A Midwinter's Tail Page 3

  My foot was on the bottom riser of the porch stairs when I heard it. Exactly what the noise was, I wasn’t sure. All I could tell was that there was some kind of god-awful sound coming from my kitchen.

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  I knew it was stupid to go inside when I didn’t know what was in there, but Owen and Hercules were in the house. It sounded as though there was some kind of injured animal inside with them. I hesitated, and then I heard what I clearly knew was a yowl from Owen.

  Fumbling with my keys, I got the porch door unlocked and dropped my purse and briefcase on the bench under the side window. I grabbed the broom that I’d used that morning to clear a dusting of snow off the steps. I had no idea what was in my kitchen or how it had gotten into my house, but whatever was terrorizing my cats was about to meet the business end of that broom.

  I heard another yowl from Owen and I wrenched the kitchen door open and launched myself into the space, swinging the broom like a pirate’s cutlass.

  Detective Marcus Gordon turned from the stove, waving the wooden spoon in his hand at me. The radio was playing softly in the background. Marcus was singing along to Aerosmith. Not at all softly. And not at all remotely on key, either.

  “Hi,” I said, a little stunned.

  Owen was perched on one of my kitchen chairs, bobbing his gray tabby head along to Steven Tyler. The cat seemed to be joining in on the chorus, or maybe he was singing harmony. I wasn’t exactly sure. He glanced over at me, still brandishing my broom like a sword, and there was what seemed to me to be a self-satisfied gleam in his golden eyes. I knew what that was about.

  I looked at Marcus again. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. The ends of his hair were damp, which meant he’d probably been in the shower just a short time ago. My shower maybe? I thought about that for a moment and then I had to force myself to pay attention to what was happening in my kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. I could see that he was stirring something that smelled wonderful, but I had no idea why all six-feet-plus of handsome him was at my stove. Or why one of my new dish towels was clipped to the front of his T-shirt with a couple of clothespins.

  Marcus smiled. “Making supper.” He gestured at the table. “I hope it’s okay.”

  For the first time I noticed that the table was set for two—place mats, napkins and a fork and large spoon at each place. I’d given him my spare key so he could pick up the tablecloths I’d ironed the night before and deliver them to Maggie and Ruby at the Stratton this morning. There was no way I could lay them down in my truck and not get them wrinkled again.

  “Of course it’s okay,” I said. I pointed to the dish towel. “I like your apron.”

  He flushed. “I had a shower before I came over. I didn’t want to get sauce on my shirt.”

  He seemed to notice the broom then for the first time. “Were you planning on cleaning the kitchen?” he asked.

  “Um, no,” I said, realizing I didn’t really want to tell him I’d mistaken his singing for some animal attacking my cat. “I, uh, guess I don’t need this after all.” I leaned the broom against the wall by the door, then crossed the room and kissed him. I still felt a little bubble of happiness every time I did that. There had been a time I’d believed Marcus and I would never be a couple. There’d been a time I would have sworn that I didn’t want to be in a relationship with him. He’d made me crazy sometimes. He still made me crazy, but he also made me very, very happy.

  I dipped my head over the pot. “You made spaghetti sauce,” I said. “It smells great.”

  Owen meowed his agreement from his perch on the chair.

  Marcus gave the sauce another stir. “Actually, I thawed spaghetti sauce,” he said. “Hannah made a big batch before she left.”

  Hannah was Marcus’s younger sister. She was an actress and she’d been in town in September as part of the New Horizons Theatre Festival.

  “Thawing is good, too,” I said.

  Marcus leaned over to turn up the heat on a pot of simmering water. “I’m about to put the pasta on,” he said. “You should have time for a shower.”

  “All right,” I said. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?”

  He shook his head and a lock of his dark wavy hair fell onto his forehead. “Owen and I have it all under control.”

  The little tabby meowed enthusiastically at the sound of his name.

