The millionaire made a dramatic sigh. “I suppose so, Jeanette. But still, I’ll have to speak my mind to her. Why the good Lord burdened me with such headstrong women, I’ll never know.”
Without even thinking, Mary stuck out her tongue.
“I rest my case,” John MacDougall said with a raised eyebrow.
Mary sniffed and took a dainty bit of trout on the tip of her fork.
Jeanette put her napkin on the table and sat back in her chair. “Did I mention, John, that I had the opportunity to stop by the Oddfellows Hall this afternoon?”
Miraculously, Mary managed to not choke on her trout. She regarded her cousin with wide eyes.
“Madame Zoya cancelled Mary’s dress-fitting, you see, but Mary had already left the office, so I couldn’t tell her. I was under the impression that she’d gone to Herr Neumann’s studio. But the young lady there told me she must have gone to the Oddfellows Hall instead.” Jeanette offered her young cousin an innocent little smile.
You torturer, Mary thought. “Yes, I wanted to speak to Herr Neumann about that landscape. Tena’s Christmas present.”
John MacDougall nodded. “Ah, yes, I read he’s doing a grand new mural for the Oddfellows. Fine organization. Good works among the needy and crippled. Reminds me I ought to write them a check sometime before the holidays. Now, if you ladies will excuse me…”
As soon as her father left the dining room, Mary glared across the table at Jeanette.
“All right,” she said, “out with it. I know you discovered my little secret. So why didn’t you tell Father?”
“I should have,” Jeanette said, crossing her arms. “I really should have. But it may surprise you to realize that I was nineteen once. And when you’re nineteen, insanity sometimes prevails. Or do you have another explanation for lying about your contact with Mr. Roy? After all, you swore to me that your personal relationship with him had ended. Let me be frank, Mary. Are you two romantically involved?”
Mary knew she should pretend outrage at the accusation. But Jeanette had her dead to rights, for now. Mary needed to somehow bluff her way out of this pickle. She leaned toward Jeanette, trying to summon up an earnest look.
“Oh, Jeanette, do you think there’ll ever come a day when a young woman and a young man can become dear friends and nothing more?”
“Well, I, for one, have no objection to the notion of a platonic friendship. But tell me, Mary, how is it that Mr. Roy finds himself in Duluth at this moment?”
Mary sighed. “You know Edmond broke his arm. Because of me. And he lost two good commissions. And when Herr Neumann mentioned he might need help at the Oddfellows…”
“You thought of Mr. Roy.”
“The least I could do. He’s really, really very good with a brush.”
Jeanette had a sip of her coffee. “How long has he been here?”
“Just a few weeks.”
“How often have you seen him?”
“Hmm, maybe two or three times. We’ve had lunch. Gone on a walk or two.”
“And nothing more? You know what I mean.”
“No, nothing more,” Mary answered, a little sharply. “Heavens, Jeanette, I do have some self-control, you know.” She bit her lower lip. “You won’t tell Father, will you?”
Jeanette didn’t answer for a number of long, nervous seconds. “Not immediately. Not until John returns from his trip, at the earliest. But I want to know each and every time you intend to see Mr. Roy. In fact, since you’ve made jokes about me being your chaperone, I may as well fulfill that duty and come along with you.”
Mary knew better than to groan, though she wanted to. She was darned lucky that Jeanette hadn’t thrown her into the soup. “Fair enough,” she conceded.
But Mary had no intention of letting Jeanette intrude into her relationship with Edmond. In fact, something he had mentioned that afternoon had given Mary a wonderful idea. But to put her plan in motion, she needed some help from her friend Lillian down at the university in Minneapolis. She would post a note and see if her friend would cooperate.
Chapter VI
They arrived at Mrs. Fesler’s home, up off Woodland Avenue, just a bit before nine. It was a handsome house in the old Federal style, painted a slate blue, with a charming late-summer garden arrayed in front of it—lots of marigolds and mums. The Feslers, Mary gathered, clearly enjoyed some degree of prosperity.
