

No, I hadn’t sent Owen across the street, but I was certain he’d headed for the tent deliberately. Just the same way that he’d prowled through a pile of recycling when Gregor Easton had been killed. And discovered a puzzle box and a piece of paper—hidden in a stack of cartons at River Arts—that turned out to be the key to the scam that artist Jaeger Merrill had been running. Both Owen and Hercules seemed to have a nose for sleuthing.

“Maybe I could teach Owen to at least bring you a cup of coffee if he’s going to stick his whiskers in your case,” I said, trying to keep my tone light.

“I think I’d rather have coffee with you,” Marcus said.

His deep blue eyes met mine, and for a moment what I’d been going to say next fell right out of my head. If the timer on his stove hadn’t started buzzing just then, I think I would have just kept staring at him.

“I have to check dessert,” Marcus said, gesturing in the direction of the oven with his eyes still glued to my face.

Was it my imagination, or was he flustered, too?

I waited while he looked at Eric’s pudding cake and adjusted the oven temperature before I said anything else. I liked watching him move, and it took me that long to get my train of thought back on the rails.

“Do you think that button Owen found had anything to do with Mike Glazer’s killer?” I asked finally. “And yes, I know it doesn’t sound like I’m staying out of things.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he said, turning the heat on under the wok that was sitting on one of the stove’s front burners.

“Would you believe I’m only asking because Owen wants to know?”

“Given that Owen isn’t like any other cat I’ve ever been around . . .” He shook his head and laughed. Then his expression grew serious. “What makes you think someone killed Mike Glazer?”

“The petechiae—those pinpoints of bleeding under his skin. I saw them when I checked to see if he was still alive. I think he was asphyxiated somehow.”

“You’re really observant.”

Maybe we really had changed our past pattern. I frowned at him. “No, you see, that wasn’t your line. You were supposed to say, ‘Stay out of my case, Kathleen.’” I made my voice low and gruff and my expression stern.

“I do not look like that, and I don’t sound like that, either.” He frowned. I wasn’t sure if the expression was meant for me or the wok.

I leaned back in the chair and laced my fingers over my middle. “Yes, you do,” I said.

He dumped a plate of chicken into the wok. It sizzled as it hit the hot oil. I waited.

Finally, he nodded. “We’re not going to be able to keep it quiet much longer. You’re right. It doesn’t look like Mike Glazer’s death was an accident. For now we’re just calling it suspicious.”

“Does that mean the whole pitch to Legacy will be off again?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

I watched him cook for a couple of minutes. I knew how hard Liam and Maggie and a lot of other people in town had worked to make the food tasting and art show come together. If Legacy did decide to base a fall tour package around Mayville Heights, it could be very good for the local economy. But would they really want to bring their clients to a place where one of their partners had been murdered? I didn’t think so.

“I don’t suppose you could figure out who killed Mike Glazer and prove that it was no one from Mayville Heights in, say, the next forty-eight hours?” I asked.

He shot me an amused look. “Sorry,” he said, pouring a small dish of sauce over the chicken and vegetables in the wok. “It doesn’t quite work that way. The investigation’s just getting started.”

“Owen already found a clue for you,” I teased. “That button.”

“I didn’t say that was a clue,” he countered. “I didn’t even say it was a button.”

“But it was.” The conversation was beginning to feel a little like a volleyball match. Every time I spiked, Marcus managed a return.

“Okay, let’s say it was a button your cat found—for the sake of argument. That doesn’t mean it came from something the killer was wearing. Half the town has been down on the Riverwalk in the past few days, including both of us.” He drained a pot of noodles with one smooth, fast motion and used a long pair of chopsticks to divide them between two blue china bowls before moving back to the stove.

“I didn’t lose a button,” I said. “You’re welcome to check my jacket. And there’s a pretty good chance the one Owen found is either vintage or handmade. It definitely wasn’t mass-produced plastic.”

Marcus’s eyebrows went up. “Owen told you that?”

Orange and spices tickled my nose as he set one of the blue bowls in front of me. I picked up the set of black lacquer chopsticks at my place. “Didn’t you know? I speak cat.”

He slid into the chair opposite me and reached for his own chopsticks. “You know, I half believe you,” he said. “I’ve always wondered why you seem to be able to communicate with Lucy. She has some kind of rapport with you that she doesn’t have with any of the other volunteers who feed the cats out there.”

