Copycat Killing

13

Derek Craig was sitting in his police cruiser when I got to the top of the driveway at Wisteria Hill in the morning. He got out of the car and walked over to my truck.

“Good morning Ms. Paulson,” he said. “You here to feed the cats?”

“I am,” I said, reaching for the canvas bag of food and the jugs of water.

“Could you sign in for me, please?” he asked, offering his clipboard.

“Have you been here all night?” I asked as I signed on the line that read AM Feeding. This had to be Marcus’s idea. He was über organized, one of the reasons Maggie always insisted we’d be a good match. I’d told her if we were using that reasoning, the perfect woman for Marcus would be Mary, the kickboxing grandmother who worked at the library and made the best apple pie I’d ever eaten. She actually enjoyed adding new books to the computerized card catalogue system.

“No ma’am,” the young policeman said. “I got here at six.”

My large metal thermos was on the floor of the passenger side of the truck. “Would you like some coffee?” I asked. “It already has cream and sugar.”

He smiled. “Yes I would. I didn’t think to fill one of those. Cup I brought with me was gone in the first fifteen minutes.”

He walked back to his cruiser and got the thermal mug that had been sitting on the dash. I filled it with coffee and he gave me another big smile. “Thank you,” he said. He gestured to the cat food and water. “Could I carry something for you?”

I wasn’t nearly as stiff as I had been and my ankle felt pretty good—the combination of Rebecca’s salve and Maggie’s herbal soak—but I knew the path around the side of the carriage house was probably still muddy. “Do you think you could carry the water jugs around to the side door?” I said.

He set his coffee on the roof of the truck and grabbed the water. “Lead the way,” he said.

It had rained a little sometime during the night and the path through the scrub at the side of the carriage house was slick and slippery, but we made it to the door without either one of us, or the cat food, ending up on the ground.

“Thanks,” I said.

Derek handed me both jugs of water. “If you need anything, just yell.”

I nodded. “I will.”

He started back around the old building and I leaned on the door, pushing with my good hip against the moisture-swollen wood. It opened with a groaning sound—the door, not me.

I stepped inside, leaving the door a couple of inches ajar so I could see better. There was no sign that anyone had been in the space. The cats were probably still in their shelters.

I carried everything over to the feeding station, set out the food and water and then retreated back by the door. The cats had learned that the sound of someone moving around meant food, so I knew they’d be out in a moment.

A couple of minutes passed and there was no sign of any of the cats. I didn’t hear anything either. Had all the people in the field behind the old carriage house scared them? Had they bolted? Then I thought about Lucy. The little cat didn’t scare easily. If she was still here, then so was the rest of the colony. I leaned against the rough wooden wall of the building and continued to wait.

And finally there was a twitch of motion over by one of the support beams. I held my breath. Lucy came cautiously out of the darkness, scanning the area. She saw me and stopped. Would she go for the food or back to the shelters where the cats slept?

She did neither. She started purposefully across the floor to me, stopping maybe a dozen or so feet away. Lucy and I had a kind of rapport that I couldn’t explain, other than in the unexplainable logic of cats, she just seemed to like me. Now she tipped her head to one side and looked up at me.

“Hey puss,” I said softly. “I bet you wonder what’s going on.”

She meowed softly.

“You’re safe. Marcus is taking care of everything. You know Marcus, the big, cute, annoying guy.”

Lucy meowed again and then turned and headed for the feeding station. I had no idea if she somehow understood what I’d said, been reassured by my tone, or if all she’d heard was blah, blah, blah and now she was hungry.

Like she’d sent off some sort of invisible signal, the other cats came out to join Lucy for breakfast. I looked each one over as usual for any signs of illness or injury. As far as I could tell in the dim light all seven cats were just fine.

I felt myself relax a little. At least one thing was going right. Maybe everything else would fall in place today.

As quickly as I had the thought, I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck as though a slight breeze had blown over my skin. A karmic warning, maybe, that life wasn’t going to work out so easily?

At the edge of my vision I saw something move behind me. I looked back over my shoulder. It wasn’t a warning from the universe. It was Marcus. Okay, maybe it was a warning from the universe after all.

“Hi,” he whispered, moving to stand very close beside my left shoulder. I could smell the citrusy shampoo he always used.

“Where’s Roma?” His breath tickled my bare neck.

“There were some things she had to do,” I whispered back.

Marcus was studying the cats, the same way I had, looking for any sign they weren’t okay. “You all right?” he said. “How’s your ankle?”

