by Clea Simon
Wilkins. Jackie’s insinuation had driven my errand out of my mind.
“That’s what I’m here for, Albert.” No sense in letting my erstwhile colleague see my lapse. “I need a carpenter. Someone who can do some work on Wilkins’ house for me.”
“Mack’s looking for work.” Albert was sulking now. “You can always call him.”
“Someone who’ll show up after lunch. Someone I won’t have to hunt down at Happy’s,” I added, to make myself clear.
“Well, there’s Dave Altschul. You know him.” Albert was staring at his desk, so I waited, willing him to feel the pressure. “He did some work for the county last year.”
Good enough. “And how do I find this Mr. Altschul?” Albert opened his mouth. “And don’t tell me Happy’s, Albert. I want someone I can call this morning.”
“Hang on.” Albert pulled a peeling wallet out of his back pocket and fished out what looked like a grocery receipt. Fumbling around for a stub of a pencil, he copied a number off of it onto the back of a state wildlife notice, and handed it to me.
“Looks familiar.” I eyed the number. Albert’s handwriting can be hieroglyphic at times. “Is that an eight?”
“Yeah.” Albert checked and nodded. “That’s the number for the smoke shop. You know, Randy’s?” I did, but I waited for an explanation. “Dave doesn’t have a phone at the moment. But he’s a good worker and real reliable. Honest. Just—well, he takes his calls at Randy’s.”
“Great.” I didn’t remember the male population of Beauville as being quite so ragged. Still, I folded the flier and pocketed it. “I’ll try him.” I got up to leave then, when the thought hit me. Randy’s sold those fake cigarettes. Maybe the burly proprietor would know if Jill had been in recently. If she’d bought something she shouldn’t. “Maybe I’ll just ask him,” was all I said. “Thanks, Al.”
With a nod, I turned toward the door and turned back. I didn’t mind being hard on Albert. He needed training. Frank, though? The masked ferret was only being himself. Besides, he was a friend.
“Bye, Frank,” I called softly. Silently, I willed my thoughts to him. “Sorry about that, little fella.”
I guess I’d gone too far, though, because all I got was silence as I walked to the door. Silence, and then, just as I pushed my way outdoors, one quiet muttered word: “button.”
Chapter Forty-three
As much as I wanted to interrogate the fat smoke shop owner, I had another appointment to keep. My plan was to do some damage control at Wilkins’ house, see what was up with the squirrels, and then set him up with this carpenter, Dave. Not that I’d let the lawyer deal with the contractor himself. Anyone who hung out with Albert, I’d be happier wrangling myself before I let him loose on a client.
I girded myself for another onslaught as I pulled up at the lawyer’s palatial home. Midday, and the birds were out in full force. The squirrels couldn’t be far behind. But as I walked around the side of the big house, I found the area strangely quiet. Even as I pulled my ladder out from under the tarp and propped it against the wall, I didn’t hear anything louder than a lust-crazed sparrow.
“Yo! Babe! Over here!” I realized I was chuckling as I ascended. Considering how I’d felt last time I was up here, it was a pleasant change. “Check this out!”
I almost turned to look before I caught myself. That glossy black neck plumage hadn’t been freshly groomed for me. Besides, as much as I wanted to avoid the pain and loss that I had felt before, I knew I had to face it. Wallis would scoff at my hesitation—call it human weakness—but until I could relinquish my place on top of the food chain, I felt obligated to experience whatever my empathy would bring. True, this empathy was amplified by my sensitivity, but to deny it would be worse. I thought of Mack, numbing himself against the world. Of my mother, whose bitterness had turned inward. No, I’d rather take the punches, even if it meant being laughed at by my cat.
With that in mind, I reached out to touch the roof. My hand on the raw wood, where I had torn out part of the fascia, could pick up little. The nom-nom vibrations of a wood beetle, the distant hum of two moths. That sparrow, going on so, seemed to be drowning out any other higher animal. Either that, or my reluctance had kicked in, amping up my new resistance skills even when I consciously willed them away. Putting both hands up, I stared into the dark, torn crevice I had enlarged and tried again.
