Софи Келли - A Tale Оf Two Kitties

“How can I help?” I repeated.

He looked over at his daughter again and his face softened. “I know that Dad and Mary Lowe go way back. Someone saw them together at a place out near the highway. They looked like they were having a pretty serious conversation.”

“The Brick,” I said, nodding my head.

Simon frowned. “How did you know?”

Mary may have looked like the stereotypical sweet, cookie-baking grandmother, which in fact she was, but there were a lot more layers to her, including her love of dancing, corsets and feathers. “That’s a story for another time,” I said.

“Would you talk to Mary?” he asked. “See if she knows anything? I think she’d be more likely to tell you before me.”

“I can do that,” I said. “She’s working tomorrow. I’ll see what I can find out.”

Simon smiled then. “How many times are you going to come to my rescue?” he said.

I smiled back at him. “How many times do you need?”

Mia had gotten to her feet and now she walked over to us. “Excuse me,” she said. “Are you done? Because I’m hungry.”

“Yes, we’re done,” I said.

“Thank you for coming to get me,” she said, wrapping her arms around me in a hug.

“Anytime,” I said.

“Thank you,” Simon said. “For everything.”

I smiled. “Like I said, anytime.”

Hercules was waiting for me in the truck. “Thank you for being so patient,” I said, sliding behind the wheel. He yawned and I realized he’d probably been napping the whole time I was gone.

We headed up the hill and I filled Hercules in on what Simon had told me about his father hiring an investigator to look into Meredith Janes’s death.

“This means something,” I said.

“Merow,” the cat said.

I glanced over at him. “Okay, so now all we have to do is convince Marcus.”

• • •

We’d only been home about twenty minutes when my phone rang. Hercules was just eating the last of the four crackers I’d given him. He meowed at me but didn’t even lift his head.

“Yes, I heard that,” I said.

It was Marcus.

“Hi,” I said. “Where are you?”

“At the station,” he said, “wrestling with paperwork.”

He sounded tired. I tucked one leg underneath me. “You want to know what I was doing at Simon’s office.”

“I do, but I don’t want to sound like a suspicious boyfriend or an equally suspicious cop by asking. You can see I’m on the horns of a dilemma.”

I laughed. “So you were going to do what, just dance around the subject?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “I’m tired; all my creativity has checked out for the night.”

“It’s not that complicated,” I said. “Simon was supposed to pick up Mia out at Harry’s. I went to get her.”

“That was nice of you,” he said.

I wondered if he was at his desk or leaning against the wall in the hallway for a bit more privacy.

“Marcus, have you looked into the possibility of a connection between Leo Janes’s death and the accident that killed his wife?”

“Simon mentioned that.”

I pulled up my other leg and propped my chin on my bent knee. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“What if there’s a connection?”

“A connection how?” he asked.

I blew out a breath. “I don’t know how. Simon told me his father had hired someone to look into his ex-wife’s accident. Don’t you think it’s an awfully big coincidence that Leo Janes started asking questions about what happened all those years ago and suddenly he’s dead?”

“Coincidences do happen, Kathleen.” I recognized that reasonable tone. When we’d first met it had frustrated me.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” I said.

“So you think what?” Marcus asked. “That Meredith Janes’s death wasn’t an accident and now after twenty years the killer decided to get rid of her husband?”

The idea sounded better in my head than when he said it out loud.

“How do you know Victor Janes didn’t do something to his brother?” I said.

The idea had been in the back of my mind like a wisp of a song.

“He has an alibi. He was in a cancer survivors’ chat room when Leo was murdered.”

“Which he could have accessed from his smartphone,” I countered.

“Victor had one of those phones with the battery problems. His actually overheated and stopped working that day. The company had to overnight a replacement. He was close to twenty-four hours without a phone.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a little deflated.

“I know you care about Mia, Kathleen, and I know you like Simon.”

I got the sense that he was choosing his words carefully, which told me I probably wasn’t going to like what he said next.

“Simon didn’t kill his father,” I said, speaking each word slowly and carefully.

Marcus cleared his throat. “Look, Kathleen, I trust your instincts. You have to know that by now. But I can’t just ignore the evidence because of those instincts.”

“And I can’t ignore what my instincts tell me just because you believe your evidence says something else.”

There was silence for a moment, then he said, “I’m sorry I called your cell phone.”

I hadn’t expected him to say that. “Umm, why?” I asked.

“Because you could have hung up on me. Regular phones can be very satisfying to hang up . . . so I’ve heard.”

I laughed. “I wouldn’t hang up on you,” I said. “Pour coffee on your shoe? Maybe.”

He laughed as well. He’d gotten my reference to a time in our past when I’d come very close to doing just that.

“I love you,” he said. I could feel the warmth of his smile as though he was in the room with me.

“I love you, too,” I said.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he said. “Sleep well.”

I set the phone on the table and sighed. Hercules was watching me, pensively it seemed, his head cocked to one side. “How am I going to convince Marcus that there are other people who could have wanted Leo Janes hurt if not dead?”

“Mrr,” the cat said, his green eyes narrowing a little.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m thinking about Elias Braeden.”

“Merow?” Hercules said. It almost seemed like there was a question in the sound.

“I know what Ruby said and I’m not saying Elias wanted Leo dead. Maybe . . . maybe things just got out of hand. He was killed with that piece of sculpture. It wasn’t premeditated.” I picked up my mug. It was empty. I set it back on the table again. “What I’d like to do is talk to someone other than Ruby about Elias.”

Hercules yawned and stretched, seemingly bored with the conversation. He made his way over to the refrigerator and used one paw to push his food dish toward me.

“You just had a snack,” I said. “That’s it until breakfast.”

He stared at me without blinking, his green eyes locked on my face for a good thirty seconds.

I got to my feet, picked up the empty bowl and set it back beside the refrigerator. “Like I said, that’s it until breakfast.”

As I turned around my gaze passed over the front of the refrigerator. I had a coupon for half a dozen cupcakes from Sweet Thing stuck there along with a notice about a Christmas arts and crafts market in Red Wing and a flyer about the holiday cookie-decorating contest being sponsored by Fern’s Diner.

Fern’s Diner, where I’d had breakfast with Burtis Chapman more than once. Burtis, who had also worked for Idris Blackthorne as a young man and likely knew Elias Braeden.

I scooped up Hercules. “You are a furry genius,” I said.

He nuzzled my cheek and tried to look modest but didn’t quite get there.