The Cats & the Riddle

by Jan Fields

  She set aside Joanna’s cap for an hour and made two colorful little belled toys. By the time she finished the two simple toys, she had relaxed and tackled the puppy cap with fresh self-confidence.

  Boots seemed to take the hours Annie spent on her crocheting as a challenge. The cat particularly wanted the toys with the bells. If Annie stepped away from her project bag for a minute, Boots immediately dove into it.

  “Boots, cut it out!” Annie scolded when she walked back into the living room with a cup of tea and saw that her project bag had grown a fluffy gray tail—again. The cat stuck her head out of the bag and looked at Annie. “You better not wreck Joanna’s cap.”

  Boots gave an innocent meow and then ducked back into the bag.

  Annie set her teacup down on the small table beside the sofa. She reached into her bag and began untangling Boots from the yarn. By the time she finished, she saw that Boots had unraveled most of the last side flap for the little hat. “You’re such a bad kitty,” Annie scolded as she put Boots on the floor.

  Boots immediately sprang back up on the couch as Annie sat down. The fluffy gray cat squeezed into Annie’s lap. “You know,” Annie said. “I should probably be much firmer with you.”

  Boots only purred loudly in reply. Annie knew better than to think she’d ever teach the spoiled cat any manners, so she just sighed and patiently reworked the earflap on Joanna’s cap. She then quickly crocheted the chin strings that hung from the flaps. All she had left to do was to stitch the hat pieces together.

  Annie glanced up toward the tall windows. It was a beautiful day outside. The unseasonable warm snap had hung on, and she felt the pull of the outdoors. She loved the idea of taking a walk without bundling up in her arctic gear. “It almost seems criminal to stay inside all day,” she said.

  Boots opened one eye before settling back to sleep.

  “I know you’re not going to like this,” Annie said, “but I definitely want to go out.” She shifted Boots from her lap as gently as she could, but still got a grumpy meow from the cat.

  Annie packed up her crochet and brushed the cat hair from her clothes. She hung her project bag on one of the pegs near the front door where she hung coats. “That should keep Joanna’s cap out of prying paws.”

  Annie opened the front door and looked out, trying to judge the temperature. She was already wearing a sweater she’d crocheted a year ago. The thick, fuzzy yarn, in shades of blue, reminded her of the ocean. The super-soft sweater felt like she was getting a cozy hug all the time. Annie decided she would be warm enough in the spring sunshine, so she pulled the door closed and headed down the porch steps.

  On a whim, Annie headed across the street where a chain was strung between two low piled-stone pillars. A gravel road led steeply up the hill. Near the gravel road, a small winding path led gently downhill toward the beach. Annie took the winding path, enjoying the sight of crocuses and snowdrops nestled in the bright green tips of the wild grasses that would line the path later in the year.

  A walk on the beach in the spring, even on such a gorgeous day, was risky. The icy breeze off the water usually made beach walking a frigid experience until mid-June, but with the warm sun on her face, she decided to take the risk. She’d scout around for sea glass and watch the gulls squabble over the tiny crabs on the shore.

  As soon as she reached the hard-packed sand of the rocky beach, she realized her mistake. The wind from the water was much chillier than she had expected. Annie glanced back the way she’d come, but she really wasn’t ready to give up on her walk. Instead, she crossed her arms and began striding down the beach at a brisk pace, hoping it would help her stay warm.

  The brisk exercise did help, but each fresh breeze threatened to chill her all over again. Annie glanced out over the waves. She loved the constant movement as each wave rose up and rushed for the shore before breaking under its own weight and collapsing into foam. It was a love she had learned early in life, on summer visits to Stony Point to stay with her grandparents at Grey Gables while her parents were on overseas missionary trips. There was a timelessness about the ebb and flow of the sea that gave Annie perspective about life. She knew she was watching the same pattern of rising water and breaking waves that the Native Americans must have seen when standing on the same beach hundreds of years before.

  Offshore, she spotted something dark bobbing in the waves. She paused, squinting to try to make out details. At first, she thought it might be a rock, appearing and disappearing as the waves broke against it. But then she saw it was moving closer to shore.

