Sleuthing for the Weekend

by Jennifer L. Hart

  I turned up Lois's street and parked a few houses down from hers, just in case the police happened to be watching. My thumbs drummed out a tribal rhythm on the steering wheel as I studied the two-story New England blue cape. No porch to speak of but a tiny covered stoop. Under a huge oak sat a delicate wrought-iron bistro table and chairs. The kind of place you could sit in an evening with a friend or a lover. It was quaint, homey-looking, the sort of place the woman I'd met the night before would own.

  According to the file, Michael had given Lois the house in the divorce. She in return had relinquished all rights to the family pub. She was a successful CPA, could have swung this place on her own. So why go work for Daniel? Was it to needle her ex? Or was I missing something important?

  In spite of my better judgment, I wanted to know more about the curse surrounding the O'Flannigan treasure. Michael, I was sure, had told me all he was going to divulge. I'd already decided to leave Daniel be for the night, and Lois was in no position to talk. I dialed Mac.

  "Are you calling about bail?" she asked when she answered the phone.

  "Not just yet. Have you finished your homework?"

  "For like, the next two weeks. Why?"

  "I need you to do your cyberdigging on Lois O'Flannigan. Find out about her friends, family, anyone she worked with. I need a full picture of her life." It was a task I could have done, but Mac would have everything I wanted and a few nuggets I wouldn't even think to dig for in a fraction of the time it would take me to do it.

  "Is that all?" my gal Friday inquired, as though I hadn't given her enough of a challenge.

  "This one is top priority. Hunt down any stray O'Flannigans." The pub was a family business, and who better than family to go to for gossip? "I want to talk to them about this whole cursed treasure thing. Find out if maybe there's another sibling or a cousin who'll have deets."

  "On it." In the background there was some typing. "Okay, well, no other siblings, but Daniel and Michael's mother is in a retirement community in Arizona. You want the number?"

  I looked at the clock. Arizona was either two or three hours earlier than Boston, making it late afternoon there. Perfect. "Text it to me."

  "Will do. Oh, and Detective Black stopped by about an hour ago."

  "Did he want me to call him?"

  "No. He brought me dinner."

  "You're kidding." Hunter wasn't exactly a cook, though he could grill and throw a salad together and look sexy while doing it. "Pizza or Chinese?"

  "Neither. It was a baked ziti. He said he had dinner with his family and his mother sent it home with him. He saw your car wasn't out and figured I hadn't eaten."

  "That was…thoughtful." Even if it made me feel like a first-rate heel that someone else had to feed my kid.

  "It was, though a little awkward. Him, looming on our doorstep with this little white casserole dish. I asked him to stay, but he said he was on his way out to work."

  "I hoped you thanked him."

  "Mom," Mac said in that don't-be-stupid tone teenagers did so well.

  "Okay, I'm almost finished here. Hoped you saved some of that baked ziti for me." Though I'd only met her once, Hunter's mother was the sort of woman who immediately made a person feel like part of the family. At least once a week, her only son stopped by, and she sent him home loaded down with leftovers. Since our meeting, she'd been sending stuff for Mac and me as well. So far we'd received a honey-glazed ham and cheese casserole, chocolate chip cookies, and Irish stew. Mrs. Black was a fantastic cook.

  "If you're not home by ten, I'm giving your share to Snickers."

  "Mean," I huffed.

  Mac laughed and disconnected.

  I dialed the number she'd texted to me.

  Three rings, four. Then an archaic answering machine picked up the line with one of the creepy robotic recitations of the number followed by a beep.

  "Hi, this is Mackenzie Taylor. I'm looking for Ruth O'Flannigan." I rattled off my number and then added, "It's about your former daughter-in-law." I didn't want to leave too much on a message, just in case she hadn't heard about what had happened to Lois. I hesitated and then added, "Please, call me back as soon as you get this," before disconnecting.

  While I'd been talking, a light had switched on in Lois's house. I held my breath. It was possible it was an automatic timer. After all, I'd seen no cars pull up. But no, a moment later a human-shaped shadow moved in the front room.

