by Molly Macrae
Clod nodded and sidestepped Ardis to study the door and frame.
“What about your neighbor across the river?” I asked when Debbie jammed the keys back in her pocket and didn’t say anything else. “Remember? You said she was going to drop off the spare when we were locked out on Monday. And, oh, gosh, in all the confusion, maybe she left it for you, but you forgot to look for it, and then Pen found it.”
I joined Clod at the door. “I don’t see any gouges or scratches, so it probably wasn’t jimmied. So maybe she did have the key. Unless she had lockpicks. Or can you really open a door like this by slipping a credit card in there? I’ve always wanted to try that. Would you be able to tell if someone did that? Is that officially called loiding, or is that only in books? But you know, Debbie”—I turned back to her—“if Pen found the key and she still has it, you should probably get your locks changed.” Maybe I was overexcited. I wasn’t usually such a chatterbox. I moved back and stood next to Ardis. She patted my shoulder and mouthed, “Good job.”
“Thank you,” Clod said. Whether he was thanking me for offering my insights or for closing my mouth and stepping out of the way, I couldn’t tell.
“Adrenaline,” I said, feeling compelled to apologize. “Caffeine and sugar, too. Too much cake and tea too late in the day. Mind if I run back to the house?”
“If you can wait another minute or two, I’d like to clear up a couple of quick things and then we can all be on our way,” Clod said.
“Hmm. Okay.”
“Ms. Keith,” he said, turning to Debbie, “I take it you did find the spare key? And you let yourself in and retrieved the keys now in your pocket?”
“Yes.”
“Did you return the spare key to your neighbor?”
“Um.”
“You didn’t. You found a hiding place for it here.”
She nodded.
“If it’s gone, Ms. Rutledge is right and you should get your locks changed. Do you know what this woman was looking for?”
Debbie shrugged and bent to rub Bill’s ears. I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she was tired or depressed by then, or overwhelmed, but if I’d had training in police interview techniques, I might have thought she was hiding something. I looked at Clod. He watched her, his head tilted very slightly. If I’d had training in Clod interpretation techniques, I would have said he thought she was hiding something, too.
“Ms. Keith? Any ideas?”
Debbie straightened and looked Clod in the eye. “No.”
I wanted to jump in at that point and ask Clod if he had any ideas. I wanted to find out what the two of them had discussed in the study. And I wanted to know why Debbie’s attitude toward Clod had changed. Why was she looking at him like a sheepdog facing down a threat instead of like a mooncalf the way she had earlier in the week?
Lucky me, though. I didn’t need to ask about their conversation in the study because I had my secret weapon. My personal surveillance system—my fly on the wall in the form of a nosy ghost in the attic—would fill me in later.
Clod studied the three of us, settling his gaze on me. I did my best to keep any secret smiles concerning secret surveillance systems off my face. Also not to stare at the twitch he seemed to have developed around his left eye. He started to open his mouth, maybe to finish clearing up his couple of things by asking me another question or two. But he’d missed his chance to be quick—I was almost beyond desperate. I shoved him aside and scampered for the house.
Chapter 17
Ernestine, Thea, and Mel all called me that night. Each was anxious for a report on our visit with Debbie, though each expressed a different reason for her concern. Ernestine worried that Debbie had no ready shoulder to cry on if she was still upset and needed one. She also wondered if we’d found out what exactly had prompted Debbie’s tears that afternoon.
“Was it because of the last few questions you wrote on the whiteboard, do you think? Or was she already crying when she came banging into the room? That’s one of those details my sorry old eyes miss.”
“I think she was already upset. I don’t know if she was already crying.”
“You should write everything down that happened tonight,” Ernestine said. “Any new questions, too.”
Wise Ernestine. When Thea called, I’d located a mostly empty spiral notebook and was absorbed in re-creating a timeline of the events since we’d walked out into that field. I could transfer everything to my laptop later, but for now I liked the idea of using one of Granny’s notebooks the way she had to keep track of ideas and to map out a project. Thea’s interruption was brief. She said she wanted to be sure Debbie wasn’t angry with any of us, that she didn’t want the equilibrium of Friday Fast and Furious disturbed, or the pleasant atmosphere in the shop.
