“You shouldn’t play cards,” Bernie told her. “You don’t do a poker face very well.”
“It’s simple,” Libby explained. “We saw you throwing out these things in the Dumpster near Thai East, and we’re being good neighbors and returning them to you.”
“You must have the wrong person,” Charlene blustered.
“I don’t think so,” Bernie said. “We have you on video.”
Charlene swallowed again. “I don’t believe you.”
Bernie showed her.
Charlene bit her lip as she watched. “That could be anyone,” she said in a shaky voice after the video was over.
“I don’t think so.” Bernie pointed to the T-shirt Charlene was wearing in the video. “I saw you wearing that T-shirt a couple of weeks ago at the supermarket.”
“Lots of people have that shirt,” Charlene protested.
“Yeah,” Libby said. “A shirt with BIRDSEED BY BOBBY on it is definitely a big seller. I bet they carry it in all the department stores these days. It’s a cult thing.”
“You should learn to mind your own business,” Charlene snapped. She started to close the door, but before she could, Bernie stuck her foot in the doorway.
“Unfortunately, that’s not an option,” she told Charlene.
“You just couldn’t see the caviar go to waste, could you?” Libby added. “So you took the unopened tins out of the cooler. I can understand that. Really, I can. But the plaque? Come on. Why that? Then Marie called you, and you panicked. A really dumb move, if you ask me. If you’d left the stuff in your house, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Libby and Bernie could see Charlene’s jaw set, could see self-righteous anger settling in and taking hold. Charlene stood up straight and looked Bernie and Libby in the eye. “She owed that caviar to me,” she told them.
“Really?” Bernie said.
“Yes, really.” The anger in Charlene’s voice was palpable. “She owed it to me for everything she’s done.”
“And I suppose Susie owed you the plaque, as well?” Libby asked.
Charlene shook her head. “No. But Susie owed Marie the plaque. She deserved it. Her cat would have won the show if Susie hadn’t paid off one of the judges.”
“You mean Dana?” Libby asked.
Charlene nodded. “Yes. That’s exactly who I mean.”
Libby smiled a gotcha smile. “Really? Because we talked to Dana, and she denies your accusation.”
“Well, Dana’s a big fat liar,” Charlene spat back.
Bernie tilted the umbrella to keep the rain off her back. “I would have thought disrupting the wedding would have been enough for you and Marie. But I guess it wasn’t enough. I guess you had to kill Susie. Which one of you stabbed her? The first person to confess usually gets a better deal.”
“Wow.” Charlene put her hands out. “Slow down. Neither of us killed her. We would have liked to, but we didn’t.”
“Someone did,” Libby observed.
“It wasn’t us,” Charlene said. “The mice were a joke. Just a joke.”
“Not a very funny one,” Libby said.
Bernie changed the subject. “When did you take the plaque?” Bernie asked Charlene.
“After Marie left Susie’s house. I thought it would be nice for her to have.”
Libby frowned. “Okay,” Libby said. “Run this by us again, because I’m not getting it.”
“Getting what?” Charlene asked.
“The timeline,” Bernie said.
“It’s simple,” Charlene said. “We went back to the house.”
“After the cats got out,” Bernie replied.
Charlene nodded.
“We didn’t see you,” Libby objected.
“That’s because we doubled back through the tent,” Charlene explained. “By that time,” she added, “you and your sister were out in the meadow.”
“Why’d you go back?” Bernie asked.
“Because Marie and I wanted to tell Susie what we’d done. But she was in the bathroom.”
“How did you know?” Bernie demanded.
“Because we could hear the water running through the pipes. We figured she’d gone upstairs to take a shower.”
Libby leaned down and scratched her ankle. “Then why didn’t you and Marie wait for her to come down?”
“Marie got cold feet. She decided telling Susie wasn’t the best idea, and she left, but I stayed.” Charlene pointed to herself. “I was going to tell Susie and not mention Marie’s name. I really wanted to see the look on her face when she found out that I was responsible for what had happened. But then I started thinking, and the more I thought about what Susie would do when she found out what I’d done, the more I thought that maybe Marie was right, after all. So I left, too.”