“Out there” was Wisteria Hill. There was a colony of feral cats that called the old carriage house on the estate home. Lucy, a little calico, was the undisputed leader of the group, and we did have some kind of connection I couldn’t explain. When I’d asked Roma what she thought the reason was, she’d just shrugged and said simply, “She likes you.”

“That rapport might just be because she thinks I smell like sardines,” I said. “I do make a lot of stinky crackers for the boys.”

“Somehow, I don’t think it’s the sardines,” Marcus said.

I didn’t think it was the sardines, either. I couldn’t say it to Marcus or Roma, but I sometimes wondered if Lucy, like Herc and Owen, had some kind of “unique” ability that I just hadn’t seen yet and that was why she responded to me. I’d always felt that the boys had chosen me, not the other way around, and like Lucy, they were Wisteria Hill cats. Maybe I was some kind of magnet for cats with paranormal abilities.

Okay, that definitely wasn’t the kind of thought I could share with Roma or Marcus. “This is good,” I said, gesturing to my dish.

“Thank you,” he said.

Dang, he was cute when he smiled. Plus he could cook and fix rocking chairs and he had his own mini library in the spare bedroom. All of a sudden I couldn’t remember any of the reasons I’d always insisted to Maggie and Roma that Marcus and I were completely wrong for each other.

This was either a very good thing or a very bad one.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said, his tone just a tad too casual. “Why do you think that button is either old or was handmade?”

I shook my head and refocused my attention. “The hypothetical button?” I asked.

A bit of color flushed his cheeks. “Okay, you got me,” he said. “It was a button Owen found, but that stays between us.”

I nodded and scooped more noodles from my bowl. “I only got a quick look at it, but from what I saw, it didn’t look like a plastic button. I think it might have been metal, probably brass, which suggests something old or at least something not mass-produced. And the design—square center and sloped sides—is very old-style.”

Marcus looked at me, clearly skeptical. “You got all that from a ‘quick look’?”

I felt my own face warming now. “You said I was observant. I guess I am. It probably comes from living with two actors. My mother and father notice everything, every detail, every nuance about people and situations. That’s why they’ve both always been good at creating characters and it’s probably why my mother is developing a reputation as an excellent director.” I didn’t add that my parents’ keen powers of observation meant that at any given time they might be “living” their characters as well.

I snared a half-moon of zucchini with my chopsticks. “And I know a little about a lot of things. That’s just part of being a librarian.”

“Why did you decide to be a librarian and not an actor?” Marcus asked. “Or something else artistic? Your brother’s a musician, right?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh, and Sara is a filmmaker and a makeup artist. She’s shooting and directing Ethan’s band’s first video.”

“So why aren’t you on stage or behind a camera?”

“Short answer: I have no talent.”

He slowly shook his head. “I don’t think so. What’s the long answer?”

The conversation had taken a sharp detour away from the Glazer case, but that was okay. There wasn’t anything else I wanted to know. At least, right now there wasn’t.

“The long answer.” I frowned at the ceiling, trying to find the right words to explain. “Well, I didn’t exactly have the white-picket-fence childhood. My mother and father performed in theaters all up and down the East Coast when I was a kid and even for a while when Ethan and Sara were little. Big elaborate theaters with live orchestras and balcony boxes and little rinky-dink places that seated only fifty people above a bakery where everyone went for sticky buns during intermission.”

“You’re kidding.”

I laughed. “No, I’m not. And I’m not saying it was a terrible childhood, because it wasn’t, but it sure wasn’t conventional.”

Marcus pushed his empty bowl away and leaned back in his chair. “So you wanted ‘conventional’?” he said.

“I wanted normal. Or what I thought of as normal.”

“Mayville Heights is your idea of normal?” he said, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

“Compared to how I grew up? Oh, yeah.” I twisted the last three noodles in my dish around one chopstick and ate them. “Except for the fifteen months my parents were divorced, I always had both of them in the same house. But sometimes I was living with Lady Macbeth and Banquo, and sometimes it was Adelaide and Nathan Detroit. I wanted parents who went to the office and came home and made meat loaf and mashed potatoes for dinner, not a mother and father who staged Act One of Les Misérables in the dining room.” I gave a half shrug. “The acoustics were better than the living room.”

“Of course,” he said as he got up and collected our dishes.

