Sofie Kelly - Copycat Killing - A Magical Cats Mystery

Slowly, I got my legs untangled and got to my feet. For a moment the world whirled dizzyingly around me. I held on to Marcus, my fingers digging into his arm, and the feeling passed.

My left ankle was stiff and it hurt enough that I grit my teeth together so I wouldn’t moan out loud. I put most of my weight on my other leg and leaned on Marcus as we made our way across the uneven ground toward the old house. I was covered with dirt and probably bruises as well, but nothing seemed to be broken and I hadn’t hit my head. My jeans and sweatshirt were wet and caked with mud, but the only thing that seemed to be bleeding was my thumb.

When we got to the carriage house I looked back over my shoulder. The entire embankment at the edge of the trees had collapsed. For a moment my legs went watery. Marcus’s arm tightened around my shoulders.

“You okay?” he asked, eyes narrowed with concern.

I nodded. “I am. Really.” How had I managed to end up with just a few bumps and scrapes? Even my bleeding hand had been injured somewhere else.

I could see that there had been some kind of stone retaining wall holding up the rise and reinforcing the slope. Could there maybe have been an old burial ground up on the hill? Was that where the skull had come from? No one had ever talked about a Henderson family cemetery out here. Then again, people didn’t really talk about Wisteria Hill much at all.

We made it to the main house and I sank onto the side stairs. Marcus took a couple of steps away from me and pulled out his cell phone, his entire demeanor shifting into police officer mode. I knew the authorities would have to figure out where the bones had come from.

I still had dirt and grit in my nose and mouth. I tried to take a deep breath and started coughing again. I leaned forward, arms on my knees, breathing slowly.

Marcus turned, snapping his phone closed. “Ambulance will be here in a few minutes.”

It took a second for me to realize he meant for me, not for the remains behind the carriage house. Hacking and wheezing I sucked in an uneven breath and then another. “I’m all right,” I said, hoarsely, starting to get up and then flinching as I put my left hand down without thinking. Not only did the gash on my thumb hurt, it felt as though I’d done something to my wrist, too.

Marcus shook his head. “No, you’re not all right.” He gestured at the scarf-wrapped hand that I was hugging to my chest. “Your hand’s bleeding. So is your forehead. You’ve probably got a sprained ankle and who knows how many other cuts and bruises. You fell a good ten feet, Kathleen. You need to be checked out.”

My hand went to my face out of reflex and I squeaked at the pain. The entire right side of my head hurt and there was blood and dirt on my fingers when I pulled my hand away. “Okay,” I said.

His eyes narrowed in surprise. “Okay? That’s it?”

I nodded. He’d probably expected me to argue. It was what we usually did; squabble like six-year-olds.

For a minute we just looked at each other in silence. Then Marcus glanced back toward the collapsed hill.

“Do you think there’s some kind of graveyard back there?” I asked, tipping my head to one side and trying to shake some of the dirt from my hair. For a moment the movement made the world spin again.

“I think there’s a pretty good chance.” He made a face and pointed at my hand. “Do you mind? Can I take a look at that?”

I held out my arm and he unwound one end of the scarf. Blood had soaked all the way through the material. “There was a smallpox epidemic in this area back in 1924,” he said. “I know there’ve been a couple of other unmarked grave sites from that time found in this part of the state.”

He inspected the cut, made a face and folded the fabric back around my hand. “It doesn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.” He squinted at my face and then reached over to brush dirt from my forehead.

I jerked back, involuntarily, and sucked in a sharp breath between my teeth.

He pulled his hand away. “Sorry. I’ll let the paramedics take care of that.”

“Could you pull my left boot off, please?” I asked. “It’s full of mud.” I’d been trying to toe off the heel with my other foot but it wasn’t working.

I held up my leg and Marcus grabbed the bottom of the rubber boot and pulled. It came off with a loud sucking sound and clumps of wet earth fell onto the grass. There was more dirt stuck to my sock. I shook my foot and sent a spray of it into the air.

Even in the heavy woolen sock I was wearing, my ankle looked swollen. Marcus set the boot down and reached for my foot. “Does this hurt?” he asked, gently bending it forward and back.

I winced. “A little.”

“How about this?” His fingers carefully probed my ankle. He had big, warm hands with strong fingers and a surprisingly gentle touch.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to be liking this so much. “It’s…um…it’s all right.” I pulled my foot back and reached for the discarded boot.

He handed it to me as the ambulance arrived, followed by the first police car. I recognized Ric, one of the two paramedics. He’d taken care of me the previous winter when I’d almost been blown to pieces in an explosion out on Hardwood Ridge. He remembered me as well.

“Ms. Paulson, what happened?” he asked, crouching down in front of me.

I explained about the hill collapsing, while his partner checked my pulse and looked into both my eyes. Once they decided I didn’t have any life-threatening injuries or broken bones, they began bandaging the cut on my hand and cleaning the various abrasions on my face.

“How’s your cat?” Ric asked as he carefully tweezered bits of gravel from my forehead. “Still sneaking into your truck to ride shotgun?”

I’d taken Owen with me the day of the explosion. Like me, he’d almost been caught in it. Everyone assumed he’d stowed away in the truck and I’d let the assumption stand.

Marcus knew the cat didn’t like to be touched by pretty much anyone other than me, but one of the police officers on the scene hadn’t taken his warning seriously. It was a wonder I hadn’t regained consciousness to find Owen shackled in a set of kitty-sized handcuffs for assaulting a police officer.

“Sometimes,” I said. “Mostly he’s just terrorizing the birds in the backyard.”

Ric grinned. “He hasn’t gone head-to-head with any more police officers?”

“Thankfully, no. But he does have a stare-down going with a golden Lab that lives up the street.”

I flinched as he pulled out a sliver of tree bark embedded in my skin.

“Sorry,” he said softly.

I looked over his shoulder, focusing on watching Marcus work to distract myself while Ric continued to gently clean my forehead.

Marcus was a good police officer—meticulous and very observant. I thought he was too rigid sometimes, and he tended to come across as cold when he was working on a case, something I knew firsthand because I’d gotten tied up in two of his past investigations.

He’d thought I had no business being involved in either one of them. The fact that I hadn’t wanted to be involved in a murder, or that he’d been investigating people I cared about—and the first time we met, me—didn’t seem to be a good enough reason.

I wasn’t a police officer. I wasn’t even a lawyer. I was a librarian. I knew about books, grant proposals and the Dewey decimal system. The thing was, because of my parents’ acting careers, I’d seen a lot of subterfuge and I was pretty good at spotting a liar. Plus I had Hercules and Owen who had the ability to stick their furry noses—literally—into places they probably had no business being. Of course, I couldn’t share that with Marcus, or anyone else for that matter.