Sleight of Paw (26 page)

I nodded. It seemed like half of Mayville was related to Lita somehow.

“Old man doesn’t like it,” Harry went on, “but sometimes he lets me win one.”

We pulled into a wide, clear area between the little house and the shop and we both got out of the truck. It was a bitingly cold night. The tiny house looked warm and welcoming. An amber light shone in the outside fixture, and a spiral of smoke came from the chimney.

We walked toward the back door. “Dad’s been very quiet and thoughtful the past couple of days,” Harry said. “Whatever this all is, I think he wants to get it out.” He rapped on the back door, then turned the knob and stepped back so I could go in.

Harry Senior was sitting on a chair by the corner woodstove in the kitchen. He smiled at me.

“Don’t get up,” I said, but he was already pushing himself to his feet.

“I wouldn’t be much of a gentleman if I didn’t get up and take your coat,” he said.

I slipped out of my jacket and gave it to him. His son gave me a quick smile, which his father caught. He dipped his head toward the younger man. “See, Kathleen? My son has already figured out to humor the old man.”

Boris padded over for a scratch behind the ears. When I bent to undo my boots, he nudged my hand with his head, much the way the cats did when they felt they weren’t getting enough attention.

“Dog’s spoiled,” Harry said, reaching down to pat him on the head.

“Would you like some coffee?” his father offered. “Will it keep you up?”

“I’ll chance it,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Let me get that, Dad,” Harry said, taking off his boots.

The old man shot him a look.

“Or not,” his son said, holding out both hands in surrender.

“Coffee cake,” I said, holding up a foil-wrapped package.

Harrison smiled at me. “I was hoping I’d get to try some of your cooking.” He pointed to one of the cupboards. “Plates are in there. Knives are in the top drawer.”

Harry Junior had put his boots back on without doing up the laces. “I’ll be outside, cleaning up the driveway,” he said.

“You don’t have to leave,” the older man said without looking up from the coffee he was pouring.

“It’s okay, Dad.”

I cut several slices of cake and put them on a blue bubble-glass plate. Harrison had poured three mugs of coffee. He set them on a wooden tray along with spoons, napkins, cream and sugar. I added the cake plate.

“Would you set that on the table over there, please, Kathleen?” he asked, gesturing at the low wooden trunk in front of the woodstove.

“Of course,” I said. I picked up the tray as the old man made his way over to his son, still standing by the door.

Harrison clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Sit down and have a piece of cake.”

The old man’s seat was clearly the chair closest to the fire. There was a plum-colored corduroy pillow against the cushions for his back and a couple of books and a newspaper on the floor. He liked Scottish history and political biographies, I knew. I took the chair next to him. Boris came and lay down with his head against my leg.

“Over here, boy,” Harrison said to the dog, patting the side of his chair. “Give Kathleen some space.” The dog lifted his head, gave the old man a mildly interested look and lay back down.

“Stubborn,” he said, shaking his head.

“Wonder where he learned that,” his son muttered.

“I heard that,” Harrison said, reaching for the coffee.

The hint of a smile played across the younger man’s face.

Boris raised his head again, nose twitching. I took a piece of cake for myself, broke off a small piece, and slipped it to the dog. If the two men noticed, they didn’t say.

The old man added cream and sugar to his mug and settled back in his chair. I held on to my coffee with one hand and scratched Boris’s neck with the other.

Old Harry smiled at me.” You have more questions about Agatha.”

“I’m sorry for being so nosy,” I said. “But I like Ruby. I truly believe she had nothing to do with Agatha’s death.”

“The police are idiots. You’re thinking they’ll stop looking for answers now that they think they have the killer.”

“Yes.”

“For what it’s worth, I agree with you about Ruby.” He studied the flames behind the glass window of the woodstove door. “You want to know what Agatha and I were fighting about,” he said, still watching the flickering fire.

“I’m sorry to invade your privacy and hers. But whatever was in that envelope that Agatha was holding on to so tightly, I’m convinced it has something to do with her death.”

