Cat Trick (2 page)

Marcus laughed, too. He had a great laugh. Maggie, who was my closest friend in town,
had been trying to get Marcus and me together for the past year. She loved that we
were “dating”—her word, not mine. I wasn’t sure what we were doing. About a week after
the library’s centennial celebration, Marcus had made me dinner and let me prowl through
his extensive book collection. Then he’d been gone on a computer forensics course
for most of the summer.

I put another piece of mozzarella on top of a cracker and took a bite. That got Owen’s
attention. He shot me an inquiring look. “This is mine,” I said. He wrinkled his nose
and bent over his bowl again. I turned back to Marcus. “Burtis and a couple of his
sons were starting to put up the tents down on the Riverwalk when I left the library.”

“Are you going to the food tasting?” he asked, leaning sideways a little so he could
see what Owen was doing.

I nodded. “I think so.” I was about to ask if he’d like to go with me when Marcus
knocked a cheese-topped cracker onto the floor and made a face. Owen’s head came up
again. The cat eyed the piece of cheese and then narrowed his gaze questioningly at
Marcus.

“Okay if I let him have that?” Marcus asked. “It’s already on the floor.” He reached
for my empty glass.

“Go ahead,” I said, propping my feet on the blue vinyl seat of the chrome chair at
the end of the table. “Although you do need to work on your whoops-I-knocked-the-cheese-on-the-floor
routine.”

He turned to look at me, lemonade pitcher in one hand. He looked guilty. Owen, waiting
at my feet, was all wide-eyed innocence. He could give his coconspirator lessons.
“Are you saying I dropped that cracker on purpose?”

“Are you saying you didn’t?” I countered, struggling to keep the corners of my lips
from twitching.

“Where’s your evidence?”

The cat had scooted under the table while we were talking, grabbed the bit of mozzarella
and retreated back to my side.

“Owen’s eating it, Detective,” I said.

Marcus held out both hands, palms up. “Sorry. Without the evidence you don’t have
a case.”

I shook a warning finger at him. “If Roma gets after me about his cholesterol levels,
I’m sending her to you.”

His smile got wider, and he refilled my glass, his fingers brushing mine for a moment
as he handed it to me.

Owen finished eating, took a couple of passes at his face with a paw and looked around.
I knew what he really wanted to do was nose all over Marcus’s house. I patted my legs.
“C’mon up.” He started washing his tail instead. “Owen,” I said, a little more insistently.

“Kathleen, there’s nothing he can hurt in this house,” Marcus said, threading his
fingers around his own glass. “Let him look around if he wants to.”

“He sheds,” I warned.

He ruffled his hair with one hand. “So do I.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “I’m serious.”

“Sadly, so am I,” he said with a grin. “Let him go.”

Owen’s golden eyes were fixed expectantly on me. “Stay out of trouble, and stay off
the furniture,” I told him sternly, shaking a finger for emphasis, “and come when
I call you.” I got a low
murp
for an answer, which might have meant he would. Or might have meant he wouldn’t.

Marcus and I sat at the table for maybe another half an hour, talking about our respective
jobs and what was going on around town. It reminded me of the first time we’d sat
across a table from each other. I’d discovered the body of conductor Gregor Easton
at the Stratton Theater the summer before this past one. Marcus was the investigating
officer on the case. We’d gotten off on the wrong foot when he raised the possibility
that maybe I’d been at the theater to meet the conductor—who was older than my father—for
a romantic rendezvous. I’d taken offense at what he’d been suggesting, and he’d taken
offense at what he saw as me poking around in his case.

Gregor Easton’s murder wasn’t the first case of Marcus’s that we’d butted heads on,
but in the past few months we’d been trying not to do that. It helped that there hadn’t
been a major crime in Mayville Heights in a while.

I stretched my arms up over my head. I’d been stuck behind my desk at the library
all day. “I should collect Owen and head home,” I said.

“Have supper with me,” Marcus said. Conversations with him sometimes veered off in
unexpected directions. “We could go down to Eric’s Place—that is, if you don’t have
plans.”

“I don’t,” I said. “But I have to take Owen home first, assuming he hasn’t decided
he’s going to live with you now.” I got to my feet and called the cat. After a minute,
he sauntered back into the kitchen. His fur was rumpled and there was a dust ball
stuck to his tail. I picked him up and he licked the side of my face, clearly pleased
with the way his visit had turned out.

