A Case Of Cat And Mouse

chapter 11

I drove out to Wisteria Hill early Sunday morning. I’d had to drag myself out of bed. It had been a long week.

Roma had decided early in the morning was the best time to move the cat colony. For the past several weeks she had been slowly moving their feeding station, which was at the back of the carriage house, over to the door, literally a few inches at a time. I had helped her as often as I could. The first couple of times Lucy had looked perplexed, but noticed after carefully checking out the food and the water she’d eaten, the others had followed her lead.

Today, for the first time, the feeding station was in the doorway of the cats’ new home. Eddie had done an excellent job on the twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot shed. It was insulated, with a roof that didn’t leak and new shelters for each cat made from plastic storage bins by Rebecca, Ella King and Harry’s daughter, Mariah.

I was surprised by the knot of anxiety that lay in my stomach like I’d swallowed a large rock. This was such a big change for the cats. What if they didn’t like their new home? What if they all just disappeared? We’d never be able to find them again. And I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to rehome Smokey at the clinic, at least not now. The colony was his family. Just because he was old didn’t mean there wasn’t a place for him.

Roma had asked me if I would put out the cats’ food and water for the first time.

“Of course I will,” I’d said at once. Lucy trusted me as much as she trusted anyone, and Roma hoped the cat would accept the change more easily if she saw me.

Roma and Eddie stayed across the driveway as I headed for the carriage house with the food, the dishes and two jugs of water. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest and I knew she was probably as apprehensive as I was.

I propped the side door of the carriage house open and then went over to the new building. That door was wedged open as well and the feeding station was set up in the doorway. Eventually it would be moved farther inside. Eddie had built a small flap in the larger door so the cats could come and go as they pleased. There was a partial wall dividing the shelter area from the rest of the space so the cats would feel secure. The shelters themselves were up on a long shelf about waist height. There was a small step about halfway between the floor and the top of the platform so the cats could easily get up and down. I knew even Smokey could navigate the distance if I could just come up with a way to convince Roma that he needed to stay.

The building was sheltered by a clump of evergreen trees and some other bushes, which Eddie felt would mitigate the extremes of both the summer and the winter temperatures.

I set out all the dishes and filled them with food and water. Then I backed away, crouched down and waited. I had probably stayed like that for maybe five minutes, although it felt a lot longer. The lump in my stomach felt heavier and harder. I had cramps in both my legs but I was scared to move, afraid that if I did it would be just the moment the cats would appear and I’d frighten them away.

Then, finally, I saw movement at the door of the carriage house. Lucy poked her head out. She looked at me and it seemed to me she looked confused. I didn’t blame her. After the loft had fallen down in the carriage house we didn’t see her or any of the cats for two long days. They didn’t touch any food. Roma kept putting out water and insisted they would come back. Later she’d admitted she was trying to convince herself as much as she was me.

“They did come back, Kath,” she had reminded me earlier. “This will work, too.” I wondered if, like before, the reassurance was for herself as much as for me.

I watched Lucy. Lucy watched me. Neither of us moved. I was holding my breath, I realized. I let it out and then called softly to the little cat. “Hi, puss. Breakfast is ready.”

She took a step outside and her whiskers twitched as she sniffed the air. Could she smell the food at that distance?

“C’mon, Luce,” I said. “This is your new home. It’s safe. I promise.” I thought about the little cat finding Marcus and making such a fuss he’d realized something had to be wrong and headed for the carriage house in time to help save Syd and Olivia.

Lucy cocked her head to one side. She seemed to be weighing my words. Or maybe she was just deciding whether to go back inside the carriage house or bolt for the trees.

Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe I was just going to have to convince Roma and Eddie to let the cat colony have the carriage house to themselves until they were all gone after very long and happy lives.

And then Lucy took a step forward. And then another. She meowed loudly and Smokey stuck his gray head around the carriage house door. He stepped outside and started for the feeding station. After a moment the other three cats followed. They all seemed a little apprehensive and skittish, even Lucy, but they all came and ate and then Smokey went inside. He had always been the most curious of the group and the most fearless. I leaned sideways and watched him sniff everything and then disappear back where the shelters were. Roma had put a couple of the sardine crackers I made for Owen and Hercules in front of each shelter as what she called a “welcome home” gift.

