Meow Matrimony

by Lickel, Lisa;

  As though I would show my lack of gratitude after that? I patted Adam on the arm to reassure him I wouldn’t spill Stanley’s blood on the kitchen floor and devalue the price of my house, and went to set another place.

  The conversation during our meal naturally drifted to the will and Stanley’s inheritance.

  I wasn’t in the mood to be subtle. In between the clinks of fork and knife against ceramic plates and ice cubes jingling in glasses of water, I asked, “So, how much do you get?”

  Stanley turned red, put his nose close to his roast beef and mashed potatoes, and muttered something.

  Virgil responded for him. “Miss Ivanna’s estate is worth three point four million dollars, though that’s today’s prices for the stock holdings, which can be volatile.” He stabbed a piece of turkey. “This is very good. Thank you.”

  His attempt to change the subject did not fool me. “What I don’t understand is why in the world she named you. You two must have been…” I raised my tone. “Pret-ty close.” I narrowed my eyes at him while buttering a crusty roll.

  “Are we supposed to be talking about this at all?” Adam asked. He nudged my knee with his under the table.

  “It’s public information so far, right?” I tried to engage Mom, but she wasn’t having it. “Anyway, I thought Ivanna couldn’t get her money until she was thirty, so what’s the big deal?” I asked the kitchen at large. “Who gets the money if she couldn’t inherit? And if she couldn’t inherit, you wouldn’t either, would you, Stanley?”

  The silence went on three seconds too long. I put down my fork and opened my mouth.

  “The thing is,” Stanley said and straightened. “Um, she turned thirty last year. She didn’t want people to know how old she was. Especially since Jason is only twenty-five. She thought a four-year difference was OK, but almost six…well…”

  Adam nudged me again under the table. He was ten years older than me, a fact we’d discussed to death already. I wanted to giggle but sobered just as quickly. Ivanna’s vanity wasn’t all that funny. But it made sense she had the funds to open the exercise studio. Even Yolanda reported in the paper that she’d only been twenty-nine, and she was a stickler for fact-checking. “Did Jason know?”

  Stanley just shook his head.

  “I still don’t understand why she—”

  “I had Tiny pack dessert for us,” Mom interrupted me quietly and firmly.

  I could have slunk in my seat for shame at my persistence, but I truly didn’t understand the reluctance to discuss the will. If we could dig out any more facts pointing directly to Ivanna’s murderer, wasn’t a little embarrassment worth it? Adam gave me a straight-faced expression I couldn’t read. I supposed my penchant toward nosiness might be another one of those personality disorders which kept me from being a perfect mayor’s wife. But it wasn’t as if I was on the phone to all my friends, yakking “alternate facts.”

  “Brownies and some of his carrot cake,” Mom was saying as she ripped open another sack.

  I rose to clear dinner plates. Adam grabbed his and Stanley’s and brought them to me at the sink to rinse. He stood close, proving his support.

  “At least we know who the killer is,” I whispered to him.

  He dropped the glass he was offering me to load in the dishwater. It shattered on the floor just as kitten Four raced around the corner from the stairwell, being chased by his sister, One.

  Stanley reached down and plucked up both kittens before they reached the shards sparkling on the floor. He grinned at me and took them into the living room. “I’m good, Professor Preston. I don’t need any dessert.”

  Odd Stanley still called her that. I stood bemused while Adam got the broom and dustpan and swept up.

  Virgil seemed in thoughtful mode, forehead creased, as he gazed at my spice rack.

  Mom sensibly stayed out of our way too and rested her chin on her twined hands.

  Ten minutes later, just as we settled with coffee and I watched broodingly as Stanley uncharacteristically let cats nibble on his fingers, Adam took a phone call.

  “Hi, Marie.” He glanced at me while he listened, and it wasn’t just a friendly sibling catch-up call by his concentration and pursed lips. He stood and paced into the kitchen, holding the phone.

  Adam popped back in the entry, holding both arms wide on either side of the frame. He addressed us all. “My sister, Marie. Mom’s had a little accident.” He focused on me. “I told her I’d come up tonight, check on things. Just a quick trip,” he assured me, a little too enthusiastically.

