by Clea Simon
I raised my eyebrows. “She won your support, huh?”
“My sympathy, Pru.
A movement at my feet alerted me to the kitten as Creighton walked into the kitchen. I heard the bottle of bourbon opening, the liquid warmth tumbling into a glass, as I lifted the little beast.
“Why won’t he play with me?” The kitten’s fur was feather soft against my face.
“He’s tired.” I willed the thought back. “They’re all tired.”
“Interesting company you keep.” His voice was tired. I turned to see him, drink in hand, brushing through the accumulation of papers on the table.
“She dropped by while I was in the bath.” I closed the door with my foot and followed him in. The kitten squirmed in my grasp. “Unannounced,” I added as he sipped my bourbon.
“She come by to drop this off?” With one finger, he brushed the newspaper aside, revealing the note beneath.
“Don’t leave!” The kitten was struggling now, I could feel him yearning—not toward the door, but toward the window. I could see Jackie’s taillights as she disappeared down the street.
“Wait, she—?” I caught myself in time. “Where’s Wallis?” I needed an interpreter, fast.
“I don’t think she got out.” Jim was still drinking, but his attention was on the paper in front of him, dry now and dimpled. “I was careful. So, she came by to leave you this?”
I looked down at the note. I had brought it in and left it here. She had seen it. She must have. Unless—had it been underneath the paper when I first came downstairs? When I had gone up to bathe?
“What? No, Jim.” I read it again, the words taking on a newly ominous cast. “SHE DIDNT DO IT. SHE WAS HELP.”
The window now showed only dark, and the kitten settled in my grasp. “Play with me?” he cried. “Don’t leave.” Jackie had asked about the kitten, but hadn’t even bothered to pick him up.
Chapter Forty-eight
Creighton didn’t believe me, or not entirely. I’d given up trying to dissimulate at that point. “Someone left it on my windshield at Happy’s. Maybe it was Jackie.”
“Interesting.” He looked at it, poking at the edge. “Could be nothing. Just someone trying to get to you.”
“I don’t understand.” I’d poured myself more bourbon by then, my surprise visitor had already ruined my good bathtime buzz. “Why would anyone?”
“You tend to get in the way, Pru.” A look, not quite a smile. “You ask a lot of questions and stick your nose in where it’s not wanted.”
I didn’t deny it. “But—this? What does it even mean?”
Another look, with even less smile. “You’re involved with Jill Canaday. You’re doing work for her lawyer.”
“Her lawyer. I thought Wilkins represented the family—”
Creighton held up a hand to stop me. “He does, or he did. He represented old man Canaday, anyway, and it seems he’s the executor of the will. But I gather Jill has hired him specifically.”
“To…” I left it open. He didn’t answer, so I spelled it out. “Why does a newly rich college girl need a lawyer?”
He raised his eyebrows. That was a warning. I was getting into his business here. “Because of the money?” Nothing. “Because of what her sisters are saying?”
“Pru, you don’t know,” he said. He was shaking his head, sad now that the drink had taken the edge off, I thought. “Families are complicated. There are old grudges…”
“Tell me about it,” I said, when it became clear he wasn’t going to. “I don’t know how my mother and I managed to talk at all toward the end. But nobody accused me of finishing her off.”
As I was talking, I was watching my beau. Something about the way he nodded let me know I’d hit on it.
“Does Wilkins do criminal cases?” I kept my voice low, even, hoping that I wouldn’t alert Creighton.
“Pru.” The smile at the side of his mouth let me know he heard what I was asking. “Why would you be asking about criminal cases when there haven’t been any charges?”
He was looking at the note again, one finger pushing the note back and forth as he stared at the ink, at the paper. I waited for him to say something more. To say anything, but his mouth was set, firm. Closed. I could see lines around that mouth. Others forming around his eyes. Fatigue was wearing out the boy scout in him. Didn’t make him any less handsome, though. Not in my book, and when he turned toward me, I let my questions go.
