by Ellen Riggs
“Perfect. It’s a win all around,” I said. “I feel bad there’s no one to arrange a funeral for Portia. It seemed that she had few friends left, other than Hazel Bingham.”
“That is sad,” Jilly said. “And commendable of you.” She grinned at me as she reached for a notepad to start her first list. “Plus it might bring together quite a few suspects in Portia’s death. I’m sure you’ll fire off some probing questions as you show people around.”
“You know me so well,” I said, grinning back. “Should we run into town and set things up?”
She grabbed her purse and coat. “If we’re doing it on Saturday, there’s not a moment to lose.”
Nonetheless we lost half an hour locating Percy and containing him in the laundry room, which now had a bed, litter box, food and water. He was hardly suffering, but you wouldn’t know it from the caterwauling.
“Why do I feel so guilty?” Jilly asked, getting into Buttercup’s passenger seat. Keats climbed into her lap without waiting for an invitation. Now it was just understood and she kept a towel on the floor to protect herself from his claws. The ride was generally smoother in Buttercup than the truck but without power brakes and steering, it was no magic carpet.
“Percy’s wheedling his way into our hearts,” I said. “And he’s proving to be useful, too. But cats aren’t welcome in nearly as many places as dogs and we have a lot of stops today.”
“I worry about him when he’s with us,” Jilly said. “For such a noticeable cat, he’s a master of evading notice. He could so easily be lost.”
“Percy has his own agenda. At the same time, I admire his independent spirit.”
The dog turned to give me a baleful look.
“Time to suck up,” Jilly said.
“Keats, buddy, I like the cat but I adore you.”
He swished his tail in Jilly’s face to acknowledge my effort.
“So where are we really going?” Jilly asked. “I feel a mission beneath the errands.”
“Again, you know me so well. I just thought with our guests off admiring the last of the fall leaves, you might throw a little charm at another suspect. Hazel put me on to this one, too.”
“Just how many people did Portia offend?”
I shook my head and sighed. “She’d gone from being everyone’s favorite cat sitter to being pretty much jobless. That must be why she had to hit up Hazel for cash all the time.”
“It’s so strange. Something devastating must have happened to cause that change.”
“Well, a bad breakup can do that, right? If that’s what happened with Roy.” I thought about how long I grieved for Kellan after our college breakup. I’d been the one who’d pulled the trigger, but only because I felt so unfairly treated. He’d been told—and believed—I was cheating on him and both of us were too proud to talk it through. All those years wasted…
I must have sighed, because Keats rested his muzzle on my lap and Jilly patted my arm.
“It’s all good now, my friend,” she said. “Leave the past in the past.”
“You’re right,” I said, sighing deliberately this time. “The more I learn, the more I want to find out what happened with Portia. How did Aaron’s collectibles come to be in her possession? What did she plan to do with them?”
“The truth will come out in the Clover Grove wash. It always does,” Jilly said. “Now, who are we meeting behind Kellan’s back today?”
“This is where I mention yet again that you’re the best friend in the world, right?”
“It certainly bears repeating,” she said. “Honestly, I can’t hear it often enough.”
We pulled up as close as we could to Grassroots Organic Meats and got out of the car. “Keats, I hate to tell you this, but dogs aren’t allowed here, either.” Once again, he curled up in the passenger seat with a huff of disapproval. “I’m worried about him,” I told Jilly as we walked to the store. “He’s been a little down lately.”
“When’s the last time you two walked in the meadows… alone?”
I tried to think back. “Not that long. Maybe a week or so?”
“If you have to think that hard, it’s been too long. You’re busy, but you both need that time to regroup.” She fluffed her hair and pinched her cheeks. “I’m sending you out this afternoon, whether you like it or not. There’s no need to worry about Michael and Caroline. If only all guests could be this easy.”
“Such a relief, isn’t it? This is what innkeeping should be.”
