Софи Келли - Cat Trick

Roma touched my arm. “Would you like a drive up the hill?” she asked.

“I should walk,” I said.

She shrugged. “I didn’t ask you if you thought you should walk. I asked if you’d like a drive.”

I nodded. “Please.” Suddenly I was tired. All I wanted to do was go home, hug Owen and Hercules—assuming they felt like coming when I called them—and then pick up the phone and call my parents.

Roma and I changed our shoes out on the landing. She pulled on her sweatshirt. I stuffed my sweater in my bag. Maggie leaned against the doorframe. “Don’t forget lunch tomorrow,” she said to me. She looked at Roma. “Can you come?”

Roma shook her head, and it seemed to me she was trying to stifle a smile. “Sorry. I can’t.” Then the smile got loose. “I’m getting the keys to Wisteria Hill tomorrow.” She was moving in once renovations to the old house were done. Given how much work it needed, that might be a while.

Maggie’s eyes lit up and she did her little happy dance, which looked pretty much like a two-year-old having a tantrum.

I threw my arms around Roma. “That’s wonderful,” I said.

“We’re going to be at my studio,” Maggie said. “Stop by for a minute if you can, so we can toast your new home.”

“Okay,” Roma said, dropping her shoes in her bag. “I’ll try.”

I leaned around Mags to wave good-bye to Ruby and Taylor, and then Roma and I headed down to her SUV.

Roma didn’t say a word as she pulled out of her parking spot and started down the street, but I saw her eyes dart in my direction a couple of times. There was something on her mind. Something she hadn’t wanted to say in front of Maggie—or anyone else.

“What is it?” I finally asked. The fact that she didn’t immediately ask me what the heck I was talking about told me my hunch was right.

Her mouth moved for a moment before any words came out. She shot me another look before speaking. “I may regret asking you this, but . . . what do you know about Mike Glazer’s death that the rest of us don’t?” She held up one hand for a second to head off what she probably figured would be my objections before putting it back on the steering wheel. “And don’t say ‘nothing,’ because I saw your face when Maggie made her comment about him having a heart attack.”

I looked out the windshield for a minute before answering. “It’s not that I ‘know’ anything,” I began.

“Okay, you suspect something.”

I shrugged. “Suspect might even be too strong a word. It’s just . . .” I folded my arms over my chest, suddenly wishing I had put on my sweater. “I told you it was Hercules who found the body.”

Roma nodded but remained silent, her eyes on the road.

“Mike was sitting in one of those white plastic lawn chairs and there was just something about the way—I knew he was dead, but I felt for a pulse at his neck, just to be sure.” I took a deep breath and let it out. “There wasn’t one. His face was blotchy, mottled. His skin was cold.”

“And?” she prompted softly.

“There were tiny red spots on his face.” I touched the side of my face.

“Petechiae?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Roma slowed down, flicked on her turn signal and pulled into my driveway. She put the SUV in park and shifted in her seat to look directly at me. “Kathleen, I know you’ve seen more than your share of dead bodies since you came to Mayville Heights,” she said. “And none of them were from natural causes.”

“But,” I said.

“But not every death is something suspicious,” she said with a half smile. “Lots of things can cause petechiae: a violent coughing jag, vomiting, certain medications, a blood disorder. By themselves, petechiae don’t necessarily mean Mike Glazer was murdered.”

“I didn’t realize that,” I said. “Thanks.” I smiled and held up a hand with my first and second fingers crossed. “Good luck tomorrow.”

Her smile got wider. “I’ll stop by Maggie’s studio if I can.”

I got out of the SUV and waved as she backed out of the driveway. Then I walked around the side of the house and let myself into the porch. Not only was Roma a very good vet; she also had first aid training. So I believed what she’d said about there being lots of reasons for those red pinpoints on Mike Glazer’s face.

I toed off my sneakers and unlocked the kitchen door. Those marks didn’t mean that someone killed him, I told myself firmly. But I couldn’t stop the thought that it didn’t mean someone hadn’t, either.

6

Hercules was sitting next to the kitchen table like a statue of the Egyptian god Bast. “Hi, Fuzz Face,” I said. I hung my bag on the hook by the back door, and he trailed me into the living room.

I sank into the wing chair and propped my feet on the footstool. Hercules jumped into my lap. His nose twitched and he narrowed his green eyes.

“Hey, I was at tai chi class,” I said. I dropped my head and sniffed, feeling a little foolish because I was checking to see if I was offensive based on Hercules’s cranky face. All I got was the scent of line-dried T-shirt and baby-powder-scented deodorant. “I don’t smell bad,” I told him.

He put a white-tipped paw over his nose. “Yes, I know,” I said. “Cat’s noses.” Satisfied that he’d made his point, he stretched across my chest, resting his furry head just below the hollow of my throat.

Owen came down the stairs then, jumped up and sprawled sideways across my legs so his head was just below my knee and his back paws and tail were mostly on the footstool.

“Everyone comfortable?” I asked.

Owen meowed, rolling partway on to his back. Hercules rubbed the side of his face against my T-shirt and began to purr. The warmth from their two furry bodies somehow chased away that lingering pinch of homesickness I’d felt back in Maggie’s studio. I decided I wouldn’t call Boston after all. Instead, I pulled the phone closer and punched in Marcus’s number.

I got his voice mail. “Hi, Marcus,” I said. “It’s Kathleen. Call me when you have time. Please.” I recited my number in case he hadn’t memorized it, the way I somehow seemed to have done with his.

Both cats were staring at me when I hung up the phone. In Owen’s case, he was looking at me upside down. “I’m not trying to get information,” I said.

Neither one of them so much as blinked.

“I like Marcus,” I said. “I think he likes me. I don’t want this case—if it even is a case—to mess that up before I at least get a chance to kiss him. Plus I didn’t tell him about that bump on Mike Glazer’s head—and why am I explaining all of this to the two of you?”

Hercules lifted his head and cocked it to one side, almost as though he were wondering the same thing. Owen stayed sprawled over my legs, golden eyes fixed on mine, and I would have sworn from the expression on his upside-down face that he was laughing at me.

Marcus didn’t call me until the next morning. I was sitting at the table with a bowl of yogurt, homemade granola, and an apple—the one breakfast neither cat would try to mooch off me—when the phone rang. I left the dish on the table, confident that there was no way it would “accidentally” end up on the floor the way a plate of scrambled eggs and toast would.

“Hi, Kathleen. It’s Marcus,” he said when I answered. “I got your message, but it was too late to call you back last night.”

“Hi,” I said. How was I going to say this?

Suddenly I could hear my mother’s voice in my head. “Katydid, if you have to dance with a bear, put on your best high heels and tango.” It was her colorful way of saying get on with it. So I did.

“I forgot to tell you yesterday that when I checked Mike Glazer’s body for a pulse, I noticed a bump—at least I think that’s what it was—at the back of his head, behind his ear.”