Sofie Kelly - Copycat Killing - A Magical Cats Mystery

“No,” he said. “There hasn’t.” He looked at Pearl. “He didn’t deserve you or Roma. I know, I know you were leaving him, but do you really think he would have ever let you go, let you be?”

He held out his hand to her and she took it, giving it a squeeze. “He’d banged your head so hard against the wall you probably had a concussion. And the marks of his fingers were on Roma’s little arm.”

He looked at me. “The nail through my foot did happen out here. I came the long way around. Got here just before they did. I wasn’t looking where I was walking. I dumped the load earlier. That’s what I was doing on the road that night, coming back here to stack it all up.” He turned to Roma. “You were in my car that night, ‘driving’ it while Anna took a look at your mother’s head.”

I shifted from one foot to the other, wishing I’d wrapped my ankle this morning. “You told Ellen what happened, didn’t you?” I said to Sam.

He didn’t answer.

“She bandaged your foot and she helped you make it look like Tom had just walked away from Pearl and Roma. I’m guessing it was her idea.”

Sam’s mouth moved but he still didn’t say anything. Pearl never took her eyes off of him.

“There’s no way you could have driven Tom’s car out to the highway. You couldn’t have managed the clutch with your foot bandaged. Ellen drove and she helped you clean up and bury the body…here. I’m guessing sometime in the middle of the night. So you both knew where it was. So you could both make sure no one found it. The women couldn’t have carried Tom. But you could. Ellen knew this whole area. You probably brought the body in through the woods some way. I know there was a road back there.”

“Why, Sam?” Pearl asked. “Why did you kill Tom?”

He looked at her and all the years fell away. All I could see was a young man looking at his first love. Maybe his only love really.

He smiled. “So you’d be safe. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. I’m sorry you had to find out at all. But I can’t be sorry Tom’s dead.”

33

“Call Marcus Gordon,” Sam said to me without turning his head, but before I’d punched the number into my phone, Marcus had arrived anyway.

I walked across the yard to meet him. All I said was that Sam wanted to talk to him about what had happened the night Tom Karlsson disappeared. Sam should be able to tell the story his own way, I figured. I owed him at least that.

I stayed where I was, out of the way, as Marcus walked over to Sam and Pearl. Roma had moved a few steps away from them. Pearl stood with one hand on Sam’s arm. They were talking. I had no idea about what.

Marcus stopped to say something to Roma. He looked back at me for a second. Roma turned as well and then she came across the grass to me.

“I can’t believe Sam killed my father,” she said.

I put my arm around her shoulders, the same way Pearl had. “I’m not making excuses for Sam,” I said. “But he was young. He loved your mother.” I tipped my head to look at her. “And you.”

After Marcus had talked to Sam and Pearl for a couple of minutes, he moved away from them and pulled out his phone. Roma went back across the yard to her mother and they walked back to me, arm in arm.

“Wait here with Kathleen for just a minute,” Roma said to Pearl. “I’ll be right back.”

I assumed she was going to speak to Marcus, but instead she returned to Sam, who was half turned, staring out at the field behind the carriage house. Roma touched his arm and he swung around to look at her.

“How did you figure it all out?” Pearl said to me.

“Roma told me about ‘driving’ with Tom,” I said. “It was one of the few memories she had of him. She was so specific: turquoise bucket seats. I’d seen a picture of Tom’s car. I was thinking about what Roma had said and I remembered that Tom’s car didn’t have bucket seats.”

Pearl nodded. “No it didn’t.” She held her hands out, studying them as though she was looking for answers in the fine web of lines on her skin. “How could I not know, Kathleen?” she asked.

“You had no reason to think Tom was dead,” I said, gently. “Let alone that Sam had killed him. And you most likely had some kind of a concussion that night that mixed up your memory a little.”

She looked over at Sam and Roma, just as Roma put her arms around the older man and gave him an awkward hug. “I wonder how things would have been different if I’d returned Sam’s feelings.” Pearl said.

I reached for her hand and enfolded it in mine. “I don’t know,” I said. “My mother always says that doing one thing differently isn’t like pulling a single thread on a sweater and having the whole thing unravel. Our lives are a little more complicated than that. And if you’d done things differently there would be no Roma.” She was headed back to us, shoulders squared, head held high. “I like the world a whole lot better with Roma in it.”

Pearl smiled at me. “So do I.”

Roma and Pearl drove down to the police station and I followed them, mostly because it made me feel better. Roma hugged me in the parking lot and I told her I’d be at the library later if she needed me.

Hercules was waiting for me in the porch when I got home. I picked him up. “I feel bad about Sam,” I said. “He shouldn’t have killed Tom, or covered it up, but it makes me sad that he never got past his first love.” The cat nuzzled my neck. Across the backyard I could see Everett’s car in Rebecca’s driveway. Susan was covering for me at the library so I had time to fit the last piece of the puzzle into place.

I went upstairs and found the journal I wanted. Owen was in the kitchen when I came down. “I’m going to Rebecca’s,” I said. “Want to walk me over?” He made a beeline for the back door. Hercules decided to stay inside the porch on the bench where he could look out the window. He didn’t like a lot of “out” in his outdoors.

Owen led the way across the grass, making noise all the way. I said, “Uh huh,” at intervals just in case he was talking to me, although it occurred to me that I could have been agreeing to a month’s worth of catnip chickens or wild salmon for breakfast instead of cat food.

Owen headed for a spot in the sunshine in Rebecca’s gazebo and I knocked on the back door. She smiled when she saw me. “Hello Kathleen,” she said. “Everett and I were just having coffee. Do you have time to join us?”

“I do,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” she said. Then she noticed the diary I was carrying. “Did you find something you want to use?”

I looked at the hardbound journal. “There’s something I wanted to ask you about.”

“Come in, dear,” she said. She glanced past me, caught sight of Owen on the gazebo railing and waved at him. He bobbed his head in return.

Everett was sitting at Rebecca’s tiny kitchen table. His jacket was hanging on the back of the chair and his tie was loose. He got to his feet when I walked in.

“Hello, Kathleen,” he said. His eyes flicked to the journal.

Behind me Rebecca was pouring me a cup of coffee and cutting a piece of her cinnamon coffee cake; coffee at Rebecca’s never meant just coffee.

Once we were all seated at the table I turned to Everett. “I should tell you that Marcus Gordon will be in touch. In fact he may have already left a message with Lita. He knows what happened to Tom Karlsson, and how his body ended up out at Wisteria Hill.”

Everett’s eyes narrowed, but otherwise there was no change in his expression.

Rebecca’s face grew serious and she shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It turns out it was Sam.”