The old man let out a slow breath. To my left his son hadn’t moved an inch. “You don’t think Agatha’s death was an accident?”

“No, I don’t,” I admitted. “Even if someone did hit her by mistake and then panicked, they ran and they left Ruby to be blamed. Either way, Agatha’s death is a crime.”

I set my cup back on the tray and turned toward him. “I saw three very different people argue with Agatha about that old brown envelope. Now it’s disappeared.”

His face went pale and he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again he looked at me. “Would it be enough if I told you that what was in the envelope had nothing to do with her death?”

I held out a hand. “I need to be sure,” I said softly. “I’m sorry. But I need to know why you’re so certain.”

He sighed. Boris looked over at him. I gave the dog another scratch behind the ears.

Boris got up and moved over to the old man’s chair. His hand settled on the thick fur on the back of the dog’s neck. “There have been too many secrets,” he said, absently patting the dog. “And I’ve been guilty of keeping them.” He looked over at his son. “You know how much I loved your mother.” It was a statement, not a question.

Harry nodded.

“I’m not making excuses,” the old man began. He stopped and fingered his beard for a moment. “If I’m not making excuses, then I shouldn’t be making them, should I?”

“It’s okay, Dad,” Harry said quietly.

They locked eyes and something stretched between them. For a moment it felt almost the way it did when Hercules walked through a wall or a door. The energy in the room seemed to somehow change.

Finally the old man leaned back and smiled wryly. “You know, don’t you?”

I looked from one man to the other, but I didn’t say anything. It was clear I was on the verge of learning something important.

“You had an affair with her.”

Harrison looked at me. “The boy’s right,” he said. “I broke my vows.”

I hadn’t been expecting this.

“My mother had a series of strokes that eventually ended with her in a nursing home,” the younger Harry said, as though his father hadn’t spoken. “She spent the last two years of her life there.” He gestured at his father. “He never missed one single day of visiting her in those two years. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t move.” He looked down at his hand still holding the coffee he hadn’t even touched. Then he met his father’s steady gaze. “No one would fault you for taking a little comfort.”

“I fault myself,” the old man said, his voice harsh. “I had no right to do what I did. How could I offer my heart when I wasn’t free to do that?”

His son set his cup on the tray and stood up. “Don’t judge the man you were so harshly,” he said. “I’m not.” He turned and went out the door.

Boris moved a bit closer to the old man’s feet and stretched out with his head on his paws. “He’s a good man,” Harrison said, his eyes still on the door his son had just exited through.

“Yes, he is.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes, but it wasn’t awkward. I knew now he was going to tell me the whole story. All I had to do was let him do it in his own way.

“That envelope?” he said finally.

I nodded.

“As far as I know, the only thing in it was information about my daughter.”

All the pieces dropped into place then.

“Agatha had a baby.” I remembered Roma talking about Agatha being away for several months, teaching. It had to be then.

“Yes,” he said. “I didn’t know for a very long time. She left town, had the baby and put her up for adoption.” Boris’s head pushed against his hand again and he began to scratch behind the dog’s ears. “Kathleen, you know I’m sick.”

I nodded again, suddenly not trusting my voice.

“I want to meet my daughter before I die. And I want her to have the chance to ask me any questions she might have.” His voice got even quieter. “I hope . . . I hope maybe she’ll want to know her brothers, but that’s her choice. I just want her to have that choice.”

I leaned toward him, elbows on my knees. “Agatha had some kind of papers about your daughter’s adoption in the envelope,” I said.

He nodded. “I think so. That’s what we were arguing about. She thought I was wrong for wanting to meet our child. She said I had no right to push myself into her life.” He shook his head, the memory clearly painful. “I was angry because she’d kept everything secret.” His eyes locked onto my face. “Kathleen, the only person who cared about the contents of the envelope was me. And I didn’t kill Agatha.”

I laid my hand on his arm for a moment. “I know that,” I said. “Are you certain the information about your daughter was the only thing in that envelope?”

“As far as I know,” he said. “Why?”

