Софи Келли - A Case Of Cat And Mouse

She turned and gave me a distracted smile. “Hi,” she said. “How did it go with Ray?”

I held out my hand and waggled it from side to side.

“Does this have something to do with Kassie?” she asked. I noticed her eyes flick back to the drawing.

I ignored the question for the moment and went to stand beside her. I studied the pen and ink drawing and the color swatches Maggie had propped beside it.

She leaned her forearm on my shoulder. “I can’t get the green right for the kiwi.” She made a gesture over her shoulder toward her computer. “I’ve been looking them up online for the last half hour but the color still feels wrong.” She’d also been running her hands through her hair and her curls stuck up all over her head. Once again I thought she looked like a green-eyed lamb.

“Mags, just go down to Eric’s,” I said. I tipped my head gently to the side so it bumped the top of hers.

“I already had supper.”

“Not for supper,” I said. “You need to look at a real kiwi. Not a photograph of one.” Maggie would have realized that herself if being overworked hadn’t given her tunnel vision. “The grocery store is closed or you could just go buy one, but Eric will have kiwi in his kitchen. Once you see the real thing you’ll be able to get the color right.”

A smile spread across her face and she straightened up. “Super Librarian to the rescue!” she said.

I tossed my hair back and pressed a hand to my chest. “I live to serve, one good idea at a time.”

Maggie threw her arms around my shoulders to give me a hug. “We really need to get you a cape and tights.”

“I think I would look very good in a cape,” I said.

She laughed. “I’ll get right on that,” she said. She let me go and studied my face, her green eyes narrowing. “Tell me what happened with Ray. This does have something to do with Kassie’s death, doesn’t it?”

I handed her the picture of teenage Kassie and Ray.

She studied the image for a moment then her eyes met mine. “That’s Kassie with Ray. They’re just kids but they’re both recognizable.”

I nodded.

Maggie turned the sheet of paper over. “How did you get this?”

I explained about Eugenie’s request and how Owen had knocked the papers off my kitchen table.

“It looks like she—or someone—scanned the original photo and then printed the scan.” She handed the page back to me. “What did Ray say? I’m assuming that you asked him if he knew where the image came from.”

I looked at the picture again. “He said he didn’t know, that maybe Kassie found it and was going to show it to him but didn’t get a chance.”

“So why did they act like they didn’t know each other?”

“According to Ray neither one of them was willing to give up their place on the show. They knew it would look bad if anyone found out they had been friends years ago, so they decided to just keep quiet.”

“You think he’s telling the truth?”

I made a face. “I think what he told me was true, as far as it goes, but I think there are some things he left out.”

“That sounds familiar,” Maggie said. I knew she was referring to the forged letter.

“I need a favor. If it makes you uncomfortable, please just say no.”

“Okay, now I’m intrigued. What is it?”

“Could you get me a copy of Ray’s CV?”

I knew from Maggie and Ruby that an artist’s CV—curriculum vitae—was necessary when submitting work to galleries and exhibitions. Unlike a résumé, which focused on education and experience, a CV highlighted professional accomplishments; awards, exhibitions, publications in which the artist had been featured, collections that held his or her artwork, teachers the artist had studied with.

Maggie picked up a paintbrush that had been lying on her worktable and turned it over in her fingers. “Do you actually think Ray could have had something to do with Kassie’s death?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I do think he’s lying about how close they were. He was very offhand about any connection between them, almost as if he was trying to convince me it was no big deal—which makes me wonder if maybe it was. Maybe it’s that picture of the two of them, or maybe it’s just a gut feeling, but I think Ray and Kassie were more than just a couple of kids who knew each other and then lost touch. I want to see if they could have connected anywhere else in their lives.”

“There’s a copy of everyone’s CV available at the store,” Maggie said. “Sometimes a collector comes in with a question about an artist’s background or who they’ve studied with. As far as I’m concerned, that makes that information more or less public.” She set the paintbrush down again and moved over to her laptop. “I can print you a copy.”

“Thanks,” I said. I watched her connect the computer to the printer. “You don’t trust Ray, do you? You haven’t trusted him since you found out his connection to Jaeger Merrill.”

Jaeger Merrill had been killed in the basement of the co-op’s store. Maggie and I had found his body floating in several feet of water that had filled the space after some serious flooding in the downtown.

Maggie hit several keys on the laptop and the printer began to do its thing. She turned around to look at me then. “Ray has worked hard to regain everyone’s trust.”

“But,” I prompted.

She shook her head. “But sometimes I think he’s making the effort just to win us all over, not to make up for his mistakes because he understands what he did was wrong. Does that make any sense?”

“Yes, it does.” It was exactly how I felt. I had never gotten the sense that Ray felt much, if any, remorse for his actions. I thought what he felt bad about was being caught.

Maggie handed me Ray’s CV.

“Thank you,” I said. “I need to get going. I still have those papers to sort through.”

“Let me shut my laptop off and I’ll walk down with you,” she said. “I’m going kiwi hunting.”

Maggie came over to the truck with me. Her Bug was parked several spaces away. “Don’t work half the night,” I said, giving her a hug.

She smiled. “Back at you.” We said good night and Maggie headed for her car.

I laid the photo and Ray’s CV on the front seat of the truck. A large crow flew overhead, cawing at something. I remembered what Russell had said about Kassie, that she was like a crow, but instead of collecting shiny things she collected information on people. I wondered what shiny thing she’d had on Ray.

chapter 13

The Mayville Heights Chronicle had been around for more than a hundred years. It was one of a shrinking number of small-town newspapers that was still turning a profit. Much of the credit belonged to publisher Bridget Lowe. Under her watch the Chronicle had won a number of awards for reporting. Not only did everyone in the area read the paper, it also had a significant number of online subscribers from out of town. Including my mother, which is why it didn’t really surprise me when she called about half an hour after I’d gotten home.

I had almost finished sorting through the envelope of papers. Owen had been content to sit on my lap and keep his paws off the papers, though he occasionally meowed his disagreement over which pile a page ended up in. Most of them were printouts of baking terms, recipe ideas and details about the original version of The Great American Baking Showdown . I realized that Kassie hadn’t known anywhere near as much about baking as any of the contestants had.

I was happy to get up and stretch when my home phone rang. I carried Owen with me into the living room, dropped into the big wing chair and set him on my lap as I reached for the phone. He would have followed me and hopped onto my lap anyway. I was just removing a step from the process.