The Cats Came Back

by Sofie Kelly

  “Emme and her professor boyfriend broke up. Emme started having second thoughts about going back to school.” I groaned. “Why is that such a big deal? Why did it matter whether or not Emme Finley went to school?”

  I knew very little about Miranda other than what Ruby had told me. Her mother and father were both dead. She had a stepfather and two stepbrothers whom she wasn’t close to. She and Emme had been friends since elementary school, and the two of them were as close as sisters.

  “Was that it?” I asked Hercules. “Was Miranda afraid of losing her best friend? Was that why she tried to derail Emme’s plans?”

  I pulled a hand back through my hair. That just didn’t fit with the woman I’d talked to. Miranda had pretended to be Emme. That I was certain about. Had that masquerade gotten her killed? I wasn’t sure that made sense, either.

  “If Miranda was trying to derail Emme’s plans, the only person who had a motive to kill her was Emme herself,” I said out loud.

  Hercules cocked his head to one side and seemed to consider my words.

  “Emme had an alibi.” I remembered Nora saying they’d gone home at four thirty and stayed in all evening.

  I sighed and set the computer on the floor beside me. Hercules immediately climbed onto my lap and nuzzled my chin. “This isn’t working,” I said as I stroked his fur. “I don’t know what to do next. I wish the answer would just fall from the sky somehow.”

  He yawned and so did I. “It’s getting late and we’re both tired,” I said. “And as Scarlett O’Hara said, ‘Tomorrow is another day.’”

  * * *

  An answer didn’t fall from the sky, but some help did come in the form of Emme herself, who walked into the library just before lunch on Monday.

  “Hi, Kathleen,” she said. “Do you have a minute?”

  I glanced behind me at the checkout desk. “I’m fine,” Susan said. “Abigail is in the stacks if I need her.”

  I led Emme over to the far end of our computer room. “I wanted to tell you that Derrick and I are back in Mayville Heights and I’m staying here until the person who killed Miranda is found. I’m not running away and hiding anymore. Miranda deserves better.” There was a determined look in her hazel eyes and a new confidence in her stance.

  “You were allowed to take some time to grieve,” I said carefully. “You and Miranda were close.” Should I tell her I believed it had been Miranda posing as her in those photos with Derrick? No, I decided. Not until I could tell her why Miranda had done it.

  She smiled. “Thank you for saying that. You’re right. Miranda and I were as close as sisters. Closer in a lot of ways than I am to Nora, because there are so many years between us.”

  I thought about Ethan and Sara. There were a lot of years between us as well, but we’d always been close. I was lucky, I realized.

  “I just wanted to ask if you’ve been able to come up with anything,” Emme continued.

  I shook my head and felt my stomach do a flip-flop. “I’m sorry. I don’t have anything to tell you yet.” It was as close to the truth as I could get.

  She put a hand on my arm. “Please don’t give up, Kathleen,” she said. “Both Ruby and Ami say you’re good at this kind of thing. And I think people are more likely to talk to you than they are to the police. If someone is talking to you, it’s just a conversation. With the police even the most innocent questions feel like an interrogation. Trust me.”

  I didn’t have to take her word for it. I remembered my first encounter with Marcus, which oddly enough had happened because of a death connected to the music festival. His questions had felt like an interrogation because they were. When he was working on a case every conversation was an interrogation.

  I sighed softly. If I was going to destroy Emme’s beliefs about her best friend, I needed to at least be able to explain Miranda’s actions. “I won’t give up,” I said, “but I’m not making any promises.”

  “That’s enough for me.” She played with the elephant charm she was wearing on a silver chain around her neck.

