“Doesn’t make any difference,” I said. “I have a younger brother and sister—twins. I was fifteen when they were born and if you asked either one of them I know they’d say I still treat them like they were six.”
“So are you saying you’d do the same thing Marcus did?”
I slowed down to let the car in front of me make a left turn. “I’m saying that if I thought Ethan or Sara was mixed up in something that might hurt them, I’d do just about anything.”
She let the silence hang between us for a moment. “I didn’t kill Hugh Davis,” she said softly.
“I believe you,” I said. “And so does Marcus.” I hesitated. “But you haven’t been completely honest, either. Just now you said you were in Red Wing.”
I heard her shift in the seat. “Because I was.”
“You didn’t say you were in Red Wing Friday night.”
The silence lasted so long this time I thought she’d just stopped talking to me. “No, I didn’t,” she said finally.
Marcus’s house was just up ahead. As I pulled into the driveway I could see him, cleaning out the flower bed underneath the living room window. He got to his feet, wiping his hands on his paint-spattered jeans.
“Kathleen, could you stay for a minute?” Hannah asked.
“All right,” I said.
Marcus walked over to us and we both got out of the truck. “Hi, Kathleen,” he said with just a touch of a smile.
I nodded. “Hi, Marcus.”
He turned to Hannah. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Marcus, I’m not six anymore,” she said, folding her arms across her middle.
“I know that,” he said, frowning slightly.
“So don’t treat me like I am.” She held up a hand to stop him from speaking. “I’m not finished. Kathleen pointed out that it doesn’t matter whether I like it or not; you’re always going to get involved in my life. So since I can’t stop you, at least be straight with me from now on.”
Marcus’s eyes flicked over to me for a second. “Okay,” he said, “but it goes both ways. I expect you to be straight with me.”
“You want to know where I was Friday night.”
“I do.” He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He swiped them on his pants again.
Hannah glanced at me and I hoped the look I gave her seemed supportive.
“I was getting drunk,” she said flatly.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but that wasn’t it. On the other hand, I did believe her.
Marcus closed his eyes for a moment. “You don’t drink,” he said when he opened them again.
She swallowed and fiddled with the strap of her tote bag. “I do a lot of things you think I don’t do. Don’t worry. I didn’t drive.” She pressed her lips together. “I’m not the perfect person everyone always expects me to be, but I wouldn’t do that.”
She turned to me then, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Thanks, Kathleen, for the drive and . . . everything.” She looked from me to Marcus and shook her head. “Sometimes you miss what’s right in front of you, big brother.” Then she disappeared around the side of the house.
I waited until Hannah had disappeared around the side of the house, and then I turned to Marcus. “I believe her,” I said.
“So do I,” he said. “Whatever you said to her, thank you.”
He was standing so close to me I could smell his aftershave mixed with the loamy smell of earth and plants. “All I said was I would have done the same thing if I thought Sara or Ethan were connected to a murder.”
He smiled. “Feels good for us to look at something the same way. Different, but good.”
I wanted to reach up and smooth the hair back off his forehead. No, I was kidding myself. I wanted to grab the front of his sweatshirt, pull his face down to my level and kiss him just the way he’d kissed me the last time we’d stood in his driveway next to my truck. I didn’t, of course. I was good at imagining those kinds of scenarios, but I was just too practical to carry them out. Or maybe too chicken.
“You’re right—it does,” I said. I put a hand on the side of the truck to remind myself I was in the real world and not some fantasy. “I should get going.”
He nodded. “Thanks, Kathleen, for driving Hannah home and for talking to her and for . . . just . . . thanks.”
I couldn’t seem to stop looking into those gorgeous blue eyes. “I’ll, uh, see you,” I said. I walked around the truck, got in and backed carefully down the driveway. He stayed where he was, watching me, and even when I was out of sight around the curve in the road, I could still feel his eyes on me.
I was almost home before I started to weigh Hannah’s words. She’d said she’d gotten drunk. I believed her. The way she’d said the words, her tone, her body language—everything told me she was telling the truth, not acting. But the fact was that Maggie had seen Hannah not long after Andrew and I found Hugh Davis’s body. And Andrew had seen her drive by the marina.
So she got drunk a little later that Friday night. What had happened earlier that made her want to?
18
There was no sign of either cat when I got home. I kicked off my shoes, hung up my sweater and set the bag Rebecca had given me on the counter. Inside I found the promised loaf of her cinnamon raisin bread, a round loaf of honey sunflower and a dozen blueberry muffins. There was also a tiny brown paper bag from the Grainery that I knew had to hold a catnip Fred the Funky Chicken for Owen. And there was a tiny cardboard box from the same store. By the process of elimination it had to be for Hercules. I wondered what was inside.
I put a piece of bread in the toaster and a cup of milk in the microwave. Usually the sound of the toaster would make both cats show up, and after a moment Owen’s gray tabby head peered around the living room doorway.
“What were you doing?” I asked, getting the peanut butter and the cocoa mix out of the cupboard.
He gave an offhand meow, cat for “Not much.”
Hercules’s black-and-white face looked around the opposite side of the door to the living room.
“And how was your night?”
He made a motion that kind of looked like a shrug.
“I saw Rebecca at tai chi,” I said as the microwave beeped. I held up the two loaves of bread. “She brought me some bread.” I saw the two of them exchange glances at Rebecca’s name.
Owen crossed the floor, sat down in front of me and meowed, cocking his head to one side. I knew what he was asking.
“Yes, she sent something for you,” I said. “She spoils you.”
He blinked a couple of times as though he couldn’t understand what I’d said.
I opened the top of the little paper bag and set it on the floor. Owen sniffed cautiously and then a blissful expression spread across his face. He poked a paw inside the bag and batted out a neon yellow Fred the Funky Chicken. For a moment he just inhaled the scent of catnip, a lot like the way Maggie did when I took a pan of brownies out of the oven. Then he picked up the toy and retreated under the table with it.
Hercules had watched the whole thing from the doorway. “Come over here,” I said. “Rebecca sent something for you, too.”
His green eyes immediately darted to his brother, who was already sprawled on the floor, chewing happily on the chicken.
“No, it’s not a catnip chicken,” I said.
The toaster popped then. I held up a finger. “Give me a minute,” I said. I put peanut butter on the bread and cocoa mix in my milk and set everything on the table. Then I grabbed the little cardboard box.
I crouched down next to Hercules. He looked at the box and then looked at me.
“I have no idea,” I said.
I took off the lid. Inside was a tiny stuffed purple mouse. There was a tag attached to its tail. Shake for thirty seconds. Set on flat surface and press down on mouse.