Faux Paw: A Magical Cats Mystery

19

For a moment there was silence; then Marcus said, “Rena Adler, you have the right to remain silent. Do you understand?”

Rena set down the tape dispenser and folded her arms over her chest. “Yes.”

He continued reading her the rest of her rights. When he finished she nodded. “I understand, Detective. But I don’t need a lawyer. Go ahead and ask your questions.”

I touched her arm. “Rena, are you sure about that?” I asked.

“I’m sure,” she said. Her gaze never left Marcus’s face.

“What did you do with the artwork?” he asked.

“Nothing. When I got here the security system was already turned off and the drawing wasn’t in the display case.”

“Let me get this straight; Margo Walsh hired you to steal the Weston drawing, but when you broke in it was already gone?” Marcus didn’t try to hide the skepticism in his voice.

“Yes. She wanted to prove that the security system wasn’t enough to protect the artwork so the tour would be canceled.”

Rena turned her head to look at me then. “The first meeting we all had with Margo.” She pointed across the library to one of our meeting rooms. “You were there, Kathleen. You heard what she said about the pieces belonging in a museum.”

I glanced at Marcus and nodded. “Margo thought the artwork was too old and too fragile to be out of a controlled setting.” I turned to Rena. “I don’t understand; you said your name isn’t Devin Rossi.”

“My real name isn’t Devin Rossi,” she said. “My real name is Rena Adler, and, yes, it’s a variation on Irene Adler, but I’m guessing you already figured that out. My father was a mystery lover. I got the name Devin Rossi from a movie.”

So even though Rena’s name had made me think she might be Devin Rossi, I was wrong about which of her names was a fake.

“Can you prove Margo hired you to break in to the library?” Marcus asked Rena.

“You mean did I sign a contract or write a receipt? No.” There was nothing defensive in her body language, but there was an edge of sarcasm in her voice. If anything she looked . . . angry. “Talk to the insurance company. They were involved in this.”

“I already have talked to them. They didn’t say anything about some plan to test the security system.”

It was impossible to miss the surprise that flashed across Rena’s face. She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again she focused totally on Marcus. “Then check Margo’s bank accounts or her credit cards. She transferred ten thousand dollars to an account in Turks and Caicos just after one a.m. Thursday morning.”

“Do you have a routing number?” Marcus asked.

“If it comes to that,” Rena said. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I didn’t kill Margo. You must have her cell phone. There should be a text from Doyle’s Art Supplies telling her her order isn’t ready. That’s me letting her know there was a problem. She sent a text back saying she’d call to change her order. But she didn’t call. I was at Eric’s Place for about an hour. The waiter was flirting. He’ll remember me.”

“You were flirting with Larry Taylor to find out how the security system worked,” I said. “You were trying to figure out how to disable it.”

Rena looked away for a moment. “I’m sorry about Larry. He’s a nice guy. And, no, he didn’t do anything to compromise the library’s security, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Marcus glanced over at the main doors. “You couldn’t have tampered with the keypad. It’s set up to call the police if there’s a security breach.”

For a long moment Rena just looked at him. Then she shrugged. “In theory it is possible to redirect the keypad, send it to a rogue cell phone network. Or so I’ve heard. But like I told you. The system was off. “

“You’ll need to come down to the police station,” Marcus said, pulling his keys out of his pocket. “And you really should find a lawyer. There’s still that fingerprint from Chicago you need to explain.”

I saw a hint of a smile cross Rena’s face. “I don’t think that’s going to be that big a problem,” she said. “I don’t think the alleged owner really wants to explain how she ended up with that painting in the first place.”

“Where’s the Weston drawing?” Marcus asked again.

Rena brushed her hair back impatiently from her face. “I didn’t take it. I told you. It wasn’t in the case.”

“You’re asking me to take a lot of things on faith, Ms. Adler,” Marcus said.

Rena actually smiled at him. “You know I didn’t take the drawing, Detective,” she repeated.

Marcus held up a hand. “Hang on a second,” he said. He frowned at Rena. “What do you mean, I know you didn’t take it?”

