Paws Аnd Effect

5

The key chain fob was logged in as evidence. I didn’t ask Hope how she explained the time lag. We agreed that I would tell Marcus what she’d uncovered so far, that way she’d be able to truthfully say that she hadn’t shared any information with him. It was splitting hairs but it protected both of them and that was enough for me.

I tossed and turned most of the night. I woke up in a tangle of blankets with an arm and a leg hanging off the bed. It made me think of all the mornings my mother had insisted that sharing a bed with my dad was like being on the channel ferry.

I missed them. They were both on the West Coast at the moment while my mother did a two-week guest stint on The Wild and Wonderful. She was hugely popular with fans of the racy soap opera, who had been clamoring since her previous visit for a return performance.

I looked at the clock. It was too early to call. My mother hated mornings. I couldn’t tell her what was going on, anyway. I pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants and went down to the kitchen to make coffee. That’s where I was when Hercules came through the door. “Through” as in the bottom left panel almost seemed to shimmer and then he was standing in the kitchen.

“Merow?” he said, looking like he was surprised to see me. He’d probably been sitting out on the porch. He liked to do that, look out the window at the world and not have to get his feet wet in the early morning dew on the lawn.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I said.

He stretched, arching his back and yawning. “You too?” I asked.

He gave an offhand murr that might have been a yes.

I poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the table, curling one leg underneath me. Hercules launched himself into my lap. He craned his neck to look in my mug.

“It’s coffee.”

He sat back on my leg and looked around the kitchen.

“I’ll get breakfast in a minute,” I said. I pushed up the sleeves of my shirt and took another drink of my coffee.

Herc bumped my free hand with his head and I stroked his fur.

“How am I going to tell Marcus that he could be a suspect in his friend’s death?’ I asked the cat. I set my cup down and massaged the back of my neck. “How do I tell him her death wasn’t an accident?”

My plan had been to invite Marcus for dinner, but now that seemed like such a long time away. “Hope said she thought the medical examiner’s official report would be ready on Monday, but what if she’s wrong? I don’t want him to be blindsided.”

Hercules hopped off my lap and walked over to the back door. He didn’t go through it; he just sat down and stared pointedly at it, then looked over his shoulder at me.

“I don’t want to have coffee on the porch,” I said. “I don’t have any socks on and I don’t have a fur coat like you do.”

He made a sound in the back of his throat, which could have best been described as an expression of exasperation. I didn’t know what he was trying to tell me. I was tired and trying not to give in to the worry gnawing at my insides.

Hercules came back across the floor to me. I’d left my purse and keys on one of the chairs the night before. He stood on his hind legs and swept the keys to the floor. Then he sat down, shot me a look and started to wash his face.

Door. Keys. I was supposed to make the connection and I likely would have, if I’d had more sleep. I needed to talk to Marcus before I could deal with anything else.

Marcus.

Door.

Keys.

“You think I should go talk to him right now,” I said.

Hercules looked up at me, his white tipped paw paused in midair. “Merow,” he said. It was about as close to “Well, duh,” as a cat could get.

I got to my feet, put my cup in the sink and got four stinky crackers from the cupboard. I put the crackers at his feet. “You’re a very smart cat,” I said.

I went upstairs, brushed my hair and teeth and found a pair of socks. I didn’t bother with makeup and I didn’t call Marcus, either. I went back downstairs and put out breakfast for both cats. There was still no sign of Owen but I found Hercules in his favorite spot on the bench in the porch.

I sat down beside him for a moment. He put two paws on my leg and I stroked the white fur at the top of his nose.

“I won’t be very long,” I said.

He lifted his head and nuzzled my chin.

“I love you, too,” I said.

There was no traffic on Mountain Road and very little all the way to Marcus’s house. I pulled in behind his SUV and walked around the house. The light was on in the kitchen. He must have heard the truck pull in, because the back door opened as I stepped onto the deck.

Marcus was barefoot and shirtless. He hadn’t shaved yet and his dark hair was still damp from the shower. “Kathleen? Is everything all right?”

I nodded, crossed the distance between us and wrapped him in a hug. He hugged me back, then took a step back, hands on my shoulders. “It’s not that I’m not happy to see you but it’s six thirty in the morning. What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you and I couldn’t wait.”

“All right,” he said. “Come in. It’s cold out there.”

We went into the kitchen and I sat across from him at the table.

