by Clea Simon
“Most definitely. And have you met Bill?” I had my palm flat on his back, ready to shove him, but it wasn’t necessary. He extended his hand and muttered something that sounded like a greeting. Patti took over from there; her years of ferrying clients about had made her a mistress of small talk. For once, I was grateful. I nodded and accepted a glass of overchilled white wine and something orange in a celery stalk. Before long, the conversation seemed almost unforced. Bill and Andy were debating new Red Sox prospects, and Patti was fluttering about, bringing out more appetizers. “It’s cheese, but reduced fat, dear. With pimento!”
I crunched down on another of the celery things and let my mind wander back a few hours. Bunny hadn’t found much on the city shelter, but she had sent me some interesting articles about the no-kill movement. Most shelters, like Rachel’s, were using a combination of programs, from aggressive spay-neuter campaigns to comprehensive counseling, the better to match people and potential pets. Some critics thought the goal was not practical, and some shelters were accused of dumping animals in other jurisdictions rather than take responsibility for unadoptable animals. But nobody called it a scam.
“Theda?” I looked up and realized everyone was standing.
“Sorry.” I smiled and reached for Bill’s hand. “I was thinking about some articles I was reading earlier. How shelters are reducing euthanasia rates.”
“Always working.” Patti’s voice was chipper as always, but I’d seen the look pass between her and Pilchard. Shelters must be a forbidden topic. I wonder if they’d seen Lee’s articles.
Patti was waiting. “Be a dear, Theda, and help me carry these in.”
I obliged, picking up the half-empty tray and following our hostess into the kitchen. She must have seen that I was about to raise a serious subject because she cut me off. “Now, I don’t want to tell you how to act, dear.” She leaned over, lowering her voice to a stage whisper. “But maybe we shouldn’t talk about work over dinner?” She handed me a bowl of brussel sprouts. “Bad for the digestion.”
I tried, really. And the food helped. Although I’d been anticipating a cuisine as bland as Patti’s fashion sense, she did Middle American well. The hunk of beef she’d roasted was rare in the middle, the potatoes crispy, and the brussel sprouts glazed with enough butter to stop an Olympic runner’s heart. All in all, the dinner was both tasty and pleasant, with the conversation ranging from the Sox, where Patti showed herself remarkably well versed, to the latest plans for the Boston waterfront. I even bit my tongue when our hostess referred to the “revitalization” of East Cambridge. The Portuguese families that had lived there were mostly long gone, and my complaining wouldn’t bring them back.
It wasn’t until we’d begun cleaning up that things got hairy. I’d followed Patti into the kitchen, carrying the remaining dinner plates, and caught her separating some of the leftover roast from its string.
“For the kitties?” Patti’s two cats had gone from Violet’s shelter to lives of utter luxury.
“Shh, don’t tell.” Patti looked back over her shoulder. “Andy thinks I spoil them!”
“How could he?” I smiled. Patti did spoil her cats, but I approved. “I’ll go run interference.”
“Hand it over, mister.” I stepped into the dining room in time to take the platter of potatoes from my lawyer. “We’re enforcing outdated gender roles tonight!”
Pilchard opened his mouth and closed it, speechless for the first time that night. Behind him, I saw Bill hide a laugh. I quickly deposited the tray inside the kitchen and came back out to the men. “So, what’s up with my case, counselor?”
I wasn’t serious, not really. But I was wondering how to engage Pilchard, and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw they’d worked. “Theda, I’m not sure this is the time.” Bill tried to butt in, but Pilchard wasn’t hearing him. Instead, the portly counselor sat back down and poured us both more wine. “Which do you want first, the good news or the bad?”
Bill was staring at me, but the feline was out of the bag. I peeked over my shoulder. Patti was still engaged with clean up. Maybe I could get this over with before she returned.
“The good?” I smiled, hoping we could keep it light.
