Sleight of Paw

by Kelly, Sofie

  Maggie and Ruby were at the table. I sat down opposite them, pulling off my coat and hanging it on the back of my chair. “The police are here,” I said.

  Claire came over unasked and brought a new coffee cup for me. As far as I could see, Eric still hadn’t shown up.

  I drank from my mug, the warmth from the steaming coffee spreading through my chest. We sat in silence, and finally Ruby looked at me.

  Her face was still very pale, but she seemed less distraught, like the initial shock of finding Agatha was wearing off. “Thank you for waiting for the police,” she said.

  I gave her a small smile. “It was nothing,” I said. “Detective Gordon is going to want to talk to you.”

  Ruby stared down into her teacup. “I thought she was . . . I thought it was a bag of garbage that had blown into the alley,” she said. “I didn’t know it was Agatha until I got right up to her.” She rubbed her finger along the rim of the cup.

  Maggie laid a hand on her arm for a moment.

  “I don’t understand what she was doing in the alley in the first place.” Ruby said. She picked up her cup and set it down again without drinking.

  Claire arrived then with our food. I’d forgotten that we’d ordered. She set the pancakes in front of me, then hesitated. “I’m sorry for eavesdropping,” she said to Ruby. “Eric let Mrs. Shepherd sleep in the back room when it was really cold. I guess she didn’t always have enough money to keep her house warm. Maybe that’s why she was in the alley.” She reached around Ruby and gave Maggie her plate. “If you need anything, let me know.”

  I slid the butter pats off the small plate they’d arrived on and replaced them with one of the pancakes and a few slices of orange; then I set the plate in front of Ruby. I waited until she speared a bite of fruit and put in her mouth before I picked up my own fork.

  “You know she had a stroke,” Ruby said suddenly. “That’s why she fell. That’s why she was in that rehab center in Minneapolis.”

  “Then maybe it was another stroke,” Maggie said. She lifted the lid of her little teapot and looked around for Claire.

  “She hated that place,” Ruby said. “Maybe she left too soon.”

  Maggie finally managed to catch Claire’s eye. She held up the teapot and the waitress nodded and reached for a carafe of water.

  After she’d dropped another tea bag into Maggie’s pot and poured the hot water, I touched her arm. “Claire, could I have two large coffees to go, please?” I said.

  “Sure. The usual?”

  I shook my head. “No. Double cream, double sugar in one, and could you just add a creamer and a couple of packets of sugar on the side for the other?”

  “Not a problem,” she said. “I’ll get them for you when you’re ready to leave so they’ll be hot.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Maggie leaned back in her chair. “Ruby,” she asked. “How did you get to be one of Agatha’s . . .” She hesitated.

  “Projects?” Ruby asked.

  “Well, I was going to say ‘kids,’ ” Maggie said. “But, yeah, I guess projects.”

  “Roma said Agatha was the reason she became a vet,” I said.

  “She’s the reason I’m an artist,” Ruby said. “She busted me for tagging—spray-painting graffiti on the side of the school.” She put down her fork. “I couldn’t run as fast as my so-called friends, and it turned out Agatha was pretty fast for what I considered an old lady.”

  “She nabbed you.” Maggie said.

  Ruby picked up a slice of grapefruit with her fingers and ate it. “By the scruff of my neck, literally. When I wouldn’t rat out the others, she said I could scrub the entire wall myself.” Her smile got a little bigger. “When I tried to argue the artistic value of tagging, she made me write a three-page essay explaining my reasoning. She used that and a painting I’d done to get me a place in a six-week summer art camp.”

  “It sounds like she had a way of figuring out what people cared about,” I said.

  “Yeah, she did,” Ruby said. “She had a way of looking right inside you, into places you didn’t show any other person. On the other hand, she could be stubborn. She made me scrub that wall until there wasn’t a dab of paint left.”

  She ran a hand through her pink, spiked hair, and glanced at her watch. Then she turned to Maggie. “I have to open the store.” The artist’s cooperative both Maggie and Ruby were part of ran a store and gallery in the same building where Maggie taught tai chi.

