Claw & Disorder

by Eileen Watkins

  “Chester’s kids have money,” I recalled. “Just depends on whether they’d be willing to pay for him to have the best care. From what I’ve seen and heard about them so far, I wouldn’t be optimistic.”

  Finished with our lunches, we ordered coffee—it was excellent at Chad’s—and Dawn filled me in on her news, such as it was. “Business has been slow this spring, so I’m brainstorming on how to improve that. Start filling orders by mail? Do more advertising or promotion? I’m stumped.”

  “Maybe there are some new target groups you could reach out to,” I suggested.

  She cupped her chin in her hand and squinted, as if thinking hard. “Is it too late for me to hold a summer solstice promotion? Those pagans and Wiccans do buy a lot of herbs.”

  I laughed. “You’d know more about that than I would!”

  As we paid our tab at the front counter, Dawn hinted that she should drop by the antiques shop so Philip could see her in the skirt.

  I startled her, I think, with my quick response to that suggestion. “Yes, let’s! I have some questions I want to ask him.”

  Philip Russell always decorated his front show window with some eye-catching arrangement of pieces, dating anywhere from the distant past to the 1980s, but following a certain theme. The concept for June appeared to be “Summer Fun.” In the large window with its deep inside sill, he had brought together an antique fishing pole, an old picnic basket, and a wicker rocker, all probably from the early 1900s. On top of a “beatnik”-themed beach towel from the 1950s rested a child’s pail with matching shovel and a boxy portable record player, both probably from the sixties.

  While Dawn and I paused on the sidewalk to admire the setup, these collectibles reminded me why I’d wanted to pay Philip a visit.

  Inside, we found him carefully wrapping up some pieces of Depression glass for a young couple, so we browsed until he was free. He instantly recognized the skirt he’d sold to Dawn and complimented her on how well she’d matched it to her top.

  “I got some more long skirts in last week, if you want to check them out.” He pointed toward the rear alcove, where he kept the vintage clothing.

  “Might as well have a look, right?” With a happy shrug, she headed in that direction.

  I considered this lucky, because I could talk to Philip alone. Quietly, I explained to him about Chester Tillman’s dilemma, and the types of things he’d been missing. “You carry a lot of video games. Are any of the old Nintendos really valuable? Would they be worth stealing?”

  The antiques dealer wore a guarded expression, though I hoped he could tell I wasn’t accusing him. “Some are more collectible than others. Ironically, if the story and characters are well-known, the game’s probably not worth very much. Certain games are rare—maybe they were sold mostly in Europe, they were limited editions or for some reason they never really caught on. But because of those elements, collectors really value them today.”

  When I pressed for specifics, Philip said the cartridge for a rare game might be worth several hundred dollars in itself, but in the box it could sell for a couple thousand.

  As a cautionary note, he added, “There has to be something special about a piece for it to command a high price.”

  Since I couldn’t tell him which games in particular Chester had lost—and I wondered if even Chester could remember—that didn’t help much. “How about jazz albums? He said he had a few from the Blue Note label that seemed to be gone from their carton, as if they’d been handpicked.”

  Philip pursed his lips in thought. “I’m not an expert on those—if someone brings one in, even I have to look it up online. But yes, in the very early days Blue Note recorded some of the jazz greats, the real innovators. Even the cover art for the albums was very avant-garde and creative. Again, if Tillman could remember exactly which ones went missing, you could check online auction sites for the current prices.”

  Meanwhile, Dawn had wandered back from the clothing alcove. She carried no major garments, but a long necklace of colorful beads. She still scanned the knickknacks in the front room of the shop, giving me time to ask Philip one more question.

  “And Chester said his wife had a doll that they bought for their daughter when she was small. I guess this would have been in the late eighties or early nineties.” I repeated the widower’s description of the doll’s appearance and costume. “He said his daughter never even played with it, but his wife kept it in her closet, still in the box. Wouldn’t that increase its value?”

  The dealer looked thoughtful again. “Probably. Did he know the brand?”

  “I don’t think he could remember, but he did say it was very good quality and cost them a bit.”

  Philip pulled out an iPad, a strange sight among all of the timeworn merchandise around him, and did some tapping and scrolling. “I’ll bet it was an American Girl. They started doing high-quality ethnic dolls right around that time.” Pretty soon he pulled up a photo of one in an elaborate Victorian dress.

  “That looks like what Chester described, all right,” I said.

  “American Girl has produced quite a few African-American dolls in historic costumes over the years. They came with booklets telling the stories of the characters. They’re only eighteen inches tall, but if your guy bought one of the first, and it was never really used . . . Yeah, that could be worth hundreds today.”

  Chester’s suspicions began to sound more and more credible. Someone certainly could have been raiding his “junk” with an eye to any collectibles worth fencing to an antiques shop or on the Internet.

  “Thanks so much,” I told Philip. “I may pass this information on to the Dalton police. They think Chester’s just a dotty old man.”

  As Dawn and I left Towne Antiques, I explained why I’d been quizzing the proprietor so intently.

  “Poor Chester,” she sympathized. “The police do need to take his reports seriously. Just because his house is cluttered, and he’s careless about leaving his door unlocked, that shouldn’t mean someone could just walk in there and get away with robbery.”