  Someone was in the dead woman's house. And I was going to find out who.

  CHAPTER SIX

  "Getting caught in a lie is the fastest way to blow your cover. And your case." From The Working Man's Guide to Sleuthing for a Living, an unpublished manuscript by Albert Taylor, PI

  I recognized the face from his election posters as soon as he opened the door. "Congressman Whitmore?"

  I tried to dredge up the little I'd absorbed during the midterm election. Alan Whitmore, democrat, age thirty-three. New England native. Fiscal conservative, social liberal. Tough on crime, went to bat for veteran programs, LGBTQ rights. Champion of education reform. He'd held several public offices before, mostly in small towns in the western part of the state. According to Len's file, Lois had been twenty-five when he was born. She'd already been married to Michael O'Flannigan, and the notes had stated that she'd been the primary caregiver to their sick mother around the same time. I wondered how that had impacted their relationship. Had he thought of her as more of a maternal figure than a sibling?

  If so, no wonder he was exerting his influence to put pressure on the DA and get the case solved, ASAP.

  The last thing I knew was that he was rumored to be a ladies' man. Never married, he had a different interchangeable blonde on his arm at every event. Always a gentleman but never in a serious relationship, at least not publicly.

  Overall, he was an attractive man who wore his expensively cut suit well. He was taller than he looked on TV. Not nearly as massive as Hunter, but he still towered a solid four inches over me. His hair was dark brown and perfectly parted. His eyes were an intelligent hazel. There were lines of strain around his mouth, understandably, considering his loss.

  "Yes. And you are?" His voice was cultured, perfectly accentless, the kind of speech that could only be achieved with elocution lessons. Since he was the muscle pushing the case against Michael, I figured he'd slam the door in my face if I admitted I'd been hired by his former brother-in-law's lawyer. Though it was low to hoodwink a grieving family member, I could play fast and loose with the truth. Especially if it got me inside the vic's inner sanctum to hunt for clues. He was a politician after all—he was used to lies.

  I extended a hand and offered up a dollop of truth along with plausible fiction. "Mackenzie Elizabeth Taylor. I was a friend of your sister's. I'm so sorry for your loss."

  Anyone else suffering from grief might have shooed me off, but Alan Whitmore was a political animal. One who would never alienate a potential voter. His hand clasped over mine, and he shook. "Thank you, Ms. Taylor."

  Awkward silence while he waited for me to reveal why I darkened that particular doorstep. I had to get him talking. Though I may not rock the private investigator Kasbah, I can usually get people to open up to me, to tell me things it sometimes shocked them to reveal. "I didn't see a car."

  "My driver dropped me around the corner. I'm not staying, just coming by to get her cat." He gestured to an open carrier sitting on a shaker bench seat.

  "That's why I'm here. To feed the cat. It dawned on me that the poor thing hadn't been fed all day." Man, could I lie or what? Maybe I should run for public office.

  "Well, I'm here now…" He stood there, clearly waiting for me to say something else, make my excuses, and leave. I stood my ground—a pleasant smile pasted on my face, and I topped my last lie with another. "I can help you look. I know all her hiding places."

  A frown. "You mean his."

  "His. Right, I misspoke." Drat, I'd never met anyone with a male cat. What were the odds? "My thoughts are a l
ittle fuzzy since I found out…"

  Not a lie. I could think of little else since I'd found Lois's body.

  "Understandable." I saw a glimmer of empathy in his eyes. He too was suffering from distraction. "She loved that cat. He hates me though, always hides when I come over."

  "I can relate. My daughter's dog hates me. Barks and growls whenever I go into my room."

  The smidge of truth peppering my lie about knowing Lois and her antisocial cat tipped the balance in my favor, and he waved me inside. "Better close the door before Hercules gets out."

