Софи Келли - Final Catcall

He climbed onto my lap and nuzzled my neck.

“I love you, too,” I said, scratching the top of his head. “But I need to get going. Maggie’s waiting.” The moment the words came out I realized what a mistake I’d just made. Owen jumped down from my lap and went to sit by the back door.

I stood up and brushed a clump of gray cat fur off my sweater. “You’re not coming with me,” I said.

He didn’t even twitch a whisker. I knew what was coming next. I swooped down and scooped him up before he could wink out of sight. He yowled and tried to wriggle out of my arms.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I set him just inside the kitchen door and closed it in his face. He yowled again in angry protest.

I went out to the truck. Now all the men in my life were mad at me.

“C’mon up,” Maggie called when I knocked on her apartment door. The aroma of sausage and onions floated down the stairs to meet me. She was at the counter, tearing a ball of mozzarella into small pieces. And Roma was sitting on the sofa.

“I was hoping you’d be here,” I said, dropping down next to her on the couch.

“I bribed her,” Maggie said. There was a blob of sauce on the end of her nose and a dusting of flour in her hair. And there wasn’t a bare bit of counter space for me to put the brownies down. I set the square plastic container on the chair next to the sofa.

Roma smiled. “She did. She promised me half a pizza to take home.”

“You get the other half,” Maggie said to me.

“Good.” I took off my heavy blue cable knit sweater and tossed it over the back of the chair. “I can use it to bribe my way back into Owen’s good graces.”

Maggie frowned. “What did you do to Owen?”

“I didn’t do anything. He wanted to come with me and I said no.” I kicked off my shoes, pulled a foot up underneath me and settled in one corner of the couch.

“You could have brought him,” she said. She frowned and looked around the cluttered kitchen.

“No, I could not have brought him. It would have set a precedent and I swear to you Owen would know that.”

“Please tell me you’re not really going to feed Owen pizza,” Roma said. “He’s a cat. He’s not supposed to eat people food.”

“You tell him that,” I said.

“I have.”

“So that explains why the cats don’t like you,” Maggie said with a grin, bending down to peer into the oven.

“I won’t give Owen any pizza,” I said. “I promise.”

Roma smiled. “Thank you.”

I’d been guilty in the past of letting the cats eat all kinds of people food. Roma had been horrified when she found out. Owen and Hercules weren’t typical cats by any standards and I didn’t think they had a typical cat’s digestive system, but I was still trying to stick to cat food and not people food.

Neither Owen nor Hercules was very happy about the change in their eating habits. If they’d known that Roma was behind it they would have had even more reason to be cool to her. Roma wasn’t one of their favorite people, probably because whenever they saw her at the clinic they were invariably on the business end of a needle and she was the one doing the poking.

“How’s Eddie?” I asked.

Roma’s boyfriend, Eddie Sweeney, played for the Minnesota Wild in the NHL. Plus he could cook, and he handled a hammer about as well as he did a hockey stick. And he was as gorgeous as a GQ cover model.

She fingered the antique rose gold locket Eddie had given her and the smile got a little wider. “He’s great. They have a preseason game tonight in St. Louis.” Her expression grew serious. “Maggie told me about you and Andrew finding that director, Hugh Davis. You all right?”

I nodded. “I’m okay, thanks. It was worse for Andrew, I think.” I gave her a wry smile. “It wasn’t my first dead body.”

She leaned back against the sofa cushions. “Did you see Marcus?”

“I did.”

She reached across the back of the sofa and patted my arm. “I’m sorry things turned out the way they did.”

“You and me both,” I said.

Maggie was scraping dishes and loading them into the dishwasher.

Roma leaned sideways to see what she was doing. “Could we help?” she asked.

“You could set the table,” Maggie said. “Place mats are in the second drawer.” She gestured with one elbow.

“What could I do?” I asked.

“Come scratch my nose. Please.”

I got up and went over to her. She tipped her head to one side and I scratched the bridge of her nose.

“Up a little bit more,” she urged. She sighed when I hit the itchy spot. “Ahh, that’s better. Thank you.”

“You sound like Hercules,” I said. I stuck the plug in the sink and started running some hot water so I could wipe the counter.

“That reminds me,” Maggie said, waving a plate at me. “I forgot to tell you. Ruby showed me the painting she did of him last night. It’s fantastic.”

“Good,” I said. “She’s going to show it to me Monday morning.”

“I thought you had a planning meeting for Winterfest last night,” Roma said as she folded napkins to put at each place.

Maggie was on the organizing committee for the Mayville Heights winter festival.

“It was canceled because of the water-main break down in front of the James—excuse me—the St. James Hotel.” Maggie made a face. “I’m never going to get used to the new name.”

The St. James Hotel, formerly the James Hotel, had undergone a major refurbishment in the late spring and early summer, and the owners had decided to go back to the name the hotel originally had when it opened in 1902: the St. James. Most people in town still called it the James. It had to be confusing for tourists.

“Andrew and I had to go the long way around to get to the marina.” I added soap to the water in the sink.

“So did I,” Maggie said, putting two large bowls in the dishwasher. “I mean, to get to my studio. They even had the sidewalk closed. I was carrying one of those big rolls of bubble wrap and the darn thing kept unrolling.” She held out her arms like she was going to hug me. “I ended up having to carry it like this and peer around the side of it.”

“Oh, Mags, I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish I’d seen you. I would have given you a ride.”

She smiled. “It wasn’t that far.” She peeked at the pizza through the oven window and seemed to be happy with what she saw. “Did Abigail go out to the marina with you and Andrew?” she asked as she straightened up.

“No.” I rinsed a cloth and started wiping the counter to the left of the sink. “Why?”

“I saw her when I was walking. She came from that direction and she was driving Burtis’s old truck.”

“Abigail was driving Burtis Chapman’s truck?” Roma said. She frowned at the place mat she’d put in the middle of the table and turned it a hundred and eighty degrees.

Maggie nodded. “Uh-huh. I cut across Jefferson because it was faster. It’s a one-way street now and Abigail was actually going the wrong way. Of course, so was Marcus’s sister. When you said you and Andrew had gone out to the marina I just assumed Abigail had gone to help you.”

I scrubbed at a bit of dried dough stuck to the granite countertop. “What do you mean, so was Marcus’s sister?” I asked, trying to keep my tone casual.

“I mean she was going the wrong way, too,” Maggie said, peering at the pizza again.

She was almost as obsessive about her pizza as she was about her artwork. That was probably why they were both so good.

“I was just about to head down the hill when I saw her. At first I thought it was Marcus, because it was his car and I thought Why is he going the wrong way? and then I saw that it was Hannah. She probably didn’t even realize she was on a one-way street. I think Abigail was just in a hurry and wasn’t really paying attention.”