“I know what a feud can do to an organization,” she said. “You might as well take a piece of muslin in both your hands and give it a good rip.”
“She was angry when Ardis and I left her, but at Pen Ledford, not us. Maybe at Deputy Dunbar, too.”
“Okay. Good.”
After I hung up, I found myself chewing on the end of my pencil and wondering if I was right about the focus of Debbie’s anger. Pencil chewing was an old cogitating habit I didn’t like and thought I’d broken myself of during the last semester of graduate school. Maybe I just hadn’t done much deep thinking since then. I wiped the pencil—then went and washed it; then I made a few notes about anger and Pen Ledford.
It was getting late by the time Mel called. She said she’d woken up and couldn’t resettle until she knew how the tunnel of fudge cake turned out.
“You should be arrested for supplying stuff like that,” I said. “It was the only thing besides her dog that made Debbie smile.”
“That’s all I need to know, then.”
“You don’t want to hear about the rest of the evening?”
“No need. Not if you all were able to eat, enjoy, and remember the cake. Where cake trumps, hope lives. I’ll hear the rest tomorrow.” Mel disappeared into a yawn and disconnected. I suddenly wished I had another piece of that cake.
Deputy Dunbar had essentially sent us packing, holding a stare-down with Ardis until she finally blinked. She’d slammed her way back into my poor old car to show him how she felt. He’d waited and watched until we drove away, as though he didn’t trust us to leave. Why that mattered so much to him I couldn’t imagine. Debbie had stood next to Dunbar, unsmiling. But she’d thanked us for coming and she’d said, “See you at the Cat tomorrow.”
Sweet Ernestine called with one last question while I was brushing my teeth. “Tell me honestly what you think, Kath. With all the burglars and murderers running around loose out there at the farm, don’t you think it might be a good idea for me to drive on out so Debbie has someone to keep her company overnight? Really, it wouldn’t be any trouble.”
“That is so thoughtful, Ernestine.” I was glad I didn’t have to try to lie. It was thoughtful. It just wasn’t in the best interests of anyone else on the road. “Deputy Dunbar was going to arrange for Debbie’s cousin to go out there again. The one who’s also a deputy.”
“That’s all right, then,” Ernestine said.
“I think so.” Besides, she had Bill and her shotgun. Maybe she’d loaded it after Clod left.
My brain certainly felt loaded. Overloaded. Between the excitement at Debbie’s, the string of debriefing phone calls, the bucket of tea that I’d consumed too late in the day, and my tendency to analyze, guess, overanalyze, and second-guess any given situation, it wasn’t a night made for restful sleep. Burying my head under my pillow didn’t fool any of my demons, either. Problems and possibilities paraded back and forth between my ears. Solutions posed themselves, then immediately prompted more questions, and then those questions turned around and flipped every solution on its head.
Sometime around four I woke with a start, surprised I’d been asleep at all. Nothing going on in my head at that point made any sense, an
d I knew I must have been dreaming and fallen into a nightmare. I dragged myself out of bed and went to find the notebook and try to pull my snarled thoughts into some kind of order. The notebook was on the kitchen table where I’d left it, and I sat down there to capture on paper the loose ends of three particular thoughts—three actions, three possible lines of inquiry the posse could take.
But the atmosphere in the kitchen—the early hour, the pool of dim light spilling in from the dining room giving me just enough to read or write by—the scene only needed…I got up and tossed a few ice cubes in a tumbler, splashed in a couple of fingers of water from the faucet, and sat back down. Put my feet up on the table, tilted the chair on its back legs. I was slaphappy by then and had no trouble picturing a trench coat instead of my pajamas and a slug of whiskey in place of the water. If only I knew the right private eye lingo and had a fedora riding low on my forehead. At least I had the dame part covered. There were plenty of dames in the picture…but my mind was wandering. Focus, focus, focus. There were three things to write in the notebook.