Jeanette had argued again during breakfast that Mary didn’t need her to come along on the hunt for lost cats. She could better serve the fledgling detective agency manning the office downtown. Office hours, she observed—not for the first time—required someone to actually be in the office, ready to help customers. But Mary countered that Jeanette would benefit from learning a bit about sleuthing by getting out and about in the greater world. Or so she said.
In fact, Mary figured that if Jeanette insisted on pursuing trivial cases—such as the four lost kitty-cats—she could darned well pitch in to solve them, leaving Mary free to pursue meatier matters. That is, if meatier matters should come their way.
A few raps of the brass knocker brought a quick response. Mrs. Fesler beamed as she opened the door.
“Mrs. Harrison, hello. Welcome. I’m so glad to see you. And this young lady, I assume, is Miss MacDougall, your chief operative?”
“It is indeed,” Jeanette said. “Mary, this is Mrs. Alfred Fesler.”
“Good to meet you.” Mary shook the woman’s hand. “Thank you so much for entrusting us with the matter of your missing feline.”
“I’m just grateful I could find someone who would help,” Mrs. Fesler said. “And don’t forget, there are three other missing cats, as well. All of them belonging to members of the Duluth Cat Fanciers Club. Now do come in. I have a nice pot of tea ready and some biscuits.”
Quick as a wink, she bent down and snatched up a black cat that was attempting to wriggle its way past her, into the great outdoors. “Oh, no, you don’t.” She held the green-eyed cat tight to her chest. “It’s a game we play, Blackie and I. If he had disappeared, it wouldn’t have surprised me. Quite the escape artist, Blackie.”
The house was as nicely appointed inside as out, with lots of solid, comfortable furniture, and walls papered in tasteful floral patterns. It also had an ample supply of cats. Mary counted four, in addition to Blackie. They trotted up to the three women as soon as they saw them, purring and meowing.
While Mary liked cats—in fact, she’d had one when she was younger—this was just too many. Mrs. Fesler, it seemed, had a feline addiction.
“Now tell me, Mrs. Fesler, which cat went missing first?” she asked
“That would be my Princess.”
Jeanette got out her notebook and began to scribble away.
“She’s a black and ginger tortoiseshell. What you might call a tabby. Four years old. And very much unlike Blackie there…”
Mary could hardly fail to notice the ebony cat, who at that moment was vigorously rubbing himself up against her ankles.
“…Princess would never venture very far, left to her own devices. But my husband and I had gone to the theater one evening about three weeks ago, and when we came home, Princess was nowhere to be seen.”
“Were there any signs someone had broken into the house?” Mary asked.
“No sign of a break-in, but the back door was unlocked. I’m afraid I’m rather notorious for forgetting to lock up. Now ladies, why don’t you go out on the porch in back there, and I’ll fetch the tea. It’s such a pleasant morning to sit outside.”
“I’ll stay and help,” Jeanette said. “Mary, you go sit.”
Mrs. Fesler was exactly right. It was a very pleasant place to catch one’s breath, underneath the porch roof. Mary could well imagine this backyard ablaze with fall colors in just a week or two. The colors had just started and it was already lovely.
Apart from being stuck hunting cats, Mary thought everything else was going quite well. The agency was up and running. Christena and Paul had de
cided to take a wonderful leap of faith. Jeanette was proving to be not so hard to handle as Mary had first thought. Edmond was close at hand. And Father was out of her hair for several weeks. All things being equal, not a bad situation.
“Here we go,” Mrs. Fesler said, coming through the screen door. She set down a tray with three teacups and a teapot. Behind her came Jeanette with a plate of cookies.
When everyone was settled at the porch table, Mary began again to gather the facts, as Jeanette kept scribbling in her notebook. “Now, tell us a bit about the other three club members and their missing pets. Names, addresses, anything you can think of.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Fesler said. “Miss Fern Campbell is an elementary school teacher who lives down on East Fifth Street with two housemates.”
“The address, please?” Mary asked.
The woman pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket, peering at it through her specs. “Eleven-forty-one.”
“Does she have a phone?”