Libby stopped scratching and straightened up. “After you took the plaque?”
Charlene nodded.
“But before Susie came down?” Libby asked.
“Yes,” Charlene answered. “Before Susie came down.”
“And yet,” Bernie said, “when Susie was stabbed, she was wearing the same clothes she had on at the wedding. I don’t know about you, but after taking a shower, I usually change into clean clothes.”
Charlene shrugged. “Maybe she wasn’t like you. Or maybe she heard someone come in after I’d left, and just grabbed what was on the bathroom floor and put it on so she could see who was there.”
“So you say,” Bernie told her.
“I do.” Charlene smirked at Bernie. “Unless you can prove different.”
“What about the plaque?” Libby asked, jumping into the conversation and switching subjects. “Tell me again when you took it.”
“I already told you. When I was waiting for Susie to come down, of course.”
“Of course,” Libby echoed.
Charlene ignored the sarcasm. “I was petting the cats in Susie’s study, and I saw the plaque sitting there on the shelf, and I got really angry, because Marie should have won the show. It wasn’t right. I grabbed it to give to her, and I walked out the door.”
“And Susie was alive when you left?” Libby asked.
“That’s what I said,” Charlene snapped. “How many times do I have to repeat myself?”
“Tell me once more how you knew that,” Bernie said.
Charlene sighed the sigh of the put upon. “Like I said, because I could hear the water running. Are we done?”
Bernie crossed her arms over her chest. “Indulge my sister and me for a few more minutes. Tell us, what did you do then?”
“Duh. I put the caviar and the plaque in my car and went down to get a drink with Marie. Then we came back up to Susie’s house.”
“And yet you kept the plaque,” Libby noted. “You didn’t give it to Marie. Why was that?”
Charlene shrugged her shoulders. “I forgot about it. With everything that was happening. I don’t know. I just didn’t. I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“Why did you and Marie go back to Susie’s house?” Libby asked Charlene.
“It would have looked funny if we hadn’t, wouldn’t it have? We didn’t want to give Susie a reason to suspect us.”
“Nice story,” Bernie noted.
“It’s the truth and you can’t prove otherwise,” she told Bernie.
Which was true. Not something that Bernie wanted to admit. Instead, she changed the subject. “Why did you send a package of mice to us?”
“Yes. Why?” Libby asked. “What did we ever do to you?”
“It was Marie’s idea,” Charlene told them. “You’ll have to ask her.”
“Funny, but she said it was yours,” Bernie said.
“Well, she’s lying,” Charlene told her.
Bernie adjusted the umbrella. “Is she?”
“Yes, she is,” Charlene declared. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to make us turn on each other. I watch TV. I’ve seen Law & Order.”
“Which makes you an expert,” Libby s
aid.
“Expert enough,” Charlene shot back.
“And yet your nephew is the one who delivered the packages. Both packages,” Libby pointed out.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Charlene insisted.
“It proves that you’re heavily involved,” Bernie told her.
“Not just involved, but heavily involved,” Charlene mocked. “Wow. Now I’m really worried.”
“Let us help you,” Bernie said, having decided to ignore the sarcasm and try another tactic.
Charlene gave her a “How dumb do you think I am?” look.
Bernie slogged on. “Seriously,” she said. “Right now, it looks as if you’re going to jail. Murder two.” Bernie shook her head sadly. “That’s a long time to spend in jail. Maybe if we spoke to your nephew, he could tell us something that would help us prove your innocence.”
Charlene started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Bernie asked.
“You,” Charlene told her. “Nice try, but no cigar.”
“What does that even mean?” Libby asked.
“It means I’m tired of playing your stupid ‘I think I’m a detective’ game. It means you can go to hell,” Charlene told her. Then she slammed the door.
Bernie got her foot out of the doorway just in the nick of time. “Well, that didn’t go well,” she noted.
