by Clea Simon
The noise was unearthly—like the cries of the damned. Nancy Pinkerton’s husband had taken off years before, if rumor ran true. Gone to help with a daughter’s ongoing renovations and never come back. Probably right around the time the bouncy lady of the house had welcomed this din into it. There were neighbors, too, less than thirty yards to the right, and I wondered what they made of the ungodly sound.
“Mrs. Pinkerton?” I knocked, unsure if she could even hear me. A fresh wail started up. “Mrs. P? You there?”
“Just one minute!” Her jolly tones seemed at odds with the howling. As did her next words. “Please stand back.”
I’m used to people. They are much less predictable than animals. So I did as requested, and heard what sounded like the door coming unlatched. Then, nothing. “Mrs. P?”
“Pickles!” A stage whisper came through the door. “Pickles, now!” Another howl. I wasn’t worried about the cat. I was used to her vocal exercises. Besides, the lithe Siamese knew how much her caterwauls annoyed most people. She enjoyed it. The closed door was a different story.
“Do you need help?” I pictured Nancy Pinkerton lying there in one of her pastel tracksuits, hip broken but determined to “not be a bother.” I wondered if she had fallen on her cat. “Nancy?”
I reached for the door. And just as I did, the knob started to turn. A little at first, then completely, and the door opened just enough for me to see Nancy Pinkerton standing several feet away, beaming like the proud grandmother she was. Taking her place by the door, Her Most Serene Highness Achara stood on her hind feet. Stretched to her full length, with her cream belly exposed, she still held onto the doorknob her chocolate brown paws had successfully manipulated. And here I was, wondering if a cat could shoot a gun.
Chapter Seven
Could those little paws bring death? I pondered the possibility as I started on her Highness, hauling the slim, self-satisfied Siamese onto my lap. And did Nancy Pinkerton have some kind of insider knowledge?
“Heard you were talking about the Franklins.” I watched the old lady from under lowered lids. The Princess was aware of my inattention, but I held her firmly. “Did you know them?”
“Knew of them.” The old lady, in pink today, leaned in. “My lord, I certainly didn’t see this coming.”
“Oh?” I had my clipper out. The Siamese had delicate paws, the fur smooth and short. That Persian’s would be like catcher’s mitts by comparisons.
“Well, everyone knew she played around.” Her cheeks colored to match her outfit. I liked her for that. “I mean, so I’d heard. He never seemed to take it seriously, though.”
“Maybe he should have.” I clipped. The cat pulled back.
“You don’t think—” Her color was deeper now, more like last week’s magenta. “Oh, my lord.”
My phone saved her from more of a grilling. My phone and her Highness—who kicked free of my lap with a claws-out push off that left puncture marks in my jeans. Like many beauties, she could get annoyed when she wasn’t the center of attention. Which probably explained my tone of voice when I finally called Creighton back.
“What?” I was in my car by then, rubbing the sore spots on my thigh. Next time, I’d start with her hind paws, get them before she could get me.
“Good afternoon to you, too.” He was laughing. Despite starting his day with a stiff. I figured it had to be me, and I softened a bit.
“Sorry, you caught me with a client. She didn’t like the phone ringing in the middle of an appointment.”
“I thought you never got bit.” Before I could explain, he went on. “Anyway, I’m sorry. You said you wanted to know what was up with that cat.”
“I do,” I waited. Jim Creighton and I had an odd relationship. Despite the occasional intimacies, we really were on opposite sides of the fence, and we both knew it. That was probably what made things so hot. It also made me hyper aware of him, of the games we both played. Now he was in cop mode: he wanted something in return. I could almost smell it.
With anyone else, the silence would have been awkward. Not Creighton, though. As I sat there, rubbing my leg, he started to laugh.
“Pru, you’re a piece of work. You know that?” It didn’t seem like he required an answer. “I really did want to fill you in.”
“Uh huh.” I’d give him that.
“It turns out, it is entirely possible for a cat to have fired that gun.” Thoughts of those bulky paws came back into my mind, but I kept my mouth shut. Creighton kept talking. “The kind of gun it is, it’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.”
