Hooked on a Feline

by Sofie Kelly

  We could both see a potato moving in the basket.

  “Clearly those researchers weren’t working with any cats,” I said.

  Marcus stretched out his long legs and raked a hand through his hair. He was frustrated.

  “The Bishop case?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I have no suspects and almost no evidence. Mike Bishop died of a head injury, but no one in the area heard or saw anything and the man was universally well-liked.”

  “According to Rebecca, some people think the Finnamore family is cursed.” The potato was still moving, pushed I knew by a furry gray-and-white paw.

  “You think Rebecca really believes that?” Marcus asked.

  I pulled both feet up onto the seat of my chair and wrapped my arms around my legs. “No. And for the record, neither do I. As Rebecca put it, ‘The rain falls equally on sinner and saint and there were both in that family.’ The quote comes from the Bible, in case you were wondering.”

  “I don’t believe in things like jinxes or curses,” he said.

  I gave a snort of laughter. “This from the man who wouldn’t wash his hockey jersey during the playoffs last year.”

  He was already shaking his head. “That’s different. When I don’t wash my jersey, I’m connecting with the collective mindset of hockey fans all over the country. Our shared energy supports the team.”

  “More like a shared delusion, but who am I to argue?” I said. I rested my chin on one knee.

  “Something else I don’t believe in?” Marcus said. “Coincidences. The deaths of two people in the same family in just three months doesn’t feel right to me.”

  “It happens,” I said.

  I’d always felt a little sad about Leitha Anderson’s death. She had come to the library for a talk about the history of the area given by Mary. Previous lectures in the series had included two talks by Harrison and one by Everett. Mary and Leitha had had a very loud and very public argument after Mary’s talk. On the drive home, Leitha had suffered a heart attack, gone off the road and died before paramedics arrived.

  “Mike was murdered. Leitha was old and her death was an accident,” I said.

  Marcus looked away for a moment; then his eyes met mine again. “What if it wasn’t?”

  chapter 7

  I had no words. I just stared at him. “Are you serious?” I finally managed to say. “You really think there’s a connection between Mike’s death and his great-aunt’s? Leitha died in a car accident. Mike was murdered. I don’t see it.”

  “I’m not saying there is a connection,” Marcus said. “Right now all I’m doing is speculating, but I do know there is a lot of money in the Finnamore family trust.”

  “ ‘If money go before, all ways do lie open,’ ” I said softly.

  “Shakespeare.”

  I nodded. “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” I lifted my chin from my knee and stretched out my legs again. “So who benefited from their deaths?” It was a question Marcus often considered in a murder case.

  “As far as I can see, Jonas and Lachlan Quinn.”

  “You can eliminate Jonas, because he isn’t a biological Finnamore, so he didn’t benefit from either Mike’s or Leitha’s deaths because he can’t inherit anything involving the trust. And as for Lachlan, he’s seventeen. C’mon, you can’t really believe a teenager engineered Leitha’s death to look like an accident and did such a good job that up to now no one suspected anything and then on top of that he managed to kill Mike. Lachlan seems like a bright kid but I remember myself at that age and I wasn’t smart enough to pull that off. Were you?”

  Marcus leaned over and kissed the side of my face. “I couldn’t figure out how to get girls to notice me when I was seventeen. I wouldn’t have been capable of plotting to kill anyone.” He laughed; then his expression became serious again. “Just between the two of us, hypothetically, what do you think happened?”

  “Hypothetically, I keep coming back to the idea of some random thief who was surprised by Mike and panicked.”

  “But?” He raised an eyebrow. “There is a but, isn’t there?”

  I leaned my head against the back of the chair. “Again, hypothetically speaking, if the police, if you, had any evidence that led in that direction—any sign of a break-in, missing valuables, someone suspicious seen around Mike’s house or if there had been other break-ins in the neighborhood—you wouldn’t be looking for a connection to Leitha’s death.”

  He didn’t say anything, which in itself told me I was right.

  Hercules came across the lawn from the direction of Rebecca’s yard. He eyed the basket of potatoes and then jumped onto my lap, nuzzling my chin before murping a hello to Marcus.

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” I said as much to myself as to Marcus or the cat.

  “No,” Marcus agreed, “it isn’t.”

  * * *

  Harry arrived at the library about midmorning on Tuesday. I was reshelving some reference books and spotted him out the window. I set the last book on the shelf and walked over to the circulation desk. “I’m just going outside to talk to Harry for a minute,” I said to Susan, who was working the desk.

  She was sorting through a stack of children’s picture books, pulling an odd assortment of things that seemed to have been used as bookmarks from between the pages. There were a folded sticky note, a scrap of red yarn, a swizzle stick and three squares of toilet paper piled next to her right arm. She looked up at me, nudging her cat’s-eye glasses up her nose with one knuckle. “Take your time.” She dipped her head at the heap of would-be bookmarks. “People use the oddest things to mark their place.”

  “Yes, they do,” I agreed, struggling to keep a straight face since Susan herself was anchoring her topknot with a bamboo knife and fork.

