I made my way up the driveway, meanwhile studying the garage. The sagging building appeared to have once been a barn, or maybe a carriage house. At ground level were three garage doors, painted black. Above them, two eaves protruded from the dark-shingled roof, inset with small windows.
Yet there was no indication that anyone was home. No open windows, no blaring music, not even the clinking of dishes. I hoped Ethan wasn’t sleeping, since I was about to interrupt him without any warning.
As Joan instructed, I pulled open the side door and stepped inside the garage. Unfortunately, she hadn’t mentioned the location of the light switch. The one window I could see was covered with a dark flowered cloth that had been tacked up haphazardly, as if to keep anyone from looking inside. The only other illumination came from dim bands of light shining through the loose slats of the walls.
I blinked a few times, trying to adjust to the gloom. Once I did, I saw several cars lined up inside the long, low interior space: a battered Volvo, a shiny new SUV, and a red pickup truck streaked with rust. Around the edges, the usual assortment of garage paraphernalia was piled up. Lawn furniture, bicycles, an archery target with its stuffing poking out in several spots, sealed-up cardboard cartons whose contents were probably a mystery even to the Thorndikes themselves.
But no staircase. At least, I hadn’t located one yet. I stood at the entryway, trying to spot it.
I’d thought I was alone. So I whirled around at the sound of a door slamming.
“Hello?” I called. “Is someone there?”
I’d barely gotten the words out before a head popped into a doorway I now realized opened onto the staircase leading to the apartment above the garage.
“Trespassers aren’t welcome here,” a strange-sounding voice said.
“I’m not exactly a trespasser,” I returned crossly. “In fact, Mrs. Thorndike—Joan—specifically asked me to come out here and find Ethan. Are you Ethan?”
“Now, that’s what you call a tricky question.”
I took a few steps closer—and realized that the person I was talking to seemed to have an unnaturally small head. Something else struck me as odd: His ears stuck out almost at right angles to his head and his forehead was completely smooth. In fact, the little bit of light that managed to sneak into the garage reflected off it.
“Are you a dummy?” The words popped out before I had a chance to think about what I was saying.
“I don’t think there’s any reason to be so rude,” he replied indignantly. “Maybe we all aren’t smart enough to have earned a medical degree, but that doesn’t mean other people have a right to call us names.”
“I didn’t mean—you are a dummy!” Now that I’d gotten even closer, I saw that I was right: The person I was talking to wasn’t a person after all. It was a large wooden ventriloquist’s dummy, his cheeks painted an unnatural shade of pink and his eyes fixed in a frighteningly steady stare. He was dressed in a tuxedo, complete with a bright crimson bow tie and a matching cummerbund.
I was even more astonished when he cried, “Ethan! I could use some help here!”
I jerked backward as a tall, lanky young man joined the dummy in the doorway. In the shadowy darkness, all I could make out was his silhouette.
A chill ran through me at the sound of a click. But it turned out to be nothing more onerous than a flashlight being turned on.
The man’s face was now illuminated. However, the fact that he held the light under his chin cast spooky shadows over his face, giving him a ghoulish look. Only his mouth, nose, and the corners of his eyes were lit, making him look as if he were wearing a mask.
Suddenly he moved the flashlight, casting a spotlight on his face. I let out a little gasp. Ethan Thorndike could have been Cassandra’s twin, except that he was a slightly more exaggerated version of his sister. While her face was narrow, his was positively gaunt, with a thin, straight nose and pronounced cheekbones. He had Cassandra’s dead-straight black hair, which was as sleek and glossy as hers was in her dramatic oil portrait. He also had the same startlingly blue-green eyes as both his father and his sister.
But Ethan’s right eye was crossed, making him look a little off. Of course, the fact that he’d chosen such a creepy way to introduce himself added to that impression.
“So you’re Ethan,” I said, not sure whether to laugh or feel annoyed. I turned to his wooden companion. “And you...you really are a dummy!”
