A Mew Beginning

by Kathi Daley

  Chapter 12

  Monday, April 6

  As had been predicted, a storm blew in overnight, which meant my long run on the beach would have to wait. Cody had meetings set up with advertisers, which was not an activity I was interested in, so after I had breakfast with Mr. Parsons, I took the dogs out for a quick run, and then I headed upstairs to continue working on the boxes Cody had stored in the house. The idea that this man named Jack, who theoretically had kidnapped and killed a bunch of women back in the nineties and might very well be back at it again, actually lived on Madrona Island, had me spooked a lot more than I was willing to admit. Of course, Fairchild didn’t seem certain of this fact, and so far, I hadn’t found anything in Orson’s notes to indicate as much, but the more I thought about it, the more the concept seemed to make sense. When I’d believed this serial killer lived and worked in Seattle, which is where he seemed to hunt for his victims, the threat felt removed from those I loved and cared about. But if this madman did live on the island, if he lived and worked here amongst us, that left me with a different feeling altogether. Sure, it did seem that he picked his women up elsewhere and then brought them back to the islands to die, which I supposed was somewhat of a comfort, although I had no idea why. Any way you diced it, the whole situation really was horrific. Still, having this man living close by gave me extra chills. My brothers owned a bar, and both my sister and my best friend worked at that bar. Were they in danger if this madman really was killing women once again?

  I sat down on the floor in the living room where I had a warm fire and large picture windows facing the sea. I set the first box on the floor next to my feet. I opened the lid, took out a stack of notebooks and files, and set them on the floor next to one of the floor to ceiling windows. I’d barely begun to sort through the box when Mystique trotted into the room and crawled into my lap.

  “Have you finally decided to help me?” I asked.

  “Meow.” She laid down on top of the notebook I’d begun to look through and began to purr.

  “I’m afraid we have work to do. Break time can come later. I don’t suppose you want to point me in a direction as long as I’m stuck here in the house looking through these boxes.”

  “Meow.” She got up and headed toward the wall where we’d stacked the boxes.

  “You want me to get a different box?”

  “Meow.”

  “Okay, which one? There are dozens of boxes in here.”

  Mystique trotted over to one of the stacks and began pawing at a box that was stacked third from the bottom. I set the boxes on top of it aside and opened the lid. “More notebooks and files. Do you want me to look through this one?”

  “Meow.” With that, she turned and headed back toward the rug where we’d been sitting.

  I picked up the box and followed her. I set the box down and opened the first file to find a copy of the police report relating to the man who’d been shot in the head while sleeping next to his wife.

  “This file isn’t related to the missing women. Do you want me to look into this unsolved murder instead?”

  “Meow.” Mystique laid down on the floor near me and began to purr.

  “You realize it might not be a good idea to get distracted with a different case. I know we haven’t made a lot of progress on the missing persons cases, but we are making some headway, and due to the link with the current missing women, it seems a bit more timely.”

  Mystique got up and laid down on the file in front of me. She began to purr.

  “Okay. If you’re sure. Scooch on over and I’ll take a look to see if I can figure out what it is you’re trying to show me.”

  The cat moved over, and I opened the file. As we’d already learned from the news articles Orson had written, a man named John Reynolds was shot in the head and killed while he slept next to his wife, Margaret Reynolds. Margaret told the police that she hadn’t heard a thing until she heard the gunshot, which woke her. She saw a man in black clothes and wearing a black mask fleeing. When she realized her husband had been shot, she called nine-one-one. Her husband was probably dead before Mrs. Reynolds even woke up enough to realize what was happening. The local deputy investigated the murder of Mr. Reynolds, but he never found one bit of evidence to suggest who might have been responsible for such a gruesome crime. There was no sign of forced entry, although Mrs. Reynolds did say that they rarely bothered to lock their doors. A crime scene team was brought in to dust for prints and look for physical evidence that might have been left behind, but not a single trace of evidence was found.

  Shortly after Mr. Reynolds was murdered, Mrs. Reynolds moved back east with her son, Alton, who was just ten at the time. Alton had been spending the night at the home of one of his friends from school when his father was shot, so he hadn’t seen or heard anything and had been unable to aid in the investigation in any way.

  “So, what am I looking for?” I asked the cat. “This is all the same information provided to us by Finn the other day.”

  The cat swatted at the page. It seemed she wanted me to turn the document over, so I did. Notes penned in Orson’s handwriting were on the back. Most of it looked like gibberish, but I did notice the initials JPR, which had been circled in red. Hadn’t JPR been one of the initials I’d found in the box with notes relating to the missing women? I got up and opened that box to confirm that indeed the same initials had been jotted down on the lined paper included with the missing persons reports that Orson had somehow obtained.

  “Are you saying these cases are linked in some way?” I asked the cat. “I really don’t see how. I mean, I suppose it’s possible that the same man we suspect was kidnapping and killing young women he picked up in bars might have killed this man, but why?”

  “Meow.”

  “And what does JPR stand for? John Reynolds? I suppose the P could be associated with his middle name.” I picked up my phone. “I suppose Finn would know.”

