Sleight of Paw (25 page)

“Ask me later,” I said, watching Ruby go over and hug another one of the building’s artists who had just come in.

“Okay.” She linked her arm through mine and walked me toward the food. “Come have some soup,” she said. “It’s tomato vegetable, and there’s fresh Parmesan and those sourdough croutons you like.”

Maggie got me a bowl of soup and sprinkled cheese and croutons on top. I picked up a spoon and took a stool at the end of her worktable. I’d eaten about half the bowl when Justin came over, hooked the rung of an empty stool with his foot, and pulled it close so he could sit down.

“Hi, Kathleen,” he said. “I wanted to thank you for helping Ruby, so”—he held out his hands—“thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

We sat in silence for a moment. Then he said, “This doesn’t feel real, you know. Ruby being arrested and me suddenly getting all this money from someone I didn’t know.” He shook his head. “I got something that will do so much good from Agatha Shepherd’s death, and Ruby—who loved her—got a load of trouble.”

So it was definitely true. “No one thinks Ruby killed Agatha.”

“The police do.”

“And they’ll figure out they’re wrong and find the real killer.”

Justin put his fingers flat on the table. And stared at them. “The funding fell through and I thought it was the end of the project. I was out of ideas. I’d begged for money. I’d literally begged for it. And then I found out a stranger had left me what I needed to get started. A stranger. I thought it was a dream or some kind of sick practical joke.” His eyes went to Ruby before giving me his attention again. “I’m thinking about not taking the money.”

“Because of Ruby.”

“Yeah.”

I could actually feel the energy coming off of him. It didn’t seem like he ever stopped moving. Some part of him—hands, feet—was always in motion. Right now it was his right foot moving up and down on the rung of the stool.

“Turning down that money isn’t going to change anything for Ruby,” I said. “And she’d hate your doing it.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, I know. But it would ease my guilty conscience.” He gave me a small smile.

I could sympathize a little on the guilt.

Justin shifted in his seat, picked up his coffee and set it down again. “Kathleen, what do you think happened in that alley?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“It could have been an accident,” he said slowly. He was still playing with his cup. “Maybe it was, I don’t know, someone who panicked, someone who was drinking. They ran and now they’re afraid to come forward. Otherwise . . . why would anyone want to kill an old woman?”

I shrugged.

“I just don’t buy that someone her age, who’d just come from rehabilitation hospital, for God’s sake, would have any enemies.”

“So maybe it was an accident and the driver panicked.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That had to be it. And it’s a stupid shortcut, you know. I walked through it.”

I’d thought the same thing myself. The alley didn’t really save any time or any distance, but if someone were driving it would help him avoid the stop sign at the corner.

“I feel bad for Eric, too,” Justin said, looking past me toward the high windows of the former school classroom behind us. “This can’t be good for business, and he made a hell of a lot of sacrifices to get that place off the ground.”

“You two are friends?” I asked. I glanced over at Maggie. She dipped her head in Justin’s direction and raised her eyebrows, code for
Do you need rescuing?
I gave a slight head shake.

He shifted on the stool again, pulling it a bit closer to me. His foot was tapping to some rhythm only he could hear. “We go way back,” he said. “We used to hang out together.” He laughed. “We got into a fair amount of trouble together.”

“Eric?” I said. That didn’t quite fit with the man I knew.

“Oh, yeah,” Justin said. “Kids I work with? Kids I want the camp for? I used to be one of them. I drank; I used. There’s a big chunk of time when I wasn’t straight for even an hour.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, although I was starting to see the reason for his intensity. “I was shoplifting,” he continued, “swiping stuff out of cars. You know that straight stretch of highway just outside of town, headed for Minneapolis?”

“I do.”

“Raced out there more times than I can count or remember. Pretty much every time with Eric riding shotgun.” He gave me a wry smile, almost like he had a bit of pride for the memory

“So, what changed?” I asked, leaning my elbow on the table and propping my head on my hand. “I take it you’re not still doing that anymore.”

He laughed, “Nope. Sober and straight for seven years now. No dope, no booze, although I do admit to still having a bit of a lead foot on the highway. What happened is I got arrested. I got sent to juvie.”