“Everywhere we lived, I always managed to find a library and my favorite books. When I found out I could actually work in one, well, I never thought of doing anything else.” I tucked one leg up under me as Marcus took the pudding cake out of the oven. “And there probably was a little rebelliousness in the decision.”

“Instead of running off to join the circus, you ran off to join the library.”

“Pretty much.” I watched him spoon dessert into two more blue bowls. He set one in front of me, and I closed my eyes for a moment and inhaled the rich chocolate scent. When I opened them again, he was watching me and smiling.

“So what about you?” I asked, picking up my spoon.

“What do you mean?”

I had to make a little moan of pleasure at the taste of the first mouthful before I could answer. “Why did you become a police officer?” I waved my spoon at him. “And I want to hear the long answer.”

He pulled a hand back through his dark hair. “I don’t know if there is a long answer. A police officer is what I always wanted to be except for the summer I was five when I wanted to drive the ice cream truck.”

“Who wouldn’t?” I mumbled around a mouthful of cake and sauce.

“I have been told I have an overdeveloped sense of right and wrong,” he said. “Maybe that’s part of it.”

“I don’t think I used the word ‘overdeveloped,’” I said.

“It was implied,” he said dryly.

We ate in silence for another minute or so. Then Marcus spoke again. “Probably my father had something to do with it as well.”

“Was your father a police officer?”

He shook his head. “No. But he was a very black-and-white kind of person.” He made a chopping motion in the air with one hand to emphasize the words. “And very focused on the facts. Not really a people person.”

“You’re a people person,” I said, trying to decide if it would be rude to lick sauce off the back of my spoon.

Marcus was already on his feet to get me a second helping, which I thought about turning down for maybe a millisecond. “You’re just saying that so you can have seconds,” he said.

“No, I’m not,” I said, smiling a thank-you at him. “Yes, I sometimes think you get too caught up in the facts and forget about the feelings involved, but people like you. Maggie, Roma, Rebecca, Oren—they like you and they respect what you do.” I ate another bite of pudding. “And the cats like you—not just my two; look at Desmond over at Roma’s clinic. Even Lucy will come closer to you than she does to anyone else besides me.”

He grinned. “Kathleen, cats are not people.”

“I wouldn’t say that out loud around Owen or Hercules,” I warned. “They think they’re people.”

His grin just got wider.

He pointed in the direction of the living room then. “Don’t let me forget. I have something I want to show you.”

“Do I get a hint?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No.”

I couldn’t coax even the tiniest clue out of him. He sat there with just the ghost of a smile on his face, slowly—on purpose, I was certain—finishing his dessert and sipping his coffee.

Finally, he pushed his chair back and stood up. “Are you finished?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yes.”

He led me down to the living room. A small cardboard box was sitting on the coffee table.

“Go ahead,” he urged. “Take a look.”

I lifted one flap of the carton and peeked inside. Then I turned my head to grin at him. “Where did you get these?” The box was about two-thirds filled with vintage Batman comic books from the early 1970s.

“One of the guys at the station found them in the attic of the house he just bought. He was going to toss them.”

I shook my head. “These are pop culture. These are art. I’m so glad you saved them.” I pointed to the comic on top of the pile. “That’s Wail of the Ghost Bride, and it looks to be in decent shape. Who knows what else is in there?”

“Why don’t you go through them and find out?”

“You don’t mind?”

He was sitting on the edge of the blue corduroy sofa, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. “Kathleen, they’re yours.”

For a moment I’m sure my mouth gaped like a fish that had jumped too high and to its surprise ended up on the shoreline instead of in the water again. “Mine?” I finally said.

“You’re the Batman fan,” he said.

I was. In fact, Owen and I had been watching episodes of the old TV show online. I’d discovered Batman comics—it was still hard for me to think of them as graphic novels—the summer I was twelve and my parents were performing in a partially converted theater in New Hampshire. Emphasis on “partially.”

One of the stagehands had found a pile of Batman comic books mixed in with a stash of old National Geographics and some girlie magazines. In its previous incarnations, the theater had been a dentist’s office and a funeral parlor, and sometimes I wondered just whose waiting room the magazines had come from.

“I can’t take these,” I said, putting one hand on the top of the box. “Some of these issues could be worth money.”

“I told Kevin that, but he didn’t care, probably because he was getting the barbecue.”

