Faux Paw: A Magical Cats Mystery

13

Gavin asked me more about my family on the drive back. I noticed that when I tried to steer the conversation into his personal life he’d deftly move it back to me, the way he had when I questioned him about being rebellious.

I hadn’t told him about my conversation with Marcus. When we turned off the highway he glanced at me. “Where can I drop you?” he asked.

“The library, please,” I said. “

Gavin nodded as the car hugged the curve of the exit ramp. “I’ll come with you. I did promise your detective I’d report in.”

In the parking lot of the library I recognized the car Hope and Marcus used when they worked together. Gavin followed me up the steps to the building. The first set of doors was unlocked and the old-fashioned wrought-iron security gates were also open. I tapped on the inside door and after a moment Hope came to let me in.

“Hi,” she said. “Marcus said you were on your way. You made good time.”

“And stuck to the speed limit, Detective,” Gavin said. “More or less.” His eyebrows went up and a small smile played on his face.

Hope rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Why do I think it was less rather than more?”

Marcus was standing by the circulation desk. He smiled as he caught sight of me and I couldn’t help smiling back as I walked over to him. Curtis Holt was doing a circuit of the exhibit area, checking the windows—part of his security guard duties, I guessed.

“Before you ask, we didn’t find out anything useful,” Gavin said.

I turned to look at him over my shoulder. “Yes, we did,” I said. I shifted my gaze to Hope and Marcus. “Julian McCrea told us that he hadn’t heard anything about anyone being interested in the Weston drawing, not before it was stolen and not since.”

“Do you think he was being honest with you?” Hope asked.

“I don’t think he had any reason to lie,” I said. I looked questioningly at Gavin.

“Big Jule doesn’t lie. He might split hairs or shade the truth, but he won’t tell an outright lie.”

Hope looked skeptical.

“He won’t,” Gavin repeated. “He went to Catholic school. He told Kathleen no one had approached him about acquiring the drawing. You can take that to the bank, for what it’s worth.”

“Every little piece is part of the puzzle.” Hope made a gesture like she was fitting two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together. “You never know which small piece will help you figure out the entire picture.”

“We found something, too,” Marcus said. There was a piece of paper on the checkout desk. He reached over and picked it up.

Gavin shot me a puzzled look. I gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

“Margo Walsh kept a date book,” Marcus continued.

I nodded slowly. “She kept everything in it. It was a small book with a maroon leather cover.” Like Maggie, Margo had kept a paper schedule instead of using her phone or computer.

“We found it today.”

Hope looked at me for a moment before looking back at Marcus. Did that mean anything? I wondered.

“So what does that mean?” Gavin asked, restlessly shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “Did Margo happen to make a note that someone wanted to kill her?”

Marcus opened the folded sheet of white paper, looked at whatever was written on it, then looked at Gavin. “No. But she did make a note about having lunch with you three weeks before you told us you’d met her for the first time.”

Gavin exhaled loudly and shrugged. “I should have guessed she’d write it down,” he said. “Margo wrote everything down.”

“Why did you lie to us?” Hope asked.

“Not because I killed her,” he said. “I was in the bar at the hotel. You know that. People saw me.” He looked from Hope to Marcus. Neither one of them said a word.

“You told me this was the first time you’d worked with Margo,” I said.

“It was,” Gavin said. “It just wasn’t the first time we’d met. I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you everything.”

“So stop playing games and tell us everything now,” Hope said.

He exhaled loudly. “Fine. Margo and I had lunch when the schedule for the exhibit was finalized.” His mouth moved like he was working on shaping his words before he spoke them. “She had big concerns about the artwork being out of a museum.”

“Why did you let everyone think you’d never met before?” Hope asked.

I glanced over at the stairs to the second floor of the building. Margo and I had been standing there when Gavin had walked into the library for the first time. I remembered her holding out her hand and saying, “Hello. You must be Gavin Solomon. I’m Margo Walsh.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Why did Margo pretend she didn’t know you?” I looked from Hope to Marcus. “I was here with her when Gavin arrived for our first meeting.” I turned to Gavin. “She introduced herself as though she’d never seen you before.”

“That’s because I asked her not to let on we’d already met.” He exhaled loudly and looked up at the ceiling. “When we met for lunch it was to go over the security details for the exhibit. The insurance company had certain requirements that had to be met. Margo . . . had some questions.” He dropped his head and looked at me. “The thing is, I work for ILG Security as a consultant, which means I can also work for other companies in the same capacity . . . as long as there isn’t a conflict of interest.”

“Which there was this time,” Marcus said.

“Who else were you working for?” I asked.

Gavin shifted restlessly again. “The insurance company.”

“You were working for the company that required the security and the one that was providing it.” Hope’s tone and her body language told me that she and Marcus had already figured out his conflict of interest.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Why on earth would Margo have gone along with keeping that a secret?”

Gavin swiped a hand across his face in exasperation. “Oh, c’mon, Kathleen. You worked with the woman. You know what she was like. She was dead set against any of the artwork being displayed anywhere other than a museum where she could control everything from the way the lights were angled to the alarm system. We could have had laser beams crisscrossing the room like a James Bond movie and she was still convinced someone was going to steal one of her precious drawings.”

“Someone did,” I said softly.

“And maybe she helped whoever it was,” he retorted. “She wanted to know a lot of the technical details on how the system worked. She said it was so she could keep moving things around and not set it off. I didn’t have any reason to think she wasn’t telling me the truth.” He pulled a hand over the back of his neck. “Maybe I was wrong.”