One: Find out more about Eric Lyle, Pen, and her pal Sylvia. It would take some digging and a few phone calls. It was a job for someone with research skills and ready resources—it was a job for Thea the Loud Librarian. Good. She’d love it.
Two: There was bound to be more gossip buzzing around out there about Will and Shannon. We’d heard some at the Weaver’s Cat and should listen for more, but Mel’s café might as well be dubbed the crossroads of Blue Plum. She saw and talked to—and overheard—a broad cross section of people. She could be our eyes and ears. Good. She’d love it.
And the historical trust potluck. How could I forget that? I’d never been to one, but from what Granny used to say, I could expect hot dishes, hot gossip, and hot tempers. Apparently members of the trust—civic-minded souls devoted to preserving Blue Plum’s history and promoting its future—weren’t always in accord. Even over simple decisions like choosing what color hollyhocks to plant behind the courthouse. Granny had considered the annual meeting one of the social and entertainment highlights of the year. Good. Who wouldn’t love that?
What number was I up to?
Four: Debrief Geneva. We needed to know what Debbie and Clod had talked about. It was something that upset her enough that she ran from the study. She’d also stopped gazing at Clod with moony eyes and telling me he was cute or funny, but that was a development that might be good, bad, or merely coincidental because she’d come to her senses, as anyone might who knew and spent any amount of time with Clod.
So where did that leave us? We’d soothed Debbie with the tunnel of fudge, but the full frontal assault we’d planned hadn’t happened because of Pen. How annoying. So was that a waste of a good assault cake? Or would the soothing effect linger and could Ardis and I just come right out and ask Debbie what was going on, ask her if she was holding something back, if something had changed since she’d asked me to investigate? After all, we did work together. We were friends. And open, honest communication should be the way to confront problems among friends. If there were problems. And if one didn’t have a ghost up one’s sleeve. If…But…
But the pencil and paper had done their jobs. I was nodding off. The numbered list before me was like a blanket thrown over the smoldering remains of my nightmare. I could go back to bed. A plan was in place. Action and forward movement could continue.
Except…a blanket on a smoldering fire? Was that really such a good idea? A blanket could smoke, catch fire, combust…
With that disturbing picture in my head, I was almost afraid to crawl back into bed. I did anyway and gave myself up to sleep and dreamed of a wet blanket in the shape of a damp, dismal ghost wearing a fedora.
The alarm rang a few hours later, too soon for my sleep-deprived brain, but the sunshine let me shrug off my lingering worries. After tucking a bowl of oatmeal under my belt—Granny’s opening salvo guaranteed to invigorate any morning—I took a brisk walk up and down several hills, then headed for the Cat to start the day, set my plans in motion, and find out what Geneva had heard.
Only to discover my personal surveillance system was on the fritz. My ghost was ailing.
Chapter 18
I wasn’t sure a ghost could take ill, but Geneva definitely was not her normal miserable self. When I ran up the back stairs to drop my purse in the study before opening the shop for the day, she was crouched in the window seat, just as she’d been the previous afternoon. She didn’t answer when I said hi. She was unmoving and unmoaning.
“Look what I made, Geneva.” I held up the chain of paper ghosts I’d cut. I’d taken a pencil and given them round eyes and mouths like cartoon ghosts.
She didn’t say anything or make any kind of noise, pitiful or dismissive or otherwise. Even a shriek or a wail would have been a heartening improvement. But there was no riffle in her foggy shape to show she’d even looked. I stood the paper ghosts on the desk. Maybe she’d catch sight of them later.
I hadn’t known her for many months, but I thought I’d experienced her full range of moods and moping. She’d sniveled and cried, complained and gone into silly snits, blustered and stormed. She’d disappeared for a few days at one point and I’d been surprised by how much I missed her. But even then she’d reappeared, doing what I took to be a Greta Garbo imitation by saying she’d only wanted to be alone. She didn’t do a good Garbo, but at least she’d come back. This bleak frame of mind she’d slipped into was different and it worried me.
“We had kind of an exciting thing happen last night,” I said. “Debbie and I caught a prowler out at her place.”