I waved a hand in his face. “Wait a second. What barbecue?”

“The barbecue I got from Eric,” he said. “It was one of the ones he used at the party to celebrate the library’s centennial. Remember?”

I sank down onto the opposite end of the couch from where Marcus was sitting. “No,” I said. I shook my head. “I mean, yes, I remember the party, but I didn’t know you ended up with a barbecue.”

Marcus nodded. “Uh-huh. Eric wanted a utility trailer that he could tow with his van, so we traded.”

“But there’s a barbecue out on your deck,” I said, gesturing in the direction of the backyard.

“I know.”

We were already way off track, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from asking. “Why did you trade for a barbecue with Eric when you didn’t need a barbecue?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t need a utility trailer, either.”

I knew where this was going. “Because you already had one.”

“Right.”

Since I was already deeply confused, I decided to go for broke. “How did you end up with two utility trailers?”

“I had one that I’d built. The second one came from Burtis. It was smaller.”

I pushed a stray piece of hair off my face. “And Burtis got?”

“The blue bench that I got from you.”

The blue bench was something I’d trash picked and painted. And then discovered it was an inch too long for the space under the coat hooks in the kitchen.

Marcus gestured at the box. “So Batman is all yours.”

It was Let’s Make a Deal, Mayville Heights style.

I reached over and gave his arm a squeeze. “Thank you,” I said. “I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe you even remembered that I’d told you I was a Batman fan.” I reached over and took the top comic out of the carton. “I haven’t read any of these vintage Batman in . . . in a long time. They take me back to my geeky girl days.”

He leaned back against the cushions and crossed his arms over his chest. “I can’t picture you as ever having been geeky,” he said

“You’ll just have to use your imagination,” I told him, pulling the comic books a little closer.

“I can do that,” he said.

I ducked my head over the open box. I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear exactly what he might be imagining.

I spent maybe another five or ten minutes exclaiming over the stack of comics, holding up issues and giving Marcus a summary of their story lines. Then he poured us each another cup of coffee, and we went out onto the deck in the fading light. He sat in a slat-back wooden chair and propped his feet up on the railing while I took the swing, kicking off my shoes so I could curl my feet underneath me.

“This is so beautiful,” I said, looking out over the backyard, rimmed with trees. The leaves were already turning, and even in the half-light of dusk I could still see colors from amber to scarlet. “How long have you been here?”

“Three years this winter,” he said. “I liked the place the moment I saw it.” He sank a little lower in his chair. “You know, it’s kind of because of Desmond that I’m here.”

“Roma’s Desmond?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.”

Desmond was another Wisteria Hill cat. Marcus had found the cat, injured, by the side of the road and taken him to Roma’s clinic. She’d ended up having to treat both of them. Desmond wasn’t exactly social.

Curious, Roma had done a little exploring at the old estate and found the feral cat colony. Marcus had been her first volunteer, although I wasn’t sure if he’d actually volunteered or if he’d been conscripted. Oddly, the cat seemed to like the clinic, so Roma had kept him. Desmond was long and lean with sleek black fur and there was something just a little intimidating about his presence. He was missing one eye and half an ear, which only made him seem more imposing.

I made a hurry-up motion with one hand. “Tell me,” I said.

“There isn’t that much to tell,” he said, setting his mug up on the railing. “I found Desmond. I took him to the clinic, and that’s when I met Roma for the first time. I knew she’d taken over the practice when Joe Ross retired. A couple of days later, I went back to see how Desmond was doing and we started talking. She told me that Joe had bought a sailboat and was planning to sail around the world so he was selling his house. I drove past on my way home and made him an offer in the morning.”

He reached over and patted one of the railing’s wooden spindles. “Most of the work has been outside so far. The yard was kind of overgrown. The end wall of the garage had a tilt that had to be fixed. And I built the deck.”

“You built this?”

He nodded. “With a lot of help from Harry Taylor.” He laughed. “Don’t worry. Harry put the swing together, so you’re safe.”

“I wasn’t worried,” I said, folding my hands around my cup. He could cook. He could build things. He smelled good. I took a sip of my coffee. I needed to think about something else.

“So what’s next?” I asked to distract myself from thinking about how great Marcus smelled.

“The attic,” he said at once. “There are boxes up there from whoever owned the house before Joe bought it. I have no idea what’s in them or who they might belong to.”