  I called Finn and confirmed that John Reynolds legally had a hyphenated last name, which made his full legal name John Peyton-Reynolds. I supposed that meant that Orson had been trying to link the two cases in some way, but why? Maybe John had found out who it was that had been kidnapping and killing the young women which created a situation where this brown-haired man known as Jack might have felt it necessary to kill him to keep him quiet. Could Jack have been a neighbor? Coworker? Friend? I really wasn’t sure how we could find out at this point.

  After hanging up with Finn, I got up and crossed the room to look out the window. The sea was angry, and the waves large, as gale-force winds pushed them onto the shoreline. Rain pelted the window, making quite the racket as the sky opened up. I loved the sunny skies we’d been enjoying, but there were times when a stormy day matched my mood much better than a blue sky and calm sea.

  I thought about what we knew or at least suspected we knew about Jack. The truth of the matter was that we really didn’t know anything. Orson had left notes indicating that someone named Jack had brought one of the missing women to a local bar, but after speaking with Fairchild, even that seemed to be an unconfirmed piece of information. We also knew that there was a cocktail waitress who worked for the Yellow Feather on San Juan Island, who claimed that a man named Jack had been in the bar bragging about bringing women to the island for a unique sexual experience. This didn’t mean he killed them, and it was quite possible the women came willing and left happily at the end of their stay.

  Both the Jack from the nineties and the Jack associated with the women who were currently missing had been described as having brown hair. I wondered about the lapse in time. If Jack with brown hair from the Yellow Feather had been the same man who’d kidnapped and killed women in the nineties, wouldn’t his hair be gray by now? Of course, lots of men died their hair, and some men grayed very late in life. I supposed it might be worthwhile to ask Cody and Finn if either of them had asked the witnesses they’d interviewed what the approximate age of their Jack might be.

  The rain let
up just a bit as I stood there watching it. Mystique wandered over, so I picked her up and hugged her to my chest. She certainly was a soft and fluffy cat. She seemed to like human contact, and I knew Mr. Parsons adored her. I wondered if she might stay around once her job was done. The other cats I’d had all moved on once they had helped me do what we were destined to do, but Mystique had bonded with Mr. Parsons to the extent that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she decided to stay.

  “So, what do you think?” I asked the cat. “Do I continue to look through the box associated with the shooting or return to the box with the information relating to the missing women Orson identified?”

  “Meow.”

  I set her on the floor, and she wandered into the kitchen and began pawing at the pantry door.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Meow.”

  “The cat food is in the laundry room. Remember, I showed you where you could find both your food and water.”

  She continued to paw at the pantry, so I opened the door. She jumped up on a shelf and knocked a can of tuna to the floor. I laughed. “I see how this is going to work now. Fairchild would only help if we gave him money, and apparently, you expect tuna as payment when you decide to help me.”

  “Meow.”

  I opened the can and dumped it into a dish. “Okay. You can have the tuna, but after lunch, we get back to work. I’d love to solve both these cases, but right now, I’m most interested in finding out who is taking the current missing women. Are they dead? Being held captive? If they are being held, is there still time to save them, or at least some of them, if we figure it out early enough?”

  “Meow.”

  “Yeah, that’s a lot of questions. Even if these women are still alive, I really have no idea how we’ll ever find them. We don’t even know if they were ever on the islands, and even if they were brought here, if they’re still here, or if the man who took them has moved them by this point. So many questions and so few answers.”

  Chapter 13

  Tara called right after Mystique and I had finished lunch to let me know that she had received a draft of the contract from Balthazar and wondered if she could stop by to go over it with me. I told her I was happy for the company and to just come on in and come up to the third floor when she arrived. In the meantime, I decided to return to the paperwork I’d been sorting through before lunch. I really had no idea if doing all of this would net us any new information, but it was something to do on a blustery day, and I liked to feel useful even though at this moment, very little was actually required of me.

  I sat down on the floor with the boxes and tried to decide which mystery to really dig into. The mystery of the missing women seemed the most relevant, but the unsolved murder of the man who had been shot as he slept was the one to grab my attention. In the end, I decided to leave it up to the cat. “Okay, so which box are we going to spend the next few hours going through?”

  Mystique jumped into one of the boxes I’d left open on the floor near where I was sitting. She put her paws on the ledge, which caused the box to tumble over. Once the contents were scattered on the floor, she pushed a single sheet of paper across the room in my direction. I picked it up and looked at it. There was a name jotted down and then circled. Marley Donnelly. Marley was Aunt Maggie’s best friend. Prior to Maggie marrying Michael and moving from the island, the two had owned a store named The Bait and Stitch, which sold both fishing and sewing supplies. When Maggie made the decision to marry the love of her life and move away, she’d given her half of the enterprise to Marley. I used to see Marley nearly every day, but now that Maggie was no longer around, I realized it had been months since I’d taken the time to visit with Marley.

  “You want us to go and see Marley?” I asked the cat.

  “Meow.”

  I looked back down at the sheet of paper, which seemed to contain notes relating to the shooting. “I really should stop by and say hi to her anyway. It’s been much too long. Maybe she’ll want to join the family for Easter like she did when Maggie lived on the island. I should ask her.”