“I know the police have the drawing, Detective. I’m assuming you’re saying you don’t to throw whoever killed Margo off base.”

“We don’t have the drawing,” Marcus said, flatly.

Rena shook her head. “You mean all this time this building’s been closed and you still haven’t found it?”

“Wait a minute,” I said, pointing with one finger. “You think the Weston drawing is here? In the library?”

She looked from me to Marcus and back to me again. “It has to be. It was dotted, so there’s no way it can leave the building with the alarm system still in place. I assumed Margo put it somewhere for safekeeping.” She was looking at us both as though we were incredibly dense—which is how I felt. I had no idea what she was talking about and, judging from Marcus’s face, neither did he.

I looked blankly at Rena. “What do you mean the drawing was dotted?”

“I mean there was a computer chip—a very tiny computer chip—attached to the back of it,” she said. “If anyone tried to take it out of the building the chip would trigger the security system and—”

I shook my head. “No,” I interrupted. “We weren’t using that aspect of the system here. It was too expensive and both the museum board and the insurance company thought the risk of anything happening was small. That was Gavin’s recommendation as well.” I did see the irony in that.

Rena ran a hand over the cardboard encasing her painting. “Margo went over his head. She convinced the insurance company that the extra security was needed and there wasn’t much the board could do at the last minute. She wanted them to see that no matter what security procedures were in place, the artwork wasn’t safe.”

I rubbed the back of my neck with one hand. A knot of frustration made it feel as though a giant hand was squeezing the back of my head.

Marcus shook his head. “No, she didn’t. There was no extra security. No computer chips on the back of any of the artwork.”

Rena looked like someone had just punched her in the stomach. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would Margo tell me that?”

I didn’t have an answer. I couldn’t understand why Margo had wanted to sabotage the exhibit at all.

“So if the drawing had a computer chip attached to it, what were you supposed to do with it?” Marcus asked.

Rena pointed across the library. “I was supposed to hide it in the fourth book from the left in that case over there.” She was indicating one of the special cabinets that held our rare book collection.

Marcus’s phone rang then. He pulled it out of his pocket and held up his hand. “I need to take this; give me a minute.”

He walked a few steps away from us.

“Kathleen, I didn’t kill Margo,” Rena said. “I had no reason to. Because of her, my paintings were going to be on display; my first real exhibit.”

I held out both hands. “You seriously thought the exhibit would continue after you stole the drawing?” It was hard to believe Rena could have been that dense.

She shook her head. “No, I knew there wouldn’t be an exhibit here, but Margo was going to add all the Mayville Heights artists to the next stop on the tour.”

I didn’t know what to say. I knew that Margo had already spent time at the other five stops on the tour. The layout of the artwork had already been planned. There was no way the artists from Mayville Heights would be part of the exhibit in some other place.

Marcus put his phone back in his pocket and walked back over to us. He gave Rena a look, narrowing his eyes, and I realized something in his attitude had changed. I wondered who had been on the other end of the phone.

“Do you know anything about the history of the Weston drawing, Detective?” Rena asked. She was still fingering the cardboard wrapped around her painting.

“I know there’s some dispute about whether or not Weston himself is the artist,” Marcus said.

“Margo believed, very strongly, that he wasn’t. She did a lot of research on Sam Weston and on that drawing in particular. She went to talk to his first wife’s great-great-grandson. I don’t know what she found out, but whatever it was, she was convinced that that particular drawing wasn’t done by Weston and that several others weren’t, either.”

“She told you all that?” Marcus didn’t even try to keep the skepticism from his voice.

Rena smiled, not particularly warmly. “Uh-huh. It’ll probably surprise you, but I agree . . . agreed with her.” She gestured in the direction of the computer area turned exhibit space. “These pieces should be in a controlled environment with proper security. They’re part of this country’s heritage—part of our heritage.”

“We should get going, Ms. Adler,” Marcus said.

Rena nodded. “I understand.” She turned to me, indicating the wrapped painting as she did. “Is it all right if I leave this here?”

“Of course it is,” I said. “I’ll put it upstairs in my office.” I looked at Marcus. “Is that all right?”

