by Sofie Kelly
I smiled at him. “Go to bed,” I said.
To my surprise he leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “Sleep tight,” he said.
When I got back in the truck Elliot’s head was against the back of the seat. His eyes were closed. And he was snoring. I shook his shoulder. If he got into too deep a sleep I’d never be able to get him out of the truck and up to his room once we got back to the hotel.
He didn’t move. I poked him with my elbow. “C’mon, Elliot, wake up,” I said. He just kept on snoring.
Great. Now what?
I started the truck and pulled down the driveway. Elliot snored in a steady rhythm beside me, sleeping the sleep of drunks, fools and angels, as my mother would say. How was I going to wake him up and get him into the hotel?
I turned down the hill. I knew there was a length of clothesline and a couple of bungee chords in the back of the truck. I couldn’t come up with any way to use them to get Elliot up and into the hotel that wouldn’t draw way more attention to us than I wanted—and that would work. I could only think of one thing to do.
The snoring had gotten louder when I pulled into the driveway. I left Elliot in his seat, shut off the engine and walked around the back of the house. A light was on in the kitchen. That was good.
I banged on the back door and after a moment Marcus opened it, Micah at his feet.
“Kathleen, what are you doing here?” he said.
“Your father’s in the front seat of my truck, snoring,” I said, rubbing my hands together. It was getting cool now at night.
He frowned at me in confusion. “My father?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
“I was taking Burtis home. Your father called shotgun, not that there was actually anywhere else for him to sit.”
“Hang on a minute.” He held up both hands like he was about to surrender. “My father and Burtis were . . . ?”
“In the bar at the St. James.”
“Why were you driving them anywhere?”
This was taking longer than I’d intended. “Because Brady is in Minneapolis, Maggie is in a lockdown at the high school with Ruby and I have no idea where Lita is.” I looked over my shoulder. “I’m sorry about bringing him here, but it was that or leave him in the truck all night covered in a blanket.”
“Show me where he is,” Marcus said, resignation in his voice.
We walked back around the house and I pointed at the truck. Marcus leaned in on the driver’s side and took Elliot by the shoulders, shaking him. Then he pulled his dad along the seat and eased him out, putting one arm behind the older man and one in front of him for support. I slammed the truck door and went around to Elliot’s other side to help support his weight. We got him all the way around the house and inside.
“Living room,” Marcus said.
We eased Elliot onto the sofa and I grabbed a plaid throw blanket from the back and covered him.
Marcus looked down at his father. “How much did he have to drink?”
“A lot,” I said. “If it helps, they seemed to be having a good time, especially when they were singing.”
Marcus turned his head slowly to look at me. “Singing?”
“Lynyrd Skynyrd in the truck on the way out to Burtis’s place. Bob Seger in the bar at the St. James.”
He exhaled loudly. “Okay. That settles it. I can never go in there again.”
I put my arms around his waist and leaned up to kiss him. “Did you know your dad and Burtis were friends when they were young?”
He shook his head. “I had no idea. Neither one of them ever said a word about it.”
He walked me out to the deck. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to stay, can I?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve heard enough seventies’ rock for one night.” I planted a kiss on his mouth and went back to the truck.
* * *
I didn’t sleep very well. I kept dreaming that Elliot and Burtis had decided to take their music on the road and I had somehow gone along as their road manager. I was down in the kitchen making blueberry pancakes before six o’clock Saturday morning. Owen wandered in, yawned and sat down next to his dishes.
“Good morning, sunshine,” I said as I got his breakfast. He grumped at me and avoided making eye contact. Some nights Owen stayed up for hours roaming the house doing who knew what. Then in the morning he was a cranky grump and I had learned to give him lots of space. Hercules came in just as I finished making the pancakes. He sniffed the air and murped inquiringly.
“Pancakes for me, cat food for you,” I said. He seemed okay with that.
We both lingered over breakfast. Hercules took his time eating and making sure he looked good to face the day. I’d brought Abigail’s twenty-five-cent book in from the truck and I picked it up and read the back cover as I finished my second pancake.
Owen, on the other hand, ate, washed his face and then headed for the back door. I let him outside so he could do his morning circuit of the property. He grunted in my direction, which I took as “Thank you” but may not have been. The sky was low and dull and that, combined with the ache in my previously broken left wrist, told me that we were in for rain.
When I stepped back into the kitchen I found Hercules sitting on my chair, bits of paper at his feet. Abigail had bookmarked several places in the slim paperback that she thought might interest me. Hercules had just pulled all but one of those bits of paper out of the book.
“What did you do?” I asked, hands on my hips. For some reason the cat looked quite pleased with himself. “That was bad. Very bad.”
Hercules frowned as though he couldn’t understand my attitude. I picked up the book. The one piece of paper left was marking a place close to the beginning. I opened the book to see what Abigail had wanted me to check out. The text, illustrated with a couple of old maps of Minnesota, talked about how the state got its name. Minnesota was named for the Minnesota River, from the Dakota Sioux word for sky-tinted water.
