Kelly, Sofie - Sleight of Paw

“Yes, please,” I said gratefully. Sulking went a lot better with some chocolate.

She sat down beside me, took one of the cups from the inside of the thermos, and filled it about half-full. I inhaled the scent of steaming chocolate.

“Your first time on skates?”

I nodded.

“So what do you think?”

“I think ice is very cold, very slippery and very hard,” I said.

“So you had fun, then?” Mary said, her eyes sparkling over her cup.

I gestured at the rink. “How do you all do that so easily?” Maggie was skating backward. Backward, talking to Claire.

Mary smiled. “Back in the dark ages when I was young, all there was to do here in the wintertime was skate and toboggan. If you stayed home someone would find a chore for you to do.”

I took another sip of hot chocolate. My fingers were starting to thaw.

“My first pair of skates were hand-me-downs from my older brother,” she said. “I had to wear two pair of my father’s woolen socks with them to fit. “

I wiggled my toes in my skates. The feeling was coming back to my feet. I looked at Mary. “Mary,” I said. “If you tell me you skated to school uphill both ways through waist-high snow, I’m going to whack you with a snowball.”

Mary laughed and shook her head. “Of course not,” she said. “Snow was closer to over my head.”

I snatched a chunk of snow from the ground and threw it at her. It disintegrated against the front of her coat. She just laughed harder.

We watched the skaters zip by, and then Mary’s face grew serious. “Kathleen.” She hesitated. “You know about Ruby?”

“That she was arrested? Yes.” I blew on my hot chocolate and took another drink. “Ruby didn’t kill Agatha.”

“The police have evidence,” Mary said. “They found a glove belonging to Ruby with the body.”

“She found Agatha’s body. She was upset. She could have easily dropped a glove.”

Mary studied her skates for a moment. “That’s not the only evidence. Bridget says they have a piece of glass that was found in the alley and paint that matches the paint on Ruby’s truck.”

It struck me that Bridget was doing too much talking, but I didn’t say that out loud.

“The glass is from the kind of headlight Ruby has on her truck and”—Mary cleared her throat—“the headlight is broken.”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “And it looks bad that Agatha left all that money to Ruby’s boyfriend,” I said.

“Yes, it does.”

“What it looks like and what the truth is are not always the same thing. I know Ruby didn’t kill Agatha.” I finished my hot chocolate and gave the cup back to Mary. “Thank you,” I said. “This is probably going to sound crazy, but could Agatha have had any enemies?”

Mary twisted the top back on the thermos, then looked at me and shrugged. “She was an old lady. When she was teaching, sure, there were some irate parents and some kids who didn’t like her. She was a pretty strict teacher. But enemies? No.” She banged her skate boots together, knocking off the snow that was clinging to the metal blades. “It had to be an accident.”

“More proof that it wasn’t Ruby,” I said. “She wouldn’t have left Agatha to die in that alley.”

Mary stood up. “I hope you’re right.” She gave me a finger waggle and skated away with the thermos.

Susan and Eric came skating by then. Each of them had one of twins by the hand. The little guys could skate better than I could. They grinned at me and I waved at them.

Susan gave me a quick smile. Her attention was focused on the boys. Eric didn’t look good from a distance and he looked even worse closer. His hair went in every direction around his black earmuffs. His color, even in the crisp, bracing air, was bilious, and he needed a shave. He had more than I’m-a-sexy-bad-boy stubble.

He looked like he’d been on a three-day bender, which wasn’t likely, since I’d never seen him drink so much as a glass of wine. He’d been close to Agatha. Having her die in the alley by the restaurant had to have been painful.

I wondered if Eric had heard about Ruby being arrested. If he hadn’t, he would soon. And when the newspaper went online after midnight, the whole world would know.

I thought about what Mary had said. Ruby could have easily dropped her glove or even have given both of them to Agatha earlier in the day. As for bits of paint, I didn’t know enough about automotive paint to know whether it could be narrowed down to one specific vehicle, although it didn’t seem likely.

And then there was that piece of glass that might have come from the headlight of Ruby’s truck. Was that the sliver of glass that had caught in the fabric of my pants? Was I, indirectly, responsible for Ruby getting arrested?

Even if, big if , the glass had come from Ruby’s truck, it didn’t mean she’d been driving it. She was pretty generous about loaning the truck. Maggie had borrowed it last summer, but it refused to run for her, which is how we’d ended up on our first “road trip” with Roma.

I leaned forward, chin propped on my hands, and watched all the skaters whiz past. I knew that Marcus was just doing his job, but he was wrong. I’d seen Ruby’s face in that alley. I’d seen how stricken she was, knowing that Agatha was dead. That reaction wasn’t faked.

I’d grown up with actors. I’d seen them practice. I’d seen them perform. I’d seen every emotion from joy to depression to grief acted out. I’ve seen it acted well and unbelievably badly. Nothing about Ruby’s grief was made-up.

Maggie waved at me from the far end of the rink. In the clump of people behind her one head stuck out.

Marcus.

For a moment I thought about skating down to him and telling him how wrong he was about Ruby. Because of course once he knew he’d apologize and let her go. It was a nice fantasy. Still, I wanted to talk to him.

Maggie was almost level with me now. I struggled to my feet and, legs wobbling, waved my mitten at her to get her attention. She stopped in front of me with a spray of ice chips, just as Mary had done. I teetered toward her.

“You want to go back out?”

“Yes,” I said, arms flapping as I stepped over the low barrier between the ice and snow. My feet were seesawing in and out. I grabbed Maggie’s arm as though it were a rope and I was going down for the third time.

“Just skate,” I said, through clenched teeth. I willed my feet to go forward and they did. Sort of.

“Okay,” she said slowly.

We started along the ice. I scanned the crowd ahead of me, looking for Marcus. I couldn’t see him, and I knew if I turned around I’d be flat on the ice again. A skater slipped past me on the outside, turning in a smooth arc in front of me.

“Hello, Kathleen.”

Of course it was him. He was skating easily, almost lazily backward, and of course at that moment my feet slid out to the sides and I lost my grip on Maggie. I pitched forward, grabbing air, realizing as I went down that I was going to slide through his legs as if we were playing a game of reverse leapfrog.

Crap on toast!

He was grinning, which added insult to injury. Then just before I hit the ice he reached out and caught me under both arms, the momentum pulling me in against him.

Of course.

14

My hands were flat against his chest and out of instinct I clutched his jacket.

“I’ve got you,” he said.

“Kathleen, are you okay?” Maggie asked. She had both of her hands out, as though I were a basketball and Marcus was going to toss me back to her.

“I’m okay.”

“Can you stand up?” he asked.

I tipped my chin so I could look at him. “If I could stand up I wouldn’t have fallen on you in the first place.”