Paws and Effect (11 page)

“Hello, Kathleen, it's Simon Janes,” the voice on the other end said.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Janes,” I said, wondering why he'd called. Was he going to cancel our appointment or did he just want to know why I wanted to see him?”

Luckily, he got right to the point. “We have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning and I have to make an unplanned trip to Minneapolis.”

My heart sank.

“But if you'd like to join me for an early supper at the St. James Hotel we could talk then.”

I didn't want to lose the chance to pick the man's brain. “Yes, thank you. I would,” I said.

We agreed to meet at the hotel bar at five thirty. I didn't doubt that Simon Janes had a meeting in Minneapolis, but I also suspected that changing the time and place of our meeting was a way for him to control it. That was fine with me. As Harrison Taylor would say, I'd been around the block a time or two and recognized the scenery.

I left the library at the same time I would have left if I'd been going home to have supper and change for tai chi class. I'd already sent Maggie a text letting her
know I might miss class. I parked the truck on a side street near the hotel. I was early but as I walked into the hotel bar I discovered I wasn't as early as Janes. He was leaning back in his seat at a small table in the center of the room, legs crossed. As I approached he got to his feet and pulled out the other chair for me.

“Hello, Kathleen,” he said. He was tall with a firm handshake and direct gaze, and once again I thought he didn't look anywhere near old enough to be the parent of a seventeen-year-old.

Since he'd referred to me by my first name I did the same. “Hello, Simon,” I said as I sat down. “Thanks for fitting me into your schedule.”

He took the chair opposite me again. “When Mia's working at the library I generally eat alone.” He shrugged. “I like my own company but sometimes it's good to have someone else's. I've heard all my stories.” He gave a practiced, self-deprecating smile.

“Well, I promise to listen attentively and nod and smile in the appropriate places.”

He laughed. “Then it should be a good meal.”

He turned his head and a waiter materialized beside us. He handed each of us a menu.

“Are you driving, Kathleen?” Simon asked.

I nodded.

“Sparkling water, then?”

“Please,” I said.

“Two please, Michael,” he said to the waiter.

The young man nodded. “Right away, sir.”

Simon leaned back in his chair, the menu
untouched on the table in front of him. “How do you feel about pizza?” he asked.

“I like pizza,” I said.

I noticed he had a crescent-shaped scar that ran from the end of his right eyebrow to just below the eye. “Mia says that my habit of suggesting what to order when I'm with a woman is condescending and patriarchal. So I'm just going to say that they have great pizza here and would you like to share one? Of course you don't have to say yes.” He raised an eyebrow. “I think that covers all the disclaimers.”

I couldn't help smiling back at him. I'd seen his arrogance and I had no doubt that he could be condescending and patriarchal, but he could also be charming. “I've never had the pizza here,” I said, “but I've heard good things about it, so yes, let's split one.”

Michael, the waiter, returned with our sparkling water. I squeezed a little lime into mine and took a drink while Simon relayed our order, taking the opportunity to study the man. He wasn't wearing a tie, but his dark suit was expensive and expertly tailored. He was somewhere below six feet, rangy, with his hair buzzed close to his head. He certainly looked the part of the successful businessman but something about the way he carried himself made me think he'd started at the bottom. He reminded me of Burtis Chapman, I realized. I wouldn't want either man for an enemy.

Once the waiter left Simon turned his attention to me. “So what do you want to ask me about first?” he said. “The Long Lake proposal or Ernie Kingsley?”

I think my mouth fell open in surprise. “How did you know?” I managed to get out.

“I knew this meeting had nothing to do with Mia,” he said. “I know she's happy working for you and I've picked her up enough times to feel confident that you're all happy with her.”

I nodded. “We are.”

“From what Mia's told me the reading program is going well and you don't have any papers with you, so you didn't want to meet with me to hit me up for money.”

He'd approached our meeting the same way I might have. “You're right again,” I said.

One forearm rested on the edge of the table. The other was on his leg. He didn't have any fidgety tics that I'd picked up so far. “You and Detective Gordon are a couple.”

It wasn't a question, so I didn't say anything.

“He has a connection to the woman who was killed—the geologist with that environmental group.”

I nodded again. “They were friends in college.”

“You're looking for information.”

The conversation was beginning to feel like a tennis match. Serve and volley. Serve and volley.