He was teasing. “Okay, shoot.” I started to smile despite myself. “If you’ll pardon the expression.”
“The gun was some kind of antique dueling pistol. A museum piece, really. It only held one shot—a ball and powder—so it wouldn’t have been obvious that it was loaded. And because it had a fancy attachment to hold the, hang on a minute—the fulminating compound.” He shifted and I could hear papers rustling. “A scent-bottle, they call it, it wouldn’t have been clear that it was primed to go off.”
“You’d still have to pull the trigger, wouldn’t you?”
“I was getting to that.” He must have closed his notepad. “It was a dueling pistol, Pru. They were fighting guns, quick-response weapons. This one had a hair trigger. Didn’t even need to be pulled. The cat could have stepped on it. Pushed its head against it. Almost anything could have set it off.”
Creighton’s explanation should have been a relief. He was right: this gun sounded like an accident waiting to happen. The questions it raised, however, were just as volatile.
“Donal Franklin was into these guns, right?” I thought about the study. Tried to remember if there had been any other weapons in the room, maybe framed on the wall. I couldn’t picture any. New things…I heard an echo of the dead man’s voice. There were books, though. I’d seen them. “Wouldn’t he have known all this?” I couldn’t tell Creighton about the small voice I’d heard—the soft, clear cry for help. I had to get at my suspicions another way. Before he could answer, I added a third question. “Could it have been intentional?”
Suicide. Not that rare when there’s a marriage on the rocks. That poodle had cast doubt on my source, but in a case like this common sense seemed more reliable than a nervy miniature.
“Forensics is looking into it, but I’d say it’s unlikely. It looks like he was too far away, and there’s no powder on either of his hands. Which means simple human error, Pru. I know it’s less interesting, but, hey, that’s the downside of this job.” He was sounding like himself again. Death or no death, a man relaxes when his work is done. I wished I had his confidence.
“I’ve made contact with a dealer out by Amherst,” Creighton was still talking. “He’s quite excited about the gun and walked me through all this. He thinks Franklin might have been examining the mechanism, or even starting to clean it. He might have been going to fire it—some collectors do, though it seems a little foolhardy with a two-hundred-year-old relic. The guy out in Amherst was horrified by the idea, even though he was the one who brought it up as a possibility, but I think he was more concerned with value. And Donal Franklin wasn’t an expert, just an interested amateur. Maybe he didn’t know about the “scent bottle” thing, that it could hold a charge. Maybe he never checked to see if the pistol was loaded. What we do know is that he got a phone call, and he must have put the gun down on the desk to talk. We found his cell. It fits.”
“A little neat, don’t you think?” That quiet voice. Help. A marriage that wasn’t working. A spouse who was encouraging dangerous new hobbies. “You talk to the wife?”
“That’s who called it in, Pru. She was the one who had called her husband—from the road, outside Northampton. We have someone staying with her now. She heard it all.”
In a way, it was a relief. I felt bad for the cat. Bad for the wife, too, of course. Even assuming things weren’t that great between them, nobody wants to hear her spouse shot. But I was out of it.
A day or two for the paperwork to be filed, and this would be labeled a clear-cut case of death by misadventure, or whatever our county coroner would call it. Of course, our coroner was a former GP, so for all I knew, he’d label it alcohol poisoning. Anyway, it wasn’t my problem. My leg hurt. I was tired. One of the great things about my mother’s failure to renovate is that, along with a heating system that could be cranky on these cold March nights, I inherited a huge clawfoot tub. I envisioned myself neck deep in hot water, assuming we had hot water. I added a tumbler of bourbon to the picture, and that was enough inspiration to start the engine and enjoy the ride home.
Only things never work like that. Not in my life. So when the phone buzzed again, bouncing around on the seat like a rabid rodent, I tried to ignore it. I had no family left. No man regular enough to worry about, and Wallis couldn’t use the phone. Late afternoon, and the light was fading. I could build a fire in the living room. There was something in the freezer, as I recalled.
