Jeffrey closed his eyes to focus on his rumbling purr. I carefully closed the laptop and set it beside me on the couch. I rearranged the cat so he was completely on my lap rather than draped over it, falling onto his head in slow motion.
“You're absolutely right,” I said. “Why worry about all the things you need to do when you can take a nap and do nothing?”
I leaned my head back on the sofa.
The warm blanket of sleep came instantly, unlike the night before, when I'd tossed and turned for three hours.
The ringing of my phone woke me up. Jeffrey grumbled as I shoved him aside so I could grab my phone from the kitchen counter.
“This is Stormy Day,” I said groggily, gripping the counter with one sweaty hand.
“Boss?” My employee, Brianna, was whispering. “She's here, and she's buying up half the store.”
“The Countess?”
“No. Samantha Sweet. She keeps asking if you're here. She's asked me three times now. I swear she thinks I'm lying or something.”
“Hang tight,” I said. “I'm jumping in the car and I'll be there as soon as I can.”
“Please hurry,” Brianna whispered. “She's freaking me out.”
I barely recognized Samantha Sweet. Gone was the bright, tidy wardrobe of citrus-colored dresses paired with crisp white blazers. She looked less like a working professional woman and more like a college coed on a reading break, with her tattered jeans and stained sweatshirt. Her blond hair was straight on one side and matted on the other, as though she hadn't brushed her hair or even showered since I'd last seen her ten days earlier.
As I watched her look over the store displays, I thought of what I'd said to Trigger Canuso the night before. “Some people behave strangely when they're grieving. It's different for every person, every situation. For some, confronting death makes them over-steer toward embracing life, seizing the day.”
Samantha's behavior did seem strange, but how was a person supposed to act after having their husband murdered?
I'd entered the store through the back way, so Samantha hadn't seen me yet. Before alerting her to my presence, I caught Brianna's attention and met my store manager in the back hallway.
I whispered to Brianna, “Has she said anything to you?”
Brianna replied, “She just keeps asking where you are. That's why I called you.” She nervously rubbed the red spot on her chin where she'd had a pimple the week before. “Thanks for getting here so fast.”
She glanced guiltily at something in the middle of the store.
I followed her gaze over the counter, to the central display table. There was a conspicuous blank spot. “You changed the display? What's missing?”
“The Laguiole steak knives are gone,” Brianna said. “When she was looking at the fairy figurines, I grabbed all of the knives and tucked them behind the counter.”
I stared at Brianna's big, wide eyes. Should I give her heck for being paranoid, or congratulate her for protecting herself?
“Smart thinking,” I said.
She grimaced. “I feel terrible. The poor woman's been through so much, but my imagination is really overactive.”
I patted her on the shoulder. “It's okay,” I whispered. “In the wake of a violent crime, we're all left with these broken pieces we have to shift around until life seems okay again.”
Brianna looked down at her shoes. “Being an adult sucks. I want to make a blanket fort and hide.”
“Make me one, too,” I said through gritted teeth.
I gave her another shoulder pat along with a few words of encouragement, and ventured out onto the sales floor.
I put on a professional smile and said to the sweatshirt-wearing, disheveled woman, “I see someone's keen on redecorating.”
Samantha spun around and gave me a wild-eyed look. “Stormy, don't sneak up on people like that!” She had a stainless steel paté knife in her hand, and she'd raised her fist in a defensive stabbing position. The short, round blade was designed for spreading soft paté, so it was no more than two inches long, and as blunt as a shiny penny, but the effect was still alarming. It would have been disturbing even if her husband hadn't been stabbed to death a week and a half earlier.
“I didn't mean to startle you, Samantha.” I took a step back toward the office.
She lowered the gleaming paté knife and dropped it onto the cheese-serving accessories shelf, next to the marble cutting boards and the bamboo trays.
We stared at each other. The music was playing over the shop's stereo system, and the song at that moment was “Cuts Like a Knife” by Bryan Adams. The lyrics jumped out.
I turned my head subtly and gave Brianna a wide-eyed look. She lifted her hands and mouthed the word what?
I made a knob-twisting motion with my hand.
She lifted her eyebrows in acknowledgment and cranked the volume. Up.
I shook my head.
Brianna swore under her breath and shut the music system off completely.
“My bad,” she said. To Samantha, she said, “I hate Bryan Adams. Canadians, right? Ugh. Canadians are the worst.”
I smiled at Samantha and continued the lie. “Brianna hates Canadians. And their stupid geese.”
“Yeah,” Brianna said with false enthusiasm.
“The geese are awful,” Samantha agreed. “I have a lake-front listing that would be an easy sell if the lawn wasn't covered in green goose droppings. That's not the sort of green lawn buyers are looking for.”
With a casual tone, I asked, “How are things going with your listings? Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Everything's fine.”
“How's your daughter doing?”
“Fine.”
“Michael Junior?”
“Fine.”
“How about Higgins?”
She blinked at me. “Who?”
“The guinea pig.”
“Right,” she said. “He's fine. He's a guinea pig.”
“He's a little cutie pie. You must have your hands full. Do you have anyone staying with you?”