“Yes,” was all I said.

“So what? You think Ernie could have killed that woman?”

At least I wasn't going to have to play any games. “I don't know. I don't know the man—he doesn't have a library card. But you know him. What do you think?”

He laughed. “I don't have a library card, either. Does that mean I'm flawed as a human being in your eyes?”

Out of the corner of my eyes I caught sight of our waiter, coming from the kitchen. “You're generous when it's a good cause, like Reading Buddies, but you don't like to waste money. I don't see that as a flaw. Also, you're a big fan of Vin Diesel and you wanted to be a lawyer.”

I'd timed it perfectly. Michael arrived then with the pizza and our plates. Simon waited until we each had a slice before he spoke.

“Very good,” he said. “How did you do that?”

I took a bite of my pizza before I answered. It was good, with a thin, crispy crust, tomatoes, onions, salami, fresh herbs and wonderfully stringy mozzarella. “This is good,” I said.

Simon didn't say anything but “I told you so” was written in the expression on his face.

I set my fork down. “So how do I know so much about you? I'm observant. You don't have a library card, but you do borrow things on Mia's card. You've watched every movie in the Fast and the Furious franchise more than once.”

“Maybe Mia's the fan,” he said.

I shook my head. “She likes fantasy and Japanese anime. So it has to be you who likes Vin Diesel. You could have bought those movies or downloaded them but you didn't. That would be a waste of money when you can borrow them for free. But you did give us
money for Reading Buddies. That says you're frugal but not cheap.”

“And law school?”

“Scott Turow and a lucky guess. You've read everything we have that he's written and requested two books we didn't have. And I know Mia wants to be a doctor.”

For a moment he didn't say anything. Then he laughed. “Very good, Kathleen. I'm impressed. And I'm not easily impressed.”

I cut another bite from my pizza. “I answered your question but you didn't answer mine.”

“Do I think Ernie could have killed that woman?”

I nodded.

“Ernie Kingsley is a junkyard dog who would sell out his own mother to make a deal. But I don't think he'd
kill
someone to make a deal.” His expression turned serious. “He does have a temper, though. Last year he was at some business lunch at a restaurant in Minneapolis. I don't know any of the details, but things got a little heated, some punches were thrown, the police were called. Then it all went away.” He held up his left hand and ran his thumb over the end of his middle finger, implying, it seemed to me, that money had made everything go away.

“Have you considered that squatter?” Simon asked. He glanced in the direction of the bar and once again the waiter seemed to appear out of nowhere, this time with another glass of sparkling water for Simon. “Could I get you another?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “No, thank you. I'm fine.” I turned my attention to Simon. “What squatter?”

“There's a guy living in the woods out there, close to the lake. He claims his family owned that land a hundred years ago and it was taken from them illegally. I don't think there's anything to his claims. In fact it looks like he's nothing but a deadbeat dad trying to avoid supporting his kids.” He didn't try to hide the contempt in his voice.

“I know the natural-resources people have had a couple of run-ins with him and I heard that the guy came after Ernie with an ax. Guy has this old truck with some kind of camper thing on the back that he's living in.”

Hope's words came back to me:
“The medical examiner thinks she was hit by a car, then the body was moved and she was . . . dropped over.”

Maybe this was the answer. Maybe this man, this squatter living in the woods, was the person who killed Dani. Maybe he'd hit her by accident and panicked.

“Thank you, Simon,” I said. The knot that had been in the pit of my stomach since the night Hope showed up at my door loosened.

“I'm glad I could help,” he said.

We spent the rest of the meal talking about Reading Buddies. He seemed genuinely interested and once again I thought that behind the somewhat arrogant exterior there was a pretty nice guy.

Before we parted ways in front of the hotel Simon
took out a business card and scribbled something on the back of it before handing it to me. “My cell phone number. If I can help with anything else.”

I headed back to the truck and drove up Mountain Road. A furry-faced committee of two was waiting in the kitchen.

“I'm sorry I'm late,” I said, dropping my briefcase and shoes under the coat hooks. “I was talking to Mia's father. I may have something that can help find whoever killed Dani.”

I bent down to pet them both. Hercules sniffed my hand and then narrowed his green eyes in suspicion. Owen's whiskers twitched and he gave a loud and somewhat huffy meow.

“Yes, I had supper with him.” The cats exchanged a look.