“Nest?” I tried the thought as a feeler, imagining twigs and grass. Warmth and a safe, dry space.
“Safe.” That came back to me like an echo, bringing with it a wave of guilt. Yes, this had been safe, until I had come along. Unless…
I took a breath and steeled myself. I needed to know. “Babies?”
The answer, when it came was faint, more a memory than a thought. A keening cry in the darkness, “gone.” I closed my eyes as the sadness washed over me. I didn’t know where the mother was now. Behind me, in the trees, most likely, and whether she was watching me or she even picked up on my regret, I would probably never know. What I did have was something akin to closure. The loss was final and maybe—just maybe—it predated my interference with her world. Fishing my hammer out of my belt, I reattached the wire mesh. Whatever had happened in seasons past, whatever had happened here, this nest was gone.
“I hope you don’t think that will be sufficient.” The voice, coming from below, startled me.
“Mr. Wilkins.” I turned enough to see him, scowling up at me. “I was going to come see you.” First rule of training: every animal wants a response. By refusing to answer him directly, I was denying him satisfaction. I doubted he could be trained. Lawyers aren’t as smart as most animals. It did, however, give me satisfaction to try.
“I fixed the mesh to prevent a re-infestation,” I said calmly, as I descended the ladder. “You may have heard animals passing through, but they haven’t nested again. And I’ve arranged with a contractor to repair the squirrel damage.” I looked up at the fascia. Originally, I’d been willing to take the blame for some of the damage. Now, with the lawyer eyeing me like that, I realized I’d been acting out of misplaced guilt.
“You do realize that this whole panel is going to have to be replaced?” It was a rhetorical question, a technique I’d learned from Mack in his contracting days. “Rotten all through. I poked at it to see the extent of the rot. It’s pretty clear that the squirrels chose your house because the wood was already so soft.” I pointed with the hammer, another trick I’d learned from Mack. Lawyers—maybe all white-collar types—are secretly in awe of tools.
He started to protest and I barreled on.
“Not to worry. I’ll work with the contractor. He’s a carpenter, licensed, of course.” I made a mental note to check that. “And we’ll coordinate to make sure the nuisance animals don’t return while he’s working.”
“I’d trust her.” I turned to see Jill coming up behind me. “Pru really knows animals. She understands how they think.” Standing beside me, the youngest Canaday seemed to tip the scales. With a gruff grunt, Laurence Wilkins nodded.
“Thanks.” I turned to my uninvited ally. I wanted to ask her what she knew. Why she had phrased her support the way she had. But I couldn’t, not with the lawyer standing right here.
Instead, I turned back to the client. “I’m sure you’ll agree, Mr. Wilkins, that it’s better to do the job right the first time, rather than have to go back and do it over.”
That shut him up, at least temporarily. He backed off, literally, taking two steps back as I collapsed the ladder—and handed it to my new apprentice.
“When do you want to start?” Keeping her close, at least I could get some questions answered.
“I think I have.” She laughed. A merry sound, but it set my teeth on edge.
“You know, you can’t smoke around animals.” I was feeling my way toward the question I really wanted to ask.
“I know that.�
�� She looked down at the ladder, as if it were going to be able to answer for her. I led her over to the tarp and together we covered it. “I told you, I quit.”
“When?” She was hiding something. Something besides my ladder.
“I’ve been quitting the last five years,” she laughed again, before she noticed that I hadn’t joined in. “Seriously? When my dad had his first attack. That scared me. And I knew people who were doing the e-cigs, then. I know it’s a crutch, but, hey, whatever works, right? I’m hardly smoking them anymore.”
I raised my eyebrows at that, but kept silent. People tell themselves what they need to believe. And I had questions of my own. “So, your dad ever smoke those?”
“Dad, no?” She shook her head. “When he quit, he went cold turkey.”