“And with just the two of them, I can make spontaneous decisions about meals. If I see something here that looks good, I may even grill. There aren’t many good days left.”
I pushed open the door and we went into the butcher shop.
“Hi there,” Jilly said, directing her best smile at the burly, bald man behind the counter. “What do you recommend for late season grilling?”
“Can’t go wrong with a grass-fed steak,” he said, eyeing her appreciatively. “But ribs are always a crowd-pleaser and they’re on sale.”
“Let me think for a minute,” Jilly said. “These are big decisions when you run an inn. It can be steak it or break it.”
I laughed. The bald man didn’t. Strike one.
“Do you have any knuckle bones?” I asked. “I’m trying to bribe my dog to like me again.”
“Lady, if you have to bribe your dog to like you, you’ve got a problem,” he said. “Not that I’m big on dogs.”
Strike two for not liking dogs. Strike three for calling me “lady.”
“Everyone likes dogs, Silvio,” I said, after straining to see his name tag. “Isn’t that almost a prerequisite for surviving in this town?”
“I moved here from Dorset Hills to get away from that crap,” he said. “My cat couldn’t even go outside there anymore. The mayor wanted to ban them completely.”
“I heard about that,” I said. “But there’s a new mayor now.”
“Too little too late. Their loss is Clover Grove’s gain.” Now Silvio smiled, showing several gold crowns. He also had a couple of sleeves of tattoos under his white T-shirt and white apron.
“If you’re a cat lover, you must have known Portia Parson,” I said.
More gold flashed. “Portia? Yeah. Shame about what happened. She used to stay with Buster when I was away, but then she overstepped.”
“Oh?” I pretended to eye a whole chicken but the sight of little quills made my stomach queasy. It was hard to disassociate this “meat” from my generous hens. “What happened?”
“She thought she could tell me how to treat my own cat, that’s what happened. Buster shouldn’t be outside, because he’d get hit by a car. He shouldn’t hunt mice because he’d get poisoned. He shouldn’t climb up on the cupboards because he’d fall. In other words, Buster shouldn’t be a cat, but a decoration.”
“Ah. I heard she came on pretty strong. She shaved Heddy Langman’s cats because they were too hot.”
He pressed his lips together, which I actually preferred because the gold teeth were unnerving me. “See what I mean? Arrogant. But I put up with her until she stuck her nose into my love life.”
“That is overstepping,” I said.
“Right? I was seeing this new girl and Portia didn’t like me leaving Buster alone. Although that’s exactly what I was paying her for—to make sure he wasn’t alone. She said I needed to get a second cat to give Buster company. But this new girl, she had allergies. One cat was bad enough. So then Portia offered to take Buster off my hands and I said no. You never know how it’s going to work out with a girl but I loved that cat. He was a real character.”
“Was? What happened?”
He started rearranging steaks on a display tray behind the glass with gloved hands, and I had to look away. It reminded me too much of Heidi, Clara and Archie, my cows.
“So, I hired Portia for the weekend and went to visit the girl,” he said. “When I got back, Buster had gone missing. She hadn’t even called me. Her story was that she was to
o busy searching. She’d put posters up all over the neighborhood to make it look legit.”
“But you thought she’d taken him?”
“Oh yeah. I drove out to the old Bingham mansion to get him back. I looked in the window and saw tons of cats. Not Buster, but enough to call Animal Services on her. I told her to give me back my cat and we’d leave it at that. But she wouldn’t do it. Instead she called the cops on me. Threatened me with a restraining order. You can’t have that kind of trouble and run a business.” He stopped turning the steaks and then rubbed his gloved hands on his white apron. “Man, I wanted to kill her.”
His eyes glazed over for a second and then cleared. “I couldn’t though. I mean, I could, obviously.” He gestured to the knives on the long counter behind him. “But not until I got Buster back.”
“And that didn’t happen?”