“Maybe,” Marcus said.

Gavin looked directly at him, his jaw clenched and tight lines around his mouth. “I didn’t kill her.”

Marcus came to stand next to me. “We should take this down to the station,” he said.

“Are you going to arrest me?”

“We just want to ask you a few more questions,” Hope said, her tone even and nonconfrontational.

Gavin looked directly at Marcus. “So go ahead and ask them. I don’t need a lawyer if that’s what you’re worried about. I have the right to remain silent and anything I say can be used against me. I get that.” His dark eyes flicked to me. “Kathleen, you’re my witness.” He held up both hands. “Ask your questions.”

“This is a bad idea,” I said softly. Hope shot Marcus a warning look.

He ignored both of us. “Before you worked for ILG Security, who did you work for?” he asked.

“Myself,” Gavin said. “I have a background in art and I’ve always been pretty good with electronics. People hired me to evaluate their security systems. It was pretty much a word-of-mouth business, but I can give you the contact information for some of my satisfied customers.”

A muscle twitched in Marcus’s cheek. “What about dissatisfied customers?”

Gavin smiled, although there wasn’t a lot of warmth in his expression. “There were none.”

“Ever been in any trouble with the police?”

The smile didn’t waver. “You wouldn’t ask the question unless you knew the answer. Yes. When I was a kid.” He emphasized the word “kid.”

He looked away from Marcus then, over to me. “I was fourteen. I broke in to a teacher’s house. I got probation and community service. I wore an orange vest that was two sizes too big for me and picked up garbage along the highway for six weeks including the hottest July on record.”

Gavin continued to focus his attention on me. “You’re the only one who doesn’t know the rest of the story, Kathleen, so here it is. I took a drawing from that teacher’s house. I guess that constitutes some kind of pattern.” He shrugged.

“Was that the only time you ever took something that didn’t belong to you?” Marcus asked. He continued his laser focus on the other man.

“I picked up a quarter from the sidewalk,” Gavin said. “Strictly speaking it didn’t belong to me. And last week I ate a muffin from the staff room here in the library, although they were on a plate in the middle of the table so you could argue there’s a reasonable assumption they were intended for everyone.” He looked away from me then, and the look he gave Marcus was a mix of flippant and defiant.

Marcus sighed softly, so softly I was probably the only person who heard him. I knew he didn’t like Gavin. He’d admitted something about the man bugged him, but did he really think the security expert had had anything to do with the theft and Margo’s death? How could he? More than one person had seen Gavin in the bar at the hotel.

Hope looked at Marcus. Something passed between them.

“Mr. Solomon, do you know a man named Alastair Darby?” Marcus asked.

I’d heard the name somewhere but I couldn’t remember where.

“He’s a collector,” Gavin said. “Fancies himself a patron of the arts.”

“You were at a fundraising event hosted by Alastair Darby a couple of years ago.”

Gavin nodded. “I was. It was a garden party at his summer home. Mediocre wine, excellent food.”

“You and Alastair Darby got into an argument at the party.” Marcus squared his shoulders and crossed his arms over his midsection. He tipped his head to one side and studied Gavin as though he was some kind of science experiment.

If Gavin was intimidated, it didn’t show. “Actually, I got into an argument with the mountainoid who worked for him. He got a little frisky in a pat down. He wasn’t my type.” He raised an eyebrow at Hope and gave her a sly smile.

“Darby thought you’d taken something that belonged to him,” Marcus said.

“He was mistaken,” Gavin said. “Which he learned after his gorilla felt me up.”

Hope smiled back at him. “You didn’t take a painting that belonged to Mr. Darby?”

Gavin laid a hand over his chest. “I promise you, Detective, I didn’t take anything from that party that belonged to Alastair Darby.”

“Two people saw you stuff something in your pants.”

He laughed. “That was all mine.”

“So you’re not a thief?” Marcus said.

Gavin held up both hands again in a gesture of surrender. “I’m just a security expert. I’m not a thief. I didn’t take anything of Mr. Darby’s. And for the record”—his eyes flicked to me again—“I wasn’t a thief at fourteen, either. The teacher? He took a piece of artwork that had been done by a student, that she didn’t give to him and that he lied about having. All I did was retrieve it.” He shrugged. “I have some unique skills. I use them to prevent things from being lost. A few times, in the past, I acted as a retrieval agent for people whose artwork had, let’s say, been borrowed without their permission. I was paid a fee when that artwork was returned to its rightful owners. I don’t think that’s against the law, Detective.”

“Mr. Solomon, were you in the bar all evening the night Margo Walsh was killed?” Hope said. “Because nobody seems to remember seeing you after about quarter to eight.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“So where were you?” I asked. This game of cat and mouse had been going on too long for me.

“With Mary,” he said, gesturing at the checkout desk.

“Mary Lowe?” I said.

He nodded. “Uh-huh. It turns out we have an interest in common.”

I should have known. I really should have known at that point. But instead I frowned and said, “You’re interested in kickboxing?”

Gavin threw back his head and laughed. “No. Mary and I were at The Brick.”

I got it then. I felt my cheeks flood with color. Marcus and Hope hadn’t figured out what Gavin was talking about, and before I could say anything he spoke again.

“It was amateur night. We performed.” One eyebrow went up and the sly smile returned to his face.

“To ‘Proud Mary,’” he said. “Together.”