Hooked on a Feline

chapter 3

No,” I whispered. I closed my eyes for a moment and swallowed against the lump in my throat, which seemed to be stopping me from getting words out. “Are you . . . are you positive?”

“Yes. I wish I wasn’t,” Marcus said, “and I’m sorry but I have to go. I should make it for supper. I mean, if you still want to cook.”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “I do.” And because it suddenly seemed important, I added, “Stay safe.”

“Always,” he replied.

I hung up the phone and stood there, not moving, as Marcus’s words began to sink in.

“Kathleen, what’s wrong?” Abigail asked, coming around the side of the circulation desk. A frown creased her forehead and her eyes were narrowed in concern.

“It’s, uh, it’s Mike Bishop,” I said slowly.

“What happened? Was he in some kind of accident?” She put a hand on my arm. Abigail had helped Mike with a lot of the research into his family tree. They’d gotten to be friends.

“I don’t know what happened but . . .” I let the end of the sentence trail away. I didn’t want to say the words out loud.

Abigail pressed her lips together and gave her head a little shake.

I swallowed again. It didn’t seem to do anything for that lump in the back of my throat. “He’s . . . dead.”

A tear slid down her cheek and she swiped at it with one hand. “Are you sure?” she asked, looking away. “Maybe Marcus made a mistake. Maybe it was someone else.”

I shook my head. “He doesn’t make those kind of mistakes.”

“I know,” she said softly.

Neither one of us spoke for a moment. Then Abigail looked at me. “What do they give the dentist of the year?” she asked in a shaky voice.

I frowned at her, not really understanding the question. “I . . . I don’t know.”

“A little plaque.” She laughed and then hiccupped. “Mike always had some awful dental joke to tell me when he came in and I’d always laugh because they were so bad.” She wiped away another tear. “Why did the dental assistant refuse to date the dentist?”

I shook my head.

“He was already taking out a tooth.”

I laughed then in spite of myself. “You’re right,” I said. “Those are terrible jokes.”

“And remember how he hated it when someone called him a dentist?” Abigail asked. “Mary would do it just to tease him. He’d give her that look.” She pushed her glasses down her nose and looked over the top of them at me. “And he’d say, ‘Endodontist.’ Then Mary would say something about how barbers used to do all that stuff and give you a shave and a haircut.” She blinked away tears. “Oh, Kathleen, how can it be true?” Her shoulders sagged.

I didn’t have an answer to her question. All I could do was give her a hug and blink back my own tears.

“You know Mike was genuinely excited about tracing his family tree,” she said. “He told me that his cousin had warned him that he might find nothing but criminals and con men back there. He told me that he kind of hoped he would. That would be way more interesting than a family full of straitlaced rule followers.”

“That sounds like Mike.”

She gave me a small smile. “He looked like he was having so much fun being back onstage again. You could see it.” She started to say something else and then stopped.

“What?” I asked.

“I was going to say that there’s never going to be a night like that again, and then it hit me that now that Mike is . . . gone, there really isn’t.”

“We went to Eric’s after the concert and they came in,” I said. “Mike, Johnny, Harry—all of them. I told Mike about those census documents you found. He was coming in this afternoon to take a look at them. I set everything out in the workroom. I should go put things away again.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Abigail said. “I mean, if it’s all right with you. I could use a couple of minutes by myself.”

“It’s fine with me,” I said. “Give me a minute to get Levi to keep an eye on the desk.”

She nodded. “Thanks.” She glanced over at the books she’d been sorting. “So Marcus didn’t say anything about what happened? If it was a car accident or a heart attack.”

“All he said was Mike was gone. He had to go and he didn’t give me any details.” I looked around for Levi, our summer student. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

I headed for the stacks where Levi was shelving books. The fact that Marcus hadn’t said what had happened to Mike Bishop bothered me and I hoped Abigail hadn’t noticed my discomfort at her question. He could have easily said Mike had had a heart attack or been in a car accident if either of those things had occurred. But he hadn’t and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something a lot worse had happened. I hoped I was wrong.

When the library closed for the day, I drove out to Marcus’s house to make supper. Rebecca was checking in on Owen and Hercules, who I knew would be fine, but who were also more than a little spoiled. Marcus and I had talked about introducing his Micah to the boys. All three cats had been found out at Wisteria Hill—the old Henderson estate—and all three were far from typical cats, so I was hoping they’d get along.

