Софи Келли - A Tale Оf Two Kitties

Hercules made a face. It seemed he wasn’t sure, either.

“You know, all we seem to have is a bunch of random facts and no way to connect them all together.” I rubbed the space between my eyebrows. “This just gives me a headache.”

“Mrr,” Hercules said, heading for the door. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder before heading for the stairs, his way of saying a treat would probably make me feel better.

Who was I to argue?

By the time I’d finished half a mug of hot chocolate and two pumpkin-spice chocolate-chip cookies I did feel better. I had about an hour before Marcus was going to be finished at hockey practice. I set my laptop on the table. “Right now we don’t have any way of finding out what the piece of mail was that Leo got. But we could see what else we can find out about Celia Hunter.”

Herc jumped up onto my lap and put one paw on the cover of the computer. We were in agreement.

Between my skill with a search engine and the serendipity of Hercules randomly touching the keyboard and somehow finding something useful, we learned quite a bit about Celia Hunter.

For one thing, she was in a relationship with a man named Edmund Holloway. Holloway was a successful businessman in his early seventies who owned, among other things, the largest organic baby food company in North America. He had seven children and twelve grandchildren. He and Celia had met at the 55+ Games, where both had been part of the dragon boat team. Celia, it seemed, had been a competitive rower in college. Edmund Holloway had taken up cross-country in college. I found a photo of the dragon boat in one of their races, crew straining as they sliced through the water toward the finish line, half a boat length ahead of their closest competitor.

Hercules seemed to study the image. He put his paw on the screen.

“Yes, I see that,” I said. Celia Hunter had strong arms. Were they strong enough to have picked up that sculpture and killed Leo Janes?

chapter 14

Susan came hurrying down the sidewalk as I got out of my truck the next morning. As she got closer I saw that she had a pair of plastic scissors and an emerald-green pencil crayon stuck in her topknot, which just gave a bit more credence to my theory that her twins did her hair in the morning.

“Kathleen, do you remember seeing my car keys yesterday?” she asked.

I shook my head as I unlocked the doors and turned off the alarm system. “No,” I said. Then I noticed she had a key ring in her hand. “What are those?” I asked.

“House keys,” she said.

“You don’t have them both on the same ring?”

She nudged her black cat’s-eye glasses up her nose. “Thank goodness, no. Now I wouldn’t have my house keys, either.”

“Right,” I said, thinking that I’d worked with Susan long enough that what she’d said actually made sense to me.

She moved inside and began flipping on the lights. Behind me I heard a soft knock on the outside door. I turned to let Mia in.

“Hi,” she said. She was carrying a round metal cookie tin.

“What did you bring?” I asked.

“Coffee cake,” she said with a smile. “I could go put the coffee on and you could try it before we open.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” I said.

Susan was standing in the middle of the floor looking around the room as though she expected her missing car keys to suddenly fall at her feet.

“Susan lost her car keys,” I said.

“What does the key ring look like?” Mia asked.

“It’s a Troll doll with lime-green hair.” She stopped and looked at us. “I think I know where they are. Kathleen, do you have the key for the cash drawer?”

“Right here,” I said, pulling my own keys out of my pocket. I handed them over to her.

“Mike Justason was paying the boys’ overdue- and damaged-book fines when Eric dropped off my car,” she explained. She leaned over the counter, unlocked the cash drawer and after a moment triumphantly held up her keys.

“Yay!” I said.

Mia held up the tin with the coffee cake. “We should celebrate,” she said.

We all headed up to the staff room, where I started the coffee machine and Mia cut us each a slice of her coffee cake.

“This is really good,” Susan told her. “Seriously. If you ever want to work at the café, let me know.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Hey, no stealing my favorite employee who also happens to bring coffee cake to work on Saturday morning.”

“I brought you banana bread two weeks ago,” Susan said.

“Which is why you were my favorite employee two weeks ago,” I said with a grin.

Mia smiled. “I’m glad you both like it,” she said. “It was my grandfather’s favorite and I knew he’d hate it if I stopped making it. So I thought I’d make it for you guys.”

“We’re glad you did,” I said.

Susan keys were lying on the table.

“I like the Troll doll key ring,” I said.

“Eric thought maybe it would help me stop losing my keys so often,” Susan said. “He thought the hair might make them easier to notice.”

“How’s that working?” I asked.

“Not bad,” she said with a completely straight face. Then she laughed.

I glanced over at Mia. She looked a little sad. “Are you all right?” I said. “The coffee cake really is good. I’m sure your grandfather would be happy you made it for us.”

“I’m all right,” Mia said. “I was remembering that Grandpa misplaced his car keys the day before he died. I’d made this cake and then we’d gone shopping and we were going to the cottage where Uncle Victor was staying for lunch. So he had to use my keys.” She ducked her head. “Don’t tell my dad.”

Susan looked confused. “What?” she mouthed.

“Your grandfather let you drive his car,” I said.

Mia looked up and nodded. “Dad would have a cow. You know how he is. He’s always afraid someone is going to run me off the road. Grandpa gave me a set of keys to his car and said I could drive it as long as I was careful.”

Susan patted her arm. “I used to drive my grandmother’s car. It was this great big boat of a Buick. I sometimes wonder if my dad knew but just pretended that he didn’t. Anyway, your secret is safe with us.”

Mia reached over and combed the little Troll doll’s green hair with two fingers. “Grandpa wanted me to go for a walk with Uncle Victor and get to know him a little but I tried to get out of it. I should have said yes because it was important to him.”

“My great-uncle smells like licorice and has hair growing out of his ears,” Susan said flatly. “It’s the only hair on his head unless you count the hair that’s growing out of his nose. And all he wants to talk about is things he and his friends have had cut out of their bodies.”

Mia made a face. “Gross!”

“More than you can imagine,” Susan said. Her topknot bobbed as she nodded her head for emphasis and for a moment I was afraid the green pencil crayon was going to go flying across the room. “A lot of people don’t want to hang out with their great-uncles, kiddo. It’s okay.” She looked at her watch and stood up. “I’ll go open.” She scooped her keys off the table, stopped at her locker and put them inside on the shelf before heading for the stairs.

Mia got to her feet as well. She took her cup and plate to the sink and then went over to her own locker and put her backpack inside. She hung up her jacket and, when she did, her own keys fell to the floor.

I picked them up. There was a red crayon attached to the ring.

Mia saw me looking at it and said, “It’s not a real crayon. It’s actually a memory stick. I have another one that looks like a little Hershey bar.”