“Come on.” I took his hand. The evening hadn’t gone as I’d expected. Didn’t mean it couldn’t still be salvaged. Not at all.
“Button?” As we climbed the stairs, I heard the kitten cry. “Why won’t he play with me anymore?”
Chapter Forty-nine
“If you expect me to babysit, you really ought to quit upsetting the creature.” Wallis was in the kitchen the next morning. She had given me and Creighton our privacy, declining to join me even after he left some hours before dawn. “I can’t keep mopping up after humans.”
“What did I do, Wallis?” I was feeling mellow, but the strange interactions of the night before hung over me. “I don’t know why Ernesto suddenly became so homesick.”
“Homesick, she says.” Wallis proceeded to wash. “Doesn’t listen. Doesn’t care.”
“That’s not fair.” I had the coffee set up to brew. I didn’t want another creature in my life to shut me out. “What am I not listening to?”
“Oh, maybe me.” The sound of her voice was nearly drowned out by the lap lap lap of her rough tongue. “Maybe our tiny houseguest.”
“Wallis, I wish you’d just tell me what I’m missing.” Even mellow, I have my limits. “And can you not do that while we’re talking?”
“Hungover, are we?” The washing didn’t stop, but she did pause for a moment as the kitten came into the room. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
I looked down at Ernesto. He looked up at me. He looked good. I had to give Wallis credit. The bedraggled mite I’d brought home a week before had begun to fill out, his fur taking on the glossy sheen of a well-groomed cat. Maybe I’d been too harsh to my longtime companion.
“You think?” The thought came to me over the swipe of tongue on fur.
“Well, kitten. What is it you want to tell me?”
“Lonely.” The desperation of the night before had faded. The longing was still there.
“Isn’t Wallis good company?” I caught my cat’s sudden startled jerk and quickly amended my words. “Aren’t I?”
“He played with me, with the button.” The face that looked at me seemed to imbue this simple act with great importance. “He’s gone.”
With the unselfconscious ease of the young, Ernesto curled up and fell asleep.
“Well, that certainly cleared things up.” I looked around. “Wallis?” My cat was gone.
***
Tracy Horlick was not much less cryptic.
“I hear they’re still investigating,” she said. The light in her eyes could have been a taunt. Then again, it could also have been the reflection of her glowing red butt.
“Really?” I wasn’t in the mood.
“Cause of death.” She paused, waiting for me to respond. She took another drag. Behind her, in the house, I heard a sharp yip. Growler. “Makes you wonder,” she added, ignoring the cries of her pet.
“These things take time.” I wasn’t going to rise to the bait if I could help it. Not that I didn’t sympathize with Growler. “Lab tests and all that.”
“Not when it’s simple.” Her words came out with the smoke. “Not when it’s a natural death.”
I nodded, not wanting to get into it.
“I heard that the youngest girl uses those electronic cigarettes.” She took a big drag on her own decidedly old-school butt. “They’re poison, you know.”
“There’s no—”
I stopped myself. So much for not getting dragged into Tracy Horlick’s mire. From inside the house, I heard a sharp bark. “There’s no evidence of anything amiss.”
“I knew it.” Tipping the ash off into the shrubbery, she turned into the house. A moment later, I heard the scrambling of claws as the bichon raced out of the basement. “He’s completely under her thumb,” she was muttering, as I bent to clip on the fluffy white dog’s lead.
So she knew where I was getting my information from. I wasn’t going to tell her how wrong she was about me and Creighton.
Chapter Fifty
“Ready to boogie, Bitsy?” I silently apologized for using that awful name.
“About time!” With a yip, he acknowledged me. “Jerome, really…” Black leather nose quivering, Growler took in the neighborhood news. “But he’s a—he’s a raccoon!”
Trying to give the little guy some privacy, I stared off into the distance. Growler’s life was more circumscribed than many, living as he did with such a harridan. Why she had a pet, when she usually kept him locked in the basement, was beyond me.
