Софи Келли - Final Catcall

“All I did was have supper at the bar,” he said. “I was talking to the bartender and he said he’d met my sister.” His eyes kept sliding off my face. He wasn’t a very good liar.

“Of course. Because you go to bars all the time to have supper.” Maybe my mother was right. He’d done exactly what I would have done and was saying just what I would have said.

“I can’t do nothing, Kathleen,” Marcus said quietly. He closed his eyes momentarily and shook his head. “And yes, those words do sound familiar.”

“Then I don’t need to say ‘stay out of it,’ do I?” I glanced over at the table. Maggie and Mom were still deep in conversation. “Well, at least now you know Hannah was telling the truth.” As far as it goes, I added silently. “That’s good.”

“Yes and no,” Marcus said. “Liam said Hannah got there about eight. Where was she between then and the time she left Red Wing? She says she wasn’t anywhere near the marina.”

There were deep frown lines between his eyes and I wanted to rub them away. “Do you believe her?”

He shook his head. “I want to.” He let out a long breath. “I know you don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He forced a smile. “I can tell you Abigail Pierce is in the clear. She’s on the hotel surveillance, breaking in Hugh Davis’s room at almost the same time Davis was making a call on his cell phone.”

“You’ll notice I’m not asking you how you know this.”

“I met her and her lawyer coming out of the station. She told me.”

“Marcus, please don’t do anything—”

“—stupid?” he finished.

I shook my head. “I was going to say don’t do anything that might get you in trouble.” My mouth was suddenly dry. “Call me instead.”

We stood there, eyes locked, for a long moment. Something we seemed to be doing a lot of lately. I cleared my throat. “Come meet my mother,” I said.

I took Marcus over to the table and made the introductions.

Mom stood up and held out her hand. “It’s very good to meet you, Detective,” she said. Her expression was serious. I knew her well enough to know she was appraising him, making a hundred tiny little judgments in just a few seconds.

“You as well,” he said.

Claire was on her way to the table with a loaded tray.

“I’ll leave you to your breakfast,” he said. He smiled at Mom and Maggie. “Have a good day, Kathleen,” he said quietly to me.

“‘From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life,’” Mom recited softly as Marcus walked away.

“Marcus and I are not star-crossed anything,” I said as Claire reached the table. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Maggie look across the table at Mom and nod, ever so slightly.

After breakfast I dropped Mom off at the Stratton and made my way to the library. There was more than half an hour before we opened, so I sat at my desk, turned on my laptop and started researching Hugh Davis’s history as a director. Mom had said he hadn’t done much of significance in the previous eighteen months, so I went back a year and a half and started from there.

What I very quickly found out was that there were just too many productions with too many actors for me to figure out who the two women were that Hugh had bullied. I leaned back in my chair and swung around to look out the window. There had to be a better way.

Chloe Miller came in just after ten with the book of poetry she’d borrowed. She walked over to the desk and held out the book. “Thank you,” she said. “The poem was perfect.”

“You’re so welcome. How are rehearsals going?”

“They’re going well. I met your mom, by the way. I like her.” She smiled. “Everything’s coming together.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Every time I’d seen Chloe she was alone. It struck me that the polished, put-together actress was a little shy. I remembered I’d heard that she’d sat down in the middle of the seniors’ reading group and answered their questions when she’d been in the building the other day. “Susan told me you spent half an hour the other morning getting peppered with questions when you were here. Thank you.”

“I didn’t mind,” she said, playing with a hammered-gold ring on her left middle finger. “They were fun. They asked some great questions about staging a production.”

“Chloe, are you free around one o’clock?” I asked. “I’d love to take you to lunch.”

“For taking a couple of minutes to talk to a few senior citizens?” She shook her head. “It’s not necessary, Kathleen.”

“It wasn’t just a couple of minutes or just a few senior citizens. But if you don’t have time, I understand.”

“I do have time,” she said. She smiled. “It would be fun to have lunch. How about I meet you here at one o’clock?”

“Perfect,” I said.

Around eleven thirty Susan poked her head around my office door. I was deep into the budget and started when she said my name. “Sorry,” she said. “Andrew’s here with some kind of panel thing that’s supposed to go in the gazebo. I thought we should check with you first.”

“I better take a look at this,” I said. “I’ll come down.”

Abigail and Andrew were in the parking lot with Burtis Chapman’s truck. There was a large latticework panel tied down in the bed of the truck.

“Hey, Kathleen,” Andrew said. “This is supposed to go at the back of the gazebo. Is that going to be a problem?”

Abigail came around the side of the truck. “Ben wants to use it as a backdrop,” she said. “If that’s okay.”

“How are you planning on keeping it in place?” I asked. The wooden panel was long and wide and I didn’t want the gazebo damaged in any way.

“Bungee cords,” Andrew said. “It’s actually two pieces, hinged. It stands up by itself. The cords are just for added stability.”

I leaned over the side of the truck bed. The backdrop looked sturdy enough. “How are you going to keep someone from just walking off with it in the middle of the night?” I said to Andrew.

He grinned at me. “You mean not everyone in Mayville Heights is a law-abiding citizen? I’m shocked.”

“Oh, people who live here are honest and law-abiding,” Abigail said. “It’s just that sometimes we get some ‘undesirables’ from out of town.” She said the whole thing with a completely straight face.

Andrew looked at her a little uncertainly. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll unload this and we can see if it’s going to work.”

Abigail caught my eye and winked.

He’d brought a wheeled dolly with him and with a little help he got the backdrop on it and around the building to the gazebo. It took only a few minutes to set it in place.

“What do you think?” Andrew said to Abigail.

“I’m just going to see how it looks from each side,” she said, heading across the grass.

He came to stand beside me and look at his handiwork.

“It looks fine to me,” I said. “But you didn’t answer my question. What are you going to do at night?”

“Oren says there a basement and it’s dry.”

I nodded. “That would work.”

“I saw your mother,” Andrew said. He brushed some sawdust off his denim shirt.

“And?”

“She told me to go home. She told me I was a year and a half too late. And she called me a dipwad in Hungarian. At least I think it was Hungarian. And dipwad.”

I couldn’t help smiling at him. He was trying so hard to fix things between us. Once again I caught myself wondering if I was crazy not to give him a chance. He was funny and handsome, and unlike Marcus, he didn’t make a secret of how he felt about me.

He glanced over at Abigail, still studying the backdrop. “Have lunch with me, Kath. Take the afternoon off and we’ll play hooky and drive into Minneapolis.”