“She doesn’t seem to have had any,” Gerry said thoughtfully.
“That’s sad,” Prudence commented.
Gerry continued. “And did anyone else ever use the key to pick up food? Phil? The Parsley twins?”
“Well,” Cathy said doubtfully, “they may have. If Betty was too busy, she might have delegated. I don’t like the idea that Ralph Parsley might have a key to my house. Oh, how am I ever going to get to sleep tonight?!”
“I could come over and check the house for you,” offered Gerry.
“We could,” Prudence stated.
“Oh, would you? Thank you! I’d feel so much better.”
“Come on. You’re tired. You can tell us about your trip and your sister another time.” Gerry covered the cake as she spoke.
Cathy looked confused. “My sister? Oh, right. Yeah. Another time.”
The women trudged by the side of the road. “How’s Mr. Parminter?” Cathy asked.
“Good,” Gerry answered. “We were there for New Year’s Eve. It was the day we —”
Cathy spoke wearily. “Everything leads back to Betty, doesn’t it?”
Prudence comforted her. “It just seems that way. You’ve had two shocks: hearing about it and now coming home to confront it.”
They crossed the road and turned into Cathy’s house’s driveway. She’d left many lights switched on, and the house looked more like the welcoming abode it usually was.
“Before I forget, Cathy,” Gerry began, “there’s a switch or a fixture next to the stairs going up to the bedrooms. It’s on, then it’s off. Maybe it needs an electrician.”
“Oh, that old thing. I’ve had it checked. They couldn’t figure out why it’s like that. Sometimes I light guests to bed with a candle. They like that.”
“Very atmospheric,” murmured Prudence.
They stood, a nervous little group, in front of the front door. “Come on, Cathy,” Gerry urged, “Prince Charles is waiting.”
Cathy, who had been hesitating with her key, found her nerve. “Yes. Of course. I must be brave for Charles.”
Inside, the normal warmth of an occupied house made a difference to at least Gerry and Prudence’s moods. This was Cathy’s home. She should be made to feel comfortable.
“Basement first, I think,” Prudence suggested.
Cathy shrunk back. Prudence tucked her arm in Cathy’s. “My dear, it will be far worse imagining than seeing. Come along.”
They walked down the long corridor to the back of the house. Gerry, coming last and peering into the reception rooms, saw Charles on his side on a rug, snoring. “I see Charles is glad to be home.”
The other two were focused on making it to the kitchen. Prudence distracted Cathy with talk of food. “Why not take something out of your freezer, dear, and defrost it so if you take a nap now, when you wake up, you can eat your supper.”
Cathy rummaged for a moment and extracted a tub of homemade soup. She placed it in the sink, then looked furtively at the basement door.
“Now, Gerry will go first, then you, then me,” Prudence suggested. Gerry made a face only Prudence could see and opened the door. With as much assurance as she could muster, she tried to descend the stairs in a normal fashion. Once at the bottom, she turned and watched the others.
Cathy crept down, her eyes wide in a white face. She looked with horror at the floor upon which Gerry was standing. Gerry looked down too.
A dull red stain oozed from a dark centre to faded edges. “Oh, no, no, no,” she expostulated. “Your wine rack was tipped over and some of the bottles broke. Doug mopped it up and I cleaned it later, but we didn’t really scrub it. It’s just wine, Cathy.”
Cathy reached the basement floor and stood next to Gerry. “There was a struggle?”
Gerry shrugged. “Who knows?”
They moved from one section to the other. “This is where we found Bob, in the armoire.” When Cathy looked bewildered, Gerry clucked her tongue in exasperation at herself. “Of course! You don’t know. Bob has a way into your basement. We think from my woodshed.”
Cathy asked in an incredulous voice, “And he comes out through my armoire?”
“No,” said Prudence, glaring at the incompetent Gerry, “your cold room. Look.” And they showed her the hole in the wall.
Finally, there was nothing left to look at except the corner where the sump pit gurgled and dripped. Cathy held Prudence’s hand as they approached. They turned the corner made by the pieces of old furniture and looked. Cathy dropped Prudence’s hand. “There’s nothing to see. It’s just my horrible old sump pump in its hole. I’m very tired.”