  “Meow.”

  “I wonder why Orson had jotted down her name. I suppose Marley might have known Margaret Reynolds. Maggie and Marley would have already owned The Bait and Stitch at the time of Margaret’s husband’s murder. Maybe Margaret was a quilter. I suppose Orson might have been looking for information relating to the couple and any enemies they might have had.” I got up and set the piece of paper on the counter. “Tara is on her way over. Once she shows me what she needs to show me, we’ll go and see Marley. Since I am assuming you’ll want to go, it might be best if you would continue to hang out up here so I can find you.”

  Mystique seemed content with that arrangement since she jumped up onto the sofa, curled up between two sofa pillows, and went to sleep.

  Not long after Mystique settled in for a nap, I heard Tara’s car in the drive, so I started a fresh pot of coffee to go with the muffins Tara had indicated she’d made that morning and was bringing with her.

  “So does Balthazar’s offer seem viable?” I asked, not really wanting to read the entire document, and not feeling that I needed to since I was certain Tara already had, and I trusted her judgment.

  “More than viable. When Balthazar mentioned working out a new share agreement, I assumed he would become a partial owner, but Willow will be our new partner. Balthazar is suggesting that you and I each maintain a thirty-five percent share, and Willow would be given a thirty percent share in exchange for the dollar amount listed toward the middle of page two.”

  I turned to page two and looked at the number on the page. “Wow. That’s very generous. I can’t see any way we wouldn’t be able to tear down what’s there and build a brand new Coffee Cat Books.”

  Tara smiled. “I know. It’s a lot more than I ever hoped for. Not only will we be able to rebuild, but there will be enough left over so that we can stock our inventory and have a little money in the bank as well.”

  “Have you spoken to Willow about this?” I asked. “She really doesn’t seem to be the sort to want to accept such a large gift from anyone, and what this really comes down to is that the money Balthazar is investing is a gift to her since she’s the one who will own a share of the business.”

  Tara nodded. “I have. I guess that between Balthazar and Alex, they managed to convince her that by accepting this gift, she will be helping us to rebuild and that without the gift, we probably will be out of business. Willow loves working at the bookstore. Even more than you do. If not for the fact that she wants to spend quality time with Barrington, I think she’d be interested in full-time work. She told me that the three days a week she spends with us mean a lot to her. I suspect that if she and Alex don’t eventually marry and have children of their own, she might even be interested in working full-time once Barry is in school. But that is neither here nor there. All she’s looking for at this point is three days a week, and from where I stand, I am happy to have her.”

  “Yeah. Me too.” I looked down at the contract in my hands. “I just want to make one small change since we’re changing things up anyway. We talked about giving Cassie a small share. I think you should keep your thirty-five percent so that you maintain the majority share. I’d like to give Cassie ten percent of my share.”

  “Are you sure? That would just leave you with twenty-five percent.”

  “I’m sure. Like we discussed, the bookstore is really your baby, and I would be most happy dividing my time between the bookstore and working at the newspaper with Cody. If I give Cassie ten percent, you will have thirty-five percent, Willow will have thirty, I’ll have twenty-five, and Cassie will have ten. That feels right to me.” I looked at Tara. “I do want to point out that even though you have the largest share, it is not in and of itself a controlling share. Theoretically, if Willow and I teamed up, we would be able to outvote you. Are you sure you are comfortable with that?”

  She nodded. “I trust you both and really can’t se
e that happening.” She smiled. “When I think of the store we could build with all that extra money, I get goosebumps all up and down my arms.”

  “When we rebuild, we could make all those little changes we’d always talked about. I really am excited about the possibilities. If you’re comfortable with this, I’m comfortable with this. I say we make the small changes to the document we discussed and then forge ahead.”

  Tara hugged the draft of the contract to her chest. “Okay. I’ll call Balthazar and put the deal in motion.”

  After Tara left, I grabbed Mystique and headed downstairs to let Mr. Parsons know that the cat and I were heading to town. Francine had stopped by for tea and conversation with Mr. Parsons, and the dogs both seemed happy to spend time with them, so I left them where they were, and Mystique and I headed into town. The rain had slowed, although the sky was dark, so I suspected the break in the downpour was only a temporary situation.

  In order to reach The Bait and Stitch, I had to drive by Coffee Cat Books. The place was boarded up, awaiting repair. It would be sad to see the old building that had at one time been the cannery demolished, but I did understand that a new building made more sense. Tara, Willow, Cassie, and I would need to sit down with an architect and nail down the design, but I suspected the new building would look much like the old building with a few alterations Tara and I had always wished we’d made when we remodeled the first time around.

  “Cait.” Marley grinned and opened her arms for a hug when I walked in with the cat trailing along behind me. “It’s been much too long.”

  “I was just thinking that.” I hugged her back.

  “And who do we have here?” Marley asked as she bent over and picked the cat up.

  “Her name is Mystique. She’s helping me out with a few things, one of which I’d like to ask you about, but before I do, I wanted to invite you to Finn and Siobhan’s for Easter dinner on Sunday.”