“Absolutely not,” said Dawn, though I heard a smile in her voice. “If he’s not interested.”
“Of course he’s not interested!”
“I know, I’m just yanking your chain.” I heard the bell over her shop door ring, and she lowered her voice. “I’d better go, now—I may actually have a customer. We’ll talk again soon.”
Back up front, Sarah had just hung up from a phone call of her own. “Robin says Chester’s all excited,” she told me. “He thinks he has proof that somebody got into his house last night. He claims he set a trap for the guy, and it worked.”
“Does she have any idea what he’s talking about?” I asked.
“He wouldn’t tell her, said she needed to see for herself. She promised to come to his place around three thirty, but she’s worried about what she’ll find.”
I could see Sarah also was troubled. “Maybe she should ask the cops to swing by, too, just in case.”
My assistant frowned. “The Dalton police have been brushing off Chester’s complaints from the beginning and already have him labeled as a troublemaker. I guess Robin wants to make sure there’s really something to his story before she calls them again. I could try to persuade her, though . . .”
I agreed that might be a good idea. “Sarah, if you want to take off early and go help her out, it’s okay with me. We haven’t got any more grooming jobs today, just one more cat to turn out and the evening feeding. I can handle all that myself.”
She looked apologetic. “Are you sure? It’s just that Robin said Chester sounded very worked up, and I know folks with dementia can sometimes be hard to handle. She’s younger and stronger than me, and she does have nursing experience. Still, two of us might do better than just one.”
“Go!” I told her. “I have to pick up Mango after work and bring him home, but after that maybe I’ll pop over to see how you guys are making out.”
* * *
My feisty feline friend already had shaken off most of the sedation when I picked him up at the Chadwick Veterinary Clinic, and of course his only “procedure” had been routine blood work. It would take another day or two for the results. So I didn’t feel there was any risk in leaving him in my apartment while I drove to Chester’s place. I confined Mango to my bedroom, though, because if his buddies caught a whiff of that medicinal smell on his fur, they might squabble with him. It’s a common problem, though nobody’s ever figured out if cats actually don’t recognize a feline friend until that odor has worn off.
Around five thirty, I found a lineup of cars in front of Chester’s homely little ranch house—Sarah’s Camry sedan, Robin’s dark gray Ford Fusion, and a white police cruiser bearing the Dalton town seal. I guessed someone had managed to convince the cops that Chester’s “evidence” was worth a look, after all.
The front door stood ajar, but I knocked on the jamb, anyway, and Sarah let me in. “The police actually came?” I whispered to her.
“One, anyhow.” She accompanied me to the kitchen, where a rangy man stood talking to Chester and Robin. The cop wore navy pants, a lighter blue shirt and a peaked cap with the same official seal as his patrol car.
Not wanting to interrupt, I circled around until I could view the “crime scene” for myself. The floor just inside the back door looked as if someone had spilled a full two-pound bag of white rice. Some grains were pushed back an angle, as if the door had been opened inward.
Meanwhile Robin noticed my presence and introduced me to Officer Marty Brewer. The tall, thin policeman shook my hand with a smile that spanned the width of his narrow face. He gave off a boyish vibe, though a few creases around his eyes suggested he might be nearing forty.
“Is Chester right?” I asked him straight out. “Did someone get into his house last night?”
Brewer cocked his head and squinted in skepticism. “More like his imagination is running away with him, as usual.”
The older man stepped forward and spoke for himself. “Cassie will believe me!” He stabbed his arthritic finger toward an area deeper into the kitchen. “Look there—footprints! I left the door unlocked last night. He sneaked in, didn’t see the rice and walked on it. Then maybe he realized I’d set a trap, got scared and snuck back out again!”
I could detect some long, oval outlines where the white grains had been crushed or scuffed aside. Though they could have been made by shoes, they weren’t enough to prove a stranger had entered the house, and certainly not enough to identify that person. It would have taken mud, or at least soft dirt, to capture a real impression of a sole.
