Copycat Killing: A Magical Cats Mystery

by Sofie Kelly

  Pearl stood up and took my hands in hers. “You too, Kathleen,” she said. “My daughter is very lucky to have you as a friend.”

  “I’m lucky to have her,” I said and I realized how much I meant the words as I said them.

  “It looks as though we’re going to be here for a few days. I hope we’ll see you again.”

  I smiled at her. “I would like that very much.” I gave her hands a gentle squeeze and said, “Good night,” to Neil.

  “Call me if you need anything,” I told Roma.

  She had one arm folded across her midsection but she wrapped me in a one-armed hug. “Thank you for coming tonight.”

  “Anytime,” I said.

  Marcus was still at the bottom of the steps. He straightened when I stepped out and walked silently over to the truck with me. Then he made a point to check the front seat and the bed. “Everything looks all right.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He didn’t smile, but I could tell he wanted to. “You’re welcome,” he said. He made no move toward his car, which was parked on the street in front of the house.

  “Are you going to give me the ‘stay out of my case’ lecture?” I asked.

  “Will it work?” He was standing with his feet apart, hands behind his back.

  “No.”

  That made him laugh. “You’re honest, Kathleen,” he said. “I’ll give you that.”

  I smiled at him. “I’m not trying to interfere in your investigation.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “All right, I admit it doesn’t exactly look that way.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “What was Burtis Chapman doing out at Wisteria Hill this morning?” I asked.

  He hesitated.

  “I can ask Burtis myself,” I said.

  “Yes you can,” he said. “It’s not a secret. Burtis knows those woods better than anyone else in town. I asked him to give me the lay of the land back there, that’s all.”

  So did that mean he knew about the poker game and Idris Blackthorne’s business operations? I knew he wouldn’t answer that question.

  I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “Do you know what The Ladies Knitting Circle was?”

  “No. I’m guessing they were knitting?”

  I shook my head. “That’s what I thought. Years ago—at the time that Thomas Karlsson disappeared—they were operating a kind of safe house, hiding women from their abusive husbands and helping them get away to start new lives.”

  “And how do you know this?” he asked.

  My hair was slipping from its ponytail and I reached back and pulled out the elastic. “I’ve been researching some of the groups that used to meet at the library. The Ladies Knitting Circle was one of them.”

  “So you think, what? That a group of little old ladies buried Thomas Karlsson out at Wisteria Hill?” Clearly he wasn’t taking what the women had been doing seriously.

  “They weren’t exactly little old ladies. Anna Henderson was the leader of the group. When Tom Karlsson disappeared, when it looked like he’d abandoned Pearl and Roma, they were already being hidden by Anna and her friends.”

  Marcus glanced back at the house.

  My ankle was aching and I shifted more of my weight to my other leg and made a mental note to use Rebecca’s herbal salve on my ankle again before bed. “I’m not telling you this to point the finger at Anna Henderson,” I said. “Pearl had an out and she’d taken it. She was safe. Her child was safe. She had no reason to kill her husband.”

  “I didn’t say that Thomas Karlsson was murdered,” he said.

  “Oh c’mon,” I said, my exasperation showing in my voice. “I saw his remains. I don’t think he hit himself in the head and then lay down and scraped dirt and leaves over his own body with his last bit of energy. At best he hit his head accidentally and someone hid the body.”

  Marcus stared past me, down the driveway. I knew what was coming. Finally he looked at me. “Kathleen, this is an active police investigation,” he said.

  “So stay out of it,” I finished. This was the point where I usually got aggravated at him and left in a huff. But I really didn’t want to do that anymore. “Could you stop being a police officer and just be a person for one minute?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “Being a police officer is part of who I am. As far back as I can remember, it’s the only thing I ever wanted to be. If you and I are going to be friends, you’re going to have to find a way to accept that.” He shifted position, folding his arms across his chest. “I can’t go easy on someone who’s part of an investigation just because you’re friends with them.”

  “And I just can’t ignore it when one of my friends is in trouble,” I said, pushing that annoying tendril of hair back off my face again. “You’re going to have to find a way to accept that, if we’re going to be friends.”

