A Case Of Cat And Mouse

chapter 9

I hadn’t seen that coming.

“I don’t exactly seem like Kassie’s type, do I?” he said.

“More like she didn’t seem like your type.”

A small smile flashed across his face. “She liked slumming.”

I didn’t like the word and I didn’t like Charles using it to refer to himself. “I don’t think Kassie was slumming by being with you and I think anyone who knows you would feel the same way.” I had noticed how quick Charles was to encourage the other bakers or to offer a hand if things were going downhill.

“I spent almost six years in prison for manslaughter, Kathleen.”

I folded one arm up over my head and looked at Charles sitting there beside me. Manslaughter. He had killed someone. Not planned and not with malice but Charles had taken someone’s life. “I don’t know what to say.” After telling me he was sleeping with Kassie I hadn’t expected to hear anything else that would surprise me.

“I get that a lot,” he said. “At least you didn’t ask me if I like The Shawshank Redemption.” He blew out a breath. “I shoved a guy outside a bar. I wasn’t looking to kill him. He’d just hit the woman he was with. Turns out he’d broken her nose.” He held up one hand. “I’m not telling you this to excuse what I did because my reasons for going after the guy don’t make it okay. I pushed him. I was bigger. I was stronger. He lost his balance. He hit his head on the curb and he died. I spent more than five years in jail. I want you to understand that I’m not ever going back. I learned my lesson.”

“So you wouldn’t have killed Kassie.”

Charles shook his head. “No, I would not. She could be a piece of work, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t get locked up again for her.”

I went out on a limb. “She was blackmailing you, wasn’t she?”

“Wouldn’t have slept with her otherwise,” he said. “Like you said, she wasn’t my type.” He gave me a wry smile. “And it turned out to be a pretty stupid thing to do. All I did was give her more ammunition to use against me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She threatened to say I was sexually harassing her unless I did her a favor. Like I said, she was a piece of work.”

I slid my hand down over the back of my head and rubbed my neck. “What kind of a favor?”

“She wanted me to throw the show.”

I frowned. “She wanted you to lose?”

“More like she wanted someone else to win.”

“Do you know who?”

“Yeah. Your friend Rebecca.”

“Rebecca?” I was pretty sure my mouth gaped for a moment.

Charles seemed to find my reaction amusing. “Oh yeah. Kassie was betting on who was going to win the competition.”

“You can bet on something like that?”

“You can bet on anything.”

“Why?” I said. “And why Rebecca?”

He shrugged. “The girl liked to gamble. She owed money. It was a way to get even or even come out a little ahead. As for why Rebecca, when we started filming she was the long shot. Little old lady from the middle of nowhere. No offense.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t offended but I was surprised that anyone would bet on the outcome of a TV show. On the other hand, as Charles had just pointed out, people bet on just about everything else. But there was something else that was bothering me. “I thought the show did background checks on all the contestants,” I said. “How did they miss the fact that you’ve been in prison?”

“When no one said anything, I just assumed somehow they didn’t know,” he said. “And yeah, I know how lame that was. When my charm in the bedroom didn’t win Kassie over, I decided the best thing to do was to out myself. So last Wednesday I went to Elias and told him the truth. I told him I would quit and go home. They could explain it any way they wanted.”

“You told him about Kassie?”

Charles nodded. “I told him everything. Turns out he’d known all along. He was planning on spinning the whole thing as an inspiring tragedy-to-triumph story that would have the added bonus that Kassie would have nothing to hold over me.”

I could see Elias coming up with that idea.

“Problem was, a couple of days later Kassie was dead.” He dropped both his arms and looked at me. “I didn’t kill her, Kathleen. I didn’t have a reason to after I talked to Elias and I wouldn’t have done it anyway. But I get that it looks bad.”

“It looks like you have a motive,” I said.

“I get that,” he said with a shrug. “That’s why Elias told me to keep my mouth shut.”

I could see Elias coming up with that idea, too. I closed my eyes for a moment and shook my head to clear it. Then I opened them again and looked at Charles. “You need to tell the police the truth.”

“I know,” he said. “If nothing else, it shows there’s some reasonable doubt at least as far as Elias being guilty.”

It could also put Charles into the middle of a murder investigation. But the truth was what mattered. As my mother liked to say, “Tell the truth. It’s easier to remember.”

So once again I pulled out my cell phone and called Marcus at the station.