“A mystery,” I said. “I like those.”

“I’ve noticed that,” he said with a laugh.

We talked about his plans for the house for a while. I set my mug down on the wide deck boards and rubbed my left arm.

“Your wrist hurts,” Marcus said, dropping his feet and straightening up in the chair.

“A little bit,” I said. “I think we’re going to get some rain.” I’d broken my left wrist just over a year ago, and since then I’d become pretty good at predicting the weather based on how it felt.

I stretched and slid my feet back into my shoes. “I should get going. Owen could have Fred the Funky Chicken parts all over the kitchen by now.”

Marcus got the box of comic books and carried it out to the truck for me. “Thank you for those,” I said, tipping my head toward the carton on the passenger seat. “And for dinner. Will you come and have dinner with me—and the fur balls? Maybe next week?”

“I’d like that,” he said. “I’ll check my schedule and let you know.”

He smiled, and I thought about standing on my tiptoes, grabbing the collar of his shirt and pulling him down for a kiss. While I was thinking about it—and having a little internal debate with myself—he leaned down and kissed me.

His mouth was warm, his lips were soft and for a second—which was about how long the kiss lasted—I forgot how to breathe. Aside from kissing my dad on the cheek and Ethan on the top of his head—mostly because it bugged the heck out of him—I hadn’t kissed a man since Andrew. Andrew whom I’d thought I’d marry until we had a fight and he went on a two-week fishing trip and came back married to someone else.

I’d forgotten how much I liked kissing.

Marcus trailed one hand along my shoulder and then he took a step backward. “Good night, Kathleen,” he said.

“Good night, Marcus,” I said.

I got in the truck, started it and concentrated on backing slowly and carefully out of the driveway. Marcus raised a hand, and I did the same as I drove away. I didn’t think at all about backing him up against the door of the truck and kissing him until he was the one who couldn’t breathe.

No, I didn’t.

Hercules and Owen were sitting by the back door when I stepped into the kitchen, almost as though they’d been waiting for me to come home.

“Hello. How was your evening?” I said.

They exchanged glances and then looked at me, cocking their heads to the left at the same time, like the movement had been choreographed. They trailed me as I hung up my jacket and carried the box of comic books into the living room. I sat down in the big chair and set the comics on the footstool.

Herc narrowed his green eyes and studied the cardboard carton. I patted my lap. “Come up,” I said. “You know you want to.” He jumped up onto my lap and stepped carefully onto the end of the footstool. Then he stood on his back legs so he could poke his nose inside the box.

“Batman,” I said.

The furry black-and-white face surfaced, and it looked like he was frowning. “No,” I said. “Batman, not bat like the one who chased you across the backyard.” He made a small sound and his head disappeared back under the cardboard flap.

Owen had run out of patience by then. He didn’t wait for an invitation. He launched himself onto my lap, then leaned over and gave the carton a poke with one paw. Hercules meowed his annoyance, his head still inside.

“Stop that,” I said sternly to Owen.

He gave a snippy meow of his own; then he turned around, settled himself and stared at me.

“What do you want?” I asked. “A full rundown of my evening?”

“Rroww,” he rumbled.

“You’re worse than Maggie,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. “Okay, Marcus made stir-fried chicken with noodles. It was very good.”

Owen waited a moment, then pawed at my left leg. Cat for “And then what?”

“We had Eric’s chocolate pudding cake for dessert.”

He licked his lips, but his gaze didn’t move from my face.

I scratched behind his ears and he started to purr. I leaned a little closer. “And you were right. That was a button you dug up this morning.” He ducked his head for a moment, giving me a sideways glance with one eye. “Yes, I know, modesty prevents you from saying, ‘I told you so.’”

I yawned. “Then Marcus gave me that box of comic books.” I gave the cats a brief summary of all the deals that had led to Marcus ending up with the old Batman comics. Neither one seemed very interested.

“And that was pretty much it.” I linked my fingers together and stretched my arms out in front of me. “Oh, and he kissed me.”

Owen had just turned to take another look at what his brother was doing. He swung around and almost fell off my lap. Hercules jerked his head out of the box so quickly he banged it on the cardboard flap. Clearly they knew what the word “kissed” meant.

“Don’t get too excited,” I told them. “It was just one kiss.”

The cats exchanged a look then, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have almost thought they seemed pleased.