He raised his eyebrows.
“All right, I admit it doesn’t exactly look that way.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“What was Burtis Chapman doing out at Wisteria Hill this morning?” I asked.
He hesitated.
“I can ask Burtis myself,” I said.
“Yes you can,” he said. “It’s not a secret. Burtis knows those woods better than anyone else in town. I asked him to give me the lay of the land back there, that’s all.”
So did that mean he knew about the poker game and Idris Blackthorne’s business operations? I knew he wouldn’t answer that question.
I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “Do you know what The Ladies Knitting Circle was?”
“No. I’m guessing they were knitting?”
I shook my head. “That’s what I thought. Years ago—at the time that Thomas Karlsson disappeared—they were operating a kind of safe house, hiding women from their abusive husbands and helping them get away to start new lives.”
“And how do you know this?” he asked.
My hair was slipping from its ponytail and I reached back and pulled out the elastic. “I’ve been researching some of the groups that used to meet at the library. The Ladies Knitting Circle was one of them.”
“So you think, what? That a group of little old ladies buried Thomas Karlsson out at Wisteria Hill?” Clearly he wasn’t taking what the women had been doing seriously.
“They weren’t exactly little old ladies. Anna Henderson was the leader of the group. When Tom Karlsson disappeared, when it looked like he’d abandoned Pearl and Roma, they were already being hidden by Anna and her friends.”
Marcus glanced back at the house.
My ankle was aching and I shifted more of my weight to my other leg and made a mental note to use Rebecca’s herbal salve on my ankle again before bed. “I’m not telling you this to point the finger at Anna Henderson,” I said. “Pearl had an out and she’d taken it. She was safe. Her child was safe. She had no reason to kill her husband.”
“I didn’t say that Thomas Karlsson was murdered,” he said.
“Oh c’mon,” I said, my exasperation showing in my voice. “I saw his remains. I don’t think he hit himself in the head and then lay down and scraped dirt and leaves over his own body with his last bit of energy. At best he hit his head accidentally and someone hid the body.”
Marcus stared past me, down the driveway. I knew what was coming. Finally he looked at me. “Kathleen, this is an active police investigation,” he said.
“So stay out of it,” I finished. This was the point where I usually got aggravated at him and left in a huff. But I really didn’t want to do that anymore. “Could you stop being a police officer and just be a person for one minute?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Being a police officer is part of who I am. As far back as I can remember, it’s the only thing I ever wanted to be. If you and I are going to be friends, you’re going to have to find a way to accept that.” He shifted position, folding his arms across his chest. “I can’t go easy on someone who’s part of an investigation just because you’re friends with them.”
“And I just can’t ignore it when one of my friends is in trouble,” I said, pushing that annoying tendril of hair back off my face again. “You’re going to have to find a way to accept that, if we’re going to be friends.”
I pulled my keys out of my pocket and unlocked the driver’s door. “I’m going to leave now,” I said. “Because I’m kind of mad right now.”
“Are you still going to be mad Saturday morning when we go feed the cats?”
Right. I’d forgotten that I’d traded a shift with Harry Junior so I’d be out at Wisteria Hill again in another couple of days.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.” I wanted to stay mad. It just wasn’t working for some reason.
I climbed in the truck, started it, and backed carefully out of the driveway, making sure my seat belt was fastened. Marcus watched me from the driveway. I raised one hand in good-bye. I was annoyed.
Not rude.
22
I thought about everything Pearl had said all the way home. Could Ruby’s grandfather have had something to do with Tom Karlsson’s death? Then there were the men Tom had cheated at poker. Did Tom go back to the game? Did something happen there?
I hoped Roma really would call a lawyer before they went to talk to the police in the morning. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Marcus, it was just that as he himself had pointed out to me back in Roma’s driveway—he was a cop. That wasn’t just what he did; it was part of who he was. I’d seen firsthand that when he was on a case he could be even more single-minded than Owen on the hunt for Fred the Funky Chicken parts.
There was no sign of the cats in the kitchen when I got home. I kicked off my shoes, hung up my jacket and padded into the living room. Owen was the picture of an adorable house cat, sitting next to the big wing chair.
“I’m not fooled,” I said. “I know you were lying on the footstool.” It was his favorite place to nap, which meant I was always vacuuming cat hair off the top. I could just never catch him up there.
I bent down, swept him up, and sank into the chair. He sat on my lap and studied my face. “Guess who showed up at Roma’s?” I said.
“Meow?” he said.
“Uh huh. He wanted to talk to Pearl.” Okay, so Owen hadn’t actually said…err…meowed Marcus’s name. On the other hand, we weren’t actually having a conversation. I told him what I learned from Pearl, turning over each bit of information in my mind. Owen listened intently, or at least pretended to.
“I keep coming back to Tom’s body being buried out at Wisteria Hill and Anna hiding Pearl and Roma at the same time. For those two things not to be connected is a bit of a coincidence.” I was slumped down in the chair, the cat stretched across my chest. “On the other hand, coincidences do happen.” Owen muttered his agreement.
I pictured the dirt-encrusted skull I’d found myself sprawled next to when the embankment had collapsed. It had been caved in, fractured on the left side.
By my estimation, based on the photographs I’d seen of her, Anna Henderson had been more than a foot shorter than Tom Karlsson. “There’s no way she could have hit the man,” I said to Owen. “What did she do? Ask him to wait while she got something to stand on? I don’t think so.”
Plus what reason did Anna have to hurt Tom, I asked myself. She was helping women get away from abusive men, not do away with them. Even if Tom had shown up at Wisteria Hill looking for his wife and daughter, there was no way he could have gotten to them. The Hendersons were the most prominent family in town. Tom would have ended up in jail for any kind of threat against Anna. Assuming he’d survived Carson’s wrath.
I tipped my head to look at Owen, who was lazily washing the end of one gray paw. Or possibly licking a bit of leftover food off of it. “Am I being naïve for not considering the possibility that Pearl had something to do with Tom ending up buried at Wisteria Hill?”
The cat paused, paw in the air, as though he were actually mulling over my question. Then suddenly he turned his head and licked my wrist before going back to his laissez-faire paw cleaning. That could be a no, I decided.
“Okay, let’s say for the sake of argument that Pearl did kill Tom.” Owen’s eyes flicked up to mine. “By accident,” I said, moving my hand so I could scratch behind his ear. “How did his body get all the way to Wisteria Hill? If Anna had helped her—”
Owen lifted his head again, eyes narrowed. For a second it almost seemed like he was following what I was saying. “If,” I said. “If.”
That seemed to satisfy him.
“So if Pearl had killed Tom and if Anna had helped her with the body, why on earth would they have taken it to Wisteria Hill? That makes no sense.”