“Where you’ve learned . . . ?” I prompted.

“How to hot-wire a car and pretty much nothing else.” He fingered the silver skull bracelet on his right arm. “It took a couple more trips there and a couple of kick-ass counselors to turn me around. It’s why the camp’s so damned important. Some of us need a kick in the ass and a lot of help to get it all together.”

He drummed his fingers on the edge of the stool between his legs. “Eric, on the other hand, he got it together by himself. With Agatha Shepherd’s help.” He laughed. “Of course, it probably helped that I wasn’t around.”

His face got serious. “When I drank I was just mostly looking to have a good time, you know, but Eric, he was”—he hesitated—“destructive.”

I was still having a problem picturing Eric as the young man Justin was describing.

“He had blackouts when he had no idea what he’d been doing.” Justin looked at me. “It’s good that he doesn’t drink anymore. Period. I just don’t want what’s happened to mess up everything he’s worked so hard for.”

I thought about seeing Eric at the rink and how my first thought was that he looked like he’d just come off a binge. “Are you saying that something like Agatha’s death could start Eric drinking again?”

“No,” he said. “I mean, she was one of the few people who stuck by him when he was still drinking, so her death had to hit him hard. But start drinking? No.”

He fiddled with one of the silver skulls again. “Stress is not good for an alcoholic. There’s the impulse to have a couple, you know, just to take the edge off.” He exhaled slowly and noisily. “But that’s not where Eric is anymore. He has a wife and kids.” Justin traced the edge of the stool’s curved seat with his finger. “And he’d never do something and let Ruby or anyone else take the blame.”

Abruptly he got to his feet. “Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I talk too much. I need to go see how Ruby’s doing. Excuse me.”

I watched him walk over to where Ruby seemed to be saying good-bye to Peter and slide his arm around her waist. I slipped off my own stool and went to Maggie. “I have to get back to the library.”

“Did Justin talk your ear off?” she asked.

“No, I, uh, learned a couple of things,” I said.

“Anything you want to share?”

“Later,” I said.

Maggie studied my face, but all she said was, “All right.”

I grabbed my coat and left. As I walked, I thought about what Justin had said, his insistence that Eric wouldn’t drink. I thought about Eric’s appearance, his evasiveness, and Susan’s out-of-character excuses. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he had been drinking. And now I couldn’t help thinking that maybe I didn’t know better.

I stopped at the corner. Peter was farther ahead of me, already on the other side of the intersection. All at once I was frozen in place, watching him making his way down the sidewalk in a black woolen Winterfest hat . . . and Ellis Slater’s aviator jacket.

I
had to remind my feet to move, and by the time I was across the street I’d lost sight of Peter.
I must be wrong,
I told myself as I trudged back to the library. He’d been wearing a jacket that looked like the one I’d seen in Agatha’s house, not the actual jacket. Peter wouldn’t take something that didn’t belong to him. He was a lawyer, after all, and a pretty decent guy, from what I’d heard.

I was glad to get home at the end of the day. I heated the last of the stew and ate with Owen for company. Hercules appeared long enough to let me scratch behind his ears and then he wandered off.

I thought about Hercules’ little forays into Ruby’s apartment and Eric’s office.

“You know what the problem is?” I said to Owen. The cat leaned forward as though he really wanted to hear the answer to the question. “Too many secrets. I’m starting to see connections where there aren’t any. I saw Peter Lundgren ahead of me on the street and I actually thought he was wearing a jacket I’d seen in Agatha’s house and that had belonged to her brother.”

There were a couple of pieces of meat and a bit of carrot left in my dish. I set it on the floor for Owen. “Don’t tell Roma,” I said. Admittedly, I was telling him to keep a secret when I had been complaining about other people doing it.

I checked the clock. I had about a half hour before Harry came to get me. What was the old man going to tell me? Anything? The more roadblocks I ran into, the more curious I got, and the more convinced I became that the envelope’s contents held the key to Agatha’s death.

