Софи Келли - Final Catcall

“What about Hugh?”

“He was furious. And he was hurt. He wouldn’t listen to anything I said and I can’t blame him for that.” She sighed. “He stopped answering the phone. I flew back from London and the apartment was empty. I dropped out, got a job fitting bras in a department store, and spent the next six years finishing my degree a course at a time.”

My stomach hurt for the nineteen-year-old young woman Abigail had been. And I wanted to shake her father and Hugh for bailing on her. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”

She gave me the closest thing to a smile she could manage. “It gets worse, Kathleen,” she said.

“What do you mean, worse?”

“That first day that everyone involved with the festival arrived, Hugh asked me to meet him back at the theater after supper. I hadn’t seen him in years.” She started picking at the skin on the side of her right thumbnail. “He said we were still married.”

“What do you mean, ‘still married’? I thought the whole thing was a fake.”

Abigail nodded. “So did I. Hugh claimed it was because of some loophole in the law about solemnizing marriage. He had documents from a lawyer.” She kept picking at her thumb. “He wouldn’t let me keep them, but they looked legitimate.”

I felt my chest tighten as though I’d tried to put on a sweater three sizes too small. “What did he want?”

“Money. He was broke. He knew I’d inherited some when my father died. He said since we’d been husband and wife at the time, he wanted his half. I think he took the directing job with the festival just to have a way to get out here and blackmail me.”

I shook my head. “I wish you’d said something.”

She looked away for a moment. “I was embarrassed.”

I put my hand over hers. “It’s okay,” I said.

She looked at me then. “I faked a marriage, Kathleen. My brothers don’t even know that.”

“Okay, so not the smartest thing you’ve ever done.” I squeezed her hand. “We do dumb things when we’re young. That’s how we learn not to do dumb things when we get a little older.”

She gave me a small smile.

“Do you remember when Andrew told you we broke up because he accidentally married someone else?”

“I remember.”

I shook my bangs back off my face. “He didn’t tell you that he was drunk and the someone was a waitress he’d met in a fifties diner while he was on a fishing trip with two of his buddies. One of which was the best man at the ceremony. The other one was the flower girl.”

“Seriously?”

I nodded. “Seriously. There are pictures. That’s partly how I ended up here. The point is, Andrew wasn’t nineteen and he did something really, really stupid. So don’t be so hard on yourself.”

She sighed. “It’s not the only stupid thing I did.”

“It’s okay,” I said, giving her an encouraging smile. “Dumb mistakes are not limited to one to a customer. What else did you do?”

“Hugh had our original marriage certificate and the vows that we wrote. He said he even had a Polaroid that one of his friends had taken of us with the minister. I thought if I had those things maybe I could prove that neither one of us had taken the marriage seriously.”

She folded one arm across her chest like she was hugging herself. “I figured they had to be in Hugh’s room at the hotel. I needed to keep him away long enough for me to find everything. I managed to get his keycard out of his pocket.” She lowered her voice. “Burtis loaned me his truck. I convinced Hugh to go out to the lookout with me. I told him we could work something out about the money. I haven’t told anyone other than you, but the police are going to figure it out. Somebody probably saw us. I left him stranded out there, Kathleen. It’s my fault Hugh’s dead.”

“No, it’s not,” I said, shaking my head for emphasis. “Abigail, the person who killed Hugh is responsible. Not you.”

She started picking at her thumb again. “He would never have been out there if it hadn’t been for me.”

“He wouldn’t have been in Mayville Heights at all if there hadn’t been a fire at the theater in Red Wing. Does that mean the person who inspected that faulty circuit breaker and passed it is responsible for his death?”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“I think it is.”

“I lied to get Hugh out to the lookout. How’s that going to look to the police?” she said. “I heard Detective Lind’s taken over the case. What am I supposed to say to her? ‘Yes, I did lure the victim out to Spruce Bluff, but I didn’t kill him. I was busy ransacking his room instead’?”

“Actually, that’s exactly what you do tell her.”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “Why? You think she’ll just take my word on it?”

“What time did you get to the hotel?”

“I don’t know. Sometime just after six, I think. I had the radio on in Burtis’s truck and they were just finishing the news update.”

Ben had said that Hugh had tried to send him a text around six thirty.

“Detective Lind may not take your word on where you were, but she will believe the security cameras. They’re on every floor in every hallway in the hotel. Little tiny cameras, part of a state-of-the-art security system they put in when they did the renovations.”

“I didn’t see any cameras.”

“They’re there,” I said. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and pushed it across the table.

“Hugh tried to text Ben about six thirty, right about the time you were in his hotel room. Call Detective Lind, Abigail. Once she knows how Hugh ended up at Spruce Bluff, maybe she’ll be able to figure out who killed him.”

Abigail nodded and picked up the phone.

I felt a huge sense of relief that Abigail’s secret wasn’t that bad, overall. Now that I knew what she’d been hiding, all I needed to do was figure out Hannah’s secret.

Abigail left to talk to Detective Lind at the police station and I covered the circulation desk while Susan and Mary had lunch. I ate mine outside on a bench overlooking the water while Hercules nosed around the gazebo. The ground was dry and he seemed to have a fine time poking his whiskers into every nook and cranny.

I expected him to give me a hard time when we had to go back inside, but he climbed into the cat carrier with no complaint. I stopped to leave my coffee mug in the staff room and Hercules poked his head out of the bag and looked around.

“I’m not fooled,” I said to him as I rinsed the cup. “I know you’ve been in here before.”

He gave me a look of green-eyed kitty innocence.

“You don’t really think I believe you stayed in my office all morning, do you?”

He continued the innocence ruse, staring unblinkingly at me. “So you’re going for plausible deniability,” I said, giving him a little scratch behind one ear. “Good choice, but I know you were roaming around this morning. You heard what Abigail said to me, didn’t you?”

He was good. He kept his eyes fixed on my face as though he had nothing to be guilty about.

“I saw your tail when you were by the door,” I whispered. “There was a scrap of paper stuck to the tip.”

He turned to check it out, forgetting for the moment that the rest of him was still in the bag.

“Busted!” I hissed. I never won a staring contest with either Hercules or Owen. I wasn’t sure what it said about my character that I was tickled I’d won this one.

I should have known I’d pay for this victory. I stepped into the hallway and Hercules wriggled his way out of the bag. He jumped to the floor, flicked the end of his tail at me and disappeared through the door to the workroom.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said.