Софи Келли - Cat Trick

Mary made a face and pressed a hand to her forehead. “I forgot all about the child being back in town. How could I do that? She must have heard what happened.”

Clearly the fact that I had no idea what she was talking about was showing on my face.

“Wren knows”—she shook her head—“knew Mike. She was close to all the Glazers when she was a kid. It’s . . . complicated.”

A lot of the relationships in Mayville Heights were, I’d come to learn. So was my own background, for that matter. My mother and father had married each other twice, with my brother and sister, Sara and Ethan, front and center with my mother, so to speak, at the second ceremony.

“Go talk to her,” I said. “Take half an hour. It’s not busy. Susan and I will be fine.”

“Thank you, Kathleen,” Mary said. She patted my arm as she squeezed past me. “You have a good heart.”

I followed Mary as far as the children’s reading area and watched her fold Wren Magnusson into her arms. Mary was the one with the good heart.

She pulled out of the hug, keeping her hands on Wren’s shoulders as she studied the young woman’s face. After a moment Mary hooked her arm through Wren’s and they headed for the library entrance.

I walked over to Susan. She looked up at me. “That poor kid.”

“She knew Mike,” I said.

She nodded. “She was almost part of that family.”

I frowned at her. “What do you mean ‘almost’?”

Susan pushed the seafood fork a little more tightly into her topknot. “You know that older brother of Mike’s Mary was telling you about?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Wren’s mother was going to marry him.”

I blew out a breath. “So Gavin Glazer was going to be Wren’s stepfather,” I said.

Susan traced a finger around the outside edge of the heavy hardcover book she was holding. “The Glazers already treated them as though they were family. Wren’s mother never really got over what happened. She cut off all contact with the family even before they moved away. I think it was just too painful for her.” She sighed. “But it had to be hell for Wren. She didn’t just lose Gavin. She lost that entire family.” She set the book on the counter.

“Sometimes life isn’t very fair,” I said.

“You got that right,” Susan agreed.

“I’m going to finish shelving that cart Mary was working on,” I said. “Yell if you need me.”

I was putting back issues of Scientific American into their cubby when Mary returned about twenty minutes later. She walked over to me, and I got to my feet, brushing my hands on my black pants.

“How’s Wren?” I asked.

“A little shaky, but all right, considering,” Mary said. “If her brother wasn’t up in Alaska until the end of the month, I would have suggested she go back to Minneapolis.”

“Susan told me about Wren’s connection to the Glazers.”

“She was so happy to get the chance to reconnect with Mike. She’d been going to see him today. She was even talking about getting to see his mother.” She tucked her hands into the pockets of her peach-colored cardigan. “Kathleen, do you have any idea how Mike died?”

I hesitated, unsure how to answer.

Before I could say anything, Mary held up a hand and gave her head a little shake. “I’m sorry. How could you know that?” She sighed softly. “It doesn’t make any difference how he died,” she said. “It doesn’t make him any less dead. I just thought maybe it would help Wren if I could tell her that he didn’t suffer.” She shook her head again as if to clear it. “Not a very nice way to go, alone in that big old tent of Burtis’s.”

“Is there a good way to die?” I asked, picking up another book from the cart.

“Well, I darn sure know how I plan on going,” Mary said, a saucy gleam suddenly lighting up her eyes.

I put one hand on my hip and looked skeptically at her, happy to have the subject changed. “I don’t think that’s something you can really plan, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear what those plans of yours are.”

She pulled herself up straight to her full height, which wasn’t actually that tall. “I plan to live to be one hundred and be shot in bed by the jealous girlfriend of a much, much younger man.” She smiled at me. “And since I’m nowhere near the century mark right now, I’m going to go wash my hands and then come back and finish those books.”

I watched her head for the stairs. She was in excellent shape. If anyone was likely to make it to a hundred, it was Mary. And even though she was very happily married, I’d seen her get admiring looks from men a lot younger. Those long, strong legs of hers tended to turn men of any age into mush.

I went back over to the desk to see if Susan needed anything, and when she didn’t, I headed upstairs to my office. I dropped into my chair and swung around to look out the window.

How had Mike Glazer died? That question had been rolling around in my mind since I’d stepped into the tent and caught sight of his body slumped in that plastic lawn chair. There had been no blood, no signs of a fight. The body had been cold and stiff.

But when I’d felt for a pulse, my fingers had brushed over something—a small bump, a little smaller than an egg, on the back of Mike Glazer’s head, behind his left ear.

I wasn’t sure that even mattered. Not compared to what I’d noticed on his face. Tiny red marks barely bigger than a needle prick—petechial hemorrhages was the medical term for them—and I knew they were a sign of suffocation, among other things. Which meant Mike Glazer’s death probably wasn’t an accident.

I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. A headache was starting to throb behind my eyes. I knew it was possible that I was wrong. But I was pretty sure I wasn’t.

5

The library got busier as the day went on, and I overheard more than one person speculating on what was going to happen to Mayville Height’s pitch to Legacy Tours. At lunchtime I tried calling Maggie, but all I got was her voice mail. I left a message telling her I knew what had happened and I’d see her later at tai chi class.

Both cats were waiting by the kitchen table when I got home. They seemed to have put their differences from the morning aside. I hung up my coat and bent down to pet them both. Owen had the slightly loopy look that told me he’d been into his Fred the Funky Chicken stash. Rebecca, whose house backed up to mine, kept him in the neon-yellow catnip chickens, using any excuse to buy him one, including Hug Your Cat Day and the summer solstice.

“How was your day?” I said to Hercules. He held up one front paw. There was a jet-black feather stuck between two toes on his right paw. I bent over to pull it loose. “Did you and that grackle get into it again?” I asked. Hercules had been having a war for months with what seemed to be one bird that liked to dive-bomb his head when he was in the backyard. I had nicknamed him Professor Moriarty because he was an arch-nemesis if a cat ever had one. He and Herc had had a couple of run-ins, one of which had ended with Hercules as the proud possessor of another large black wing feather. The bird had disappeared for a while after that. I was guessing he was back.

I pointed to his paw. “Do I want to know what happened?”

He immediately put his left paw on top of his right and looked at me, blinking his big green eyes.

“That’s fine with me,” I said. “Whatever happens in the backyard stays in the backyard.”

I turned to Owen. “And how was your day?” I asked, reaching over to scratch under his chin. He gave me a blissful if slightly stoned-looking smile, and leaned in to my hand.

After I’d gotten some cat love, I went upstairs, changed into my tai chi clothes and came back down to get supper. I made a grocery list while I ate, making sure I put sardines on the list so I could make the cats’ favorite stinky crackers on the weekend.