Софи Келли - Faux Paw

“They are,” I said. “Gavin and I were going to see if we could return them to the artists sometime in the next few days.” Hercules leaned against my leg.

“Could you return Rena Adler’s artwork, say, tomorrow? And without Solomon?”

“I don’t see why not,” I said. “What are you thinking? You don’t want to question Rena at the police station?”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t want to question her in any kind of official way at all. If I do that, she’s likely to request a lawyer.”

“You’re having second thoughts.”

“I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the investigation. Like I told you, I can’t use those fingerprints as evidence.”

“But if you have a conversation with her at the library, anything you learn is evidence,” I said.

“It’s a fine line, but yes,” he said.

“Okay. How about this? Gavin has a meeting in Minneapolis with the insurance company. He won’t be back until after lunch. I’ll call Rena and see if I can set something up for midmorning. Then when Gavin gets back he and I can return everyone else’s pieces.”

“Sounds good,” Marcus said.

I called Rena after supper. Marcus had gone back to work. She was happy to hear she could get her paintings back. I felt a twinge of guilt as I set a time for her to meet me at the library the next morning. Owen cocked his head to one side and eyed me as I hung up the phone.

“I hate this part,” I said to him with a sigh. “I like Rena.”

“Merow,” he said.

There really wasn’t anything else to say.

18

The sun was shining in the morning and the sky was slash of blue overhead as though Mother Nature had taken a wide paintbrush to the sky, so I walked down Mountain Road to meet Marcus at the library. As soon as we were inside the building I headed for the book drop. There weren’t nearly as many books and magazines as there had been in the past few days. I had enough time to take care of them before Rena showed up.

“I like her,” I said to Marcus as I sorted the books onto carts.

“Any special reason?” he asked. He was leaning against the circulation desk, handing books and magazines to me.

I looked up at him. “I told you how she managed to change the subject anytime the conversation turned to anything personal?”

He nodded.

“Well, Ruby and I were talking about possibly having an exhibit of local artwork at the library this summer and maybe tying it into a workshop at the co-op. Maggie asked Rena if she’d been willing to do something with egg tempera. I was watching her.”

“And?”

“She said yes and I believed her. I watched her body language.” I held up a hand before he could say anything. “She could have said no. She could have made an excuse. For that matter, why did she stay in Mayville Heights at all once the show was canceled? If she killed Margo, why didn’t she leave town? I know she’s been working at the high school with Ruby, but she could have gotten out of that.”

He ran his hand over the cover of a children’s picture book. “I think there’s jam on this one,” he said.

I took the book and set it aside in a pile I was keeping for Abigail to repair.

“Maybe she stayed so she wouldn’t look guilty,” Marcus said. “Maybe she stayed to keep an eye on our investigation. Right now, I don’t know.”

I took the last magazine he handed me, set it on top of the others and got to my feet. I glanced at my watch. “Rena should be here soon,” I said. “I’ll go watch for her.”

Marcus straightened up. “I’ll do that,” he said. He went to wait between the double doors and I wandered over to stand in the entrance to the exhibit area. Marcus had sent Curtis out for coffee. I looked around the space. I remembered Margo working with Larry Taylor to make sure the lighting was absolutely perfect.

I felt a lump in my throat. It seemed that her passing hadn’t really left a hole in anyone’s life.

I had my crazy family as well as Lise and my other friends back in Boston. I had Marcus and Maggie and Rebecca and Harrison and so many special people here in Mayville Heights. I liked Rena Adler, but I had also liked Margo, for all her perfectionism, and I wanted whoever had killed her brought to justice. Somebody had to fight for Margo, and it looked like that was going to be me.

I heard voices behind me. Rena had arrived and Marcus was letting her in.

“Hi, Kathleen,” she said as she stepped into the main part of the building. She’d brought cardboard to wrap around her paintings and I could see a roll of bubble wrap poking out of the top of her canvas tote. Marcus took the cardboard from her.

I reminded myself that if Rena hadn’t done anything wrong there was nothing to worry about and forced myself to smile at her. “Good morning,” I said.

“Am I the first one here?” she asked, looking around.

“You’re the only one, actually,” I said, taking the cardboard from Marcus and leaning it against the desk. “Ruby said you’ll be at the high school all day for the next couple of days. I thought it might be easier for you to get your paintings today.”

“It is. Thanks,” she said. She glanced at Marcus. “Thank you, too, Detective.”

“You’re welcome,” Marcus said. He looked around. “Tell me which pieces are yours and I’ll lift them down for you.”

Rena pointed at her two paintings, one of a small mouse and the other of a turtle near the edge of a pool of water.

Marcus lifted down the turtle painting and carried it over to the checkout desk. I slid the card with Rena’s name and the name of the painting out of its holder on the wall and handed it to her.

She ran a hand along the side of the frame. “I like this frame,” she said. “When Margo chose it I wasn’t so sure, but now I can see she was right.”

“You can keep it,” I said, running my own finger over the smooth pale wood.

Rena looked uncertainly at me. In jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt, with her black hair in a loose side braid, she looked a lot younger than I knew she had to be.

“Margo wanted you all to have professionally framed pieces. She arranged it through the museum.” I smiled at the memory of Margo, walking the length of the upstairs hallway, having an animated conversation with someone from the museum. “She was hoping these pieces would be part of other shows.”

“What happened to her was horrible,” Rena said softly, her expression a mix of sadness and gravity.

The emotion looked genuine. The energy coming off her felt genuine. A knot of uncertainty twisted in my stomach.

“The last time you saw Margo Walsh was right after lunch on Thursday?” Marcus asked.

Rena shook her head. “No. Before lunch.” She looked at me and I nodded my head in confirmation. “We were all here. All the local artists, I mean.”

His gaze had been drawn to the picture on the counter. “That’s the turtle preserve isn’t it?”

Rena smiled. “It is. How did you know?”

“I’ve hiked all through that area, though not for a while.” He narrowed his blue eyes at her. “It’s very good. Have you been painting your whole life?”

She nodded and reached for the roll of plastic wrap in the bag at her feet. I was surprised that she was wrapping the painting so carefully. Maybe it was going somewhere other than back to Red Wing with her. “If you count finger painting in kindergarten, then, yes,” she said.

“I didn’t like finger painting,” I said with a sheepish smile.

Rena turned to look at me. “Why?”

“I didn’t like getting my hands dirty because we could only go to the reading corner with clean hands and that was my favorite place in the classroom.”