by Mollie Hunt
But he did. He always did.
So I got busy. I buried myself in work, specifically my cat shelter work. I directed the Halloween fundraiser, now officially the Kitty Noir Cat-illion, with a vengeance. I joined the Pet Pals program, a small group of devotees who concentrate on the cats with behavior issues. I helped to train the new volunteers at their orientation held once a month. I participated in special events. When I didn’t have meetings or classes, I scooped litter and cleaned food bowls. I even did laundry, something I’d always avoided in the past, figuring that out of all the Friends of Felines volunteers, there must be someone who didn’t hate the job as much as I did.
The plan was to run myself into physical and mental exhaustion in hopes I’d sleep the night through. It hadn’t happened yet, but I was still hoping.
Frannie caught me nodding off in the volunteer locker room on the tiny bench beside the check-in kiosk.
“I can’t believe the gala is only four weeks away,” she said, undoing the padlock on her locker and slipping off her green volunteer apron.
I jerked to attention though I swore I wasn’t asleep. “Oh, yeah,” I murmured, trying to focus. “The gala.”
“How’s that coming? Need help with anything?”
“I...” I began, but my mind wouldn’t track. “Oh I don’t know, Frannie. Ask me tomorrow.”
She turned and gazed at me for the first time. “You look exhausted, Lynley! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Well, not really. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
She dropped her shelter bag on the floor and sat down beside me. “You’re working too hard. You know you don’t have to take on every single job in this whole place all by yourself.”
“I know. It’s just that...” I faltered. It’s just that what? That I’m worried? Crazy? Suffering from PTSD?
She was waiting for an answer, her blue-gray eyes filled with concern.
“I guess I’m not really over what happened this summer on the island. I don’t know why it still bothers me, but it does.”
“You don’t know why it’s still bothering you?” she snorted. “Well, let’s see. Someone you had just spoken with was murdered and you were blamed for it. Then within hours, someone else was killed. And they never did find the killer, which means he’s still running around somewhere. I think that qualifies as a seriously traumatic experience. Have you thought about seeing someone?”
“Actually I have. Thought about it, that is. I know of a psychologist who treats cases like this, but I haven’t got around to making an appointment.” I sighed. “That would be admitting there’s something wrong, and I guess I’m not quite there yet.”
“But if it’s affecting your sleep, then there is something wrong. I’d make that appointment if I were you. You have insurance. What could it hurt?”
“You’re right, of course. Thanks, Frannie. Just talking about it makes me feel a little better.”
“Oh, honey, I’m always here for you. And I know something else that might raise your spirits. I have two tickets to the Portland Pops tomorrow night, and guess what they’re playing?” She grinned.
I smiled and shook my head. “I have no idea. Music from the musical, Cats?”
“Good try, but this is completely different. I know you like Star Trek, are a bit of a Trekkie, and the concert will be music from the Star Trek series and movies. Alexander Courage, Jerry Goldsmith, Dennis McCarthy—I don’t know who else. I never realized so many well-known composers worked on Trek. I just found out about it myself and was lucky enough to get tickets.”
“You’re right, I would have never guessed,” I said without enthusiasm. “That sounds nice but I don’t know. I’d planned to do a shift here tomorrow night.”
“Nice? It’ll be great! You love Star Trek, Lynley. And someone will cover,” she countered. “I happen to know Mary and Jake Swanson are both going to be here until closing. Along with staff, that’s plenty of coverage for a Tuesday night. I’ll wait while you go take your name off the roster and then we can make plans.”
“I never officially signed up.”
“Oh well then, no problem.” She briefly squeezed my hand. “Say yes, Lyn. You’ll love it. You need the break. Besides, if you don’t go, I’ll have to find some other geek to come with me.” She laughed and so did I.
With a deep, Let-go-let-God breath, I agreed.