“Sky-tinted water, I like that,” I said to Hercules, who tipped his head sideways and blinked slowly at me a couple of times. “And I probably would have been interested in the other things Abigail marked, even though you don’t seem to think so.”
Hercules jumped down from the chair, walked over to his water dish and peered down at it. It was still about half full. “Mrrr?” he said. He looked back at me.
“No, I think sky-tinted water means water that’s outside, like a lake or a river. It reflects the color of the sky, which is one of the reasons lakes and rivers look blue. That’s just plain, clear water in your dish.” I was explaining reflection to a cat.
At least he seemed to be considering what I’d said. “Thank you for the place name lesson,” I said. Then I leaned down so my face was inches from him. “But next time stay away from my books.”
Hercules licked my chin and then sat down, looking expectantly at me. He seemed to be waiting for me to do or say something. I had no idea what.
I sat down at the table again, speared the last bit of my pancake and ate it. Then I looked at Herc still looking at me. “I don’t suppose you know where Ira Kenyon is?” I said.
He shook his head, flicked his tail in annoyance and took a step backward, bumping his dish and sending a tiny splash of water onto the floor. Hercules yowled and jumped at the same time, all four feet going in different directions like a feline version of Riverdance.
“It’s okay. I’ve got it,” I said. I grabbed a rag from under the sink and wiped up the water. Then I got a second cloth to dry Hercules’s feet. He complained the entire time. Hercules hated having wet feet, so much so that Maggie had actually bought him a pair of boots—which is how I learned that he hated looking like a dork more than he hated wet feet.
I refilled the water bowl and set it closer to the side of the refrigerator so he wouldn’t spill it aga
in. “There,” I said. “There’s your water, clear because we’re all out of sky-tinted.”
And then, suddenly, I remembered something Maggie had said while we were talking about the development. She’d pointed out that right now this end of the lake wasn’t even any good for swimming thanks to a very late algal bloom.
“The clear water is on the other side,” I said aloud.
“Merow,” Hercules agreed and began to clean his paws.
“Ira Kenyon didn’t go to Clearwater in Florida. He went to clear water on the other side of the lake.” No. That was too easy. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be hard to check.
I looked at Hercules, who was now happily ignoring me, cleaning his front left paw. He’d tried awfully hard to draw my attention to water, in the name of the state and in his dish. Had he been trying to tell me something? More than once it had seemed to me that Owen and Hercules were playing detective in their own unique way.
* * *
I waited until seven thirty to call Hope. “I know how ridiculous this sounds,” I said, explaining my leaps of logic while leaving out the cat’s role in the process.
“I’ve seen cases solved with thinner hunches,” Hope said. “I’ll go out there and look for him. I’ll call you later.”
I was on the back steps shaking the mat from the porch when I spotted Rebecca coming from her house carrying a beautiful golden-orange chrysanthemum. I walked across the grass to meet her.
“Good morning,” she said, holding out the plant.
“Is this for me?” I asked.
Rebecca smiled. “It’s for the library. Abigail is going to put it on the table in the reading corner. She said you’re decorating for the Halloween party.”
I nodded. “She told me she was going to see what she could scrounge to brighten up that spot.”
“Well, I’m one of the scroungees,” Rebecca said.
I took the plant from her. “Did John come to see you?” I asked.
She nodded and her smile faded. “Yes, he did. He told me that he couldn’t find anything that would stop the development. I was hoping for a different outcome.”
“You and me both.”
“The day you introduced us at the library I really believed we had a chance.” She adjusted the yellow scarf at her neck. “It’s not that I’m against progress. It’s just that I don’t want to see a beautiful piece of land destroyed.” She raised her eyebrows slightly. “Everett called me a tree-hugger.”
“I’m sure he meant it as a compliment.”
“If I thought that going out there and chaining myself to one of those trees would stop this whole thing I’d do it, but I think Ernie Kingsley would just cut it right out from under my feet.”
I smiled at her over the top of the plant. “From what I’ve heard about the man, you’re probably right.”
“The day John came out to see the rest of my mother’s journals started out with so much hope and it ended in such a dark way.”
That was the day Dani had been killed and we were still no closer to figuring out who her killer was.
Rebecca leaned sideways to look at Hercules sitting on the step. “Are you coming over?” she asked the cat.
“Merow,” he said.
“All right, then. See you tomorrow.” She smiled at me and headed back across the lawn. Half the people I knew talked to my cats like they were people. At least it made it seem a lot less odd now when I did it.
* * *
Marcus called me mid-morning at the library to cancel our flea market plans. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Brady thinks the prosecuting attorney may be going to take everything to the grand jury sometime in the next couple of weeks.”
