Софи Келли - A Midwinter's Tail

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Kathleen Paulson is snowed under running her library and caring for her extraordinary felines, Owen and Hercules. But when a fund-raiser turns deadly, she’ll have to add sleuthing to her already full schedule....
Winter in Mayville Heights is busy and not just because of the holidays. Kathleen is hard at work organizing a benefit to raise money for the library’s popular Reading Buddies program. She has her hands full hosting the event. And when a guest at the gala drops dead, her magical cats, Owen and Hercules, will have their paws full helping her solve a murder.
The victim is the ex of town rascal Burtis Chapman, but she hasn’t lived in the area in years. And though everybody is denying knowledge of why she was back in town, as Kathleen and her detective boyfriend, Marcus, begin nosing around, they discover more people are connected to the deceased than claimed to be. Now Marcus, Kathleen, and her uncanny cats have to unravel this midwinter tale before the case gets cold.

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“Yeah,” Nic said. He grinned. “And before you ask, no, I wasn’t a juvenile delinquent. My dad taught me. He had a pawnshop. He knew all kinds of stuff.”

So I was right.

“What do you think?” Eric said to me. “I can still text Susan.”

“It’s worth trying.” I looked at Nic. “The truck’s old. You can’t hurt it.”

“Give me a second,” he said. He took off his apron and pointed toward the kitchen. “Okay if I get a screwdriver from the toolbox in the storage room?” he asked Eric.

“Sure,” Eric said. He looked at me. “I’ll get my phone anyway, just in case.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He grabbed a couple of menus. A man and a woman—tourists, I was guessing—had just come in. Eric gestured at my coffee as he passed me. “That’s on the house.”

He headed for the customers and I took another long drink just in case I did end up walking up the hill.

Nic came out of the kitchen in a black jacket, carrying a long, flat-bladed screwdriver. “Show me your truck,” he said.

I took him outside.

Owen had finally finished washing his face. He watched us walk around the truck with interest, but he made no move toward the door.

“What’s your cat’s name?” Nic asked as he lifted the driver’s-side door handle.

“Owen,” I said, making a face at the fur ball, who ignored me and watched Nic intently instead. “He is—was feral.”

“In other words, don’t try to pet him.”

I nodded. “How did you know?”

He shrugged. “I volunteered with a rescue group in Minneapolis. There were three feral cats living in the alley next to my dad’s pawnshop.”

He pointed to the door handle hinge. “See this? You have to be very careful, but you stick the screwdriver in here . . .” He slipped it in an opening by the hinge. “You feel around for the rod attached to the lock mechanism and . . .” I heard a clunk. “That’s it.”

Nic opened the door, picked up my keys and handed them to me. He looked at Owen. “Hey, Owen,” he said.

“Merow?” the cat said. He seemed a bit surprised to be called by name by someone he didn’t know.

“I’ll close this so he doesn’t get out on the street,” Nic said, shutting the door again.

“Thank you so much,” I said, holding tightly to the keys.

He made an offhand shrug. “No problem. It’s good to know I can still do that. It’s been a while.”

“I read the news story about your father,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” he said. He ran a hand over his smooth scalp, wiping away the snow. “It took a long time, but he’s doing really great now.”

I brushed snow off the side of the truck. “So you knew Dayna Chapman.”

He nodded. “She was a witness. She was just walking by on the sidewalk when everything went down that night.” He turned the screwdriver over in his hands. “You think the stories are true? You think someone killed her?”

I scraped my boot against the pavement. “Yes, I do,” I said.

Nic rubbed his gloveless hand across his mouth. “I guess that makes me a suspect, then,” he said.

18

He mumbled an oath under his breath. “The kid who shot my father? He has a new lawyer. They’re trying to get the plea agreement tossed on some kind of technicality. The prosecutor thinks it actually could happen, so she’s been looking at all the evidence again, talking to witnesses.”

I wasn’t sure why he was telling me all this. Maybe he hadn’t had anyone to talk to about it all for a while.

“Including Dayna,” I said.

He shrugged. “Not exactly. About six months ago she started hedging, claiming she couldn’t remember certain things all of a sudden. I tried to talk to her, but when I went to her apartment she wouldn’t come to the door. Then she dropped out of sight altogether.”

He leaned his head to one side and studied my face. “I heard how you helped catch the person who killed that director who was here for the theater festival a few months ago, so I think maybe you’ll get it.”

“Get what?” I asked.

He continued to play with the long screwdriver. “I came here to see if I could find out something, anything that might give me a clue as to where she went. Hell, I thought maybe she might even be here. The fact that the co-op was here and I’m an artist? It just seemed like the perfect confluence of circumstances.”

He blew out a breath. “When she walked into the theater Thursday night, for a second I thought I was hallucinating.”

“You tried to talk to her.”

“Waste of time,” he said, making a dismissive gesture with one hand. The muscles tightened along his jawline. “She told me her son was a lawyer and that if I didn’t stay away from her, she’d sue me. Then she just walked away.”

“Do you have any idea why she suddenly changed her story?” I asked, leaning over to brush snow off the driver’s side of my windshield.

“I figure somebody from that kid’s family had to have gotten to her, but I didn’t have anything to prove that. If I had, I would have gone straight to the prosecutor.” He kicked a chunk of dirty snow from the front tire of the truck. “Dayna Chapman being dead doesn’t help me,” he said. “I didn’t kill her.”

I believed him. Nothing in his face, in his voice, in his mannerisms suggested he was lying. “For what it’s worth, I believe you,” I said. “But you should tell all of this to the police. Detective Gordon.”

“Your boyfriend?”

I nodded.

He shrugged. “Okay. But Dayna Chapman getting killed might not have had anything to do with the robbery and my father getting shot.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. Or maybe it did, I added silently.

I thanked Nic for his help again and then climbed into the truck. Owen had had some time to perfect his innocent act.

“Not working,” I said as I stuck the key in the ignition. “You are in so much trouble.”

He looked over his shoulder toward the restaurant and gave a questioning meow.

“Yes, I found out a little more about Nic,” I said.

“Merow,” he said sharply. I glanced over at him next to me on the seat. He looked smug.

“No,” I said. “There’s no way you knew Nic could unlock this door and we’d end up talking. Not possible.”

He gave me another self-satisfied look and then turned to watch out the windshield.

I drove over to tai chi, parked the truck and realized I was going to have to take the cat inside with me. The snow was easing up and I knew it would get colder.

Luckily there was a cloth shopping bag in one pocket of my old jacket.

I put the bag on the seat. “Get in,” I said.

For once Owen didn’t give me a hassle. I grabbed him and my tai chi bag and got out of the truck.

The class was already in the circle and Maggie had started the warm-up. “You’re late,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

“I got locked out of the truck,” I said, swiping a hand back over my hair. “Long story. And I, uh, kind of brought someone to class.”

As usual, Owen’s timing was perfect. He poked his head out of the bag and meowed hello.

Maggie waved at him. “Hey, Owen,” she said with a smile.

He immediately began to purr so loudly everyone heard him.

“Is Owen planning on taking up tai chi?” Ruby asked. “Is that why you brought him?”

The cat tipped his head to one side as though he was considering the idea.

For once, I decided not to hedge. “Would you believe he can make himself invisible so I didn’t see him get in the truck?”

Ruby laughed.

“Could I put him in your office?” I asked Maggie.

Owen made a sour face. He definitely knew what the word “office” meant. And he didn’t like it.

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