Paws and Effect

by Sofie Kelly

  I nodded. I couldn’t speak. My throat was tight.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I could do it again . . .” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I’d behave . . . differently. Better.”

  I managed to find my voice. “Thank you,” I said.

  Marcus made coffee and I put half of Rebecca’s donuts out on a plate. The conversation was strained and awkward at first. I filled John in on what Maggie and Brady had found, which was nothing so far.

  “Dominic called me back,” John said. “That’s Dani’s brother,” he added as an aside to me. “The service will probably be the end of next week. It will be by invitation only. I told him all three of us wanted to come.” He let out a breath. “He said he’d put us on the list.”

  We sat in silence for a moment. Then Travis spoke. “She’d hate it. It’ll be all pomp and circumstance and nothing that she wants.”

  Marcus nodded.

  John looked down at the table. “She wanted ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca,’ remember?”

  “It’s her favorite song,” Travis said. He managed what I was guessing passed for a smile for him at the moment. “That night she got us drunk she said that’s what she wanted played at her funeral and she wanted us to come and dance with our walkers.” He put both hands flat on the table and stared down at them.

  They needed to talk about her. They needed to remember and grieve and do it together. I needed to keep the conversation going.

  “She got you drunk?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” John said. “She got us drunk.” He shifted in his chair to look at me. “She could drink a lumberjack under the table.”

  “And not be hungover the next day,” Marcus added. “I don’t know how she did it.”

  “So why exactly did she get you drunk?” I said.

  “It was a bet.” John looked in his mug and Marcus immediately got to his feet and reached for the coffeepot. “Dani bet all three of us that she could match us beer for beer and still walk a straight line.”

  “She did, too,” Travis said, joining the conversation for the first time. “She has some kind of freaky metabolism. Alcohol never affects her the same way it does most people. None of us could walk that line.” He looked up at Marcus, who was topping up my cup. “He kept insisting the line was moving, so he sat on it.”

  “It felt like it was moving,” Marcus said, making a face.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Were you on some road?”

  Travis shook his head. “We were at the drive-in. It was this retro place. It’s not open anymore.” He gestured at the others. “The three of us worked there one summer. Bowling shirts and slicked-back hair.”

  “Are there pictures?” I asked, looking directly at Marcus.

  “No,” he said.

  “Yes,” John said.

  Marcus shot John a look. “No,” he repeated.

  “Do you still have your key chain?” John asked. He patted his pocket. “Or am I the only one?”

  Travis pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and held up the fob. It was a stylized black crescent moon with a dotted white line down the center and a gold star at the top point of the crescent.

  Marcus had the same thing on his spare set of keys. “I didn’t know that meant something,” I said.

  “So you still have it?” John said.

  Marcus nodded. “Uh-huh. On my extra keys in the bedroom. I think I have the shirt somewhere as well.” He gestured at the key chain Travis was still holding. “Stuckey’s Drive-In. Don’t drive by.”

  “Drive-in,” all three of them said.

  They all smiled at the memory.

  “Blast from the Past,” John said. “Remember that?”

  Marcus sat down at the table again. “The night before the drive-in closed for the season they did this thing they called Blast from the Past. You could get in for half price if you came in costume, and they showed American Graffiti and Grease.”

  John nodded. “Dani came in a poodle skirt and a pair of those black cat’s-eye glasses with the rhinestone things on the ends.” He smiled. “This guy in a leather jacket and a beer belly hanging out kept hitting on her.”

  “He asked her, ‘Where have you been all my life, Sweetlips?’ She patted his cheek and said, ‘Washing bodies in the cadaver lab.’”

  John leaned back in his chair and laughed at the memory. “I’m surprised the guy didn’t get whiplash backing away from her.”

  We finished our coffee and moved into the living room. The three of them spent the next hour and a half telling me stories about Dani and their college days and I found myself wishing I’d had the chance to get to know her better. When John and Travis left, Travis extended his hand and Marcus shook it. I hoped that the rapprochement between them would continue.

  * * *

  The investigation into Dani’s accident continued. Marcus took a day off and went to Chicago for the memorial service held by her friends. John and Travis came back to Mayville Heights with him. They had decided to continue their work against the development.

  “It was important to Dani,” John said, standing in the middle of the library, still dressed in the suit he’d worn to the service. “There isn’t anything else we can do so we’ll do this.”

  * * *

  For the next week it seemed as though nothing was happening. John alternated spending time at the library with wandering around out at Wisteria Hill. Travis was back and forth between Red Wing and Mayville Heights.

  Marcus was frustrated by the slow pace of Hope’s investigation. “I don’t understand why she’s shutting me out,” he said as we cleared the table after supper Wednesday night.

  We’d had spaghetti and meatballs. Marcus had snuck a meatball to each cat and I’d pretended not to notice.

  “The only thing she said is there’s some kind of backup at the medical examiner’s office.”

  “Maybe that’s all it is,” I said. “Or maybe she’s not telling you anything because Dani was your friend and you really shouldn’t be involved in the investigation.”