He shook his head. “Someone got to her first.” Wiping his hands on his apron, again, he left a long bloody streak. “I went back to the old house the day after that, thinking I could find Buster, but all the cats were gone. Dozens of them. I tried Animal Services but he hasn’t turned up.”
“I’m sorry to hear all this,” I said. “I hope you get him back. But at least it worked out with the girl.”
He shook his head. “I can’t do allergies.” He looked down the counter at Jilly, who was still examining cuts of meat with intense interest. “Your friend like cats?”
“Dog lover first and foremost. Walk us out and you can meet the lucky fella.”
Jilly settled on the steaks, which I would not be eating, and kept up a brave smile as Silvio shone some gold while wrapping them in brown paper and tying them with string. I wasn’t even surprised when he used gold-handled scissors to snip the string. A local store sold a lot of them.
Then he carried our bag outside and slapped Buttercup’s trunk as if she were a prize filly.
Keats got himself back on the job and sniffed the butcher with far more enthusiasm than I felt.
“Not guilty,” I told Jilly as I got in the car. “At least, innocent in the court of Keats. But I can’t help thinking Silvio bought off the judge with those knuckle bones.”
Chapter Twenty
I had seriously underestimated the appeal of our celebration of life gathering for Portia Parson. Cars poured down the lane long before the event officially started at noon. I knew full well that about half attended out of sheer nosiness—to see the farm, to see how the Galloways were holding up under the barrage of bad luck, and to see if anything dramatic might unfold.
The other half came for the free food. Jilly and Mandy McCain hadn’t prepared nearly enough, so we sent Asher and Poppy into town to scavenge what they could from the Berry Good Café and other local eateries.
“What a turnout,” I said to Hazel Bingham as Keats and I escorted her to see the goats. The crazy dancing kids were her favorites and I wanted to get her there before the throngs got too dense. She had only brought her cane and had to be extra cautious. “We should have made it pot luck.”
She looked around and shook her head. “They should be ashamed of themselves. None of these people liked Portia and it’s disrespectful to pretend otherwise.”
“Probably true about the majority,” I said, relieved to deliver her safely to the goat pasture, where she could grip the fence for support. “You know Clover Grove loves any excuse to gather and collect fodder for the gossip mill. This farm has always been a good provider of compost for that cause. Still, I think a few people genuinely liked Portia, or at least they did until she started going off the rails.”
“I still don’t understand it,” Hazel said, sighing as she handed me her cane and folded her arms on the fence. She was wearing a classy black wool coat over an equally classy black dress, and her hair was coiled in a silvery twist. “What happened to make Portia so stressed and why didn’t she tell me about it?”
“I can’t help but think it had something to do with your brother’s collectibles,” I said. Kellan had already informed Hazel about their recovery, although she wasn’t permitted to see or reclaim them while they were evidence. “Her prints were all over them. Do you know how they came into her possession?”
“No idea. Those were some of Aaron’s favorite pieces. I sold them last, and only when I felt I had no choice. That was about fifteen years ago, when the manor flooded and needed major repair work. I’m sure I told Portia about it at the time. Maybe she found them and bought them back for me.”
“Wouldn’t she have told you, knowing it would bring you such happiness?”
She shrugged. “I would think so, especially after my health scare last year. Who knows how long I’ll be around? But I feel like I don’t know anything I thought I knew anymore. It’s disheartening.”
Tears pooled in her eyes and I quickly pointed to the goats. “Check out the little brown one with the blue eyes. Our newest addition. I’m going to let you name him.”
That diversion worked perfectly, and she was still working on goat puns when I delivered her safely to the porch swing and beckoned Teri Mason, artist and friend, to join her. I wanted Hazel to have a shield from the masses, given that I had to circulate and guard the flock. Teri was happy to oblige. Hazel would have preferred Keats to keep her company but I needed him even more than she did in that crowd. Moreover, Keats was unusually anxious himself. Normally he loved a crowd but today his tail and ears told me he wanted custody of his farm back.