“Thank Marcus for his hospitality,” I said. Owen meowed his appreciation.

Marcus nodded at the cat. “You’re welcome.” To me he said, “I’ll follow you.”

I grabbed my purse from the back of my chair and carried Owen out. I didn’t completely
trust him to stay where I could see him, so to speak.

Once we were headed along the road toward home, I glanced over at him on the passenger
seat. He was looking out the windshield.

“So did you have a good time?”

“Merow,” he said. His gaze flicked to me and then he went back to staring straight
ahead.

“Think of this little visit like it was two visits,” I said darkly. “A first one and
a last one.” I didn’t get so much as a whisker twitch for the rest of the ride.

I pulled into the driveway at home, and when I turned off the truck, Owen climbed
onto my lap, put a paw on my shoulder and rubbed the side of his face against my cheek.
“You’re in big trouble,” I warned, trying to sound mad but not really getting there.
“Being cute is not going to save you.”

He licked my chin.

“That would be a whole lot more adorable if you didn’t have fish breath,” I told him.

I carried Owen inside and left him in the kitchen. Hercules was nowhere to be seen.
I ran upstairs, undid my ponytail, and ran a brush through my hair. I was still growing
out my hair—with help from Rebecca, who used to be a hairdresser. I had layers with
side-swept bangs, but I could finally pull it back off my face when I wanted to.

Owen was sitting by the refrigerator when I came down. “Nice try,” I said. “You’ve
already eaten. More than once.” I made sure I could see him as I closed and locked
the door behind me.

Marcus was waiting in the driveway. I climbed into the passenger side of his SUV.

“Is Owen okay?” he asked as he backed onto the street.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “He had sardines in hot sauce, a hunk of mozzarella cheese,
and he got to poke his furry little nose into who knows what at your house. It was
just about the perfect cat outing.” I shifted sideways in my seat a little so I could
watch him drive.

We started down Mountain Road, and Marcus glanced over at me. “So have you decided
what you’re going to do?” he said.

I didn’t have to ask, “About what?” I knew he meant had I decided if I was going to
accept the offer Everett Henderson had made to me on behalf of the library board and
stay in Mayville Heights, or go back to Boston when my contract expired in about six
months. I had until the end of the month to give the board my answer. I fiddled with
the strap of my purse to buy a little time. “I’m not sure,” I said finally.

His eyes stayed focused on the road ahead.

“I didn’t think I’d miss my family so much.” I cleared my throat. “One of the reasons
I came here was to get some breathing room.”

Marcus nodded without speaking.

“My mother and father, and Sara and Ethan, they sometimes tend to suck all the air
out of the room.”

My parents were both actors. My sister, Sara, was an aspiring filmmaker. Her twin,
Ethan, was a musician. They were all dramatic people. I’d always been the practical,
responsible one in the family. Moving to Mayville Heights to supervise the refurbishment
of the library had been the first impulsive thing I’d done in my life.

“When I went back to Boston to see everyone last month . . .” I let the end of the
sentence trail away.

“It made the decision more complicated,” Marcus finished.

“It did.”

It had felt so good to be in the middle of my crazy, infuriating family again; to
watch my mother and father rehearse, to see Ethan and his band play to an enthusiastic
crowd in a little club in downtown Boston, and to play assistant to Sara as she worked
out the details for a music video she was shooting for the group. But I couldn’t imagine
saying good-bye to Maggie and Roma and Rebecca. And Marcus. I couldn’t see Owen and
Hercules living in an apartment in Boston. But I couldn’t leave them behind, either.

Marcus came to a stop at the bottom of the hill and waited for a couple of cars to
go by. “I’d miss you,” he said lightly, looking over at me as he made a right turn
toward the diner.

“Really?” I said, giving him my Mr.-Spock-from-
Star-Trek
raised eyebrow.

He nodded. “Who would bring me coffee when I’m working on a case?”

“And who would you tell to stay out of your case?”

“That too,” he said, scanning the street for somewhere to park.

A red pickup pulled out of a spot in front of the bookstore, and Marcus expertly backed
into the space. He turned to me as he pulled the key out of the ignition. “You should
do what makes you happy,” he said. “But I really would miss you.”

I didn’t know what to say. Marcus was already getting out of the SUV, so I did the
same.