After Lucy had eaten she sat and washed her face while the others finished and then followed Smokey inside. Finally she turned, looked at me and meowed again.

“I’m glad you like it,” I said. I had to blink away a sudden, unexpected prickle of tears. Everything was going to be all right. Lucy turned back around and went to explore her new home.

I stood up, shaking my left leg, which had fallen asleep because I had been crouched down so long. I walked back over to Roma and Eddie, hobbling a little as the feeling came back to my leg.

“It worked!” Roma exclaimed, bright-eyed. She’d come close to tears herself, it seemed.

We hugged and then I leaned back. “Don’t make Smokey go live at the clinic,” I said. “Please.”

Roma shook her head. “I’m not.”

I stared at her for a long moment. “You’re not?”

“I’m not. This is his home and his family. Eddie convinced me I was wrong. And that’s why he built that extra step between the ground and the platform. So Smokey could make it up and down easily.”

I looked up at Eddie, who was smiling at me. The former hockey player really was a softie. “I love you, Crazy Eddie Sweeney,” I said.

The smile turned into a grin and he wrapped me in a bear hug. “Love you, too,” he said.

I told Roma I would call her later that afternoon to see how the cats were and then I got in the truck and headed home.

I’d had fruit and yogurt before I had driven out to Wisteria Hill. Now I was hungry again. I found Hercules sitting on the back steps, green eyes cast skyward. He had some weird rivalry going on with a grackle—or maybe it was several grackles, I wasn’t sure.

I leaned down and picked him up. “How do you feel about a breakfast sandwich?” I asked.

He murped with enthusiasm and nuzzled my neck.

“Where’s your brother?” I asked.

Hercules suddenly wriggled to get down. That was not a good sign. As soon as I stepped inside the kitchen I knew why Hercules had suddenly gotten squirmy. Owen was under the kitchen table and based on the bits of dried leaves surrounding him, he had been playing air hockey with a Fred the Funky Chicken. For once he hadn’t bitten the head off and spread catnip everywhere. This would be easy to sweep up. There was just a tiny split in the side of the cat toy.

Owen gave an indignant meow when I picked up the chicken.

“Yes, I know it’s yours, but you made a mess on my clean floor.”

The cat looked around the room and then fixed his narrowed golden eyes on me. I remembered that I hadn’t actually washed the floor on Friday. I had gone to Maggie’s with Roma instead.

“Okay, my almost clean floor,” I said. “That’s not the point. I don’t see your little paws working the broom when there’s catnip everywhere.”

He lifted one paw and stared at it. I couldn’t help laughing. I leaned down to scratch the top of his head. “Okay, Fuzzy Face,” I said. “First I’m going to clean up your mess. Then I’m going to make a breakfast sandwich.”

Owen murped his enthusiasm for both ideas and tried to grab the yellow chicken I was holding. I snatched it out of his reach. “Say good-bye to Fred,” I told him, straightening up and taking the catnip toy to the garbage can. It was one good swat away from splitting open and spewing a whole lot of dried catnip all over my semiclean floor.

I grabbed the broom from the porch and swept up the mess Owen had made. He muttered and grumbled a little but he knew when he’d lost. I kicked off my shoes, hung up my hoodie and went to wash my hands. I knew there were eggs, tomatoes and cheese in my refrigerator and one last slice of Rebecca’s spelt bread in the breadbox. I scrambled the eggs, toasted the bread and added a couple of slices of tomato and two slices of cheese. The boys got a tiny bit of egg with two sardine crackers.

I set my sandwich on the table and got my laptop. I didn’t have to be down at the show for a while. I wanted to see if I could learn a little more about Kassie.