“Did you hear someone come in?” I asked Chester.
He frowned. “Naw, I tried my damndest to stay awake, but I couldn’t. I thought I would still hear if someone crunched on the rice. But my ears aren’t that great anymore, either, and I guess I was too deep asleep. I could kick myself!”
Robin laughed, with a nervous edge. “If somebody came in here last night, thank God you didn’t wake up. You’d probably have picked a fight with him and gotten yourself killed!”
“Maybe you’re right,” Chester conceded. “’Specially if it was the same guy who smothered Bernie.”
Brewer scanned the ceiling for heavenly help. “Not that again! Chester, no one smothered your wife except those damn cats of hers. Glad you at least got rid of some of them.”
I reflected on the scene for a minute, then asked the cop, “Can you get somebody to check for fingerprints on the back doorknob?”
He gave his head a half shake. “We checked after the wife died. No prints then except hers and his.”
Of course, this was an entirely new situation, but Brewer didn’t seem to consider it worth another visit by the fingerprint guy.
Chester still fumed about having slept through the supposed nighttime intrusion. “This mighta been the same guy who killed Bernice. Boy, I wish I’d stayed awake. I coulda used one of her old cast-iron skillets and brained him!”
Brewer planted his hands on his hips and regarded the homeowner as if he were a small child. “Chester, how do you know you didn’t wake up sometime during the night? And went to check the door, and made those footprints yourself ?”
The older man looked rattled for a second, then scoffed. “I’d know, I’d remember. I’m not crazy!”
Robin put a hand on Chester’s arm to soothe his wounded ego. “Instead of spilling rice all over your kitchen, why don’t you get some good locks and an actual alarm? I’ll gladly buy them for you.”
Though he seemed to consider this, he protested, “But then I’ll never know.”
“Know what?” Sarah asked gently.
“Who killed Bernice. And who’s been stealing our stuff... is still stealing it.”
Brewer’s shoulders rose and fell in a deep sigh. “Mr. Tillman, nobody’s taking your stuff. Nobody wants any of this old junk! You should just have it hauled away. Dan’s even offered to do that for you.” The cop jerked his head backward. “You could just chuck it all in one of his Dumpsters.”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Dan Pressley. He owns the company that’s working on that house down the road.”
I wondered how the house flipper would know so much about Chester’s hoarding habits. But it was a small town, and I guessed cops and neighbors would talk about such things. Especially since there had been a death in the home.
Brewer had started out of the kitchen toward the front hall, when Sarah asked him, “So, it’s okay if I sweep up all of this rice?”
“Someone better,” he told her with a hard laugh. “That’s slippery footing. Wouldn’t want Chester to break his neck on his own ‘trap.’” As Robin and I followed him to the door, Brewer dropped his voice a little. “Poor old guy. It’s not really safe for him to be alone here at night. Hasn’t he got kids, somebody he could move in with?”
Robin explained that Chester’s grown children lived at a distance, and they had talked about moving him to an assisted living home. “The nicest one around here is Moun
tainview,” she said, “and it even has a dementia wing. But I think it’s a little pricey. I don’t know whether that’s an issue for them.”
Brewer scratched his scalp under the uniform cap. “Y’know, Dan probably would buy this place from him at a fair price. Might make it easier for Chester to afford the move.”
“I’ll mention that to his son,” Robin said. “James heads up a construction company, himself.”
The cop nodded with some enthusiasm. “That house they’re working on started out just like this one, a run-down ranch from the nineteen seventies. Gonna be terrific, though, when they’re done. Ought to bring up the property values in the whole neighborhood.”
“Dalton sure could use more of that,” Robin admitted.
As Brewer paused by the front door, sounds of vigorous sweeping from the kitchen reached our ears. He frowned and told Robin, “If you do get a good lock for that door, you might want to skip the alarm. Between Chester and his cats, it’ll probably be going off at all hours, and we haven’t got enough manpower to deal with that.”
