Sleight Of Paw

21

Hercules was waiting on the porch; Owen was in the kitchen by the door. They trailed me as I hung up my coat and set my mittens by the heat vent.

“Give me a minute,” I told them.

I washed my hands, put bread in the toaster and a cup of milk in the microwave. Finally, I settled at the table with a cup of hot chocolate and a piece of peanut butter toast. Both cats positioned themselves directly in front of my feet, as much for a bite of toast as for information.

“I might have something that can help Ruby,” I said. Two sets of ears twitched.

I explained about the trucks. “Ruby has one. Harry has one. One’s been junked. And there are three others—three identical old trucks. That piece of glass came from a truck like Ruby’s. Like Ruby’s. Not necessarily hers.”

I bent to give each cat a bit of toast. It made sense. There were other trucks like that truck. Maybe the glass came from one of them.

Hercules looked up at me. “The headlights were okay on the truck at Harry’s,” I said. “I checked.” With that he bent his head and began licking the peanut butter.

“We have to find out where the other trucks are.” I held up a hand even though no one was meowing any objections. “And yes, I know it’s a long shot, but it’s all we have right now to help Ruby.”

Owen, who had finished eating, walked over to the refrigerator and meowed. “Are you still hungry?” I asked. He dipped his head and put a paw over his nose, cat for “You are so dense.” Okay, so he wanted to draw my attention to something on the fridge door.

I got up and walked over. “What is it? This?” I pointed at the Winterfest schedule. Owen’s response was to look under the fridge. I took that as a no. “Well it can’t be this.” I gestured to a photo of Sara and Ethan mugging for the camera. Owen didn’t even look up.

The volunteer schedule for Wisteria Hill was stuck to the fridge with a gingerbread-man magnet.

“This?” I asked. Owen meowed his approval.

It was like playing charades with someone who didn’t speak English. “Well, obviously you don’t mean Wisteria Hill,” I said, walking back to the table with the sheet of paper.

“Everett? No.” That didn’t even get a reaction. “Not Marcus?”

Owen tipped his head to one side as though he was considering the idea.

“I don’t think he’s going to help. He arrested Ruby. He thinks she’s guilty.”

I broke off another piece of toast and held it out to Owen, who sprang across the room like it was a catnip chicken. I gave another bite to Hercules, too. “I don’t see Marcus helping us look for the killer when he thinks he’s already found her.” I stared at the sheet of paper. “Roma,” I said slowly.

Both cats murped at the same time. Although Owen’s was more of a mumble, since he had peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“She knows everyone in town. She had one of the trucks. She wants to help Ruby.” I looked at the boys. “Very good idea.”

I headed for the phone. Roma answered on the fifth ring. She sounded distracted.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No, I, uh . . . no,” she said. “You didn’t. Are the cats okay?”

It didn’t seem like a good idea to tell her Owen was sitting right in front of me, trying to get peanut butter off of his whiskers, so all I said was “Yes.”

“Good.”

“I need your help with something that might help me find who really killed Agatha.”

“What do you need?” she asked, her voice all business now.

I explained what Harry had told me about the trucks. “Any chance you could help me find out where the other three are?”

“I think so,” she said. “I may know where one of them is, and I’ll ask around about the other two. Give me a day or so.”

I thanked her and hung up. I went back to the kitchen with Owen on my heels. We’d eaten all the toast, and what was left of my hot chocolate was now cold.

I put the feeding schedule for the Wisteria Hill cats back on the fridge. I could feel Owen and Hercules staring at me. I turned around to see them sitting like a couple of statues, one pair of green eyes and one pair of gold eyes locked on me.

“What?” I said.

Nothing. Not a blink, not even an ear twitch.

“You think I should talk to Marcus, don’t you?”

Two sets of whiskers twitched.

I folded my arms and stared back at them. “First of all, when did you two become the champions of law and order? And second, what makes you think he’ll help?”

They stared.

I stared back.

Never get into a staring contest with a cat, or, even worse, two cats. You can’t win.

“Give Roma some time—a couple of days. Then I’ll talk to him.”

They exchanged looks. Then Owen turned and headed for the living room, while Hercules came over to me and rubbed against my leg. I picked him up.

I’d been thinking about telling Marcus about the trucks since Harry had told me about them. Marcus was so wrong about Ruby, but he wasn’t so close-minded a person or a police officer that he wouldn’t listen to what I had to say about the trucks. At least I hoped he wasn’t.