“The social angle, old Smoke Teeth.” The words broke through and I turned away. “No! No!” A series of sharp barks brought me back. “I’m talking to you, walker lady.”
To anyone else, we must have made a pair. The tiny white dog barking up at me as I, mouth agape, bent over to listen.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“She got me to go out with.” A little chuff accented his words. “To sniff about.”
“Of course.” Poor guy. Bad enough to belong to such a person. Worse to have to be a prop for her forays. “And then she got tired of you?” It wasn’t kind, but it was honest.
Another bark. “No!” I didn’t press. I did, however, find myself wondering. I’d accepted that it was common knowledge about the autopsy. The Canaday girls’ increasingly public sniping would have made that clear. But the idea of nicotine poisoning? Could Jackie be spreading that rumor?
“Breeders, huh.” With a short snort, Growler lifted his leg, leaving his own mark where so many of his peers had before. “Led around like…like….”
The button eyes looked up at me, and I finished the thought: “Like so many house pets?”
“Huh.” Another chuff. “Exactly.”
“He’s completely under her thumb.” Tracy Horlick’s words came back to me. Maybe she hadn’t been talking about Creighton. About me. I stopped and looked down at the little dog.
“Growler,” I said, looking into those wide dark eyes. “Are you saying that the gossip is being started by a woman?”
The white tail started wagging.
“It’s Judith, isn’t it?” Creighton had said charges had been dropped. To Tracy Horlick—hell, to half of Beauville—that wouldn’t matter. No wonder the middle Canaday girl had left town, risking her father’s displeasure. Growler’s comments, what he had been saying about his witch of a person, all came back.
“Judith is using Randy at the smoke shop to spread rumors about her baby sister,” I said, as Growler started to whine, his canine misogyny winning out. “She wants everyone to suspect Jill.”
I thought of the note. Of the timing. “But why not just have him tell me? I was asking…” Of course, Albert. The bearded wonder had been almost courtly to Jackie—and then done his best to deny it. “And if she can implicate Jackie, too, so much the better.”
Judith Canaday was after it all.
Chapter Fifty-one
I was beginning to understand why Creighton had kept me out of it. Had done his best to keep things quiet—keep things under wraps while the investigation proceeded. Bad enough the lab was taking its time, the town of Beauville had already begun a trial—and one of its own was in the dock. If anyone else heard about that note, Jackie would be suspected too. My guy had taken it with him, and I made a mental note to tell him about Judith’s visit to the medicine cabinet at her father’s house as well. Aspirin for a headache, indeed.
I needed to wash my hands of the lot of them. Imagined how Wallis would react, her single-minded focus on a thorough cleanse. But, I still wanted my own questions answered as I drove over to Wilkins’ place that afternoon. To start with, I wanted to know what had gone on with Wilkins’ late wife and what role Judith had played. Maybe this had nothing to do with Jill Canaday. Maybe this was about Judith and her dad and a particularly bad, old habit. But maybe I had been cleaning cages with a murderer.
“Hey, Pru.” Dave, the carpenter, was waiting for me as I got out of my car. Leaning against a battered blue pick-up, with a tool kit by his feet, he nodded toward the house as I walked up to meet him.
“Dave.” Glad as I was to see him, I couldn’t help wondering. He knew these people, had worked for David Canaday. What if he’d been the one to put the note on my windshield? What if I had it all wrong? “Follow me,” was all I said, as I started walking around the house.
He fell in step beside me. “I already checked it out. Saw what you did up there.” A smile caught at the side of his mouth. “Some squirrels, huh?”
“There was a nest situation.” I kept my voice neutral. He was looking at me, that smile still twitching at the corners of his mouth. “The wood was rotted away.”
“Well, it’s gone now.” While I waited, he went back to his truck, returning with an aluminum ladder that he deftly placed against the side of the house.
I bit back the urge to respond and instead watched as he climbed up and took some measurements.