“A bit stiff,” I said. “But I’m okay. Rebecca brought me one of her herbal concoctions. I have a doctor’s appointment on Monday, by the way.”

“Good,” he said. He didn’t look the slightest bit guilty about telling on me. “The cats look all right.”

“Lucy took her time coming out, but once she did, the rest followed her. I’m hoping they won’t get spooked and take off.” He was so close to me I could actually feel the warmth coming off his body. Or maybe it was the carriage house that was getting warm and stuffy.

“I’ve told everyone to stay away from this building,” Marcus said.

“Have you always been a cat person?” I asked.

He smiled. “I told you I had a paper route when I was a kid, didn’t I?”

I nodded. It was one of the few things Marcus had shared about himself, sitting at my kitchen table having breakfast not long after we’d first met.

“I was nine. It was a Saturday morning, it was raining and I had maybe four more papers to deliver. I was on Mountain Road, just a couple of houses above yours, and there was this little ginger cat, scrawny and wet under a tree.”

“And you rescued it,” I said, glancing over at the feeding station where the cats were still eating.

“I put her inside my raincoat and took her home. I had this crazy idea that I could hide her in my bedroom without anyone finding out.”

“I take it that didn’t work?”

Marcus laughed. “Well, it might have if I hadn’t had the idea to dry the cat with a blow dryer.”

“You didn’t?” I couldn’t help laughing myself.

“It wasn’t one of my better ideas,” he said. “I probably scared her out of one of her nine lives. She managed to squeeze into this little space behind my dresser and she wouldn’t come out.” Something changed in his expression and he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “My father, in his three-piece suit and white shirt, spent a good fifteen minutes on the floor, coaxing the cat out with a sausage. I thought for sure he’d take her to the animal shelter. But he just said, ‘Put up posters and if you can’t find out who owns her, you better start saving that paper money because she’s going to need shots.’”

He shrugged. “No one came for her so that’s how I ended up with Abner and I guess that’s how I became a cat person.”

I frowned, eyes narrowed. “Abner? I thought you said the cat was a she?”

“She was.”

Was Marcus blushing? I couldn’t tell in the dim light. “Why did you name her Abner?” I asked. “I’m not criticizing. I’m just curious.”

He ducked his head for a moment. “She was wearing an old collar with a metal name plate, but all that was legible were the first two letters, ‘A’ and ‘B.’ I thought the cat’s name was Abner.”

“It didn’t occur to you that maybe, I don’t know, Abigail might have been a more likely name?” It was hard not to laugh.

“Well, now, yes. But I couldn’t tell the difference between a boy cat and a girl cat back then.”

“Roma did explain the difference before you signed on to help with these cats, didn’t she?” I teased.

“I know the difference between boys and girls now,” Marcus said, his eyes locked on mine.

For a moment it seemed as though there was no air in the room. Or maybe I’d just forgotten how to breathe for a second or two. Then from across the carriage house the yowl of a couple of squabbling cats cut the silence. Marcus took a step sideways to see what was going on and I took a breath.

One of the younger cats had tried to eat from the same dish as an old tom. The disagreement was over almost as fast as it had started.

We stood in silence after that, until all the cats had eaten, stretched, and in the case of Lucy, washed off the remains of breakfast. She finally headed for the far corner of the old building and I stepped away from Marcus and made my way over to the feeding station. I gathered the dishes and picked up a couple of pieces of stray cat kibble, while Marcus put out fresh water.

Once we were outside again, he took both the water jugs and the bag with the cats’ dishes. “Go carefully,” he said. “It’s a little slippery.”

I put one hand on the wall of the carriage house. The old shingles were gray and cracked with age. At the truck I reached for the thermos as Marcus set the canvas tote and the empty water bottles on the passenger side floor mat. “How about some coffee?” I asked.

“Umm, please,” he said.

The thermos had two cups—one nested inside the other—so I poured coffee for both of us and handed him the larger cup. I knew I could make more when I got home.

Marcus leaned against the side of my truck, wrapping both of his big hands around the plastic cup. He took a long sip and then smiled at me. “You make good coffee.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Library opening today?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I’m hoping tomorrow, if we don’t get any more rain.” I looked around. “When will you be finished out here?”

He shrugged. “That depends on Dr. Abbott and her team.” When I didn’t say anything his eyes narrowed and he frowned at me over the top of his cup. “Aren’t you going to ask me how Thomas Karlsson’s body ended up out here?”

I took another mouthful of coffee before I answered. “No.”