Slowly, she mounted the stairs and checked Charles in his slumber. Finally, she climbed the stairs to her room. Gerry squinted at the wall sconce, which today was working. Prudence went ahead to fill Cathy’s hot water bottle, then slipped it under the covers.
They left her sitting on her bed, yawning, and tiptoed downstairs. But some creak or shift in the old house must have alarmed Charles, for he bugled as he woke and scrambled to his feet.
“Charles! Shush! I know.” Gerry rushed to the kitchen, Charles skittering after. She left him, nose deep in his bowl, crunching his supper. After scrawling “Fed Charles” on a notepad, she joined Prudence at the door. “Will she be all right?”
Prudence nodded. “I don’t think she’s very imaginative. She’ll be fine.”
“And you, oh sensitive one? Did you pick up any vibrations from Betty Parsley?”
Prudence busied herself about her boots. “Nothing. About her.”
Gerry paused in adjusting her scarf. “What does that mean?”
“It means I feel something. But not in this house.”
“In mine?” They stepped out the front door into the biting wind and began walking back to Gerry’s, their heads down.
“No. Not really. Actually, it’s strongest right here.” Prudence paused as they reached the bottom of Cathy’s driveway and passed the above-ground burial vault of Gerry’s family.
“Coming from the crypt?” Gerry sounded incredulous and Prudence responded peevishly:
“You don’t have to sound so skeptical! I don’t want to feel it. I just do!”
Gerry felt baffled. “I think I need to know more about my family’s and The Maples’ histories. Do you feel like reading old letters this evening?”
“I don’t mind. I’m not very hungry.”
“I am!” Gerry said with the enthusiasm of youth. “Tinned split pea soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Easy, quick, good.”
After she’d attended to the cats and they’d eaten their simple supper, the women each brought a box of letters and family papers down from Gerry’s office. Prudence sat at the table, while Gerry worked on the rug in front of the fire.
At first, Mother and the kittens watched gravely from the banana box, but the kittens were larger and strong enough to hoist themselves over the box’s sides, and when Gerry caught one of them peeing on an ancient bill for horse feed instead of in their nearby cat box, she had to join Prudence at the table.
Gerry sorted. “Tax records from the 1920s, 1930s. Oh, look, the Lovering Herald must have started back then. Here’s Ellie and Matthew’s engagement notice. How quaint. 1932. Oh, this is sad. Matthew’s brother, Alfred, killed in the First World War. A picture of the plaque when it was installed at the church after the war. Another engagement. James Parsley and Sylvia Catford. 1939. Are those Phil Parsley’s parents?”
“Yes.”
“But Phil’s not that old.” Gerry lifted up her family tree, which was never far away.
“No. I think they married after the war and had their family then.”
“That makes sense. See? Bill, the newspaper’s editor, born 1950, and Phil, from the inn, in 1953.”
Prudence pushed her own stack away. “What has all
this relatively recent history to do with my haunting?”
“What we need is a list of everyone in the crypt.”
“Gerry, it’s written on the tablets on the outside.” When Gerry looked blank, Prudence continued, “Around the back of the crypt.”
Gerry’s face cleared. “Oh. Right.” She felt foolish. “I forgot about that. I just read the family names carved in the rock facing the street. Well, tomorrow I’ll go over and copy all that down. What’s in your box?”
“Letters. Love letters. Letters from sons away at school or on business. Letters from family who’ve moved away or are on vacations. All from the twentieth century.”
“That’s not our period. But it’s good you eliminated that box from our inquiries.”
Prudence shook her head and laughed. “Our inquiries. Next you’ll be trying to find Betty Parsley’s murderer.”
“Absolutely not. Whoever did that is a dangerous person. I am staying far away from that inquiry.”
They discussed their plans for the next day, which was to be a busy one, and went to their rooms.
As Gerry settled in with another Miss Read paperback, she had a real sense of the Christmas holidays being over at last.