  Anne walked to the edge of the water, risking her shoes in the lap of the waves. Was she seeing someone’s head bobbing in the surf? It might be an unseasonable warm snap, but it was still March in Maine! Surely no one would go swimming. Annie felt a sick anxiety wash over her as a thought struck her. Not everyone who walked out into the surf was going swimming. Was it someone trying to drown himself?

  “Hello!” she shouted. “Hello. Is someone out there?”

  She watched to see if the bobbing head might be joined by an upraised arm in response to her calls, but nothing changed except the dark object still seemed to be moving slowly closer to shore.

  Annie paced the shoreline for a moment, unsure of what to do. She’d be so embarrassed if she called 911, only to find out the bobbing object was an escaped lobster-pod float or something equally innocuous.

  Finally, the bobbing head came close enough for Annie to work out a bit more detail. She saw the sun glisten against slick dark skin. Two black eyes turned toward her and dripping whiskers just barely cleared the water. She’d been panicking over a seal! Annie chuckled and shook her head. This was definitely the sort of situation where she was glad to be alone on the beach so no one could see her fretting about a seal’s suicide attempt.

  5

  Suddenly a shiver shook Annie. She’d stood worrying over the seal long enough for the cold to catch up with her again. She definitely needed to head home for a cup of hot chocolate and a warm cat. She turned back and strode quickly along.

  In the distance, she spotted a tall figure walking toward her. Annie smiled. From the long-legged gait, she was certain she must be seeing Stony Point’s mayor, Ian Butler. If Ian was out for a walk, Annie might brave the cold a little longer to walk with him. She had been so busy for the last few days that she hadn’t dropped by the courthouse or run into the handsome New Englander at the diner to share a cup of coffee.

  The closer Annie came to the long-legged figure, the more she realized she’d made another mistake. Though tall and slender like Ian, this man’s hair was darker than Ian’s salt-and-pepper hair. And the stranger tended to hunch in on himself a bit as he walked, while Ian always walked with ramrod confidence. Like Ian, the stranger had high cheekbones, though the lines in his face were harsher, and his nose was sharp as a hawk’s beak.

  Annie realized she’d been staring when the tall stranger looked right at her and smiled. It turned the creases in his face into laugh lines. Annie smiled back slightly.

  “Excuse me for bothering you,” the stranger said in a clear, refined British accent. “Could you help me?”

  “I can try,” Annie said. “Do you need directions?”

  “Something like that,” he answered, nodding his head. “I’m looking for someone. A young woman—well, I guess not terribly young anymore. About your age, I would guess. Not that you aren’t young ….”

  Annie laughed before the man could grow any more flustered. “Do you know the woman’s name?” she asked.

  The man sighed, smiling a bit sheepishly. “It’s Candace Caine. She writes and illustrates picture books for children. I think she may live around here. Or perhaps she visited here for a length of time.”

  “Her name sounds familiar. I think my grandchildren have some of her books,” Annie said. “There’s one about a little boy who wakes up to find a whole circus in his house, right?”

  The man nodded. “Yes, that’s one of her books. You see,
I am her publisher in London. My name is Adam Smithfield. I’ve been looking for her.”

  “She disappeared?” Annie asked.

  “Something like that,” he said, his eyes sad. Annie felt a pang for the stranger. “She’s gone, and I haven’t been able to find her. One lead I had brought me to Stony Point, and I just arrived.”

  “Have you called the authorities?” Annie asked. “Our Chief Edwards is very good if you need to file a report or something.”

  “I’m certain no one took Candace,” Adam said with a sigh. “Wherever she is, she is there voluntarily.”

  “Oh,” Annie said. “And you’re looking for her for business reasons?”

  Adam shook his head. “No, my reasons are completely personal. Stony Point seems to be a fairly small town. Would it be difficult for someone to move here and go unnoticed? I’ve always assumed it’s much harder to stay anonymous in a small town. People are so much more interested in their neighbors.”

