Софи Келли - A Midwinter's Tail

I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “No, it’s not.”

“I can see why a man might not want his children to know that basically their mother hadn’t really ever given a goddamn about them. And he might go to any lengths to keep them from finding out.”

“Including kill her?” I asked.

Harry made a face. “Or make her sick enough to land her in the hospital.”

I just couldn’t see Burtis doing something like that. He was far more direct.

“I don’t want to be thinking what I’m thinking, Kathleen,” Harry said. “But it’s kind of hard not to.”

“I don’t know how I can help you,” I said.

Harry jammed his hands in his pockets. “You have a way of seeing past the things that don’t matter. If you can see into the heart of this mess, then maybe you can keep some people from getting hurt who sure as hell don’t deserve to be.”

The conversation reminded me uncomfortably of the one I’d had with Harry when Agatha Shepherd died.

“Harry, I’m not the police,” I said. I’d said that to him then, too.

He shrugged. “Maybe that’s a good thing.” He looked up at the night sky. “Looks like snow’s coming,” he said. He smiled. “Drive safely.”

I nodded. “I will. Good night.”

I got in the truck, started it and headed out the driveway. In the rearview mirror I could see Harry still standing in the yard.

I thought about what he’d told me as I drove home.

Had Dana abandoned her children even more than anyone knew? Had Burtis used a little misdirection and subterfuge to keep them from finding out?

With all her faults I’d never doubted the depth and ferocity of my mother’s love for me or Sara and Ethan. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to discover it was all a lie.

All I had was speculation, I reminded myself. And just because Burtis could seemingly make a flower appear from behind a young girl’s ear didn’t mean he could switch one chocolate box for another.

One thing that wasn’t speculation was Burtis’s love for his kids. But just how far would he go to protect them?

14

I’d had more coffee than I should have, so when I got home I made myself a cup of hot chocolate and sat at the table with it. After a moment I felt a cat wind around my leg. I looked down to see Owen’s furry face looking up at me.

“Hi,” I said.

He murped a hello in return.

I turned my mug in a slow circle on the table. “Burtis knows how to pull a quarter from behind your ear. Or a dandelion.”

Owen looked blankly at me.

“Or in theory a little box of chocolates.”

He still didn’t see why that piece of information was important.

I thought about what I’d just said, that in theory Burtis could have switched the box of chocolates that he’d taken from Olivia’s tray with another box that held three chocolates coated with pistachio oil.

“All he would have had to do was find out Dayna was going to be at the fundraiser, then break into the office at the Stratton, steal one of the boxes of chocolates and put pistachio oil on them.”

Even a small gray cat could see how preposterous that was.

I sighed. “Okay, that sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”

Owen murmured his agreement, then jumped up onto my lap and nuzzled my chin to show he’d meant no offense.

I leaned back in the chair and stroked his fur. “This is crazy,” I said. “I’m tilting at windmills.”

He gave me a quizzical look.

“Tilting at windmills. Don Quixote.”

Owen’s expression didn’t change.

“He’s a character in a Spanish novel. I’ll read it to you sometime,” I said.

All that got me was an unenthusiastic “Mrrr.”

I drank the last of my hot chocolate and stretched. Owen looked over at the counter and then back at me. That was his subtle way of saying, “How about a treat?”

“You get too many treats,” I said.

He blinked. In Owen’s world there was no such thing as too many treats.

“You need to get down,” I told him, pointing at the floor. “I want to check my e-mail. Lise said she’d send me some photos. The band was playing in a club downtown over the weekend.”

Lise was my best friend in Boston. My little brother’s band, The Flaming Gerbils, was developing a bit of a following in the Boston area, helped along by a music video they’d made for their song “In a Million Other Worlds.”

Lise’s husband was a musician, a jazz guitarist, not grunge rock like the Gerbils, and Lise had been photographing his performances for years. She’d gone to see Ethan and his buddies on Saturday night and had promised to send me some photos.

Owen made grumbling noises, but he jumped down to the floor. I got my briefcase and set my laptop on the table.

I turned on the computer and Lise’s e-mail pinged in my in-box. At the same time Owen launched himself back onto my lap. He put one paw on the edge of the table and studied the screen as I scrolled through the photographs.

They were fantastic.

“Look at this one,” I said to Owen, touching the screen. Lise had caught Ethan in midleap onstage. I grinned as the cat leaned in, as though he actually was trying to take a closer look at the image.

My favorite shot of the nine photos was the last one, of Ethan again, seated on a stool with his guitar. I knew that had to have been during “In a Million Other Worlds.” It was the only slow song the band did.

I leaned against the back of the chair, one hand on Owen, who still seemed to be studying the screen, as a wave of homesickness rolled over me. I was happy with my decision to stay in Mayville Heights. It really did feel like home, and people like Rebecca, Maggie and the Taylors felt like another family. But I missed Boston: Ethan and Sara, my mom and dad, Lise. We e-mailed, we talked on the phone, we texted—Sara and I had managed to Skype a couple of times. But I missed the little things—lunch with Lise, shopping with Sara, going to see Ethan and the band perform, watching my parents rehearse. I reminded myself that the twins were away from Boston now more than they were there, and even my mother had spent several weeks in Los Angeles during the fall on the soap the Wild and the Wonderful . No matter where my family was, it was hard to be away from them.

I thought about Dayna and what Harry had told me about his father’s suspicion that the cards and parcels from her to her children had really been orchestrated by Burtis. Could that really be true? I didn’t understand why she hadn’t come back to see her children. Where she had gone and what had she done after she left Mayville Heights all those years ago?

Owen seemed to have gotten tired of looking at Lise’s photos. He put a paw on the keyboard.

“Don’t do that,” I warned.

Owen hit another key and suddenly Google was open. He turned and looked expectantly at me. I had said I was going to see what I could find about Burtis’s ex-wife.

What I found was nothing.

“How can someone leave no digital trail?” I said to Owen.

His response was to poke at the keyboard again, adding three a’s and a q to Dayna Chapman’s name.

“Owen,” I started. Then I realized what the problem was: I was spelling her name wrong.

I kissed the top of his head. “You’re a genius,” I said.

He dipped his head in a display of very false modesty.

I’d been spelling Dayna Chapman’s name without the y. It was with Dayna Morretti—y—and her maiden name that I struck pay dirt.

Six years previous Dayna had been a witness to a robbery at a Minneapolis pawnshop that had left the owner with a life-changing brain injury. I scrolled down through the online newspaper article, stopping when I got to the third paragraph. The pawnshop owner’s name was Sutton. Nicolas Sutton Sr.