Faux Paw: A Magical Cats Mystery

by Sofie Kelly

I shrugged. “I’m not sure,” I said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say whoever it was used rope, not giant suction cups.”

  Ruby gave me a smirk. “Yeah, people always make the conventional choice,” she said.

  I turned back to Maggie. “That’s why I stopped by. You’ll need to let everyone know they won’t be able to pick up their artwork for a few more days. Or if you want to give me phone numbers, I can do it.”

  Ruby leaned sideways so she was in Maggie’s direct line of sight. “Want me to take care of that?” she asked.

  “Please,” Maggie said. She gave me a hug. “I’m sorry you can’t get back into the building.”

  I tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “The worst part is that there are so many programs that don’t have anywhere else to meet: the seniors, story time, Reading Buddies. We’ve just got the new group of kids paired up and started in Reading Buddies.”

  Reading Buddies was a program that paired kindergarteners and first graders with older kids who helped the little ones with their reading skills. The little ones benefited from the one-on-one attention and the older ones from the responsibility. Right after Thanksgiving we’d had a fundraiser that had managed—after some major roadblocks—to leave us with enough money to expand the program and add more kids. Now every younger child had a match and the older ones had finished their training with Abigail. The kids had had only one session together. I hated that they were losing momentum.

  “They meet after school, don’t they?” Maggie asked. I knew that gleam in her green eyes. She had a plan.

  I studied her face. I swear I could see her mind working, or as Mary would say, the little hamsters running in their wheels. “Yes,” I said. “The little ones come right after school lets out and the older ones get their last period off. We usually get started about two thirty.”

  “They can come here,” she said. “I mean upstairs in the studio. You don’t have to have chairs and tables, do you?”

  “No,” I said slowly. “But they’re not exactly quiet. I know they’re reading, but—” I held out both hands. “They’re kids. They don’t always do it quietly.”

  Maggie pulled a hand through her blond curls. “First of all, we’re not exactly packed with customers at two thirty in the afternoon in April. And second, anyone who has a problem with children learning to read can—”

  “—bite me,” Ruby said behind us.

  Mags laughed. “Anyone who has a problem can take it up with Ruby.”

  I laughed too. “All right. Yes.”

  This time I hugged Maggie. “Okay, put me to work,” I said, taking off my jacket. Ruby put it and my purse behind the counter.

  “We need to get those shelves apart,” Maggie said, pointing to a wide, ceiling-high shelving unit against the end wall. Her neon orange toolbox was sitting on the floor.

  I studied the unit for a moment. “I think we need to detach the shelves first,” I said. I took a look at the underside of one of the long barn-board planks and then opened the toolbox to find the right screwdriver.

  Maggie had the neatest toolbox I’d ever seen. Everything was organized by size and function and there wasn’t a speck of dirt or rust on anything. She picked up the cordless drill that had been lying on the bottom shelf of the unit. “Do you want this?” she asked.

  “No, the screwdriver is fine,” I said. I knelt down and started on the lowest shelf while Maggie, who was taller, used the drill to work over my head.

  “Do Marcus and Hope have any suspects?” she asked. She smelled like lavender oil.

  “Not exactly,” I said. I was twisted so my head and one shoulder were under the shelf and my voice was muffled.

  “So what do they have, exactly?”

  I gave the screwdriver one more twist and the screw in the back corner of the shelf came loose. I pulled my head out from under the length of barn board and sat back on my heels. “Have you ever heard of a woman named Devin Rossi?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Is that who they think took the Weston drawing and killed Margo Walsh?”

  “It’s what Gavin thinks,” I said.

  Maggie frowned. “He could be right.”

  I looked up at her. “Seriously?”

  She adjusted the drill bit, tightening the chuck. “You could say she ‘works on commission.’ She never hits the big galleries or museums. And I heard she used to be a gymnast, so getting in through the roof would be something she could do.” She turned the drill over in her hands. “But no one’s ever been hurt as far as I know. In fact Devin Rossi has a bit of a Robin Hood reputation.”