  I understood I wasn’t invited this time, and I was actually OK with it. I was going to Colby in the morning with Addy and had planned to visit Roberta and talk wedding flowers, and hopefully about Ruby, after lunch, but it would have been nice to have been asked.

  “I’ll call you later,” Adam said.

  I accompanied him to the door. “You’re leaving now?” I checked the time. With good traffic it wouldn’t be that late when he got up to his condo—maybe nine or nine thirty. Except it was Friday night and traffic was never good.

  “You’ll stop in the morning and check on Memnet? And open the shop?”

  “Of course. What happened to your mom?”

  “A fall.” Adam grimaced. “She needed a few stitches on her forehead and of course she fought.”

  Adam and Marie’s mom had been moved to the memory care unit of her nursing facility and was not doing very well. Once dignified and calm, Adam told me how horrified she’d be if she knew how physically and verbally combative she’d become as her disease progressed.

  I wished I’d had a chance to know her former self, and my heart grieved. “I’m sad to hear that,” I said and hugged him.

  “I’ll call when I get there,” he said again. I waved as he backed out. He wouldn’t have to stop at his apartment, as everything he needed was already in Chicago—his home.

  I turned at footsteps and rustling.

  “Sweetheart, Virgil and I want to catch a movie. I’ll see you later.” Mom gathered her purse and then the two of them were gone.

  Stanley mumbled a thanks and good bye and wham, I was alone.

  I stepped around Isis who had slunk into the room when the door closed behind Stanley. She had an urge to clean her paws after blinking at the closed door. I could have joined her.

  We both headed for the living room. Had I driven them away with my poor behavior? They all had legitimate excuses, besides Stanley, and neither of us needed each other’s company right now, anyway. Especially if he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, talk about what I really want to know.

  I read the Gazette article about Ivanna’s will with some care. This time Yolanda corrected herself with Ivanna’s true age, stating there were discrepancies with official records. Doralynn declined to comment on the advice of her attorney. In the case of Stanley’s inability to collect the inheritance, a trust fund from her grandfather Peter I. Pressman of Pressman Converter fame, maker of catalytic converters, the bulk of the estate, besides two hundred thousand dollars outright to Doralynn, went to the IRS. Apparently, Peter the first got his son Peter the second started in the automobile sales business and put the rest of his wealth in a trust fund for his granddaughter. Peter the second made a small fortune selling cars while the economy was good, then ran off with his bookkeeper. I assume Peter the second had nothing to do with his first family.

  Peter the first didn’t care for charities, the article explained. They were all crooked somehow. Yolanda quoted the will: “I don’t trust anyone to do the right thing with my hard-earned money, and since the commies are poised to take over the world (editor’s note: referring to the 1960s) the US Government needs all the help it can get, by God!”

  I set the paper aside and got up to make some hot chocolate. The whole thing was sort of sad, a commentary on trust and stolid old folks’ “do we cheat ‘em and how!” mentality.

  Whatever had Stanley done to get Ivanna to leave her money to him? And what would he do with it? I
hoped he’d use it well. Bittersweet about the whole thing, I wasn’t jealous, not really, just curious about what Stanley and Ivanna had seen in each other, especially when Stanley had come to town supposedly to get me back. And he had for a few weeks while Adam was off trying to decide whether he could overcome his fear of marrying again. Stanley and I were never meant to be and we knew it.

  But, Ivanna? And the Ruby angle…that really threw me. Ruby must have figured there was something off about the money. Why else would she have mentioned it? And if they were planning to do business together, why did Ruby act as if she didn’t like Ivanna? Ivanna must have been working on Ruby even before that, encouraging her to spiff up her image. Why? And why would Ruby resent Ivanna?

  I got out my pad and made more notes about my thoughts and questions. These issues were superfluous to Ivanna’s killer, however. I assumed Elvis was back since Stanley was in Apple Grove, not under Elvis’s protective wing. I made a note to call Elvis and set up a time to go over how we would lay the trap for the murdering creep. It might have been a crime of passion, but a murder was still a murder. Our trap must be iron-clad.