The phone buzzed.
“Hello?” This had better be good.
“Dear Prudence. Long time, no contact.” The voice was male and familiar. Not local, though. I pulled over to the curb to better sort through my mental Rolodex. Whoever it was knew me well enough to know how I worked. He chuckled, and that did it.
“Tom?” The laugh had been low and sexy. It went with muscles, dark hair, and a scar that pulled at the side of his mouth.
“And here I was, thinking you’d forgotten.” Like I’d forget Tom Reynolds, all danger and nighttime excitement. Tom had given me the switchblade I always carry. “And not want to have dinner with me.”
“Tom, I’m not in the city anymore.” I tried to remember when I’d seen the big guy last. Two years ago? Two and a half?
“I know, babe. What kind of a cop do you think I am?” So he was still on the force. The way Tom had played it, close to the edge, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d switched over. “I’m looking into something for someone, and I found your new number.”
“You’re in Beauville now?” I couldn’t explain why this creeped me out exactly. I like my breaks to be clean. Maybe I’d come to like my cops clean, too. “For how long?”
He chuckled again and I visualized his mouth, the way the scar pulled. “So you did miss me. I don’t make plans, Pru. You know that. But I’m thinking it might be fun to get together again.” He was pushing too hard, sounding a little strained. A little tired. “Maybe we can help each other out. What do you say? Eight?”
“Look, Tom, I’ve had a hell of a day.” I didn’t want to get into it. Talking about Donal to Tom felt dirty somehow. “I don’t know if I’m up for anything.”
“Seven, then.” He wasn’t waiting for an answer. “Look, Pru. I’m not sure how long I’ll be in town.”
“Yeah.” He was in trouble, or something like it. Without thinking, my hand had strayed to my pocket. The outline of my knife, hard and deadly, reminded me of what my tough beau had once meant to me. Switchblades are illegal, but he’d taken this one off some street punk and given it to me. He’d done me a solid; that knife had come in handy. Maybe it was time to return the favor. Not that I’d meet him without the blade by my side.
***
I gave him directions to Beauville’s downtown. Since I’d grown up here, the area had actually grown to deserve the name. Before I’d left, it was two blocks long—a hardware store. The post office. A few shops. Sometime during my years away, a row of condos had extended the residential part of town almost down to the river, and the town had gotten itself together to cater to these new people. You could see it as you drove down Main Street. The barber shop had morphed into a hair salon; the toy store now sold cell phones. And the hardware store where my mother had bought a new set of locks and the tools to install them after my dad had taken off had been transformed into a bistro. With a city-trained chef and a menu focused on local produce, it seemed an unlikely addition; we were too far from Tanglewood to get that many tourists, and the condo folk were seasonal or retirees. But as long as it lasted, I’d go there—especially if someone else was paying. They did a good steak, and I was eating meat again.
Happy’s, of course, still held down the end of our main drag. The dive bar where I’d learned to drink hadn’t changed since my father’s day. I thought of the smoky little room as I drove home. Tom would love it. Maybe he’d already found it. Our own new police headquarters was only two blocks away.
That thought, as much as anything else, cleared my head as I pulled into my own driveway. My day had started with a stiff and a scared cat. I didn’t need to end it with something stupid and booze-driven. One cop per city was enough for any girl. Especially a girl with secrets.
Chapter Eight
Wallis had been noticeably absent as I sank into the tub. That didn’t surprise me; she finds the idea of bathing uncivilized. But as the hot water did its work, I found myself missing my feline companion. I hadn’t had a chance to tell her what the poodle had said, or what the Princess Achara had shown me. Creighton might be a good guy; still, there was no way I could share this new info with him. Besides, I wanted to talk to her about Tom. She and I hadn’t been communicating back in the days of our city romance. At least, not that I’d been aware of. But she had to have been aware of him, and increasingly I trusted my tabby’s take on people, often more than I trusted my own.
“Tom Knife? That Tom?” She appeared in the bathroom and jumped up onto the sink, smirking a bit as I started.