“He ever fall off the wagon?” Another shake. “Maybe he was tempted, and you told him about the e-cigs?” A more vigorous shake. “No, like I said, I only started with these after he had his first heart attack. He couldn’t—they wouldn’t have been safe for him.”
“Safe.” I kept my face blank, waiting.
“Nicotine raises the heart rate.” She sounded so earnest. “Breathing, you name it.”
“It’s also a poison, but it wouldn’t have to go that far, would it?” I was trying it out. Seeing how it felt. “Not with someone like your dad. Someone who already had a bum heart.”
“What? You think….” If she was acting, she was good. As the implication dawned on her, I could see the color draining from her face. “My sister—what, no.” She turned to the lawyer. “Larry, tell her!”
Larry? I stopped. What happened to Mr. Wilkins? My mind jumped back to that first day at Wilkins’ office. The way the sheltie greeted her…
“Tell her what?” The man in question interrupted my thoughts. “Ms. Marlowe, if you’re going to attack Ms. Canaday—”
“Wait.” I put my hand up, calling for quiet. Turned from my client back to Jill. “I’m not attacking anyone. I’m not the one—”
“Please.” Wilkins coughed a little. Cleared his throat. “I believe I have some insight into this situation. Jill, do you mind?” He motioned and I followed him away from the house. “Jackie Canaday is a very volatile woman,” he said, his voice low. “Very—and very unfair to her youngest sister. At times it seems best to accommodate her.”
“So I gather.” I looked at him. Tried to read him. “Why did Jackie come to see you that morning? The morning her father died?”
“Ms. Marlowe, please.” He did his best to look affronted. “There are some things I cannot talk about.”
I waited. This had gone beyond protocol.
“I’d rather Jill not hear about this. You understand, of course?” I didn’t, but he took my silence for assent. “She called me panicked. She was making wild accusations—saying horrible things about her sisters. I thought it best to accommodate her. To contain any damage she might do.” He looked over to where Jill was waiting. “She has always resented her younger sisters, and I was afraid she would misread things. Lash out, so I cleared my morning for her. Clearly, my efforts didn’t suffice.”
“You don’t think she did something…” The timing was awfully neat.
“No.” He was shaking his head. “I am confident that David’s death was from natural causes. I’d seen him only a day or two before, you know. I could tell he was growing weaker.”
“His daughters don’t seem to think that.”
“His daughters are guided by what they want to see.” He glanced over at Jill, who was waiting by the ladder. “If anybody is casting aspersions now, it may be that those parties are simply seeking to deflect attention. Not necessarily from any misdeeds, but in order to further their own interests, whatever they might be.”
I nodded. “People can be nasty.” I thought of that squirrel nest. Of what I had done for money. “Come on, Jill.” I motioned to the waiting girl. “If you’re still up for it, we’ve got work to do.”
Chapter Forty-four
Call me crazy, but taking Jill with me seemed the sensible option. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew something was off. Was she innocent, smeared by her older sisters in an attempt to get her inheritance? Probably. Could she have hastened her father’s death, either by accident or intent? Yeah, that was a possibility, too. Would I learn more by watching her than by running away? I didn’t need any special senses to figure that one out. Besides, she was still my best bet for housing that kitten.
“Wow, this is a great car.” She settled into the passenger seat of my baby-blue baby, apparently willing to let bygones be bygones. I’d suggested she leave her Mini at Wilkins’. It would mean an extra trip at the end of the day, but I wanted to be in the driver’s seat. Besides, you can tell a lot about a person by the way she reacts to your wheels—and to your driving. Gushing about my car wasn’t bad. But considering what had just transpired, it was a little odd. I held my tongue as I pulled onto the road. That’s when I’d see what she was really made of.
“What do you know about squirrels?” I threw that out as I accelerated into a turn.
“Um, two litters a year?” Her hand went up, but she forced it down before she could brace herself on the dashboard.
I smiled. “Right.” The girl had nerve. “Do you know the law on nuisance animals?”