“We don’t like visitors,” the dummy said rudely.
“This isn’t a social call—” I stopped mid-sentence, realizing I was defending myself to Pinocchio. Turning back to Ethan, I said, “Your mother asked me to look at your cat. You already seem to know that I’m a veterinarian.”
“Mr. Ed and I like to keep track of who comes and goes,” Ethan replied. “We find it...comforting.”
Mr. Ed? I thought. Why would someone name a dummy after a horse from a classic television series of the 1960s? I’d barely asked myself the question before I realized that a talking doll wasn’t that different from a talking horse. So maybe Ethan had a clever streak, after all.
“Now that we’ve introduced ourselves,” I said, trying to reestablish something along the lines of normal conversation, “maybe you can bring your cat—”
“Why are you here?”
“I told you,” I said, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. “Your stepmother asked me to—”
“On our property. Why did you come here today?”
“I ran into Joan at the vineyard, and she asked me to stop by with my clinic-on-wheels.” I added, “I’d also like to say that I’m extremely sorry about your sister. What a tragedy that someone so young—”
“You didn’t know Cassie, did you?”
His question startled me. “Well, no. Actually, I never—”
“Then you don’t know she was a little bit crazy.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, not knowing how literally to take him. For all I knew, he was simply playing the role of annoying little brother.
“Craziness runs in our family.” In a matter-of-fact tone, he added, “On my mother’s side of the family. Not my father’s. In fact, my father is about as un-crazy as you can get.”
I filed away his comment, wondering if he, too, had inherited what he considered the Thorndike family trait.
“But it’s my cat you’re interested in, not my family,” he continued. “So why don’t you come up to my apartment?”
Somehow, that didn’t strike me as a particularly good idea.
“Tell you what,” I told him evenly. “Why don’t you bring your cat out to my van? It’s parked right outside. That’s where I always examine my patients, unless there are special circumstances.”
A few minutes later, Ethan joined me in the driveway—this time, without his doppelganger. Instead, he carried a large calico cat in his arms. I estimated that she weighed at least ten or twelve pounds, a good size for a cat. She had long, fine fur, a beautiful mixture of gray, white, and orange.
“Hey, Jenny,” I greeted her in a soft voice.
Ethan looked surprised. “How did you know her name?”
I was tempted to tell him I was as much a master at eavesdropping as he was. Instead, I told the truth. “Your stepmother told me.”
“Ah, yes. Leave it to Joan to make sure everyone knows everybody else’s business.”
So she wasn’t exaggerating when she said that Gordon’s children had never stopped seeing her as the wicked stepmother.
“Her name is actually Pirate Jenny,” Ethan noted as he followed me into my van, sounding a trifle indignant. “You know, from The Threepenny Opera? The play by Bertolt Brecht?”
I’d only known Ethan Thorndike for ten minutes. Yet somehow, naming a pet after a character in a musical satire of bourgeois society seemed to fit perfectly. I seemed to recall from my Twentieth-Century Theater class at Bryn Mawr that Pirate Jenny was a prostitute, the merciless Mack the Knife’s girlfriend. Pretty heavy stuff for such a cute l
ittle kitty.
“Beautiful fur,” I commented. “But I bet it mats easily.”
Ethan looked surprised that I knew anything at all about cats. “I guess I should tell you that she has a heart murmur,” he mumbled.
“Yes, that’s important for me to know. Why don’t you put her down on the examining table—”
“I suppose you should also know that Jenny isn’t particularly fond of veterinarians.”
While Joan had mentioned that fact, it was also something I could see for myself. As Ethan lowered her onto the table, she was already doing her best to lean over and bite me.
“Whoa, Jenny. Calm down.” Glancing at Ethan, I said, “I don’t suppose you brought a toy to distract her with.”
