Софи Келли - Final Catcall

The car came around the turn at the top of the driveway and my stomach flip-flopped. It was Marcus. I realized I was smiling and I couldn’t seem to make my face stop even though I tried.

He got out of the SUV and I noticed that while he looked surprised he was smiling, too. “What are you doing here?” he said.

I held out the bag with the cat food. “I came to feed the cats. Roma has to go—”

“—to Minneapolis,” he finished. He reached into the SUV and pulled out a similar bag of cat food. His blue eyes narrowed. “I suspect a setup.”

“Pretty hard to fool you,” I said.

“I am a professional detective,” he said with mock seriousness.

I walked over to him. “You don’t have to stay.”

“Would it bother you if I did?” he asked.

Nothing had changed since the previous day, but all I could think about was those gorgeous blue eyes, how strong his hands were, and how warm his mouth had been the first and only time he’d kissed me.

Okay—bad idea to think about those things. I tried to make myself remember all the disagreements we’d had, how he’d accused me of not believing in him, how we had different ideas about loyalty and what it meant to be a friend. The problem was I kept getting distracted by his incredibly strong, broad shoulders and the way a lock of his dark hair fell onto his forehead.

“It wouldn’t bother me,” I said. It wasn’t what I’d intended to say.

For a long moment Marcus just stared at me. Then he gave his head a little shake. “Did you bring water?”

“I put the jugs by the door.”

He took the canvas bag of food from my hand and we started walking toward the old carriage house. “Thank you for yesterday,” he said. He looked out over the trees. “For calling Brady Chapman and caring about Hannah . . . and me.”

I waited for a moment before I said anything, trying to find the right words. “I don’t think Hannah killed Hugh Davis,” I said.

“She didn’t.”

“But she’s not telling the truth, either. Not about where she was, probably not about that newspaper clipping. Which means she lied to the police.”

We were by the side door of the building. Marcus exhaled slowly and looked at me. “I know,” he said.

I set the bag of dishes on my feet. “You know?”

He swiped a hand over his face. “When Hannah was six she left her lunch box at the bus stop. It was the third one she’d lost in a month. She knew Dad would be mad, so she said it was stolen by a bear who mistook it for a picnic basket.”

“Pretty creative,” I said.

“Exactly. Too creative. There was a whole story about how the bear had eaten her orange slices and pita bread and unscrewed her thermos with his teeth so he could get at the tomato soup inside. Way too much detail. Just like her story about that newspaper clipping.”

I ran my hand over the weathered wood of the side door to the old building. “There’s something else I need to tell you,” I said.

“What is it?” he said.

“Remember the water main break Friday night? The traffic was being detoured up and around that whole block.”

He nodded.

“The sidewalk was closed as well, so Maggie had to walk from the store over to River Arts. She cut along Jefferson Street.”

“And?”

“And she saw Hannah. In fact she was going the wrong way on the street. That’s why Maggie noticed her. When she first saw the SUV she thought it was you.”

He took a slow, deep breath and let it out. “Driving the wrong way on a one-way street doesn’t prove anything,” he said.

I put a hand on his arm. “I know that,” I said. “But it does prove that she wasn’t in Red Wing the way she says she was. She didn’t just lie to you; she lied to the police and she lied to her own lawyer. She’s hiding something.”

He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I’ll talk to her again.” He frowned. “I could fix this if I just knew what the heck was going on.”

Fix this?

I swallowed, trying to come up with the right words, words that wouldn’t get under his skin. “I think it’s a good idea to talk to Hannah, Marcus, but otherwise you need to stay out of this. Just . . . just tell her to be straight with Brady Chapman and then back off.”

He looked at me as if I’d suggested he run naked along the Riverwalk. “Kathleen, she’s my sister and she’s somehow tied up in a murder. I’m not going to ‘back off.’”

We’d had this conversation before, too. Only it had always been Marcus warning me to stay out of his investigation and me trying to make him understand that I couldn’t do nothing when someone I cared about was caught up in one of his cases.

He’d obviously had the same thought. He reached out as though he was going to touch me and then pulled his hand back. “I get it,” he said quietly. “I get why you always tell me you can’t help getting involved when it’s someone you care about.”

I shrugged. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I understand why you keep telling me to stay out of your cases.”

He laughed, but there wasn’t a lot of humor in the sound. “This is odd.”

I laughed, too. “I guess it is.” He pulled a hand back through his hair. He did that a lot when he had something on his mind.

I reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. “How about you just say all the things that you’d ordinarily say to me to yourself and save me a step.”

He covered my hand with his own. “I’m sorry I was so rigid.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I understand a lot better why you were trying to get me to stay out of your cases. I’m sorry that I didn’t try harder to see things from your side.”

We were only inches apart and there was an energy between us that I was certain I’d be able to feel if I just put my hand up. Then Marcus suddenly moved his own hand and took a step back.

“We should feed the cats,” he said.

“Right. We should do that.” I took a step backward as well, and almost fell over one of the water jugs.

“I’ll get that,” Marcus said, reaching for the plastic container at the same time I did.

We almost bumped heads. He smelled like citrus aftershave and Juicy Fruit gum. I wondered what he’d do if I leaned in a little more and kissed him. I wasn’t sure enough of the answer to try it.

“Sorry,” I said. I pulled back and straightened up. It had suddenly gotten very warm.

Marcus picked up the jugs and pushed open the heavy wooden door. We stepped into the carriage house. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.

I did what I always did first: check out the space. There was no sign of any of the cats and no sign that anything was amiss. We put out the food and water and retreated to the back of the building by the door to wait. I leaned against the wall, arms folded over my chest. Marcus stood behind me, hands stuffed in his pockets.

After a couple of minutes I heard a sound and saw movement in the far corner at the other end of the space. “Lucy,” I whispered to Marcus.

The little calico cat came out cautiously, sniffing the air. She looked in our direction, tipping her head to one side.

“Hey, Lucy,” I said in a quiet voice.

The cat and I had some kind of connection I couldn’t explain. Roma said it was because Lucy was a Wisteria Hill cat just the way Hercules and Owen were. She believed Lucy trusted me for some unknown reason, just the way Owen and Hercules had done the first day I’d come across them up here as tiny, tiny kittens.

I wasn’t sure. I sometimes wondered if Lucy, too, like the boys, had some kind of superpower and that was why we connected.

The little calico turned and came toward us. She stopped maybe ten feet away and meowed at us. Then she moved toward the feeding station.