  I tried to recall what Ruby had told me about Miranda’s family. “Miranda’s mother is dead,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Emme said. “Our moms were close, but I think we would have been friends anyway. Miranda never knew her father. He was killed in a car accident just before she was born. Her mother remarried, and then she died when we were freshmen in high school. I guess maybe I kind of understood what she was going through. Our mother—mine and Nora’s—died of cancer when I was eight. The difference was I had Nora, and I still had my dad then. He was wonderful. Miranda was left with her stepfather and two stepbrothers. It wasn’t Cinderella, but it was close for a while—except there was no prince or fairy godmother to save her.” She continued to finger the tiny silver elephant.

  “Nora and I had always planned to move to Chicago when I graduated whether or not I went to college. There was no way I was going to leave Miranda behind. So two days after graduation we packed everything we could into the car and we left and we never looked back.”

  “How did Miranda end up working as your assistant?” I asked.

  “It was just a temporary thing. She lost her job about six months ago. But she had a job in the registrar’s office at the University of Chicago starting in September, and she was planning on taking courses, too. She wanted to eventually become an accountant.” She stopped, swallowed and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice husky with emotion. “Sometimes it just hits me that I’m never going to see her again.”

  Miranda didn’t sound like someone who would have been trying to derail her best friend’s plans. Was I wrong? Was it someone else impersonating Emme? No. Miranda was the only person who made sense. “What was her relationship like with her stepfather and stepbrothers?”

  She shrugged. “Her stepfather pretty much just ignored Miranda. Her stepbrothers were always mooching off her. She’d save a few hundred dollars, and then one of them would show up and it would be gone. Neither one of them ever seemed to be able to hold a job for very long. Brent—he’s the older one—always had some get-rich-quick plan. Not that any of them ever worked out.”

  “Emme, do you have a photo of Miranda I could have?” I said. “I’ve been thinking that maybe I’d try to reconstruct her last few hours.” Actually, it had just occurred to me, but it was still a good idea.

  She nodded. “I have lots of them.” She pulled out her phone and began scrolling through her photos. She stopped on one image and smiled. “That’s us at graduation,” she said, turning the phone so I could see. I leaned in for a closer look.

  She and Miranda in their blue-and-gold caps and gowns looked so young and so happy, arms around each other’s shoulders. A younger Nora, without glasses and with hair that was lighter and longer, stood next to them.

  “You both look happy,” I said.

  She nodded. “We were.” She looked at the photo again. “Nora looks so young.” She glanced up at me. “She’s always been so responsible. Me going back to school meant that Nora would get a chance to have her own life.”

  “You don’t look a lot alike,” I said.

  “Nora looks like our dad. She has his hair and his long fingers—piano-player fingers, she always said. I take after Mom. We both get our hazel eyes from her.” She smiled. “I wish I had a photo of him to show you. He was the best dad.”

  She started scrolling through the pictures again. “Here’s one of Miranda from a couple of months ago.” She shook her head. “No, that’s no good.”

  I glanced over her shoulder. The photo looked fine to me. It had been taken outside. Miranda was sitting on a set of steps that looked to be part of a gazebo.

  “That’s from before she dyed her hair.”

  I took a better look at the image. Miranda’s hair was a deep, coppery red. “Her hair was really pretty,” I said.


  Emme nodded. “I thought so, too, but one day she just showed up with it dark brown. She said she was tired of being called ‘Red’ and she just wanted a change.” A smile spread across her face. “We really looked alike after that.”

  Was that the reason Miranda changed her hair? So she’d look even more like Emme?

  Emme continued to go through the pictures. She suddenly stopped and went back several images. “I forgot I even had this,” she said, more to herself than me. She shook her head; getting rid of an old memory, maybe? Again she turned the phone so I could see the screen. “Miranda’s brothers. Brent and Nick. There was a barbecue after graduation at the school. They came. Probably for the free food, not for Miranda. I’d forgotten I’d taken the picture or that I’d transferred it to this phone.”

  She said something else but the words didn’t register. All my focus was on the screen in front of me. “I saw him,” I said slowly.

  Emme frowned. “What do you mean you saw him? Saw who?”