Carrying Hercules, I went out to the porch to double-check that I’d locked the door. I looked over at Rebecca’s house. The lights were on in the kitchen and I could see Everett’s car in the driveway. “I’m glad those two are together,” I said to the cat. He rumbled his approval. “At least something good came out of that awful mess of Gregor Easton’s death last summer.”

I picked up my scarf that had somehow ended up on the bench in the porch and took it back inside. “We need a happy ending for Ruby.”

Hercules nuzzled my chin. “I want to talk to Susan again,” I said. “Before I ask Eric about the envelope.”

The piece of envelope Hercules had taken from Eric’s office was upstairs with my computer. “You know, maybe we should search the newspaper archives, to see if we can find anything about Eric. Justin said they got into a bit of trouble when they were kids. It might’ve made the paper back then.”

The Mayville Heights Chronicle had been around for more than a hundred years. The archives, going back to the early sixties, were online for subscribers. I typed in my customer number and password.

The search system was a little funky, not at all like the one we used at the library that let readers search by author, title, subject, and keywords, and that allowed for minor spelling errors à la Google. The newspaper system required you to first settle on a year and then a category before you could search for keywords.

I did the math in my head and started with the year I figured Eric would’ve been sixteen. It took two tries to get the category right.

The story had made the front page below the fold. I was a bit surprised the paper had identified the boys. Eric, Justin, and three other young men, whose names I didn’t recognize, had been out driving—too fast and without headlights—and passing a couple of cans of beer around the car. Along the road that leads to Wisteria Hill, they hit something.

And ran.

What they’d hit had turned out to be a fifty-pound jute bag of apples. But they didn’t know that at the time. It would have been hard not to know you’d hit something, but they hadn’t known it was a sack of fruit. It could’ve been a raccoon. It could’ve been a dog. It could’ve been a person. The fact that it wasn’t was only luck, and maybe the old saying was true that angels watch out for fools and drunks, and heaven knows those boys were both.

I had to read another paragraph to learn Eric had been the driver and claimed he couldn’t remember the accident. He’d had a lot to drink.

My mind raced and my stomach twisted into a knot. I thought about Eric’s distracted manner and disheveled appearance the past few days and how Susan had been evasive, not her usual cheery, snarky self.

Was I wrong? Had Eric been drinking? Was he the one who hit Agatha in that alley? Did he have a blackout?

No.

I wasn’t going to do that, jump to conclusions about Eric, when all I had was an old newspaper story.

I logged out of the newspaper’s Web site and shut off my laptop. I’d talk to Susan in the morning, and after that, well, I wasn’t going to think that far ahead.

I would’ve overslept the next morning if Hercules hadn’t lurked over me. I fed the cats, drank two cups of coffee—extra strong—and left early for the library.

Fate or something seemed to be on my side. As I came down the sidewalk I saw Susan cutting across the parking lot, chin buried in the collar of her coat. Moving closer I could see two red plastic take-out forks in the knot of hair on top of her head. She smiled when she saw me, waiting until I caught up with her.

“Coffee?” I asked when we’d stomped the snow from our boots and I’d relocked the library door.

“Please.”

I dumped my things in my office and headed down the hall to the staff room. Susan walked around, turning on the downstairs lights even though there was almost a half hour until we opened.

I had the coffee on when she came up. I’d brought the remainder of the granola bars with me on the theory that a little chocolate couldn’t hurt.

Susan broke one in half, putting a piece on a blue-flowered plate from the staff room’s collection of mismatched dishes and stuffing the other half in her mouth. “These are good,” she said. High praise from someone who ate Eric’s cooking every day.

“Thank you.”

I got the cream, sugar and a couple of mugs and poured the coffee. Then I sat at the table opposite Susan, who inhaled half the cup like a man crawling through the desert who had just come across an oasis.

I was trying to figure out how to start when she looked at me over the top of her cup and said, “Eric said you asked him about Agatha.”

“I did. I’m trying to help Ruby. She didn’t kill Agatha.”

“I know,” Susan said. “She was the reason Ruby became an artist. And Eric probably wouldn’t have the café if it weren’t for Agatha Shepherd.” She set down her cup, picked up a chocolate chip from the plate and ate it. “Kathleen, you didn’t grow up here so you don’t know much about Eric when he was younger.”

“No, I don’t. I do know he got in a bit of trouble.”

“Agatha changed his life,” she said. “Hell, saved it, for that matter” She drank from her cup, then set it back on the table. “Short version: Eric’s mom and dad were too young and had too many kids. He was feeding the little ones when he was eight years old. And doing a good job of it. And he was running wild from about that time, too.” She gave me a brief smile. “Doesn’t sound like the man you know, does it?”

“No. Truthfully, it doesn’t.”

