Софи Келли - Faux Paw

“I’ll see you soon, then,” Marcus said, and I could picture the smile I knew was on his face.

I ended the call and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly.

I liked to think of myself as being pretty unflappable, growing up with my eccentric actor parents and a younger brother and sister who could both be pretty out there sometimes. Someone had had to be the sensible, practical person who remembered to buy milk and carry the health insurance cards. Marcus had the ability to turn me into a blushing, giggly teenager. I’d never really been that and, truth be told, I liked it.

Lita was watching me, a knowing smile on her face. “You two are so adorable,” she said.

“And you and Burtis are?” I teased.

“A mature love ripened by time,” she countered. “Like a bottle of fine wine or an aged wheel of Brie.”

It sounded like an answer she’d given before. I laughed as I picked up my bag. “I’m sure Burtis would like the comparison to a wheel of stinky cheese,” I said.

Lita threw back her head and laughed. “He certainly eats enough of it for it to be an apt comparison.”

I thanked her for her help and headed out. I couldn’t get the image of barrel-chested Burtis, whose hands were big enough that one of them would cover my head, holding a tiny water cracker with a smear of soft cheese, his pinkie raised in the air. The image made me smile all the way to library.

Marcus was waiting for me on the steps to the building. He smiled when he caught sight of me.

“Hi,” I said, reaching out to touch his arm.

“What were you thinking about?” he asked. “You were smiling all the way up the sidewalk.” He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and unlocked the doors.

I told him what Lita had said about Burtis’s love of old cheese. “I just always thought of Burtis as a beer-and-brats kind of guy,” I said.

Marcus punched in the codes for both security systems and we stepped into the library proper. “Burtis is a complex man,” he said. “There’s a lot more to him than just what you see on the surface.”

Marcus was very much a law-and-order, the-rules-apply-to-everyone kind of person, while some—or maybe all, for all I knew—of Burtis Chapman’s business enterprises danced on the edge of illegality and sometimes fell in. But Burtis was intensely loyal to the town and to people he called his friends. I was lucky to be one of them. And Marcus was the same way, so the two of them had always had a grudging respect for each other. But last winter Owen and I had been trapped in a burning building and Burtis and Marcus had worked together to get me out. It had changed the relationship between the two men in ways I couldn’t exactly figure out.

Curtis Holt was in his chair next to the Plexiglas half wall that still separated the exhibit area from the rest of the library.

“Good morning, Curtis,” Marcus called.

“Morning, Detective,” the guard replied. “Detective Lind is upstairs.” He smiled at me. “Good morning, Ms. Paulson.”

I smiled back. “Good morning, Curtis.”

Hope Lind was at the top of the stairs on the second floor with, I guessed, a couple of crime scene technicians.

“Thank you for letting me get some things from my office,” I said. Hope was the lead detective on the case and I knew it was because of her that I had been allowed in the building, not because of my relationship with Marcus.

“No problem, Kathleen,” she said. Her eyes flicked to Marcus for a second and I found myself wondering about those dates the two of them had had.

I stepped into my office and glanced around the room, trying not to look at the spot on the floor where Margo’s body had been lying. I tried instead to think about what I wanted—needed—to accomplish in the next few days. I pointed out the files I wanted on my desk and Marcus retrieved them, looking carefully through each manila folder before he handed them to me. “Sorry,” he said with shrug. “I have to follow procedure.”

“It’s okay.” I smiled at him.

“Is there anything else you need?” he asked. “I still have no idea when you’ll be able to reopen.”

I stuffed the file folders in my bag. “That’s all right. I can work around the building being closed. Maggie’s offered to move Reading Buddies to the tai chi studio. And Lita is going to offer the boardroom at Henderson Holdings to the seniors’ reading group.”

“They couldn’t get any more raucous than some of the board meetings we’ve had in there,” she’d said, looking at me over the top of her glasses.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Marcus said. “Everyone—but especially you—worked hard to raise the money to expand Reading Buddies. That’s really nice of Maggie to let you use the studio. But, uh, does she have any idea how loud that could get?”

Marcus had helped out with the kids at the library a few times. Because of his own dyslexia he was very good with reluctant readers.

“I warned her.”

“Maybe you should drop off some earplugs, just in case,” he said with a grin.

“By the way, she thinks Gavin might be right about Devin Rossi.” I glanced toward the hall again.

His smile faded. “You told her what he said.”

I studied his face as it closed into what I thought of as police officer mode. “I didn’t think it was a secret and I wanted to know if she thought Gavin’s idea had any credence.”

His eyebrows went up slightly. “Did she?”

I shifted a bit uncomfortably from one foot to the other. I could feel the skepticism coming off him. He’d made it clear he thought the idea of a cat burglar dropping into the library from the roof to steal a drawing that wasn’t any bigger than a piece of copier paper was outlandish.

“She confirmed everything Gavin told us.” I paused. When he didn’t say anything, I added, “She’s at the shop all afternoon if you’d like to talk to her.”

“Okay,” he said. He leaned against the edge of my desk. “By the way, I talked to Solomon’s police contact from Chicago.” He gave me a small smile. “You didn’t think I would, did you?”

“No, I didn’t,” I admitted, feeling my cheeks get warm.

“The only thing they have on Devin Rossi is a fingerprint from a robbery they think she committed at a private gallery about three years ago.”

“Did you find any fingerprints on the skylight?” I asked.

Marcus nodded. “Yes.”

“So did they match?”

He shook his head. “The only prints we had belong to Will Redfern, and I don’t think it was him who stole that drawing.”

I sighed. “And you don’t think it was Devin Rossi, either.”

He straightened up. “Sorry. I just don’t think some cat burglar broke in here, stole that drawing and killed Margo Walsh.”

I nodded. It was just so far-fetched, but I couldn’t help wishing things really were that simple.

10

Owen went to sit by the back door about five minutes before Maggie was due to drive out to Roma’s with me. “She’ll be here soon,” I said. He shot a backward glance in my direction as if to say, “I know that.”

And he did. I had no idea how he knew when Maggie was going to show up or when Rebecca was about to knock on the back door with treats or even when Marcus was going to stop by unexpectedly. He just did. It was just one of the many things about the cats that I’d stopped trying to find an explanation for.

“Hey, Fuzz Face,” Maggie said when she caught sight of Owen.

He looked up at her, adoration written all over his furry gray-and-white face. I pulled on my hoodie while the two of them “talked.”

Finally, Maggie looked at me. “Hi, Kath, where’s the bench?” she said. We were taking a long, low bench that I’d painted and Mags had made a pillow for out to Roma as surprise. Maggie had surreptitiously measured the space and we were fairly confident that it would fit under the window at the end of the upstairs hallway. Roma had found a similar bench in an antiques store in Red Wing but had balked at the price. Maggie and I had found this one at a flea market a few weeks ago, painted a bilious pea soup green. Marcus had tightened one wobbly leg and Hercules had “helped” as I sanded away the old paint—from a distance, of course.