Софи Келли - Faux Paw

An unspoken “but” hung in the air between us.

I studied his face. “How about indirectly?” I asked. “Is there something about Gavin you haven’t told me?”

He swiped a hand over the back of his neck. “No. I just . . . I just get a bad feeling from the guy.”

It took effort to keep from smiling. “A feeling?” I said. “You?” Marcus was very much a “just the facts, ma’am” kind of person. I was the one who relied much more on feelings, nuance and body language. It was one of the reasons we’d butted heads so much in the past. It had taken a case that involved his sister, Hannah, for both of us to be able to see the other person’s point of view.

The corners of Marcus’s mouth twitched. I realized that meant he could see the irony of his words, too. “I guess that’s what happens from spending so much time with you,” he said, the tight lines around his eyes softening.

“I guess it does,” I agreed, wiggling my eyebrows at him.

Just then Claire came out of the kitchen carrying a large brown paper bag. She set it on the counter in front of Marcus.

He smiled at her. “Thanks, Claire. Could I get two large coffees to go, please?”

“Of course.” Claire smiled back at him. “Black with two sugars for you and one sugar no cream for Detective Lind.”

He nodded and looked at me again. “The coffeemaker at the station died. Again. And we did an extra run this morning.” He fished his wallet out of his pocket.

Hope was training for a triathlon and Marcus was running with her a couple of mornings a week. Brady Chapman was helping her with the cycling portion and I knew that Mary had been working with Hope on a strength program for her legs using kickboxing moves. It was one of the things that had made me fall in love with Mayville Heights, the way people were willing to help one another.

Claire came back with the coffee. Marcus handed her a couple of bills. “The rest is for you,” he said.

She smiled again. “Thanks. Have a good day, Detective.” She moved down the counter to the cash register.

“I can drop you at the library,” Marcus said, reaching for the paper bag of take-out food. “It looks like rain.”

I turned and looked out the front window of the restaurant. It was cloudy but it didn’t look like rain to me. And more important, my left wrist, which was a pretty good indicator of wet or snowy weather, felt fine.

I realized that maybe Gavin’s invitation to breakfast had been motivated, a tiny bit, by wanting to spend time with me. The two of us eating at Eric’s was getting to be a habit. On the other hand, I also believed that he wanted to catch whoever took the Weston drawing and killed Margo as much as I did. If I went with him to talk to Big Jule, maybe I could find out if there was anything more to Marcus’s “feeling” about Gavin than just a smidgen of jealousy that he didn’t want to admit to.

“Thank you,” I said, brushing his hand with my fingers. “But there are a couple of other things I want to talk to Gavin about.”

Marcus picked up the bag of take-out food with one hand and the pressed-paper tray holding the coffee with the other. “You’re going to go with him, aren’t you? To talk to his contact .” Something in his voice when he said the word “contact” made me suspect that he didn’t really believe there was one.

I nodded. “Yes. And just so you know, I keep that little can of industrial-strength hair spray that Mary gave me in my bag. It’s more lethal than pepper spray.” I held up my first three fingers. “I’ll be careful. I’ll call you when we get there and as soon as we get back. Librarian’s honor.”

“There’s no such thing as librarian’s honor,” he said.

“Don’t make me shush you,” I countered, narrowing my gaze at him in a mock glare.

He smiled and gave my fingers a quick squeeze. “I’ll call you later,” he said.

I nodded and watched him go, thinking for what had to be the millionth time by now that he looked good no matter in what direction he was headed.

I walked back to the table.

“Everything okay with you and your detective?” Gavin asked.

I nodded and sat down again. “You wanted to get a rise out of him. That’s why you told him that ‘we’ were going to talk to Big Jule.”

I thought he’d deny it, but he just gave me that easy grin. “Guilty as charged,” he said, leaning back and propping one arm on the chair back. The smiled dimmed. “I’m sorry, Kathleen. I shouldn’t have done that. It was juvenile.”

He seemed sincere, so I decided to accept his apology.

“When do you want to go talk to Julian McCrea?” I asked.

The smile came back. “You’re coming with me?”

I reached for my coffee. The cup was empty, but Claire, with her seemingly sixth sense about when I needed a refill, was already headed our way with a full pot. “Yes, I’m coming with you,” I said. “I hope it’s not a waste of time.”

“I’ll pick you up at nine.”

I nodded. “That’s fine.”

“I’ll call Big Jule in a little while and if anything changes I’ll let you know,” he said. He made a gesture at the table. “Breakfast is on me.”

“Thank you,” I said, getting to my feet and sliding the strap of my bag over my shoulder. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

I stopped at the counter for a cup of coffee to go even though I was probably already overcaffeinated. It gave me the opportunity to quietly pay for both my and Gavin’s breakfasts, my subtle way of letting him know that all the charm in the world wasn’t going to work on me.

12

Gavin pulled into my driveway exactly at nine the next morning, something I was pretty certain he’d timed for effect since I’d once seen him check his watch and linger for a moment at the library when he’d had a meeting with Margo.

“I’m leaving,” I said to the boys, reaching for my jacket.

Owen looked up from the stack of stinky crackers that he was arranging on the floor like a bingo player spreading out cards before the numbers were called. It could have been my imagination, but his expression looked sour, as though he’d just gotten a whiff of something rotten. Hercules didn’t even acknowledge that I’d spoken. “I’ll see you later,” I said.

Gavin was just coming around the side of the house as I stepped outside. “Good morning,” he said. After a pause he added, “You look nice.”

“Thank you,” I said. I’d waffled on whether it was manipulative to wear a skirt and heels for the meeting with Julian McCrea, standing, undecided, in front of the closet. Hercules, who had been sitting just inside, seemingly eyeing everything I pulled out and rejecting it like a feline Tim Gunn, had finally reached out and set a paw on my black boots and blinked his green eyes at me.

Ruby would have said that was a sign from the universe. It was more likely a sign that Hercules wanted his breakfast, but I decided I was overthinking things. I’d chosen a black skirt with a lavender shirt and the boots.

“We’re meeting Big Jule for brunch at the Rose and Gray,” Gavin said as I settled into the passenger seat of his Mercedes and fastened my seat belt.

I’d never been to the restaurant that specialized in cuisine made exclusively with ingredients from within a hundred-mile radius of Minneapolis, but I knew Roma and Eddie had had dinner there a few times and it was only his position as a local celebrity that had gotten them a reservation on short notice. Either Julian McCrea or Gavin had some clout.

We talked about Gavin’s work for much of the drive, and that led, eventually, to a conversation about Margo.

“She had talent in her own right, you know,” Gavin said, his eyes flicking away from the road for a moment to look at me. “One night we were working in the bar at the hotel and she showed me photos of her artwork. I can’t even draw a stick man, but Margo had done some paintings of these old buildings, and I know it sounds crazy, but she could actually make you feel something when you looked at them.”