Софи Келли - Hooked On A Feline

“Get out,” I repeated.

His response was to disappear.

I blew out a breath in frustration, lifting my bangs off my face. “I know you’re there, Owen,” I said.

Marcus laughed.

“Don’t laugh,” I said. “It just encourages him.”

“Did you know that researchers in Montreal have been looking at ways to change a light’s frequency to make it pass through an object, which then makes the object seem to be invisible?”

We could both see a potato moving in the basket.

“Clearly those researchers weren’t working with any cats,” I said.

Marcus stretched out his long legs and raked a hand through his hair. He was frustrated.

“The Bishop case?” I asked.

He nodded. “I have no suspects and almost no evidence. Mike Bishop died of a head injury, but no one in the area heard or saw anything and the man was universally well-liked.”

“According to Rebecca, some people think the Finnamore family is cursed.” The potato was still moving, pushed I knew by a furry gray-and-white paw.

“You think Rebecca really believes that?” Marcus asked.

I pulled both feet up onto the seat of my chair and wrapped my arms around my legs. “No. And for the record, neither do I. As Rebecca put it, ‘The rain falls equally on sinner and saint and there were both in that family.’ The quote comes from the Bible, in case you were wondering.”

“I don’t believe in things like jinxes or curses,” he said.

I gave a snort of laughter. “This from the man who wouldn’t wash his hockey jersey during the playoffs last year.”

He was already shaking his head. “That’s different. When I don’t wash my jersey, I’m connecting with the collective mindset of hockey fans all over the country. Our shared energy supports the team.”

“More like a shared delusion, but who am I to argue?” I said. I rested my chin on one knee.

“Something else I don’t believe in?” Marcus said. “Coincidences. The deaths of two people in the same family in just three months doesn’t feel right to me.”

“It happens,” I said.

I’d always felt a little sad about Leitha Anderson’s death. She had come to the library for a talk about the history of the area given by Mary. Previous lectures in the series had included two talks by Harrison and one by Everett. Mary and Leitha had had a very loud and very public argument after Mary’s talk. On the drive home, Leitha had suffered a heart attack, gone off the road and died before paramedics arrived.

“Mike was murdered. Leitha was old and her death was an accident,” I said.

Marcus looked away for a moment; then his eyes met mine again. “What if it wasn’t?”

chapter 7

I had no words. I just stared at him. “Are you serious?” I finally managed to say. “You really think there’s a connection between Mike’s death and his great-aunt’s? Leitha died in a car accident. Mike was murdered. I don’t see it.”

“I’m not saying there is a connection,” Marcus said. “Right now all I’m doing is speculating, but I do know there is a lot of money in the Finnamore family trust.”

“ ‘If money go before, all ways do lie open,’ ” I said softly.

“Shakespeare.”

I nodded. “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” I lifted my chin from my knee and stretched out my legs again. “So who benefited from their deaths?” It was a question Marcus often considered in a murder case.

“As far as I can see, Jonas and Lachlan Quinn.”

“You can eliminate Jonas, because he isn’t a biological Finnamore, so he didn’t benefit from either Mike’s or Leitha’s deaths because he can’t inherit anything involving the trust. And as for Lachlan, he’s seventeen. C’mon, you can’t really believe a teenager engineered Leitha’s death to look like an accident and did such a good job that up to now no one suspected anything and then on top of that he managed to kill Mike. Lachlan seems like a bright kid but I remember myself at that age and I wasn’t smart enough to pull that off. Were you?”

Marcus leaned over and kissed the side of my face. “I couldn’t figure out how to get girls to notice me when I was seventeen. I wouldn’t have been capable of plotting to kill anyone.” He laughed; then his expression became serious again. “Just between the two of us, hypothetically, what do you think happened?”

“Hypothetically, I keep coming back to the idea of some random thief who was surprised by Mike and panicked.”

“But?” He raised an eyebrow. “There is a but, isn’t there?”

I leaned my head against the back of the chair. “Again, hypothetically speaking, if the police, if you, had any evidence that led in that direction—any sign of a break-in, missing valuables, someone suspicious seen around Mike’s house or if there had been other break-ins in the neighborhood—you wouldn’t be looking for a connection to Leitha’s death.”

He didn’t say anything, which in itself told me I was right.

Hercules came across the lawn from the direction of Rebecca’s yard. He eyed the basket of potatoes and then jumped onto my lap, nuzzling my chin before murping a hello to Marcus.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” I said as much to myself as to Marcus or the cat.

“No,” Marcus agreed, “it isn’t.”

Harry arrived at the library about midmorning on Tuesday. I was reshelving some reference books and spotted him out the window. I set the last book on the shelf and walked over to the circulation desk. “I’m just going outside to talk to Harry for a minute,” I said to Susan, who was working the desk.

She was sorting through a stack of children’s picture books, pulling an odd assortment of things that seemed to have been used as bookmarks from between the pages. There were a folded sticky note, a scrap of red yarn, a swizzle stick and three squares of toilet paper piled next to her right arm. She looked up at me, nudging her cat’s-eye glasses up her nose with one knuckle. “Take your time.” She dipped her head at the heap of would-be bookmarks. “People use the oddest things to mark their place.”

“Yes, they do,” I agreed, struggling to keep a straight face since Susan herself was anchoring her topknot with a bamboo knife and fork.

I walked across the parking lot and Harry got to his feet when he saw me approaching, brushing the dirt off his hands.

“Good morning,” he said. “The old man told me next time I saw you to be sure to tell you that those tomatoes are the best so far.”

“I’m glad he liked them. I’ll get some more out to him. I have more than I can use.” I looked over the flower bed. “The marigolds still look good.”

“They should be fine until the first frost.” He adjusted the brim of his ball cap. “You didn’t come out here to talk about tomatoes and flowers, Kathleen.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “I need you to tell me about Mike. The real person. Don’t get me wrong. I liked him. But I know that people tend to make a person into a saint when they’re dead.”

Harry smiled. “Mike definitely wasn’t a saint, but he was a good guy. In all the years I’ve known”—he stopped, took a breath and let it out and then continued—“knew Mike, I think I may have seen him lose his temper five or six times if that. He was just one of those people who could roll with whatever was happening. That was the real Mike.”

“How did you all manage to practice for the show without the people around you finding out?”

“I think a few people did guess, but they were just good at keeping the secret,” Harry said. “I’m pretty sure the old man figured it out, although he says he didn’t. Mike came over to the house every Thursday night for weeks so we could practice together because it was the only time we could make it work. Monday through Wednesday he worked later at the office and Friday night he was checking out new music somewhere in the area. Peggy works late on Thursdays, so dad was always around and you know he doesn’t miss a thing.”