“Now I have to go home,” Frannie said, “and you should too. It’s already nine o’clock. Start thinking about what you’re going to wear tomorrow. Star Trek uniform costumes are encouraged, and I know you own one.” She winked. Picking up her bag, she stuffed her dirty apron into one of the pockets and rose to check out on the computer.
Pulling myself up, I went to my own locker. Turning back to Frannie, I said, “I don’t know about dressing up, but thanks. You’re really the best.”
She gave a little hand flourish. “ ’Tis nothing, love. See you tomorrow.”
As she turned to go, Kelley Moro ducked in like a girl on a mission. The volunteer-cum-artist-cum-underground-journalist was wearing her apron, a pair of ribbon dancers streaming from the pocket. The determined look on her face left no doubt that she had something on her mind.
“Oh, there you are, Lynley. Sherri at the front desk didn’t think you’d left yet. Hi, Frannie,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
“Hi, Kelley, and ’bye.” Frannie waved and was gone.
“What’s up?” I asked as I continued pulling things out of my locker.
She hesitated. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”
“You’ve got my emails about the Kitty Noir Cat-illion, haven’t you?”
“Oh, sure. I’ve been weighing in on all your queries. Love the name, by the way.”
“Yeah, me too. That was Esmae’s idea. I like that it doesn’t directly refer to Halloween. You know, for those who don’t celebrate.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Kelley was correct; we hadn’t connected lately. In fact, we hadn’t had a face-to-face conversation since the day she told me she had the scoop on the third homicide. I had waited for news, even checked her website once or twice, but nothing came of it. She’d never got back to me on anything more profound than the color of napkins or the style of background music best suited to our fete.
I breathed in and smiled as if murder weren’t forefront in my mind. “What can I do for you, Kelley?”
“I just wanted to update you on what we were talking about last time.” She paused and lowered her voice to a whisper. “You know, the suspicious death?”
I found it odd that she wound feel the need to be secretive. Granted there was a small surveillance camera in the corner of the ceiling, but it was trained on the lockers in case of theft, and to my knowledge was not equipped with sound.
“I remember. What about it?” I managed, my heart rate picking up a little more than I would have liked it to.
“Not here,” she hissed. “Can we go somewhere?”
I glanced at the clock. It was edging toward nine-thirty. “Um, it’s getting kind of late. Would the parking lot do?”
“How about your car?”
“Sure, I guess. Just let me finish checking out.”
I punched in my numbers on the computer screen and it told me thank you—nice machine. Then from the locker room, through the lobby, out the front door, down the walkway, and across the asphalt to my car we walked in silence. I threw my bag in the trunk of my little Toyota and unlocked the passenger door for Kelley, manually, because yes, my car is that old. I cracked the driver’s side and slipped into the cold darkness, wondering just what I was in for.
Banging my door shut, I turned to the woman. “Okay, what’s so secretive we can’t discuss it in the shelter?”
“Whoa, don’t be mad. I just thought you’d like to know. After all, you’ve been in on it from the first.”
“I’m sorry, Kelley. I didn’t mean to sound abrupt. I’m just tired. Been a long day.” But I
knew it was more than that. This was the thing I had been trying so hard to exorcize from my mind, and here she was bringing it all back again. Still, if there was news—real news—it might be worth it.
“No, I’m sorry,” she replied. “I know it must be hard for you, but this is sort of important.”
I waited for her to say more, but she just stared out at the night. A few cars whizzed by on the four-lane street that ran past the shelter. Beyond that, halide lights shone pink on a vacant gravel parking lot. A cluster of dead leaves from the ancient maple tree flurried, then fell at the whim of the autumn wind. Somewhere in the distance, a train was passing—no whistle, just the clunk-clunk-clunk of the rails.
“I never did see anything about a murder last month,” I said finally. “What happened to your story?”
“It fizzled. The victim turned out to be a drug addict so they couldn’t be sure if it was murder or just an overdose. Sort of a strange coincidence if you ask me, but junkies will shoot anything, including animal tranquilizers. Case is still open, though. They’re looking into it.”