“Didn’t think of it. She has this furry squirrel toy, with catnip inside, that she spends hours trying to tear apart.” He smiled condescendingly. “The vet that usually treats her has been known to sedate her.”
“I have a better idea,” I told him. I pulled off my polyester fleece jacket and draped it over her head. As soon as I blocked her vision, she quieted down.
“Good trick,” Ethan offered begrudgingly.
“You pick up a few if you do this long enough,” I replied. I reached over and grabbed the clipboard I kept well-stocked with information forms. “Why don’t you fill this out while I get started? Just the usual questions, like name, address, and the animal’s medical history.”
Ethan took the clipboard but continued to watch what I was doing.
“How does Jenny act around other people?” I asked, partly because I found the way he kept staring at me so unsettling.
“What other people?”
“How about your friends?”
He looked at me strangely. “I don’t have a lot of friends. I find that I prefer my own company to most other people’s.”
“I see,” I replied noncommittally.
As I began palpating her organs, he commented, “Jenny hates other cats, too. In fact, we have to make sure we keep her away from Joan’s cat. She’s done some pretty vicious things—not with Coco, which would totally have freaked out Joan—but with other cats who’ve come around. She practically killed one. I’m talking ear-tearing, skin-breaking, fur-flying damage. All out war.”
“Hmm,” I said, making a mental note to put a huge “Caution” tag on Pirate Jenny’s chart.
Not that making a follow-up visit was high on my list of priorities.
After finishing my second house call at the Thorndikes’, I wasn’t feeling particularly encouraged about the progress I was making. True, I’d managed to get my first peek inside Cassandra Thorndike’s world by meeting her family. And like many families, hers was fraught with loyalties, rivalries, and tense undercurrents. Joan appeared to mean well, yet it looked as if she’d been cast into the role of Wicked Stepmother from the start. But she’d stuck it out because of her devotion to Gordon, which certainly seemed sincere.
And it was clear to me that Gordon had adored his daughter. His grief further highlighted the tragedy of a young woman who was just getting started with her life being killed. I suspected he’d never recover.
As for Ethan, he was harder to fathom. Was he playing a role for my benefit or was he really as creepy as he seemed? From what Joan had said, I had a feeling I wasn’t the only person who was reminded of Norman Bates.
Welcome to another dysfunctional family, I thought ruefully.
My first impressions of the Thorndikes were reinforced by my years as a veterinarian, which had taught me that you could learn a lot about people by their pets. Again and again I’d observed that humans are frequently drawn to animals with personalities that are similar to theirs.
For example, Joan’s beloved cat, Coco, was as loyal and affectionate toward her as Joan appeared to be toward her husband. Meanwhile, Ethan’s cat, Pirate Jenny, clearly wanted as little to do with both cats and humans as possible. She seemed to prefer being alone— or at least in the company of the one person she felt understood her. And that happened to be someone who, like her, was happy living a hermit’s life in a small apartment above a garage.
Yet I still didn’t feel I’d learned much about Cassandra herself. Maybe that was because I’d only gotten as far as her roots, without yet finding out much about the direction in which she’d chosen to branch off.
But I had another trick up my polyester sleeve.
Before leaving behind the Thorndikes’ homestead, I sat in my van in the driveway for a minute or two, consulting my trusty Hagstrom map. Once I’d deciphered the maze of meandering back roads that would serve as a short cut to the South Fork, I turned on the ignition and veered back onto Route 35.
It was time to meet Cassandra’s fiancé.
Chapter 6
“Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this.”
—Anonymous
Thanks to a bit of Web research I’d done early that morning before setting off, I’d learned a few facts about Robert Reese, Suzanne’s ex as well as the man Cassandra had decided to settle down with. He had opened his high-end restaurant, Granite, in a building that had already housed a string of similar establishments.
