Sofie Kelly - Copycat Killing - A Magical Cats Mystery

He turned as we got close, said something to the woman kneeling in the dirt, who nodded without looking up, and then came over to us.

“Hi,” he said, peeling off a pair of mud-covered latex gloves. I couldn’t miss the quick once-over he gave me before he turned his attention to Roma. “I was going to call you,” he said to her.

“Thank you for sequestering the carriage house,” she said, glancing back at the old building. “Are we going to have to move the cats?”

Marcus frowned. “For now, they’re probably okay. Beyond that, we’re waiting for Dr. Abbott to tell us more about the bones.” He tipped his head in the direction of the woman hunkered down in the dirt. “She’s an anthropologist.”

“Do you think this is another of those unmarked graveyards from the smallpox epidemic?” Roma asked.

He shifted from one foot to the other, the wet ground pulling at his boots. “Probably.”

She looked past him. “I don’t know Marcus,” she said, frowning. “That’s Henderson land all the way back through the trees. Maybe you should talk to Everett.”

“I plan to,” he said. He turned his attention to me, lowering his voice. “I didn’t expect to see you back here. You okay?”

I nodded, a little surprised. I’d expected him to give me a hard time about coming back out to Wisteria Hill. Behind him the anthropologist, Dr. Abbott, got to her feet and started toward us.

“Detective Gordon,” she called. She was holding something in her gloved hand.

As she came level with us I realized it was a heavy gold ring. From the size it looked as though it was a man’s ring and the insignia on the front looked familiar.

“That’s an old Mayville Heights High School graduation ring,” Roma said, leaning past Marcus for a better look. “My father wore one,” she added by way of explanation. “Those were his glory days. According to my mother, he never took it off.”

“I thought it was a high school ring,” Dr. Abbott said. She looked to be about forty, tall, with blond hair in a low ponytail.

“With the ring facing you, the date’s on the left,” Roma continued. “See the sixty-three right there?” She pointed, and then paused for a moment. “Funny. That’s the same year my father graduated.”

She looked up at Marcus. “It would have been a pretty small graduating class. It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out who owned that ring.” She shifted her attention back to the piece of jewelry. “In fact, some of the kids had their initials in raised lettering on the other side. I know my father did. T.A.K.”

T, A, K? That didn’t make any sense. Roma’s dad’s name was Neil Carver.

Dr. Abbott stiffened, still holding the ring between her gloved thumb and index finger. Beside me, Roma had gone rigid as well. It almost seemed as though she’d stopped breathing. “What are the initials on that ring?” she asked. The tightness in her body was in her voice too.

The anthropologist hesitated. Her eyes went to Marcus and back to Roma.

Marcus cleared his throat. “Thanks for the information about the ring,” he said to Roma. “Dr. Abbott and I need to get back to work.”

Roma ignored him, or maybe his words didn’t register. “What are the initials on that ring?” she said again. “I can see a T. What are the other two letters?”

Her hand was at her side and her fingers were moving, bending, flexing, then closing into a fist again. I touched her arm. “Roma, we should go check on Lucy and the other cats,” I said.

But her entire focus was on Dr. Abbott. “T.A.K.,” she repeated, her voice low and insistent. “For Thomas Albert Karlsson.”

It couldn’t be her father’s ring. Even if he’d changed his name—and it appeared that he had—how could his high school ring have ended up in the ground with the bones of someone who’d died in 1924?

Usually I’m not that slow.

“Those are the initials, aren’t they?” Roma asked.

“Yes,” Dr. Abbott said, in a voice so quiet I almost missed the word.

Roma swallowed and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them she looked out across the grass and dirt to where the skull and a few other bones were resting on a tarp. “That’s my father,” she whispered.

4

“What do you mean, that’s your father?” Marcus asked, eyes narrowed in confusion.

I put my arm around Roma’s shoulder. “We don’t know who that is,” I said. “We have to let Dr. Abbott get back to work so she can figure that out.”

Roma turned her head to look at me. She opened her mouth to say something then closed it again. Her gaze went back across the field.

I gave her shoulder a squeeze so she’d look at me again. “Even if it is your father’s class ring, it doesn’t mean that’s…him.”

“It’s his ring,” she said in a low voice.

“Roma, are you sure?” Marcus asked, his voice surprisingly gentle. I knew he liked Roma, as a person, not just for all the work she did with the cat colony and pretty much every other stray animal in the area.

“I have a picture somewhere of him wearing it,” she said. She couldn’t take her eyes off those bones spread on a blue tarp. “I’ll see if I can find it.”

He nodded.

“He walked out on us,” Roma continued, “when I was a little girl. At least that’s what I thought. My mother always said he was just too young for the responsibility of a family.”

“It’s just a ring,” Marcus said. “We don’t know how it ended up out here. Let Dr. Abbott do her job. Let me do my job. I’ll call you later.”

“C’mon, Roma, let’s go,” I said. I had no idea who those remains belonged to, but I knew it wasn’t good for her to be standing there, staring out at them. The pain I could see in her pale, still face made my chest hurt.

I looked at Marcus, and mouthed the words thank you. He nodded.

We made our way back along the edge of the field. I clenched my teeth, concentrating on not stumbling on the slippery, uneven ground. When we got level with the back of the carriage house Roma stopped and faced me. “Can we check on the cats and…and leave all of this until after? Please?”

I nodded. “Of course we can.”

Derek let us duck under the yellow crime scene tape and I followed Roma into the old building, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the light. My ankle hurt every time I took a step and I tried to concentrate on the cats, on Roma, on anything else to distract myself. “What are we looking for?” I said.

Roma rubbed the top of her shoulder. “I don’t really know,” she said. “I’d feel better if I knew Lucy was here. The rest of the cats follow her lead.”

Lucy wasn’t the largest cat, but she was the undisputed leader of the feral cat colony. She may have been a tiny calico, but she had the heart and the spirit of a jungle cat.

There was no sign of Lucy anywhere. “Why don’t we take a look at the shelters,” Roma said.

The cat shelters were made from oversized plastic storage bins, well insulated to keep the cats warm during the freezing Minnesota winter. They sat in the far corner of the building in a space that had probably once been used to keep feed for the horses. Harry Taylor—the son, not the father—had made a raised platform for the shelters to sit on, and straw bales around the three walls added extra insulation and warmth.

I squinted in the dim light. There wasn’t so much as a twitching whisker to be seen. Beside me Roma let out a slow breath.

“The cats could be asleep,” I whispered. “They could be out prowling around. They’re probably okay.”

She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead, between her eyes. “You’re right,” she said. “I just don’t want them to get spooked and run.”