  Annie wasn’t certain whether she should do anything to encourage the stranger’s search for a woman who might not want him to find her. Her thoughts immediately went to another woman, who had come to Stony Point to blend in, disappear, and hide from a man who terrified her. Annie had nearly gotten an old friend killed when she’d gotten involved with that mystery. Some people had good reasons for coming to a place and vanishing, sometimes very good reasons indeed. It would be wiser, she knew, if she stayed far away from this mystery.

  “No one has mentioned her moving here,” she said carefully. “I would definitely have remembered.”

  At that the stranger looked so disappointed that Annie couldn’t leave him without some sort of hope. Though she wasn’t completely confident in her own ability to judge character, she did have an overwhelming desire to help whenever she saw someone hurting. “I haven’t actually been living in Stony Point long enough to know everyone,” she said hesitantly, hoping she wasn’t making a bad decision. “You might ask at The Cup & Saucer. If she lives anywhere in Stony Point, someone there will know her. You can be sure of it.” At least by sending the man toward Peggy Carson at the diner, Annie would soon have everyone in Stony Point aware of what he wanted.

  “The Cup & Saucer,” he echoed, his eyes bright again. “Is that a dishware store?”

  Annie laughed. “No, it’s a diner. It’s at the corner of Main Street and Oak Lane, across from the Town Square and the library. Everyone in Stony Point goes there at least once in a while.”

  Suddenly the tall man seemed to notice Annie’s shivering. “Oh, you’re cold. Here, take my coat.” He slipped out of his wool coat and wrapped it quickly around Annie before she could protest. As the warmth of the coat sank in, she thanked him. It wrapped around Annie like a kimono, and she used the belt to hold it closed against the cold. She stuffed her hands in the pockets to warm them.

  Adam had turned to walk along beside Annie. “Is there a nice place to stay around here?” he asked.

  “Maplehurst Inn is lovely,” Annie said.

  “Is it easy to find?” he asked. “I’m still having some culture shock about driving on the wrong side of the roads. The sat nav in my rental car is a great help, but sometimes I have trouble understanding her accent.”

  “Sat nav?”

  “Um, GPS,” Adam explained. “Sorry, I actually come to the United States quite often. You’d think I could get the words straight.”

  Annie laughed. “I’ve lived in the United States all my life, and some of the words I’ve encountered since moving from Texas to Maine have completely baffled me. But I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding the inn. Once you reach Main Street, you’ll soon see most of what Stony Point has to offer—including Maplehurst Inn.”

  They walked together in peaceful silence for a few moments. His eyes turned toward the surf several times before they reached the parking lot.

  “Candace always loved the ocean,” Adam said as they crossed the near empty lot. “I knew there wasn’t much chance I would just bump into her on the beach today, but I guess I still hoped. And it was a lucky walk. I met you.”

  “Well, I hope I’ve helped you,” Annie said. She shrugged out of the coat and handed it to him.

  “I think you have,” Adam said. “I feel hopeful.” He opened his door and tossed the coat onto the passenger seat. Then he turned to Annie. “I don’t know your name.”

  “Annie Dawson,” she said.

  “Thank you for your help, Annie Dawson.”

  Then Adam climbed into his car and drove away. Annie watched the car until it disappeared. Then, as she turned to head home, she spotted a worn envelope on the ground. She bent to retrieve it before the wind blew it away.

  She turned the envelope over in her hands and saw it was addressed to Adam Smithfield with a London address. She brought the envelope close to her face to read the postmark. It had been mailed in Stony Point, though the return address on the envelope was from somewhere in New York City. She surmised that the envelope was what had brought Adam to Stony Point. It would be important to him. She assumed it had fallen from his coat when she’d taken it off to return it. I’ll just run it by the inn by the end of the day, she thought.

  She hurriedly climbed the long, uphill path toward Grey Gables. The further she got from the water, the less chilly the air felt. Plus the climb helped warm her up. By the time she’d reached her house, she was slightly winded and toasty warm.

  Annie walked through the front door, and Boots rushed over to thread through her legs, meowing complaints the whole time. “It’s not dinnertime,” Annie said firmly.