He nodded. “It’s fine.” He looked around. “I’m sorry, Kathleen,” he began.

“I can’t stay here,” I finished. Once again I was shut out of my own library.

Marcus took me by the arm and led me over to the main doors. Rena was putting a bit more tape on the cardboard-wrapped painting.

“You don’t think she killed Margo,” I said.

He shook his head. “How do you do that?”

“That was Hope on the phone and she told you something that convinced you that Rena isn’t the killer.” I was only guessing, but his expression told me I was correct.

He pulled a hand over his mouth. “Rena is left-handed,” he said.

I glanced over at her. “I noticed that, too.”

He didn’t say anything.

I turned back to him. “The killer wasn’t,” I said slowly. Then I gave my head a slight shake before he could speak. “I know. You can’t tell me that.”

He shrugged. “I’m sorry.” He looked around. “There was no computer chip on that drawing,” he began.

“But you want to search again.”

“I do.”

Another thought had just occurred to me. “Marcus, if Rena didn’t kill Margo, that means someone else got in here and did.”

He nodded.

“But if it wasn’t about the drawing, if she didn’t walk in on the thief, on Rena, then why would anyone want to kill her?”

Marcus shook his head. “I don’t know.”

I took Rena’s painting up to my office. While I was gone Marcus opened the cabinet and checked to make sure the drawing wasn’t inside.

It wasn’t.

“Is it all right if I let Lita and Everett know we’re going to be closed a bit longer?” I asked as we headed for the front door.

“It’s all right,” he said. “But for now, everything else stays between us.”

I nodded, then reached for his hand to give it a squeeze. He smiled and the gleam that flashed in his blue eyes sent a warm feeling flooding through my chest.

I turned and walked back to Rena. “Think about a lawyer,” I said softly.

All she did was smile at me.

Curtis Holt was at the front doors. I realized Marcus had worked out the timing of that in advance. He and Rena headed for the police station and I walked over to Henderson Holdings and brought Lita up to date on what was going on. Then I headed home.

Hercules was sitting in the blue Adirondack chair in the backyard when I got home. I scooped him onto my lap and sat down. “What are you doing out here?” I asked.

He looked over at the big maple tree and meowed. Hercules had a love-hate relationship with a grackle that spent a lot of time in that tree. I thought of their perverse connection as love-hate because while Hercules had managed to snag one of the bird’s feathers, he’d never come any closer to the bird—something he was quite capable of doing. And the grackle, in turn, had dive-bombed the cat, but never, as far as I had seen, touched a single strand of fur on his head.

“Where’s your friend?” I said, stroking his fur. It was warm from the morning sun.

He responded with a sharp meow.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I meant your archnemesis.”

Hercules made a grumbling sound low in his throat, shook off my hand, then jumped to the grass and headed for the house. He didn’t bother waiting for me; he just walked through the door into the porch.

I watched him, thinking how much easier it would be if I could do that instead of stopping to fish out my keys all the time and unlock things. I couldn’t help laughing as I let myself into the porch the normal way. When had I gotten so blasé about the cats’ abilities?

I spent the afternoon catching up on what work I could from home. Lita called with a message from Everett that in essence promised any resources I needed to get things back to normal at the library as quickly as possible. I called Maggie to let her know we’d need her space for a few more days if that was okay. I told her that Rena was answering some questions for the police, but it didn’t look like she’d killed Margo. I didn’t think that violated Marcus’s request not to talk about what had happened at the library. Gavin didn’t call and I didn’t call him, either.

I couldn’t get Rena’s story out of my head. Margo had hired her to break in to the library and take the Weston drawing out of its case and hide it? That made no sense. The case we kept the rare books in would make a good temporary hiding place, but I couldn’t believe that Margo would do anything that might put the fragile piece of artwork at risk of damage. This whole thing was so out of character for the person I’d gotten to know.

But why would Rena make up a story like that? Even though Margo was dead, there were parts of her tale Marcus and Hope would be able to check on.

When I got to tai chi, Maggie took me aside to tell me that Rena was out on bail and had to stay in town, but she didn’t seem concerned about the time she’d spent at the police station. “Did Marcus say anything?” she asked.