  “That doesn’t mean Hope wouldn’t tell me what’s going on.” He shook his head. “I know her. The last couple of days she’s been avoiding me.”

  “Maybe she’s just trying to spare you from some of the details of how Dani died.”

  “I don’t want her to keep that kind of thing from me,” he said. I recognized the stubborn set of his jaw.

  “Hope cares about you,” I said.

  He dropped a glass in the soapy water I’d filled the sink with.

  “I know that,” he said. “I do, but I don’t like being shut out. Why can’t she just tell me what she knows so far?”

  “Whatever it is, she has her reasons, I’m sure.”

  He studied me for a few silent seconds. “This is what it’s like for other people, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “About three years ago a young man was killed on the train tracks down by the old warehouses. There isn’t any traffic on them now, but there was back then. It turned out he’d been drinking and lost his balance and fell. His mother called me every day of the investigation. Every single day at quarter after nine. And every time I’d tell her that as soon as I had something to share I’d call her.” He looked up at the ceiling for a moment before meeting my gaze again. “And the next morning at nine fifteen my phone would ring. I didn’t get it, but I do now.”

  I gave him a hug. “You’ll get your answers. And you and John and Travis will be able to say a proper good-bye to Dani.”

  * * *

  Thursday turned out to be busier than usual at the library, so I was already running a little late when I pulled into the driveway at home. I discovered Hercules waiting for me on the back steps. He had a black feather in his mouth, the fur on his head was standing on end and his right ear
was turned half inside out.

  “Did you and that grackle get into it again?” I asked as he followed me into the house.

  He spit the feather on the mat where I kept my shoes and gave me what could only be described as a self-satisfied look.

  “Let me check the top of your head,” I said. I didn’t think he was wounded. The cat and the bird had some kind of arch-nemesis thing going. It was more WWA wrestling fighting than the real thing.

  Hercules shook his head. Translation: “I’m fine.” He made a move to go up another step and I leaned down, putting one hand on his back so I could use the other to part the fur on the top of his head and check for any bird-inflicted injuries and then fix his ear. He grumbled while I looked but didn’t try to squirm away. “You’re fine,” I said. He shot me a look that seemed to suggest he was insulted I had ever suspected otherwise.

  Hercules was more than capable of taking down the big black grackle mid-flight and the bird could have easily injured the cat with its long beak. They both seemed to enjoy the battle. If someone won, the whole thing would be over and it didn’t seem as though either one of them wanted that.

  In the kitchen I discovered that Owen had decapitated yet another catnip chicken. There were bits of catnip all over and a limp yellow chicken head in the middle of the floor.

  Hercules immediately sneezed and jumped in the air at the sound. He always managed to scare himself when he sneezed, as if he couldn’t seem to grasp the small explosion was coming from him.

  “Owen!” I yelled. When he didn’t appear—literally or figuratively—I called his name again. “I’m putting Fred’s head in the garbage if you don’t get in here right now.”

  I heard a meow from the living room and after a moment Owen appeared in the doorway. He made his way across the kitchen and took the chicken head from my hand.

  Rebecca and Maggie kept the cat in a steady supply of the little yellow catnip toys known as Fred the Funky Chicken. Owen in turn destroyed them almost, it sometimes seemed, on some kind of schedule of his own.

  “Why do you do this?” I asked pointing at the bits of dried catnip all over the kitchen floor. He looked up at me, blinked twice and headed for the basement, the yellow chicken head firmly in his teeth. I couldn’t exactly make him go get the vacuum and clean things up. Behind me Hercules sneezed again. He had never been enthralled by catnip the way his brother was.

  By the time I cleaned the kitchen floor, ate supper and changed, I was running very late for tai chi class, so Maggie was announcing “Circle,” as I walked into the studio. She worked us hard and it wasn’t until class was finished that we got a chance to talk. “Nice job, everyone. See you on Tuesday,” she called as she walked over to me.

  I blotted sweat from my neck with the edge of my T-shirt, which was damp with perspiration in places.

  “Your Push Hands are looking better,” she said. “Remember to think about your weight and where your center is.”

  I nodded. “Aren’t you going to tell me to bend my knees?” It was a running joke in the class that Maggie told me to bend my knees at least once per session.

  “You’re getting better at that,” she said with a smile.

  I bumped her with my shoulder. “See?” I said. “I do listen to you.”

  “I told Owen to remind you when you practice.”

  I started to laugh.

  Mags frowned. “What’s so funny?”

  “I was working on the form a few days ago and Owen kept making these little murping noises the entire time.”

  “Did any of those noises sound like ‘Bend your knees’?” Maggie asked.

  “No,” I said, stretching one arm over my head. “They sounded more like ‘Where’s my breakfast?’”

  We walked over to the table where Maggie kept supplies for tea. I gestured at the wall behind the table. “I like the color.” Oren had painted the walls in the studio a very pale yellow.