  Jason Clark sure talked up North Star candies and their amazing properties—even health benefits. There had to be a connection there somehow, if only I could use it.

  Later that evening as I was pulling back the covers to crawl in bed, Adam called.

  I sat cross-legged on my mattress, clutching the covers and phone, listening to his soothing tone, saying he’d had an easy trip, despite an extra hour of slow creep into the burbs.

  “Now, about your suspicions,” he said, “I want you to promise that you won’t do anything about it. Especially when I’m not there.”

  To bail me out…yeah, I caught that. “I promise. But don’t you want to know what I’m thinking?”

  His sigh reached my ear from miles away. “I suppose you’d better tell me.”

  Not the enthusiasm I was hoping for, but I’d take what I could get. “Obviously Jason found out about the will and killed her. He could use a crime of passion defense…”

  “What about the poison?”

  “Oh. But the authorities still don’t can’t identify the source. It wasn’t in the candy. He could have planted it. Somewhere.” My voice sounded small as Adam continued to shoot down my theories.

  “They know.”

  “And you won’t tell me.”

  “It’s one of the pieces of evidence the police need to keep from the public.”

  “So, it’s not Jason? What about the will?”

  “I didn’t say that, Ivy. Really, you just have to stay out of this for your own good. The Pressman death and estate are none of y—our business. Please, Ivy, can you at least try to stay out of trouble? Until I get back?”

  I pouted, though he couldn’t see. “Which will be when?”

  “Tomorrow night. We have a meeting set up at four with the social services people and the nursing home staff. I’ll call when I leave town, OK?”

  “OK. I love you.”

  “I’m the blessed one to have your love. And you have all of mine.”

  I shut off the light and pulled the blanket up to my ears. Rats. If it wasn’t Jason, then who? But Adam hadn’t said that. He must know…or did he? I turned over in a huff. If he knew the police had the case wrapped up, why didn’t he just say so? He understood that telling me to keep my nose out of it would just make me more curious.

  Adam said the police identified the source of the cyanide that killed Ivanna. Obviously, it wasn’t something in the open I had touched. I pulled my knees up and twined my fingers around them. Follow the money. Who had the most to gain? Who had the most to lose? Ruby must have thought Ivanna was her friend, right? And the way Jason drooled when he’d watched her crossing the street the other day…yuck? Had he been a jerk during his and Ivanna’s engagement? Undoubtedly. But Ruby had only gotten into shape over the past couple of weeks, after Ivanna’s death.

  I yawned. A hefty plop of cat landed near my feet. Soon, whiskers tickled my nose and Isis’s peculiar chortling purr sounded in my ear. She brushed my cheek then picked her way down toward my feet and settled. I tried not to shift and dislodge the cat. Tomorrow Addy and I would go get my wedding dress and visit Emblem for a tour of the facility.

  Mom came in quietly and went about her own business. I sank further into dreamland. Wedding dress…alterations. I yawned again, thinking of the dress that was my number one choice. It had cap sleeves and a princess neckline. Beads and pearls decorated the outlines and shimmered on the full skirt. I sucked in my gut, hoping I hadn’t gained much weight.

  Weight…Fit’r U. Something about the store… Ruby running…texts…

  ~*~

  In the morning after getting the store opened and in Martha’s capable hands, I picked up Addy and we buzzed into Colby’s downtown and parked at the bridal store. Colby was about twice the size of Apple Grove, though it was by no means prosperous. The store to the right of the bridal place stood empty.

  Since having to return my dress the last time I almost got married, there was always this little niggling cloud of doubt a ceremony would occur.

  Addy pulled my hand and we went to keep my dress appointment.

  I wasn’t much of a clothes horse, and to be honest, the excitement of picking out a wedding dress for the first time was lost on me. Anyway, the dress I’d dreamed about last night was perfect and only needed a little tuck in front and hemming. I could pick it up next week. Addy hugged me, laughing, and I allowed a few trickles of joy that the upcoming date brought the reality of a wedding one step closer. We went to what I hoped would be the more entertaining reason for visiting the area.