  I pulled my keys out of my pocket and unlocked the driver’s door. “I’m going to leave now,” I said. “Because I’m kind of mad right now.”

  “Are you still going to be mad Saturday morning when we go feed the cats?”

  Right. I’d forgotten that I’d traded a shift with Harry Junior so I’d be out at Wisteria Hill again in another couple of days.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.” I wanted to stay mad. It just wasn’t working for some reason.

  I climbed in the truck, started it, and backed carefully out of the driveway, making sure my seat belt was fastened. Marcus watched me from the driveway. I raised one hand in good-bye. I was annoyed.

  Not rude.

  22

  I thought about everything Pearl had said all the way home. Could Ruby’s grandfather have had something to do with Tom Karlsson’s death? Then there were the men Tom had cheated at poker. Did Tom go back to the game? Did something happen there?

  I hoped Roma really would call a lawyer before they went to talk to the police in the morning. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Marcus, it was just that as he himself had pointed out to me back in Roma’s driveway—he was a cop. That wasn’t just what he did; it was part of who he was. I’d seen firsthand that when he was on a case he could be even more single-minded than Owen on the hunt for Fred the Funky Chicken parts.

  There was no sign of the cats in the kitchen when I got home. I kicked off my shoes, hung up my jacket and padded into the living room. Owen was the picture of an adorable house cat, sitting next to the big wing chair.

  “I’m not fooled,” I said. “I know you were lying on the footstool.” It was his favorite place to nap, which meant I was always vacuuming cat hair off the top. I could just never catch him up there.

  I bent down, swept him up, and sank into the chair. He sat on my lap and studied my face. “Guess who showed up at Roma’s?” I said.

  “Meow?” he said.

  “Uh huh. He wanted to talk to Pearl.” Okay, so Owen hadn’t actually said…err…meowed Marcus’s name. On the other hand, we weren’t actually having a conversation. I told him what I learned from Pearl, turning over each bit of information in my mind. Owen listened intently, or at least pretended to.

  “I keep coming back to Tom’s body being buried out at Wisteria Hill and Anna hiding Pearl and Roma at the same time. For those two things not to be connected is a bit of a coincidence.” I was slumped down in the chair, the cat stretched across my chest. “On the other hand, coincidences do happen.” Owen muttered his agreement.

  I pictured the dirt-encrusted skull I’d found myself sprawled next to when the embankment had collapsed. It had been caved in, fractured on the left side.

  By my estimation, based on the photographs I’d seen of her, Anna Henderson had been more than a foot shorter than Tom Karlsson. “There’s no way she could have hit the man,” I said to Owen. “What did she do? Ask him to wait while she got something to stand on? I don’t think so.”

  Plus what reason did Anna have to hurt Tom, I asked myself. She was helping women get away from abusive men, not do away with them.
Even if Tom had shown up at Wisteria Hill looking for his wife and daughter, there was no way he could have gotten to them. The Hendersons were the most prominent family in town. Tom would have ended up in jail for any kind of threat against Anna. Assuming he’d survived Carson’s wrath.

  I tipped my head to look at Owen, who was lazily washing the end of one gray paw. Or possibly licking a bit of leftover food off of it. “Am I being naïve for not considering the possibility that Pearl had something to do with Tom ending up buried at Wisteria Hill?”

  The cat paused, paw in the air, as though he were actually mulling over my question. Then suddenly he turned his head and licked my wrist before going back to his laissez-faire paw cleaning. That could be a no, I decided.

  “Okay, let’s say for the sake of argument that Pearl did kill Tom.” Owen’s eyes flicked up to mine. “By accident,” I said, moving my hand so I could scratch behind his ear. “How did his body get all the way to Wisteria Hill? If Anna had helped her—”

  Owen lifted his head again, eyes narrowed. For a second it almost seemed like he was following what I was saying. “If,” I said. “If.”

  That seemed to satisfy him.

