A Whisker of a Doubt

by Cate Conte

  Katrina certainly didn’t have the funds to support the effort for a long time, although she told me she’d gotten a bunch of anonymous cash donations and had been buying the food that way since we started caring for this colony. The money had been left in her home mailbox every week, which led her to believe it was the person who had alerted her to the colony. Between that and Whitney’s donations we were set for a while.

  Katrina had gotten an anonymous call about the cats three weeks ago. She’d mobilized her core crew immediately—which was basically Adele and me—and we jumped into action. After assessing the colony over a few days, we estimated about fifteen adult cats and a couple of young kittens. One of Katrina’s first acts was to reach out to Dr. Kelly, the island vet who had officially retired over the summer but had unofficially gone back into business when a series of unfortunate events took the new island vet off the scene. Dr. Kelly had been a huge help to Katrina over his many years in business by providing discounted vet care for her rescues. He agreed to vet the cats for his usual discount, and we’d managed to trap five cats and one of the kittens for a mini-clinic last week. The kitten was young enough to be socialized. We’d named him Gimley and he was now at my café. We were going to set traps this morning to try to catch more.

  I wondered if the anonymous tipper and donor was Leopard Man, our quirky island character. As his name suggested, he dressed head to toe in leopard-print garb. He also spoke almost completely in Shakespearean phrases, loved cats more than anything, and had a sixth sense for cats in trouble. He always did what he could to help. He never liked taking credit for anything, so it would be just like him to do it that way. I wasn’t about to voice that suspicion, though, since talking about his own generosity made him uncomfortable.

  Katrina hadn’t actually had a feral colony to care for in a while—she, along with the island’s former rescue group, had managed to reduce the feral population drastically, and the ones that were left had their own ongoing feeders. We had no idea how or when this situation started out in Turtle Point, but it was even harder to accept given the status of the neighborhood. The last couple of colonies she’d been managing were out on the other side of the island, in more rural communities where people didn’t really have the means to care for them. Or know better in the first place not to turn unfixed cats loose outside where they could repopulate.

  But this fancy-schmancy neighborhood … that was different.

  “So where do you want to put the traps?” Adele asked, pausing to look around.

  “Over behind the shelters,” I said, pointing ahead. Although I must’ve been a little directionally off today because I couldn’t actually get a visual on the shelters. I was hopeless in the woods, even though these woods couldn’t have been more than two blocks deep. Good thing too, because otherwise there was a chance I’d get lost when I was here on my own and never make it out. A Girl Scout I was not.

  A group of local high school students had built some shelters for the cats, which meant we had more places to store their food, and we could put blankets inside the little houses for them. Before now, we had a makeshift house that Grandpa had tried to make. His effort was valiant, but the house itself was a little iffy. Other than that, Whitney let us use her heated shed. She’d made it a real room with heat and electricity, her attempt at a “girl cave,” she’d told us jokingly, but never used it. Which had never really made sense to me since Whitney lived alone in a giant house. The entire thing could be one big girl cave, in my opinion.

  Adele was not so patiently waiting for me to get my bearings. “Did you move the houses since I’ve been out here?”

  “No. They’re way too heavy. I thought we had put it closer than this.”

  I took one more slow spin around. We weren’t that far into the woods, directly behind the Hacketts’ house, which was friendly territory. We’d tried to strategically place the three houses behind homes we knew did not object to the cats or their feeders, so at least one of the houses should be somewhere around where we were standing.

  “Thought so,” Adele said. “I mean, I know I’m a crazy old bat, but I didn’t think I was that crazy.” She squinted into the tree line. Then she pointed to the left. “What’s that?”

  I peered in the direction of her finger. Deeper into the woods, I could see a speck of green, which was the color of the feral houses. “I don’t know. Did someone move our house?”

  Adele’s eyes darkened. “Who would do that? Jonathan’s even scrawnier than you.” Jonathan was our other remaining volunteer. “If you can’t move it, he sure can’t.” She started toward it.

  I had to smile—Should I consider that a compliment?—as I dropped the traps and food and followed her. She reached the house a few steps before I did. But the way she just stopped and stared, I assumed there was a problem. I pulled up beside her and surveyed the damage.

  This, I wasn’t anticipating. Someone had taken one of our shelters and destroyed it. The little shingles had been ripped off and one of the sides had been completely caved in. I had a moment of panic that a cat or two had been inside at the time, but a quick peek in the door with the flashlight on my cell phone put those fears to rest.

  “What the…” I murmured. “Who would do this?” I circled around it, trying to figure out if there was some way to make it usable again. I couldn’t ask the class to make another one.

  “Well,” Adele said, waving in the direction of the houses behind us. “Plenty of choices, I suppose.” She shook her head, disgust sharpening her features. “Though I got a real hard time seeing how they think this’ll solve anything. But I guess the rich just don’t care.”