  I walked across the parking lot and Harry got to his feet when he saw me approaching, brushing the dirt off his hands.

  “Good morning,” he said. “The old man told me next time I saw you to be sure to tell you that those tomatoes are the best so far.”

  “I’m glad he liked them. I’ll get some more out to him. I have more than I can use.” I looked over the flower bed. “The marigolds still look good.”

  “They should be fine until the first frost.” He adjusted the brim of his ball cap. “You didn’t come out here to talk about tomatoes and flowers, Kathleen.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said. “I need you to tell me about Mike. The real person. Don’t get me wrong. I liked him. But I know that people tend to make a person into a saint when they’re dead.”

  Harry smiled. “Mike definitely wasn’t a saint, but he was a good guy. In all the years I’ve known”—he stopped, took a breath and let it out and then continued—“knew Mike, I think I may have seen him lose his temper five or six times if that. He was just one of those people who could roll with whatever was happening. That was the real Mike.”

  “How did you all manage to practice for the show without the people around you finding out?”

  “I think a few people did guess, but they were just good at keeping the secret,” Harry said. “I’m pretty sure the old man figured it out, although he says he didn’t. Mike came over to the house every Thursday night for weeks so we could practice together because it was the only time we could make it work. Monday through Wednesday he worked later at the office and Friday night he was checking out new music somewhere in the area. Peggy works late on Thursdays, so dad was always around and you know he doesn’t miss a thing.”

  I smiled. “No, he doesn’t.” I also knew Harrison was very good at keeping his own counsel, to use one of his own expressions.

  “Eventually, we worked things out so the others could join in on Zoom. Mike set everything up. I did ask Larry a couple of computer questions, but I don’t think he figured it out.” He shrugged. “Then again, for all I know, maybe I’m selling him short. I can tell y
ou that Mike was never late, so I’m guessing someone in his office knew he was doing something even if they didn’t know what the something was, because they got him out on time every single Thursday. And we all spent a couple of Saturdays at Paul’s camp. It’s likely Paul’s wife, Sonja, knew or guessed what was going on.”

  He frowned. “Do you think someone had been watching Mike’s coming and goings and broke into the house when they thought he wouldn’t show up?”

  I played with my watch, twisting it around my arm. I wasn’t sure about anything. “I don’t know,” I said. “Right now anything is possible.”

  * * *

  Later that morning Johnny Rock came in to the library. I was standing in the doorway to our smaller meeting room talking to Patricia Queen, head of the quilters group that met each week in the library, when Susan came to find me. Patricia and I were talking about a fall workshop for beginning quilters. We’d already had one quilt show at the library, which had shown me there was lots of interest in the craft.

  “Kathleen, I’m sorry for interrupting,” Susan said. “Johnny Rock is here to see you and he says it’s important.”

  “That’s all right,” Patricia said before I had a chance to speak. “We covered everything I had on my list and I’ll e-mail you the notes on our meeting this afternoon.” Patricia was nothing if not organized.

  “Thank you,” I said. “If anything else comes to mind after I’ve read your notes, I’ll be in touch.”

  Patricia picked up her quilted tote bag, tucked the small notepad and pen she’d been using inside, nodded to both of us and strode purposefully though the stacks.

  Susan and I followed behind her, a little less briskly.

  “Kathleen, do you think Patricia would come to my house and teach the boys some organization skills?” Susan asked.

  Her boys, twins, were incredibly smart, genius-level-IQ smart. They were always coming up with some new project, which always seemed to take the entire house to put together.

  “You know, she probably would,” I said.

  Susan made a face. “Doing that seems kind of mean,” she said, “to Patricia.”

  “You know, if the three of them teamed up, between the boys’ creative thinking and Patricia’s organizing skills, they could take over the world.”

  She grimaced. “Did I say getting the three of them together would be mean? Make that scary. Very scary.”

  Johnny was waiting for me by the circulation desk. He gestured to the carved wooden sun over the front entrance with the words Let there be light. “You know, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit I never noticed those words before,” he said.

  “You’re not the only one, I promise. The same words are over the entrance to the very first Carnegie library in Dunfermline in Scotland.”

  Johnny looked around the large open space. “I’m glad the building was restored,” he said. “It would be a shame to lose such a big part of the town’s history.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  He turned his attention back to me. “Kathleen, could we talk somewhere a little more private?”

  “Of course.” I gestured toward the stairs to the second floor. “Come up to my office.”

  I led the way up and unlocked my office door. “How about a cup of coffee?” I asked.

  “Yes, please,” he said. “Black with one sugar would be great.”

  “Have a seat.” I indicated the two chairs in front of my desk. “I’ll be right back.”

  I went down to the staff room, got coffee for the two of us and went back to my office.

  “What did you need to talk to me about?” I asked after I’d set our mugs on my desk. Instead of sitting across the desk from Johnny, I had taken the other chair next to him.

  “You brought the library back to life,” he said. “And I don’t just mean with the restoration of the actual building. You’ve made the library a big part of the community, the way it used to be. The way it should be.”