  “I think Robin Hood’s thing was take from the rich, give to the poor. Not take from the rich, give to the rich.”

  She smiled. “Okay, it’s not a perfect analogy.”

  I pushed my hair back off my face and leaned under the shelf again. “What you’re saying is she has her fans.”

  “In the art world, to some people, she’s kind of a folk hero, yes,” Maggie said. “Not everyone is a fan of big museums and galleries.”

  I twisted onto my left shoulder so I could reach the screw in the other back corner of the shelf. “That doesn’t mean it’s okay to take things that don’t belong to you.”

  “I know,” Maggie agreed. “Some people just seem to lose sight of that. Robin Hood was probably nothing like Sean Connery or Kevin Costner in tights.”

  I grunted as I tried to get some torque on the screw. “No, he wasn’t. Some historians think Robin Hood was a real person. Others think he was a character based on the exploits of people like William Wallace. Still others say he’s totally a creation of folklore—the outlaw hero of ballads.”

  Maggie laughed. “How did I know you’d know that?”

  I slid my head out from under the shelf. “Was I being obnoxious?” I asked.

  She nudged me with her foot. “No,” she said. “It just fascinates me how you know so many things.”

  “I spent a lot of time in the library when I was a kid,” I said, just a little self-consciously.

  “And I spent a lot of time taking pictures with my mother’s Polaroid instant camera and then coloring in the image with magic markers,” she said. She looked over at Ruby. “Hey, Ruby, what did you like to do for fun when you were about ten or twelve years old?”

  “Shoplift Kool-Aid and use it to dye my hair,” she said immediately. Ruby had been on the road to being a juvenile delinquent as a kid before her school principal, Agatha Shepherd, had taken an interest in Ruby’s flair for art. When Agatha died, Ruby had used the money the older woman had left her to fund an art program for children as well as an art school scholarship.

  I looked up at Maggie and smiled. “It seems our destinies were set before we even hit puberty.”

  She smiled back at me. “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

  I spent about an hour and a half helping Maggie; then I walked up to Henderson Holdings to see Lita. I called Marcus before I left. “Any chance I could stop by the library and get some files from my office now?” I asked.

  “You can,” he said, “but I’ll have to take a look at whatever you take out. Will that be a problem?”

  Even though I knew it was impossible, it seemed as though I could feel the warmth of his voice against my ear. “It’s just some files on books I want to buy and a draft report on the library’s new damage-control strategy. You’re welcome to look at all of it.”

  “I’d rather look at you,” he said.

  I felt my cheeks flood with color. Marcus wasn’t a wildly romantic hearts-and-flowers kind of man, but every once in a while he’d say something that would make me either blush or forget how to breathe.

  “I’ll be there in about . . .” I glanced down at my watch. How long did it take to walk over to the library? Why couldn’t I remember that? “A few minutes . . . I mean ten minutes,”
I said, stumbling over my words.

  “I’ll see you soon, then,” Marcus said, and I could picture the smile I knew was on his face.

  I ended the call and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly.

  I liked to think of myself as being pretty unflappable, growing up with my eccentric actor parents and a younger brother and sister who could both be pretty out there sometimes. Someone had had to be the sensible, practical person who remembered to buy milk and carry the health insurance cards. Marcus had the ability to turn me into a blushing, giggly teenager. I’d never really been that and, truth be told, I liked it.

  Lita was watching me, a knowing smile on her face. “You two are so adorable,” she said.

  “And you and Burtis are?” I teased.

  “A mature love ripened by time,” she countered. “Like a bottle of fine wine or an aged wheel of Brie.”

  It sounded like an answer she’d given before. I laughed as I picked up my bag. “I’m sure Burtis would like the comparison to a wheel of stinky cheese,” I said.

  Lita threw back her head and laughed. “He certainly eats enough of it for it to be an apt comparison.”