Even though feeding people for profit was a notoriously difficult business, one entrepreneur after another had moved into the same East Brompton location, tried, and failed. Yet there was apparently an endless supply of optimists, including Robert, who knew that the odds were stacked against them but still remained convinced that they could come up with just the right concept, just the right chef, just the right menu, and just the right ambiance. They were certain they could create a restaurant that was so desirable that sophisticated diners from New York City and Long Island would gladly wait five weeks for a reservation, then whip out their charge cards and pay whatever exorbitant sum they were asked to cough up.
It wasn’t until I’d pulled my van into a parking lot off Windmill Lane that it occurred to me that I wasn’t exactly dressed for the chic Bromptons—even if it was off-season. My black pants were covered in cat hair and my chukka boots looked as if they’d been dipped in mud. The pièce de résistance was my navy-blue polyester fleece jacket, which was embroidered with my name instead of some designer’s.
Still, I’d come this far. I wasn’t about to turn back, especially since I couldn’t get the sound of that ticking clock out of my head.
In fact, that relentless tick-tock, tick-tock made the fact that I couldn’t figure out which of the similar-looking brick buildings surrounding the parking lot was Robert’s restaurant even more frustrating. One was clearly a bank, and another housed professional offices. That left two choices. Either they were both guilty of poor signage or I was guilty of extreme denseness.
“Eenie, meenie, miney, mo, catch a monkey . . . Oh, what the heck.” With a shrug, I strode toward the one that happened to be closer to my parking space.
Frowning, I stood outside a windowless wooden front door that was painted black and sealed up tight. I tried the doorknob, not expecting to get very far. Yet while the front door looked like the gates of the Castle of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings, it turned out to be unlocked.
I pushed it open, surprised at how heavy it was and thankful that regularly lugging around mastiffs and even the occasional St. Bernard was part of my job description. As I did, I noticed a small black G on the front door. It looked as if it had been written by hand, possibly with a pencil.
Looks like understatement is in, I thought wryly. Always something new in the Bromptons.
I stepped inside, blinking a few times before my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Either the restaurant wasn’t open for dinner or the décor had been inspired by Dracula. When a meticulously dressed gentleman in his mid-forties rushed over to me, I figured it had to be closed. This struck me as the kind of place that generally ignored whoever came inside for at least a respectable ten minutes or so.
“May I help you?” The man who approached me seemed unable to keep his slend
er hands from fluttering. He also couldn’t stop running them through his spiky hair, which was dark at the roots but had tips that were bleached white. I guess I was getting hungry, because his hairdo reminded me of chocolate and vanilla ice cream. The way his nails caught the light indicated that they were lacquered with clear nail polish. Either that or olive oil played an unusually large part in his diet.
“Is this Granite?” I asked.
He looked stricken. “G,” he replied.
I waited politely for whatever would come next: “Gee, yes,” or “Gee, no,” or even “Gee, willikers.” But he just stared at me expectantly, as if it were my turn to speak.
“So this is Granite?” I repeated.
“G.”
I was losing patience. Either I was missing something or this guy had major communication issues.
Then, sniffing the air in a way that made me stop and think about whether I’d taken the time to shower that morning, he added, “I can see you’ve never heard of us. It’s G—as in the letter G. That’s our name.”
“G is a restaurant?”
He raised his chin a little higher. “G is the restaurant. I should know. I own it.”
“Sorry. I’m in the wrong place.” Deciding to test his reaction, I added, “I’m looking for Granite.”
The expression on the man’s face became even more disgusted. “Gra—Gra—that other place is next door. Gra—that other place and our establishment have the terrible misfortune of sharing a parking lot.”
“So I noticed.”
I looked past him, surveying the restaurant’s interior. Now that I’d had a minute or two to fully adjust to the darkness, I could see that it wasn’t my eyes that were the problem. It was the fact that just about everything in the place was black. The walls, the wooden chairs, even the fabric on the banquettes. By contrast, the white linen tablecloths were positively blinding. Of course, the tables were set with black dishes, with a black linen napkin neatly folded at each place.
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