Another silence.
“Is that what you wanted to tell me? That it wasn’t murder after all?”
“No, there’s something else. Another thing I’m not officially allowed to talk about but I really thought you should know. I mean, what can it hurt? You know everything else about the case.”
“Sounds logical. And I promise, I won’t tell a soul.”
She turned to me. I could see the ghost of her face in the dim of the reflected street light, and she looked scared. Then she whispered, “Don’t make promises you may not be able to keep.”
* * *
“I know you know him,” said Kelley. “He was your old school chum.” When I didn’t answer, she added, “Am I wrong, Lynley?”
I pulled myself away from the downward spiral of my overactive imagination. “Yes, of course. I knew Simon Bird back in the eighties.”
“And then you reunited with him this summer and subsequently attended his art retreat on Clover Island.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by reunited, but, yes, we saw each other again.” This was beginning to feel like an interview, and I was not up for that—not now, in the dark Friends of Felines parking lot, and probably not ever.
“And have you heard from him lately?”
“Not for a while. We don’t have that sort of relationship.”
“How about social media? Facebook or Twitter?”
“He’s got a blog, but he doesn’t seem to get to it all that often. It’s mostly about art and animals anyway.”
“Never anything personal?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.” I took a deep breath. “So tell me again. You think Simon is somehow connected to the murders?”
“He’s undeniably connected to the victims. Crystal was his estranged ex-wife, and it turns out the junkie, whose name was Paul Hartley, was an old lover.”
“If this Hartley guy was murdered at all. You said there was a question. How can they tell? Heroin is heroin.”
“That’s just it. All heroin is not the same. You rarely get pure heroin on the street. It’s always cut with something.”
“Cutting it makes for better profit?”
“Yes, and it’s usually cut by every hand through which it passes. They use all sorts of stuff—sugar, flour, starch, powdered milk, but it can also be like brick dust or glass, sometimes even a poison. This heroin was uncut, which says to me it must have come right off the boat.”
“It comes on boats?”
Kelley shrugged. “Maybe. What I mean is, it hadn’t had time to travel around through the usual distributors.”
“Oh, right.” I thought about how little I knew of the illegal drug trade nowadays. Back in the hippie era, we had our pot and hashish, maybe even a little LSD, but now there seemed to be a new psychoactive drug every time I read the papers. How could one keep up?
“What about Marissa Peabody-Jones?” I asked, getting back to subject. “She had no relation to Simon at all, just another student at the retreat.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong,” Kelley said. I thought I caught a glint of excitement in her eyes, but I supposed that was part of the journalistic instinct. “Marissa Peabody-Jones had been studying with Bird since she was thirteen. She was one of his prodigies.”
“You’re kidding me. They acted as if they had never met.” I paused to think. “But then again, she was a shy girl. I may just not have noticed. I thought she was studying to be a vet tech.”
“She was, but art was her minor. She had actually received a scholarship to the Portland Art Museum school before she went into veterinary medicine.”
It was warm for October, or maybe it was just me, but suddenly the car felt stuffy. I rolled down my window and a rush of wintery air swept in.
“Does this mean the police think Simon is the killer?” I said slowly to keep from choking on the words.
Kelley was suddenly noncommittal. “I don’t know what the police think.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Lynley...” She drew the name out dramatically. “I know he’s your friend and all, but I’d be careful if I were you. Something very strange is going on with him, or at least around him. People close to him are dying. If he’s not killing them himself...”
“He’s not! Simon wouldn’t hurt anyone, no matter what.”
“Okay, but what I was going to say was, if Simon isn’t doing this, then there’s someone out there with an agenda, and Simon is involved.”
She opened her door, gathered her things, and got out. She stood for a moment, then poked her head back inside. I couldn’t see her face, only the halo of her long blonde hair against the street light.
“You’re his friend, Lynley,” she said in a monotone. “All I’m asking is that you be careful.”
