Софи Келли - Paws Аnd Effect

“I don’t want that development to be built if it’s not the right thing for the town and the land,” Ruby had told me when I’d said I thought it was good of her to let John and Travis on the property. “I’d rather hang on to the land.” She’d grinned at me. “Maybe I’ll build a tree fort and go live out there.”

I was hoping it was early enough that Travis would still be at the motel, and when I pulled off the highway I saw his rental car still in the lot.

“I won’t be very long,” I said to Hercules.

He looked pointedly from me to my cross-body bag. How did he know I had a tiny container of fish-shaped crackers in there? A friend of Roma’s owned a small cat food company and Owen and Hercules had been taste testers—happily—several times for his new products.

“Stay in the truck and I’ll give them to you when I come back.” I patted the bag.

He sighed and laid down on the seat, putting his head on a small paperback book on the history of Minnesota that Abigail had gotten for me for a quarter at a flea market.

I picked up the bag of cookies and got out of the truck. I knocked on the door of Travis’s motel room, expecting him to ask who it was. Instead, after a moment, he opened the door. His hair was disheveled. There were dark circles under his eyes and a couple of days of stubble on his cheeks. Everything about him, even the way he was standing, was so profoundly sad I knew I couldn’t ask him any questions about Dani. I knew it would be wrong to take advantage of his grief like that.

“Hi, Travis,” I said. “I just came to see how you were, if you need anything.” I suddenly felt a little silly standing there with the bag of cookies. I held them out to him. “I, uh, made these for you.”

He didn’t take the bag. “Did you come to plead Marcus’s case?” he asked in a voice edged with snark. “Are you going to tell me we should grieve together?”

I shook my head slowly. My heart ached for him, my chest actually hurting. “No,” I said. “I just came to see if I could do anything for you. Not make you feel worse. I’m sorry.” I turned to go.

“Have the police figured out who killed her?” Travis said.

I turned back around to face him. “Not yet.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “She came here because he was here. She wanted to talk to him.”

Dani knew Marcus was in Mayville Heights? “How do you know?”

He swallowed and his face tightened. “I went looking for her, after the restaurant that morning. She was on her phone talking to someone. I heard her tell whomever she was talking to that now she’d have the chance to talk to him. Then she said, ‘No more secrets.’” He pulled a hand across the stubble on his chin. “She wouldn’t talk to me. She wouldn’t tell me what the hell she was talking about. She wouldn’t let me apologize.”

The bit of conversation Travis had overheard didn’t prove anything. I sighed. “I’m sorry.” The words seemed inadequate but I didn’t know what else to say.

“Secrets, Kathleen,” Travis said bitterly. “All these years later and the two of them are still keeping secrets.”

I noticed he was still referring to Dani in the present tense. Marcus had done that a few times as well.

“I know,” I said.

“You know?” He narrowed his eyes at me.

I let out a long slow breath. “I know there’s something they were keeping from everyone. I don’t know what it is.”

Travis’s mouth worked before he spoke. “You’re okay with that?”

I looked away for a minute and then met his gaze again. “Marcus told me it wasn’t his secret to tell. Which means he’s protecting Dani. I don’t expect you to ever be friends again with Marcus after what happened, but you know whatever else he is, he’s deeply loyal to the people he cares about. Whatever his reason is for keeping this secret, he thinks it’s important. I know he’d do the same thing for me if I needed it.”

He looked at me for what felt like a long time. Then he cleared his throat and inclined his head in the direction of the room behind him. “I have a coffeemaker. You want a cup?”

I nodded. “I’d like that.”

Travis and I sat at the small round table just inside his room. He told me more about Dani, his face lighting up as he related the story of how they met in high school when he skidded down an icy stretch of sidewalk outside the school and she caught him. As he had before, he talked about Dani in the present tense, as though she wasn’t gone.

Very quickly I realized I wasn’t going to learn anything from Travis that would tell me more about who Danielle McAllister had been as a person. His memories were colored by how he felt about her. There was nothing critical or negative in them and while I’d thought more than once since her death that I probably would have liked Dani if I’d had the chance to get to know her, I knew that no one was quite as perfect as Travis described. It struck me that he had been a little obsessed with her.

Still, it seemed to help him to talk. “If I hear anything about the investigation, I’ll let you know,” I said when I got up to leave.

“Thank you,” he said. It seemed like there was something else he wanted to say so I waited for a moment without speaking. Finally he spoke, looking past me as he did. “Tell, uh, tell Marcus that Dani’s family is having a service for her a week from Sunday. Maybe . . . maybe we could, uh, drive up together.”

I nodded. “I’ll tell him.”

Hercules was sitting on the driver’s side when I opened the truck door. He looked up expectantly at me. “Let me get in,” I said. He moved over about a foot. I took the little box of crackers out of my bag and shook three of them onto the seat.

“Ready?” I asked after he’d eaten them. He made a quick pass at his face with a paw then moved over a few inches and gazed out the windshield. He was ready.

I got home in lots of time to change for work, make a sandwich and start dinner in the slow cooker before I left for the library. It was a quiet morning and I was arranging a display of Halloween-themed books when Simon Janes walked into the building just before lunch. He nodded to Mary, who was at the desk proofreading the mock-up of the poster advertising Spookarama, and walked over to me.

“Good morning, Kathleen,” he said with a smile.

I smiled back at him. “Good morning.”

“Could we talk somewhere private?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. I led him over to one of our meeting rooms. Once I’d closed the door he handed me the brown envelope he was holding.

“What is it?’ I asked.

“Ernie Kingsley is a lousy businessman and a first-class ass, but he didn’t kill anyone.”

“How do you know?” I said, my heart sinking.

Simon indicated the envelope. “Look inside.”

I lifted the flap. The only thing inside was a photograph. Looking at it, I realized it was a screen capture from a security video. The black-and-white image was of Kingsley and a young woman who barely looked eighteen wearing red stilettos, red fringed bikini bottoms and nothing else. She was giving him a lap dance.

I looked at Simon. “Where did you get this?”

“From a club just outside of Red Wing,” he said. “Look at the time stamp in the corner.”

I looked at the number on the bottom right-hand side of the picture.

“He was there for more than an hour,” Simon said. “I saw all the footage.” His hands were jammed in his pockets, feet apart. He looked uncomfortable.

I did the math in my head. “He didn’t kill Dani. There’s no way he had time.”

“No, he didn’t.”

I looked up from the picture. “You knew. That’s why you said you’d get me a meeting with him if I still wanted one.”