Copycat Killing

14

The phone rang as I was hanging up my coat by the back door. “Hello, Katydid,” my mother said when I answered.

“Hi,” I said, sinking into the wing chair. “How are things in Boston?”

“Wonderful. The sun is shining. The birds are singing in the trees and for once your father is taking direction.”

My parents taught and ran the drama program at a private school in Boston. They did a lot of theatre as well—especially Shakespeare, although my mother was moving more into directing, which meant butting heads with my father when he didn’t like her suggestions. Which was only two or three dozen times in a production.

They were very dramatic people—on stage and off—which was why they’d been married, divorced and then married again.

“Is it still raining there?” Mom asked.

“Not at the moment,” I said. “I don’t want to jinx anything, but I may have even seen a sliver of blue sky a little while ago.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you, sweetie,” she said and I could hear the smile in her voice. “I take it the library is still closed?” My mother read the Mayville Heights Chronicle online so she was usually up to date on what was happening in town.

“If the rain holds off I’m hoping we can open tomorrow.” Hercules wandered in from somewhere. I patted my legs and he jumped onto my lap and stretched out on my chest. “I’ve been helping Maggie move things at the store. There’s water in the basement,” I said. “Cross your fingers that somebody finds a pump, as well.”

“Fingers, toes, arms, legs and eyes,” Mom said solemnly.

“Thanks,” I said.

“The reason I called was to tell you I’m going to Los Angeles for a few days.”

I straightened up a little, which meant Hercules had to move too. He glared at me. “Los Angeles? What for?”

She hesitated for a moment. “I’m going to do a small part—well, actually it’s quite a significant part, very integral to a major storyline, what I really should call it is a limited run part”—she paused, for effect of course—“in a soap opera.”

“A soap?” I said. “After the last time you said you were never going to do another daytime drama.” She’d said more than that, mostly about the skills or lack thereof of the director.

“Sweetie, never is a long time.”

“Yes it is,” I agreed, grinning at Hercules.

“The executive producer asked specifically for me. He said the part required an actress of my vintage with my unique skills.” Then she laughed, a big, warm sound that rolled into my ear and gave me a small pinch of homesickness. “What he really meant was he was looking for an old broad who wasn’t in rehab and who hadn’t been tucked, tightened and Botoxed up the ying yang. And when I saw how much money they were offering, it seemed petty to say no.”

I laughed. “That was very big of you, Mom,” I said. “You’ll be terrific.”

“Well, of course I will,” she said.

We talked for a few more minutes and she promised to call me again when she’d gotten to LA and been to the set.

After I’d hung up I stayed sprawled in the chair, stroking Hercules’s fur. “I talked to Marcus about Jaeger,” I told him.

The cat lifted his head and looked inquiringly at me. At least that’s how I decided to interpret his look.

“I told him I think Maggie may be right,” I said. “That Jaeger was up to something. The problem is, I don’t have any proof.” I pulled a hand back through my hair, sucking in a sharp breath when I touched my bruised forehead. “Ow,” I said.

Hercules got up, jumped to the floor and started for the kitchen. “Good idea,” I said, getting to my feet. “I need coffee.”

The cat positioned himself by the counter and looked at the toaster. Cats are not subtle.

I gave him the Mr. Spock eyebrow. “How about coffee with toast and peanut butter?” I said. That got an enthusiastic “meow.”

I turned around to start the coffee and Owen was suddenly right in front of me. “You have ears like a, well, like a cat,” I told him. He murped his agreement.

I made coffee and toast and peanut butter and then we settled ourselves around the table—me in one chair with my ankle propped on another because who was I kidding, it still hurt a little, and the boys at my feet with their little bites of toast.

“Okay, so what do we know?” I asked. Neither cat answered. Peanut butter tended to have that effect on them. “We know Jaeger was really Christian Ellis and that he had gone to jail for forgery. He was pushing Maggie to make changes at the co-op store. I saw him at the repurpose store and digging around in a dumpster.”

I took a bite of toast myself and chewed thoughtfully. It all proved exactly nothing. Nothing.

Maybe Maggie was wrong. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Jaeger hadn’t been up to anything at all other than trying to make a new life. Maybe we were seeing conspiracies where there weren’t any.

Then again, maybe we were right.

I knew how hard Maggie had worked to make the co-op a success. What if Jaeger had gotten the store mixed up in something illegal? If I was going to convince Marcus, I needed a smoking gun, so to speak.

I slid down in the chair so I could lean my head against the back and that’s when I saw it. Not a smoking gun. It was the little purple puff I’d picked up out at Wisteria Hill, still on top of the refrigerator. I pushed myself upright and hobbled over to retrieve it. Okay, so it probably wasn’t a wig for a forest pixie. What the heck was it?

I sank back onto my chair. “Any idea what this is?” I asked the cats, holding out the puff. Owen immediately leaned in to sniff it, discovered it wasn’t something he could eat and went back to his last bit of toast.

Hercules took his time, eyes narrowed, as though he were trying to think of a good answer to my question. After a minute he looked over at the sink and then turned his green eyes on me.

“You think it’s something to scrub dishes with?” I asked.

He meowed his agreement.

I turned the purple puff over in my hand. It did have a rough, abrasive feel to it. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think it’s big enough to scrub a pot.”

Owen made a sound that sounded a lot like a sigh. He stalked over to my briefcase on the floor under the coat hooks and put one paw on top. Then he meowed. Loudly and impatiently.

I looked down at Hercules and shrugged. “I suppose we could go online and see if we can find this thing.” Was it my imagination or did he give a why-the-heck-not shrug in return?

It took several tries with my favorite search engine and Hercules on my lap, “helping,” before I found a photo of the tiny, purple thingamajig. It was a fine grit, abrasive buff, an attachment that worked exclusively on a small rotary tool. Imported from Sweden.