“You’re in luck.” Pilchard sipped his wine, clearly savoring what he had to tell me. “It’s early days yet, but I’ve had a look at the police records and there are two points in our favor.” I nodded, trying to hurry him along. “The first is that the murder weapon was most certainly that scalpel. That does away with premeditation.” I nodded again, this was old news—and definitely not a good subject for a dinner party. My lawyer, however, was on a roll. “The other plus is that there was a back exit to that office.”
That wasn’t news, either. I tried to break in, but he wasn’t stopping.
“Hey, nobody told me, but don’t you see the implications? The killer could have escaped. Could have gone through to the treatment room and out a different door further down the hall. And you didn’t!” He was glowing now. “So the worst they can say is crime of passion!”
I felt sick. There had been too much butter on those sprouts. “And the bad news?” Bill was staring at me in a way I couldn’t decipher. It didn’t look like sympathy.
“Well, it’s not great, but it’s not fatal either.” I winced at his word choice. He kept on talking. “The staff looks like they’re in the clear. Everybody is pretty much accounted for.”
“But what about the vet tech I saw?”
He shook his head. “She was taking a delivery. A Fed Ex van had pulled up and was unloading a pallet’s worth of cartons. Some kind of bulk supplies. Anyway, she wasn’t there the whole time, you must have seen her when she went to check something. But he was there, by the door for a good twenty minutes and she signed off on everything on his electronic clipbboard. That records date and time, too.”
“Great.” I couldn’t finish my wine and pushed the glass away.
Pilchard noticed. “No giving up now. There were a lot of people in that office. We’ll break some of these alibis.”
“And you’re looking into ex employees, too, right?” I remembered what Piers had said. “I mean, the jobs didn’t pay well, but people wanted them.”
Another nod. “We’re on it. So far, we don’t have any former staff who were angry about being fired, but we’ll start looking at the other end, at unsuccessful candidates, too.”
“Maybe you should let the Boston police do their jobs.” There was a growling note in Bill’s voice that I recognized, but I had my own objections.
“What about the threatening letters? Have you started to trace them? I’m really interested in the printed ones. They’re just different from the usual crazies.” I’d meant to hold all of this till after dinner, but we were on the topic now. “And did any of you see the stories in the Weekly Wag? They were this close to accusing the shelter of fraud.”
Too late, I saw that Patti had returned. Her stare said she’d never forgive me. Ignoring both Patti and Bill, I filled Pilchard in on what I knew. “And so, if Rachel was using it to raise money and some people thought the campaign was a fraud, then maybe that’s a motive.”
Pilchard shook his head. Patti turned on her heel and walked back into the kitchen. “I don’t see it. It’s not like someone else would get the money.”
“Dessert!” Patti’s voice nearly cracked with the force of her announcement as she came in carrying something that looked creamy and bright. “Hope you all saved room!”
“That looks great, Patti.” Bill stood to take the tray from her, and leaned in front of me to place it on the table. “Why don’t we all get back to this fantastic dinner,” he said, his voice a little loud. “Would you like me to slice this, um, cake?”
“Thank you, Bill.” Patti returned with plates. “That would be very gentlemanly of you.” She shot her date a look. “This is my own invention, a cross between a chocolate truffle cake and Baked Alaska. I thought tonight would be special.”
I
passed a plate to Pilchard. “And don’t forget the poison,” I whispered softly. He looked up at me, eyes wide. “Someone poisoned the cat food,” I added, by way of explanation.
“Wrong shelter, Theda.” Bill plunked a plate in front of me. The baked frosting revealed a suspiciously slick brown interior. If this was going to be our last meal together, it was a bad end.
“Delicious, honey.” Pilchard was unfazed. He took another bite as I explained what had happened. “KittyLuv?” He gestured with his fork. “I don’t remember it.”
“Bright blue and red logo. Maybe it’s just listed as kibble or cat food?”
My lawyer took another bite. “I’ll check the inventory again. But the problem with these theories, Theda, is that they’re all idealistic. People don’t kill for ideals. They kill for greed or lust. So we gotta find someone who’s gonna profit from this lady’s death, or someone else who might have had the hots for her. Or maybe,” his fork paused in mid-air, “someone else who had the hots for her boyfriend. Get me some gossip.”