“I haven’t talked to him,” I said, wondering if he hadn’t called so I wouldn’t have to be evasive with Maggie—or anyone else.

I was restless when I got home. Roma had an early surgery at the clinic so I was driving out to Wisteria Hill to feed the cats in the morning. Now that Roma lived in the old farmhouse full-time, I fed the feral cats only when she was out of town or tied up with a patient. I hung my old jacket on the doorknob and went down to the basement for my heavy rubber boots. Roma had warned me that the path around the side of the old carriage house was wet and muddy.

While I was down there I decided to try to figure out why Owen was spending so much time in the basement. A waist-high workbench took up almost half of the back wall of the cellar. Harry Taylor had told me it had been built by the previous owner of the little farmhouse. Owen had taken over part of the knee-level shelf. It looked like the stash of a hoarder. He’d dragged down the old sweatshirt I’d told Maggie he’d swiped from me. There was a mitten that I recognized as belonging to her, several catnip chicken body parts and three black feathers. They looked like they might have come from a grackle.

I leaned against the bench holding the feathers, trying to make sense of how and why Owen had them. The little “war” between Hercules and the large bird was exactly that: between the two of them only. The bird hadn’t so much as lifted a wingtip in Owen’s direction, probably because it was Hercules who liked to hang around the maple tree the grackle considered to be its territory. Owen was generally prowling the yard or rooting in Rebecca’s recycling bin.

So how had Owen gotten those feathers? From another bird? I didn’t think so. From what I’d seen, the big black grackle kept all other similar birds at bay.

Could Owen have taken a run at the bird? I thought about the various squabbles he and Hercules had been having the past several months. There was an element of tit for tat in all of it.

I blew out a breath. No, it was just too preposterous to think Owen and Hercules were fighting because Owen had gone after the bird Hercules had been jousting with for the past year. They were cats, after all, not people.

I took my boots and the three feathers and went upstairs.

Owen wandered into the kitchen from somewhere carrying the disembodied head of a yellow funky chicken. He dropped it next to his water dish.

“Why do you have these?” I asked, holding out the black feathers.

He blinked at me.

I leaned forward, one hand on my knee. “If you’ve been after that bird, you have to stop.”

“Mrr,” he said, dropping his head to study a spot on the floor.

“Hercules and the bird are like . . . like Austin Powers and Dr. Evil.”

I shook my head. What was I doing? Trying to explain to one cat that he had to stay away from the so-called archenemy of another cat by referencing a movie from the 1990s, albeit one both cats had watched with Maggie and me.

I straightened up. No, this was crazy. I held up the feathers. “Bad,” I said sternly. “Very bad.” Then I dropped them in the garbage can.

Owen gave a snippy meow and turned his head so he wasn’t looking at me.

“Don’t do that again,” I warned, glaring at him. I wondered if as far as he was concerned all I’d been saying was “blah, blah, blah,” for the last minute.

I went to the sink and washed my hands. When I turned around again Owen was studying my things by the door.

“Mrrr?” he asked.

“I’m going out to feed the cats in the morning,” I said in answer to what I was assuming was his question. “And before you ask, no, Marcus isn’t going with me.”

He cocked his head to one side.

“He’s working. Some new information in the case.” I blew out a breath. “I’m starting to think we’re never going to find Margo’s killer.”

“Mrr,” Owen said again.

“It’s not Rena and I’m glad about that. I don’t know her very well, but I like what I know.” I checked the back door, making sure it was locked.

Owen was still watching me.

If anyone heard me having a one-sided conversation with a cat, they probably would have thought I was more than a little delusional, but the fact was, saying it all out loud helped me make sense of things. And the conversation didn’t usually feel so one-sided, although I wasn’t going to admit that to anyone.

I made myself a cup of cocoa, put three marshmallows on top and sat at the table with my cup, quickly giving myself a marshmallow mustache. As much as I enjoyed a cup of coffee, you couldn’t put marshmallows on top.

“Everything seems to be tied to that picture,” I said. “Everything comes back to that.”

Owen launched himself onto my lap and sniffed in the direction of my mug. “Freeze, mister,” I warned, putting one arm around him.