Susan let out a slow breath. “Eric started drinking when he was twelve, stealing beer from his father and other people in the family. When he drank he lost chunks of time. He had a car accident when he was sixteen. He didn’t remember being in the car, let alone driving. And he still . . .” She didn’t finish the thought.

She picked at another chocolate chip but didn’t eat it. “Agatha saw something in him and she encouraged his love of cooking. Kind of melodramatic to say it, but it is true that she changed his life.”

She was stalling, dancing around whatever it was she felt she needed to tell me. She flicked the chocolate chip around the plate like a little hockey puck.

I got up and refilled both our cups, trying to give Susan the time she needed.

“Eric hasn’t had a drink in a long time. He goes to meetings.” Abruptly she straightened. “The thing is, Kathleen, the past few weeks he’s been helping someone, I don’t know who, but someone he acted as a sponsor for in the past. Whoever it was had started drinking, and had the idea he could control it.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way, believe me.”

“You don’t know who it was?” I asked.

“No. Eric said he couldn’t tell me. But I know he was worried. I told him if he couldn’t tell me, he should talk to his own sponsor.”

The silence stretched between us. I wasn’t sure if she was going to say it, so I asked, “Susan, did Eric have a drink?”

Her left eyelid began to twitch. She nodded. “The night Agatha was killed. The person, whoever it was, called Eric on his cell. He hadn’t been home a half hour. I got the feeling from Eric’s side of the conversation that they’d talked earlier in the evening. Anyway, this guy was in a bar; at least I’m pretty sure he was. I was standing right beside Eric when the phone rang and I could hear the background noise. Eric said he had to go.” She laced her fingers together and stretched her arms in front of her. “He came home after two in the morning. His coat and hat were all snowy. He’d obviously walked, I don’t know how far. And he was drunk.”

I reached across the table and laid one of my hands on hers. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“I put him to bed,” she continued. “In the morning he didn’t remember coming home or where he’d been.”

“He had a blackout?”

“Yes. I don’t know what scared him the most: taking the first drink or the fact that he doesn’t remember it.”

I wasn’t sure how to ask what I needed to ask. “Susan, does Eric know anything about . . . about Agatha’s death?”

“No.” Her mouth moved, then she said, “I’m not sure. Eric would never hurt anyone, especially Agatha . . . but there’s all that time he can’t remember.”

“And he still won’t tell you who he went to meet?”

She shook her head. “No, and believe me, we’ve been back and forth about it over the past few days. He says the whole program falls apart if you can’t trust your sponsor. I don’t even know if he’s told his own sponsor.”

I pushed a stray bit of hair away from my face and tried not to let my frustration show. “Do you have any idea, any hint, who it was?”

“I don’t. I’m sorry. I don’t. All I can tell you is that it’s someone Eric used to know a long time ago when he first stopped drinking.” She looked at me, tight lines of anxiety around her mouth. “You believe me, don’t you?”

“I do,” I said. It was true. I did. Susan was a lousy liar, as I’d seen in the past few days.

“Eric didn’t hurt Agatha,” she said. “Even if he was having a blackout, he wouldn’t hurt another person.”

I thought about the news story I’d read. Eric had left the scene of an accident back then. But that hadn’t been a person, and Eric had been a kid in a car full of other kids. I could remember what peer pressure was like. “I don’t think Eric hurt Agatha, either,” I said. “I think Eric would always be Eric even if he couldn’t remember.”

Susan searched my face and she must’ve liked what she saw, because she smiled as she stood up. I got to my feet, as well. “Susan, do you remember seeing Agatha with a brown envelope any time before her death? I think it was a report-card envelope at one time.”

She thought for a moment. “Yeah, I do. Why?”

I couldn’t betray Harry’s confidence and I didn’t want to tell her that Eric had argued with Agatha over the envelope. “It might be nothing, but Agatha was hanging on to it pretty tightly, and it’s disappeared.”

“You want me to ask Eric about it? He’s really worried about Ruby, you know.”

Maybe she’d get further than I had. “Please,” I said. “Tell him it’s important.” At least for Old Harry, I added silently.

She nodded and looked at her watch. “I’ll go down. It’s almost time to open.”

“I’ll be right there,” I said, gathering the dishes and setting them in the sink. I leaned against the counter.

Eric had had a blackout. I’d meant what I said to Susan. Blackout or not, I didn’t believe Eric had killed Agatha. Eric would always be Eric. But the fact was, he’d been drinking. He’d had a blackout. And Agatha was dead.

I needed to know who Eric had been with in the missing time and where they’d gone. The question was, How was I going to find out?