“At least we kept our promise to Susie about finding out who sent the mice,” Libby observed as she and Bernie headed for the van. “Too bad we still don’t know who killed her.”
“But we will, Libby. We will.”
As they got to the bottom of the driveway, the sky let loose with a torrent of rain. It came down in sheets, working its way into the sisters’ hair and running down into their eyes and ears. Then, just as suddenly as it came, the storm departed, leaving the sisters soaking wet, Bernie’s umbrella having given up the ghost against the onslaught.
“I guess I don’t have to take a shower now, Bernie,” Libby kidded as she wrung the water out of her shirt.
“Oh no, Libby. You do. You definitely do,” Bernie said as she reached up and brushed some more rice and a couple of snow peas that she’d missed out of Libby’s hair.
Chapter 39
Day five . . .
The rain had woken Sean up at five in the morning, and it gave no sign of letting up. It hit the windowpanes as he studied one of the sheets of paper he’d ripped off the legal pad he’d found on top of Susie’s desk. When he was done, he leaned back in his chair, put the page down, looked out the window, and sighed. It had been a wet spring. He just hoped it wasn’t like this in the summer.
Sean watched the water running down the street in streams, the streams carrying leaves and twigs along, forming little lakes around the storm drains, and eddying around the curbs. If it kept up like this, Sean wondered if the street would flood, something that hadn’t happened since the city fixed the drainage system twenty years ago. Before that, there’d been water in the basement. He sure hoped that wasn’t going to happen again.
Main Street was deserted. Except for the mailman scurrying along, Sean didn’t see anyone else out. Even Mrs. McDonald had run out with her corgi and run back in as soon as Edna had done her business. They’d been having a lot of these kinds of days recently, Sean reflected. Too many. The painters couldn’t paint, and the farmers couldn’t plant. The strawberry festival had been rained out, as had the ice cream social by the library, and Libby and Bernie had been complaining about a drop in their business. People didn’t want to park down the block and run into the shop. And who could blame them?
Sean remembered the days when he’d been out in this kind of weather, when he got called to every accident in the area. Snow was bad, but rain was worse. Once you got wet, you were wet for the whole day. That was the good thing about being retired, he supposed. He wasn’t on a schedule.
With that thought in mind, he extracted another page from under Cindy and tried once again to find some clue, some hint of who had killed Susie in her scribblings. And failed. He’d been looking at those pages on and off ever since he’d gotten them. But the result was always the same. Nothing stood out. Nothing struck him. And yet his gut told him the answer he was looking for was in the pages. Somewhere. If he could only see it.
“What do you think, Cindy?” he asked the cat.
Cindy swished her tail and meowed. Sean supposed it was as good an answer as any. He was about to ask her what she meant when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Ah. Breakfast was about to arrive. He smiled and put the papers aside. Maybe after he’d eaten, an answer would suggest itself. And in the meantime, he and his daughters had other things to discuss. A moment later, Bernie and Libby arrived, bearing trays loaded with food. Sean grinned and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. Judging by what he was seeing, he had a good meal in store.
Sam poured a little more coffee into his cup from the French roast sitting on the coffee table, added a small amount of cream, two cubes of raw sugar, and stirred. He watched the cream turn the coffee a light tan. Then he took a sip and savored the bittersweet taste, after which he ate a piece of the fried duck egg sitting on the blue-and-white china plate that Libby had set before him.
“What do you think?” Libby asked as she sat down to her breakfast, which was the same as her dad’s.
Sean took another bite and chewed carefully. “I think the duck eggs taste the same as chicken eggs. If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
“That’s what I said, too,” Bernie replied as she took her seat near the coffee table and tasted her egg. She and Libby were discussing serving duck eggs in the shop.
“I think it would be a neat novelty item,” Libby said. “Something new to try. People like new.”
“Some people,” Sean observed.
“Young people,” Libby said and laughed.