  I took a sip of my coffee before I answered. “Thank you,” I said. “It took a lot of work from a lot of people to make it all happen. I can’t take all the credit. I shouldn’t.”

  “Mike talked a lot about how much help you gave him while he worked on his family history.”

  I smiled. “He was so caught up in learning more about the family, it was easy to get carried along with his enthusiasm. I enjoyed myself. He brought coffee and muffins for my staff twice. We all liked him.”

  Johnny handed me an envelope.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “Mike wasn’t one for showy remembrances, but I wanted . . . I need to do something in his memory.” He cleared his throat. “Harry said the library is fund-raising for new computers.” He indicated the envelope. “I hope that will help.”

  I lifted the flap and was stunned to see the amount of the check inside. It would take us past our fund-raising goal. I pressed my lips together and swallowed down the sudden press of tears. “Thank you. This is so incredibly generous. I promise to make sure everyone knows the new computers are in memory of Mike.”

  Johnny smiled. “Thank you. I think Mike would get a kick out of that. I’ll let the guys know and Mike’s family as well.” He got to his feet and I did the same, still holding tightly to that check. “You know, it’s going to be odd on Thursday nights not to be getting together with the guys online to make music. Those few hours feel as though they’ve left a gaping hole in my life.”

  “You gave everyone who was at the concert something we’re going to remember for the rest of our lives,” I said.

  I walked Johnny back downstairs, thanked him again and then stood in the entrance and watched him cross the parking lot to talk to Harry. I went back inside to find Susan stacking books on a cart. She looked up at me.

  “Johnny made a donation in memory of Mike, didn’t he?” she said

  I nodded. “Enough to put our new-computer fund over the top.”

  She grinned and did a little fist pump. “Do you remember that Saturday Mike was here and he fixed the computer monitor for that kid who was working on a paper for school? Last minute, of course.”

  I nodded. Mike had tried so hard not to swear because there were kids around. After the monitor was working again, he’d told me our computers were a bunch of boat anchors with a few colorful adjectives added. I pictured him standing by the circulation desk, just about where Susan was standing now, hands gesturing in the air.

  “You’re going to figure out who did this, right?” Susan asked.

  “That’s Marcus’s job,” I said.

  Susan nudged her glasses up her nose and brushed a stray strand of hair off her face. “I know,” she said. “And you’re going to figure out who did this, right?”

  I could still see Mike, in my mind, standing there telling me that the library needed to have computers from this century. I nodded. “Right,” I said.

  chapter 8

  I got home to find Hercules on the back step with a grackle feather under one paw and a triumphant look on his face.

  “Don’t tell me that you two are at it again?” I said.

  He looked down at the feather and then looked at me. “Merow,” he said.

  The cat and one particular grackle—or maybe it was several different birds for all I knew—had had some kind of war going on for quite some time. Basically neither wanted to share the backyard with the other. They had seemed to reach a détente earlier in the summer, but now it seemed the battle was on again.

  I had always had the feeling that the two of them liked their little skirmishes. If one took down the other, the fun would be over. I’d seen the grackle sweep low, just inches over the cat’s head, several different times. To me, it looked liked the same bird. I’d discovered that the average life span of a grackle was about seventeen years, so it wasn’t that unlikely that Hercules had been warring with t
he same bird from the beginning. This wasn’t the first time he had snagged one of the bird’s feathers. Last week the grackle had swiped two sardine crackers from the arm of one of the Adirondack chairs, just inches from Herc’s nose. Was this some kind of retaliation or had Hercules found the feather on the lawn and brought it home as a trophy

  I unlocked the porch door. “Leave that out here,” I said, indicating the feather.

  He wrinkled his nose at me.

  “The spoils of battle stay outside,” I said firmly.

  He looked at the feather, sighed and came inside.

  I changed for tai chi class and warmed up a bowl of noodles and veggies for supper. Hercules sulked around the kitchen. I found the little mechanical mouse Marcus had brought back for him after a recent trip. He’d gotten Owen a catnip frog, Ferdinand the Funky Frog, to be precise, sibling, via adoption, to Owen’s beloved Fred the Funky Chicken. Since Hercules didn’t get the attraction of catnip his gift was the mouse.

  I set the mouse going and put it on the floor. Hercules liked to watch it run randomly all over the kitchen and then whack it with a paw. Once he’d smacked the little toy so hard, it skidded across the floor all the way to the living room doorway.

  Owen wandered in for a drink, and when the tiny mouse suddenly veered in his direction, bushing against the end of his tail, he started with a loud meow. His paw hit the edge of the dish and flipped it into the air like someone doing a trick with a Frisbee. I sucked in a breath, picturing water everywhere and a wet, indignant cat, but luckily the bowl was empty and it landed right side up on the floor.

  “You’re fine,” I said. “No water. No harm done.”

  I spoke too soon.

  The mouse was still moving, veering to the right, toward Hercules, who slapped a paw on it and looked at us with triumph in his green eyes.