“Ruby knows what Agatha was carrying around with her.” Owen had finished eating and started to clean himself up. “And Eric is mixed up in this in some way, too. Why won’t anyone tell me what’s in the damn thing? What’s the big secret?”

It didn’t make any sense. What were Harrison Taylor, Eric and Ruby all willing to risk being implicated in a crime for? Had Agatha done something illegal? Had someone else? It wasn’t money. I was fairly certain of that. Harry wouldn’t keep his mouth shut, promise or no promise, over money. For him it was personal, emotional. Probably for Eric and Ruby, too. The one thing they had in common was they all loved Agatha.

I was going to have to talk to Eric again. I kept trying to push the thought that he’d been drinking out of my mind. But it wouldn’t quite go. Justin said Eric had been destructive when he drank and sometimes he blacked out.

I look down at Owen and gave voice to the thought that had been twisting in my head and in my stomach since I’d left Maggie’s studio. “Eric did not get drunk, have a blackout and run over Agatha. Did he?”

Hearing the words made me see how preposterous the idea was. Owen didn’t even dignify the question with so much as a twitch. I didn’t have any real proof that Eric had been drinking, let alone that he had been drunk. And if he had fallen off the wagon and had a blackout I didn’t believe that meant he’d turned into someone else. Even if there’d been some kind of accident, I refused to believe Eric could drink enough to turn into the kind of person who would just leave someone to die.

“I’ll talk to Eric again after I talk to Harry,” I said to Owen as I reached for the bowl on the floor. “If Harry tells me what all the secret keeping has been about maybe I’ll be able to find out what’s happening with Eric.”

I began filling the sink with hot water. “And maybe somewhere in all of this we’ll find a way to help Ruby.” Owen finished washing his tail and went to get a drink.

“I’m going out to the Taylors to talk to Harry in a little while,” I said. “I forgot to tell you.” Owen’s head snapped up. I could read his little kitty mind. “Forget it,” I said. He ignored me, walked over to the door where the messenger bag sat by the heating vent and stuck one paw side.

“No,” I said. “You can’t go with me.” After what had happened this morning I wasn’t chancing taking a cat with me to Harry’s.

He leaned his head over the top of the bag and peered inside.

“Owen, have you forgotten about Boris?” I asked. His paw came out a lot faster than it had gone in. Boris was Harry Junior’s German shepherd. Boris was a pussycat, pun intended, but I couldn’t convince the cat of that. The only menacing thing about Boris was his bark, but Owen wasn’t taking any chances.

Harry pulled into the driveway at exactly seven o’clock. “Your father knows I’m coming?” I asked as I got in the truck.

He nodded. “I wouldn’t ambush the old man.”

“I didn’t really think you would.”

“He knows about Ruby being arrested. He wants to talk,” Harry said as he backed out onto the road and started up the hill. “I think there’s stuff he’s been wanting to get off his chest for a long time.” He glanced over at me. “And he likes you.”

“As I said before, I like him, too.”

“There’s no way he’s going to talk to me. He still sees me as a kid. Dad keeps his cards pretty close to his vest, but for some reason he trusts you.” He blew out a breath as he realized how that sounded. “I’m sorry,” he started. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” I said, lifting a mittened hand to stop him. “I know what you meant.”

“I think the fact that you didn’t grow up here makes a difference,” Harry continued. “You don’t have any judgments about anyone, or any ideas about who they ought to be or how they ought to live.”

It was the first time being from away was seen as an advantage. I liked Harry’s way of looking at things.

The Taylors lived close to Oren, two roads above the Kenyon family homestead. Young Harry and his kids—a boy and a girl, both teenagers—lived in the main house. I knew Harry and his wife were divorced and she lived out of state, but the town talk was silent on that subject.

The old man lived in a small house, more like a cottage or a guesthouse, behind and to the left of the main house, in a cleared area surrounded by trees, with Harry Junior’s shop nearby.

“Your dad still lives alone?” I asked as the truck followed the curve of the neatly plowed driveway.

“Oh, yeah,” Harry said. “There’s a woman who comes in every weekday to clean up and do some cooking. Paula Stevens—she’s a cousin somehow to Lita. You know, Everett’s secretary.”