“True,” Sean said, and he laughed, too. “What’s the difference between the two kinds of eggs, then?” he asked Libby. As he waited for the reply, he took a bite of the blueberry, arugula, goat cheese, and toasted walnut salad and followed that up with a bit of toasted, buttered brioche. As he did, he reflected that he was a lucky man to have daughters who liked to cook and bake.
Libby answered. “Well, the duck eggs last longer because their shells are thicker, they’re larger, they have bigger yolks, more omega-three, and a higher cholesterol count. Also, they’re supposed to make a fluffier omelet.”
“They’re also more expensive,” Bernie added. “A lot more expensive.”
Libby waved her fork in the air. “Not in this case, though. Not for us.”
“The Codys have a flock,” Bernie explained to her dad. “And they want to build up their business, so they’re giving us a deal.”
“A very good deal,” Libby said.
“In that case, by all means, go ahead and serve them,” Sean said. “What are you going to do with them?”
“For starters, I’m thinking roasted asparagus with a fried duck egg on toast, with strips of speck, for an upscale breakfast sandwich,” Libby said.
Sean raised an eyebrow. “Speck?” He’d never heard of it.
“It’s an Italian bacon-tasting cold cut. Kind of like prosciutto.”
“Sounds good,” Sean commented.
“It is good,” Libby agreed. “The only problem is the fried egg part might be tricky. Especially in the morning, when everyone wants to get in and get out quickly. I’ll have to see if I can figure it out.” Then she pointed at the papers Sean had put aside. “Are those Susie’s?” she asked.
Sean nodded. “I keep hoping something’s going to pop out at me.”
“I take it nothing has popped,” Bernie observed.
“You take it correctly.” And Sean took another bite of brioche.
“Maybe there’s nothing there to pop out,” Bernie said.
Sean ate a bit more of his egg. It did taste a little different from a hen’s egg, he decided. The duck egg was a litt
le richer. Especially the yolk. “I think I like these, after all,” he said. Then he pointed to the papers with his fork. “I just have this feeling there’s something there, but maybe you’re right. Maybe my feeling is wrong. Maybe I’ve lost my ability to sniff things out.”
“Let me see them again,” Bernie said, reaching out her hand.
Sean passed the pages to her. “Be my guest.”
Bernie put the pages on the coffee table, between herself and Libby, so they could both study them while they ate. Sean watched his daughters and ate his breakfast, pausing now and then to give tidbits to Cindy, who seemed to like the brioche as much as she liked the egg.
“So, what do you think?” he asked his daughters after five minutes had gone by.
Bernie swallowed the last of her salad before answering. “The same thing I thought when you showed me the pages the first time. I think this is Susie’s to-do list for the party, plus her tasks for the day. She said she was an obsessive list maker, and evidently, she was right.” Bernie tapped the yellow papers with one of her fingernails. “Here she’s calling the roofer, here she’s calling the oven repair guy, and here she’s made a note to herself to take care of the deeds to some of her properties. Unless these notes are a code for something else, this is pretty straightforward.”
Sean sighed. “Agreed. Libby, what do you think?”
“If there’s anything on these pages that would be helpful to our investigation, I’m not seeing it, either,” Libby concurred after she’d finished her egg. “I wish there was, but I don’t think there is.” Libby gestured to the numerous cats Susie had doodled on the pages. Some had hats, some had collars, a couple were wearing tiaras, others were wearing bow ties, and one had a lace dress on.
“Susie was really obsessed with Boris and Natasha’s wedding, wasn’t she?” Sean noted as he put the pages back where they had been. Then he finished his coffee, sat back in his chair, rubbed Cindy’s ears, and waited for Libby and Bernie to tell him what had happened with Lucy.
Sean had been up last night when Bernie and Libby came in looking like drowned rats and smelling like a garbage dump, so he’d heard most of the details of their evening’s adventures. What he was waiting to hear was what Lucy had said to them when he’d appeared at A Little Taste of Heaven at seven o’clock this morning.
A Catered Cat Wedding Page 23