“Because I’m pretty sure Ruby argued with her about it, too.”

He hung his head for a moment. “That’s because of me, Kathleen. I knew Ruby’s grandfather. I know her mama. Ruby and Agatha were close. In some ways, for Agatha, I think maybe Ruby replaced our child.”

He looked at the dog at his feet, smiling when he lifted his head to look at him. “I’m not proud of it,” he admitted, “but I went to Ruby and asked her to talk to Agatha. It’s my fault she got caught up in all of this. I finally got her on the phone a little while ago. I told her to come clean. Agatha . . . she wouldn’t have wanted it to come to this.”

“It’s not your fault. Ruby has a good lawyer and a lot of friends. She’s not going to . . .” I exhaled slowly. “The truth will come out.”

Harry studied his gnarled fingers. “I even hired a private detective,” he said. “Now with the envelope gone, I don’t know how I’ll find her.” He was talking about his daughter, not Ruby, I realized.

I thought about the piece of paper Hercules had found in Eric’s office. I was going to have to figure out how talk to him about it without letting on how I knew he had it.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. I didn’t want to say anything to Harry until I was sure Eric hadn’t destroyed the envelope, maybe out of some misguided loyalty to Agatha.

“I appreciate that.”

I tried to imagine what it would be like to have a child you’ve never seen out there somewhere, but, really, I couldn’t. My family—my mother and father, and Ethan and Sara—had always been in my life, even when they drove me crazy.

“Harry, did you ask Eric to talk to Agatha?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. Why?”

“I saw them that same night. They had words about that envelope.”

“No,” he said. “The only person I pulled into this was Ruby. Whatever Eric was arguing about with Agatha, it wasn’t my daughter.”

I could see that he was getting tired, the lines on his face seemingly etched even deeper. “Thank you for telling me,” I said. “I know it wasn’t easy.”

“There never should have been all those secrets,” he said. “There never should have been anything to keep secret. I was a married man.”

“You were human being. You loved two women.”

All he could do was nod.

I got to my feet and went to hug the old man, feeling a lump in my throat at the thought that he might not be around much longer.

“I have to keep nosing around to help Ruby,” I said. “If I find that envelope, if I find anything that will help you find your daughter, I promise you, it’s yours.”

I broke out of the hug and he put a hand against my cheek for a moment. “Thank you, Kathleen,” he said.

Behind me in the doorway his son cleared his throat. “I’m going to see Kathleen home, and I’ll be right back,” he said. Harrison lifted a hand in acknowledgment.

Out in the yard I took a deep breath of the frosty night air. The stars really did seem to sparkle more out here. We stood by Harry’s truck.

“How long have you known?” I asked.

“I figured it out about a year or so back,” he said. “I know about the baby, too. I suppose you think it’s strange I’m not angry.”

“None of my business,” I said. “Even though I do seem to be poking my nose in it.”

He smiled for a second, then his face grew serious again. “Kathleen, my mother died by inches. She was a beautiful, capable woman who shrank into nothing. And she loved my father fiercely.” He laughed. “That may seem like a strange word to describe it, but that’s how it was. If she’d been herself . . . Well, he didn’t see any other woman when my mother was in the room.”

Harry looked up at the sky again, filled with stars so far away there was no warmth in them for us. “My mother was gone long before she died, and I can promise you that she would never have begrudged the old man a little love.” He stumbled over the last word.

“As far as I can tell, whatever Agatha had about the baby has disappeared,” I said. “But if I find anything, I promise you I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m sorry Ruby got caught up in all of this. If I can do anything, you’ll call me?”

“I will.”

We got in the truck and as I turned to fasten my seat belt, I caught sight of another old vehicle I knew. “Harry, what’s Ruby’s truck doing here?” I asked. “I thought the police had it.”

“What do you mean, Ruby’s truck?”

“There.” I pointed to it, parked next to his workshop.

“That’s not Ruby’s truck,” he said, putting on his own seat belt. “That’s an old truck I mostly use around here and as backup for the plow.”