  “So if Pearl had killed Tom and if Anna had helped her with the body, why on earth would they have taken it to Wisteria Hill? That makes no sense.”

  I shook my head and shifted to scratching behind Owen’s other ear. He gave up on his paw, closed his eyes, and started purring.

  “I just don’t think Pearl had anything to do with what happened to Tom,” I said thoughtfully. “I didn’t get any sense that she wasn’t telling the truth tonight. Yes, she lied about Tom so Roma wouldn’t know her father was a deadbeat. But she wouldn’t have killed him. She wouldn’t do that to Roma.”

  I closed my eyes. So if the killer wasn’t Pearl and it wasn’t Anna Henderson…I clenched my teeth. I didn’t like the idea, but could it have been…Sam?

  It was clear Sam had had a thing for Pearl. Those old photos that hadn’t made it into the Mayville High yearbook pretty much confirmed that.

  “So when she showed up at Wisteria Hill with Roma, did Sam go to confront Tom?” I asked Owen.

  He didn’t seem to have an opinion.

  “No, wait, Tom wasn’t there.”

  What had Pearl said? She felt she had time to get away because Tom had gone to Red Wing on a beer run—I was guessing because Idris Blackthorne wouldn’t sell to him. The car had been found abandoned at the side of the highway, out of gas, right by the turnoff to Wild Rose Bluff. It would have been a long walk back to Mayville.

  Of course, that didn’t mean Sam couldn’t have come across Tom later that night. Sam would have been big enough to hold his own in a fight with Tom. Tom had been an athlete, but Sam had been working in his father’s landscaping business. He was more than strong enough to swing whatever had fractured Tom Karlsson’s skull.

  “Except he couldn’t drive,” I said to Owen. I sat up straighter and slid the cat down onto my lap. “Pearl said Sam had taken a load of old railway ties out to Wisteria Hill for Carson, and run a nail through his foot. He wouldn’t have even been able to drive the truck. It would have been a standard.”

  I looked at Owen. “I have to get up.” He made grumbly noises but he jumped down to the floor and trailed behind me into the kitchen. Hercules came through the door from the porch. Literally through. The energy in the kitchen seemed to change somehow and there he was. It still made me jump.

  Owen looked at my keys on the table and meowed. “We’re trying to figure out what happened to Tom,” I said to Hercules.

  I shook my head at Owen. “No,” I said. “Sam would have been driving one of the Ingstrom trucks—I’m guessing maybe a one-ton. It would have been a standard. He couldn’t manage the clutch.”

  I hooked one of the chairs with my foot and pulled it out so I could sit down. I stretched out my left leg and rolled my ankle in big, slow circles. “How about this?” I said to the cats. “Pearl shows up with Roma. Ellen is bandaging Sam’s injured foot. Tom didn’t actually go to Red Wing, so he shows up looking for his wife.”

  Hercules interrupted my recitation with a loud meow.

  “I don’t know how he knew Pearl was at Wisteria Hill. He just did.”

  The cat didn’t raise any more objections.

  “Tom shows up. Pearl won’t leave with him. Sam and Tom get into a fight. Sam whacks Tom with one of those railway ties and everyone helps him bury the body out behind the carriage house and never speaks of it again.”

  I looked at them. Even cats know stupid when they hear it.

  “Okay, so maybe that’s a little too far-fetched.” I stretched both feet out across the floor. “I’m thinking Pearl may be right. Maybe Tom ended up out there because of someone who was connected to Ruby’s grandfather or even that poker game.”

  So how was I going to find out more about a dead man and a group of nameless, high-stakes card players from more than forty years ago? I knew Marcus would say it was none of my business, but I also knew Roma needed answers.

  “I need to make a phone call,” I said.

  I found the small red book I kept addresses and phone numbers in. I went back to the living room, sat down again, and reached for the phone.

  Harry Junior answered at his father’s house. “Hi Harry,” I said. “It’s Kathleen. Is your dad around? I was hoping I could pick his brain.”

  “Hi Kathleen,” he said and I could hear a hint of exasperation in his voice. “He’s right here, arguing hockey stats with me. Hang on a minute.”