I ran her through her paces as I drove back into town. She had read the literature, and she was good under pressure. But as I neared what passes for a main street in Beauville, I found myself wondering. How much of the good-girl front was an act? Was the toughness I was witnessing the real Jill Canaday?
Our first stop was at a regular’s. Old Meryl Sandburg did her best, but her Siamese often got the best of her. I made a weekly visit, ostensibly to trim the hefty feline’s claws. In reality, I would do a quick assessment—make sure the tiny octogenarian was still up to living on her own, if cohabiting with a twenty-pound yowler qualified. Once a month, I brought litter and food by, too, telling her it was part of the service. No sense in infringing on anyone’s dignity.
I gave Jill the rundown as we pulled up to the neat bungalow. The crocuses of a few weeks ago had already given way to tulips and hyacinths, dotting the small front yard with bursts of red and blue. Either Meryl was doing better now that the weather had warmed up, or others in the community had the same instincts I did.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Sandburg.” I called as I let myself in the unlocked door. “Hi, Princess.”
“Oh, Pru, good to see you.” The wizened face turned up to me with a smile, pale eyes blinking. I smiled back. It was hard not to, even for me, and immediately dropped down into a crouch.
“Princess?” The seal-point pushed her coffee-colored head into my hand. I knew, because she had told me in no uncertain terms, that her full name—her real name—was both long and Thai, reflecting her exalted lineage. Queen Raja was my best translation of it. In a model act of noblesse oblige, however, she accepted the name her person had bestowed on her. The old lady might not have been completely aware of the transaction, but her feline companion accepted the familiar moniker as an honorific. As she aged and grew more to resemble an ottoman than the sleek heartbreaker of her youth, the blue-eyed cat was even growing fond of the term.
“Where shall I put this?” I’d left Jill to lug in the twenty-pound bag of kibble.
“I’ll take it from here.” I stowed the sack, Mrs. Sandburg’s kitchen being as familiar to me as my own, and pulled out a bag of loose catnip. The Queen—“Princess”—eyed the baggie with interest. “Nails first, Princess.” We made eye contact. She accepted my terms.
“Mrs. Sandburg, this is Jill Canaday.” I turned to make the introductions once I had stored the bag under the counter. “She’s considering studying animal behavior.” That was a bit of an exaggeration, but it covered the bases.
“I knew your father, dear.” The old lady had come up to
my assistant and taken her hand between both of hers. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m going to show her how I clip Princess’ claws.” Disengaging Jill, I directed her over to the sofa. Princess had followed me, an air of sufferance on her chocolate face, and I rewarded her with a small pinch of the catnip. She responded by lolling on her back, which made it easier for me to scoop her up.
“Notice how I cradle the cat’s body,” I said, once I had Princess on my lap. “If she feels secure, she’s less likely to struggle.”
“Royalty become used to being groomed.” The thought, more a passing observation than a comment, made me smile. The big cat was already stoned.
“Then you press gently on the paw pad to make the cat extend her claw.” Princess politely obliged.
“You have such a way with her.” Meryl Sandburg clasped her hands together, watching.
“She really does, doesn’t she?” Jill said. Princess kicked—I’d looked up a little too fast.
“Is everything okay?” The old lady’s voice quavered.
“Yes, we’re fine here.” Aren’t we? I focused on the cat, but found myself wondering: Was Meryl Sandburg as good at manipulating me as I was this paw? Was this one of the female wiles my mother had so completely rejected by the time I was coming along?
“What is that scent?” Princess was distracted, which was good. I took the opportunity to move her to Jill’s lap. Her highness accepted the shift with regal indifference, as I took up her other front paw.
“Again, you gently press the pad.” I demonstrated, as the cat’s leather nose twitched toward me, taking careful stock of my shirt.
“She must smell the squirrels.” Jill chimed in. Turning to the old lady, she explained. “Pru was removing some problem animals over at—”
I had to stop her. Talking about other clients is never a good idea, and talking about pest animals an even worse one. Too many people associate unwanted animals of any kind with vermin and uncleanliness.