Paws and Effect Read online

  “Does that mean he’s out of chickens?” Maggie asked.

  “No,” I said firmly, narrowing my eyes at her. “Owen does not need any more chickens. He has enough assorted parts to put about half a dozen of them together. He’s the Dr. Frankenstein of funky chickens.” I glared at her. “No new chickens.”

  “I heard you,” she said. She leaned over to give me a hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I headed for the coat hooks, knowing there was at least one new Fred the Funky Chicken in Owen’s immediate future.

  * * *

  It was dark when I got home. I was unlocking the back door when something furry wound around my leg. I jumped, almost falling off the step. It was Hercules.

  “You scared me,” I said, reaching down to pick him up. “What are you doing out here?”

  He gave a non-committal murp but his green eyes darted to the big maple tree in the backyard. “Were you stalking that bird again?” I asked.

  Hercules suddenly got very interested in the bag with my tai chi clothes hanging from my shoulder. “That grackle is tucked in his little bird nest right now. You can terrorize each other tomorrow,” I said. I gave the top of his head a scratch and started again to unlock the door.

  “Kathleen,” a voice said behind me.

  I jumped and swung around. Hope Lind was standing there. “I’m sorry,” she said, holding up one hand. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Do you have a few minutes?”

  Hope was wearing her dark hair a little longer and the curls looked a little windblown, like she hadn’t had time to look in a mirror for a while. She was dressed in black trousers and heels that brought her to my height instead of the couple of inches shorter she was in flats.

  “Of course,” I said. “C’mon in.”

  Hope followed me inside. I set Hercules on the kitchen floor and he cocked his head to one side and eyed her.

  I indicated the table. “Have a seat. I’m going to have a cup of hot chocolate. Would you like one? I have tea as well.”

  She seemed distracted. “No,” she said, “hot chocolate is fine.” She glanced down at the cat. “Hello, Hercules.”

  “Mrr,” he answered.

  Hope looked around the kitchen. “This is a nice little house.”

  “It actually belongs to Everett Henderson.” I put two mugs of milk in the microwave. “It was one of the perks he used to woo me to Mayville Heights.”

  “I’m glad it worked,” she said, propping her elbows on the table.

  We were both stalling, her in saying whatever it was she’d come to talk to me about and me in hearing her out. I could feel my pulse thumping in the hollow below my throat. This had to be about Dani’s death.

  When the hot chocolate was made I set a cup in front of Hope and joined her at the table.

  She cleared her throat. “Kathleen, I need to keep this conversation just between us.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t like keeping secrets from Marcus, Hope,” I said, wiping a hand over the back of my neck. “It’s gotten us into trouble in the past.”

  “This has to do with Marcus. And I wouldn’t be here if there was anyone else I could talk to.”

  I couldn’t miss the intensity in her voice. It matched the look in her eyes. I felt my chest tighten. I sighed. “All right.”

  “Danielle McAllister’s death wasn’t an accident,” she said. “There’s evidence that she didn’t fall over that embankment.”

  That was why the investigation had been taking so long. That was why Hope had been avoiding Marcus. “Did someone push her?” I asked. Had someone killed Dani because of the development? Would someone go that far?

  Hope played with her cup, turning it in slow circles on the table. “The medical examiner thinks she was hit by a car, then the body was moved and she was . . . dropped over.”

  An image of Dani, sitting at the table at Eric’s, laughing as she told the story of their first meeting in the biology lab flashed into my mind. I felt the sour taste of bile at the back of my throat. “That’s horrible,” I whispered.

  “It gets worse,” Hope said. “We found her phone. It was a little way away from her body. It had probably fallen out of her pocket when . . . when she went over. At first, I wasn’t sure what we were going to be able to get from it.” She looked down at the table and then met my eyes again. “The last text Dani sent was to Marcus. She wanted to talk to him. He texted back a yes.”

  “They did meet,” I said. “Over at the hotel.”

  “I know,” Hope said. “This was after that.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “He texted back a yes?”

  She nodded silently.

  “That . . . that doesn’t make sense.” Because of his dyslexia Marcus rarely sent texts. He called people. Everyone who knew him knew that. “Why didn’t he call Dani back?”

  Hope sighed softly. “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t asked him. I haven’t told him about any of this. I haven’t told anyone, except now, you.”

  “Maybe someone else sent that text,” I said.

  “C’mon, Kathleen, you know Marcus. He doesn’t leave his phone lying around. And even if he did, you think what? That someone else at the station answered that text and now doesn’t want to admit it? Seriously?”

  Okay, so it didn’t really make sense that someone else had answered Dani’s text, but it didn’t make sense to me that Marcus had, either.

  Hope raked a hand back through her hair. “Look, I know he doesn’t text very often but he does sometimes. He sent me one this afternoon. Two words: Anything new? He wants to know what’s going on with the case. I’m guessing he didn’t call because he didn’t know where I’d be and he didn’t want anyone to know he’s asking.”

