Софи Келли - Faux Paw

“I’ll think I’ll just say, ‘no comment,’” I said.

He smiled. “Good answer.”

When we got to the library I turned to face Marshall. He was at least as tall as Marcus. Without heels I felt small standing next to him. “Thank you,” I said. “But I think you really should go now.”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I’m going to wait out here for you. Whoever killed Margo is still on the loose and I’ll feel better if I stick around.” He shrugged. “My father was also big on being a gentleman.”

I looked up at the sky. “Come inside, Marshall,” I said. “It’s going to rain by the look of those clouds, and it would probably be better for both of us if you weren’t lurking around out here.”

I pulled my spare set of keys out of my pocket, let us into the building and shut off both alarm systems. There was no security guard on duty anymore. After their initial panic, the insurance company had decided they only needed a live person in the library during the daytime. Gavin had laughed when he told me, saying that maybe they thought art thieves were afraid of the dark.

I turned on only one set of overhead lights. Marshall followed me up the stairs. I tried not to look at the piles of books on the main floor.

At least my office was untouched. I found the forms I needed in my filing cabinet. “I just need to go next door and copy these,” I said to Marshall, holding up the papers. “I’ll only be a minute.”

“Do you mind if I borrow your phone book again?” he asked, a bit sheepishly, pulling his flip phone out of his pocket.

“Sure, go ahead,” I said. I pointed to the bookshelf behind him. “It’s in the same place. I’ll be right back.”

I walked down the hallway and picked up a plastic bag from the table in the lunchroom. I counted to twenty and stepped back into the office.

23

Marshall Holmes was standing in the middle of the room, holding the phone book upside down by its spine.

I held up the plastic bag. “Are you looking for this?” I asked. Below the Falls was inside the bag.

“Oh, my word, you found the drawing,” Marshall said. “Where was it?”

“In that phone book,” I said. I exhaled slowly. “Where you put it.”

His eyes darted to my desk.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t have another paperweight for you to hit me over the head the way you did to Margo.”

He was good. He frowned, shaking his head. “You think I killed Margo? You think I’m the one who hit her over the head with that brass cat?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “How did you know the paperweight was a brass cat?”

He wasn’t at all rattled. “Because I was here. I used your phone book.” He held it up. “Remember?”

“The paperweight wasn’t here when you were in my office,” I said. “It was a gift from a friend in Boston. I got it in the mail the day Margo was killed. By you.”

Marshall rubbed a hand over his mouth. “It was an accident,” he said, changing tack. He swallowed hard. His hands were shaking. “Margo and I had gotten to be friends putting this tour together. She felt the same way that I did, that the drawing was too fragile and potentially too valuable to be part of the exhibit.”

“So you took it, so the whole tour would be canceled.” My knees were trembling. I hoped he couldn’t tell.

Marshall clenched his teeth and tight lines formed around his mouth. He gestured at the bag holding the drawing that I was still holding. “I took the drawing to keep it safe. That’s not a crime. It belongs to me.”

“Half of it belongs to you,” I said.

“All of it should belong to me.” His eyes flashed. “I’m a real Holmes. Diana isn’t.”

“Why did you kill Margo?” I said.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen. You have to believe me,” he said. “You know she didn’t want the artwork out of the museum, especially the Weston drawing.”

I nodded.

“She said more than once that no one seemed to understand what a bad idea it was. I thought . . . I thought it meant we were on the same page.”

He cleared his throat. “I was here. Just Margo and I. Ownership has its privileges. The drawing was sitting there in its case. I thought, what if I took it? What if we made it look as though there had been a break-in? That would be the end of the exhibit.”

“So it was a spur-of-the-moment thing?”

“It was. It was an accident, I swear.” He sucked in a breath and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “I made the mistake of telling Margo I was going to sell the drawing to a private collector who had the resources to make sure it was preserved properly.”

He looked at me again, his expression pleading with me to understand. “Margo wanted the drawing to stay in a museum, where it could be examined and analyzed by art historians and anthropologists. They’d pick at it and pick at it until it was damaged. Until it wasn’t worth anything anymore. I said no.” He looked away again, running his left thumb over and over his fingers like he was trying to wipe something away.

“I walked away from her. I came in here,” he said. “She followed me. She put her hands on my chest and she kept pushing me.” He swallowed again. “I just reached blindly behind me. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

I took a couple of steps closer to him. “Well then, tell that to the police,” I said.

He looked at me, opened his mouth as though he was going to say something, and then closed it without speaking. His hand snaked out and snatched the bag holding the drawing from me. His entire expression changed. He shook his head, a condescending smile on his face. “I can’t believe you fell for that,” he said.

Behind him a voice said, “Funny. I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

Marcus was standing in the doorway.

“How did you know?” Marshall asked after he’d been read his rights and the handcuffs had been snapped on.

“You switched phones to have an excuse to use the phone book here in my office.”

He shook his head but didn’t say anything.

“You have a smartphone,” I continued. “I found photos of you online taking a call with a smartphone outside the opera. And how could a businessman manage without one these days? Which means you planned it all.”

I remembered what Rena had said about the security system being off when she’d gotten to the library. “I think you shut off the alarm system somehow—it can be done and money buys a lot of information—took the Weston drawing, and it was Margo’s bad luck to walk in on you. I found a photograph of Diana online from a charity talent show. When I did a little more digging, I found out you were in the same show, part of a magic act. You picked the lock.” I gestured at my office door. “You hid the drawing here just in case the police considered you to be a suspect. You didn’t count on the library being closed for so long.”

Marshall didn’t say anything, but a tiny nerve next to his eye began to twitch.

“You and Margo weren’t friends. She wasn’t helping you.” I moved a step closer to him. “She wasn’t the type of person to fall for your charm, but she was the type of person who would have come back here to make sure everything was perfect.”

“And that got her killed,” Marcus said.

Marshall’s expression darkened. “I want my lawyer,” he said.

Diana Holmes arrived just as the police were taking her stepbrother away. Neither one of them bothered with their public faces this time, and the animosity they felt for each other was obvious.

“The drawing will have to stay in police custody for now,” Marcus told her. “It’s evidence.”

“I understand,” she said giving him a cool, businesslike smile. “It won’t be a problem. My lawyer will be in touch with you. The drawing won’t be going back to the museum.” One eyebrow went up. “Under the circumstances.”