“Thank you,” I said, brushing his hand with my fingers. “But there are a couple of other things I want to talk to Gavin about.”
Marcus picked up the bag of take-out food with one hand and the pressed-paper tray holding the coffee with the other. “You’re going to go with him, aren’t you? To talk to his contact.” Something in his voice when he said the word “contact” made me suspect that he didn’t really believe there was one.
I nodded. “Yes. And just so you know, I keep that little can of industrial-strength hair spray that Mary gave me in my bag. It’s more lethal than pepper spray.” I held up my first three fingers. “I’ll be careful. I’ll call you when we get there and as soon as we get back. Librarian’s honor.”
“There’s no such thing as librarian’s honor,” he said.
“Don’t make me shush you,” I countered, narrowing my gaze at him in a mock glare.
He smiled and gave my fingers a quick squeeze. “I’ll call you later,” he said.
I nodded and watched him go, thinking for what had to be the millionth time by now that he looked good no matter in what direction he was headed.
I walked back to the table.
“Everything okay with you and your detective?” Gavin asked.
I nodded and sat down again. “You wanted to get a rise out of him. That’s why you told him that ‘we’ were going to talk to Big Jule.”
I thought he’d deny it, but he just gave me that easy grin. “Guilty as charged,” he said, leaning back and propping one arm on the chair back. The smiled dimmed. “I’m sorry, Kathleen. I shouldn’t have done that. It was juvenile.”
He seemed sincere, so I decided to accept his apology.
“When do you want to go talk to Julian McCrea?” I asked.
The smile came back. “You’re coming with me?”
I reached for my coffee. The cup was empty, but Claire, with her seemingly sixth sense about when I needed a refill, was already headed our way with a full pot. “Yes, I’m coming with you,” I said. “I hope it’s not a waste of time.”
“I’ll pick you up at nine.”
I nodded. “That’s fine.”
“I’ll call Big Jule in a little while and if anything changes I’ll let you know,” he said. He made a gesture at the table. “Breakfast is on me.”
“Thank you,” I said, getting to my feet and sliding the strap of my bag over my shoulder. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
I stopped at the counter for a cup of coffee to go even though I was probably already overcaffeinated. It gave me the opportunity to quietly pay for both my and Gavin’s breakfasts, my subtle way of letting him know that all the charm in the world wasn’t going to work on me.
12
Gavin pulled into my driveway exactly at nine the next morning, something I was pretty certain he’d timed for effect since I’d once seen him check his watch and linger for a moment at the library when he’d had a meeting with Margo.
“I’m leaving,” I said to the boys, reaching for my jacket.
Owen looked up from the stack of stinky crackers that he was arranging on the floor like a bingo player spreading out cards before the numbers were called. It could have been my imagination, but his expression looked sour, as though he’d just gotten a whiff of something rotten. Hercules didn’t even acknowledge that I’d spoken. “I’ll see you later,” I said.
Gavin was just coming around the side of the house as I stepped outside. “Good morning,” he said. After a pause he added, “You look nice.”
“Thank you,” I said. I’d waffled on whether it was manipulative to wear a skirt and heels for the meeting with Julian McCrea, standing, undecided, in front of the closet. Hercules, who had been sitting just inside, seemingly eyeing everything I pulled out and rejecting it like a feline Tim Gunn, had finally reached out and set a paw on my black boots and blinked his green eyes at me.
Ruby would have said that was a sign from the universe. It was more likely a sign that Hercules wanted his breakfast, but I decided I was overthinking things. I’d chosen a black skirt with a lavender shirt and the boots.
“We’re meeting Big Jule for brunch at the Rose and Gray,” Gavin said as I settled into the passenger seat of his Mercedes and fastened my seat belt.
I’d never been to the restaurant that specialized in cuisine made exclusively with ingredients from within a hundred-mile radius of Minneapolis, but I knew Roma and Eddie had had dinner there a few times and it was only his position as a local celebrity that had gotten them a reservation on short notice. Either Julian McCrea or Gavin had some clout.
We talked about Gavin’s work for much of the drive, and that led, eventually, to a conversation about Margo.
“She had talent in her own right, you know,” Gavin said, his eyes flicking away from the road for a moment to look at me. “One night we were working in the bar at the hotel and she showed me photos of her artwork. I can’t even draw a stick man, but Margo had done some paintings of these old buildings, and I know it sounds crazy, but she could actually make you feel something when you looked at them.”
I thought of Ruby’s oversize pop-art acrylic renderings of Owen and Hercules. I couldn’t explain it, but she’d managed to capture Owen’s mischievous streak and Herc’s sensitive side with her vivid colors. “It doesn’t sound crazy to me,” I said.
“She painted this barn—it was half falling down—and I kid you not, when she showed it to me I got a little choked up just looking at it. But she had another one she’d done of this old farmhouse, and be damned, but the feeling I got was that I wanted to live in the thing.” He shook his head.
“Had she ever exhibited her work?”
“Somehow I don’t think so. Margo was her own worst critic.”
I exhaled slowly. “I know she could be”—I hesitated, looking for the right word—“challenging. But she was very encouraging to the local artists who had pieces in the show.”
I remembered the smile on Nic Sutton’s face after he’d come out of his meeting with Margo, and how Ruby had been literally bouncing with enthusiasm after hers.
“Lita said Margo didn’t have any family. Is she right?” I felt a twinge of guilt that it had taken me until now to ask the question.
“She is,” he said, moving into the passing lane and accelerating to pass a high-sided furniture delivery truck. “She told me once that her parents had died when she was a child and she’d been raised by her grandmother.” His gaze flicked over to me for a moment. “I think that’s why she was so exacting. Her grandmother was a doctor in an era when there weren’t that many women doctors. I got the impression the woman had very high standards for Margo.”
He looked at me again as the sleek silver Mercedes hugged a wide turn of the highway. “Margo has”—he paused for a moment—“had a degree in molecular biology. I think studying art history was a huge act of rebellion for her.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
Gavin smiled. “I know. ‘Rebellious’ isn’t really the first word you’d think of to describe her.”
I couldn’t help smiling myself. “No, it isn’t,” I agreed. Knowing a bit of Margo’s history helped me understand her a little more. I found myself wishing I’d known all of this before she’d died.
“What about you, Kathleen?” Gavin asked, his eyes fixed straight ahead as he moved into the left lane to pass a slow-moving minivan and then back to the right to get by a tractor-trailer. He drove the way he did everything else: with a confidence that teetered on the edge of arrogance. I felt safe—he wasn’t taking stupid chances, and he was a good driver. It reminded me of driving with Marcus, a comparison neither man would probably have liked.
“What do you mean?” I said.