  There was a spot of something on Marcus’s chin. I licked my thumb, reached up and rubbed it away. For a moment I’d considered kissing it away, but I was pretty sure that would have led to a lot more kisses and I really did need to have a shower.

  Reluctantly, I pulled my gaze away from his gorgeous blue eyes. Owen was watching me, his gray head tipped to one side. I stopped to give him a scratch under his chin.

  “Cats do not eat spaghetti,” I whispered sternly.

  He made a face and shook his head. I knew that meant he was planning on wheedling at least a taste out of Marcus.

  There was no sign of Owen’s brother, Hercules, in the living room. Upstairs in my bedroom I noticed the closet door was open just a little.

  “You can come out now,” I said, peeling off my sweater.

  After a moment the closet door opened and a furry black-and-white face peered around the edge.

  “I think they’ve stopped singing for now,” I said.

  He scrunched up his face in an expression that looked a lot like a grimace. I bent down and scooped up the little tuxedo cat. He shifted in my arms, put a paw on my shoulder and looked at me with his green eyes. “Yes, I heard them,” I said. “I thought something had gotten in here and was torturing you two.”

  He dipped his head for a moment as if he was trying to tell me that it was torture for him.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. “You know that was payback from Owen, don’t you?”

  Hercules immediately turned and looked at the iPod dock on the table by the bed. The cat shared my love for Barry Manilow. Owen didn’t. Somewhere in his feline brain, singing Aerosmith along with Marcus—if you could call that noise singing—was his way of getting a little revenge for all the times he’d had to listen to Hercules and me do our version of “Copacabana.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m going to scrub the kitchen floor this weekend.”

  Herc’s black-and-white face snapped up and it seemed to me that I could see a calculating gleam in his green eyes. I often did the floors to Ultimate Manilow.

  I gave the cat a kiss on the top of his head and set him down on the floor. Then I grabbed my robe and headed for the shower. Five minutes later I was sitting on the edge of the bed again, rubbing my hair with a towel. Hercules was back in the closet. More than once I’d opened the door to find him just sitting on the floor, staring thoughtfully, it seemed to me, at the clothes hanging there.

  “I’ve already chosen what I’m going to wear,” I said.

  After a moment I heard a muffled meow from inside the closet, followed about thirty seconds later by what sounded like something falling over.

  “I picked the shoes, too,” I added.

  As I got up to get my comb, Hercules came out of the closet, a dust bunny stuck to his left ear. He swiped at it with a paw, shook his furry head and stalked away. Either he was insulted by my lack of interest in his kitty fashion skills or he’d caught a whiff of the spaghetti sauce.

  I pulled on jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and stuffed my bare feet into my slippers.

  “Perfect timing,” Marcus said as I stepped into the kitchen. He was just about to drain the pasta, with two pairs of cat eyes, one gold and one green, watching his every move.

  “What can I do?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Just sit.” He inclined his head toward the table.

  I pulled out my chair and sat down while he plated our spaghetti and spooned the sauce over the pasta. There was a small dish of grated Parmesan in front of my place. Marcus must have brought that with him, because I knew I didn’t have any. A war
m feeling settled in my chest at the thought of him planning all this.

  The sauce was delicious—rich with tomatoes, garlic and tiny meatballs no bigger than the end of my thumb.

  “Hannah’s a wonderful cook,” I said, twirling another forkful of noodles.

  Marcus nodded and licked a dab of sauce off the back of his fork. “I know. She’s been cooking since she was about six.” He smiled and his blue eyes lit up. “Whenever she screwed up a recipe, she’d toss whatever she’d made over the fence and the dogs next door would eat the evidence.”

  I laughed and made a face at the same time. “I’m guessing that probably wasn’t so good for the dogs.”

  “They both ended up at the veterinary clinic, the whole thing came out and my dad ended up paying the vet bills.” He speared a meatball with his fork. “Hannah was limited to her Easy-Bake Oven for a long time after that.”