  I thanked her for her help and headed out. I couldn’t get the image of barrel-chested Burtis, whose hands were big enough that one of them would cover my head, holding a tiny water cracker with a smear of soft cheese, his pinkie raised in the air. The image made me smile all the way to library.

  Marcus was waiting for me on the steps to the building. He smiled when he caught sight of me.

  “Hi,” I said, reaching out to touch his arm.

  “What were you thinking about?” he asked. “You were smiling all the way up the sidewalk.” He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and unlocked the doors.

  I told him what Lita had said about Burtis’s love of old cheese. “I just always thought of Burtis as a beer-and-brats kind of guy,” I said.

  Marcus punched in the codes for both security systems and we stepped into the library proper. “Burtis is a complex man,” he said. “There’s a lot more to him than just what you see on the surface.”

  Marcus was very much a law-and-order, the-rules-apply-to-everyone kind of person, while some—or maybe all, for all I knew—of Burtis Chapman’s business enterprises danced on the edge of illegality and sometimes fell in. But Burtis was intensely loyal to the town and to people he called his friends. I was lucky to be one of them. And Marcus was the same way, so the two of them had always had a grudging respect for each other. But last winter Owen and I had been trapped in a burning building and Burtis and Marcus had worked together to get me out. It had changed the relationship between the two men in ways I couldn’t exactly figure out.

  Curtis Holt was in his chair next to the Plexiglas half wall that still separated the exhibit area from the rest of the library.

  “Good morning, Curtis,” Marcus called.

  “Morning, Detective,” the guard replied. “Detective Lind is upstairs.” He smiled at me. “Good morning, Ms. Paulson.”

  I smiled back. “Good morning, Curtis.”

  Hope Lind was at the top of the stairs on the second floor with, I guessed, a couple of crime scene technicians.

  “Thank you for letting me get some things from my office,” I said. Hope was the lead detective on the case and I knew it was because of her that I had been allowed in the building, not because of my relationship with Marcus.

  “No problem, Kathleen,” she said. Her eyes flicked to Marcus for a second and I found myself wondering about those dates the two of them had had.

  I stepped into my office and glanced around the room, trying not to look at the spot on the floor where Margo’s body had been lying. I tried instead to think about what I wanted—needed—to accomplish in the next few days. I pointed out the files I wanted on my desk and Marcus retrieved them, looking carefully through each manila folder before he handed them to me. “Sorry,” he said with shrug. “I have to follow procedure.”

  “It’s okay.” I smiled at him.

  “Is there anything else you need?” he asked. “I still have no idea when you’ll be able to reopen.”

  I stuffed the file folders in my bag. “That’s all right. I can work around the building being closed. Maggie’s offered to move Reading Buddies to the tai chi studio. And Lita is going to offer the boardroom at Henderson Holdings to the seniors’ reading group.”

  “They couldn’t get any more raucous than some of the board meetings we’ve had in there,” she’d said, looking at me over the top of her glasses.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Marcus said. “Everyone—but especially you—worked hard to raise the money to expand Reading Buddies. That’s really nice of Maggie to let you use the studio. But, uh, does she have any idea how loud that could get?”

  Marcus had helped out with the kids at the library a few times. Because of his own dyslexia he was very good with reluctant readers.

  “I warned her.”

  “Maybe you should drop off some earplugs, just in case,” he said with a grin.

  “By the way, she thinks Gavin might be right about Devin Rossi.” I glanced toward the hall again.

  His smile faded. “You told her what he said.”

  I studied his face as it closed into what I thought of as police officer mode. “I didn’t think it was a secret and I wanted to know if she thought Gavin’s idea had any credence.”

  His eyebrows went up slightly. “Did she?”

  I shifted a bit uncomfortably from one foot to the other. I could feel the skepticism coming off him. He’d made it clear he thought the idea of a cat burglar dropping into the library from the roof to steal a drawing that wasn’t any bigger than a piece of copier paper was outlandish.

