Софи Келли - Final Catcall

We turned the corner and started up the hill. “That’s my truck,” I said, pointing a little way up the grade on the other side of the street. We looked both ways and crossed the street. “So you don’t want to direct someday?” I asked. “I thought that was something a lot of actors wanted to do.”

She nodded. “It is, but no, I’d rather stick to acting and writing.”

“Writing for the stage or a screenplay?” I asked as we reached the truck.

“Stage.”

I unlocked the passenger door and walked around to the driver’s side. “You should talk to my mom. She’s been a judge in several script-writing contests.” I grinned and raised my eyebrows at her over the hood of the truck. “She does have some ‘strong opinions’ on what sells and what doesn’t.”

“I don’t mind,” Hannah said. “That’s a lot better than someone who’ll waffle because they don’t want to hurt my feelings.”

That made me laugh. “Don’t worry,” I said, inserting the key in the ignition. “One thing my mother doesn’t do is waffle.”

I checked for traffic and pulled out. I heard Hannah give a soft sigh. “Is everything all right?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the road so she wouldn’t feel she was being interrogated.

For a moment she didn’t say anything. Then she spoke, her voice soft and low. “Have you talked to Marcus today?”

“Yes,” I said.

“So you know what he did.”

I nodded. “I do.”

“I told him I was in Red Wing. My word wasn’t enough for him. He went into police officer mode and checked up on me.”

I noticed she’d said she’d been in Red Wing, not that she’d been in Red Wing Friday night. I glanced over at her. Her face was flushed with annoyance.

I put on my blinker and turned right, toward Marcus’s house. “Hannah, you know Marcus a lot better than I do, so you probably know this. Being a police officer is wired into his DNA.” I let out a breath. “It took me a long time to understand that and for what it’s worth, I don’t think he was in police officer mode. I think he was in big brother mode.”

“I’m not six,” she said stubbornly and something in her tone made me think of her big brother.

I glanced over briefly at her again. Her head was up, shoulders rigid behind her seat belt. Hannah and Marcus were so much alike.

“Doesn’t make any difference,” I said. “I have a younger brother and sister—twins. I was fifteen when they were born and if you asked either one of them I know they’d say I still treat them like they were six.”

“So are you saying you’d do the same thing Marcus did?”

I slowed down to let the car in front of me make a left turn. “I’m saying that if I thought Ethan or Sara was mixed up in something that might hurt them, I’d do just about anything.”

She let the silence hang between us for a moment. “I didn’t kill Hugh Davis,” she said softly.

“I believe you,” I said. “And so does Marcus.” I hesitated. “But you haven’t been completely honest, either. Just now you said you were in Red Wing.”

I heard her shift in the seat. “Because I was.”

“You didn’t say you were in Red Wing Friday night.”

The silence lasted so long this time I thought she’d just stopped talking to me. “No, I didn’t,” she said finally.

Marcus’s house was just up ahead. As I pulled into the driveway I could see him, cleaning out the flower bed underneath the living room window. He got to his feet, wiping his hands on his paint-spattered jeans.

“Kathleen, could you stay for a minute?” Hannah asked.

“All right,” I said.

Marcus walked over to us and we both got out of the truck. “Hi, Kathleen,” he said with just a touch of a smile.

I nodded. “Hi, Marcus.”

He turned to Hannah. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Marcus, I’m not six anymore,” she said, folding her arms across her middle.

“I know that,” he said, frowning slightly.

“So don’t treat me like I am.” She held up a hand to stop him from speaking. “I’m not finished. Kathleen pointed out that it doesn’t matter whether I like it or not; you’re always going to get involved in my life. So since I can’t stop you, at least be straight with me from now on.”

Marcus’s eyes flicked over to me for a second. “Okay,” he said, “but it goes both ways. I expect you to be straight with me.”

“You want to know where I was Friday night.”

“I do.” He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He swiped them on his pants again.

Hannah glanced at me and I hoped the look I gave her seemed supportive.

“I was getting drunk,” she said flatly.

I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but that wasn’t it. On the other hand, I did believe her.

Marcus closed his eyes for a moment. “You don’t drink,” he said when he opened them again.

She swallowed and fiddled with the strap of her tote bag. “I do a lot of things you think I don’t do. Don’t worry. I didn’t drive.” She pressed her lips together. “I’m not the perfect person everyone always expects me to be, but I wouldn’t do that.”

She turned to me then, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Thanks, Kathleen, for the drive and . . . everything.” She looked from me to Marcus and shook her head. “Sometimes you miss what’s right in front of you, big brother.” Then she disappeared around the side of the house.

I waited until Hannah had disappeared around the side of the house, and then I turned to Marcus. “I believe her,” I said.

“So do I,” he said. “Whatever you said to her, thank you.”

He was standing so close to me I could smell his aftershave mixed with the loamy smell of earth and plants. “All I said was I would have done the same thing if I thought Sara or Ethan were connected to a murder.”

He smiled. “Feels good for us to look at something the same way. Different, but good.”

I wanted to reach up and smooth the hair back off his forehead. No, I was kidding myself. I wanted to grab the front of his sweatshirt, pull his face down to my level and kiss him just the way he’d kissed me the last time we’d stood in his driveway next to my truck. I didn’t, of course. I was good at imagining those kinds of scenarios, but I was just too practical to carry them out. Or maybe too chicken.

“You’re right—it does,” I said. I put a hand on the side of the truck to remind myself I was in the real world and not some fantasy. “I should get going.”

He nodded. “Thanks, Kathleen, for driving Hannah home and for talking to her and for . . . just . . . thanks.”

I couldn’t seem to stop looking into those gorgeous blue eyes. “I’ll, uh, see you,” I said. I walked around the truck, got in and backed carefully down the driveway. He stayed where he was, watching me, and even when I was out of sight around the curve in the road, I could still feel his eyes on me.

I was almost home before I started to weigh Hannah’s words. She’d said she’d gotten drunk. I believed her. The way she’d said the words, her tone, her body language—everything told me she was telling the truth, not acting. But the fact was that Maggie had seen Hannah not long after Andrew and I found Hugh Davis’s body. And Andrew had seen her drive by the marina.

So she got drunk a little later that Friday night. What had happened earlier that made her want to?

18

There was no sign of either cat when I got home. I kicked off my shoes, hung up my sweater and set the bag Rebecca had given me on the counter. Inside I found the promised loaf of her cinnamon raisin bread, a round loaf of honey sunflower and a dozen blueberry muffins. There was also a tiny brown paper bag from the Grainery that I knew had to hold a catnip Fred the Funky Chicken for Owen. And there was a tiny cardboard box from the same store. By the process of elimination it had to be for Hercules. I wondered what was inside.