She ignored my question and picked up a heavy pewter candlestick. “Is this brass?”
“Pewter,” I said.
“What is pewter? Whatever happened to brass, anyway? It's pretty, like gold. I like gold. I'm going to buy some gold earrings. Michael never bought me jewelry. Now I can buy whatever jewelry I want.”
She continued to babble about jewelry and buying gifts for herself. The slightly obsessive part of my personality made me want to answer her question about pewter, because I knew it was a malleable metal alloy, mostly tin, mixed with copper, antimony, or bismuth. Older pewters exhibiting a darker silver-gray color might contain lead, so they shouldn't be used for food or come into contact with the human body.
But Samantha wasn't in the mood for a discussion about alloys or the history of tableware. She was in Full Shopping Mania Mode. She wanted napkin rings. And decorative key organizers. And an old-fashioned wooden sorting board for mail, decorated with a hand-painted rooster going COCK A DOODLE DOO.
If she'd had a shopping cart, she would have been filling it. But we didn't have big, rolling carts in the gift shop. Mostly people came in to buy only one or two items at a time. When people did go on sprees, they stacked things on the checkout counter, which was what Samantha Sweet was currently doing.
I asked her, “Are you picking up a thank-you gift for a family member? Maybe someone who's staying with you?”
She pointed to an octagonal mirror high up on the wall. “Is that for sale?”
“Sure,” I said, even though the mirror wasn't for sale. It was there to cover an access panel. But I didn't want to say no to the woman. It would be like waking a sleepwalker.
For the next hour, I tried a few more times to find out how things were going at her house, but she kept ignoring my questions. She just wanted to shop.
Her behavior certainly matched with what Trigger Canuso had told me the night before, about how Sam
antha was going to be getting a big insurance settlement. But did she really believe Michael was still alive, and that the body was that of a doppelganger?
She was behaving erratically, for sure.
Brianna and I watched with equal parts horror and awe as Samantha Sweet stacked up for purchase a significant portion of our inventory.
I looked over her piles at the counter and said, “You can return this if you change your mind.”
“Stormy, I wouldn't do that to you,” Samantha said. “You've been such a help to me through this difficult time.”
“I've helped?” I wondered if she'd heard about the police questioning Colt the day before.
“Sophie is always talking about you,” Samantha gushed. “And your trip to Goodie Burger, and then how you watched princess movies with her, just like a true friend. You should come by and see her some time. She'd love to see you.”
“I could do that,” I said. “Are you sure it's a good idea? Kids might seem resilient, but they need time to grieve.”
“Grieve?” Samantha blinked at me, her expression blank.
I didn't know how to respond, so I looked at the computer screen and read the total for her purchase.
She handed me a credit card without hesitation.
I swiped the card through the credit card machine. I hoped it would be declined. I didn't want to take Samantha's money, not like this.
To my surprise, the transaction was going through. I had just taken money from a woman who wasn't in her right frame of mind. It felt unethical, but I didn't know what else to do. If she was going to max out her credit cards, it was better for her to do it at my store, because I truly would accept back all the merchandise when she eventually came to her senses. I didn't know if the other local businesses would be so understanding.
Samantha took her credit card from my hand and tucked it away. “Sophie always misses her dad when he's away on business, but it just makes for a happier reunion when he comes home.”
“But Michael's not coming home,” I said. “Samantha, he's dead. We both saw him.”
“That wasn't Michael,” she said, scoffing. “It must have been a body he bought off someone at the morgue. Or from a medical school. Didn't you smell it? The thing smelled like pickles!”
“Pickles?” I was nearly speechless. “Do you mean embalming fluid?”
She shrugged. “How should I know? When Michael comes back, he can tell me exactly how he pulled it off.” She looked at me and laughed. “He sure fooled you, Stormy! The look on your face that day!”
I nodded and decided to play along. “Yup. I was really fooled. Michael certainly was quite thorough with his plans. He even warmed up the body to make it seem like it had only just happened.”
“I'm sorry if you were scared,” she said. She glanced around to make sure we were alone. Brianna had gone into the office to take a much-needed break. The walls were thin, and she'd be able to easily overhear our conversation, but Samantha didn't know that.
“Don't tell anyone,” Samantha said gravely. “Not until after we have that money from the insurance company and it's all hidden away where they can't touch it.”
I mimed zipping my lips.
She looked down at the pile of housewares and tchotchkes. “How am I going to get all of this back to my house?”
“I'll help you,” I said. “Whatever doesn't fit in your vehicle, we can put in my car. I'll follow you to your house, and then we can make a whole day out of setting everything up.”
She clapped her hands girlishly. “That sounds wonderful.”
I started boxing up the items in cardboard shipping boxes, since our bags would only hold a few items.
I decided I would follow her to her house, and then I'd conduct a search of her purse, her medicine cabinet, and her bedside table. She was, without a doubt, suffering a mental breakdown. Whether it was just a bad mix of medicines or something else was yet to be determined, and the diagnosis was not up to me.
Thanks for my investigative work experience, I had a few contacts in the social services field who could take my tip and deal with it discreetly.
It was with a heavy heart that I popped my head into the office and whispered my plan to Brianna.