  Marcus didn’t talk a lot about his family. It had taken a long time for him to feel he could trust me and even more important, that I trusted him. That had been a bone of contention between us as we’d danced around a relationship. But not nearly as much as the fact that I seemed to get mixed up in every one of his cases.

  In the two and a half months since the two of us had become a couple, I’d been slowly learning about his family. Most of the time, Marcus talked about Hannah, his younger sister, but I’d learned that his mother was a math professor and his father was a lawyer. It was more than I’d found out in the previous year and a half that I’d known him.

  “How are rehearsals going?” I asked, thinking that if Hannah’s acting career suddenly went south, she could have a future as a chef.

  Marcus gestured with his fork. “She said there are some changes that need to be made to the script, but I can tell by the way she talks about the play that she’s happy.”

  Hannah was in rehearsals for a play called Walking Backwards, which was going to debut in Chicago and possibly move to New York after that.

  Marcus held up one hand. “I almost forgot,” he said, pushing away from the table. He crossed over to the coat hooks by the back door and felt in the left pocket of his jacket.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two furry faces eye his chair. I leaned sideways so I was in their line of vision. “I know what the two of you are thinking. Stop thinking it,” I said quietly.

  Owen and Hercules both turned to look at me, blinking in wide-eyed kitty innocence. Marcus came back and handed me a small blue envelope.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Open it and find out,” he said.

  I stuck my little finger under the flap and tore the envelope open. Inside was a small, square card with a line drawing of a smiling little girl holding a bunch of balloons. It was from Hannah.

  Inside she’d written, Marcus told me all about Reading Buddies and the fundraiser. Good luck tonight, Hannah. And there was a check.

  I looked across the table at Marcus. “She sent it last week,” he said, “and asked me to wait to give it to you until tonight.”

  I liked Hannah, and not just because she was Marcus’s sister. “I can’t believe she did this.” I held up the check.

  He picked up his fork. “She’s really grateful about how you and your mother saved Hester’s Girls.”

  Ben Saroyan was directing Walking Backwards. The play, which had had more than one incarnation, was based on a prize-winning article about Hester’s Girls, which worked with teenage alcoholics. The group had lost its prize money when it was discovered that the winning article hadn’t exactly been written by the young woman whose name was on the piece. Ben had given my mother her first directing job, and my parents—who were both actors—had put together a benefit for Hester’s Girls and raised enough money to keep the program going.

  I’d flown back to Boston for a long weekend in November to help with the benefit, although the lion’s share of the work had been done by my mother.

  Marcus gestured at the check. “Kathleen, that’s about to go in your sauce.”

  I set the card on the table beside me and folded the check on top of it. “She didn’t have to do this,” I said. “I did very little, and my mother loves a chance to get onstage and do Kate to my dad’s Petruchio.”

  He reached across the table for the pepper. “I know exactly how much work you did behind the scenes,” he said. “We can argue if you want to, but you can’t win this one. It’s not a lot of money, but she really wanted you to have it.”

  He looked over at Owen and Hercules as he sprinkled cheese on his spaghetti. They were watching his every move. “Would it really hurt if I—”

  I didn’t let him finish. “Yes, it would,” I interjected. “You know what Roma said about feeding them people food.”

  He shot the cats a quick look and all three of them made sour faces.

  “I see those cranky faces,” I said. “Roma’s just trying to keep you and you”—I pointed at the cats, who immediately changed to their faux-innocent “who, me?” faces—“from getting sick. And you”—I pointed at Marcus—“from getting a cup of coffee poured on your shoes because you made them sick.”

  The three of them exchanged looks again. They looked more sneaky than sorry.

  Owen and Hercules weren’t just a couple of house cats who thought they were people. They had abilities that no one but me knew about. For all I knew, they didn’t have the digestive system of a regular cat, but I didn’t want to take a chance on that and I didn’t want Roma—or anyone else—figuring out that the cats were a lot more than they seemed.

