Софи Келли - Hooked On A Feline

“Okay.” I put a hand against his cheek for a moment. “Have something to eat,” I said. “We don’t have to talk about this right now.”

He reached for the pasta salad and I picked up my fork even though my appetite was pretty much gone. I realized from the way Marcus had dodged my questions that he suspected Mike Bishop had been murdered. I had a familiar sinking feeling in my stomach.

It was the end of the week before the medical examiner declared Mike Bishop’s death a homicide. For once the newspaper didn’t offer any opinion on what had happened before the official ruling. Marcus had shown up with the news and a quart of mocha fudge ice cream. We were sitting in my two big Adirondack chairs in the backyard. Hercules was perched on the wide arm of my chair, washing his face and sneaking looks at my dish, while pretending he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in what was in it. Owen was sitting at Marcus’s feet. He knew his chance of getting even a tiny taste was slim to none and there was no chance it would be coming from me.

“The news will be in tomorrow’s paper,” I said. It wasn’t a question. Bridget would have been looking for the story in Mike’s death.

“I’ll be surprised if it’s not,” Marcus said. He and Bridget had a cool, slightly prickly relationship. He and Mary, on the other hand, were friends. They seemed to have an unspoken agreement not to talk about Bridget.

“There’s no way it could have been an accident?” I asked. It wasn’t that I doubted the skills of the medical examiner. I just hated the idea that someone—anyone—had deliberately ended Mike Bishop’s life.

Marcus was shaking his head before I got the words out. “I wish there was. I agree with the medical examiner, based on what I saw. Mike hit his head on the fireplace mantel and bled into his brain. Based on the location of the wound, there’s no way it could have happened accidentally.” His hand briefly touched the back of his head. “Between you and me, he was punched in the face right before he hit his head. I think he was moving away from the person who threw that punch. There was nothing on the floor he could have tripped over and nothing he could have slipped on.”

Hercules looked at me, tipping his head to one side and narrowing his green eyes. “If Mike had tripped while he was moving away from whoever had hit him, wouldn’t he have fallen forward, not backward?” I asked.

Hercules immediately looked at Marcus, as though he wanted to hear the answer to the question as well, as though I’d asked what he’d wanted to know—which wasn’t as unlikely as it seemed.

Marcus shrugged. “He could have been backing up.”

“So Mike fought or struggled with some unknown person, and that person hit him and then pushed him or hit him again, which sent him into the mantel.”

“That’s one of the possibilities.”

Hercules looked expectantly at me again. Was there something else he wanted to know? “But that suggests what happened wasn’t premeditated, that it was most likely an accident. So why didn’t that person call for help? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know. Mike Bishop was universally liked. I don’t think you could find anyone in town—or in this part of the state for that matter—who had a bad word to say about the man.”

“So why is he dead?” I said.

Marcus shrugged. “Right now I don’t know.”

It felt as though the entire town showed up for Mike Bishop’s funeral on Saturday. That was one of the things I liked about living in a small town, this small town—everyone knew everyone else; everyone cared about everyone else.

It was more than four years now since I’d arrived in Mayville Heights. The head librarian position I’d come for was supposed to only be a temporary eighteen-month appointment, with the main part of the job being to supervise the refurbishment of the library in time for its centennial. I had applied on a whim, looking to get away from Boston after a relationship had fallen apart. The building had been beautifully restored, the collections had been reorganized and the computer system brought more or less into this century, but when the time was up, I found myself wanting to stay. I had Owen and Hercules. I had friends. I had a life I loved. I was lucky that the library board had wanted me to stay as well. As much as I sometimes missed my family back in Boston, Mayville Heights was my home now. Now I felt that sense of community very strongly.

Marcus and I sat with Eddie and Roma at the service. Roma had known Mike for years and she had taken his death hard. She had been pale but composed when she and Eddie pulled into Gunnerson’s parking lot, but when I’d hugged her, she’d held on a little tighter and a little longer than usual.

I had closed the library an hour early because all of the staff wanted to attend the funeral.

“I was leaving one night after my shift and Mike asked me what I was listening to,” Levi had said to me when he’d asked for the time off to attend the service. “I told him ZZ Top. About a week later, he comes in and says he has something for me. It was a concert T-shirt from the band’s El Loco tour. I said I couldn’t take it and he laughed. He patted his gut and said it didn’t fit his needs anymore, and if I didn’t wear it, the shirt would just sit in a drawer.”

The service was being held at Gunnerson’s Funeral Home. Daniel Gunnerson Senior was at the front door, shaking hands and directing people. He was a short and solid man with deep blue eyes and a head of thick white hair. He wore a black suit with a crisp white shirt and a blue tie. The smaller rooms, which could accommodate several services, had been opened up to make one large space, and even so I wondered if there would be enough room for all the people I was expecting would come.

We took a seat about five rows back. Jonas and Lachlan were standing together at the front of the room with a bearded man I didn’t recognize. Lachlan looked subdued. Jonas seemed even more serious than usual, his face pale. Their small family had gotten even smaller.

Roma looked around as though she was trying to find someone.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“I don’t see Eloise,” she said.

Eloise was the only other Finnamore cousin left. I’d met her when she’d come to town for her mother, Leitha’s, funeral.

Marcus had heard our conversation and he leaned toward us. “She isn’t coming. I spoke to her on Thursday. She had surgery on a broken leg a few days ago. She’s not allowed to fly.”

Roma nodded. “Thanks. I knew there had to be a good reason she wasn’t here.”

The man with the beard turned out to be a Unitarian minister and a college friend of Mike’s. He led the service, sharing his own memories of Mike’s sense of humor and his kind heart.

Jonas and Lachlan talked about how Mike had kept them together as a family. “He loved to cook, make music and bring people together,” Jonas said. “He’d organize these Sunday meals, timed so that Eloise and the girls could join us from California over Zoom. We’d have dinner and they’d have lunch and the distance didn’t matter because we were still all together like we’d been when we were kids.”

I had to swallow back tears when Harry walked to the front of the room. He looked so somber in his dark suit. Roma was already holding Eddie’s hand. She reached, wordlessly, for mine, squeezing it hard.

“Mike and I had been practicing for what turned out to be our last show for over a month,” Harry said. “He loved the idea that we were going to surprise everyone. It was one of the best nights of his life, he told me after the concert. And according to Mike, he had a lot of those.” Harry raised an eyebrow. A lot of people were smiling. Mike had been a charmer.