  Hercules the cat? Lois was an interesting woman, and I felt a pang wishing I'd had the chance to know her better. I crossed the threshold and took in her home. Living room to the left, office space to the right, stairs leading to the second story smack in the middle of the hallway, and what looked to be a kitchen in back. If Lois's cat was anything like Snickers, he was hiding under the bed in the master bedroom. I'd save that for last.

  "So, where do we look first?" His tone was mild.

  "How about the kitchen?" In commercials and television shows, cats were forever jumping up on tables and knocking things off shelves in the kitchen. "He might be hungry."

  "Lead the way."

  I could feel his eyes on me as I maneuvered around the staircase and into the hall. Was he just checking me out, or did he suspect my story? I'd have to make this search count.

  "Here, kitty kitty," I called, even as I prayed the feline would remain well hidden. The sooner we found it, the sooner my surreptitious search would end. Lois O'Flannigan's kitchen was dated but tidy. The walls were a faded lemon yellow with a pastel fruit bowl border. The linoleum, an avocado green that probably had never looked much better than it currently did. I spied no crumbs on the countertops though, no cobwebs of dust in the corner like the ones that graced my own kitchen. Also like my kitchen, no cat in sight.

  "Did you work with Lois?" the congressman asked.

  Hunting for information on me? Again, I couldn't tell if he was asking because he smelled something fishy about my story or because he was interested in me. Being a work colleague would make sense, but it would be too easy for him to trip me up in a lie. "No. She did my taxes though. She spoke of you often."

  He smiled, though his eyes were sad. "Lois practically raised me from infancy."

  "Because your mother was unwell?"

  "Cancer. She was diagnosed six weeks after I was born. She beat it eventually, but it was a long battle. Lois stayed with us day and night until I went into school." Alan frowned as though he hadn't meant to reveal so much.

  So, while Michael O'Flannigan had been serving with the Captain, Lois had been holding down the fort at O'Flannigan's, caring for her sick mother and raising her little brother. Having grown up with a career military father, I knew families were often forced to make tough choices, but Lois should have been nominated for sainthood.

  I opened the pantry door and spied a stack of canned cat food. It was the fancy shmancy kind, a brand called Finicky Feline. On the label there were pictures of cubes of meat, peas, and gravy. Nicer than anything in my pantry. It looked as though it should be served in crystal goblets to extremely pampered critters. No goblets in sight, but there was a large black bowl with a black leather collar set inside it. Must have had a dog at some point.

  I took one can of food out and handed it to him. "Dish out some food, and maybe he'll come out for it."

  He accepted the can without a word and then carried it over to a plastic dish next to the fridge. It had a pop top, and the smell wasn't nearly as appetizing to my nose as the picture promised. While he was busy letting the high-end meal slurp out, I scanned for an address book, pictures, mail. Unfortunately, Lois had a place for everything and put everything in its place. The most interesting thing was a clear glass jar labeled clothespins. Maybe because I'd been thinking about line drying clothes earlier, but it just seemed like a massive number of clothespins for a single woman to own. They were the old-fashioned kind with the spring for hanging laundry out to dry, like something out of another era.

  Otherwise the place was basic. No pictures or notes stuck to the fridge, no stray pieces of paper. I'd dearly love to hunt through the waste bin in the corner—my glamourous life—but I doubted even the feline-ignorant congressman would believe the cat was hiding in a heap of old coffee grounds and wilted lettuce.

  "Where to next?" he inquired, setting the can down beside the sink.

  I needed to shake him in order to snoop. "Why don't you take the living room, and I'll check her office?"

  "I already checked the living room."

  "Office, then. Oh, and I should bag up the rest of this food. You'll want to take it with you. You know how finicky cats can be." Or so I'd heard.

  I reached into the pantry and extracted a stack of cans and handed them over.

  "Odd that there was such an age gap between you and Lois." I'd have Mac check to see if they were full siblings or only half.

  "Mom had Lois in her teens." Still carrying the food, he followed me into the front room. It was decorated with delicately feminine furniture. The desk sat catty-corner to the bay window, and a small bench seat was decorated with a few frilly pillows. A fireplace sat on the outer wall, the grate clean like it'd never seen a fire.