  I pushed away from the table, went to the cupboard and got a few stinky crackers for each cat. Stinky crackers were made with sardines, and as long as the boys didn’t eat too many, they were okay with Roma.

  “You’re spoiled,” I told them as I set a little pile in front of each cat. They didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to what I’d said. I knew they understood the words; they’d just heard them so many times that I might just as well have kept quiet.

  I put my hand on Marcus’s shoulder for a moment as I passed him. His blue eyes met mine, and my heart literally skipped a beat. Maggie had tried so hard to get the two of us together, and now I wondered why I’d resisted for so long.

  We finished supper and cleared the table, stacking the dishes in the sink. I didn’t have a dishwasher—I liked to do them by hand; it was my best thinking time—and I didn’t have time to wash them.

  “Did you bring your suit?” I asked Marcus.

  He nodded. “It’s out in the car.”

  “You can get dressed in the spare room,” I said. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

  His eyebrows went up.

  I folded my arms across my chest and tipped my head to one side, studying him. “What? You don’t think I can be ready to go in ten minutes?”

  He looked down at the cats, who were sitting by the refrigerator. Hercules was washing his face. Owen was eyeing the two of us.

  “I have a feeling this is one of those times when I should just not say anything,” Marcus said to the gray tabby.

  Owen meowed and ducked his head as though he was agreeing.

  I looked at the clock on the wall above the refrigerator. “Ten minutes,” I repeated as the second hand swept up to the twelve. “Starting now.”

  I headed for the stairs. I didn’t look back to see if he was watching me, or if he was already on his way to get his suit.

  Ten minutes later I was standing in the middle of the living room waiting for Marcus to come downstairs, a little out of breath because I’d all but bolted down the steps in my high heels so I could be standing casually by the window. Sometimes Marcus still brought out my competitive side.

  Hercules had followed me upstairs and watched with what seemed to me was a bemused expression as I hurried to brush my teeth, put on my makeup and twist my hair back into a loose knot, following the steps Rebecca had patiently taught me the previous weekend.

  “So your brother is Team Marcus?”
I’d said as I fastened my rose-gold locket around my neck. My parents had given it to me on the day they remarried.

  “Merow.” Hercules had made a move that almost looked like a shrug.

  Owen appeared at the top of the stairs then. He meowed loudly, as though he were announcing a celebrity or royalty, and then started down the steps. Marcus came behind him.

  I was at a loss for words. I’d seen Marcus in a tie and sport coat before, but never really dressed up. Never like this.

  His dark charcoal suit fit his broad shoulders perfectly. The collar of his snowy white shirt was a perfect contrast to his dark hair, and his tie matched his deep blue eyes. Even his black shoes gleamed.

  For a moment I just stared.

  “Wow!” I finally whispered.

  “I know,” Marcus said, and I realized then that he hadn’t taken his eyes off me since he looked over and caught sight of me. “You are . . . wow.”

  He walked over to me, still staring. “I didn’t think you could look any more beautiful,” he said. “I can’t believe how wrong I was.”

  I felt my cheeks getting warm. “It’s the dress,” I said.

  I was wearing a deep purple dress shot with flecks of silver and black. It had long, close-fitting sleeves and a skirt that flared from the waist to swing at my knees. The neckline was a deep V, a little more revealing than I usually wore, which was why I’d added my locket.

  Maggie and Roma had talked me into the dress. They’d also chosen the sheer, seamed black hose and the sleek sling-backs that added another three inches to my five-foot-six height.

  Marcus shook his head. “It’s not the dress,” he said.

  I don’t know how long we would have stood there just looking at each other like lovers in some cheesy romantic movie, except Owen meowed, loudly and insistently.

  I looked over to see him leaning around the doorway from the kitchen. He dipped his head and gave me his sad cat pose.

  “Owen’s trying to guilt me into giving him a few more crackers because we’re going out and leaving him.”

  “He’s probably lonely,” Marcus said. “You’ve been gone all day.”