Sleight of Paw (7 page)

“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 thought 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.

I leaned back against the desk and stretched my legs in front of me, crossing one foot over the other. “Is there anything else?”

He smiled, almost. “I can’t think of anything else. Thank you.” He touched his pocket. “And thank you for calling me when you found the piece of glass.”

I gave him a small smile. “You’re welcome,” I said.

He started for the door and then stopped and turned back to me. “Any chance you’d be available to help me out at Wisteria Hill tomorrow morning?”

There was still a colony of feral cats living out at the old Henderson estate, Wisteria Hill. Roma had a group of volunteers taking care of them. Marcus was one. So was I.

I ran through what I had planned for Friday morning: laundry, housecleaning—nothing that couldn’t be put off. And I have a soft spot for Wisteria Hill. It’s where I found Owen and Hercules, or to be more exact, where they’d found me.

I nodded. “I can help you.”

He smiled for real then. “Thanks. I’ll pick you up about eight, if that’s okay.”

I still found it disconcerting, the way he could switch from being coolly professional to almost friendly. “It is,” I said.

“I’ll call you if something changes.”

“You mean if you find the person who hit Agatha.”

He didn’t even blink. “You think someone hit Mrs. Shepherd?” he said, standing there so unconcerned, feet apart with his hands in his pockets.

“I think a car or truck hit her, yes.” I pointed at his pocket. “The broken glass, the blood soaked into her coat, tire tracks in the alley. She didn’t have a stroke.” I straightened and faced him head-on, almost challenging him to tell me I was wrong.

He looked at me for a long, silent moment. “You’re very observant, Kathleen,” he said finally.

I waited for something else, some admission that I was right, but all he did was pull on his gloves.

“Have a nice day, Kathleen,” he said. This time he made it all the way to the door before he turned around.

I was already reaching for my briefcase.

“Kathleen.”

I turned.

“Thanks for the coffee.”

He was gone before I could say “You’re welcome.”

I took my laptop and the file about the reference books I wanted to order out of my briefcase and set the bag next to my boots, under the coatrack. Then I walked down to the front desk, where Abigail was sorting the books from the book drop, peering through her rimless reading glasses.

“I let Detective Gordon in. Was that all right?” she said.

“Yes, it was.”

“He’s kind of cute in a chiseled-jaw, broad-shouldered, Dudley Do-Right kind of way,” Abigail said, a hint of a smile making her lips twitch.

“Don’t you start, too,” I said. “I’m not interested in him. He’s not my type.”

She held up one hand. “Okay, whatever you say,” she said in a tone that meant she didn’t quite believe me. “So, what was Detective Do-Right here for?”

“Do you know Agatha Shepherd?” I asked.

“Not really. I know who she is.” She looked up, her face serious. “Something happened to her?”

I nodded. “She’s dead. Ruby found her body. You know the alley that turns and runs behind Eric’s?”

She nodded.

“Ruby was cutting through to meet Maggie and me at the café.”

“Poor Ruby,” Abigail whispered. “Wasn’t Agatha in a rehabilitation hospital? She’s only been home for, what, maybe a week?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t seem fair. Was it another stroke?”

I flashed back to the dark stain of blood soaked into the plaid mohair coat. “I . . . I don’t know,” I said. “Detective Gordon didn’t say.”

“She was a good principal,” Abigail said. “She helped a lot of kids.” She glanced down the desk and made a face. “Kathleen, I’m sorry I forgot to tell you that Susan called. She won’t be in until after lunch.”

“Are the twins sick?” I asked. I remembered that Eric hadn’t been at the café. It wasn’t like either of them to miss work.

“She didn’t say, but I’m guessing that was probably it. She sounded pretty frazzled.”

“And Eric wasn’t at the café this morning. I think Claire said he broke a tooth.”

Abigail winced in sympathy. “I can hold down the fort for a while. Kate will be here soon.” Kate was our work-study student from the high school.

“You have story time.” As well as working part-time at the library, Abigail was also a children’s author. She often read some of her own stories to the kids. I never quite knew what was going to happen at story time—one morning I’d come in to find all the children wearing foil hats with pom-pom antennae—and I liked that.

I glanced at my watch. “I’ll try Mary.”

“Okay,” Abigail said as she went back to checking in books.

I went back up to my office and called Mary at home.

“I can be there in about a half hour,” she said. “Only thing you’re taking me from is a heap of laundry, and it won’t miss me.”

I thanked her, hung up and went back down to tell Abigail that Mary was on her way.

It was nine o’clock. Abigail had turned on the rest of the library lights, and I unlocked the front doors. I started going down a mental list of what needed to be done that morning.

“I’ll get the rest of the books from the book drop,” Abigail said. “Coffee’s ready. Strong, the way you like it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve had only one cup this morning.”

“Should we unleash you on an unsuspecting world when you’re down at least two cups?” she asked, struggling to keep a straight face.

I looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. “No,” I said. We both laughed.

Abigail’s face grew serious again. “Kathleen, I didn’t ask you. Is Ruby all right?”

“She was a little shaky,” I said. “She’s working in the store this morning and she decided she still wanted to do it. Maggie went with her.”

“I’m glad she’s okay.”

I thought about Ruby standing there, hunched against the cold at the mouth of the alley, trembling with Maggie’s arm around her. “So am I,” I said.

Abigail brushed off the cover of a big coffee-table book about the Sahara. “It just doesn’t seem fair,” she said again. “I can’t believe Agatha’s dead.”

There was a crash behind me. I jumped and swung around.

Harrison Taylor was standing there, his face ashen, his cane on the floor beside him.

“H
arry, are you all right?”I said.

It took a second for him to focus on me. “Oh, yes . . . I���m—I’m getting clumsy in my old age.” He started to reach for his cane, but I bent down and picked it up for him.

“Thank you, my dear,” he said. His color still wasn’t good, I noticed as he took the carved, black walking stick from me. He ran a hand over his chin, twisted finger joints pulling at the skin on his hand, which seemed as thin as tissue paper.