  “She confirmed everything Gavin told us.” I paused. When he didn’t say anything, I added, “She’s at the shop all afternoon if you’d like to talk to her.”

  “Okay,” he said. He leaned against the edge of my desk. “By the way, I talked to Solomon’s police contact from Chicago.” He gave me a small smile. “You didn’t think I would, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” I admitted, feeling my cheeks get warm.

  “The only thing they have on Devin Rossi is a fingerprint from a robbery they think she committed at a private gallery about three years ago.”

  “Did you find any fingerprints on the skylight?” I asked.

  Marcus nodded. “Yes.”

  “So did they match?”

  He shook his head. “The only prints we had belong to Will Redfern, and I don’t think it was him who stole that drawing.”

  I sighed. “And you don’t think it was Devin Rossi, either.”

  He straightened up. “Sorry. I just don’t think some cat burglar broke in here, stole that drawing and killed Margo Walsh.”

  I nodded. It was just so far-fetched, but I couldn’t help wishing things really were that simple.

  10

  Owen went to sit by the back door about five minutes before Maggie was due to drive out to Roma’s with me. “She’ll be here soon,” I said. He shot a backward glance in my direction as if to say, “I know that.”

  And he did. I had no idea how he knew when Maggie was going to show up or when Rebecca was about to knock on the back door with treats or even when Marcus was going to stop by unexpectedly. He just did. It was just one of the many things about the cats that I’d stopped trying to find an explanation for.

  “Hey, Fuzz Face,” Maggie said when she caught sight of Owen.

  He looked up at her, adoration written all over his furry gray-and-white face. I pulled on my hoodie while the two of them “talked.”

  Finally, Maggie looked at me. “Hi, Kath, where’s the bench?” she said. We were taking a long, low bench that I’d painted and Mags had made a pillow for out to Roma as surprise. Maggie had surreptitiously measured the space and we wer
e fairly confident that it would fit under the window at the end of the upstairs hallway. Roma had found a similar bench in an antiques store in Red Wing but had balked at the price. Maggie and I had found this one at a flea market a few weeks ago, painted a bilious pea soup green. Marcus had tightened one wobbly leg and Hercules had “helped” as I sanded away the old paint—from a distance, of course.

  “It’s in the basement,” I said. “It’s kind of awkward for one person to bring up the stairs alone and I forgot to ask Marcus to help me when he was here.”

  She lifted her right arm and made a muscle. “We can do it,” she said. “We don’t need any boys.”

  Owen gave a sharp meow.

  Maggie smiled down at him. “I didn’t mean you,” she said.

  He went over to the basement door and pushed it open with a paw, then looked expectantly at Maggie.

  “Thank you, Owen,” she said.

  With Owen supervising, we got the bench up the basement stairs. Hercules came to watch as we carefully wrapped it in an old blanket, sniffing and poking the padding with a paw. Once the bench was set in the bed of the truck and Maggie had given both cats a couple of sardine crackers to thank them for their assistance, we headed out to Wisteria Hill.

  I backed the truck up to the side steps of the house. Roma had come out onto the verandah when she’d heard the truck. “What is this?” she asked as Maggie and I got out.

  “We brought you a little housewarming gift,” I said.

  Roma looked from Maggie to me. “I should say you shouldn’t have, but I’m really curious about what it is.” She cocked her head to one side and studied the blanket-wrapped shape. “It looks a little small to be another Eddie.”

  Eddie Sweeney, aka Crazy Eddie Sweeney, was a star player for the NHL’s Minnesota Wild and was Roma’s significant other. Mags had made a life-size Eddie for a Winterfest display a couple of years ago. Faux Eddie had led to a lot of rumors swirling around town about Roma and the real Eddie, and eventually to the two of them meeting. Real Eddie had bought Faux Eddie as a gift for Roma.

  I climbed into the truck bed and Maggie and I got the bench off it and up onto the verandah. I unfastened the bungee cords that were holding the blanket in place and Maggie pulled it away.