Pouncing on Murder

by Laurie Cass

  “Was this recently?”

  “A week or two ago. Maybe three.”

  Or four? “Is there any way you can pin it down?” I asked.

  “Well, I guess. I’d have to look it up, at home.” There was a question in his voice, as in why on earth did I want to know?

  It was a very good question. And I wished I had a good answer for him. Then inspiration struck. “You know Adam Deering, who was out there the day Henry Gill died? Adam thinks Cole might have helped him call 911 and he wants to thank him. But he doesn’t want to thank the wrong guy.” It was mostly a lie, but it wasn’t a lie of malice, so with any luck it wouldn’t count against me.

  “Okay, sure,” Bob said. “When I get home, I’ll look it up and give you a ring.”

  I thanked him and thumbed off the phone. “Progress, Eddie. We’re making definite progress.”

  “Mrr.”

  During the phone call, Eddie had finished his dinner, stretched, yawned, and was now sitting next to the front door, looking at the handle. “Mrr,” he said again.

  “You sure you want out?” I asked. “The wind is picking up and you know you don’t like that.”

  “Mrr.” He put his head half an inch from the doorframe. “Mrr.”

  “You are the weirdest cat ever. Sometimes you seem more like a dog than a cat.” I opened the door. “Don’t say I never did anything for you, okay?”

  “I never would.”

  I jumped a little, then saw my new neighbor, Eric Apney, standing on the dock between our boats and smiling at me. My very good-looking new neighbor. “Hello,” I said. “But I was actually talking to my cat.”

  “Does he talk back?” Eric asked, watching Eddie jump from one chaise to the other.

  “All the time.”

  Eddie looked back at us. “Mrr,” he said, and settled down on the chaise where I usually sat.

  “I see what you mean,” Eric said, nodding. “Do I need his permission to ask you out?”

  “He’d probably like you to.” I felt a wide smile building up inside me. “It’s not necessary, though.”

  “I know we only met the once,” Eric said, “but I’m new up here, hardly know a soul, and I like your cat and your boat, so what do you think about dinner and maybe a movie?”

  Though my initial impulse was to blurt out an immediate yes, I hesitated. This was not the time to say I’d just been through a breakup, but there were questions that had to be asked. “You’re not allergic to cats?”

  “Not allergic to anything, as far as I know.”

  “And you’re not committed to anyone?”

  “Well, my mom and dad, but that’s probably not what you’re talking about.”

  Friendly, liked cats, had a good relationship with his parents, and had a sense of humor. Things were looking up for Minnie in the romance department. I smiled at him. “What do you do for a living?” I asked, then laughed. “Let me rephrase that. Just tell me you’re not a doctor. I’m not sure I care what you do, as long as you’re not a doctor.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  All the fun went out of me. “You’re a doctor,” I said flatly.

  “Cardiac surgeon.” He frowned. “Is that a problem?”

  I sighed. Of all the professions in all the world, why had he picked that one? Even so, I was tempted. He was on vacation when he was up here. He wouldn’t be on call, couldn’t be yanked into the hospital at a moment’s notice. Why not go out for dinner? What could it hurt?

  A cell phone trilled. Eric reached into his pocket. “Sorry, that’s the hospital’s ring tone. I have to take this.”

  Then again, there were a lot of reasons not to go out with him.

  I sent him a polite smile, waved good-bye, and, followed by Eddie, headed back inside.

  • • •

  A few minutes later, I was feeling trapped on my own houseboat. Eddie, apparently exhausted by his short stint in the great outdoors, had flopped himself onto the dining booth’s seat and was curled into a flattish ball.

  I, however, had the itch to get outside and do something in the last couple hours of daylight. The only problem was that Eric the surgeon was still standing on the dock, talking away on his cell phone. He was staring at the lake with a serious expression, and if my experience with Tucker was worth anything, he would either be on the phone for a long time or soon be taking a quick trip downstate.