What had Ruby said when Maggie had told her Jaeger had complained that the cabinet where he kept his tools had gotten wet? His fancy Swedish tools.

“Jaeger was out at Wisteria Hill,” I told the cats, holding up the abrasive buff. “This has to be his. How many other people in town are going to have some tool exclusively from Sweden?”

Hercules looked thoughtful, at least to me. Owen, on the other hand, had gone into his faux-modest routine. “Yes, it was a very good suggestion that I go online,” I said. He lifted his head to stare pointedly at the cupboard. “And yes, this calls for a kitty cracker.” I bent my face close to Herc’s black-and-white one before he could start yowling his objections. “For you too. You were a big help with the typing.”

I put Hercules on the floor and got a cracker for each cat. I turned the small purple attachment over in my hand. So Roma was right about seeing Jaeger at Wisteria Hill. The old estate would be a good source of aged pieces of wood. The main house and the carriage house were over a hundred years old, I knew. It looked like Maggie was right. But was this enough to convince Marcus?

I leaned forward. “How about a road trip?” I said to Hercules. He immediately looked over to where my messenger bag was hanging next to my jacket as he licked crumbs off his whiskers. Owen, meanwhile, scurried up close to my feet and meowed loudly to get my attention.

“This job needs your brother’s particular skill,” I said. The cats exchanged looks. Owen made a face and shook his head. Hercules turned his back and started washing his face.

“You can go next time,” I said to Owen, who refused to look at me. I pulled another cheese and sardine cracker out of the bag and held it out with a sigh. I was trying to placate a cat.

He took the kitty treat from my fingers and set it on the floor, sniffing and at the same time making sulky, grumbling noises. Hercules kept on ignoring him.

“Good to have that settled,” I said, grabbing my cup and heading for the phone.

“Hey, Mags, do you have any plans for lunch?” I asked when Maggie answered her phone.

“No,” she said. “What were you thinking?”

“How about Eric’s?”

“Oh that would be good.” She sounded a bit distracted. “Could you meet me at the shop?”

This was working out perfectly. “Sure,” I said. “But isn’t it still off limits?”

“Nope. I got the keys back about twenty minutes ago. The police are finished. And guess what?”

“The Pump Fairy found a pump for the basement?”

There was silence for a moment and then Maggie started to laugh.

“What?” I said.

“I’m telling Larry you called him The Pump Fairy,” she giggled.

“Larry found a pump? Seriously? Where?”

“Seriously. I have no idea where. It’s gas powered so we’ll have to make sure it’s vented properly, and Larry said it’s older than Noah’s grandmother, but he and Harry got it going and he swears it’ll work. I’m going to meet him over there in about fifteen minutes.”

I did a little fist pump in the air. “I’m so glad,” I said.

Maggie let out a breath. “Me too. Why don’t you meet me there in maybe an hour or so?”

“Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

I headed upstairs to change my old jeans for something a little more presentable. When I came back down Hercules was waiting in the kitchen, sitting underneath the hook where my new messenger bag was hanging. I lifted the bag down; he climbed inside, kneaded the bottom a little with his paws and then lay down.

There was no sign of Owen. He was probably off somewhere pouting and gnawing on a funky chicken. “We’re leaving,” I called out.

No response.

“He’s still sulking,” I said to Herc, who murped his agreement from inside the bag.

We drove down to the library and I was happy to see that while a small part of the parking lot was still underwater, that section of street was open again. Inside the building I let Hercules out of the bag, crouching down so we were face to face. “You can look around for a while,” I told him, “but please come when I call you.”

He stared at me solemnly, and then he licked my nose and headed for the stacks.

I did a quick survey of both floors of the building and the basement, looking for leaks or any standing water. Happily there were none. I retrieved all the messages from our voice mail and then I cleared the book drop. I was reshelving books when Lita called to tell me the library could reopen on Friday.

As I was putting a couple of back issues of Scientific American in their slot, I happened to glance over at the local history section. The library had inherited a collection of Mayville Heights High School yearbooks and photographs during some renovation work at the school building.

I walked over and pulled down the volume for the year that Roma’s mother, Pearl, would have graduated.

My first thought was that she looked so young and so serious in the black-and-white photo. She wasn’t smiling, but no one was. She wore a short-sleeved white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and black cat’s-eye frame glasses. I could see some of Roma in the way she tilted her head and looked directly into the camera.

Roma had Thomas Karlsson’s coloring. He too, looked directly into the camera. There was something confident, challenging even, in his gaze.

There was an accordion file full of notes and pictures that went along with the yearbook. I flipped through several mock-up pages that hadn’t made it into the finished volume. One section called “School Life,” was all unposed, candid snapshots. There was a shot of a group of baseball players crowded into the front seat of a Ford Biscayne with Tom Karlsson grinning behind the wheel. On the second page I discovered a picture of Pearl and a couple of girls standing beside a 1959 T-Bird convertible. It was a beautiful car with fins and wide whitewall tires and I got so caught up in looking at it that I almost missed the young man in the photograph leaning awkwardly on the T-Bird’s front fender: Sam Ingstrom. The caption read: Sam gets ready to hit the road.

Except Sam wasn’t paying any attention to the road or the car at all. Sam was looking at the girls. One girl.

Pearl.

Interesting.

I checked my watch. It was time to head over to meet Maggie. I decided I’d take the yearbook and the pictures home for a closer look. I walked back to the front desk and called Hercules. After a moment he came around a set of bookshelves, crossed the mosaic tile floor and climbed in the bag. I didn’t have to call him six times, threaten, cajole or even offer a bribe.

Clearly, he was screwing with me.