  “Why don’t you let me do that for you today?” Maggie said, setting down her cup.

  Ruby studied her hands for a minute. “Thanks, but I’d rather do it. I’d rather be busy than keep thinking about what happened.”

  Maggie nodded. “Okay, but why don’t I walk with you? I’m going that way anyway.”

  I stood up. “I’m going to get my coffee,” I said. I gestured at the table. “And I’ve got this.”

  “You sure?” Maggie said, reaching for her coat.

  “Uh-huh. I’ll be right back.” The café was beginning to fill up. As I stood at the counter, waiting for Claire, I overheard conversations around me. The news about Agatha was already spreading.

  I paid for breakfast and collected my two cups of coffee. Claire had put a couple of sugar packets, a creamer, and a stir stick into a little waxed-paper bag and rolled down the top. She handed me everything. There was a P on one of the lids.

  “That one is just coffee,” she said. “P for ‘plain.’ ”

  I thanked her and walked back to the table. Maggie held the cups while I shrugged into my coat and pulled on my hat and mittens. After I slid the strap of my briefcase over my head, she gave me both coffees. Their warmth seeped into my fingers.

  As we stepped outside a man cut across the street, dodging cars. “Ruby,” he called. She turned in his direction and her face lit up. When he reached us, he put an arm around Ruby and gave her a quick hug. This has to be the new boyfriend, I thought, which Ruby confirmed when she turned back to us.

  “Kathleen, this is Justin,” she said.

  “You’re the librarian,” he said.

  I nodded. “I am.”

  He stuffed the knitted hat he was holding into his pocket and offered his hand, and I held up the two coffee cups to show I couldn’t shake his.

  He gave me an easy smile and said, “Nice to meet you.”

  He was about average height, with longish dark hair slicked back from a widow’s peak and angular features. He smelled like hair gel.

  “You remember Maggie,” Ruby said.

  Justin turned to Maggie. “I do,” he said. “Hi, Maggie.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  “I’m so glad I caught you,” he said. “I found those lights you were looking for.”

  He patted the black nylon bag on his hip. He had a couple of elastics around one wrist and a silver skull bracelet on the other.

  Ruby pressed a hand to her head. “I forgot all about them. They’re for Maggie.”

  He opened the flap of his carryall and handed Maggie a plastic bag.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Ruby glanced down the street and gave an involuntary shiver.

  Justin followed her gaze. “What’s going on down there?” he asked.

  Ruby closed her eyes for a second and took a couple of deep breaths. “It’s . . . it’s . . . Remember I introduced you to Agatha Shepherd?”

  Justin nodded slowly, his eyes narrowed. “Yeah.”

  “She’s, uh, dead,” Ruby said.

  “Hey, I’m so sorry.” He caught one of her hands and gave it a squeeze. Then he looked from me to Maggie. “What happened?”

  Maggie shrugged. “Stroke, maybe. She was old.”

  Ruby swallowed hard. “I was cutting through the alley, and she was lying . . .” She didn’t finish.

  Justin folded her into a hug. “That’s horrible. What can I do?”

  Ruby broke out of the embrace and pushed stray bits of hair out of her face.

  “Nothin
g really,” she said. “I’m . . . all right.”

  The coffee was going to get cold if I stood there any longer. “Guys, I’d better get going,” I said.

  Ruby turned to me and touched my arm. “Thank you, Kathleen,” she said.

  “You’re welcome.” I smiled at Justin. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Yeah, you, too,” he said.

  I caught Maggie’s eye. “I’ll see you at class tonight.”

  She nodded.

  I started down the sidewalk while the others headed in the opposite direction, toward the artists’ co-op. Officer Craig was standing at the mouth of the alley, which was already taped off and partly blocked with a couple of town sawhorses. There were a few people hanging around watching, but not that many. I eased my way over to the young police officer and handed him the coffee cup and the little bag of sugar and cream. “I thought you might be getting cold,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he said, taking the cup.

