Sleight Of Paw Part 19

The sun was still out as I got dressed to meet Maggie. Hercules paced restlessly around the kitchen as I pulled my wool socks up over my snazzy green long underwear and stepped into my snow pants.

"It's skating, Hercules, not BASE jumping. I'll be fine," I said. He didn't look convinced.

There was a reason I had never skated, I discovered. It was a lot like patting your head and rubbing your stomach-while standing with one foot on a banana peel. At least that's how it felt to me.

There were quite a few people on the ice when I got down to the marina, mostly little kids and a few adults. Maggie was sitting on a wooden bench with her own skates already laced. I dropped beside her. "Hi," she said.

I looked out over the ice surface. "I didn't think there'd be so many people."

"That's okay. No one expects you to audition for Stars on Ice your first time out." She pulled a pair of skates out of the bag at her feet. "They should fit," she said.

I undid my boots and pulled on the extra socks I'd tucked into my pocket. Maggie laced the skates for me, wrapping the ties around my ankle at the top and double knotting the bow.

We stepped onto the ice and my legs slid out to the side until I was more than halfway down into a pretty decent split. My arms flailed until I could latch on to Maggie and I did, wrapping both my arms around her waist in an awkward bear hug. I managed to pull myself up, but my ankles wouldn't stop wobbling. The only way to stay upright was to keep a death grip on Maggie and press my knees tightly together. My feet kept trying to slide off in opposite directions. Every bit of coordination I thought I had was gone.

"Take a second to find your balance," she said.

"It's going to take more than a second," I said. I tried to straighten out more, clutching at Maggie's jacket like it was a lifeline, because it was. I got both feet together and pointed in the same direction.

"Link your arm through mine," Maggie instructed.

I pried my fingers from the front of her coat, put my arm through hers, and smiled triumphantly.

And then immediately fell on my snow pants.

Maggie, who had somehow known I was going to fall, had let go of me a split second before I went down.

"Ow!" I said, glaring at her.

She pulled me up and had the good sense not to smile. I found my balance again, and this time I didn't end up on my padding. "Okay, we're going to try a little skating," she said.

"I don't think so," I said. "I think I'll stay right here and enjoy the scenery."

"You can do this." She tugged on my arm, and for a moment I was gliding across the ice.

Although my brain said forward, my feet decided to move sideways and independently of each other. I windmilled my arms to try to stay upright. But I didn't.

That was how it was for two turns around the outdoor rink: Maggie alternating between giving me confusing instructions and pulling me back to my feet.

"I have to sit down," I said finally. I was sweating like a bear in a sauna. and I was pretty sure my feet had tied themselves into knots inside my skates. Maggie was more or less dragging me around while I clung to her, bent at a ninety-degree angle at the waist. It was the only way I could keep my feet from sliding off on a tangent. I pretty much looked like Wile E. Coyote on skates.

Maggie steered me over to the bench and I dropped inelegantly onto it. "Go skate," I said, waving her away. "Go."

She went, which meant I could sit and sulk silently for a while.

Mary glided over, stopping with a flourish and a little spray of ice chips. I should've guessed she could skate. She held out a thermos. "Hot chocolate?"

"Yes, please," I said gratefully. Sulking went a lot better with some chocolate.

She sat down beside me, took one of the cups from the inside of the thermos, and filled it about half-full. I inhaled the scent of steaming chocolate.

"Your first time on skates?"

I nodded.

"So what do you think?"

"I think ice is very cold, very slippery and very hard," I said.

"So you had fun, then?" Mary said, her eyes sparkling over her cup.

I gestured at the rink. "How do you all do that so easily?" Maggie was skating backward. Backward, talking to Claire.

Mary smiled. "Back in the dark ages when I was young, all there was to do here in the wintertime was skate and toboggan. If you stayed home someone would find a ch.o.r.e for you to do."

I took another sip of hot chocolate. My fingers were starting to thaw.

"My first pair of skates were hand-me-downs from my older brother," she said. "I had to wear two pair of my father's woolen socks with them to fit. "

I wiggled my toes in my skates. The feeling was coming back to my feet. I looked at Mary. "Mary," I said. "If you tell me you skated to school uphill both ways through waist-high snow, I'm going to whack you with a s...o...b..ll."

Mary laughed and shook her head. "Of course not," she said. "Snow was closer to over my head."

I s.n.a.t.c.hed a chunk of snow from the ground and threw it at her. It disintegrated against the front of her coat. She just laughed harder.

We watched the skaters zip by, and then Mary's face grew serious. "Kathleen." She hesitated. "You know about Ruby?"

"That she was arrested? Yes." I blew on my hot chocolate and took another drink. "Ruby didn't kill Agatha."

"The police have evidence," Mary said. "They found a glove belonging to Ruby with the body."

"She found Agatha's body. She was upset. She could have easily dropped a glove."

Mary studied her skates for a moment. "That's not the only evidence. Bridget says they have a piece of gla.s.s that was found in the alley and paint that matches the paint on Ruby's truck."

It struck me that Bridget was doing too much talking, but I didn't say that out loud.

"The gla.s.s is from the kind of headlight Ruby has on her truck and"-Mary cleared her throat-"the headlight is broken."

She wouldn't meet my eyes. "And it looks bad that Agatha left all that money to Ruby's boyfriend," I said.

"Yes, it does."

"What it looks like and what the truth is are not always the same thing. I know Ruby didn't kill Agatha." I finished my hot chocolate and gave the cup back to Mary. "Thank you," I said. "This is probably going to sound crazy, but could Agatha have had any enemies?"

Mary twisted the top back on the thermos, then looked at me and shrugged. "She was an old lady. When she was teaching, sure, there were some irate parents and some kids who didn't like her. She was a pretty strict teacher. But enemies? No." She banged her skate boots together, knocking off the snow that was clinging to the metal blades. "It had to be an accident."