Poor wording. I choked down a forkful.
“Coffee?” Patti yelled.
“Let me help you.” Bill pushed his chair back so fast it fell with a crash.
“This is wonderful, Patti.” Maybe it wasn’t too late for damage control. “Do you think I could get the recipe?”
***
“I’m sorry, Patti.” We were cleaning up by then. I was scraping plates into the disposal while Patti’s cat Aslan licked up the last of the coffee cream from the server. “I just meant to distract Pilch—I mean, Andy.”
“Theda, how could you?” She slapped Aslan away from the cream and deposited the fat tabby by his sister on the kitchen floor. “I worked so hard.”
“It was a wonderful dinner, really.” I couldn’t blame her for the ache in my belly. “And, hey, at least because of me the men have bonded.” I was trying for humor, but there was some truth to what I said. In a last ditch attempt to salvage polite conversation, Patti had raised the question of the designated hitter. We could hear them going at it in the other room.
“You really ought to be more careful, dear. You know that.”
I nodded. “I know, I’m sorry.”
“Not just with me, Theda.” I looked up. Patti had put down the wine decanter. “Did you see Bill’s face when the topic of that woman’s boyfriend came up?”
“Piers? But nothing’s happening between me and him.”
She shook her head. “Everyone is looking for a motive. And, well, I’m in the position to say this to you, Theda. You’re not getting any younger, you know. You should be careful about gossip. That is, if you want to hang onto Bill.”
I looked down at the floor, unable to respond. Aslan used that moment to start hacking, his round striped body jerking forward in the motion that presaged a furball.
“Oh no, Aslan!” Patti grabbed for the paper towels, but I took the roll from her.
“Let it out, kitty,” I squatted on the floor as the other cat fled. “You’ll feel better.” He did. Cream is just too rich for adult cats. “I’ll finish up in here.” I looked up at Patti. She nodded and stepped away, wiping her hands on one of a matched set of dish towels that I’d been afraid to touch.
“If only the rest of my life were this simple,” I said to the cat. He flicked his tail and exited, leaving me to deal with the mess.
***
By the time Bill dropped me at the Casbah we were speaking again.
“Did you see Patti’s face?” I was hoping for a laugh.
I got a smile in return. “And that was all a bluff while she fed that fuzzy beachball she calls a cat?”
“Mostly,” I confessed. The time had come for honesty. “I mean, I did want to tell Pilchard about the differences in those letters. They weren’t complaints. They were threats, and they focused on the no-kill campaign.”
“You think he’s not looking in that direction.” It wasn’t a question, and as Bill pulled up to the curb he was looking at me.
“I think he’s very…” I paused, searching for the right word, “concrete. That whole thing about lust or greed. I mean, you and I know isn’t always the case.” Not that long ago, we’d learned of an accidental killing, I found it hard to call it murder, caused by misplaced idealism.
“You think maybe there’s a fanatic at work here?” He put the car in park and turned toward me. I nodded. “But if someone were so strongly against killing, why would he stab a vet? I mean, whatever else she was, Rachel was a doctor, right? She saved animals’ lives.”
“If I had the answer to that, Bill, I wouldn’t be under arrest.”
I got a kiss in response. Things were still tense, but I loved him all the more for it.
The Casbah on a Saturday was packed. Although the night had cooled off, I was sweating by the time I made it back to Brian, who stood sentry over the back room.
“Hey, Brian.” I smiled and waited.
“Theda.” Without checking the list, he inked a stamp and I held out the back of my hand. I hadn’t had to say I was there for the Mail. I hadn’t had to pay, either. For tonight, I was still in the inner circle.
But any warm glow I had evaporated as I descended down to the music room and saw my peers. Ralph, his sweaty face glowing in the red stage light, was holding forth, his beer bottle swinging in the air. Lee, meanwhile, was nodding, short and intent, a willing disciple to the older writer. Maybe I was better off out of this.