“So what do you need to talk to me about?” he asked, pulling on a T-shirt that had been over the back of his chair. His blue eyes were narrowed with concern. “Is it . . . Are we okay?”

I reached over and put both my hands over his. “No, no, no. It’s not us.” I made myself smile at him. “We’re fine. We’re better than fine.”

I saw him relax a little. Then a shadow seemed to pass over his face. “It’s Dani, isn’t it,” he said.

I nodded. “I’m so sorry. She . . . didn’t fall off that embankment by accident.”

His mouth twisted to one side. “I probably shouldn’t ask you how you know that.”

“It would be better if you didn’t,” I said.

“What happened?”

I told him what Hope had shared with me. He had to know that she was the source of the information, but neither one of us said her name.

“She didn’t text me, Kathleen,” he said. “I gave her my number and I told her she could call me, but she didn’t.”

“That’s good,” I said. “You can show them your phone.”

He shook his head. “Even though I don’t text I still get some spam. I clear it out once a week.”

My heart sank.

Marcus was meticulous and organized and I knew he would have a system in place to deal with those unwanted texts, just the way he did with so many other things.

“You deleted them all,” I said. Inside I groaned.

He gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Last Friday.”

Anyone who knew Marcus would know it was completely in character for him to do something like that.

“If this were my case I’d think it was suspicious,” he said. “But I give you my word that Dani didn’t send me any texts the day she died. She didn’t ask me to meet her.”

The only thing I could think of was that someone else must have answered that text, and then, realizing it was Marcus’s phone, deleted the original message and the reply out of embarrassment. Maybe it had been someone at the station who had mistaken his phone for their own. It seemed far-fetched but what other explanation was there? I knew Marcus generally kept his cell in his pocket but it was possible he’d set it on his desk for a moment and gotten distracted.

“I don’t need your word,” I said. “I know you. And everyone else who knows you knows that you had nothing to do with Dani’s death.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” he said, “but you know that police investigation is based on following the evidence, and from what you’ve just told me that evidence leads to me.”

“You told me once that an investigation is a little like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. First you have to make sure you have all the pieces. Then you have to start putting them together to form a picture and sometimes you can’t be sure how one piece fits until you get some of the others in place.”

He laughed, which was the last thing I was expecting.

“What?” I said.

“Kathleen, when I said that to you I was trying to impress you. I was trying to make what I do sound more like an art than just the facts, ma’am.” He got to his feet, touching my shoulder as he moved behind me.

“Yes, police work is a process, but it’s also an art,” I pointed out. “It’s as much instinct and feeling as it is observation and fact-finding.”

“I think instinct and feelings are how you figure things out,” he said as he poured a cup of coffee for each of us, “not me.”

He was right. The conflict between feelings and facts had been the major source of turmoil between the two of us. It had taken a case that was very personal to Marcus for us to start to see things from the other’s perspective.

He came back to the table with our coffee. He waited until I had taken a sip, then he spoke. “What else do they have? There has to be more than just those texts. You wouldn’t have come out here this early just for that.”

“Marcus, where are your extra keys?” I asked.

“In the bedroom on my dresser.”

I got up and went down the hall to the bedroom. The keys were in a pottery bowl that he’d told me his sister, Hannah, had made when they were kids. I snagged the keys with one finger. The round metal fob from the drive-in wasn’t attached. Somehow I’d known it wouldn’t be.

I went back to the kitchen.

“What is it?” Marcus asked, turning in his seat to look at me.

I dropped the keys on the table in front of him. He got it immediately. He pressed his lips together for a moment. “Where was it?”

“Under her body,” I said softly.

His face twitched. “I wasn’t there. I didn’t—”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my cheek against his hair. It smelled like baby shampoo. “I know,” I said.

“It must have gotten lost when Thorsten had my keys.”

“That’s possible.”

“And someone picked it up.”

I didn’t say anything.

Marcus eyed me slowly, shaking his head. “You don’t think John or Travis . . . ?”

“No,” I said. My stomach did a queasy flip. “They have theirs.”

His forehead creased. “You think it’s a setup?”

It was the conclusion Hope and I had come to. Someone—the real killer—wanted to make it look as though Marcus had murdered Dani. “Nothing else makes sense,” I said. “We just have to figure out who’s behind it.”

He twisted around to look at me. “No. I don’t want you involved in this in any way.”

