Copycat Killing: A Magical Cats Mystery by Sofie Kelly Read Free Book Online

letters?”
    Her hand was at her side and her fingers were moving, bending, flexing, then closing into a fist again. I touched her arm. “Roma, we should go check on Lucy and the other cats,” I said.
    But her entire focus was on Dr. Abbott. “T.A.K.,” she repeated, her voice low and insistent. “For Thomas Albert Karlsson.”
    It couldn’t be her father’s ring. Even if he’d changed his name—and it appeared that he had—how could his high school ring have ended up in the ground with the bones of someone who’d died in 1924?
    Usually I’m not that slow.
    “Those are the initials, aren’t they?” Roma asked.
    “Yes,” Dr. Abbott said, in a voice so quiet I almost missed the word.
    Roma swallowed and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them she looked out across the grass and dirt to where the skull and a few other bones were resting on a tarp. “That’s my father,” she whispered.

4
     
    “W hat do you mean, that’s your father?” Marcus asked, eyes narrowed in confusion.
    I put my arm around Roma’s shoulder. “We don’t know who that is,” I said. “We have to let Dr. Abbott get back to work so she can figure that out.”
    Roma turned her head to look at me. She opened her mouth to say something then closed it again. Her gaze went back across the field.
    I gave her shoulder a squeeze so she’d look at me again. “Even if it is your father’s class ring, it doesn’t mean that’s…him.”
    “It’s his ring,” she said in a low voice.
    “Roma, are you sure?” Marcus asked, his voice surprisingly gentle. I knew he liked Roma, as a person, not just for all the work she did with the cat colony and pretty much every other stray animal in the area.
    “I have a picture somewhere of him wearing it,” she said. She couldn’t take her eyes off those bones spread on a blue tarp. “I’ll see if I can find it.”
    He nodded.
    “He walked out on us,” Roma continued, “when I was a little girl. At least that’s what I thought. My mother always said he was just too young for the responsibility of a family.”
    “It’s just a ring,” Marcus said. “We don’t know how it ended up out here. Let Dr. Abbott do her job. Let me do my job. I’ll call you later.”
    “C’mon, Roma, let’s go,” I said. I had no idea who those remains belonged to, but I knew it wasn’t good for her to be standing there, staring out at them. The pain I could see in her pale, still face made my chest hurt.
    I looked at Marcus, and mouthed the words thank you. He nodded.
    We made our way back along the edge of the field. I clenched my teeth, concentrating on not stumbling on the slippery, uneven ground. When we got level with the back of the carriage house Roma stopped and faced me. “Can we check on the cats and…and leave all of this until after? Please?”
    I nodded. “Of course we can.”
    Derek let us duck under the yellow crime scene tape and I followed Roma into the old building, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the light. My ankle hurt every time I took a step and I tried to concentrate on the cats, on Roma, on anything else to distract myself. “What are we looking for?” I said.
    Roma rubbed the top of her shoulder. “I don’t really know,” she said. “I’d feel better if I knew Lucy was here. The rest of the cats follow her lead.”
    Lucy wasn’t the largest cat, but she was the undisputed leader of the feral cat colony. She may have beena tiny calico, but she had the heart and the spirit of a jungle cat.
    There was no sign of Lucy anywhere. “Why don’t we take a look at the shelters,” Roma said.
    The cat shelters were made from oversized plastic storage bins, well insulated to keep the cats warm during the freezing Minnesota winter. They sat in the far corner of the building in a space that had probably once been used to keep feed for the horses. Harry Taylor—the son, not the father—had made a raised platform for the shelters to sit on, and straw bales around the three