"More proof that it wasn't Ruby," I said. "She wouldn't have left Agatha to die in that alley."

Mary stood up. "I hope you're right." She gave me a finger waggle and skated away with the thermos.

Susan and Eric came skating by then. Each of them had one of twins by the hand. The little guys could skate better than I could. They grinned at me and I waved at them.

Susan gave me a quick smile. Her attention was focused on the boys. Eric didn't look good from a distance and he looked even worse closer. His hair went in every direction around his black earm.u.f.fs. His color, even in the crisp, bracing air, was bilious, and he needed a shave. He had more than I'm-a-s.e.xy-bad-boy stubble.

He looked like he'd been on a three-day bender, which wasn't likely, since I'd never seen him drink so much as a gla.s.s of wine. He'd been close to Agatha. Having her die in the alley by the restaurant had to have been painful.

I wondered if Eric had heard about Ruby being arrested. If he hadn't, he would soon. And when the newspaper went online after midnight, the whole world would know.

I thought about what Mary had said. Ruby could have easily dropped her glove or even have given both of them to Agatha earlier in the day. As for bits of paint, I didn't know enough about automotive paint to know whether it could be narrowed down to one specific vehicle, although it didn't seem likely.

And then there was that piece of gla.s.s that might have come from the headlight of Ruby's truck. Was that the sliver of gla.s.s that had caught in the fabric of my pants? Was I, indirectly, responsible for Ruby getting arrested?

Even if, big if, the gla.s.s had come from Ruby's truck, it didn't mean she'd been driving it. She was pretty generous about loaning the truck. Maggie had borrowed it last summer, but it refused to run for her, which is how we'd ended up on our first "road trip" with Roma.

I leaned forward, chin propped on my hands, and watched all the skaters whiz past. I knew that Marcus was just doing his job, but he was wrong. I'd seen Ruby's face in that alley. I'd seen how stricken she was, knowing that Agatha was dead. That reaction wasn't faked.

I'd grown up with actors. I'd seen them practice. I'd seen them perform. I'd seen every emotion from joy to depression to grief acted out. I've seen it acted well and unbelievably badly. Nothing about Ruby's grief was made-up.

Maggie waved at me from the far end of the rink. In the clump of people behind her one head stuck out.

Marcus.

For a moment I thought about skating down to him and telling him how wrong he was about Ruby. Because of course once he knew he'd apologize and let her go. It was a nice fantasy. Still, I wanted to talk to him.

Maggie was almost level with me now. I struggled to my feet and, legs wobbling, waved my mitten at her to get her attention. She stopped in front of me with a spray of ice chips, just as Mary had done. I teetered toward her.

"You want to go back out?"

"Yes," I said, arms flapping as I stepped over the low barrier between the ice and snow. My feet were seesawing in and out. I grabbed Maggie's arm as though it were a rope and I was going down for the third time.

"Just skate," I said, through clenched teeth. I willed my feet to go forward and they did. Sort of.

"Okay," she said slowly.

We started along the ice. I scanned the crowd ahead of me, looking for Marcus. I couldn't see him, and I knew if I turned around I'd be flat on the ice again. A skater slipped past me on the outside, turning in a smooth arc in front of me.

"h.e.l.lo, Kathleen."

Of course it was him. He was skating easily, almost lazily backward, and of course at that moment my feet slid out to the sides and I lost my grip on Maggie. I pitched forward, grabbing air, realizing as I went down that I was going to slide through his legs as if we were playing a game of reverse leapfrog.

c.r.a.p on toast!

He was grinning, which added insult to injury. Then just before I hit the ice he reached out and caught me under both arms, the momentum pulling me in against him.

Of course.

14.

My hands were flat against his chest and out of instinct I clutched his jacket.

"I've got you," he said.

"Kathleen, are you okay?" Maggie asked. She had both of her hands out, as though I were a basketball and Marcus was going to toss me back to her.

"I'm okay."

"Can you stand up?" he asked.

I tipped my chin so I could look at him. "If I could stand up I wouldn't have fallen on you in the first place."

He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me so I was on his left side. "Bend your knees and lean forward," he said. "Just a little bit."

Gingerly I followed his instructions, and my legs stopped quaking as I found my balance.

He looped my left hand around his arm, holding it securely with his other hand. "Better?"

I nodded.

"Okay, now lean on me just a little and push out and back with your outside foot."

We moved forward and I didn't fall down. I tried another push.

"Keep your blade flat on the ice," he said. He turned his head. "I've got her," he said to Maggie, who just raised a hand and smiled as she skated away.

I was skating. I pushed with my outside foot, and feeling brave and fancy, did the same with my inside foot. I was definitely skating. Someone had a weird sense of humor to make this happen because of Marcus.

I waited until we made one circuit around the ice before I spoke. "You're wrong about Ruby," I said.

He didn't try to pretend he didn't know what I was talking about. "You heard."

"I heard. Ruby didn't kill Agatha." I loosened my grip on his arm. "I was there with her, with the body. She was grief-stricken. She wasn't faking that."

"I can't do my job based on feelings," he said. "I look at the facts, at the evidence."

I took a breath and let it out. It was important to make my case without sounding like a crackpot. "That she was distraught is a fact. Ruby isn't a killer. Look at all the work she does with kids. She was inspired to do that by Agatha."

I took my eyes off the ice for a second to search his face. It was unreadable. I continued. "The piece of gla.s.s that I gave to you. Can you prove it came from the headlight of Ruby's struck? Can you prove how it ended up in that alley? Or when? Or how it got stuck in my pants? Can you even prove Ruby was driving her truck that night?"

I shook my head. "Never mind. I know you can't tell me any of that," I said.