I took a step backward and folded my arms over my midsection. “I’m already involved. I’m not going to sit around twiddling my thumbs or making stinky crackers for the boys while someone sets you up for murder, so if we’re going to argue about this let’s hear all your arguments now because I have things to do.” I made a beckoning gesture with one hand and waited for him to tell me this was a police matter and I had no business getting involved.

Instead, he stood up, pulled me against him and gave me a kiss that made me forget—for a moment at least—what we’d been talking about. “I love you,” he said.

I laid my head against his shoulder. “I love you, too,” I said. I tipped my head back to look up at him. “If this is our new way of fighting about things, I like it.”

He smiled and kissed me again, on the forehead this time, so I didn’t temporarily lose all my senses. “Somebody is trying to make it look like I killed Dani, Kathleen. This is dangerous.”

I was starting to see the kisses were more about distracting me than anything else. I broke out of the embrace and took a couple of steps backward so the counter was at my back and there was some air space between me and his broad, muscled shoulders.

“It was dangerous when Ruby was a suspect in Agatha Shepherd’s murder,” I said. “Remember what happened when Owen and I got locked in the basement of that old cabin?” I felt a fleeting rush of panic as an image of that small dark cellar flashed into my mind.

“I remember exactly what happened,” Marcus said. He narrowed his blue eyes. “You could have been killed in that basement or you could have died from hypothermia. It was dangerous.” He enunciated each of the three words, biting them off as though they left a sour taste in his mouth.

“I know that,” I said, struggling not to raise my voice. “I went out there for Ruby, and for Harrison because the papers about Elizabeth’s adoption were out there. I went because I care about both of them.”

I could see from the stubborn set of his jaw that he wasn’t going to be easily dissuaded. “Ruby is my friend and Harrison is like family. I went out there because I cared . . . care about them.” I was having a hard time keeping the emotion out of my voice. “But what’s between you and I”—I gestured from me to him—“is a lot . . . stronger. I was willing to take a risk so Ruby wouldn’t go to jail for a crime she didn’t commit and so Harrison could meet his daughter. You can’t ask me to do any less for you.” I felt the prickle of tears and I blinked several times so they wouldn’t fall.

“That’s when I knew,” he said, his eyes locked on my face.

“Knew what?” I said.

“That I was crazy about you.”

“Way back then? You knew then?”

He nodded. “Uh-huh. I was afraid you were . . .” He cleared his throat. “I was making all sorts of ridiculous bargains with God and when I saw you and Owen through the trees, wading through the snow almost up to your waist, I wanted to dance. I wanted to jump up and down like a kid and high-five everyone in sight.”

I felt myself tear up again and I had to swallow down the emotion or I wouldn’t be able to say the things I needed to say to him. “I’m trying to imagine you dancing in that big parka you were wearing and all that snow,” I said with a small smile.

“I came pretty close.” He swiped a hand across his mouth. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, Kathleen. You understand that, right?”

I nodded. “I do. I really do. And I feel exactly the same way about you. The difference is that you’re trying to protect me from something that’s up here.” I tapped my temples with the knuckles of each hand. “From something you think might happen. The threat, the danger you’re in is real. Here. Now. And I won’t stay out of it. I can’t.”

“I know,” he said.

There really wasn’t anything else to say.

* * *

The medical examiner officially ruled Dani’s death a homicide on Monday. Marcus was put on leave—with pay—and Hope was removed from the case. The chief had decided, given Marcus’s connection to the victim, to bring in an outside investigator. A detective from Red Wing, Bryan Foster, took over the investigation.

“It could be worse,” Hope said that evening, sitting once again at my kitchen table with Hercules ensconced next to her chair. He seemed to like her and she him.

“Foz and I go way back. We went to the academy together. He won’t shut me out completely. I can keep tabs on what’s happening in the investigation under the table.”

“You trust him?” I asked, pulling up one knee and tenting my fingers on top of it.

She nodded. “I do. He won’t cut any corners and he won’t make any assumptions. He’s going to gather the evidence and follow the facts.” She shrugged. “And so am I.”

“The chief took you off the case,” I said.

“Foz is a good cop and he’ll be fair, but we both know that all the evidence so far points at just one person.”

“Marcus.”

Hope picked up her cup, took a drink and set it down again. “I can’t sit on my hands and do nothing, Kathleen.”

“Neither can I,” I said.

We looked at each other across the table. “Are you sure you’re in?” she asked. “You know what Marcus would say?”

I nodded slowly. “I know what he would say and yes I’m sure I’m in.”

“Merow,” Hercules said from his place next to Hope’s chair.

We were all in.