Kelly, Sofie - Sleight of Paw

“What?” I said.

Nothing. Not a blink, not even an ear twitch.

“You think I should talk to Marcus, don’t you?”

Two sets of whiskers twitched.

I folded my arms and stared back at them. “First of all, when did you two become the champions of law and order? And second, what makes you think he’ll help?”

They stared.

I stared back.

Never get into a staring contest with a cat, or, even worse, two cats. You can’t win.

“Give Roma some time—a couple of days. Then I’ll talk to him.”

They exchanged looks. Then Owen turned and headed for the living room, while Hercules came over to me and rubbed against my leg. I picked him up.

I’d been thinking about telling Marcus about the trucks since Harry had told me about them. Marcus was so wrong about Ruby, but he wasn’t so close-minded a person or a police officer that he wouldn’t listen to what I had to say about the trucks. At least I hoped he wasn’t.

Carrying Hercules, I went out to the porch to double-check that I’d locked the door. I looked over at Rebecca’s house. The lights were on in the kitchen and I could see Everett’s car in the driveway. “I’m glad those two are together,” I said to the cat. He rumbled his approval. “At least something good came out of that awful mess of Gregor Easton’s death last summer.”

I picked up my scarf that had somehow ended up on the bench in the porch and took it back inside. “We need a happy ending for Ruby.”

Hercules nuzzled my chin. “I want to talk to Susan again,” I said. “Before I ask Eric about the envelope.”

The piece of envelope Hercules had taken from Eric’s office was upstairs with my computer. “You know, maybe we should search the newspaper archives, to see if we can find anything about Eric. Justin said they got into a bit of trouble when they were kids. It might’ve made the paper back then.”

The Mayville Heights Chronicle had been around for more than a hundred years. The archives, going back to the early sixties, were online for subscribers. I typed in my customer number and password.

The search system was a little funky, not at all like the one we used at the library that let readers search by author, title, subject, and keywords, and that allowed for minor spelling errors à la Google. The newspaper system required you to first settle on a year and then a category before you could search for keywords.

I did the math in my head and started with the year I figured Eric would’ve been sixteen. It took two tries to get the category right.

The story had made the front page below the fold. I was a bit surprised the paper had identified the boys. Eric, Justin, and three other young men, whose names I didn’t recognize, had been out driving—too fast and without headlights—and passing a couple of cans of beer around the car. Along the road that leads to Wisteria Hill, they hit something.

And ran.

What they’d hit had turned out to be a fifty-pound jute bag of apples. But they didn’t know that at the time. It would have been hard not to know you’d hit something, but they hadn’t known it was a sack of fruit. It could’ve been a raccoon. It could’ve been a dog. It could’ve been a person. The fact that it wasn’t was only luck, and maybe the old saying was true that angels watch out for fools and drunks, and heaven knows those boys were both.

I had to read another paragraph to learn Eric had been the driver and claimed he couldn’t remember the accident. He’d had a lot to drink.

My mind raced and my stomach twisted into a knot. I thought about Eric’s distracted manner and disheveled appearance the past few days and how Susan had been evasive, not her usual cheery, snarky self.

Was I wrong? Had Eric been drinking? Was he the one who hit Agatha in that alley? Did he have a blackout?

No.

I wasn’t going to do that, jump to conclusions about Eric, when all I had was an old newspaper story.

I logged out of the newspaper’s Web site and shut off my laptop. I’d talk to Susan in the morning, and after that, well, I wasn’t going to think that far ahead.

I would’ve overslept the next morning if Hercules hadn’t lurked over me. I fed the cats, drank two cups of coffee—extra strong—and left early for the library.

Fate or something seemed to be on my side. As I came down the sidewalk I saw Susan cutting across the parking lot, chin buried in the collar of her coat. Moving closer I could see two red plastic take-out forks in the knot of hair on top of her head. She smiled when she saw me, waiting until I caught up with her.

“Coffee?” I asked when we’d stomped the snow from our boots and I’d relocked the library door.

“Please.”

I dumped my things in my office and headed down the hall to the staff room. Susan walked around, turning on the downstairs lights even though there was almost a half hour until we opened.

I had the coffee on when she came up. I’d brought the remainder of the granola bars with me on the theory that a little chocolate couldn’t hurt.

Susan broke one in half, putting a piece on a blue-flowered plate from the staff room’s collection of mismatched dishes and stuffing the other half in her mouth. “These are good,” she said. High praise from someone who ate Eric’s cooking every day.

“Thank you.”

I got the cream, sugar and a couple of mugs and poured the coffee. Then I sat at the table opposite Susan, who inhaled half the cup like a man crawling through the desert who had just come across an oasis.

I was trying to figure out how to start when she looked at me over the top of her cup and said, “Eric said you asked him about Agatha.”

“I did. I’m trying to help Ruby. She didn’t kill Agatha.”

“I know,” Susan said. “She was the reason Ruby became an artist. And Eric probably wouldn’t have the café if it weren’t for Agatha Shepherd.” She set down her cup, picked up a chocolate chip from the plate and ate it. “Kathleen, you didn’t grow up here so you don’t know much about Eric when he was younger.”

“No, I don’t. I do know he got in a bit of trouble.”

“Agatha changed his life,” she said. “Hell, saved it, for that matter” She drank from her cup, then set it back on the table. “Short version: Eric’s mom and dad were too young and had too many kids. He was feeding the little ones when he was eight years old. And doing a good job of it. And he was running wild from about that time, too.” She gave me a brief smile. “Doesn’t sound like the man you know, does it?”

“No. Truthfully, it doesn’t.”

Susan let out a slow breath. “Eric started drinking when he was twelve, stealing beer from his father and other people in the family. When he drank he lost chunks of time. He had a car accident when he was sixteen. He didn’t remember being in the car, let alone driving. And he still . . .” She didn’t finish the thought.

She picked at another chocolate chip but didn’t eat it. “Agatha saw something in him and she encouraged his love of cooking. Kind of melodramatic to say it, but it is true that she changed his life.”

She was stalling, dancing around whatever it was she felt she needed to tell me. She flicked the chocolate chip around the plate like a little hockey puck.

I got up and refilled both our cups, trying to give Susan the time she needed.

“Eric hasn’t had a drink in a long time. He goes to meetings.” Abruptly she straightened. “The thing is, Kathleen, the past few weeks he’s been helping someone, I don’t know who, but someone he acted as a sponsor for in the past. Whoever it was had started drinking, and had the idea he could control it.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way, believe me.”