  Or, I thought, maybe even with murder.

  * * *

  I got back to my duties at the shop after that. But later on, during a post-grooming coffee break, I phoned Bonelli.

  She also was in her office and had a few minutes free to talk. She told me she’d had a conversation with Chief Eddie Hill of the Dalton PD. When she’d offered to “assist” his department by taking a second look at the Bernice Tillman case, Hill had assured her that it would be a waste of time.

  “On the other hand,” Bonelli said, “the fact that he cares so little about her death could actually work in my favor. His last words to me were, ‘If you think there’s something more to the case that we missed, Detective, then be my guest. Knock yourself out!’”

  “Not very respectful,” I observed.

  “No, but technically he gave me permission to investigate. So I hope to get over to Chester’s this afternoon, have a look around and ask him a few questions.”

  “That’s great, thank you!” With Bonelli on the case, we might start getting some real answers. “I also found out some stuff today, at the antiques shop, that might help.”

  I explained about the latest items Chester claimed were missing from his home, and what Philip Russell had told me about their possible value.

  “Interesting,” she said. “It seems like two people we can definitely rule out are his children. They’d have no reason to sneak stuff out of the house, since they stood to inherit everything.”

  “You’re right. Chester said he was actually keeping some of the video games for his son, all these years, and the doll for his daughter. If they’d shown the slightest interest, he’d probably have insisted they take those things home with them.”

  “You don’t think that might have happened, and Chester just forgot?” Bonelli wondered.

  “Sarah said both James and Sylvia just stopped by the house for a few minutes and turned up their noses at the mess.
As far as she could see, they left empty-handed.”

  “Maybe they would have felt differently if they knew how much their old toys might be worth. We have their contact information, so I can give each of them a call. Anyhow, I’ll do some more digging.”

  “Thanks so much.” Sensing the detective was about to hang up, I squeezed in one more question. “Was there some kind of to-do at the Fosters’ house last night?” I explained what Nick had said, about seeing a police cruiser headed toward the place just after he’d left.

  “We did send a unit to a domestic disturbance around eight thirty p.m.,” she confirmed. “Not so unusual, except most of the time those calls come from the seedier part of town.”

  “Nick said Gillian was blaming her husband for pulling that prank at their reception last week.”

  “According to the officers, she was making a lot of accusations, but didn’t have any proof. Our guys just tried to calm everyone down, and said by the time they left things seemed okay. But if I were your friend Nick, I’d steer clear of that household. He can’t need the work that badly.”

  I chuckled. “He’s already decided that on his own. Well, the Fosters have put up with each other for what, seventeen years so far? Long enough, at least, to have a daughter that age. They should be able to work out their issues eventually.”

  “Unless the wife is really going off the rails this time,” Bonelli said soberly. “Now, Cassie, much as I’ve enjoyed our gossip session . . . ”

  “Yes, I’m sure you have other cases to get back to. But thanks for the updates.”

  I also returned to my work. The owner of Pepper, a silver Ocicat, would be returning for him that afternoon. While he was being boarded, Pepper’s beautiful spotted coat did not really need grooming, but his master had requested that we trim his nails and add soft caps to them. The young man had tried to do this himself, without success, so it was up to me and Sarah.

  Normally I could trim a cat’s claws myself, but after handling Pepper a few times during his stay, I could see it would be a two-person job. He was a friendly cat until you touched his paws—then he declared war. He hissed, growled, twisted himself every which way, and threatened to bite, though so far he’d never followed through on that.

  I misted the grooming studio with an herbal spray that supposedly calmed fractious cats, and managed to get Pepper into a padded grooming harness that also had a soothing effect. Sarah and I both wore rubber gloves. While she held his body, I took on the riskier job of gently squeezing each paw to expose the nails, and clipping each as short as possible without exposing the “quick,” or the vein that ran down into the nail.

  Though Pepper grumbled under his breath, this worked okay for his front feet. When Sarah carefully laid him on his side and I dealt with his hind feet, though, his fighting spirit revived. Luckily, an Ocicat isn’t a large breed—a blend of Siamese and Abyssinian genes—so the two of us could hold him in place. Still, I never liked to subdue a cat by force, because it stressed them so much.

  I got the hind feet clipped, and I had purchased a set of the nail tips, but started to have second thoughts about adding them. Maybe when the owner came, I’d suggest just a bimonthly clipping instead, and advise him on teaching Pepper to use scratching posts as a better way to spare the furniture.

  Sarah and I had to concentrate so intently during the session, we didn’t have a chance to chat as we normally do while grooming a cat. After we put Pepper in his condo and took a much-needed coffee break, though, I told her the latest news about both the Foster and Tillman cases.

  “Sounds like our friend Gillian doesn’t believe her husband is innocent until proven guilty,” Sarah concluded with a twinkle in her eye.

  “I wanted to ask if Whitney told the cops she doctored the porridge,” I said. “But Bonelli didn’t mention it, and I didn’t want to be the one to bring it up. Even if the daughter lied to take the heat off her father, it could still open a can of worms. The Dugans could sue them for Adele’s hospital costs, pain and suffering, and who knows what.” With a paralegal for a mother, I’d heard about such cases.