  I strode over to the desk. No stray papers to shuffle through and an old-fashioned ink blotter protecting the polished walnut surface. The room smelled of wax and floral potpourri, which sat in a crystal bowl beside a Tiffany-style desk lamp. Two framed photographs graced the polished surface. One a picture of her and Daniel O'Flannigan standing in front of The Shipping Lane. Her hair had been shorter than it had been the other night. They grinned at each other while pointing up at the sign. The other was a professional headshot of the man by my side.

  "I can relate. I have a sixteen-year-old. Same age I was when I had her." I got on my hands and knees, looked under the desk. Small white wicker trashcan, empty.

  "Scary," Alan murmured when I popped back up.

  "You have no idea. Unless, do you have any kids?" The question startled both of us, since I hadn't meant to ask it.

  He shook his head. "No. I've never been married."

  "Don't have to be married to have children. I'm proof of that."

  "In my line of work, you do." That was a glimmer of interest in his hazel eyes.

  My heart sped up. Java preserve me, I'd overshot from friendly into flirty. Just as I was trying to figure out a way to back the heat off, he turned away, but not before the low light from the lamp highlighted the red flush to his face. Tension bunched his shoulders.

  He was embarrassed. Maybe feeling guilty since we were sizing each other up in his dead sister's house. Self-censure from the reputed ladies' man over nothing more than a harmless flirtation? Oddly, I found his chagrin endearing.

  "Well, Hercules isn't in here." He stated the obvious.

  "Guess not." I got up and headed for the stairs, but before I could ascend them, the back door opened.

  "Sir?" A tall, gangly, ghost-pale man with piercing gray eyes and curly nut brown hair scurried through the back door. "Is everything all right?"

  "We're still looking for the damn cat." He sounded both aggravated and relieved at the interruption.

  "We?" The new arrival studied me, suspicion written all over his twenty-something face. "And you are…?"

  "Sorry. Wes, this is Mackenzie Taylor, a friend of my sister. Mackenzie, this is Wesley Cummings, my personal assistant."

  "Nice to meet you," I greeted the newcomer even as I fretted how I was going to conduct a proper search with two sets of eyes monitoring my every move.

  He didn't acknowledge my greeting but instead turned back to his employer. "Congressman, we need to keep to the schedule if you're going to make the policeman's ball tonight."

  "I can take care of finding the cat." I leapt at the chance to search the house on my own. "Maybe deliver him to you?"

  "That would be excellent," the harri
ed assistant pushed, still not making eye contact with me.

  "We can't ask you to do that." The congressman scowled at his assistant.

  "You're not. I'm offering."

  Our gazes met, and my stomach did a little flip. Eek, the attraction went both ways. What the hell was going on? I'd managed to turn down that cute bartender last night, no sweat, but I was getting heart palpitations over a politician?

  Cummings broke into the moment, sweat beading his brow. "Sir? We really do need to hurry."

  "I'll just come back later to collect him, now that he has food." Alan Whitmore's steady gaze was assessing. "You probably want to get back to your daughter."

  "She's a big girl. I'll lock up and then deliver Hercules on the way home."

  The congressman took a business card holder and pen from his pants pocket. He extracted two cards, flipped one over, and then wrote something on the back. He extended it to me. "Here's my address. I'll probably be out late. You can leave him with my housekeeper." He sounded like he had something else to say but was afraid to voice it.

  "Or?" My eyebrows went up in inquiry.

  A soft smile. "Or you can give me your address, and I'll drop by and pick him up. So you won't be…inconvenienced."

  The way he stated the last word…no. Just no. Inconvenience or not, I could not allow this man to come to my home. For one thing, I'd already given him my full name. If he knew where I lived too…just a little too much reality.

  Plus, what if he ran into Hunter?

  Thoughts of Hunter cooled my growing interest. Trying to make light of it, I claimed the proffered card and teased, "You just want to know where I live so you can send me political propaganda. Hate to break it to you, but I'm not a registered voter."