“Yes, she does,” Mrs. Fesler said, providing it. “Her cat’s named Romeo and he’s a very handsome boy, a Russian Blue. She was out visiting friends on the evening of the…” She consulted her notes again. “…the twenty-fifth of September. She got back home quite late in the evening and found a window ajar, wide enough for a person to slip in through, or Romeo to slip out of. Fern swears neither she nor her housemates left it open.”
Jeanette looked up from her notepad. “Was anything else missing from her house?”
“No. The only thing taken was Romeo. Now, Mrs. Vivian Sternberg comes to our meetings with her daughter, Virginia. Both of them great cat fanciers. Vivian is British originally, you know, and she calls their cat a moggie. Pixie’s short-haired, white and cinnamon. Not really a tiger stripe, in my opinion. That puss is a sweet little girl and a homebody. Never would have left the backyard on her own.”
As Jeanette wrote down the address and phone number, Mary tried to concentrate on what Mrs. Fesler was saying. But she couldn’t help thinking how wonderful a nice jewel robbery or an unsolved embezzlement would be. And she was dying to know about the international case Detective Sauer had hinted at.
“And, of course, there’s Mr. Quentin Pettyjohn,” Mrs. Fesler continued, “whom you’ve met, Mrs. Harrison. He has just one cat, an Egyptian Mau called Bastet. An absolutely gorgeous little lady. Spotted, almost like a leopard. And I can tell you that poor Quentin was devastated when she disappeared.”
“Bastet, Bastet.” Mary furrowed her brow. The name sounded familiar. “An Egyptian god?”
“Close, but not quite,” Mrs. Fesler said. “A goddess. The goddess of mystery. And of cats.”
“And does Mrs. Pettyjohn participate in the club?” Mary asked.
Mrs. Fesler laughed. “The only Mrs. Pettyjohn is Quentin’s mother, to whom he’s devoted. Quentin is a confirmed old bachelor. No missus for him, now or ever, I should think.”
“Now tell me about the Cat Fanciers Club,” Mary said. “How it operates. Who belongs, beyond the people you’ve mentioned. How and when meetings are held. And so on and so forth.”
* * *
Mary and Jeanette caught the streetcar on Woodland Avenue and headed back downtown. But Mary surprised her cousin when she stood up to get off at Lake Avenue, three blocks before their regular stop.
“Where in the world are you going?” Jeanette asked.
“I’ll join you in a bit,” Mary said. “Just have to go see someone.” She hopped down onto the curb and waved cheerfully at Jeanette, who peered back at her through the window, a look of distinct irritation on her face.
Salter’s Saloon, as usual, was packed wall-to-wall with men taking their lunches—talking, joking, making a terrific din, filling the air with cigar and cigarette smoke. Two waitresses trotted from table to table, delivering loaded plates and glasses of beer.
Mary had taken a gamble coming here, and it paid off. There, at a little table by the far end of the bar, sat Detective Sauer. Reading his paper and taking bites of a sandwich between sips of beer. A uniformed police officer sat across from him, also munching on a sandwich.
A fly in the ointment, thought Mary. It wouldn’t do to have the fellow know she had come to talk to Detective Sauer. No one, least of all herself, would benefit from the detective getting the sack for consorting with her. Nothing for it but to try to blend in—no easy task for her in this establishment—and hope the other policeman wouldn’t linger long. She sidled over to the opposite end of the bar, out of Detective Sauer’s sight, to a vacant spot. The bartender approached her, drying a beer glass as he came.
“Hullo, miss. You sure you’re in the right place?”
“Oh, I think so,” Mary said with a smile. “I’m rather thirsty and I wondered if I could have a ginger ale.” She leaned to the side, looking around the other bar denizens, and saw that the uniformed copper hadn’t budged.
When the bartender brought the bottle and glass, she gave him a quarter and told him to keep the change, making a fast friend. She poured the fizzy drink, sipped slowly, and took occasional peeks at her quarry. Finally, after about ten minutes, the uniformed officer stood and made his way out of the bar. Happily, the detective stayed put. As Mary walked in his direction, a stout gentleman with a narrow mustache leered at her and invited her to join him at his table. She gave him a curt shake of the head and continued on.