Micah was waiting for me on the back deck. The little ginger tabby meowed hello and then jumped down to stand by the door and look expectantly at me. I let us both into the kitchen, set my bag on the table and dropped into one of the chairs.

Micah immediately launched herself onto my lap. She seemed to study me for a moment and then, as if sensing I was upset, she leaned her body against my chest with a soft “mrr.” I stroked her fur and felt a little of the day’s stress subsiding. The news about Mike had spread quickly and everyone who had come into the library seemed to want to talk about him. While it had been good to hear more stories about his sense of humor and quiet generosity, it had also been painful to realize that a good man was gone and wasn’t coming back.

After a few minutes, I gave Micah one last scratch under her chin and set her on the floor. “Want to help me get supper?” I asked.

“Merow,” she said, whiskers twitching.

That seemed to be a yes.

As I stood up, I realized that there were two physics textbooks on the chair next to mine. I leaned down and opened the cover of the top book. It had come from the library in Minneapolis. There was a piece of paper poking out from between two pages just beyond the midpoint of the text.

These two books were the fifth and sixth books on theoretical physics Marcus had requested via interlibrary loan. Since he had found out about the special “skills” that Owen and Hercules and Micah had, he’d been looking for some sort of logical explanation. I’d struggled with telling him that all three cats had abilities that seemed to violate the laws of physics, at least as we knew them at this point in time. I’d put it off longer than I should have. I knew it had been hard for him to accept that Hercules had the ability to walk through any solid object, while both Owen and Micah could literally disappear at will—and usually at the most inconvenient times. Even when Marcus actually saw it happen, it was hard to believe it wasn’t some kind of trick. I understood how he felt. It had taken me a little time to accept that I wasn’t hallucinating, that I didn’t have a brain tumor.

The first time I’d seen Owen disappear, I’d been able to convince myself it was just a trick of the light and my own overtired brain. When Hercules walked through a closed door after hours at the library, I’d thought that maybe I’d had a stroke. I had long suspected Micah had the same skill as Owen, so it wasn’t as much of a surprise the first time she vanished, although the knowledge had come with the added worry that now I had to stop putting off telling Marcus just exactly how smart all three cats were.

I closed the cover of the book and straightened up. Micah was watching me, her head cocked to one side in curiosity. “He’s persistent,” I said.

“Mrr,” she agreed.

I didn’t think Marcus was going to give up until he found something that explained how the cats could do what they could do. That determined streak was one of the things that helped make him a good detective. Still, sometimes I thought he just needed to accept how things were and stop trying to find answers for questions that just might not have answers.

I washed my hands and set a pot of water on the stove to boil for the pasta. The cat watched and made little murping comments as I got out the rest of the ingredients for pasta salad.

“Should we eat in here or out on the deck?” I asked.

She immediately looked at the back door.

“Deck, it is,” I said. “Excellent choice.”

I moved the little round table Marcus kept out on the deck so it was in front of the swing and set it with place mats, napkins and silverware. While the pasta cooked, I put together a quick marinade for the chicken. Then I made the pasta salad, adding cucumber, celery, black olives and plump cherry tomatoes and radishes that Marcus had grown himself.

I’d just poured a glass of iced tea and stepped out onto the deck when Marcus came around the side of the house. “It’s so good to see you,” he said, wrapping his long arms around me and giving me a kiss.

“It’s good to see you, too,” I said. He looked tired. There was dark stubble on his chin, his pale yellow shirt was creased and I could see that he’d been raking his hands through his hair, something he did when he was stressed.

He reached up and brushed a stray bit of hair off my face. “Are you all right? I know the news about Mike was a shock.”

“It’s all anyone who came into the library was talking about. Do you know what happened yet?”

A shadow seemed to flit across his face. “Could I have a shower first?” He glanced over at the grill. “Do I have time?”

I nodded. “Go ahead. The salad’s made and I’ll start the chicken.”

He blew out a breath. “Thanks,” he said. He stopped to give Micah a scratch on the top of her head and went into the house.

The chicken was just about done when Marcus came out, wearing a pair of gray shorts and a red T-shirt, his hair damp from the shower. “Is that mine?” he asked, gesturing at the frosty glass of beer on the table.