  Not that there was any real reason that I couldn’t have walked out of my own boat, past him, and out into the wilds of Chilson, but I’d just created a socially awkward situation and would have liked to wait a day or two before talking to him again.

  Of course, if he was still on the phone, I wouldn’t have to talk to him at all.

  I pulled on a light jacket, grabbed my backpack, patted the snoring Eddie on the head, and went out the front door. Eric’s back was toward me—more serendipity!—and I escaped off the boat and down the dock without having to make eye contact.

  But once I’d reached the sidewalk, I realized I had no destination in mind. The temperature had dropped and the wind had come up, so going for a walk or a bike ride wasn’t appealing. It was a school night for Aunt Frances. She was teaching a night class in wood turning right that second, and the texts I’d received from Kristen that day had been fraught with restaurant staffing woes, which meant she’d be too busy to talk. I thought about going over to bug Rafe, but I could see his house from here and I didn’t see any signs of light or life.

  I could have driven over to talk to Irene and Adam, but I didn’t want to have to see the disappointment in their faces when I told them I hadn’t learned anything new.

  Which led me to a conclusion I should have reached far earlier—I needed to learn something new. And suddenly I knew exactly what to do.

  • • •

  I knocked on the door of the large lakeside home. It looked like a front door, but on lake houses it was hard to know for sure. Because if you had a house on a lake, surely you’d make the prettiest side of the house face the water, and wouldn’t that be the front? Then again, shouldn’t the front door be the door where people first entered the house? It was a conundrum, and once again I patted myself on the back for not having the financial resources to live on a lake. Just think of all the problems I’d avoided.

  The door was opened by a middle-aged woman and I mentally breathed a sigh of relief. At least I wouldn’t have to explain myself to Cole Duvall.

  “Hello,” the woman said. “Can I help you?” She wasn’t tall, exactly, but appeared tall at first glance because she was solidly built from head to toe. Her brown hair was pulled back into a soft bun and her face, while not one of beauty, was full of a kindly intelligence.

  “Hi,” I said. “Sorry to bother you, but are you Mrs. Duvall?” When she nodded, I introduced myself. “I was a friend of Henry Gill’s and—”

  “That poor man.” Her face crumpled into sadness. “Oh, bugger. I’m going to start crying.” She pushed the door open. “Come on in and keep me from bawling my eyes out. I just go to pieces every time I think about it.”

  By the time we were settled on wicker furniture in a glassed-in porch, I’d learned Mrs. Duvall’s name was Larabeth, that she was Cole’s second wife, and that he was her first husband. “I was just too busy for years working on the stores. Somehow I got to forty before I once thought about getting married. When I looked around, there was Cole,” she said, smiling.

  I also learned that Cole hadn’t wanted children—“He and his first wife had a boy and a girl and he said he didn’t want to do that all over again”—and finally that Larabeth was the sole heir to the Dwyer grocery store chain.

  “Really?” I almost squeaked. “I love those stores!”

  And I did. Dwyer was the name of an extremely successful regional chain of specialty food stores. What made the Dwyer stores different was that each one was customized for its location, carrying not only local produce, but as many local items as possible, from wine to cheese to pasta. An
d though the main decor of all the stores was similar, each store had personalized wall murals that captured the local flavor. “Are you going to open one in Chilson?”

  Larabeth sighed. “Don’t I wish? The town isn’t big enough to support one of our stores, not without taking too much business away from what’s already in place.”

  A businesswoman with a conscience? I was so busy putting her into my mental Friend category that my slide into the next phase of the conversation was awkward. “Yes, it’s very sad that Henry’s gone,” I said, “and that’s partly why I’m here. Did you know that there was someone else out with Henry that day?”

  “I hadn’t heard that.” She frowned. “Was he hurt, too?”

  “Not directly.” I explained about Adam and the heart attack and about the fictional man who’d called 911 on Adam’s cell phone and helped direct the EMT crew to Adam. The story was getting better every time I told it, and I was sorry it wasn’t true.