  Maggie smiled. “Me too. I probably looked at two dozen colors but I kept coming back to this one. She leaned over to plug in the kettle then reached for a box of chamomile tea bags. “Was John in the library today?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “He went back to Red Wing with Travis to check on something.” I studied her face. “Did you find the plant?”

  She nodded. “I think so. Brady and I went out to Roma’s yesterday after supper. I took some photos to show John but I’m pretty sure it is Leedy’s roseroot.”

  “And you found the plants on Roma’s land, didn’t you?” She would have been more excited if they had been growing anywhere else.

  Maggie dropped the tea bag in a cup and reached for the kettle. “Yes. Brady said we were definitely on Roma’s land.”

  I let out a sigh. So there wasn’t going to be any way to stop the development after all. Then I noticed that Maggie was humming to herself as she finished making her tea.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You don’t seem that upset. What’s going on?”

  “When we went out to Wisteria Hill we walked around that little piece of land that Ruby owns. I asked her first and she said it was okay.”

  Considering that Ruby stood to benefit from the development I thought it was generous of her to tell Maggie she could look around her property.

  “Did you know there’s a cave just beyond that old cabin that Ruby’s grandfather owned?”

  Goose bumps puckered my skin. I didn’t like small tight spaces. I’d been that way since I was a kid. Owen and I had been trapped in the dark, damp basement of a camp in the woods not that different from the old building on the Blackthorne property a couple of winters ago. The experience hadn’t made my claustrophobia any better.

  “I was going to say I didn’t know that, but I think maybe Marcus told me about it.” He’d spent a lot of time checking out those woods after a body had turned up at Wisteria Hill a year and a half ago when an embankment collapsed after a week of seemingly endless rain.

  “We were dive-bombed by a bat,” Maggie said with a shudder. She felt the same way about small, furry animals as I did about small dark spaces.

  “Oh, Mags, I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She took another sip from her tea. “Brady said the bat was more afraid of me than I was of it but I don’t think that’s true. The bat did not hurl itself at Brady and pull his jacket over its head.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I said, reaching out to give her arm a squeeze.

  “Yes, I’m okay,” she said, “because I think the bat may help us stop the development.”

  “How?” I asked just as Rebecca came across the floor to join us.

  She looked at Maggie, curiosity in her blue eyes. “Did you have any luck last night?” she asked.

  “I was just telling Kathleen,” Maggie said, leaning over to plug the kettle in again. She related her story about being bat-bombed while Rebecca looked at the selection of teas and made her choice.

  “Bats have gotten a bad reputation thanks to all those myths about vampires,” Rebecca said. “Did you know that just one little brown bat can eat up to a thousand mosquitoes an hour? They provide pest control without all those nasty chemicals. And during World War Two the US government considered using bats to drop bombs on the enemy.”

  “How do you know these things?” I asked as she reached for the now steaming kettle.

  “I visit my public library,” she said primly and then laughed, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. She turned her attention to Maggie. “So tell me about the bat cave. Did you find Alfred there?”

  Maggie gave her a blank look. She wasn’t into comic book heroes.

  “Batman’s butler,” I explained exchanging a smile with Rebecca. “Tell us what you found.”

  “Brady thinks the bat may have been a long-eared bat. I didn’t know because I didn’t get a very good look at
it.”

  Rebecca paused with her cup in midair. “Wait a minute, wasn’t the long-eared bat on one of those lists John had?”

  Maggie nodded.

  “So it’s endangered?” I said.

  “Threatened,” Maggie said.

  “White-nose syndrome,” Rebecca interjected. “It’s killing bat populations all over North America.” She glanced at me. “That’s from PBS, not the library.”

  “So if Brady is right about the type of bat and if they’re living in that cave—” I began.

  “It might be enough to at least slow the proposal down for a while,” Maggie finished. “Brady said there is some precedent for protecting the bat’s habitat.”

  “That’s wonderful news.” Rebecca smiled. “Have you told John yet?”

  “He was in Red Wing all day, but I know he’s planning on being at the library in the morning,” I said. “There are a couple of things he wants to check in the herbarium again.”

  “I could text him,” Maggie said, setting her cup down on the table. “But I really wanted to talk to him face-to-face.”

  “Come over about ten,” I said. “I’ll be there. I changed shifts with Abigail.”

  Rebecca touched my arm. “How’s Marcus?” she asked.

  “He’s all right,” I said. “Thank you for asking. Dani’s family is waiting to have a funeral service until the investigation is wrapped up so Marcus—and John and Travis—are still hanging.”

  “They need to say a proper good-bye,” Rebecca said. “That’s understandable. I’m sure Detective Lind will have things wrapped up very soon.” She glanced down at her watch. “Oh, I better get going,” she said. “I have a date with my husband and some Tubby’s frozen yogurt.”

  “Have fun,” I said, leaning in to give her a hug. She reached for Maggie’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Will you call me, dear, after you speak to John?”

  “I will,” Maggie promised.

  I stretched both arms up over my head. “I have to go, too,” I said. “Owen chewed the head off another chicken and I don’t think I got all the bits of catnip off the kitchen floor.”