  I waited, picturing Harry taking the phone over to his father in his chair by the woodstove, with Boris, his German shepherd at his feet.

  “Hello, Kathleen,” Harrison Taylor, Senior said, his deep voice warm in my ear. “My son says you want to pick my brain. I should warn you, the pickin’s are slim.”

  “I doubt that,” I said with a laugh.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  I leaned my head against the back of the chair. “Tell me about Idris Blackthorne.”

  “Meanest son of a bi-…gun I ever met,” he said.

  “Is it true he wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to be on the wrong side of?”

  The old man gave a snort of laughter. “No one ever crossed old Idris twice.”

  “Was he capable of killing someone…or having someone killed?” I asked.

  “Ahh…this has to do with Tom Karlsson, doesn’t it?” he said. “I heard you found what was left of him out at Wisteria Hill. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Harry,” I said. “But I am curious how Roma’s father ended up buried out there.”

  “Well, I’m not saying Idris had nothing to do with that,” Harry said slowly, and I pictured him fingering his snowy beard. “But it wasn’t his way. And if he was responsible for what happened, I can’t see him burying the body out at Wisteria Hill. Too close to his business enterprises, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” I said. “I’ve heard about Idris Blackthorne’s business.”

  “Then you know he wouldn’t have been doing anything to draw attention to himself.”

  I stretched my legs across the footstool. “Harry, did you ever hear about some kind of high-stakes card game going on in a cabin in the woods out behind Wisteria Hill?”

  “That was another one of Idris’s business ventures,” he said. I could hear his dog, Boris, sniffing the phone.

  “High stakes?” I asked.

  “From what I heard. The closest I ever got to a high-stakes card game was nickel poker around the kitchen table on a Saturday night.” He laughed. “My wife thought gambling was a waste of money. Didn’t mean she didn’t clean out my friends on a regular basis though.”

  “Do you think it’s possible someone at that poker game did something to Tom?”

  “It’s possible,” he said. He was silent for a moment. “You should talk to Burtis Chapman if you want to know more about things to do with Idris. He worked for the man
for a lot of years.” Harry lowered his voice. “In fact Burtis took over a small bit of Idris’s business. But you could keep that to yourself.”

  “Yes, I could,” I said.

  “If you can get down to Fern’s about six tomorrow morning, you’re likely to find Burtis having breakfast. Tell him I told you to talk to him.”

  “Thank you Harry,” I said. “I just might do that.”

  “You take care of yourself, Kathleen,” he said.

  “I will,” I said. “Good night.”

  Breakfast with Burtis Chapman was not my idea of a good time. “Maybe Marcus is right,” I said out loud. “Maybe I should just stay out of this.”

  The phone rang then. It was Maggie.

  “Hi,” she said. “I just wanted to check in and make sure Roma is okay.”

  “She’s good,” I said, leaning forward to brush a clump of cat hair off the footstool. “Pearl answered all her questions, but I’m not sure Marcus or anyone else is going to be able to figure out what happened to Roma’s father. It’s just too long ago.” I exhaled slowly. “He showed up after supper.”

  “Really?” she said. “Did you have some kind of séance?”

  “Not Tom,” I said. “Marcus. He wanted to ask Pearl a few questions. We convinced him to wait until tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m glad Roma’s all right. It’s been a rough couple of days for her.”

  “For you, too,” I said. “How’s the basement?”

  Owen appeared in the kitchen doorway and started across the floor to me. He had some kind of kitty intuition that told him when it was Maggie on the phone.

  “Almost dry last time I checked, and Harry took a look at the back wall for me. He’s pretty sure he knows where most of the water came in and he thinks it’s an easy fix.”

  “Oh Mags, that would be terrific.”

  “It would, because there isn’t very much left in the contingency fund.”

  I looked down at Owen whose eyes were fixed on the phone’s receiver. His right paw was over his left one. “Owen has his paws crossed for you,” I said.

  Maggie laughed. “Give him a scratch for me. If we were just the same species, he would be the perfect guy.”