When I stopped at the food station—long tables with harvest-themed salads, casseroles and desserts—Jilly took the opportunity to run inside.
I grabbed the last pumpkin pie square, smirked at Mandy, and then bit off a good chunk. “So much for being a good hostess,” I mumbled around it. “Most of these people don’t deserve your fine work.”
Mandy laughed. We were quickly healing the rift that opened when Lloyd Boyce had been murdered. I understood why Mandy hadn’t been forthright about her situation with Lloyd and I’d always liked her back in our school days. Time was taking the edge off. No one was perfect, including me.
“I agree with you,” Mandy said. She would never have said something like that before but she was becoming more assertive now that she ran Mandy’s Country Store on her own. Since she’d been painfully shy all of her life, it was nice to see her evolution. “I wonder how many of them contributed to Portia’s anxiety during her last months. She lost most of her business and started falling apart. At the end I was running a tab for pet supplies I knew she would probably never pay, but I didn’t mind. I know what it’s like to feel like an outcast in this town.”
“Did she confide in you about what was going on?” I asked, licking my fingers with the last bite. It was good to know that while anxious myself, I could still enjoy a delicious treat. I reached over to take the last sugar cookie and gave it to Keats. His tail rose and fanned with the rare snack. “I saw her at your counter often.”
“Mostly we talked about cats,” Mandy said. “That was her comfort zone. I knew from the volume of food she ordered that her numbers were going up and up. I assumed she was worried about Animal Services giving her trouble.” She pulled a fresh box of pumpkin squares out of a cooler under the table and I took one of those, too. “Portia thought they were already onto her. She said intruders had been on the property and even broken a basement window. But she wouldn’t report it to the police in case her cats were seized.”
“Her hands were tied there,” I said, washing down the square with the paper cup of coffee Mandy handed me.
“Exactly. So she wasn’t sleeping well, always afraid someone would break in. I suggested she at least get a security camera, and offered to order it on her tab.”
“That was kind of you, Mandy. Did she take you up on it?”
She shook her head. “And if she ordered anything herself it didn’t come through the store’s post office.”
“Are you going to leave any of those for me?” Michael joked as he joined us with Caroline. They were both dres
sed down in country casual but still had the city shine on them. That didn’t seem to wear off until you’d been rolled in the muck enough times to blend.
Mandy quickly served him a square on a paper plate and said, “I know these are a favorite of Ivy’s, so I put a box in the fridge inside.”
“Well, I hope Heddy and Kaye don’t find them first,” he said. “They were taking a tour of the inn.”
“Taking a tour?” I said, snapping to bring Keats back to my side. He had formed a canine barrier between me and the crowd and I’d trip on him if I wasn’t careful. I was never careful enough. “On their own or with Jilly?”
“Jilly’s over there,” Caroline said, pointing to my best friend, who was circulating with apple cider on a tray.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll just make sure Heddy and Kaye get the royal treatment. Thanks for the heads-up, Michael. Now go and enjoy yourselves.”
“We already are,” Caroline called after me. “It’s wonderful to see the community come together like this for Portia. I underestimated Clover Grove.”
“Me too,” I said, running up the stairs. I had a very good idea why the antiques dealers were roaming around inside the inn, and while they wouldn’t find what they were looking for, I didn’t want them casing the place out. Asher still wasn’t back from town and Kellan had been called away almost as soon as he arrived. That was the downside of dating the chief of police. Luckily the upsides were many.
The sisters were in the family room when I joined them. Kaye was holding the tray that normally sat on the old oak chest that served as our coffee table. Meanwhile, Heddy had opened the chest to look inside.
“Ladies,” I said. “Can I help you find something?”
Kaye jumped and the array of tea candle holders clattered on the tray. Heddy dropped the lid of the trunk with a bang.
“We were just looking for that gorgeous cat,” Heddy said. Despite the guilty slam, her smile was audacious. “Percy, right?”