  “There’s cream and sugar in the bag.” I held out the other cup. “Would you give this to Detective Gordon, please?”

  There was a brief flash of surprise on his face, but it quickly disappeared. “Yes, ma’am, I will.”

  “Stay warm,” I said. It was what everyone said in Mayville Heights in the winter.

  I skirted out around the police van, still angled near the curb, and took the opportunity to have a look down the alley. I couldn’t see much, just Marcus and a couple of other people standing over Agatha Shepherd’s body, which was still lying on the snowy ground. A shiver crept up the back of my neck. Maggie and Ruby seemed convinced that the old woman had had a second stroke. I hadn’t wanted to upset Ruby by disagreeing.

  I’d seen blood on Agatha’s coat and on the pavement. And her arm was twisted at an unnatural angle.

  I didn’t know what had happened to her, but I was pretty sure it had been violent.

  5

  Abigail came up the steps just as I was unlocking the wrought-iron security gate at the main entrance of the library. The gate was mostly decorative now that the building had a proper security system. I punched in the code on the keypad and waited for the light to turn green before I opened the doors.

  Behind me Abigail turned on the lights. “It looks good, doesn’t it?” she said, pushing the scarf off her head. Her hair, a beautiful mix of red and silver, was pulled back in its usual braid. She smiled at me. “I know, I know. I keep saying that, but I can’t get over how amazing this place looks now.” She gestured to the mosaic tile floor. “Every once in a while I flash back to that bilious turquoise indoor-outdoor carpet that was on the floors.”

  I rolled my eyes at the memory. “That was pretty bad.”

  Abigail started for the stairs and the second-floor staff room. I headed up behind her. “You want coffee?” she asked. “I’ll start it.”

  “Please,” I said.

  I unlocked my office, dumped my bag on my desk chair, hung up my coat and then bent to take off my boots. Something was caught in the cuff of my pants—probably another chunk of frozen snow.

  I started to turn the fabric inside out to dump whatever it was onto the floor when I realized it wasn’t a dirty piece of snow caught in my pants; it was a broken piece of glass. How had I gotten that stuck in my cuff?

  I went to pull it loose and then stopped myself. I’d bent down in the alley next to Agatha’s body when I’d felt for a pulse that hadn’t been there. There had been tire tracks and other bits of detritus in the sand and snow near the body. Had I picked up the piece of glass there? If someone had run Agatha down, the jagged piece of broken glass caught in my pants cuff could be evidence.

  I reached for my bag. I had Marcus Gordon’s card with his cell number in my wallet. He’d given it to me the previous summer when my house had been broken into. Now I used the number.

  I wasn’t surprised to get his voice mail. I left a brief message explaining that I might have found something connected to Agatha’s death and then hung up. I pushed back the sleeves of my sweater and turned around.

  Marcus was standing in my doorway. Startled, I made a strangled sound halfway between choking and gargling.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, leaning back against the desk. “I just left you a message.”

  He pulled out his cell and flipped it open. “So you did. Was there something you forgot to tell me?”

  “No.” I pointed to my pant leg. “There’s a piece of glass caught in my cuff. I think I might have picked it up in the alley when I bent down to check on Agatha. It wasn’t there when I got to the café this morning.”

  He tipped his head and looked down at me. I was five foot six; he was taller, over six feet, so tall that I always felt little in his presence. “How can you be sure it came from the alley?”

  “Because the laces on my boot came undone when I was at the café and I dumped snow out of that cuff. I would’ve felt a piece of glass.”

  “Did you walk over here?”

  “Yes,” I said, shifting so the edge of the desk wasn’t digging into my backside. “On the sidewalk all the way.”

  He gestured at my leg. “May I?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I put my foot up on the seat of one of the black fauxleather chairs that flanked my desk. “The inside edge of the cuff,” I said.