The next morning was a scramble. As they were eating, Prudence’s neighbour Charlie phoned to let her know a contractor was at her house. They hurriedly cleaned the cat boxes, figured out the day’s schedule, and drove over. Gerry left a well-bundled-up Prudence supervising the dismantling of her broken roof and made the half-hour drive to her car dealer.
After waiting for an hour, she was told her car wouldn’t be ready that day and offered the use of a courtesy car. The Mini they gave her was lemon yellow and had the number 12 painted in black on each door.
She had some time to kill before picking up Cece and Bea at the airport, so she went for a coffee and a doughnut. She was staring absently out the window at the bleak landscape of new and used car lots, stirring sugar into her cappuccino, when a familiar black pickup truck pulled into the space in front of the restaurant. A Parsley twin got out of the passenger side, leaned in to shout a few words, then slammed the door. The other twin drove off in a fury, it seemed, swerving violently to avoid a car entering the area.
Gerry sat, frozen, not wanting to meet either twin when they were obviously so angry, but the one who’d come in only wanted the toilet and a takeout coffee, and soon left by the same door by which he’d entered, not noticing Gerry, hunched in her seat.
He — whoever he was — got into a small light green car parked at the doughnut shop and, more calmly than whoever was driving the pickup truck, left in the same direction.
Ralph and Steve: Ralph, presumably, driving his pickup; Steve in his own vehicle. None of my business, thought Gerry. But it had made her uneasy, all the same.
She checked the time. Cecil and Beatrice Muxworthy’s flight was due in at 12:30. If they were on time, she wouldn’t have to park. She drove to the airport in the yellow Mini. Well, at least I’m visible, she thought.
It was a busy time of day and loitering on the arrivals level with a car, however compact, was impossible. Gerry couldn’t see Cece or Bea. “My nerves can handle one more pass,” she murmured, dodging SUVs, buses and taxies, and circled the airport again.
This time she was lucky; spotted Cece’s tall gangly frame, bent over, pushing Bea in a wheelchair. Gerry beeped briefly, pulled over to the curb and hopped out. Bea, as usual, was laughing. “Gerry, you simp! There’s designated wheelchair pickup parking. It’s right over there and it’s free!”
“No one told me,” she replied cheerfully, throwing their bags in the back.
“And what have you done to the Mini?” her friend queried, sliding slowly into the front seat. Cece disappeared to return the wheelchair and a parking attendant bore down on them. Quickly, Bea whipped a square handicapped parking permit from her purse and held it up to him. He waved them to a spot further along the curb. “Making MS work for me,” Bea chortled. Moments later, a sprinting Cece flung himself into the backseat, folded up his legs sideways, and clicked on a seatbelt.
“Nice paint job, Gerry, but why 12?” Cece’s eyes twinkled at her as she glanced in the rear-view mirror.
“Have you guys been paying any attention at all to the rest of the world outside of Jamaica?” She could see both were tanned and had that relaxed-around-the-eyes-good-vacation-look.
“Nope,” said Bea. “Been eating and laying around and breathing soft sea air.”
“Iree, man. Been chillin’,” Cece chimed in.
“Iree?” Gerry asked.
“Rastafarian,” Cece explained with a wink. “Means, um, in a relaxed frame of mind.”
“Huh. I see. Well, we had an extreme weather event on Christmas Eve, and,” Gerry added in a more sober tone, “a death.”
“Who?” they chimed in unison.
“Betty Parsley.” She filled them in with as much as she knew.
“Almost the last person I would have expected to die that way,” murmured Bea.
“Why?” a curious Gerry asked. “Had you known her long?”
“Since she married Phil. A quiet person who just focused on her family and, by extension, the family business.”
Cece harrumphed self-importantly. “Yes, my dear one,” his wife enquired sweetly. “You have information?”
He cleared his throat again. “It was always my impression that Betty was the business, while Phil just played host.”
“Well, he’ll have to step up now,” his wife suggested grimly. “Their kids are still teenagers. They can’t run the place.”
“N-no,” Gerry agreed. “But isn’t Steve Parsley a kind of manager at the inn?” She felt Bea’s eyes on her and then a flush mounted her cheek.