“Wallis—” I bit my tongue. I’d been wanting her to come by, and here she was. “Yes, ‘Tom Knife,’ from the city.”
“Interesting.” Her green eyes began to close, and I knew her well enough to recognize the look. This wasn’t sleepiness; this was a cat considering the hunt. “He was…lively.”
The hesitation made me aware of the gap between us. Wallis is good at translating, better than I’d probably ever be. But cats and people see things differently. “Polite” meant diffident, to a feline, because most cats find a direct gaze offensive. Lively?
“Oh, please, Pru. I lived there, too.” She smiled. I got it.
“I don’t know if I want that in my life right now.” I wasn’t being coy. There’s no point in acting with your cat. “I mean, I’ve finally gotten a handle on everything. I’ve got some control.”
“You mean with the tame ones you’ve got now?”
I was about to protest. Jim Creighton might be on the right side of the law. He was hardly tame. But whether it was a nonverbal nudge from Wallis, or my own conscience, I stopped myself. Jim and I hadn’t seen each other socially for months. And Mack, the gambler who had left me alone at the bar, had been written off that night.
“And you know you’re too young for—what’s his name? Lewis?”
Llewelyn McMudge. The other man I’d danced with at the benefit. Donal’s friend. I blocked that memory by conjuring up good ol’ Lew. Unlike Don, he’d wanted more than one dance, and he knew how to have fun. He had the means, which helped. A car that purred like Wallis, and a country home over near Northampton. Probably a girl in every town, too, despite the gray at the temples and lines that hung in even when his hungry smile had faded. Still, sometimes it was nice to be taken out, especially by a tall, lean gallant who carried his years gracefully. I’d become rather used to steak dinners again.
“Llewelyn.” Wallis flicked her tail in dismissal before jumping to the floor. “Suit yourself, Pru. And happy hunting.”
Dinner. As I got dressed, I toyed again with the idea of taking Tom to Happy’s. I’m human. It would be easy. But a little too much had happened that day. If I was going to reignite this particular old flame, I wanted to do so with a clear head. So Hardware it was.
Tom was waiting when I drove up, a square block of muscle lined up against the brick doorway, and in a rare moment of reticence I didn’t voice the local witticism—that the owners had come up with the name only after rejecting Hammered and Screwed. He’d smiled the crooked smile any
way, as he held the door for me, and suddenly the place looked small town. Quaint, like it was trying a bit too hard.
“So what brings you to our one-horse town?” I’ll admit, I was a little defensive. It wasn’t that I felt much allegiance to Beauville, but what we did, we did right. I’d also made sure we’d put our drink order in before I turned on Tom. No point in giving him an excuse to run.
“Pru, Pru.” He shook his head, that grin belied the dying fall of his voice. The scar twitched as he talked. “Since when did you become so suspicious. Can’t we just enjoy the evening?”
I didn’t even bother responding. We’d stopped seeing each other—broken up would have implied too much of a commitment—months before I left. After a moment, I remembered. He’d been the one to teach me about silence—about how keeping quiet gets the other person to talk. I needed to be direct.
“You said you were looking into something for someone.” I watched his face. “Business or personal?”
The smile grew a little wider, thin lips revealing sharp teeth. I thought again about those rumors of wolves. “You jealous?”
“You’re avoiding the question.” I smiled back. We were on familiar ground now. Tag, he was it.
“You’re right.” We both paused as the waiter brought over our drinks and took our order. “It’s business. For me, anyway.”
My drink served as a useful prop. I sipped and waited.
“I’m not on the job anymore. I’ve got a little private consulting business now.” He looked into his drink. “The money is much better.”
I didn’t believe it. Tom had never been interested in the money. He’d lived, like me, for the chase. The excitement. Then again, he could go a bit far in the pursuit of that excitement. The muscles, the appetite: they made things too easy for him. As he kept talking, I found I wasn’t surprised. Tom Reynolds as a PI made some kind of sense.
“I’m just getting started, really. Getting some referrals. Looking into a couple of things. Anyway, one of my clients has asked me to follow up on something.”