  “Him.” I tapped the phone screen with one finger, indicating the taller of the two young men in the photo. He was the obnoxious customer Eric had kicked out of the diner.

  “That’s Brent,” she said. “Brent Pearson.”

  “He’s still here,” I said. “At least, he was a few days ago.”

  She looked at me wide-eyed. “Why on earth would Miranda’s stepbrother be here in Mayville Heights?” she asked.

  That’s what I wanted to know.

  chapter 15

  Emme found a more recent photo of Miranda and sent it to my phone. She was going to check in with Marcus, and I asked her to tell him about Miranda’s stepbrother. She promised she would.

  Roma’s daughter, Olivia, arrived late Monday afternoon. Maggie had invited Roma, her mom, Olivia and Sydney to join us for breakfast at Eric’s Tuesday morning. I was the last to arrive. Nora Finley was alone at a table by the far wall. She smiled a hello at me from across the room.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” I said as I got to the table where Maggie and the others were sitting. “Owen managed to upend his water twice, the second time on Hercules’s foot.”

  Maggie, who was stirring her tea, made a face. “There’s no way that was good.”

  I nodded. “Let’s just say ‘mad as a wet cat’ is a very accurate saying.” I smiled across the table. “Hi, Olivia,” I said. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Hello, Kathleen,” she said. I noticed two things at once. First of all, her wavy hair, the same dark chocolate-brown shade as her mother’s, had been cut into a collarbone-grazing bob. Second, and more important, she wasn’t happy. The smile she gave me was forced, and when she wasn’t faking a smile there were tight lines pulling at the corners of her mouth and eyes.

  I glanced at Roma, noting the tension in her shoulders. She was turning the large silver ring she wore on the index finger of her right hand around and around in circles. Something was wrong.

  “Kathleen, can I come see Owen and Hercules?” Sydney asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “They’d love to see you.” The boys had first met Sydney on shot day at Roma’s clinic. She’d rewarded their so-called “good” behavior with their favorite fish crackers, and they’d adored her on sight.

  “Can I bring them a treat? Roma said I have to ask first.”

  I smiled at her. “Yes, you can bring them a treat as long as it’s not pizza. Roma gets annoyed if I let them have pizza.”

  “One tiny bite of pepperoni isn’t going to hurt them,” Maggie said, peering into the little stainless-steel teapot in front of her.

  “First of all, it’s never just one bite,” Roma said, gesturing at Mags with her spoon. “And second, Owen and Hercules are cats. Cats, Maggie. Not people. Cats eat cat food. And pizza is not cat food.” She and Maggie had had this conversation before. Although I suspected that given their other “abilities,” Owen’s and Hercules’s digestive systems weren’t like most cats’, I wasn’t about to share that supposition with Roma—or anyone else, for that matter.

  “See why it’s a good idea to ask?” I stage-whispered across the table to Syd.

  She grinned at me.

  Nic arrived then with coffee for me. “Do you need a menu, Kathleen?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No thanks. I know what I’d like.”

  We ordered, and when Nic went back to the kitchen Maggie clinked the side of her cup with her fork. “Okay, there are a few details that need to be taken care of.”

  I stifled a smile. Maggie could be almost obsessive when it came to taking care of all the details involved in displaying her artwork. She was turning out to be just as obsessed when it came to her role as maid of honor. She turned to me. “Kath, do you have your shoes?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I picked them up yesterday.” The store had been out of my size and they’d had to be specially ordered and then were back-ordered. “And yes, they fit just fine.”

  “Perfect,” she said.

  “Sydney, you need to try your dress on.” The child had gone through a growth spurt, and her dress had had to be lengthened. Luckily, Ella King was a whiz with a needle and thread.

  “We’re going out to Ella’s right after breakfast,” Pearl said, exchanging smiles across the table with Sydney.

  Maggie turned her attention to Olivia. “Olivia, you need to look at your dress right away and try it on for Ella so she can make any adjustments it might need.”

  “I don’t think I can do that today,” Olivia said.

