Copycat Killing

30

I put the journal away, curled my feet up under me, and settled Hercules a little more comfortably on my legs. I thought about the few memories of her father that Roma had shared, like that game of hide and seek with Tom tossing a blanket over her head and telling her to be quiet and then “pretending” to look for her.

Owen wandered back in, stretched out on the floor in front of my chair and started washing his tail. He was acting just a little spacey, which meant he’d been into his stash of catnip chicken parts. He seemed to have gotten over our near accident the night before. I was pretty sure he was most annoyed about having my old sweatshirt tossed on top of him.

My shirt thrown over Owen to hide him.

A blanket thrown over Roma. Part of a game or an attempt to hide her?

Maybe Tom hadn’t been playing a game with Roma. Maybe he’d been going to take Roma away from Pearl. Maybe that’s what had caused Pearl to pick that particular day to run. Was I wrong about Roma’s mother?

“Could Pearl have killed Tom to protect Roma?” I asked Hercules. What else had Roma said about Tom? “He sat me on his lap and let me drive,” she’d said. “I can close my eyes and see the car. It had turquoise and white bucket seats.”

Could those memories be from the same night? The night Tom disappeared?

I stroked the top of Hercules’s head. There was a connection I couldn’t quite make. I glanced at the box of Ellen’s things beside me on the table and suddenly tab A dropped into slot B.

“I have to put you down for a second,” I said to Hercules. I set him on the floor and hurried downstairs to the living room where I’d left my briefcase. I took it back up to the bedroom with me, sat down on the rug with the cats and pulled out the old yearbook and the envelope of photographs.

I started with the pictures. Hercules put both paws on my leg and poked his head in to check out each photo. Owen was content to watch and crane his neck for a better look from time to time.

It took a while, but I eventually found what I was looking for, not in the photos but in the yearbook under the heading TRAVELIN’ MAN.

“That’s piece number one,” I told Hercules. “Cross your paws that I can get piece number two.”

He held out his paw and looked at it.

I pulled the phone down and thought for a moment. “She should be home,” I said to the boys. I dialed Mary’s number and crossed my own fingers that she was home and would have the answer. I was hoping the fact that she was a bit of a pack rat would work in my favor.

It did.

I hung up, set the telephone on the floor, and leaned back against the side of the bed. Hercules climbed up onto my legs and put his paws on my chest.

“I think I know what happened to Tom,” I said. “It’s a bit of a stretch—okay a lot of a stretch—but I think I know who killed him.

“And why.”