After Brewer drove away, Robin and I rejoined Sarah in the kitchen. I didn’t see Chester and asked where he’d gone.
“Into his bedroom.” Sarah dumped the last dustpan full of rice into the trash. “To sulk, I guess.”
Robin told her what Brewer had suggested, about selling his house to help pay for the upscale assisted living facility.
“That might be a good plan,” Sarah agreed. “And as long as Chester has help, there’s really no reason why he can’t go on living here until Mountainview has an opening. The biggest problem is this obsession of his, about someone breaking in.”
“Of course,” I reminded her, “if someone really is breaking in, that’s an even bigger problem.”
I knocked on the closed door of his room, and Chester mumbled that I could come in. He sat on the foot of his bed, and did seem to be brooding over the fact that the cop had not taken his “evidence” seriously.
This visit, I had remembered to bring a small notepad with me, and pulled it from my purse. “Chester, can you tell me everything you noticed missing around the time your wife . . . died, and since then? Be as specific as you can.”
I interviewed him this way for about twenty minutes, which he told me was far more than the police ever had done. Chester’s recall impressed me—obviously, he’d given the missing items a lot of thought—and again I reflected that he wasn’t as addled as some people believed.
He also seemed to appreciate my effort to catalog his losses. “You really think you might be able to get some of my stuff back? Or at least to find out who took it?”
“I can’t promise anything, but it’s possible. With computers today, there are all kinds of ways to search.”
Sarah knew I’d brought Mango to the clinic, and after I’d finished with Chester, she asked how my tabby was doing.
“He seemed pretty good, no aftereffects from being knocked out,” I told her. “But he’s stuck by himself in my room, so I still don’t want to leave him alone too long.”
“Go home, then,” she told me. “Robin and I are going to hang around a little longer and make Chester some supper.”
I said my goodbyes and headed out to my car. It was about six twenty, but the day was still warm and the sun still high in the sky. The slam of a vehicle door drew my attention toward Bob Smiley’s house. I saw him exit his old red truck, a few tools visible in the flatbed, probably after a long day of working for the neighborhood contractor. His posture weary, Bob trudged up the flagstone path to his front door.
Maybe because I was watching him from the back, his closely shaved nape and army-green T-shirt struck a familiar note with me, especially combined with his rather discouraged-looking gait. I realized he very well might have been the man Dawn and I had run into—literally—when he was leaving the antiques store a few weeks ago.
The one Philip said had tried to sell him some ’80s video games.
Chapter 18
Saturday morning, after Sarah and I had done the initial cleanup of the condos and feeding of the boarders, I retreated to the grooming studio with my laptop. For about twenty minutes, I searched online auction sites for objects that might have been pilfered from Chester Tillman’s house. I found a bewildering amount of memorabilia for sale online, but nothing correlated closely with any of the items on the list I’d handwritten at Chester’s place, and typed out for legibility the night before. I didn’t want to spend too much time on the quest during work hours, leaving Sarah to staff the counter by herself.
Just as I was giving up on this project, I got a call on my cell from Becky. A visitor to FOCA the previous week had expressed some interest in adopting Autumn, and even sounded perfectly willing to deal with her health issues.
“She’s coming back for a second visit Monday,” Becky told me, “and I’d like Autumn to look her absolute best. Could you possibly stop by tomorrow and work your magic on that heavy coat of hers? I’ll help you, naturally!”
The next day, of course, was Sunday, when both my shop and FOCA would usually be closed. Also, I had made plans with Mark for the afternoon, but grooming one cat wouldn’t take that long. I agreed to meet Becky at the shelter around ten a.m.
While on the phone, I’d heard someone come in the shop’s front door, and as I pocketed my phone, raised voices reached me from the sales area. I left the studio and headed out to the playroom, where I met up with Sarah.
