Софи Келли - A Midwinter's Tail

“Murp.”

Cat for “I could eat.”

Owen looked at the back door and meowed inquiringly. I’d told him Marcus was joining us for supper. Had he remembered?

“Marcus isn’t coming,” I said. I checked the slow cooker. It had just switched over from “cook” to “keep warm.”

I turned back to Owen, who was sitting by the table looking at me. “He has a case,” I said. I got a bowl down from the cupboard. It was all I needed. I’d set the table before I left. “Dayna Chapman’s death wasn’t an accident. It looks like someone might have killed her on purpose.”

I heard a meow from the other side of the room. Hercules was poking his black-and-white head around the basement door.

“Hello,” I said. “One, supper is almost ready. Two, Marcus isn’t coming. Three, it looks like Dayna Chapman’s death wasn’t an accident. And four”—I pulled the purple mouse out of my pocket and set it on the floor, sending Owen a warning look that I hoped was sufficiently intimidating enough that he wouldn’t so much as twitch a whisker in the direction of the toy—“this is yours.”

Herc nudged the basement door open a little more and started across the kitchen floor toward Owen and me.

“You know, Boris closes the door for Harrison,” I said, taking the lid off the slow cooker. I liked Harry’s big German shepherd, and I’d been impressed the first time I saw him close the back kitchen door in Harry Senior’s small house.

Hercules made a face as though he’d just caught the scent of something bad, even though the aroma from the stew was filling the kitchen. Both he and Owen were smart enough to close any door in the house—although for Hercules it was easier to walk directly through a door—but being cats, they just didn’t.

Herc picked up his mouse and set it next to his food dish. Then he came back over, sat down beside his brother and looked expectantly at me.

“Okay, you can both have a little chicken,” I said. “But just a little.”

The little black tuxedo cat licked his lips.

“Oh, and I almost forgot, Maggie sends her love,” I said to Owen.

I swear he smiled.

I put a little chicken in each of their dishes and then filled a bowl with stew for myself. Since my only dinner companions were furry and were eating without using forks, I had no problem propping my feet on the chair opposite me and leaning an elbow on the table.

I wished Marcus was sitting in the chair opposite me. Things had been so good for the past three months. But we had a history of his cases coming between us. I didn’t want that to happen with Dayna Chapman’s death.

Hercules had finished his chicken. He came over, sat next to my chair and began to wash his face.

“Everyone is going to think it was Burtis,” I said thoughtfully.

He paused for a moment, seemingly considering the idea. Then he resumed washing his face.

“I know his reputation,” I said.

Burtis was the town bootlegger and as a younger man he’d worked for Idris Blackthorne, Ruby’s grandfather, a hard and ruthless man who ran pretty much every illegal enterprise in a hundred-mile radius around Mayville Heights.

“Just because he could squash someone like a bug doesn’t mean that he would,” I said, as much to myself as the cats.

Owen lifted his head and looked around when I said the word “bug.”

I exchanged a glance with Hercules.

“There are no bugs in here, Owen,” I said. He looked over at me. “No bugs,” I repeated. “It’s just an expression.”

He dropped his head over his food again.

Burtis had to have known that he’d be the main suspect if Dayna’s death wasn’t an accident. Maybe that was why he’d been encouraging me to get involved. I thought about what he’d said about the times I’d gotten mixed up in Marcus’s cases. “He isn’t going to want you to stop being who you are.”

Owen had joined his brother and was carefully washing his face, too.

“Okay, so we’re eliminating Burtis. Who else would want to kill Dayna Chapman? She hadn’t even been in town for twenty-four hours.”

They didn’t have any more idea than I did. Aside from what I’d learned from Burtis, I really knew nothing about his ex-wife.

“Maybe it’s time we learned a little more about the former Mrs. Chapman,” I said to the boys.

“Merow,” Owen said.

Okay, so he was in.

I looked at Hercules. “What do you think?” I asked. He was washing the white fur on his chest. He raised his head and looked in the direction of the hooks by the back door where I hung my jacket and briefcase.

My briefcase.

“Crap on toast!” I said, slouching lower in my chair. I’d left my briefcase with my laptop in my office. “Okay, as soon as I have my computer again we’ll see what we can find online about Dana. In the meantime maybe we can use that other information superhighway.”

Hercules frowned at me. Clearly he didn’t know what I was talking about. Or he’d just noticed a knot in the fur on his tail. He started working on his tail, but I decided to believe it was the former anyway.

“The Mayville Heights grapevine,” I said.

Marcus knocked on my back door a little after nine thirty. I was curled up in the big chair in the living room with the cats stretched across my legs watching a movie. They weren’t happy about having to move.

“Hi,” I said as Marcus stepped into the porch and knocked the snow off his boots.

“I saw your light on. It’s not too late, is it?” he said, leaning down to kiss me. The man could kiss. I tended to forget where I was and what I was doing when his mouth was on mine. I hoped the day never came when that didn’t happen.

I smiled up at him and then remembered that he’d asked me a question. “No. We were just watching a movie on TV,” I said, pushing my hair back off my face.

Marcus followed me into the kitchen. He draped his jacket on the back of a chair and then sat down. I was wearing a pair of old stretched-out sweatpants, heavy woolen socks and a baggy sweatshirt, and my hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. I felt self-conscious for a moment. Then I remembered that Marcus had seen me covered in mud when the embankment behind the carriage house collapsed, and when I was half-frozen with a mild case of hypothermia, wandering the woods with a bleeding arm wearing only long underwear after making it out of a cabin just before the building exploded.

“Hi, guys,” he said.

I realized he was talking to Owen and Hercules, who were looking around the living room doorway.

“Have you had any supper?” I asked, leaning my hip against the table.

He pulled both hands through his hair. “I had three cups of coffee and some beef jerky.”

“That’s not supper.”

I heard a meow of objection from the doorway. “No, beef jerky is not supper, Owen,” I said. I kissed the top of Marcus’s head. “I’ll warm you up some stew.”

He reached for my hand as I moved past him. “You don’t have to do that.”

I smiled. “I know.”

I got the stew out of the refrigerator, put a bowl of it in the microwave and poured Marcus a glass of milk. When I turned around he had a couple of “friends” sitting next to his chair.

“I said I would warm up some stew for Marcus, not you two,” I said.

In perfect synchronization both cats leaned their heads to the right. Marcus noticed and did the same thing so all three of them were in their most adorable poses.

I leaned down toward the cats. “Don’t encourage him,” I stage-whispered.

Behind me Marcus laughed.

Once his supper was hot, I made myself a cup of hot chocolate and joined him at the table. Owen had a dab of gravy on his whiskers and I caught Hercules licking his lips, so I knew Marcus had snuck the two of them a bit of chicken and maybe part of a dumpling from his dish.