  He pulled a thin purple glove from his pocket and put it on. Then he reached into the fold of fabric and carefully pulled out the piece of glass, holding it by the edges with his thumb and forefinger. He had huge hands. He stood up and looked around. “Do you have an envelope to put this in?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said. I dropped my foot and squeezed past him to get to my desk drawer. He smelled citrusy—a bit like one of those drinks with a tiny plastic sword skewering a wedge of lime. I shook my head. Why the heck was I smelling the man? Most of the time I didn’t even like him.

  I held up a business-sized envelope. “Will this do?”

  “That’s perfect.”

  I held open the top and he dropped the piece of glass inside; then I handed the whole thing over to him.

  He sealed the top and put the envelope into the pocket of his coat. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Was there something else you wanted to ask me?” I said.

  “I just have a couple of questions.”

  I gestured to the chairs. “Have a seat.”

  He made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “I’m okay,” he said.

  I didn’t want to sit down if he wasn’t and have him looming over me like a cop in an old black-and-white movie, so I stayed standing, as well. “What did you want to know?”

  “You were meeting Ms. Adams and Ms. Blackthorne at the restaurant. What time did you get there?”

  “I was meeting Maggie,” I said. “She told me Ruby was coming, as well, because she had the lightbulbs Maggie needed for the Winterfest display. And as for when I arrived, I’d say about seven thirty. Maggie was already there.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “How long before Ms. Blackthorne showed up?”

  I shrugged. “Five minutes, maybe,” I said. “Less than ten, for sure. We’d ordered, but our food hadn’t arrived and I hadn’t finished my first cup of coffee.”

  He nodded and I guessed he was filing the information away somewhere in his head. “So, you went to the alley to check on Mrs. Shepherd?”

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Why?” I repeated.

  He shifted from one foot to the other. “Why didn’t you just call nine-one-one, or at least let someone else go take a look?”

  I exhaled slowly, trying to get rid of some of the irritation Marcus always seemed to make me feel.

  “I didn’t know there was a reason to call nine-one-one,” I explained. “Ruby was . . . upset, and the alley’s dark. Maybe she hadn’t seen what she thou
ght she had. As for why me”—I gestured toward my boots standing on a square of newspaper under the coatrack—“Maggie had boots with heels, and I didn’t. The sidewalk was icy and I could move a lot faster than she could.”

  He looked at the boots and for a moment I thought he was going to walk over to pick them up. But he didn’t. “So, you got to the alley. What did you do then?”

  “I could see that there was something on the ground about halfway down. I couldn’t tell if it was a person or maybe a bag of garbage that had just blown there.”

  I folded my own arms across my chest, mimicking his stance. “I told Ruby to stay at the end of the alley while I walked down to see who it was. As I got closer I could see that it was Agatha, and I could see that she was dead.”

  “How did you know that?” he asked.

  “That wasn’t my first dead body,” I said dryly. “But as I told you, I felt for her pulse.”

  “Did you touch anything else besides the body?” He unfolded his arms and turned his head from one side to the other to stretch his neck.

  “No,” I said slowly and clearly. He’d already asked me this, so there was obviously some reason he was intent on going over it again. “I didn’t touch anything else. I walked down and back, and I tried to stay in Ruby’s footsteps. When I realized I couldn’t do anything for Agatha, I went back to Ruby. Maggie was with her, and I asked Maggie to call nine-one-one because my phone was in my briefcase, which was still in the restaurant.”

  I held up a hand before he could speak. “Ruby was cold and I was afraid she might go into shock, so I got Maggie to take her back to Eric’s while I waited for you to show up. That’s it.”

  He nodded again and felt in his pocket for something. “Did you know Mrs. Shepherd?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’d seen her a few times in the past couple of days, but I didn’t know who she was until she came into Eric’s last night and I asked Roma—Dr. Davidson.”

  I thought about Agatha and Old Harry Taylor standing on the sidewalk, arguing. I didn’t see how that had anything to do with Agatha’s death, so there didn’t seem to be any reason to tell Marcus and have him start bothering the old man.