“Mrr?” Hercules asked. I knew what that meant. I'd heard it enough times.

“Pizza,” I said.

Hercules made a sound a lot like a sigh. Owen, on the other hand, put on his indignant face and made a point of turning his head and looking away from me.

“It was the only time he had available and it's not as though I could call you.”

Hercules tipped his head and looked in the direction of the living room, where the phone was.

I put my face close to his and scratched the spot where the white fur of his nose met the black fur from the top of his head. “You don't have opposable thumbs,” I said.

Beside him Owen gave an audible sigh. I reached
over with my free hand and scratched behind his left ear. Then I leaned closer to him. “I'm sorry,” I said. He still wouldn't look at me.

I got to my feet, got the stinky crackers and put a stack of four in front of each cat. Hercules looked up and smiled at me. Clearly all was forgiven. Owen sniffed the crackers as though he hadn't eaten hundreds if not thousands of them by now. He eyed me briefly, then nudged the pile over with his nose and began checking the crackers one by one.

Poet Alexander Pope wrote, “To err is human; to forgive divine.” In my experience a few sardine crackers helped getting to the
divine.

I
made it to tai chi just as Maggie formed the circle. I hurried across the room, hopping on one foot as I pulled on my shoes, and slid in next to Roma. She smiled a hello, already swinging her arms along with Mags and the rest of the class.

It was good to set aside everything else that had been on my mind and just concentrate on the form and my Push Hands for the duration of class.

“How are you?” Roma asked after we'd finished the form at the end. “And how's Marcus?”

Roma had been out of town at a convention for several days. Marcus and I—along with Harry Taylor—had taken care of the cats while she was gone.

“We're both okay,” I said, patting my face with the edge of my shirt. “There's something I wanted to ask you. Do you have a second?”

“Sure. What is it?”

I led her over to the windows at the end of the
room. “Do you know anything about some guy living in an old truck somewhere near Long Lake?”

Roma nodded. “His name is Ira. He's been out there for the last five or six months. Do you think he had something to do with what happened to Marcus's friend?”

“I don't know. Maybe. How has he managed to stay out there for so long?”

“He claims his family owns some piece of land out there—nothing that's part of the development. I heard there's some kind of court case and that's why he hasn't been forcibly evicted.” She reached over and picked a clump of cat hair off the front of my shirt. “You could try talking to Oren. I think the guy is related to the Kenyons somehow.”

“I'll do that,” I said. “Thanks.” I studied her face for a moment. “How are you, really? Rebecca told me that Eddie is going to be working with Everett.”

Eddie was Eddie Sweeney, former all-star player for the Minnesota Wild hockey team, now retired, and Roma's former boyfriend. Their relationship had ended when he proposed and Roma turned him down. She was older than Eddie and that, plus the fact that it was too late for her to have children, was the reason she'd said no. Eddie was crazy about Roma and he wasn't giving up.

Roma sighed softly and played with the wide silver ring she wore on the index finger of her right hand. I could see part of the chain from her rose gold locket peeking out from the neck edge of her long-sleeved T-shirt. Eddie had given her that locket. “It's harder than I thought it would be, having him here in town.”

Eddie had retired at the end of the season and moved to Mayville Heights just a couple of weeks earlier.

“You could say yes and put both of you out of your misery,” I said lightly.

She gave me a sad smile. “You know I can't do that.”

I leaned over and gave her a hug. I knew that she could do it. I just didn't know how to make her see that.

I called Hope when I got home and told her what I'd learned from both Simon and Roma. “Nice work,” she said. “Marcus said you had a way of getting people to tell you things.”

“I think it's just because I ask a lot of questions,” I said. “I'll try to talk to Oren tomorrow. I'll let you know what I find out.”

“Sounds good,” she said. “How's Marcus?”

I was sitting in the big chair in the living room, rubbing a knot in my left calf with one hand. “You know him, Hope. He doesn't say a lot. He's been helping Eddie do some work on his new place the past couple of days. I think it's making him crazy that he can't investigate.”

“Maybe we'll get lucky and find something and this will all be over.”

“I hope so,” I said. I didn't add that in my experience things rarely went that easily.