“What’s up?” I asked her.
“Gillian Foster is here, and she wants Leya.”
That was a surprise. I accompanied my assistant back to the sales counter, where Gillian wheeled upon me.
If I’d been startled by the recent changes in her husband’s appearance, I was even more alarmed by Gillian’s. She looked thinner, the rather aristocratic bone structure of her face now verging on haggard. Her usually sharp, hawklike hazel eyes had taken on a wilder cast. She wore makeup but, horror of horrors, she’d actually put her coral lipstick on crooked.
She seemed to struggle to control herself and spoke in a frosty tone. “I understand that my husband brought our cat here earlier this week without my knowledge. I’ve come to take her back. Your assistant”—she shot a glance at Sarah—“would not release her without your say-so, which I guess I can understand. But please tell her to bring Leya out here immediately.”
The way Gillian was acting, I could easily believe the things Whitney had told me, about her treating the cat roughly these days. It wouldn’t be the first case I’d heard of where someone upset with another member of the family, or with a romantic partner, took out their anger on a pet.
She tried to interpret my hesitation. “I’ll pay you for the days she’s been boarding here, of course.”
I needed to stall, and this gave me the perfect opening. “That won’t be necessary. Your husband prepaid, enough for Leya to stay here for at least another month.”
That seemed to startle Gillian. “Well, no matter. He shouldn’t have brought her here in the first place, and I want her back, now.”
Sarah glanced at me nervously, and I knew we both were dreading the outcome if we complied.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” I said. “Donald brought the cat here and paid in advance for her upkeep. That makes him my client. Legally, it wouldn’t be right for me to hand her over to anyone else.”
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t hesitate to give a pet to someone’s spouse, as long as I knew it was okay with the person who’d brought me the animal. But in this case, I didn’t know. What if Donald deliberately had left Leya in my care because he was afraid his wife would abuse her?
This time, I was going to stand on ceremony.
As I could have predicted, Gillian’s face went scarlet. “That’s ridiculous. I bought the cat originally, so she’s more mine than his! And if he paid you by credit card, it’s got both our names on it.”
“He paid with a personal check. It has just his name, and his signature
.”
She looked about to explode, and I felt glad that Sarah and I stood behind the sales counter, though it was only a little more than waist-high. I do have an alarm button under the counter to press, though, in case of a stickup or other emergency. I hoped I wouldn’t need it.
Gillian let go a stream of curses such as I never would have expected to pass her lips, at least not when we’d first met. Of course, I knew a lot more about her these days. “You’re just a snotty, ignorant kid with a crappy little business! You think you can hold on to a valuable animal that belongs to me, when I’m standing here in person demanding that she be returned? And as far as honoring my husband’s wishes . . . let me tell you something about Donald. He’s trying to kill me! That business with the porridge was just a test, I suppose. But this week he got serious, tampering with my car.”
She must have read my silence—correctly—as skepticism, because she added, “I told your friend the police detective all about it. If you don’t believe me, ask her.”
I kept my voice level. “Detective Bonelli says there’s no proof connecting him to either of those incidents.”
“I’m not leaving here without that cat!”
Gillian started for the gap between the sales counter and the wall, trying to dash through the playroom door to the back of the shop. Just as swiftly, Sarah stepped sideways to block her. My assistant is only about five-four, her bulk more motherly than brawny. But decades of teaching in inner-city schools has made her pretty fearless, I guess.
Arms crossed over her chest, she braced herself like a stone statue, and her dark glare challenged Gillian—Just try it, lady!
The suburban social climber backed off so quickly that I hid a smile. Not willing to take us on in physical combat, Gillian threatened another means of attack.
“I’ll sue you!” she shouted at me. “For keeping my cat and my money under false pretenses.”
Technically, it’s Donald’s money, I thought, but wasn’t about to point that out again. This time, I kept my mouth shut and only shrugged.
Claw & Disorder Page 17