Софи Келли - A Tale Оf Two Kitties

Mary joined us. She smiled at Mia. “I have something for you upstairs in the staff room. I found a couple of photos of your grandfather when he was about your age. I thought maybe you’d like to have them.”

Mia nodded and managed a smile. “I would like to have them. Thank you.”

“I’m going to try not to worry and hover,” I said. Beside me Mary made a strangled sound in her throat. I looked at her, narrowing my eyes.

She put one hand on her chest. “It’s dry in here,” she said. “Got a little frog in my throat.”

I turned back to Mia, who was still smiling. “If you need anything I’m going to trust you to ask.”

The phone rang then at the circulation desk. “I’ll get that,” Mary said, bustling across the tile floor.

“There is one thing,” Mia said, ducking her head. “You can say no if you want to.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Would it be too weird? Would you sit with Dad and me at the service on Friday?”

Simon had told me that since Mayville Heights was where Leo had grown up, he and Mia had decided here was where his father should be buried.

“Of course,” I said. I’d been planning on going to the service for Leo and if I could be there for Mia—and Simon—I was happy to. I’d felt helpless from the moment I’d found Leo Janes’s body and I was glad to finally be able to do something that might make a difference to Mia.

• • •

I stopped at the library after tai chi class to check on Mia. According to Abigail, she was handling being at the library just fine. While I was there I noticed more than one person share their sympathies with her and it seemed to do her good to hear how many people had known and liked her grandfather. The next evening went just as well.

Thursday night after tai chi I drove out to Marcus’s house.

He had called just as I was leaving for class. “I haven’t seen you in days,” he’d said. “I have pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies.”

“Well, for cookies I guess I could drive out,” I’d teased.

Marcus was just ending a conversation on his cell when I stepped into the kitchen. He looked tired, I thought. There were shadows under his eyes and I could see that he’d run his hands through his hair multiple times.

“Hope says hello,” he said, setting his cell on the table. He leaned forward to kiss me.

“How’s she’s doing?” I asked.

“Good.” His mouth twisted to one side. “I think. She said physio is going well, but you know what Hope’s like. She keeps things pretty much to herself.”

I nodded. He was right about his partner. She did keep things to herself, which was why he had no idea she’d been in love with him for years. “You called her to talk about the case,” I said, hanging my purse on the back of the closest chair.

“I did want to see how she was, but yeah, I wanted to run the case by her as well.”

“Do you have any suspects?” I asked.

Marcus hesitated. I waited for him to say he couldn’t talk about the case the way he had so many times in the past. But instead he said, “You’re not going to like it.”

I pulled off my jacket and put it on the back of the chair as well, to buy a little time. I realized he had to be referring to Simon.

“Simon didn’t kill his father,” I said. “If that’s what you’re thinking you need to look somewhere else.”

Marcus just looked at me without speaking.

“C’mon, Marcus, you have to know there’s no way he would do that. First of all, he’s not that kind of person, and second, Mia is the most important person in the world to him. He would never hurt her.”

He raked a hand through his hair, something he did a lot when he was stressed. Then he suddenly shook his head and said, “Do you want a cup of hot chocolate?”

“Please,” I said. I’d warmed up at class but suddenly I was cold again.

When he didn’t say anything else I sat down, curling one leg up underneath me. “Why?” I said. I didn’t need to say another word. Marcus knew what I meant.

He exhaled loudly and opened the refrigerator to get the milk. “Simon and Leo Janes had a volatile relationship and spent periods of time when they didn’t talk,” Marcus said.

“Lots of fathers and sons have difficult relationships,” I said. “And as for not speaking, for a while that was you and your father.”

“Which, believe me, I’ve reminded myself of more than once,” he said. “I’m guessing you know about the affair Leo Janes’s brother, Victor, had with Simon’s mother. There was bad blood between them for more than twenty years.”

I nodded. “By that logic Victor Janes should be a suspect.”

“He had nothing to gain,” Marcus said. “Simon, on the other hand, does. He was Leo’s beneficiary and by Simon’s own admission Leo wanted his son to give Victor a second chance because he’s sick, but Simon found it hard to forgive the man who he felt was responsible for his mother’s death and the breakup of his family.” He looked back over his shoulder at me. “They had recently had a very heated conversation in the hotel bar that was seen and heard by several people.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” I said. “You and your father have had some pretty heated discussions. So have we.”

He put two mugs in the microwave and turned around, leaning back against the counter. “This is not the same thing.”

Even if I hadn’t known him so well I would have known he was holding something back. His blue eyes didn’t quite meet mine. So I didn’t say anything. I just waited.

“This stays between us,” he finally said.

I nodded.

It had taken a long time for Marcus and me to work out our differences, and now I couldn’t imagine my life without him in it. My parents had been married twice—to each other both times. As crazy as they made each other—and the rest of us sometimes—they were miserable without each other. Just the way I was miserable without Marcus.

“Simon doesn’t have an alibi, at least not one we can verify, for the window of time around his father’s death.”

“Yes, he does,” I said. “He was in his office, working. Mia talked to him before we left the library. I talked to him.”

Marcus took the mugs out of the microwave and added the Jam Lady’s cocoa mix and a couple of her homemade marshmallows to each one. He handed me my cup, set a plate of the promised cookies at my elbow and came to sit across from me at the table. “Simon did talk to you, but he’d had the calls to his office phone forwarded to his cell phone and the cell tower logs show he wasn’t at his office. The call pinged off a tower near Everett’s building—near his father’s apartment, Kathleen. He says he was just driving around, trying to clear his head after a frustrating day, but he can’t prove it.”

“That doesn’t prove he was in his father’s apartment or even close to the building.” I turned the mug of hot chocolate in circles on the tabletop. “You’re the one who explained the problems with cell phone evidence to me when that woman was on trial for killing her husband in Red Wing back in the spring. Simon could have been in his office and if the tower near him was experiencing a heavy call volume his calls could have been picked up by another tower closer to the apartment.”

Micah wandered in from somewhere, probably drawn by the sound of our voices. She jumped into Marcus’s lap, cocked her head at me and meowed softly. I leaned over and scratched behind one ear. She immediately began to purr.

I looked over at Marcus. “I know you don’t know Simon very well,” I said, “but I do know him well enough to know that his life revolves around Mia and he wouldn’t have killed his father even by accident. He would not do that to her. Please, trust me on this.”