“Okay, I can do this by Friday,” he said, once he’d climbed down. “Assuming the weather holds. You want me to leave the gate up here?”
“There’s no point.” The sad, sinking feeling swelled up inside me again. “I can probably take it down now, leave the mesh.”
“Suit yourself.” He pocketed the measuring tape. “I need to take some notes.”
As he walked back to his truck, I climbed up to the ruined corner. The wood crumbled at my touch now, its rot dried out by the air and the sun, but I let my hand rest there. Waited for the emotions to flood through me.
“Nest…home…gone.” The thoughts were faint, memories most likely. Though whether they were echoes left in the dark space by that bereaved mother, or phantoms conjured out of my own guilt, I couldn’t tell.
“I’m sorry.” Hand flat against the ruined wood, I tried to concentrate, to picture a nest with young ones safely inside. All I saw was black. “I was at fault.”
“Gone…” I had an image of another nest. Older, and a sudden attack—
“Miss Marlowe?” I looked down. Dave was still by his truck. “Hello?”
The window. I turned to see Laurence Wilkins, inside his office, staring up at me. “Hello,” I said.
“May I ask what you’re doing?” From up here, his brow looked furrowed. It could have been the angle.
“Doing a last check for signs of animal infestation.” That was true, after a fashion. The image lingered like a nightmare. I had to shake it off. “Dave, the carpenter, has already made some measurements.”
“And is eavesdropping part of your ‘last check’?” There was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice now.
“What? No.” I smiled, a submissive gesture to de-escalate. I needed to focus. I had things I wanted to know. I’d been trying to figure out a way to ask Wilkins about his late wife, before I’d been distracted. Any chance of that disappeared, however, as he retreated back into the room. In his place, I saw a familiar face staring up at me. Jill Canaday, eyes wide.
“Hi, Jill.” I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see her, not when she was staring up at me. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“It’s—it’s fine.” She didn’t sound fine. “May I talk to you—in private?”
“Suit yourself.” She disappeared and I dismounted the ladder. Dave was by the base by then, looking at me funny.
“Sorry.�
�� I was apologizing to everyone today. “Thought I’d take a last look around.”
“I gather.” He wasn’t even trying to hide the smile anymore.
“Hello.” Laurence Wilkins used the word like a wedge, coming up between us. Jill, coming up behind him, hung back.
“Laurence Wilkins, Dave Altschul.” I made the introductions. “Dave says he can probably start work this week.” Always build some extra time in with the customer. That way, nobody gets bent out of shape.
“Pru?” Jill’s voice was soft, but the request was clear in her voice as she gestured toward the front of the house. I nodded and followed, leaving the lawyer and the contractor to sort out the details.
“What is it?” My voice stayed even, my face still.
“You don’t know?”
I shook my head. A non-denial denial.
She sighed heavily, gazing off at the side of the building. The negotiations must have been ongoing. Between a local carpenter and a lawyer, I wouldn’t have put money on who would come out ahead.
“It’s about my dad.”
I nodded, waiting. “We’ve just heard the news. There’s going to be a report — a final ruling from the medical examiner about my father. They’re saying that his death wasn’t natural.” She paused and licked her lips. “That it wasn’t even accidental.”
So it was official. “Nicotine?”
“I don’t know.” She took a breath. “They’re saying that the cause isn’t clear—or that it’s overdetermined?” She seemed unsure of the word. “At any rate, they’re saying ‘unnatural means.’ Do you know what that means?”
“Yeah.” I looked at her. Despite everything I was learning about her, she still seemed younger than her years. Maybe she was scared. Maybe it was an act. “It means that it’s a good thing you’re talking to your lawyer, Jill. It means the authorities are going to investigate his death for possible foul play—even murder.”
Chapter Fifty-two
“Jim, you could have told me that the old guy was murdered.” I’d driven over to the town cop shop straight from Wilkins’. Found my beau in his office and cut through any small talk. “That I was hanging out with a suspect in a patricide. Maybe two.”