“Yes, it is,” I said. My iced tea was sitting to the left of the grill.

Micah was perched in the middle of the swing. “Get down,” Marcus said, making a move-along gesture with one hand.

She wrinkled her whiskers at him and, instead of jumping down, moved to the left and then looked at him. It seemed to me there was a challenge in her eyes.

Marcus shook his head. “Fine. Close enough,” he said. He sat down next to the cat and reached over to stroke her fur.

I took the plate of chicken over to the table and joined them on the swing. “That smells great,” Marcus said as he reached for the tongs I’d set on the table. “What did you put on the chicken?”

“Eddie’s marinade and Harry’s barbecue sauce,” I said. I shook my head and sighed. Saying Harry’s name made me realize how much he must be grieving right now.

Marcus put a hand on my shoulder. “I saw Harry a little while ago. He’s okay. At least as okay as he can be under the circumstances.”

“I can’t believe Mike is dead,” I said, dishing some of the salad onto my plate. “He was one of those people who just seemed so . . . alive.” I looked at Marcus. “I know that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yes, it does,” he said.

I leaned back, balancing the plate on my lap as the swing began to gently move. “Marcus, what on earth happened? Mary said Mike died from a head injury. That doesn’t sound like an accident.”

Mary Lowe had come in to work at lunchtime. Her daughter, Bridget, was the publisher of the Mayville Heights Chronicle. Bridget always seemed to know the details of any police investigation long before they made any statements on a case.

Marcus swiped a hand over his face. “I don’t know why I’m surprised to hear that,” he said. “I swear, sometimes it seems like Bridget has the station bugged.” Micah put a paw on his leg. He cut a sliver of chicken with the edge of his fork and gave it to her. She murped a thank-you. “It’s way too soon for anyone to know the exact cause of death until the medical examiner finishes his work,” he continued. “Bridget shouldn’t speculate and spread rumors.”

I noticed he hadn’t said that what Mary had told me wasn’t true. “Did someone break into his house?” I asked.

“Well, what’s Bridget saying?” His voice was laced with sarcasm, which he seemed to realize the moment the words were out. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It just . . . hasn’t been a very good day.”

I put my hand on his leg and gave it a squeeze. “I know,” I said.

“At this point we don’t know for certain what happened,” he said after a brief silence. “Mike was found inside his house. If I had to guess, I’d say he died sometime Sunday night. Beyond that, I just don’t know.”

“Maybe it was an accident,” I offered. “Maybe he tripped over something on the floor and hit his head. Maybe he had a seizure or a stroke.”

“It’s possible.” Marcus didn’t sound convinced.

“Could Mike have walked in on someone who broke into the house? I haven’t heard of any break-ins in that area.”

“There haven’t been any. At least nothing that’s been reported to us. I talked to Oren and the Kings. They haven’t seen anything suspicious.”

I folded one arm up over my head, my supper forgotten for the moment. “Do you think Mike was murdered?” I asked.

Marcus raked a hand back through his hair. “Don’t ask me that, please,” he said.

“Okay.” I put a hand against his cheek for a moment. “Have something to eat,” I said. “We don’t have to talk about this right now.”

He reached for the pasta salad and I picked up my fork even though my appetite was pretty much gone. I realized from the way Marcus had dodged my questions that he suspected Mike Bishop had been murdered. I had a familiar sinking feeling in my stomach.

It was the end of the week before the medical examiner declared Mike Bishop’s death a homicide. For once the newspaper didn’t offer any opinion on what had happened before the official ruling. Marcus had shown up with the news and a quart of mocha fudge ice cream. We were sitting in my two big Adirondack chairs in the backyard. Hercules was perched on the wide arm of my chair, washing his face and sneaking looks at my dish, while pretending he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in what was in it. Owen was sitting at Marcus’s feet. He knew his chance of getting even a tiny taste was slim to none and there was no chance it would be coming from me.

“The news will be in tomorrow’s paper,” I said. It wasn’t a question. Bridget would have been looking for the story in Mike’s death.

“I’ll be surprised if it’s not,” Marcus said. He and Bridget had a cool, slightly prickly relationship. He and Mary, on the other hand, were friends. They seemed to have an unspoken agreement not to talk about Bridget.