“No?” He shifted, crossing one long leg over the other. I could see he was trying to stifle a smile.

“You’re good, but there’s no way you could have figured that out yet.” I smiled at him. “You were pretty fast at identifying those bones, though.”

“A lot of that was luck.”

“And Roma recognizing her father’s ring.”

His face grew serious again. “And that.”

“When are you going to be finished at the co-op store?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said, ducking his head for another drink. “There are still some things I need to check, people I need to talk to again.”

“Maggie,” I said.

“Among others, yes.”

I hesitated, shifting my cup from one hand to the other. “Marcus, you know that Maggie had nothing to do with Jaeger slipping on those steps? I know they’d argued, but she didn’t give him her keys and she didn’t let him in the basement. You know Maggie. She wouldn’t lie about that. She wouldn’t lie about anything.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m just talking to people, Kathleen,” he said. “That’s all. I’m not saying I think Maggie had anything to do with Jaeger Merrill’s death.”

Was I imagining his emphasis on the word “I”?

“Are you saying someone else might? Or does.” I asked.

“You know I can’t answer that,” he began.

“Because this is a police investigation,” I finished. I sighed, pulling a hand over my neck. “I do understand that. And I really will try to stay out of it. But do you understand that I won’t stop being Maggie’s friend?”

Marcus took another sip of his coffee. “Yes. I’ve learned by now how loyal you are to the people you care about.”

“Marcus, have you come up with a good explanation for why Jaeger created this new persona?” I asked. “I think the whole secret identity thing is very melodramatic.”

He shrugged, but didn’t say anything. It was as good as a no.

“Maggie thinks he was planning another scam and I’m starting to think maybe she’s right. I did a little digging. Some people think Jaeger was a lot more involved in the whole forgery business that sent him to jail than he ever admitted. What if he was going to use the co-op in some way? What if he already was?”

Marcus’s deep blue eyes fixed on my face. “Do you have any reason to think that’s what he was doing?” He drank the last of his coffee, and handed the cup back to me.

“If you mean can I prove it, no,” I said. I put my cup inside his and screwed the whole thing back on the thermos. “But what was Jaeger doing in the basement? And how did he get a key? During the meeting earlier in the morning, Maggie had taken everyone to see how much water had come in. If there was something he wanted to see down there, why not ask her?”

“She wasn’t there, or he figured she’d say no, since they’d already had one argument.”

I reached through the open driver’s window and set the thermos on the seat. “Or he didn’t want Maggie—or anyone else—to know what he was looking for.”

Marcus stuffed his hands in his pockets, taking a quick glance at his watch as he did so. “You think he was looking for something?”

“Have you ever been in Play it Again, Stan?” I asked.

“You mean the repurpose store out by the highway? The place with the secondhand furniture and salvaged building supplies?”

I nodded. “I was out there maybe a month ago. So was Jaeger, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I didn’t even speak to him, I just saw him. He was at the very back where all the salvaged wood and trim is stored.”

“Maybe he was looking for something for his mask-making.”

“Jaeger Merrill’s masks were made out of metal—not wood. But those religious icons he went to jail for forging—some of those were painted on wood—old wood.”

“You think he was in the basement looking for a piece of wood?” Marcus said, skepticism evident in his voice.

“Maybe. What if Jaeger was back in the forgery business? What if, when Maggie took them all down to see how much water had come in, he saw something useful and he went back to get it?”

“Okay,” Marcus said. His face was unreadable. Sometime while I was talking he’d gone into police officer mode. I had no idea if he’d taken anything I’d said seriously.

“Anyway, I better get going,” I said. “So, uh, have a good day.”

“I will.” He took a couple of steps back from the truck.

I leaned around him and raised a hand in good-bye to Derek Craig. Then I got into the truck, fastened my seat belt and as I put the key in the ignition a shiny black pickup bumped its way up the driveway. What was Burtis Chapman doing out here?

The thermos rolled against my hip. There were at least a couple more cups of coffee in it. I picked it up and held it out the window to Marcus. He turned toward me. “Here,” I said.

“You sure?” he asked.

I nodded. “You work better when you have a supply of coffee. I think you might get a little crabby without it.”

He took the stainless steel flask and I put the truck in gear. “Thanks,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be annoying.” He stepped back again.

He’d heard what I’d said to Lucy. I could feel my face getting red. I was all the way at the bottom of the driveway before I realized that if Marcus had heard me tell Lucy I thought he was annoying, he’d also heard me say I thought he was cute.

Crap on toast!