He looked up at me, all furry gray tabby innocence.

“Marshmallows are not cat food,” I said, frowning at him. “Not in this life or any other.”

He made a sound a lot like a sigh.

“Yes, I know, your life is so hard.” I leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “And I meant what I said before: Stay away from that grackle or your brother is going to destroy every chicken you have. Think of it this way: Maggie is your friend and the grackle is Hercules’s friend . . . sort of.”

Owen made a face, which could have meant he was considering my words or that he was wondering when I was going to stop talking.

I picked up my mug and took another drink.

My computer was still on the table. With both of my hands occupied, Owen took the opportunity to stretch out a paw and touch the keyboard, waking the laptop up. He looked at me again, expectantly, it seemed to me.

“Okay, maybe we should see what we can find out about the history of that drawing,” I said, pushing my mug to one side and pulling the computer closer.

Owen immediately turned to look at the counter. He meowed softly.

“Yes, I suppose the research would go better with a couple of stinky crackers,” I said. I got up, set him on the chair and got the crackers for him. When I turned back around he was up on his hind legs, looking at the computer screen with one paw on the edge of the keyboard.

I swept him onto my lap again and held out a cracker. He took it from me and murped a thank-you.

I opened my Web browser and typed in my favorite search engine. “You have marshmallow on your whisker,” I said, keeping my eyes on the screen.

He dropped his head and took a couple of furtive swipes at his furry face.

The history of the Weston drawing was, I discovered, a little murky. It had turned up almost fifty years ago in the private collection of a New York businessman, although there was no provenance with the piece and no record of where or when he’d purchased it. It had been believed that the drawing was part of a collection of Weston’s work housed at the Butler Institute of American Art. Since there were photographs of the drawing from more than one exhibit at the museum, some people believed the piece had been stolen, but the institute had no paperwork to back up the claim.

“Interesting,” I said to Owen, raising an eyebrow, Mr. Spock style.

His response was to paw at the touch pad and bring up another site.

Charles Holmes had purchased the drawing for his private collection, although he had been generous about lending it and other artwork in his collection for exhibit as long as the displays were accessible to as much of the general public as possible. Before his death, Holmes had agreed to loan the Weston drawing and two other watercolors for this tour because it was taking the artwork to an audience that didn’t usually get to see such pieces.

There had been rumblings about the authenticity of the drawing for decades, I discovered, but if Charles Holmes had been aware of it—and it was hard to believe he hadn’t—I couldn’t find any public comments he’d made on the subject.

I leaned back in my chair and picked up my mug. My cocoa was cold. I got up to warm it up and set Owen on the seat again. “What do you think?” I said as I waited for the microwave. “Should we look up this generation?”

“Merow!” he exclaimed with great enthusiasm, which was probably more for the jar of peanut butter I’d just taken down from the cupboard than for my idea.

Once I had a cup of hot chocolate that was actually hot and a piece of peanut butter toast, I went back to the computer to see what I could find about Marshall and Diana Holmes.

Marshall Holmes was Charles’s only child. He’d taken over his father’s grocery store chain and managed to make the business even more successful, something that often didn’t happen when a business was handed down from parent to child.

Diana Holmes was the senior Holmes’s stepdaughter, the only child of his second wife, Catherine. Charles Holmes had raised Diana from the time she was eight years old and by all accounts considered her to be his child in every way. Diana Holmes ran the Charles and Catherine Holmes Charitable Foundation and had increased its endowment by almost thirty percent in the five years she’d been in charge.

There were so many photos of both Marshall and Diana online. Marshall sweaty and beaming after a marathon, cutting a ribbon at the opening of a new store, and giving the eulogy at his father’s funeral wearing a dark suit and somber expression. There was Diana in a short sequined dress with a ventriloquist’s dummy in a variety show for charity, and serving at a downtown Chicago soup kitchen.

“So we know both Diana and Marshall Holmes are successful,” I said to the cat, letting him lick a dab of peanut butter from my finger. “But what are they like as people?”

He was too busy getting every bit of peanut butter to have an opinion.