  “Well, you got that information from Nick, so it’s only hearsay. At least nobody died as a result. Might as well step back now, and let the Fighting Fosters work out their own problems.”

  Sarah took more of a personal interest in Chester Tillman’s case and was also encouraged to hear that Bonelli would be looking into it.

  “Y’know, yesterday after church, Robin reminded me about something,” she said. “A couple of the Dalton cops got in trouble, a few years back, for pulling some funny stuff on the job. They stopped a driver who was slightly drunk, made him step out and do the sobriety test. I guess he wasn’t that impaired, so the cops sent him off with a warning. But the next day, the guy went back to the police station claiming that he’d had an iPod on the passenger seat that went missing.”

  I set my empty mug back on the small table next to the coffeemaker, to be rinsed later in the studio sink. “During the traffic stop?”

  Sarah nodded. “He swore that while the one cop was testing him, the other guy must have swiped the iPod. Of course both of them denied it, saying he was so drunk he’d probably lost it somewhere, and he should just be glad they didn’t arrest him. The driver complained to their captain, too, but he backed his guys up.”

  “That’s Hill. Even Bonelli doesn’t think much of him.” This story opened up a whole new field of possibilities. Would the Dalton cops have known that Chester left his house open at night? But even if one of them was capable of stealing from a homeowner, would he sink so low as to smother an elderly woman to death?

  Possibly. If she woke up, saw his face, and he thought she might recognize and report him.

  We were winding up our break when an electronic chime told us someone had come in the shop’s door. Sarah offered to go up front, while I checked to see if Pepper had settled down by now.

  The Ocicat seemed to have recovered from his ordeal, but my assistant returned from the sales area wearing a slight frown. “So much for my advice that you should stay out of the Fosters’ business.”

  “Why, what’s wrong?”

  “Donald Foster is out there with Leya. He wants to board her again . . . and they both seem kind of upset.”

  Chapter 14

  Compared to the times I’d seen him before, at his house, Donald Foster looked as if he’d aged ten years. His hair and his complexion both seemed a shade grayer. Even so, he put on a good-natured smile when I stepped into the front sales area of my shop.

  Leya’s hard-sided beige carrier already rested on the counter, agitated meows coming from inside. I remembered that when I’d picked the cat up at her home, and even when I’d returned her, she’d stayed calm and quiet.

  “Bet you didn’t think you’d see us again so soon!” Donald tried to joke.

  “I certainly don’t mind,” I told him, “but is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. I just think we should leave Leya with you until we’ve finished work on our cellar. The noise seems to be bothering her, and she’d be better off in a quieter environment.”

  Sarah had slipped away into the adjoining playroom, and through the screen I saw her waving a wand toy at another of our boarders.

  I opened the carrier to have a look at Leya. Usually I check a cat over physically only on its first visit, but because the Himalayan had been so vocal since her arrival, I wanted to be sure she didn’t have any new problems. Sure enough, I found a bald patch on her tail and another on a hind leg.

  When Donald noticed me examining these, he shifted from one foot to the other. “Yeah, those skin problems are new. I don’t know if something got into the air, with all the construction, that she’s allergic to . . .”

  When I let go of the fluffy cat, she immediately twisted around to lick to her tail. I pointed this out to Donald. “Or she could be overgrooming those areas. That’s a common reaction to stress.”

  He nodded. “I guess that would make
sense. Like I said, it’s been noisy, with people traipsing in and out of the house and up and down the cellar stairs. Leya doesn’t go outside, so we’ve had to shut her up in the guest room more than usual, but I’m sure she can still hear all the activity.”

  Well did I recall that creepy guest room. If I was shut up in there all day, I’d probably start pulling my hair out, too.

  “I’m sure it’s been stressful for everyone,” I said, trying to keep my tone casual. “Nick Janos was helping you with that project, wasn’t he?”

  Donald sank onto one of the tall stools on the customers’ side of the counter, letting down his guard. With another tight smile, he told me, “I think he’s given up on us.”

  “He did say you and Gillian were having some disagreements, and it was making him uncomfortable.”

  Donald ran a hand over his short, combed-back hair. “She always does this. She takes on these very challenging projects and then expects everything to go perfectly. Years ago, when we started, I had no problem with it. I like planning the renovations and even doing some of the work myself. But if there’s a delay, or something doesn’t turn out exactly as expected, I can roll with that. Somehow, Gillian just can’t.”

  I stroked Leya’s vanilla coat. Unlike most of my boarders, she seemed calmer and happier now, away from her home. “I’m sure you can’t predict or control everything in a whole house renovation.”

  Donald let out a brief snort. “Or in life!” Before I could think of a response to that, he slid off the stool, straightened, and pulled a checkbook from his back pocket. “Anyhow, I’m sure we’ll get things under control in another week or two. But since I don’t know how long it will be, Cassie, how about I give you twice the usual deposit?”

  I wasn’t going to turn down that offer, especially since having Leya back on the premises might once again involve me in the Fosters’ problems. Accepting the check, I asked him, “How’s Whitney getting along?”