* * *
Our discussion, though weighty, hadn’t taken long, and by ten forty-five, I was home and settled on the couch with Tinkerbelle in my lap licking my hand. Tink is a licker. I don’t know if it’s me she loves or the salt she craves in her elder years. Usually I don’t mind it, but tonight, every pass of her rough tongue made me more unsettled.
Was Simon Bird, my long-time friend and ally, a cold-blooded killer? Was he stalking people from his past? Why would he do such a thing? To get retaliation? To eliminate a threat? The only things I knew about Paul Hartley were that he was a drug addict and that Simon had once loved him, but I’d spent enough time with the other two victims to form an opinion: As far as I could see, Crystal Holt and Marissa Peabody-Jones had nothing in common.
Except Simon.
Drat! I thought, lifting Tinkerbelle from my lap and putting her on the pillow next to me. It was time for a cup of tea.
I continued to ponder as I grabbed a tea bag from the tin and ripped open the paper wrapper.
Drat! I swore again when I discovered I’d chosen Sunrise Thunder, a highly caffeinated blend of black teas that would keep me awake for days. I stuffed it back in its pouch and put it aside for the morning when I surely would need that blast of caffeine, then chose more carefully, this time picking out chamomile-mint in a deep blue packet.
I took a mug from the dish drainer, not even bothering to admire the cat picture that adorned its ceramic sides, and ran water from the InSinkErator over the bag. As the tea steeped, I stared out the window into the night. It wasn’t much of a view, my dark back yard with its mass of plant shadows and the old garage behind. Over the slanting rooftop, the street wound away up the hill toward Mt. Tabor Park. That, too, was a black outline, swathed in mist. The sky was clear but only the bright planets shone through the inner city haze. When I was a child, I had wished upon those stars. How many of my wishes had come true in the past sixty years?
Now I was becoming morose. I took my tea and sat down at the mission oak table I’d inherited from my grandmother. What would she have thought of my predicament, I wondered. The answer came easily:
Trust your heart and act like a lady. I laughed out loud, recalling her voice and smile.
But this was a quandary that I doubted my grandmother ever had to face. Either Simon was a serial killer or someone was picking off his friends, one by one. There was a third alternative: that it was all a grand coincidence, but I didn’t believe in coincidences. So what did I believe?
Simon killed three people? That was nearly as ludicrous, but aside from the retreat, I hadn’t seen the man in decades. How much did I really know about his life? That he’d had a wife—a female wife—had been a shocker; what other secrets did he hold from those thirty long years?
I had never known Simon to be violent, even when provoked, but again, I was thinking in the past. There was Crystal’s charge of abuse to consider. Simon had explained, and I couldn’t promise that, under similar circumstances, I wouldn’t have done the same thing. Though morally wrong, his slapping of Crystal had been a spontaneous reaction to her cruel and drunken outburst, one he honestly seemed to regret. The murders, on the other hand, had been premeditated, carefully planned and executed by a cold and calculating mind. It was not at all the same thing.
I felt soft paws on my calf and looked down to see Tinkerbelle giving me the love-blink. I blinked back.
“Time for bed?” I asked her.
She bleated a loud meow.
“Treat, then bed?”
She dropped to the floor and sauntered to her food station, looking over her shoulder expectantly.
“Okay, sweetheart. I’m coming.”
As I rose from the table, I swayed slightly and it hit me just how weary I was. All this speculation was getting me nowhere. I needed to come up with a plan. Maybe I should call Simon; maybe I should ask him his thoughts on the whole silly deal. Or maybe I should quit for the night and figure it out in the morning.
For once I took my own advice, and after dishing out Greenies for all, hauled myself upstairs to bed.
Chapter 20
Did you know that black cats have the lowest adoption rate and are ignored by many rescue groups because they are so hard to place? We don’t know if it’s superstition or merely because black isn’t as exciting to most people as the colors. Luckily a lot of true cat people love black cats and go the extra mile for them.