I thought about my encounters with Marshall and Diana. They had both been very pleasant and well spoken, but something about the way they had interacted had made me wonder if they were in agreement on how to handle Charles Holmes’s art collection. According to what I was reading online, it had been left equally to both of them.

I lifted my hair and let it fall against my neck. “So. Any ideas?” I said to Owen.

His response was to hop down off my lap and head for the back door. It was a warm evening so I’d left it open. He headed purposefully into the porch. After a moment I heard him meow. Clearly he wanted out and didn’t really care if I learned any more about the Holmes siblings.

“I’m coming,” I said.

Owen was sitting in front of the outside door. I opened it for him, but instead of going outside he just poked his head out, looked across the back lawn and meowed.

“Go if you’re going, please,” I said.

He didn’t move.

“Owen,” I said sharply. “I’m not you’re doorman . . . doorwoman, doorperson, whatever the politically correct term is. In or out.”

He looked up at me, his tail whipping across the floor in annoyance. Then he looked across the yard again and meowed once more.

And then I got it. “I could call Rebecca,” I said slowly. “She might know something about Diana and Marshall Holmes. It’s possible Everett knew Charles Holmes.”

Owen turned and headed back to the kitchen, making muttering sounds all the way. Trust a cat to want to have the last word.

I sat down on the bench by the window in the porch and took my cell out of my pocket.

“Hello, my dear, how are you?” Rebecca asked when she answered the phone.

“I’m well, Rebecca,” I said. “How are you?” Hearing her voice automatically made me smile.

“Well, at the moment I’m beating the pants off Everett at Texas Hold’em,” she said.

“She cheats,” I heard Everett call in the background.

Rebecca laughed. “He’s not losing graciously.”

“That’s because you’re cheating,” he countered.

“I won’t keep you,” I said. “I was hoping you might be able to get a little information for me.”

“Does this have something to do with everything that’s happened at the library?” she asked, lowering her voice a little.

“Yes,” I said, wondering if this was such a good idea after all. I didn’t want to put her in any kind of conflict with Everett.

“I’d love to help, my dear. What do you need? And don’t worry about Everett.”

“How do you manage to read my mind?” I asked.

“It’s my secret power,” she said. I could imagine her smiling as she said the words.

“Well I’m glad you’re using it for good and not for evil,” I teased.

“So how can I help?”

“Do you know anything about Marshall or Diana Holmes?” Owen was sitting at my feet, intently watching my face.

“I know Everett did some business with their father, Charles. That’s how the exhibit ended up coming to the library. I can certainly find out more about them.”

I pulled my free hand down over the back of my head. “I don’t want to put you in a difficult position, Rebecca.”

She laughed, and somehow the warmth of the sound came through the phone at me. “Oh, Kathleen, there’s nothing difficult about playing a nosy old lady. Give me a day and I’ll see what I can find out for you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m happy to help.”

We said good night and I hung up the phone.

I went back into the kitchen to discover a guilty-looking Owen under the table and the garbage can tipped over on the floor.

“Owen!” I exclaimed.

This wasn’t the first time Owen had tipped over the trash, although he hadn’t done it in a while. The last time, he’d leapt on the can in an ill-advised effort to snag a scarf from the hooks by the door.

He hung his head, but I could see one eye watching to gauge how mad I was.

I set the can upright and sent a stern look in the cat’s direction. “Don’t do that again,” I warned. “Or it won’t be Hercules who’s making your chickens disappear.”

I cleaned up the mess and then went to the sink to wash my hands. I felt a furry body wind around my ankles. I bent down and picked Owen up.

“Merow?” he said, cocking his head to one side.

“I’m still mad at you,” I said.

He leaned forward and nuzzled the side of my face.

“I am,” I insisted. “You can’t jump up onto the garbage can. You’re not one of the Flying Wallendas. Next time I go to the thrift store I’ll get you a scarf.”

His response was to lick my chin. I couldn’t help feeling that somehow I’d just been had.

I set Owen back on the floor and he walked over to the back door and looked in the direction of Rebecca’s little house. Then he turned his wide golden eyes on me.

“She’s in,” I told him. “The game is afoot.”