  “Anyway, Adam never learned the name of the man who helped him and I said I’d try to find out. I don’t suppose it was your husband, was it? Adam would love to thank him.”

  Larabeth was shaking her head. “Couldn’t have been. Cole flew out West skiing that weekend.” She sighed. “I would have liked to go with him, but there was a grand reopening at the Lansing store and I never miss those.”

  We chatted awhile longer, during which she became an ever firmer friend by smiling when I told her that I drove the bookmobile, and when the sun started dropping into the water, I headed home, thanking her for her time.

  All the way back to Chilson, I thought about times and dates, about marriages and money.

  But I also thought about wooden boats.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning I did my best to play catch-up on the tasks that had gone undone while I was out the day before, so it was nearly noon before I remembered to act upon my brilliant middle-of-the night idea. I reached for the phone, hoping it wasn’t too late.

  “Is this Pam Fazio?” I asked. “The world-famous graphic designer?”

  “Shh,” she hushed. “Didn’t I tell you to keep that a deep, dark secret?”

  “Haven’t told a soul,” I said. “And if you want, I’ll make a pinky swear on it at lunch. Round Table in half an hour? I’ll buy, because I want to ask you something.”

  “Not Shomin’s Deli?” she asked.

  “I haven’t seen Sabrina in a while,” I said. “Don’t want her to get too lonely.”

  Pam laughed and said she’d see me soon.

  And half an hour later, I was sitting at one of the diner’s back tables when Pam came in. I waved her over and she made the trek across the room, fake-panting as she dropped into a chair. “Whew! Wasn’t sure I was going to make it all the way.” She drew her hand across a brow that wasn’t the least bit damp. “If this is your way of getting me to exercise, it’s not going to work, because I’ll need dessert to get me back to the store.”

  “I’d prefer,” I said quietly, “that this conversation not be overheard.”

  “Oh-ho!” Pam, suddenly perky, sat up and plopped her elbows on the table. “An excellent opener. What’s the topic of the hour?”

  “Felix Stanton,” I said.

  Pam’s perkiness slid away. “Felix. Ah. Well.”

  “And do you girls need menus today?” Sabrina put down glasses of ice water and took out her pad. “I didn’t think so. Ham sandwich with a side salad and raspberry vinaigrette for you,” she said, nodding at Pam, “and a burger with everything but and an order of fries for the bookmobile lady. Anything other than water? Right. I’ll put this up and you’ll have your food in a jiffy.”

  She walked over to where her husband, Bill, was sitting while tapping away at his computer, planted a kiss on the top of his head, and headed off to the kitchen.

  I turned back to Pam. “When we were at Shomin’s last week and Felix was being all cranky, you said you’d known him for a while. That he gets like that every so often.” I fiddled with one of the straws Sabrina had left. “But you’ve only been in Chilson a year and Felix . . . well, I guess I don’t know if he’s a native, but he’s had that real estate and development business for years.” I tipped my head questioningly.

  Pam grinned. “Should have figured you’d pick up on that.” She ripped open her straw and jammed it into her ice water. “Felix and I grew up together, down in Ohio. It’s because of him that I heard of Chilson in the first place. His parents came up here every summer when he was a kid, and as soon as he was old enough to be on his own, he moved north.”

  It was a familiar story. A lot like mine, actually. “So the two of you are friends,” I said.

  “We have a lot of history—no, not that kind of history,” she said, rolling her eyes at my smirk. “We were next-door neighbors from kindergarten through high school. He was another brother, practically. Just one that didn’t live in the same house.”

  “A lot of shared history, then,” I said, “and a lot of shared loyalty.”

  “Not so much of that second one.” She looked at the ceiling for a moment, then back at me. “Felix isn’t the kind of guy who inspires loyalty, somehow. I like him, even love him in a distant cousin sort of way, but . . . well, let’s just say that if I wanted some help moving across town, he’s not who I’d call.”