“I’m standing in the parking lot right now,” he said. “Stay put and I’ll come to you. I won’t be long.”

I would just be able to make it to the library on time. I explained where we were and Marcus said he’d see us in a few minutes. Charles and I sat on the bench and talked about the show. It seemed the general consensus was that everyone already liked Peggy. At least something was working out.

When Marcus arrived I walked over to meet him. “Charles is a good guy,” I said.

“Is that your way of telling me to be nice?” he asked.

I stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “No,” I said. “That’s my way of telling you to be nice.”

“For the record, I like that second way.”

I smiled at him and swung the strap of my messenger bag over my shoulder.

Marcus caught my arm. “Do you remember the other night when we came down to the hotel to listen to those two guys?”

I nodded.

“Did you take the half a pack of gum that was in the cup holder?”

I shook my head. “I don’t even remember seeing anything in the cup holder.”

He made a sound of exasperation. “This case has me distracted.”

“I’ll get you more gum,” I said. “Right now I have to get to the library.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” he said.

I got to the library with maybe a minute to spare. Susan was at the circulation desk. “How was your morning?” she asked. “Tell me some backstage gossip. Is Rebecca secretly a terrible baker? Does Ray make cookies that look like little ducks? Does Eugenie Bowles-Hamilton expect you to curtsey when you go into her office?” She cocked her head to one side. “C’mon, Kathleen. You have to share something. You’re my inside source.”

I smiled and held up my left index finger. “Okay. Let me see. Rebecca is not secretly a terrible baker. In fact, I’ve probably eaten about five pounds of her sourdough bread in the last week.” I held up a second finger. “Ray actually did make little duck cookies. They were chocolate hazelnut. And they were delicious.” I added a third finger. “And no, Eugenie definitely doesn’t make anyone curtsey, although she does do a perfect one herself.”

In fact, Eugenie had shown her curtsey to Peggy and me just that morning. “My mother insisted that all we girls knew how to do a proper curtsey,” she’d said. “Just in case the queen happened to come for tea.”

“I have to meet her,” Susan said, gushing like the fangirl she obviously was. “She looks so cool and elegant. Please, Kathleen.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, heading for the stairs. Susan gave a little squeal of excitement.

I loved her zest for life in general. Her boys had the same enthusiasm. And since they were scary smart, life was never dull at Susan and Eric’s house.

During my supper break I started looking into the backgrounds of everyone I figured had been on Marcus’s suspect list before Elias Braeden moved to the top, doing a deeper dive than I had when I was putting together the information for Peggy. I couldn’t just sit on a bench by the water and wait for the answers to come to me, although that had worked twice so far.

Just as he’d told me, Charles had spent close to six years in prison for manslaughter in the death of the man he had shoved outside a bar. I’d missed that when I’d been putting together that basic profile on him for Peggy. The sentence had been reduced due to extenuating circumstances—the fact that the man had just hit his girlfriend hard enough to break her nose.

Charles had learned to box in prison and had had a short-lived professional career when he got out. He’d trained at Rival Boxing in Chicago. I leaned back in my chair, laced my fingers together and rested my hands on the top of my head.

Charles had boxed in Chicago. Sean Sullivan owned a gym in Chicago. Could there be a connection? Had Charles known who Kassie really was? Did he know why Elias had hired Kassie? I had questions for the next time I saw Charles.

I had a few minutes left to see what else I could learn about Caroline Peters. She didn’t have much of a social media presence and what she did have showed that she was very much the earth mother I saw her as. I knew she liked to keep her baking as healthy as possible. She favored natural products like the beeswax wraps she’d taught Rebecca how to make and she was an active protestor over climate change. While Caroline may have been a gentle earth mother most of the time, I discovered she did have a temper when she was provoked. She had tangled with a counterprotestor at a global warming panel discussion in her hometown and had hit him over the head repeatedly with her protest sign. She’d only stopped because other people pulled her off the man. He had needed stitches to close the gash on the back of his head.

No charges were brought against Caroline. Maybe because the police found bomb-making supplies in the guy’s car.

I studied the photo that accompanied the story I had found in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The photographer had caught the protestor curled in a ball, cowering on the ground. Caroline had her sign raised above her head ready to swing it again. Her hands clenched the wooden post so tightly that even in the small photo on the paper’s website I could see the skin of her hands pulled tight over her knuckles. As I studied the image all I could think was that she looked angry enough to kill.

Had she?