*   *   *

I woke well before my alarm Wednesday morning and since I was up so early, decided to drive out to Long Lake to see if I could find Ira the squatter and
his truck. There was no sign of him or the vehicle. Instead of going back home I stopped at Eric's for a breakfast sandwich and coffee, which I took to the library and ate at my desk, my chair turned around to the window so I could look out over the water.

I was halfway up a ladder with a set of pumpkin lights when Eddie Sweeney walked into the building after lunch. He was six-four with broad shoulders and muscles in all the right places, the walking definition of tall, dark and handsome.

“Kathleen, what are you doing?” he asked, grinning up at me.

“Getting ready for Spookarama,” I said. I draped the lights over the top step of the ladder and climbed down so I was at Eddie's level, more or less.

“That has to have something to do with Halloween.”

“It's a party for the little ones. It's safer than them being out on the streets on Halloween night.”

“Could I help?” Eddie was good with kids. It was part of the reason Roma insisted he needed to marry someone who could give him more children. Eddie had a daughter, Sydney, who lived with her mother, Eddie's ex. I knew that part of the reason Eddie had bought the loft that Marcus was helping him work on was so that Syd could spend more time with him now that he wasn't playing.

I leaned back and studied him, squinting my eyes and trying to see him with green skin and neck bolts. “How would you like to be Frankenstein? I'm thinking more Herman Munster than Mary Shelley.”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Abigail will call you.” I gave him a hug. “Thank you. The kids are going to love this.”

He nodded and his smile faded. “Kathleen, how's Roma?”

“She misses you.”

He nodded. “I miss her. I went out to see her. She said I was just rubbing salt in the wound. I told her I wanted to be friends.”

“Do you?” I asked even though I knew the answer.

Something flashed in Eddie's dark eyes. “I want to be her husband.” He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “You know she's staying in touch with Syd.”

I smiled. “It doesn't surprise me. That's Roma.” I knew that Roma and Sydney had bonded over their shared love of animals. Roma would never cut the child out of her life. I also knew that Sydney was all for her father marrying Roma and was probably pleading his case.

“Syd's working on her,” Eddie said as if he could read my mind. “She's crazy about Roma and so am I. And I know she still loves me.”

“She does.” It was written all over her face whenever his name came up.

He jammed his hands in his pockets. “I'm not going to get all weird and follow her around town. I'm just going to camp on the edge of her life until she figures out that we're better when we're together.”

“I hope that happens,” I said.

Eddie smiled then. “Don't tell anyone, because it
would blow my tough-guy hockey-player image, but I kinda believe in all that happily-ever-after stuff.”

I thought about Everett and Rebecca, who had spent a big part of their lives apart but who had gotten their happily ever after in the end. I hoped it wouldn't take Roma and Eddie that long.

*   *   *

I was crossing the parking lot at the end of the day when my cell phone rang. It was Hope. “We need to talk,” she said.

“All right,” I said. “Where are you?”

“In the parking lot at the marina.”

“Stay there. I'm standing beside my truck. I'll be there in five minutes.”

Hope was parked at the far end of the marina parking lot. I pulled in next to her car. I could see her standing by the rock wall that ran from the wooden dock around to the point. Just from her body language I could tell that she didn't have good news to share. I walked over to join her.

“Hi,” I said. “What's up?”

“I talked to Foz—Bryan—a little while ago,” she said. The breeze off the water tousled her dark curls and she pushed them impatiently back from her face. “He was pretty close-mouthed but I did find out that they've found more evidence that seems to implicate Marcus.”

My throat tightened. “I don't understand. He didn't do this. How can they find evidence of something that didn't even happen?”

“I don't know,” Hope said. “This whole thing is off.”

“Did he tell you what this so-called evidence is?” I couldn't help the sarcastic edge to my voice.

“Someone—I have no idea who—saw Marcus and Dani arguing outside the motel.”

I shook my head. “That's not new evidence. We already knew they were there. Maggie saw them.”

Hope pushed her hair away from her face again. “Motel, Kathleen,” she said. “Motel. The Bluebird Motel, where all three of them were staying.”

“Whoever saw them is wrong,” I said flatly. “If Marcus had been out there arguing with Dani he would have told us.”

Hope didn't answer me right away. Her mouth moved as though she was trying out the feel of what she wanted to say before she said it.

“Are you sure?” she finally asked.

“Of course I'm sure,” I retorted. “Why aren't you?”

