I stuck him back in the porch and because this wasn’t the first time this kind of thing had happened, I scooped up a couple of handfuls of snow onto the top step. I knew he’d walk through the door, but he wouldn’t walk through the snow.
I was almost around the end of the house when I heard him. I stopped and turned around. Hercules was coming along the path, stopping to shake a paw every step or two, green eyes narrowed, ears pulled forward, complaining all the way. I went to pick him up again and as I reached for him he darted left, past me, and headed for the truck.
I turned the corner just in time to see him launch himself from a snowbank onto the hood of the truck. He’d climbed up onto a snowbank? He scrambled to get his balance and for a moment I thought he was going to slide down onto the front bumper. Then he managed to get upright and stable. He shot me a look of victory and walked through the windshield onto the dashboard. Then he shook himself and jumped down onto the seat.
I opened the door and looked at him. “Why do you do this?” I asked.
“Murp,” he said, and it seemed to me that he almost shrugged.
“There’s nothing going on at the library.”
His response was to turn his head and look out the front window.
I reached past him and set my briefcase on the floor on the passenger side. “This doesn’t mean you’ve won,” I said as I climbed in.
He very wisely didn’t point out that I was wrong.
Surprisingly, considering all the back-and-forth with Hercules, I actually got to the library early. I slung my briefcase over my shoulder and carried the cat in my arms because I didn’t have a bag to put him in. I hoped like heck that no one would see me. Pets did not belong in the building and I’d already heard more than one joke about bring-your-cat-to-work day.
I took Hercules up to my office and set him down. He immediately jumped up onto my desk. When I set my laptop down beside him, he put one paw on top and meowed loudly.
I looked at my watch. “Okay, we have a few minutes to see what we can dig up about that pawnshop robbery.”
I was still convinced it was the key to Dayna Chapman’s murder. It seemed that Hercules was as well.
The previous librarian, Ingrid, had subscribed to a news service package for libraries. It had turned out not to be that popular with library patrons and when it expired at the end of January I wasn’t going to renew our subscription, but since we still had access for a few weeks I decided to log in and see what I could find on the Minneapolis robbery. All I came up with was a short newspaper article about the sentencing for the young man who had shot Nic Sutton’s father. There was one photo of him being led out of the courthouse in handcuffs. At the time he was only eighteen and his slight build and strawberry blond hair made him look even younger.
The paper clearly hadn’t deemed the story to be very important. They hadn’t even sent their own photographer to court. The photo was credited to Edwin Jensen, a blogger who covered crime and policing stories in the Minneapolis area. He called himself an “independent journalist.” He might have been independent, but he also seemed to have a bit of a bias against the Minneapolis Police Department. On the other hand, he also had an uncanny ability to be able to find out that a crime had happened and be the first on the scene. His blog had tens of thousands of readers.
“What do you think?” I asked Hercules. “Is it worth a look?”
“Merow,” he said decisively.
A click on Edwin’s name sent us to his blog. Deep in the archives we hit pay dirt. Jensen wasn’t much of a writer, so his stories were always photo-heavy. There were probably two dozen shots posted from the night of the pawnshop robbery, many just slightly different versions of one another. I found one of Dayna Chapman standing talking to a police officer. POLICE TALK TO WITNESSES, the caption said. There was another similar shot with the same caption, and another after that. The only reason I took a closer look at the third image was that Hercules had stuck his head in my way and I’d had to lean closer to the screen. I recognized the face, I realized. But it wasn’t Dayna Chapman in the photograph. It was Olivia Ramsey.
22
I slumped against the chair back. “What the heck?” I said.
Either Hercules had gotten bored or he’d decided his work on this planet was done, because he was sitting on my desk washing his face.
“We have to talk to Olivia.”
“Mrr,” he said. It might have been a yes. It might not have been.
I straightened up and pulled the laptop closer. Buried in a post from three days later, I learned that a teenage witness named Livie West had actually come past the pawnshop after the robbery and shooting had happened. She’d stopped to help with first aid for Nic’s father—and was being hailed as a hero—but she’d been too late to see anything. The only real witness was Dayna Chapman.
“Livie West,” I said, standing up and walking around my desk. “Olivia was using a different last name.”
I had to talk to her and I needed a reason. I didn’t want to just barge in and start asking questions.
I looked at my desk, where Hercules was still washing his face, and realized I had the perfect excuse right there: the thank-yous from the board to everyone who’d worked on the fundraiser. I’d brought them back from my meeting with Lita so I could add my own personal thanks.
“I could deliver Olivia’s thank-you in person,” I said. I looked at my watch. But first I had to see if Susan and Abigail were downstairs.
I looked at Herc. “Please, please, please stay in here,” I said. He jumped down onto my chair and sent it spinning lazily in a circle. Hopefully that would keep him entertained for a while.
It was eleven thirty before I could get away from the library. I’d hoped to sneak Hercules down the stairs and take him home after I stopped at Olivia’s, but there were just too many people around. I left the cat curled up asleep on my desk chair and crossed my fingers he’d stay there.
Olivia was in the kitchen that Decadence Chocolatier shared with Sweet Thing and the Earl of Sandwich, packing truffles into silver boxes with white embossed snowflakes on the lids.
“Those are beautiful,” I said.
She smiled. “Thank you.”
I held up the envelope with the board’s thank-you. “This is just an official thank-you from the library board,” I said.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Olivia said. “My truffles didn’t exactly help you.”
“That’s not your fault.”
She peeled off the thin plastic gloves she was wearing and took the envelope, turning it over in her hands.
“Kathleen, there’s something I haven’t told anybody,” she said.
“What is it?” I asked.
She stared down at the floor for a moment. “Dayna Chapman wasn’t exactly a stranger to me.”
It was the last thing I’d expected to hear. “What do you mean?”
Olivia sighed, then looked at me again. “Six years ago I was living in Minneapolis. I was heading home from the comic book store on a Tuesday night and there was a man, lying on the sidewalk bleeding.” She stopped and took a moment to compose herself. “He, uh, it turns out he owned a pawnshop. There was a robbery and he . . . he was shot.”
“You must have been terrified,” I said.
She gave me a half smile. “You know, I wasn’t. I was on the first responder crew at school. I just started first aid. Someone had already called nine one one. Five minutes and the paramedics were there and it was over.”
“Dayna was another witness,” I said.
“She was the only witness.” Olivia reached over to straighten a row of chocolate boxes on the workspace in front of her. “I got there after everything had happened. I didn’t see a thing. The police took us back to the police station and once they figured out that I didn’t know anything that could help them, they drove me home.” She shook her head. “That was the only time I’d ever seen Dayna until last Thursday afternoon.”