  Our tour of the paper plant was most illuminating. Thankfully Addy had readily agreed when I asked her last week to join me.

  “I’ve always wanted to see how paper was made,” she said for the fourth time as we approached the huge white edifice on the edge of town, squeezed between the highway and the Illinois River.

  I wasn’t sure about the general attraction of papermaking, but I was hoping against hope to find out if candy wrappers were made here. Specifically, Featherlight wrappers. We were admitted through the security gate and directed to the visitor’s parking area, which was strangely empty.

  “They must not do tours on weekends,” I said. Sure enough, only weekday hours were posted on the door. After entering the reflective shaded glass entry portal, Addy and I were met by a pleasant middle-aged woman in a 1980s beige pantsuit and white shirt. She could have been anyone and when I took my eyes off her, I couldn’t recall any specific features of her round, beige hairdo or round, beige nose. I was pretty sure she wasn’t wearing any lipstick and I had no idea what color her eyes were. Strange.

  “I’m Madge Delaney, public relations office. Welcome. Mrs. Clark said to be sure to give you two a good tour. Please, follow me to pick up your badges and hard hats.”

  We started outside where I could have stayed happily watching the big open semis of timber being offloaded by trucks with those cool pincher arms. Madge explained the timber was brought in and sent to be debarked and chipped. “Though one of our biggest sources of pulp comes from offcuts of the lumberyard.”

  I nodded. Made sense. Good recycling.

  Addy asked about sustainable growth and our guide told her about the thousand-acre plantation a few miles away that Emblem maintained. It wasn’t nearly enough supply, of course, but every little bit counted.

  She pointed across the flat rooftops of the buildings that made up the factory to the wide girth of the Illinois. “Of course, water is the main ingredient in papermaking. Whereas an average-sized large tree can make fifteen or more standard reams of paper, it takes about twenty gallons of water to make one ream of twenty-pound paper, or five hundred sheets of paper finished to a thickness that will weigh five pounds.”

  The noise grew when we went inside to follow the chipped wood. From the head box where the process started to the digester where the w
ood was delignified, a cool word which meant chemically cooked into pulp that I stored away later to impress somebody. I was fascinated. The noise of the huge machines, however, began to wear on me even through ear protection. After we got into the pulp screening process and saw a little of the minimal waste residue, I started to tune out here and there, waiting until I could jump in to ask about the finished products.

  We followed Madge toward huge gargantuan drums and rollers towering way over our heads into the shadows. “Each step is monitored carefully. The pulp is spun clean and prepared for the press. Then it is further rolled and readied for dying and coating processes, according to customer orders.”

  Aha! “So…” I said to Madge’s back.

  She was leading us onward.

  Addy shrugged at me and followed.

  “The pulp stock is bleached…”

  I gazed at the rollers, mesmerized by the drone.

  Addy told Madge she was interested in the science of papermaking and the chemicals involved. Madge assured her that Emblem’s standards of recycling and treatment of contamination were of the highest caliber and constantly tested.

  We moved into the finishing and coating area, finally.

  Addy asked about bleaching and dying, which went over my head until I heard the word “cyanide.”

  17

  Loud as it was on the paper factory floor, I may have misheard our guide Madge say “cyanide.” I’d also let my mind wander, thinking about when to pose my question about making candy wrappers—a bad habit when I should have been paying attention to the moment. I reached to nudge Addy but realized she and Mage were halfway across the smooth concrete floor, paths taped off like the yellow brick road. I scurried to catch up. We entered another clean white room that echoed with rhythmic sounds of precision. The cutting room.

  “Here is where the product is cut into smaller rolls from the jumbo roll,” Madge said.

  We moved past the robotic arms and their slicing wheels making smaller rolls and toward a conveyor that sent American standard-size copy paper along a line that wrapped and boxed perfect reams, according to our guide. I marveled at the cadence, almost hypnotized into forgetting my quest.