“You know better than most people how private a man Marcus is.”

I nodded.

“And you know how important trust and loyalty are to him.”

“I know,” I said. They had almost derailed our relationship before it got started.

“There's something he hasn't told us in all of this.”

My stomach clenched as though some giant hand had grabbed it and started squeezing. “Hope, he's what you two like to call a person of interest in his friend's death and you think he's keeping secrets?”

She exhaled softly. “I think he's protecting someone—I don't know who—that he cares about.” She looked
down at the ground for a moment and kicked a rock, skittering it across the grass. Then she met my eyes again. “Can you tell me with one hundred percent certainty that Marcus has told us everything? Absolutely everything?”

The hand on my stomach squeezed harder and harder. Because I realized that I couldn't. That little niggling feeling that had been burrowing in the back of my brain wouldn't let me.

“I don't know what he's holding back,” Hope said. “But we need to find out.”

All I could do was nod. I wasn't sure what felt worse: the thought that Marcus didn't completely trust me, or the thought that I didn't completely trust him.

I cleared my throat. “I'll talk to him.”

“I'm sorry to put you in this position,” Hope said. I believed her. I could see the sadness in her eyes and the downturn of her mouth. “I can't let Marcus be arrested for something we both know he didn't do.”

She pressed her lips together and it suddenly hit me that she loved him. Not as a partner. Not as a friend. She
loved
him. Why hadn't I seen it before? Or maybe I had and I just hadn't wanted to admit it.

“It has to be done,” I said. I looked past her to the lake. The water looked rough and troubled—exactly how I felt. “What else did you find out?”

“I didn't get this from Bryan,” she said. “I have a . . . contact in the prosecuting attorney's office—he's keeping a close eye on this—and anyway, it looks like Marcus doesn't have an alibi for the time that the medical examiner thinks Dani was killed.”

I held up a hand. “Wait a minute. The prosecuting attorney's office is where he was. Remember? He went for a meeting. The prosecutor had been held up. He went to talk to Dani and then he went back to the prosecuting attorney's office.”

“Where the meeting lasted all of about five minutes,” Hope said. “Which means there's an hour unaccounted for.”

“Did you ask Marcus where he was?”

“Uh-huh. He was evasive. Finally he said he went for a walk. He said he had a lot on his mind and just wanted to figure some things out. When I asked him what things he said they had had nothing to do with the case.” She looked past me, at the water, and for the first time I saw a flicker of fear in her eyes. “Keeping secrets is the worst thing he could be doing right now.”

The words hung in the air between us. “I'll find out where he was,” I said, working to keep the emotions that were swirling in my chest from getting out. “I'll find out all of it.”

Hope looked away again for a moment. “I don't want this to come between the two of you.”

I believed her. She loved him and I should have seen that a long time ago but I could also see that she wanted him to be happy.

“It isn't going to come between us.”

“I have to go,” Hope said abruptly.

“Wait,” I said. “Did you find anything more about Dani's family?”

“I've got a line on someone who might be able to give us some inside information.”

I nodded. “Good. I'm going to out to see Marcus and I'll stop and talk to Oren about the guy in the truck.”

“Okay, I'll talk to you later, then,” Hope said. She walked back across the grass to her car. I was about to head back to the truck when my phone rang. It was Marcus. He had been planning to make dinner for us. I had thought I might stop to talk to Oren on the way out to Marcus's house. If I left now I could still do that.

“How do you feel about spaghetti at Eric's?” he asked.

“Okay, but what happened to spaghetti at your house?”

“My stove won't work. Larry Taylor is coming to take a look at it in the morning. I told him it wasn't an emergency.”

I started for the truck. “Okay,” I said. “I'll meet you at the café in about an hour. There's something I need to do first.”

Oren's house was a renovated farmhouse not a lot different from mine, with the same steeply pitched roof and bay window. His house had an addition on the left side, set back from the main house. A covered veranda ran along about half of the front of the main house and all the way across the front of the extension.

I could see his truck in the driveway as I got close to the house. He was on the veranda painting what looked like a long wooden bench with a hinged seat.

I pulled my truck in behind his and got out. Oren waved his paintbrush in greeting and got to his feet. He was tall and lean, in his mid-fifties, with sun-bleached
sandy hair. He minded me of actor Clint Eastwood with a little quiet farm boy thrown in.