  Adele was even less a fan of the island’s upper class than Katrina was. She had her reasons, but the constant reminder of the haves versus what she and Katrina considered the have-nots was a big part of the problem out here. “Yeah, but most of these people are older. You think I don’t have the strength to move that house? If I don’t, they sure don’t. It weighs a freakin’ ton.” I’d been surprised at how heavy they were when the teacher and kids delivered them. That had been a banner day. I thought June Proust would lose her mind. She’d stood on her deck glaring at the kids the whole time.

  “Not all of them,” Adele reminded me. “That Trey Barnes is, what, your age, even though he’s married to that nasty old Edie? I mean, man, she’s older than me.” Adele shook her head, no doubt thinking about the injustice of rich old women snagging young hot men. “He’s big and strong. Probably had his drunken friends over and they all drank a case of beer and came out here to wreak havoc. Maybe Edie even gave him an extra allowance to do it.”

  She had a point. Trey Barnes—although not quite as young as me—always seemed to be hanging around, in the yard or on the street, but it was never obvious what he was actually doing. And I had seen him with his group of friends a few times, usually when Edie was off at her charity luncheons or whatever it was she did all day.

  Still, it seemed like such a childish thing to do. I tried to shrug it off, even though it made me super sad. “Could’ve been anyone. There’s probably tons of kids with nothing to do who come into the woods to smoke pot or whatever. Maybe they did it just to be jerks.” I wasn’t sure if I believed that either, but I was having a harder time imagining any of these prissy people taking the time to come out here and figure out how to haul a cat house deep into the woods and destroy it. Their hands would get dirty, for one thing. And the last thing I wanted was for more trouble out here if we all went off half-cocked and started accusing them of doing this. “Look.” I pointed to my right. “That house is fine.”

  Adele sniffed. “For now.” She headed over there with her food. I went back to retrieve my stuff, but before I walked over to join Adele I pulled out my phone and pressed the button next to Katrina’s name.

  “Someone wrecked one of the feral houses,” I said when she answered.

  “What?” Her shriek nearly went right through my eardrum.

  I grimaced and held
the phone away until I was sure she was done.

  “Yeah. Adele and I just found it.”

  “Oh, screw this. I’m calling the police.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I said. “That will cause all kinds of trouble. Chaos in the neighborhood, more police lights, more reasons to complain about us. Plus, what are we going to tell them? That this isn’t our property, but we dropped off some cat shelters and someone who does live here vandalized them?”

  “So you want to let them win? They have every right to mess with us and keep messing with us because this is their property? It’s the woods! No one owns the woods.” I could feel her anger vibrating through the phone.

  “I know. It’s crappy and awful and I don’t think they should get away with it either. But I don’t see a way to get this sorted out without making everything worse. And if they ban us all from being out here, the cats will suffer, no one else. I just wanted you to know, I didn’t want to you to fly off the handle.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Well?” I pressed. “Promise you’re not going to call?”

  The silence stretched so long I thought she’d hung up, but finally she sighed. “Fine. Whatever. We’ll just let them wreck all the houses. Maybe they’ll kill some of the cats too.”

  I sighed. “Katrina—”

  “It doesn’t matter, Maddie. I know you don’t want to hear it, but someone’s going to pay for this. Mark my words.”

  Three beeps from my phone, signaling she’d hung up.

  “Okay, Godfather,” I muttered.

  My cell phone rang again before I could return it to my pocket. But it wasn’t Katrina calling back to yell again. It was Becky.

  “I need a quote,” she said by way of greeting.

  “About what? It’s not the best time,” I said.

  “Where are you?’

  “In the woods.”

  I could hear her snort a little. “Then it actually is a good time. We’re doing a story on the thefts in the Sea Spray development. We got a call from…” I heard papers rustling as she flipped through a notebook. “Someone named June Proust. She’s saying the volunteers are bringing bad influences into the neighborhood.”

  I felt a flare of anger. June was not only a bully, but she was clearly determined to slander everyone who had a heart along the way. I should’ve let Katrina call the cops. I was being a wuss trying to keep the peace. They didn’t deserve it.

  “Yeah? Well I have another angle to your story.”

  “Oh yeah? Do tell.”

  “Someone vandalized one of the cat shelters. Adele and I just found it. So I guess it’s an eye for an eye, or at least we can make the accusations right back at them.”

  She whistled under her breath. “Cat fight, eh? Come by the paper. I’m here until six tonight.”

  I hung up and joined Adele, who had finished filling up dry-food bowls in the first house and was impatiently waiting for my wet food.

  “Hey,” I said. “You think Gabe will build us some new feral houses?” Gabe, my contractor, was Adele’s nephew and an awesome guy.

  Adele broke into a smile. “You bet your booty, if I tell him to. I’ll call him when we leave. Now get over here with that food. I’m freezing my tush off.”

  Chapter 7

  Sunday, December 20: two days before the murder

  1 p.m.

  I dropped Adele back off at the café and ran inside to make sure everything was under control. Val was sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by a sea of notes, her laptop and, oddly enough, strings of blinking Christmas lights. At least they weren’t white. Ethan had something in the crockpot and was perusing a cookbook. There was coffee in the pot. They looked like some backward scene from a fifties sitcom.

