He made a sound a lot like a sigh and lay down, stretching across my chest with his chin on my breastbone.
“And please stay out of that pile of branches and dead plants. Harry’s coming to get all that tomorrow to put in his compost pile.”
I stroked the cat’s black fur, warm from the afternoon sun. “I don’t have anything to tell him,” I said. “Mike Glazer didn’t die from anything natural—like a heart attack—but other than that, I don’t know what happened to him, or why it happened.”
I scratched the top of the cat’s head with one finger. “Got any ideas?” I asked.
He squinted at me. Either he was pondering my questions or the sun was in his eyes.
“Mike’s partners are out. They both have alibis. They were at that awards dinner in Minneapolis.” I sighed. “I keep thinking that it has to matter that he was killed here, in Mayville Heights.” I moved my arm a little under my head. “Okay,” I said. “There’s Liam.”
Hercules made a face.
“Yes, I know Maggie likes him, but Liam and Mike did have that argument outside Eric’s Place. Maybe whatever happened was an accident and Liam panicked.”
Hercules didn’t look convinced.
“Who else?” I said.
He seemed to think for a moment and then he licked his whiskers.
“Georgia?” I said. I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” She’d been awfully convincing in her explanation about losing the little spatula. Then again, whoever killed Mike had likely convinced him they weren’t a threat.
He flicked the tip of his tail and gave a snippy meow.
“Fine. Liam and Georgia are both on the list.”
Herc put his head back down again.
“What about Burtis?” I asked.
Hercules gave his head a vigorous shake. I wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no.
“What reason could he have had for killing Mike?” The cat didn’t have an answer. “Does Burtis strike you as the kind of person who would panic and run if something had happened by accident?” I blew a strand of hair off my cheek. “Liam, Georgia and Burtis,” I said. “That’s what we have. Or some mysterious person from out of town who followed Mike here to kill him because . . . because . . .” I made a face. “I don’t have a ‘because.’”
I put my arm around Hercules and sat up. I set him on the swing beside me. He shook himself and looked inquiringly at me. “I guess we might as well start with Liam. What do we know about him?” I held up one finger. “He’s a bartender at Barry’s Hat.” I stuck a second finger in the air. “He’s working on a degree in psychology.” I held up a third finger. “He’s been the driving force behind this whole tour proposal idea.”
Herc cocked his head to one side.
I nodded. “Yeah. That might be important.”
I knew almost nothing about Liam Stone, I realized, other than he was good-looking and liked to help women in trouble. He hadn’t borrowed books or anything else from the library. People’s borrowing habits were a good way to get some insight into what secret dreams they had and who they really were.
“Maggie said Liam likes to rescue damsels in distress,” I said to Hercules. Then I remembered what she’d also said about Liam rescuing Wren Magnusson the night Mike Glazer had been killed.
I folded one arm over my face and groaned into my shoulder. “Liam has an alibi,” I said, letting my hand slide down over the back of my head. I nodded slowly. “I bet Marcus knew that. That’s why he didn’t seem too concerned about that fight between Liam and Mike.”
Hercules put both paws on my leg.
“That leaves us with Georgia, Burtis and some nameless, faceless person from Chicago . . . or, or anywhere for that matter.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Do you know what the problem is?”
He looked around. Searching for an answer to my question or doing a quick spot check to make sure his friend the grackle wasn’t back?
“We don’t know anything about Mike other than what Rebecca and Harrison told us. And the fact that everyone who’d dealt with him here in town thought he was a jerk.”
Rebecca had described Mike as being “full of life.” Harry Senior had said he was “young and reckless.” And they’d both talked about how the death of his brother had changed Mike.
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to recall Harrison’s exact words: If anyone had predicted that one of the Glazer boys was going to end up dead the way he did, well, no one would have figured it to be Gavin.
I opened my eyes and looked down into Hercules’s green ones. “Everyone says that Mike changed when his brother died. And Harrison told me no one would have expected Gavin to die ‘the way he did.’ Maybe that’s where the answer to this whole thing is. Maybe what we need to do next is to find out just exactly how Gavin Glazer did die.”
19
The problem was I couldn’t find any details about Gavin Glazer’s death online. His car had missed a turn on Wild Rose Bluff and gone down over an embankment. The weather was good, the road bare and dry. I scrolled through two weeks’ worth of newspapers online for the period of time after the accident, looking for follow-up articles and reading the Letters to the Editor. There was some speculation that a deer might have darted in front of the car, and when Gavin had swerved to avoid it, he’d lost control of the vehicle, but that’s all it was—speculation.
After supper I’d taken the computer outside to sit in one of the big chairs by the back steps. Hercules was on the wide, flat arm of the other so he could look at the computer screen. “There’s something off here,” I said to him. “The night of Gavin Glazer’s accident it wasn’t snowing or raining. He was on a stretch of road he’d been driving since he was sixteen.” I touched the screen with one finger. “See that?” I said, pointing to the photo on the front page of the archived issue of the Mayville Heights Chronicle. “The embankment is on the left-hand side of the road and it’s an open field on the right. If a deer ran out in front of him, where did it come from and why didn’t he see it?”
I leaned against the back of the wooden chair. Hercules seemed to be reading the article on the screen, so I left the page open. I knew I was reaching, but something felt off about Gavin Glazer’s death. Maybe it had nothing whatsoever to do with his little brother’s death last week, but I didn’t have anything better to go on.
“I think I’ll call Mary,” I said.
Hercules stopped reading—assuming he had been reading and not just admiring his reflection in the screen. He jumped down and started for the house. There was an e-mail in my in-box from Lise, I noticed. It was probably the information I’d asked her for about Legacy Tours.
Hercules paused, looked back over his shoulder at me and meowed insistently. I could read the e-mail later, I decided. I shut down the computer and followed him.
I wasn’t sure how to explain to Mary why I wanted to know what I wanted to know.