No flicker of interest.
“It was one of those two women who were in the shop that morning the twins came in with Angela—the morning of the Unfortunate Incident of the Twin Pencil Skirts. Do you remember?”
No snort of laughter or derision. No comment about broad beams.
“In fact, the twins followed those two out of the shop.” Rats, I should talk to Shirley and Mercy. Find out what they’d seen or heard. I couldn’t bring myself to make a note of that, though. Besides, if I asked, then they’d know I was interested in Pen and Sylvia, and somehow that didn’t seem like a good idea. They had a knack for collecting information. It was getting the information back out of them in one piece that was the trick. That and keeping personal information out of their reach in the first place. Generally speaking, the less the twins knew or were involved in my business, the better I liked it.
I could ask one of the posse to tackle the Spiveys. But in my professional life I’d never liked passing off the nastier preservation problems to colleagues if I wasn’t willing to poke around at them myself. Besides, anyone else asking the Spiveys anything about Sylvia and Pen would start questions turning in the Spivey collective mind and might put them on to the fact that there was a posse—inklings of which they already had. If its existence was confirmed, they would want to join—by hook or by crook or conniving. And that was out of the question.
So on to the question I really wanted to ask. “Geneva, I’ve been dying to know…” That was unfortunate phrasing, but she didn’t react so I stumbled on. “When Deputy Dunbar and Debbie were up here yesterday afternoon, after I left and he shut the door, what did they talk about? Was he asking her questions or did he tell her something that upset her?”
No answer.
“Because I think it was something significant. A vital clue.” Adding a touch of melodrama couldn’t hurt. “And think about it—if you tell me what you heard, you might be the one who cracks the case. You’ll be Geneva the Ace Detective.” I framed those words with my hands and held them up so she could admire her accomplishment.
Nothing. But was there nothing because she couldn’t remember or because she’d sunken into a virtually catatonic state?
Speaking of cats—the cat came into the study, having enjoyed the breakfast I’d tipped into his bowl in the kitchen. He brushed against my leg, then jumped to the corner of the desk nearest the
window seat and blinked at me. He turned and blinked at Geneva, then tucked himself into a handsome meatloaf shape and started his motor. Geneva gave no sign she knew he was there. Then I did something against my better judgment.
“Sergeant Friday,” I said, addressing the cat, but at the same time checking for a reaction from Geneva out of the corner of my eye. There wasn’t any. “I hope you know I really don’t want to call you Sergeant Friday. Or Dirty Harry.” The cat continued to purr and lifted his chin for me to rub. He didn’t care what I called him. Geneva remained a statue. “Friday, you seem comfortable enough with ghosts. What do you know about them? What does it mean when one is here but not here at the same time? That sounds like a riddle, doesn’t it? I don’t like riddles, Friday. They make me anxious. I’m worried about our friend here.”
The cat tipped his head and looked at me with half-closed eyes.
“Okay,” I admitted. “You’re right. I’m anxious and I’m worried and I’m also edging toward angry for no good reason I can think of. But how am I supposed to figure out what’s wrong if she won’t talk to me?”
There was no change in Geneva. The cat went on purring. His purr was a wonderful noise I still marveled to hear after all the years of being hissed at or ignored by Granny’s cats. Unfortunately, although the text of his purr sounded warm and fuzzy, it was wordless and unenlightening. Cats and ghosts. Two of a kind. There was no counting on either one of them to solve my problems for me.
“Well,” I said, trying not to let all the miff and concern I felt color that one word, “time to open the shop. You’re both welcome to come along if you want. Otherwise I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” No reaction from Geneva. I sighed. “Okay. I’ll see you later.”
The cat blinked, possibly thinking I’d left off rubbing his chin too soon. But he took my dereliction with his usual grace, deciding the interruption was a good time to relocate for a cozier nap on the cushion in the window seat. He yawned and stood, then shivered his tail and made the leap. At the last minute his tail flicked the chain of paper ghosts. The ghosts tipped and fell so they lay on their backs, their blank eyes staring up at the ceiling.