  Maggie sent me a look across the table. I remembered her asking me at the shower if Olivia was okay with Roma getting married.

  “Sweetie, the wedding is less than a week away,” Pearl said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Olivia shrugged. “I can’t help that. It’s what happens when people get married in a big rush.” The look she gave her mother across the table was almost defiant. This was not the Olivia I’d met before.

  “You can wear whatever you want,” Roma said. “That’s not a problem.”

  “But we won’t match,” Sydney said, giving Roma a stricken look. “We have to match. It won’t look right.”

  “You’ll match Kathleen and Maggie,” she said.

  Sydney’s dress was the same pale green color as the dresses Maggie and I were wearing. Like ours, her dress was sleeveless and fastened at the waist with a wide satiny ribbon. But where our dresses were floor length, hers had a fuller ballerina-length skirt. Olivia was supposed to be wearing a similar dress to mine and Maggie’s only with a slightly lower neck and thin spaghetti straps.

  “We’re all bridesmaids. We’re all supposed to match,” Sydney said stubbornly.

  “I don’t have to be a bridesmaid,” Olivia said. She sounded more like a petulant child than Sydney did.

  Sydney bit her lower lip. She turned to Olivia. “I won’t have anyone to walk with if you’re not a bridesmaid.”

  “You can walk with Kathleen and me,” Maggie offered.

  “Or you could go first instead of me,” I said.

  The child turned to me. “Really?”

  I nodded. “I’m a little nervous about walking in first. Have you seen my shoes?” I held up my right thumb and index finger about three inches apart. “I’m a little wobbly on those heels.”

  Maggie grinned. She began to walk two fingers across the table with very shaky steps. Sydney laughed.

  I made a face at Maggie and then I looked at Syd. “See? If you go first and I fall off my shoes, everyone will be looking at you and no one will notice.”

  Maggie leaned sideways. “Yes,” she said. “So please, will you go first?”

  Syd nodded. “Okay, I’ll do it,” she said with a happy smile.

  “Thank you,” Roma mouthed at me.

  “Sweetie, could you show me where the ladies’ room is?” Pearl asked. “It’s been a
while since I was here, and I’m not sure I remember.”

  “Sure,” Sydney said, sliding out of her chair. “They have the best hand dryer. When it blows it wrinkles up your skin and sends it moving right across your hand.”

  Pearl took her hand and they started for the washroom. “I’m not sure I like that,” I heard Pearl say. “I already have quite a lot of wrinkles.”

  As soon as they were out of earshot Roma turned her attention to her daughter. “You’re acting like a child.”

  “I think Sydney’s doing a pretty good job of that,” Olivia said.

  “No,” Roma said. “She’s acting like a ten-year-old who’s excited to be in a wedding. You’re acting like your underwear is stuck somewhere uncomfortable. It’s pretty clear you don’t want me to marry Eddie. Why?”

  “I don’t see what the rush is.” Instead of looking at her mother she looked out the window.

  “We’ve been engaged for a year. We’re not rushing.” Roma studied her daughter, eyes narrowed. “What’s the real problem, Ollie?” she asked.

  Olivia’s mouth moved but for a moment no words came out. Then she finally turned to her mother. “I don’t see why you have to get married at all. You’re not exactly a kid. And anyway, Eddie is way younger than you. You know it won’t work out.”

  “We’re getting married because we love each other.” Roma smiled then. “I know I’m not a kid and I know how much younger Eddie is.” She looked over at Maggie and me, and I put my hand on her arm and gave it a squeeze. “For a long time I wouldn’t say yes, because I was afraid things wouldn’t work out. I was wrong.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m marrying Eddie and I really want you to be there and to be happy for me.”

  Olivia pushed her chair back from the table. “I have to go,” she said. She was on her way out the door as Pearl and Sydney came back from the washroom.

  “Where did Olivia go?” Syd asked.

  “There was somewhere else she had to be,” Roma said.