Eric’s Place was about half-f, mostly of people I recognized, but a few tourists,
too. Claire, my favorite waitress, showed us to a table by the window. Eric raised
a hand in hello from behind the counter. His wife, Susan, worked at the library with
me. They had twin boys, almost five, with genius level IQs. Susan’s stories about
their latest schemes always made me laugh. She claimed they were either going to become
criminal masterminds or the first president/vice president twins.

Claire’s eyes flicked over to Marcus as she handed me a menu, and she gave me a knowing
smile. I knew that the two of us having dinner together would be all over town in
no time. The Mayville Heights gossip grapevine could spread information faster than
a fiber-optic Internet connection.

After we’d both ordered and Claire had headed back to the kitchen, I leaned sideways
to look out the window.

“You won’t be able to see the tents from here, but we can walk down after we eat,”
Marcus said.

I felt my cheeks get warm as I straightened in my chair. “I’m sorry,” I said, realizing
I’d been caught out with my attention away from my dinner companion. “That was rude.”

He smiled. “No, it wasn’t. And I’d like to see what’s going on myself.”

I put my napkin in my lap. “I was talking to Maggie when Burtis arrived. He started
unloading the truck, and it made me think of one of those little cars at the circus
that some implausible number of clowns gets out of. There was so much stuff. It looked
as though he were going to set up something big enough to hold a circus.”

“You think it’ll work?”

“You mean the tents or the food tasting?” I asked.

“The food tasting,” Marcus said, shifting in his chair so he could stretch out his
jeans-clad legs. “I know Burtis will make the tents work. He’s very . . . resourceful.”

“That he is,” I said with a grin. Among other things, Burtis Chapman was allegedly
the town bootlegger. Allegedly, because it wasn’t something he admitted to and he’d
never been caught. “I don’t know about the whole food tasting thing. I like the idea,
but it’s turned out to be a lot of work. And Maggie says Mike Glazer is”—I struggled
for a moment to come up with the appropriate words—“challenging to work with.”

“Challenging?” Marcus raised his eyebrows.

“Actually, she called him a festering boil. I was paraphrasing.”

He was nodding like he agreed. “I probably wouldn’t have called Glazer a festering
boil,” he said, “but from what I’ve heard, he has been challenging to work with.”

Mike Glazer was a partner in Legacy Tours, a company out of Chicago that put together
small, exclusive travel packages for its upscale clients. Several businesspeople in
Mayville Heights were trying to entice Legacy to base a package around the town; the
foliage was gorgeous in Minnesota in the fall, we had a thriving artists’ community
here—thanks to Maggie—and the food was terrific.

Mike had grown up in Mayville Heights, then moved away and eventually gone to law
school. He hadn’t been back in years, according to Maggie. He was in town for a few
days now, listening to the pitch for the tour. Part of that pitch was a food tasting
and small art show.

I was about to ask Marcus what he’d heard about the man when Claire came back with
our food. We’d both ordered the same thing—Mediterranean fish stew—something Eric
had just added to the café’s menu. Claire set the steaming bowls in front of us and
placed a basket of corn bread in the middle of the table. I breathed in the scent
of tomatoes and onions and picked up my spoon.

I was down to the last spoonful of fragrant broth when Claire came back to the table.
“Dessert?” she asked. “There’s chocolate pudding cake in the kitchen.”

“None for me,” I said, wondering if there was a polite way to get the last bits of
corn bread and cheese from the bottom of my bowl.

“I’ll try some, please,” Marcus said.

Claire smiled at him. “I’ll be right back.”

When she set the heavy stoneware bowl in front of Marcus, the scent of warm chocolate
reached across the table like a finger beckoning me to lean over for a taste. He picked
up the spoon and held it out to me without saying a word, but a smile pulled at his
mouth and the corners of his eyes.

I thought about just shaking my head. After all, it was his dessert, not mine. I thought
about signaling to Claire for a dish of my own. I could see from the corner of my
eye that she was watching us, even as she seemed to be giving directions to a tall
man in jeans and a black and red jacket whom I remembered talking to earlier at the
library. But I had a feeling from the smile that Marcus had been unable to stifle
that sharing dessert had been his plan all along. So I smiled back at him and took
the spoon. The man in the plaid jacket nodded at me as he passed us on his way out.
“It’s delicious,” he said, gesturing at the bowl.