“There’s no way it could have been an accident?” I asked. It wasn’t that I doubted the skills of the medical examiner. I just hated the idea that someone—anyone—had deliberately ended Mike Bishop’s life.

Marcus was shaking his head before I got the words out. “I wish there was. I agree with the medical examiner, based on what I saw. Mike hit his head on the fireplace mantel and bled into his brain. Based on the location of the wound, there’s no way it could have happened accidentally.” His hand briefly touched the back of his head. “Between you and me, he was punched in the face right before he hit his head. I think he was moving away from the person who threw that punch. There was nothing on the floor he could have tripped over and nothing he could have slipped on.”

Hercules looked at me, tipping his head to one side and narrowing his green eyes. “If Mike had tripped while he was moving away from whoever had hit him, wouldn’t he have fallen forward, not backward?” I asked.

Hercules immediately looked at Marcus, as though he wanted to hear the answer to the question as well, as though I’d asked what he’d wanted to know—which wasn’t as unlikely as it seemed.

Marcus shrugged. “He could have been backing up.”

“So Mike fought or struggled with some unknown person, and that person hit him and then pushed him or hit him again, which sent him into the mantel.”

“That’s one of the possibilities.”

Hercules looked expectantly at me again. Was there something else he wanted to know? “But that suggests what happened wasn’t premeditated, that it was most likely an accident. So why didn’t that person call for help? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know. Mike Bishop was universally liked. I don’t think you could find anyone in town—or in this part of the state for that matter—who had a bad word to say about the man.”

“So why is he dead?” I said.

Marcus shrugged. “Right now I don’t know.”

It felt as though the entire town showed up for Mike Bishop’s funeral on Saturday. That was one of the things I liked about living in a small town, this small town—everyone knew everyone else; everyone cared about everyone else.

It was more than four years now since I’d arrived in Mayville Heights. The head librarian position I’d come for was supposed to only be a temporary eighteen-month appointment, with the main part of the job being to supervise the refurbishment of the library in time for its centennial. I had applied on a whim, looking to get away from Boston after a relationship had fallen apart. The building had been beautifully restored, the collections had been reorganized and the computer system brought more or less into this century, but when the time was up, I found myself wanting to stay. I had Owen and Hercules. I had friends. I had a life I loved. I was lucky that the library board had wanted me to stay as well. As much as I sometimes missed my family back in Boston, Mayville Heights was my home now. Now I felt that sense of community very strongly.

Marcus and I sat with Eddie and Roma at the service. Roma had known Mike for years and she had taken his death hard. She had been pale but composed when she and Eddie pulled into Gunnerson’s parking lot, but when I’d hugged her, she’d held on a little tighter and a little longer than usual.

I had closed the library an hour early because all of the staff wanted to attend the funeral.

“I was leaving one night after my shift and Mike asked me what I was listening to,” Levi had said to me when he’d asked for the time off to attend the service. “I told him ZZ Top. About a week later, he comes in and says he has something for me. It was a concert T-shirt from the band’s El Loco tour. I said I couldn’t take it and he laughed. He patted his gut and said it didn’t fit his needs anymore, and if I didn’t wear it, the shirt would just sit in a drawer.”

The service was being held at Gunnerson’s Funeral Home. Daniel Gunnerson Senior was at the front door, shaking hands and directing people. He was a short and solid man with deep blue eyes and a head of thick white hair. He wore a black suit with a crisp white shirt and a blue tie. The smaller rooms, which could accommodate several services, had been opened up to make one large space, and even so I wondered if there would be enough room for all the people I was expecting would come.

We took a seat about five rows back. Jonas and Lachlan were standing together at the front of the room with a bearded man I didn’t recognize. Lachlan looked subdued. Jonas seemed even more serious than usual, his face pale. Their small family had gotten even smaller.

Roma looked around as though she was trying to find someone.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“I don’t see Eloise,” she said.

Eloise was the only other Finnamore cousin left. I’d met her when she’d come to town for her mother, Leitha’s, funeral.

Marcus had heard our conversation and he leaned toward us. “She isn’t coming. I spoke to her on Thursday. She had surgery on a broken leg a few days ago. She’s not allowed to fly.”

Roma nodded. “Thanks. I knew there had to be a good reason she wasn’t here.”