  As she walked slowly, careful not to fall over the persistent cat, the phone began to ring. “Boots,” she scolded, “stop it, before you trip me.”

  Finally she reached the low table and answered the phone with a sharp, “Hello!”

  “Hi Annie,” Ian’s deep voice rumbled with amusement. “You sound annoyed. I hope I haven’t called at a bad time.”

  “Sorry, Ian,” Annie said as she dropped the tattered envelope onto the phone table and sank into a chair beside it. “Boots seems to be determined to trip me. I think she may be trying to kill me in hopes of inheriting everything.”

  Ian chuckled. “You shouldn’t say that where she can hear it. You’ll give her ideas.”

  Boots hopped up on the phone table and began knocking things off onto the floor as she paced over and around the phone. “Hold on,” Annie said. “Boots is in a mood, and I need to corral her before she manages to hang up the phone on us.”

  She scooped up the cat and headed through the kitchen and the back of the house to the mudroom. She deposited Boots on the floor and shut her into the room. The cat’s disgruntled yowls followed Annie through the kitchen as she hurried back, but had faded by the time she reached the living room. At least she wouldn’t have to try to talk over the cat’s complaints. She grabbed the phone and sank back into the chair again. “OK, I’m free to talk now.”

  “I expect Boots is not happy about whatever you just did,” Ian said. “She may be plotting some kind of revenge as we speak.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re right,” Annie said as she curled up in the chair next to the table. “She’ll let me know all about how I’ve wronged her, or she’ll give me the feline version of the silent treatment. It never lasts though. Dinnertime fixes everything. So, what’s going on?”

  “I called to ask for a favor,” Ian said. “I need someone to look after Tartan. I’m going out of town, and the kennel where he normally stays is full. They’re doing some renovating, so only have part of the building running.”

  “I would be glad to have him stay here. I love Tartan,” Annie said. “But if I put him and Boots in the same house, I’m not sure either of them will make it out alive.”

  Ian laughed again. “I don’t know, I might bet on Boots. Tartan has the weight advantage, but Boots has more practice with maiming intruders to Grey Gables. Luckily, I was planning to leave Tartan here at home. I know it’s a lot to as
k, but I was hoping you could come over in the mornings and put Tartan outside in his run. Then you could come in the evening and put him inside in the back mudroom. His kennel is in that room, but I don’t want to close him into the kennel itself—I’ll just Tartan-proof the room, and it will give him a little more room to stretch out.”

  “Well that sounds easy enough,” Annie said. “Though I didn’t know you had an outside run for Tartan. I’ve never seen it, and I know I’ve seen your whole yard.”

  “I had Wally build it for me the second the ground thawed this year,” Ian said. Wally Carson was Peggy’s husband and the town’s go-to guy for all handyman projects. Not only did he do excellent work, but everyone liked helping out the small family. “I’m going to do some planting this spring without Tartan unplanting behind me while I work,” Ian insisted.

  Annie laughed. “You could leave him inside on gardening days.”

  “I know, but he loves it outside, and I am a total pushover,” Ian said. “He actually seems to like the run, though he hasn’t been in it much. I enjoy walking him as much as I can.”

  “I could take him for a walk each day,” Annie said. “It will be good for both of us. I could certainly use the exercise.”

  “Well, walking a schnauzer can be like walking a pogo stick,” Ian said. “You’re welcome to give it a try, but it’s perfectly OK if you don’t want to be quite that active!”

  As Ian began listing where he kept Tartan’s food and leash and various other things, Annie gently interrupted. “Why don’t I just come over, and you can show me where everything is?” she asked. “I’d probably remember better with a walk-through. And I can ask questions if they come to mind.”

  “That would be easiest,” Ian said, “if you don’t mind.”

  Annie assured him that she was happy to help. As they ended the call, she picked up the small notepad and pen that Boots had knocked on the floor earlier. That reminded her that her cat was still shut up in the mudroom, growing more hostile by the minute. In her rush to the mudroom door and then out to the car, Annie never even noticed the faded envelope wedged between the table leg and the wall.