  I nodded slowly. Hope was probably right. Marcus wouldn’t want to get Hope in trouble for keeping him in the loop.

  Hope looked down at Hercules, still sitting next to her chair, his green eyes fixed intently on her as though he were following the conversation. I knew there was a good chance that he was. Her eyes met mine again. “I think you’re missing the point,” she said. “Marcus may have seen Dani the night she died. Why didn’t he say so?”

  I stared at her. “Hope, you don’t think that Marcus . . . ?” I couldn’t finish the thought.

  “No,” she said. She cleared her throat. “No.”

  I felt Hercules lean against my leg. I studied Hope’s face. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She still didn’t say anything.

  My heart was pounding so hard in my ears that my own voice sounded like I was underwater when I spoke. “Tell me!”

  Hope looked at me for a long moment as though she was deciding what to do. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. She dropped it onto the table.

  I leaned over for a closer look. For a moment I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. The bag held a small, round metal disc. On the front was a stylized black crescent moon bisected by a white line. There was a small gold star at the top point of the moon.

  “It was underneath her body,” Hope said. “And before you tell me it’s not the only one in existence, I know that, but this one was wiped clean of fingerprints.”

  “How did you get that out of the police station?” I asked, gesturing at the bag.

  Her eyes slid off my face and she picked up her cup and took a drink.

  “Hope, you broke the chain of evidence.”

  “No, I didn’t,” she said. “It was never logged in as evidence.”

  I just stared at her and finally, when I didn’t speak, she lifted her head and looked at me again. “You and I both know Marcus didn’t have anything to do with Danielle McAllister’s death. But he was the last person she had contact with and part of his key chain was found with her body.” She clo
sed her eyes for a couple of moments and took several breaths. “And before you ask, John Keller and Travis Rosen both have theirs.” She had obviously uncovered the backstory of the key chains at some point in her investigation.

  “You can’t hide evidence,” I said. A bubble of panic had settled in just under my breastbone and I pressed my fist there as if somehow I could hold it in place and keep it from overwhelming me. “I know how it looks, but you’re putting yourself at risk and if it comes out this will just make things look worse for Marcus.”

  Hope opened her eyes again. “They were old friends, Kathleen, old friends who were involved in some kind of disagreement in a public place. And then one of them is dead. How much worse could it look?”

  “It could look like Marcus asked his partner to hide evidence of a crime. You could lose your badge. You could go to jail. Both of you could.”

  My voice was getting louder. Hercules pressed his furry body against my leg. I stopped talking and swallowed a couple of times to get my emotions under control.

  Hope looked away again, her expression a mix of guilt and defiance.

  “I know you care about him,” I said. “But you have to turn that key chain in, because you and I both know it doesn’t belong to Marcus so it has to belong to whoever killed Dani.”

  “All right,” she finally said. She still wouldn’t look at me. “You know what will happen.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “You’ll be taken off the case and Marcus will be called in for questioning.”

  “And then what?” Hope said, finally looking in my direction.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  5

  The key chain fob was logged in as evidence. I didn’t ask Hope how she explained the time lag. We agreed that I would tell Marcus what she’d uncovered so far, that way she’d be able to truthfully say that she hadn’t shared any information with him. It was splitting hairs but it protected both of them and that was enough for me.

  I tossed and turned most of the night. I woke up in a tangle of blankets with an arm and a leg hanging off the bed. It made me think of all the mornings my mother had insisted that sharing a bed with my dad was like being on the channel ferry.

  I missed them. They were both on the West Coast at the moment while my mother did a two-week guest stint on The Wild and Wonderful. She was hugely popular with fans of the racy soap opera, who had been clamoring since her previous visit for a return performance.

  I looked at the clock. It was too early to call. My mother hated mornings. I couldn’t tell her what was going on, anyway. I pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants and went down to the kitchen to make coffee. That’s where I was when Hercules came through the door. “Through” as in the bottom left panel almost seemed to shimmer and then he was standing in the kitchen.

  “Merow?” he said, looking like he was surprised to see me. He’d probably been sitting out on the porch. He liked to do that, look out the window at the world and not have to get his feet wet in the early morning dew on the lawn.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” I said.

  He stretched, arching his back and yawning. “You too?” I asked.

  He gave an offhand murr that might have been a yes.

  I poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the table, curling one leg underneath me. Hercules launched himself into my lap. He craned his neck to look in my mug.

  “It’s coffee.”

  He sat back on my leg and looked around the kitchen.

  “I’ll get breakfast in a minute,” I said. I pushed up the sleeves of my shirt and took another drink of my coffee.

  Herc bumped my free hand with his head and I stroked his fur.

  “How am I going to tell Marcus that he could be a suspect in his friend’s death?’ I asked the cat. I set my cup down and massaged the back of my neck. “How do I tell him her death wasn’t an accident?”