The instant he saw her, Detective Sauer frowned. “Miss MacDougall. I can’t say I’m happy to see you.”
Not the greeting one would hope for, but not unexpected. Mary understood perfectly well that she had somewhat complicated the man’s life.
“I feel terrible about bothering you,” she said, taking the other chair, “but we need to talk about the Ostovians.”
Mary had always credited Detective Sauer for a degree of inscrutability, but this time his poker face failed him, however briefly. She saw a tiny flicker in his eyes. A very slight lifting of the eyelids, expressing surprise. Mary had struck a nerve.
“And why, exactly,” he asked slowly, “would we need to address the Ostovians?”
“Well, you must surely know that the police have been making inquiries about a death in the Ostovian community. And I wondered if it had anything to do with that intriguing matter you mentioned yesterday. The case with international implications, I believe you called it.”
“And how do you come by this information about the Ostovians?”
She smiled teasingly. “I have my sources, you know. But I’d really rather not say who.”
“And I’d really rather not tell you anything about the matter. I shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place.”
“After all these months, you still don’t trust me.” She slumped back in her chair with a pout.
“Sharing the details of a sensitive police matter with a nosy teenager,” the detective said, “would not auger well for my career in police work. I count myself lucky I managed to survive our last professional encounter.”
Mary could hardly blame him for feeling that way—though being called a nosy teenager miffed her a bit. Why shouldn’t the man value his livelihood more than the confidences of a neophyte sleuth? She sometimes had to remind herself that not everyone shared her enthusiasm for Mary MacDougall’s aspirations.
“Well, it’s just so odd. I was at a dinner party the other night and Mrs. Ivey…”
“The wife of the former city councilman?”
“Yes, that’s her. She said that she’d heard about a body that washed up in St. Louis Bay. So I just naturally wondered if that might be the death your boys are looking into out in the Ostovian community. Perhaps it might even pertain to your international incident.”
Detective Sauer took a deep breath. “Miss MacDougall, do you have any idea of how tiresome you can be?”
“My father made a similar observation recently, and not for the first time,” Mary said. “We’ll leave it there, then. Don’t suppose you know anything about cats going missing?”
Mary ignored the jab regarding her bank account. “Mrs. Harrison’s my widowed cousin from St. Louis. She had a bit of bad luck down there and Father thought we could help her out. But, truth be told, the main condition that Father set down, with regard to Moody Investigations, is that Jeanette—Mrs. Harrison—keep an eye on me. No Mrs. Harrison, no detective agency. So, more like a prison guard than a secretary.”
“Your father’s a very sensible man,” the detective said.
“And for some reason Jeanette thinks you don’t like her.”
The detective looked surprised. “Why in the world would she think that?”
“She says you’re rather aloof. Unfriendly.”
It was only rarely that Robert Sauer could be flummoxed, but this was one such occasion. “It’s just that sometimes I can be a bit awkward,” he muttered. “Umm, Mrs. Harrison—she’s a widow? Surprising that a woman who looks like that wouldn’t have remarried.”
“Who looks like what?”
“Well, you know…”
Ah, Mary thought, the master detective finds Jeanette attractive. If she had known him better, she might have teased him, in a sisterly way. But that wouldn’t do.
The detective straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat. “And by the way, the department’s just hired another matron. So we’re not caught without a female on duty, to handle girls and women taken into custody. Including the occasional obstreperous lady sleuth.”
“Well, then, I’d better behave myself,” Mary grinned, standing up. “And by the way, Detective, next May I’ll finally turn twenty and you’ll no longer be able to call me a teenager. You’ll have to refer to me as that ‘nosy woman’ instead.”
As she strode west on Second Street a few minutes later, Mary thought that Detective Sauer had made a good point. She should keep her distance. But what harm could there be in calling on Mrs. Petrescu, ostensibly to look at the lace she’d made for Mary’s gown? And if something about police visiting the Ostovians should come up, why not ask about it?
A Fatal Fondness Page 5