“Gerry’s blushing!” Bea announced. “Have you been seeing the dashing Steve? A dash of Parsley. Get it? Yuk, yuk.”
“Shush, dear, you’re being yourself again,” chided Cece. “Do tell us, Gerry,” he continued in a polite voice, “what you know about Steve Parsley?”
Gerry blurted out, “Almost nothing! I’ve met him twice! Saw him this morning, by coincidence. He was shouting at his brother and didn’t notice me.”
Cece sounded serious as he said, “Ralph Parsley is something else, Gerry. I’d steer clear.”
Gerry said, “Oh, I don’t like him!” And blushed again.
Bea pounced. “Aha! So she does like the Steve twin.” She grabbed the dashboard. “Wait! Wait!”
“What! What?” A flustered Gerry reacted, braking.
“You just missed the smoked-meat place. We’re taking you there for lunch. Turn around!”
Grinning and grumbling at the same time, Gerry manoeuvered the car off the highway and into an industrial park where she could turn around and head back onto the highway in the opposite direction. Minutes later, they were sinking their teeth into succulent smoked-meat sandwiches with sides of fries and cole slaw.
Cece returned to the subject of the car. “I know it’s a different car, Gerry. The dash is different as well as the colour. What happened?”
Gerry told them about the storm on Christmas Eve, the damage to her trees, the car roof and the woodshed. And then she had to explain about the bones.
Bea almost choked on a fry and had to guzzle most of her cherry Coke. When she’d recovered, she blurted, “So two bodies? Two deaths?”
“Well, the bones are old, maybe 150 years. So, a long-ago death. And we’ve discovered a long-ago way from my woodshed under the road into Cathy’s basement.”
“Really?” Gerry could hear the skepticism in Cece’s voice.
“Weren’t there local fears of Fenian activity in the area in the 1850s or 1860s?” said Bea, a member of almost every group, club or association Lovering had to offer, including, Gerry supposed, the historical society. “And before that, around 1837 or ’
38, it was the Patriotes scaring the English settlers.”
“I remember,” said Gerry slowly, “being taken as a child to see bullet holes in the walls of a church. Prudence mentioned them, too. But that was the other side of the lake, no?”
Bea nodded. “There was activity here, too. At the Parsley Inn, actually.”
“So you’re thinking some kind of escape route from one property to the other?” Cece still couldn’t keep that note of doubt from his voice.
“Or an early warning system,” Bea stated triumphantly. “Send a servant scurrying through the tunnel to alert the people at the other house of trouble.”
“And trouble would likely come from the river as the most easily navigated route,” Cece concluded. “Do either of you ladies have room for strawberry cheesecake?”
Gerry nodded, while Bea groaned, “Oh, to be young again. But I’ll have a bite of yours, dearest, if you’re having some.” Cece rolled his eyes and ordered two servings and coffee and, when the desserts arrived, positioned one midway between himself and his wife. Meanwhile, Bea, after rummaging in her capacious beach bag, thrust a small package at Gerry.
Gerry unwrapped a six-inch-tall wooden carving of a sitting cat, tail erect, and with a face that looked remarkably like Bob’s. She ran her hand over its back. “Thank you.”
Cece responded, “Thank you for picking us up.”
“So what do the police say?” said Bea, picking up her fork.
“Not much. Nothing, actually, since the initial discovery. Or did you mean about Betty?”
Bea’s mouth was full but she nodded. “Bofe,” she managed. Gerry heard Cece sigh.
“Well, they interviewed me and Prudence, of course, and Doug because —” for the second time that day Gerry felt her cheeks grow warm.
Bea swallowed a big gulp of coffee. “Oh ho! Doug as well? My, my.” She turned to her husband. “We have to go away more often, hon. Apparently, our absence does wonders for Gerry’s love life!”
“Shush. No. Yes. Oh. Doug was the only person I really knew at the Parsleys’ party, so we hung out and he offered to accompany me to check Cathy’s house. Oh. Cathy just got back yesterday. You know, now that you guys are back, too, I feel like having a Christmas party.”
The Cat Vanishes Page 15