“Hey, there.” Ralph raised the bottle in greeting. Nothing for it but to go over. Ralph owed me, and although I doubt he’d listened half as much as he’d talked, he still might have gathered something to tell me.
“Ms. Krakow.” Ralph leaned in for a beery kiss. “You look lovely tonight.” I turned my face in time and used the moment to order my own poison, a Blue Moon.
“Theda.” Lee nodded in my direction, but for someone who wanted my help getting my old job, he seemed rather reserved. “I hear you want to talk with me.”
I took a pull on my beer, stalling while I thought through strategy. He wanted something from me, too. “Yeah, I was curious about some things. But I also got your message. I figured rather than call you back, I’d probably see you here tonight.”
He nodded again, a sharp fast movement like a tic. “You know,” he paused and removed his glasses, pulling a microfiber wipe out of a pocket to clean them, before continuing. “I’m not in the habit of giving up my sources.”
I forced a laugh. “Wow, I wonder what Ralph’s been saying?” I would have kicked him if I thought he could feel pain at that point. “I’m not asking about sources, I just wanted to know how you came onto that story, the one about the city shelter backing off from its no-kill pledge.”
“I hear you used to date a cop.”
“I’m still seeing him, but he’s an ex-cop now, and this has nothing to do with him.” For once, I was telling the truth. “You know I’m friends with Violet Hayes, right? She runs the Helmhold Home for Wayward Cats and they’re no-kill, too. We were just talking about this.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot.” He smiled, but it was a nasty smile. “You’re friends with a lot of the musicians you write about.”
This was getting to be too much. “Look, Lee, I don’t know what Ralph told you. He said he was talking to you, so I asked him to ask you. That was obviously a mistake.” I gave Ralph a look I hoped he’d remember when he was sober. “I’m not trying to steal your story. I’m just trying to figure out if there’s any truth to the rumor.”
“You think I don’t check my sources?” Great, I’d made him more defensive.
“I think that sometimes one disgruntled employee can do a lot of harm by spreading a rumor, and that we don’t always have the resources to follow up on everything.” I was going to add something about the size and scope of the Weekly Wag, but figured that would just aggravate him more.
“It wasn’t just one ‘disgruntled employee.’” I held my breath, hoping he would prove me wrong by telling me w
ho had spread the story. But he was a little smarter than that. “Let’s just say my main source was someone who had a long association with that shelter and with other humane organizations in the area. I’m not saying that this person didn’t have personal motives. I’m not stupid.” That look again. “But I called up the vet in charge once I had my story. She got so upset, I took that for confirmation.”
“Well, of course she was upset. She loved that shelter.”
“Uh huh.” Lee leaned back on the bar. “She’s the one you’re accused of killing, right?”
That was it. With a parting glare at Ralph, I stalked off across the room. I wouldn’t be chased away, not from my territory. But I wasn’t going to get anything useful from this conversation, and I had no reason to take abuse from the short freelancer either.
“Theda, Theda, wait up!” I was heading into the ladies room to regroup, when Ralph caught up to me. “Hey, I’m sorry about that.”
I looked at him and waited. He wasn’t getting off the hook that easily. “Lee gets, well, he gets touchy. Some of it is about the Wag. He thinks us daily people look down at him.” I shrugged. “And, yeah, I guess I made too big a point of who you are and about your guy and everything. I thought that would impress him.”
He looked so downcast, I felt a spark of pity. “It’s okay, Ralph. I figured that if he wanted my help getting the column, he’d be a little nicer.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the problem.” Ralph was staring at the wall, so I waited. “He’s not just going for the column now. He’s been talking to our fearless leaders about that staff position. He considers himself a reporter, as well as a critic. I mean, I know I was out of line suspecting you, Theda, but this time I’m right. Lee Wellner wants both our gigs.”
***
I stayed long enough to see the band’s set and to be seen. I might have lost “Clubland,” but I was still a citizen of this world. Which, considering how the dinner party had gone, was a good thing, because it didn’t seem like I was fit to socialize anywhere else.