  My plan had been to invite Marcus for dinner, but now that seemed like such a long time away. “Hope said she thought the medical examiner’s official report would be ready on Monday, but what if she’s wrong? I don’t want him to be blindsided.”

  Hercules hopped off my lap and walked over to the back door. He didn’t go through it; he just sat down and stared pointedly at it, then looked over his shoulder at me.

  “I don’t want to have coffee on the porch,” I said. “I don’t have any socks on and I don’t have a fur coat like you do.”

  He made a sound in the back of his throat, which could have best been described as an expression of exasperation. I didn’t know what he was trying to tell me. I was tired and trying not to give in to the worry gnawing at my insides.

  Hercules came back across the floor to me. I’d left my purse and keys on one of the chairs the night before. He stood on his hind legs and swept the keys to the floor. Then he sat down, shot me a look and started to wash his face.

  Door. Keys. I was supposed to make the connection and I likely would have, if I’d had more sleep. I needed to talk to Marcus before I could deal with anything else.

  Marcus.

  Door.

  Keys.

  “You think I should go talk to him right now,” I said.

  Hercules looked up at me, his white tipped paw paused in midair. “Merow,” he said. It was about as close to “Well, duh,” as a cat could get.

  I got to my feet, put my cup in the sink and got four stinky crackers from the cupboard. I put the crackers at his feet. “You’re a very smart cat,” I said.

  I went upstairs, brushed my hair and teeth and found a pair of socks. I didn’t bother with makeup and I didn’t call Marcus, either. I went back downstairs and put out breakfast for both cats. There was still no sign of Owen but I found Hercules in his favorite spot on the bench in the porch.

  I sat down beside him for a moment. He put two paws on my leg and I stroked the white fur at the top of his nose.

  “I won’t be very long,” I said.

  He lifted his head and nuzzled my chin.

  “I love you, too,” I said.

  There was no traffic on Mountain Road and very little all the way to Marcus’s house. I pulled in behind his SUV and walked around the house. The light was on in the kitchen. He must have heard the truck pull in, because the back door opened as I stepped onto the deck.

  Marcus was barefoot and shirtless. He hadn’t shaved yet and his dark hair was still damp from the shower. “Kathleen? Is everything all right?”

  I nodded, crossed the distance between us and wrapped him in a hug. He hugged me back, then took a step back, hands on my shoulders. “It’s not that I’m not happy to see you but it’s six thirty in the morning. What are you doing here?”

  “I need to talk to you and I couldn’t wait.”

  “All right,” he said. “Come in. It’s cold out there.”

  We went into the kitchen and I sat across from him at the table.

  “So what do you need to talk to me about?” he asked, pulling on a T-shirt that had been over the back of his chair. His blue eyes were narrowed with concern. “Is it . . . Are we okay?”

  I reached over and put both my hands over his. “No, no, no. It’s not us.” I made myself smile at him. “We’re fine. We’re better than fine.”

  I saw him relax a little. Then a shadow seemed to pass over his face. “It’s Dani, isn’t it,” he said.

  I nodded. “I’m so sorry. She . . . didn’t fall off that embankment by accident.”

  His mouth twisted to one side. “I probably shouldn’t ask you how you know that.”

  “It would be better if you didn’t,” I said.

  “What happened?”

  I told him what Hope had shared with me. He had to know that she was the source of the information, but neither one of us said her name.

  “She didn’t text me, Kathleen,” he said. “I ga
ve her my number and I told her she could call me, but she didn’t.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “You can show them your phone.”

  He shook his head. “Even though I don’t text I still get some spam. I clear it out once a week.”

  My heart sank.

  Marcus was meticulous and organized and I knew he would have a system in place to deal with those unwanted texts, just the way he did with so many other things.

  “You deleted them all,” I said. Inside I groaned.

  He gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Last Friday.”

  Anyone who knew Marcus would know it was completely in character for him to do something like that.

  “If this were my case I’d think it was suspicious,” he said. “But I give you my word that Dani didn’t send me any texts the day she died. She didn’t ask me to meet her.”

  The only thing I could think of was that someone else must have answered that text, and then, realizing it was Marcus’s phone, deleted the original message and the reply out of embarrassment. Maybe it had been someone at the station who had mistaken his phone for their own. It seemed far-fetched but what other explanation was there? I knew Marcus generally kept his cell in his pocket but it was possible he’d set it on his desk for a moment and gotten distracted.

  “I don’t need your word,” I said. “I know you. And everyone else who knows you knows that you had nothing to do with Dani’s death.”

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence,” he said, “but you know that police investigation is based on following the evidence, and from what you’ve just told me that evidence leads to me.”

  “You told me once that an investigation is a little like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. First you have to make sure you have all the pieces. Then you have to start putting them together to form a picture and sometimes you can’t be sure how one piece fits until you get some of the others in place.”

  He laughed, which was the last thing I was expecting.

  “What?” I said.