  I knew what she meant. “So, if I asked why you said he was being even more Felix-ish than usual, would you tell me?”

  She shrugged. “I thought it was common knowledge.”

  Apparently not common enough. “What is?”

  Pam looked around, but no one was sitting within two tables of us. “You know that new big mixed-use building on the waterfront? Retail shops on the first floor, professional offices on the second floor, residential units on top?”

  “Sure.” I also knew it was more than half-empty. “Are you saying . . . ?”

  She nodded. “It’s Felix’s pet project and he’s overextended to the max. He keeps telling me all he needs is one good anchor store to make it work, but every time he gets close to signing someone, they back out.” She sighed. “I’m getting worried about him, to tell you the truth. If he doesn’t get a big success soon, I’m not sure what he’s going to do.”

  Our lunches arrived and the talk turned to other things, but all the while, part of my brain was chewing over what Pam had told me and thinking pretty much one thing: hmm.

  • • •

  Deep in thought, I walked back into the library and I was still so deep in thought that I didn’t notice how the personal space between Holly and Josh was playing out until I’d almost walked past the main desk.

  At that point, however, I clued in to the fact that something was wrong, came to a slow stop, and then backed up. Holly was at the desk, being perfectly friendly as she checked out books to an elderly man. Josh was nearby, working on the library’s most hated printer.

  There they were, less than three feet apart, and Holly had managed to turn herself so that her back was to the printer. This couldn’t have been an easy thing to do, because the printer was placed next to the computer where she was working. I watched the scene for a moment, wondering what was going on and hoping Holly didn’t end up with a stiff neck by the end of the day.

  Josh looked up, rolled his eyes and mouthed a single word: House.

  This could only mean that Josh still wasn’t giving Holly the address of his new place and that Holly was getting well and truly miffed. Which was understandable, because the three of us shared all of our major life events and most of the minor ones. Why Josh was making this a point of contention, I didn’t know, but I hoped it wouldn’t cause lasting damage to our happy trio.

  My concern must have shown on my face, because Josh—after making sure that Holly wasn’t watching—grinned at me, then winked.

  I sighed and continued on to my office. Sometimes it was best not to know exactly what was going on.

  • • •

  Late the next afternoon, it had been prear
ranged that I drop Julia off at her sister’s house. Why, exactly, I was doing so I hadn’t understood from the beginning, but it had something to do with a birthday and soup and family traditions, and who was I to stand in the way of traditions? Besides, since the final stop of the day was barely two miles from the sister’s house, it wasn’t a problem.

  “I’ll see you,” Julia said, standing at the top of the stairs and pointing at me down her long arm, “on Saturday. To be completely honest, I hadn’t planned on coming, but missing an opportunity to buy Trock Farrand’s cookbook from the man himself would be ludicrous.”

  She exited stage right, and shut the door as she departed.

  “Go figure,” I told Eddie. “Turns out that some cook hawking a book about getting dishes dirty is a bigger draw than one of the bestselling thriller writers of the decade.”

  “Mrr.”

  “Well, sure,” I said, putting the bookmobile in drive and sailing away, “Trock’s a great guy and I suppose you do end up with something to eat before having to do the dishes, but at the end, isn’t food just fuel?”

  “Mrr!”

  “Well, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”

  “Mrr,” he said.

  But Eddie’s point of view was understandable. Last summer, Trock and Eddie had become fast friends and the cat treats the famed chef had concocted were the hit of my cat’s day.

  “Is the way to a cat’s heart through his stomach?” I asked.

  Eddie, however, was too busy licking his front paw and swiping the top of his head with it to answer the question.

  “Just as well,” I said. “You should never ask a question for which you aren’t ready to hear the answer.”

  That little aphorism had been one of my dad’s many phrases of wisdom, and it had been one that I hadn’t understood until the time I asked a high school boyfriend who he liked better, Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot. He’d said he wasn’t sure who they were, unless they were the new teachers, and our relationship drifted apart soon afterward.