Софи Келли - Hooked On A Feline

I walked across the grass toward him. “Hey, Johnny,” I said when I got close.

He turned and gave me what passed for a smile from him these days. “Hey, Kathleen. What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

The water was dark and angry and the clouds were low and heavy. It was going to rain soon.

“You were the new buyer for the building in Red Wing, weren’t you?” I asked. “The buyer who was going to turn the property into a parking lot. You scammed Leitha. That’s why you weren’t worried. That’s why you told Lachlan to let go of his plan to stop the sale. You didn’t want to stop the sale.”

He was nodding before I finished speaking. “Yeah. I bested her. You have no idea how hard it was not to rub her face in that, to keep it secret.”

“I can imagine.”

“It wasn’t just about the building. It was the way she treated Mike and Jonas. Part of it was because I hated how she kept pressuring Lachlan about college and threatening not to let him have the Finnamore money for his education, as though studying music was somehow not good enough. I wanted her out of the kid’s life but I didn’t make it happen. Mike cared about the old bat, you know. And that tells you everything you need to know about him right there.”

I nodded because I couldn’t get any words past the lump in my throat.

“So why were you looking for me?” Johnny asked.

I cleared my throat. “Marcus needs to talk to you. I think you should tell him what you just told me.”

Johnny pulled out his phone. “What’s his number?”

chapter 18

I waited with Johnny until Marcus arrived.

“I would never tell you how to grieve,” I said when I caught sight of Marcus pulling in next to my truck in the parking lot, “because something like that is so intensely personal, plus it annoys the crap out of me when people do that.”

Johnny gave me a small smile, the first genuine one I’d seen from him in a while.

“But I am going to remind you that if Mike were standing here instead of me, he would tell you to grab life by the—” I pictured Mike onstage explaining his definition of a good friend. I smiled. “By the athletic supporter and live every second you’ve got because none of us knows how long that’s going to be.”

I put a hand on his shoulder for a moment and then headed over to meet Marcus.

“Thank you for getting Johnny to call me,” he said. “I thought you were going home.”

I knew that meant Why didn’t you just tell me where you thought Johnny was? Since he hadn’t asked me that directly, all I said was “I’m going home now.”

I started for the truck. Marcus didn’t say, I’ll call you later , and neither did I.

After supper, once again I sat at the table with my laptop. I checked my e-mail. Susan had scanned the documents she’d found that referred to John Finnamore’s eye color and e-mailed them to me. I also had an e-mail from Roma with a fairly large attachment. The subject line was THE BURLESQUE SHOW.

I opened Susan’s e-mail first. Two different society-page articles mentioned John Finnamore’s blue eyes and dark hair. I had the feeling I’d gotten way off on a tangent. I hadn’t learned anything that put me closer to figuring out who had killed Mike.

“Does any of this really matter?” I asked Hercules, who was sitting at my feet, carefully washing his chest.

He looked up and meowed loudly and enthusiastically. He seemed to think it did. I wasn’t so sure anymore.

I heard the washer shut off. I went down to the basement and discovered Owen sitting in the empty laundry basket on top of the dryer, both paws up on the end of the basket.

When Ethan and Sarah were very small, I would take the two of them sledding in a park close to where we lived. I’d stick them in our laundry basket—leaving behind a pile of dirty clothes on the floor—tie the basket to an old metal toboggan we had and then I’d jump on the back and we’d go like stink down the steepest hills there.

Ethan was always in the front of the basket, two little mittened hands holding on to the end, a huge grin on his face, with Sarah behind him with an equally big smile on her face. Dad insisted that that was the reason they both had lead feet.

The cat reminded me of Ethan. For all I knew, maybe Owen was imagining himself hurtling down a snowy hill.

I moved the wet towels into the dryer. Owen leaned his head over the side of the laundry basket and watched. “You know, if you could just learn how to set the timer, I could get you to do this and save me a trip up and down the stairs.”

He looked at me and yawned. Cat for Not happening .

When I got back upstairs, I found Hercules standing up on my chair, looking at something on the laptop. Somehow, he’d managed to open Roma’s e-mail and get into the photos from the burlesque show.

“How did you do that?” I said.

He ducked his head as though modestly trying to say, Oh, it was nothing .

A photo of Zorro strutting his stuff on the middle of the stage out at The Brick filled the screen. I smiled, then leaned over and closed the image. I thought of Roma’s frustration with trying to organize another show. I wished there was a way to convince Mary to at least plead Roma’s case to whoever Zorro was.

I scooped up Hercules, sat down and settled him on my lap. He immediately reached a paw toward the computer and Zorro filled the computer screen again.

“I don’t have time for this right now,” I said.

He gave an insistent meow that I knew meant he wanted me to look at the photo.

I yawned and stretched. “You’re so stubborn,” I said.

His whiskers twitched. A pair of green eyes was locked on my face. I glared back at him, which was a waste of time because he never lost a staring contest. Neither did Owen. “Fine,” I said. “I will look at the picture.”

I pulled the laptop a bit closer, centered the photo of Zorro and studied it. His fencing foil was thrust forward, his cape swirled behind him and he was giving the crowd a wicked grin as he swiveled his hips from side to side. I couldn’t see what Hercules thought was so important about the image. Maybe he’d just been poking at the touch pad because it was fun. Maybe the photograph didn’t matter at all.

And then I noticed something on Zorro’s left hip. I used the magnifying feature to get a close look. The image was blurry but I could just make out the tops of two tiny fingers, spaced apart like they were part of some hand gesture tattooed on the man’s hip.

I zoomed out again and looked at the man carefully: his body type, his smile. And suddenly I got it. I slumped against the chair back. “Mike Bishop was Zorro,” I said aloud.

Hercules had already jumped down to the floor and was washing his face. He meowed his agreement without looking up from his ablutions.

Mike was Zorro. Suddenly it all made sense. That was why both Mary and Sandra had refused to put Roma in touch with the mystery dancer. They couldn’t. “Take me at my word when I tell you that there is no way Zorro will ride again,” Mary had said to me. I looked at the photo one more time. It seemed so obvious now. Why hadn’t it occurred to me before? Mike had the soul of a performer and a huge, kind heart. Getting up on that stage to help the no-kill shelter was exactly the kind of thing he would have done.

Hercules had stopped washing his face and was looking up at me as though he wanted something.

“Thank you for pointing out the photo,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t take you seriously at first.”

And then, in case he hadn’t been looking for a little vindication, I got him a couple of sardine crackers.

It was raining when I got to the library the next morning. I was unlocking the main doors and juggling my messenger bag, my coffee mug and my umbrella when Mary came up the steps and grabbed my cup just before I dropped it. I didn’t have a good record with coffee mugs.