The man with the beard turned out to be a Unitarian minister and a college friend of Mike’s. He led the service, sharing his own memories of Mike’s sense of humor and his kind heart.

Jonas and Lachlan talked about how Mike had kept them together as a family. “He loved to cook, make music and bring people together,” Jonas said. “He’d organize these Sunday meals, timed so that Eloise and the girls could join us from California over Zoom. We’d have dinner and they’d have lunch and the distance didn’t matter because we were still all together like we’d been when we were kids.”

I had to swallow back tears when Harry walked to the front of the room. He looked so somber in his dark suit. Roma was already holding Eddie’s hand. She reached, wordlessly, for mine, squeezing it hard.

“Mike and I had been practicing for what turned out to be our last show for over a month,” Harry said. “He loved the idea that we were going to surprise everyone. It was one of the best nights of his life, he told me after the concert. And according to Mike, he had a lot of those.” Harry raised an eyebrow. A lot of people were smiling. Mike had been a charmer.

Harry let out a slow breath. “When someone dies, we always talk about what a great person they were when a lot of the time they were really a jerk, but Michael Bishop was not one of those people. Everyone loved him and he was a dentist. How many people love their dentist?”

“Endodontist,” Lachlan called out.

Across the aisle from me, I saw Mary wipe away a tear.

Harry smiled and nodded his head. “Right. Endodontist.” He looked skyward. “Sorry, my friend.” His expression grew serious again, and his gaze shifted to the pewter urn to the right of him under the photo of Mike playing his bass at the Last Bash concert. The polished container seemed too small to contain Mike’s big personality. “The world was brighter with Mike Bishop in it and it’s a little darker now that he’s gone.”

Johnny spoke last. “When Mike came to audition to join the Outlaws, he was dressed just like Sonny Crockett—Don Johnson—from the TV show Miami Vice: pleated pastel blue pants and a matching jacket with shoulder pads, a white T-shirt, loafers with no socks, shades and, because it was Mike, a mullet.” He smiled at the memory. “I just knew from looking at him that he was the wrong fit for the band, so I asked him to play with Harry and do the bass line from Heart’s ‘Magic Man.’ I figured there was no way he’d know the song. He was wearing a pastel suit for heaven’s sake!”

There were a few ripples of laughter around the room.

“I was so sure he wouldn’t be able to play it but he did and he played his part perfectly, in his own way, not a copy of anyone else. That was Mike.”

Johnny had to pause for a moment and clear his throat. “People of a certain age will remember when Principal Haney canceled the senior class sleigh ride because he wasn’t happy with the class average after Christmas exams. He got to school the next morning and his office was filled floor to ceiling with bales of hay.” He glanced over at the urn and smiled. “He suspected Mike from the beginning but Mike had an alibi. He had spent the evening before calling bingo at the senior center like he did every Thursday night. Or so they all said.”

There was more laughter.

“That was Mike.”

Beside me Roma was nodding.

Johnny continued, “What most of you don’t know is that when Mike was in college, he used to play stand-up bass for a Baptist church band, which meant he would be out playing at a bar with us until two a.m. and then he’d put on his white shirt, slick back his hair and be at the front of the church at nine thirty. He did that because the group’s regular bass player—who also happened to be Mike’s chemistry professor—was undergoing cancer treatment. That’s also who Mike was.”

He cleared his throat again. “Jonas and Lachlan asked us to sing something for Mike. We talked about it and we just couldn’t sing anything that was sad because it just didn’t feel right.”

Harry and Paul had gotten to their feet. They joined Johnny while Ritchie moved to the piano set off to one side.

“Mike learned this one from those Baptists, and when he wanted to get under my skin, he’d start pushing to make it our encore. Please join us if you know the words.” Johnny looked over at the urn one last time. “Safe travels, my friend.” He clasped his hands in front of him and began to sing the poignant words of the old hymn “I’ll Fly Away.”

Jonas and Lachlan stood up and everyone else rose as well. One by one, throughout the room, I heard voices begin to join in. It was profoundly sad and somehow uplifting at the same time.

Outside, a fine, soft rain was falling. As I stood under the umbrella Marcus held over us and watched Daniel Gunnerson carefully set all that was left of Mike Bishop into the hearse, I thought of something I’d heard my mother say: Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on.

I hoped it was true.