“Someone's gotta do it,” she whispered back. “You have to make sure those little kids of hers are safe.”
“I really don't want to do this,” I said.
“But you're so good at it,” she said. “You'll do great. Call me with an update? I swear I'm not trying to be a drama llama. I feel kinda responsible, because I phoned you.”
“I understand,” I said. I really did appreciate her having called me at home to let me know about Samantha's strange behavior.
“Good luck.”
“I'll check in with you,” I said. “Brianna, you did the right thing by calling me.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “How come the right thing feels so wrong?”
I felt myself channeling my father, speaking his words. “I'm sorry, sweetie. That's just how life is sometimes.”
Chapter 28
I loaded the remaining boxes of Samantha's merchandise into my car and followed Samantha to her house. She parked in her driveway and went straight into the house, carrying in only one bag from her vehicle.
I parked on the street in front and stepped out. I was surprised by what I saw, at the transformation that had taken place over the last ten days. A pile of mail appeared to be bursting from the mailbox. The front step was strewn with wilting bouquets of sympathy flowers in a variety of containers. Some well-meaning neighbor had brought over a casserole, but it hadn't even been brought inside. If I hadn't already known, I would have been tipped off immediately that there'd been a tragedy at the Sweet residence. Two oily-black crows had easily removed the plastic wrap from the casserole and were now digging into the abandoned treasure. Human tragedy made for a tasty crow picnic.
The two glossy birds flapped their wings as I approached.
“Lunch is all yours,” I told the crows. “That actually looks good. Is it lasagna?”
The crows continued pulling the casserole apart.
“I talk to animals now,” I explained to the birds. “You see, I have a cat.”
The crows paused and cocked their heads in an almost human gesture, as if to say they totally understood.
I entered the house.
“Where's Sophie?” I asked as I surveyed the mess in the entryway.
“At school,” Samantha answered nonchalantly.
“And Michael Junior?”
“Um...” Samantha picked up a rumpled blanket from the sofa. “At the daycare?” Her voice inflected up at the end, as though she was the one asking me.
We finished picking up blankets and dirty laundry from the living room. I was relieved to not find the baby there unattended, but I was troubled by Samantha's lack of concern about where he actually was.
“We should tidy up before we bring more stuff in,” I said.
“You don't have to help. Unless you want to?”
I gave her a warm smile. “I insist. Let's get things tidied up. It's always easier to think in a clean room.”
She agreed. While Samantha went to the kitchen and started on the dishes, which I could smell as soon as we'd walked in the front door, I got to work on the rest of the house.
An hour later, I went into Sophie's room, where I found Higgins looking unhappy in a dirty cage. Or at least I assumed he was unhappy. If I were trapped in a cage that smelled as bad as his, I'd be grumpy.
“Hey, Higgins. I'm here to help. How would you like some new bedding in there?”
He stared at me with his big dark eyes. I'd never spent much time around guinea pigs, but he was a cute little guy, mostly brown with a white sash down the center of his face. The white sash had a zig-zag to it, like a lightning bolt. Harry Potter, I thought. Tony Milano's kids had a guinea pig they called Harry Potter because he or she had a lightning bolt. I wondered if their Harry and Higgins could be relate
d. We only had so many pet stores and breeders in town, so it was possible.
I gave Higgins fresh food and water, and changed the stinky bedding in the bottom of his cage. I used the paper-based bedding material that was in a bag next to his cage. The writing on the packaging claimed it to be phenol-free and healthier than wood shavings.
“There you go,” I said when I was done.
Higgins thanked me for my efforts by biting my finger.
You know what they say. No good deed goes unpunished.
Truthfully, it wasn't his fault. I'd spooked him with some sudden hand movements. At least he hadn't broken my skin.
“Sorry I scared you,” I said.
He blinked up at me with big, frightened eyes. Or maybe I was projecting again. I was the one who was frightened. What was I doing there? What was I supposed to do about Samantha, who'd apparently gone a bit crazy?
I pulled a book about the care of guinea pigs off Sophie's shelf and sat down to learn more about the little critters. One thing at a time, I told myself.
Higgins gradually warmed up to my presence and hopped out of his cage to come check me out.
He meandered over to where I sat cross-legged on the carpet. After a few minutes, he eventually hopped up onto my leg and nuzzled my hand.
“Does this mean we're friends?”
He gazed up at me with big, black eyes. Was that affection?
“Sorry, I can't take you home with me,” I said. “My cat is still very sore with me for bringing home two huskies last night.”
He nuzzled my hand again and began vibrating.
Vibrating?
I checked the handbook.
Yes, guinea pigs purr. Who knew? Higgins definitely wanted to spend more time with me.
“Higgins, you don't know what you're asking for,” I said softly. “Jeffrey Blue would try to eat you. I know you're bigger than his mouth, but he'd still try.”
I handed him a leaf of lettuce I'd gotten from the kitchen, and he nibbled away happily on my lap.
“You're welcome,” I said. “You sure are easy to please. Other than the time you bit me.” I checked my fingertip. It was red but not bleeding. “No harm, no foul,” I said.
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