  “Do I even want to know what you’re doing?” I asked Val.

  She didn’t even glance up. “Working on this Christmas party I’m running tomorrow night. I need lights for every table and I can’t decide between the big ones or the little ones.” She held up two strings. “What do you think?”

  In addition to getting divorced and moving in with me and Grandpa, Val had also started her own business over the last few months. She was now a party planner extraordinaire, running small and large affairs for the island residents including holiday events, birthday parties, and anything else they wanted to celebrate. She loved it and was completely in her element.

  “The little ones,” Ethan and I said in unison, then looked at each other and burst out laughing. We’d always been on the same wavelength. It’s why we did so well in business together.

  Val rolled her eyes and tossed the lights back on the table. “I’ll go with the big ones,” she said.

  “Whose party is this, anyway?” I asked.

  “It’s for the senior center. In Turtle Point. Dad referred me to the director.”

  “Aww. That’s cute,” I said.

  “It’s going to be fun,” Val agreed. “We’re doing Secret Santas and everything.”

  “Adorable.” I grabbed a travel mug and poured coffee into it. “I have to run over to Becky’s. Can you guys man the café if anyone comes in?”

  “I can,” Ethan said.

  “Thanks. Back in a bit.”

  I found a parking space right in front of the Chronicle and hopped out of the car. I rang the buzzer out front and Becky let me in immediately.

  “This just keeps getting better and better,” she called down from the top of the staircase that led to the newsroom.

  “What does?” I began the trek up, wishing I’d been working out more.

  “The Evans family is suing the Prousts. Did you know this?”

  “What?” I rushed up the rest of the way, winded by the time I reached the top. “As in Avery Evans? Our former volunteer?”

  “Yeah. Mr. Evans just called me. Poor baby Avery was traumatized by her recent experience nearly being arrested while she tried to do a good deed.” She grinned. “Did they really almost arrest her?”

  “Yep.” I could only imagine what the Prousts would do when they heard about this. Or maybe they already had, and that was why they’d called the paper in the first place with the news about bad influences infiltrating their neighborhood. So much for trying to keep the peace.

  “Come on in,” Becky said, leading me to her office. The newsroom was dead, with only one reporter banging away on his computer, and a lone copyeditor yawning as she waited for the final story to plug into the layout. The fast-paced life of a newspaper on an island in the winter. “Thanks for helping me with the story. Coffee?”

  “Sure. Are you writing it, or one of the reporters?”

  She turned to the little Keurig she kept on a table behind her desk and brewed me a cup. “I am. We’ve got a bunch of people on vacation. I don’t mind.” Becky had been editor for a year now—her dream job—but I knew she missed actual reporting a lot of the time. She usually jumped at the chance to do things like this.

  I dropped into the chair in front of her desk. “So you’re writing a story on this rash of thefts in the charming Turtle Point Sea Spray neighborhood?” I used air quotes around the offending phrase. It seemed like a betrayal that Becky was giving them any of her precious inches. Unless the news was that slow and she was desperate. But even then I’d be hard pressed to get behind it.

  “Well, yeah.” Becky shrugged and handed me my coffee. “It’s definitely worth a story. And it is slow this time of year.”

  “Ah, come on, Bec.” I put my mug down on her desk maybe with a little more force than was necessary, the coffee sloshing a bit over the sides. I grabbed a tissue to mop it up. “You know it’s all nonsense. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hid the stuff away somewhere just so they could accuse us of something.”

  “Maddie.” Becky fixed me with her best “you’re joking” stare. “That’s nuts. Not to mention illegal.”

  “I know, but I wouldn’t put it past them.” I still couldn’t believe the chutzpah of those people. I didn’t actually blame Mr. Eva
ns for being mad. A lawsuit seemed like a stretch, but I appreciated the sentiment.

  “You said someone destroyed your shelter.” Becky sat back, winding a blond curl around her finger. “Do you know who?”

  “I don’t, but it seems pretty likely it’s someone from the neighborhood.”

  “I can’t print it because it’s likely. Did you see anyone? Get a tip?”

  I shook my head. “No. But they didn’t see anyone or get a tip that it was me or Katrina or any of our volunteers stealing their stupid Christmas decorations, and you’re still writing a story.”

  Becky thought about that. “Okay. You have a point. We can counterpoint that there’s been other acts of vandalism in the area that clearly aren’t you guys. You wouldn’t destroy your own shelters.”

  “They’ll still try to say we brought undesirables to the neighborhood so it’s no wonder they’re vandalizing everything in sight,” I said bitterly.

  “Eh, that’s weak. The shelters are in the middle of the woods, right?”

  I nodded.

  She picked up a pen, tapped it against her desk. “I don’t have a lot to say about either thing, honestly. Just what was in the police reports, and a quote from Proust and you.” She waited expectantly.

  I leveled a steady gaze at her. “It’s disappointing that anyone would destroy a shelter that a bunch of students made out of concern for the well-being of some poor feral cats who are just looking for a little warmth and food this holiday season,” I said.