I drop into my desk chair as my stomach flip-flopped. “How can they do that when you haven’t done anything wrong?”
“The prosecutor doesn’t want it to look like he’s treating me any differently than he would anyone else.”
“So he’d do this to any other person who’s innocent?”
“Kath,” he said gently.
I sighed. “What did Brady say?”
“That’s why I have to cancel. He wants me to meet him at his office so we can go over everything.”
“Go,” I urged. “Call me when you’re done and we’ll do something.”
“Ummm, I like the sound of that,” he said.
My face got warm. “How’s your dad?” I asked, partly to change the subject.
Marcus laughed. “Last time I checked he was sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of aspirin and an entire pot of coffee. Is it wrong that I might have laughed?”
“Yes,” I said, “but I probably would have done the same thing.”
I heard some kind of crash in the background. “I’ve gotta go,” Marcus said. “Everything will be okay. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I said. I wanted to believe everything was going to be okay. But it seemed to me that it was going to need a nudge or two.
13
Hope called as I was getting into the truck after the library had closed at lunchtime for the day. “Are you still at the library?” she asked.
“I’m just about to head home.”
“Do you mind if I stop in for a minute?”
“No,” I said. I didn’t have any plans anymore. “Did you find Ira?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get there.”
When I pulled into the driveway Hope pulled in right behind. I grabbed my briefcase and got out of the truck. “So Ira was there, on the other side of the lake?”
She nodded. “Living in his truck just back from the water in a little clearing in the trees. He’s only been there a couple of days. He knows someone with an apple U-pick up north and he’s been working there. Ira’s actually a pretty interesting man.”
“You don’t think he killed Dani.”
She shook her head. “No. His right arm is basically useless. I suspect he had a stroke at some point in the past. There’s no way he would have been able to pick her up, let alone throw her over the embankment. And I took a look at the truck. It’s banged up in places but nothing recent and nothing that makes it look like it hit someone.”
“It was a long shot anyway,” I said with a small sigh.
“Hey, I’m impressed that you figured out where he was. If you ever want to give up being a librarian . . .” She grinned.
“I’ll go work for Burtis Chapman,” I said, “because I’d make a lousy detective.”
“I think you’re pretty good at it.”
My stomach growled loudly then. “Have you had lunch?” I asked.
“I thought maybe I’d head over to Fern’s,” Hope said with a shrug.
“I have soup and brownies,” I said. “And cats who will at least pretend to listen while you talk about your day.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
Owen was in the kitchen lying on the floor on his back, chewing on the head of a funky chicken. He lifted his head to look at us and I thought he looked just a little buzzed on the catnip.
“Should I start looking for the body?” Hope asked.
“It’s probably under the fridge,” I said.
“Do you know why he bites the heads off?”
“He likes to chew on them and suck on the beak part. Roma thinks he was separated from his mother too soon.” I washed my hands and reached for the placemats and napkins.
“Just let me wash up and I’ll do that,” Hope said.
I left the things on the table and got the soup out of the fridge and a pot from the cupboard so I could heat it up for us.
“You found Owen and Hercules at Wisteria Hill, right?” Hope asked as she set the table.
“More like they found me,” I said, “but yes.”
“It’s beautiful out there. I know
the resort is supposed to bring money and jobs but I can’t help thinking I’d rather have the trees than an ugly glass-and-metal building.”
“You haven’t heard?”
Hope was folding a napkin into some kind of triangular shape. She looked up at me. “Heard what?” Then before I could answer she made the connection. “Ah crap. Marcus’s friends didn’t find anything. Did they?”
I opened the cupboard for a couple of bowls. “No. It doesn’t look like there’s any way to stop things now.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given that John Keller was doing all the work since Danielle McAllister’s death.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What do mean?” Hercules had come in and was sitting by the table. He murped a soft inquiry as well. Owen was still engrossed in his chicken.
Hope smiled down at the little tuxedo cat and waggled her fingers at him.
“I think I told you that I did some background checking on both John and Travis Rosen.”
I nodded.
“Turns out he used to work as a lobbyist for a consortium of construction companies.”
“Doing what?”
“Making a case for the kind of thing he’s working against now.”
I started filling our bowls. “Maybe he had a change of heart and that’s why he went to work with American Land Trust.”
Hope shrugged. “I know it makes me sound cynical but in my experience those kind of things don’t happen very often.”
I set a steaming bowl in front of her. “This smells good,” she said. “Chicken noodle is my favorite, although at my house it generally comes out of a can.”
I took the place opposite her. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Owen drop the chicken head, stretch and head for the table. “You could make this,” I said. “The slow cooker does most of the work. If you decide you want to let me know and I’ll show you what I do.”
“Seriously?” Hope asked, spoon halfway to her mouth.
I smiled. “Absolutely.”
We ate in silence for a couple of minutes, then Hope set down her spoon. “Kathleen, how much do you know about Dani McAllister?”