I was reading an article on an entertainment site about the revival of The Great Northern Baking Showdown, when Owen launched himself onto my lap and leaned in front of me as though he wanted to read what was on the screen, too. After we finished the article—Owen, if he was indeed reading, was pretty quick at it—we scrolled down to the comment section. The first episode hadn’t even aired and already people were critical about Kassie’s casting and her lack of experience and training when it came to cooking in general and baking in particular. They picked on everything from her hair to her penchant for heels to the way she pronounced the word “recognize” in her online videos. A lot of the comments were spiteful. I wondered if Kassie had seen any of them, and if she had, how they had made her feel. I felt uncomfortable and sad reading them and they weren’t directed at me.

I got up to get another cup of coffee, setting Owen on the chair. When I came back to the table he was on his hind legs, one paw on the edge of the laptop, looking at the screen with what seemed to me to be a very self-satisfied expression on his face. Somehow in the short amount of time I had been up he’d managed to find Kassie’s Instagram feed. I scooped him up and set him on my lap.

“Not even going to ask how you did this,” I said. “But I’ll give you a pass for the catnip.” He licked my chin.

Kassie’s Instagram feed was a carefully curated collection of images. There was no way my kitchen ever looked that good.

“Where are the clumps of cat hair on the floor?” I said to Owen. “Where are the funky chickens and stinky cracker crumbs?”

He leaned forward for a better look at the screen and then seemed to shake his head. Clearly he was baffled, too.

We spent a little time sifting through the photos Kassie had posted before her death. She had been showing more of what was happening on set than Elias had wanted posted online and while she didn’t mention any of the contestants by name she did manage to work in little comments on their baking. Very quickly I picked up a pattern in what she was saying and showing. She favored Ray. Although she didn’t use his name it wasn’t hard to figure out to whom she was referring. Anyone who had checked out the show’s social media would realize it was Ray.

There was already a lot online about The Great Northern Baking Showdown and the contestants. Elias’s promo people seemed to be trying to generate as much buzz as possible, probably because they felt it would help find a buyer for the final product. It was hard to believe that people actually cared about the outcome of a program no one had seen yet.

I remembered Charles telling me that Kassie had bet on the winner of the show being Rebecca. “This doesn’t make sense,” I said to Owen. “Why was Kassie piling on the not-so-subtle praise for Ray when her money was on Rebecca?” If anything, she had seemed to pick on Rebecca’s efforts a little.

“Mrrr,” he said.

“Unless . . .”

Owen looked at me, cocking his head to one side.

“We know people bet on the show. They bet on who will make it to the top three. They bet on who will win. If someone is perceived to be a long shot, then the payout will be greater if they win.”

“Mrrr,” Owen said again. So far he seemed to be following me.

I took a drink of my coffee. “So if Kassie gave people the impression that Ray is becoming the front-runner and Rebecca doesn’t have much of a chance of winning, they’re more likely to bet on him, which moves the odds with respect to Rebecca winning more in Kassie’s favor.” Could that have actually happened?

It took a little searching and a couple of lucky pokes of the keyboard by Owen but eventually we managed to find an online gambling site that gave the odds of each one of the bakers taking first place on the show. People would bet on anything, it seemed.

“Look at that,” I said. Owen followed my finger. Ray was favored to win, although as I tracked the odds back over the previous ten days his advantage had slipped a little. On the other hand, the chances of Rebecca winning had increased a little over the same period of time.

I didn’t think Rebecca knew what Kassie had been doing. Had Ray? “Very interesting,” I said to Owen.

He murped his agreement.

I got down to the set about half an hour before filming started, which gave me plenty of time to check in with Eugenie and deal with any last-minute questions from Peggy. They were shooting Back to Basics and then Favorites. The Basics section would take the least amount of time. After that had been filmed we’d break for lunch—catered by Eric—and then finish with Favorites.

Everyone was wearing the same clothes they had worn on Saturday and I watched a member of the production crew check shoes, hair and jewelery for continuity’s sake since we were filming the first part of the show last.

Everything went just as well as it had the day before. Peggy and Richard already had an easy, relaxed chemistry—not flirtatious, more like siblings without the sibling rivalry. I could see that Ruby had been right to suggest Peggy as the replacement judge.

Russell came to stand next to me while we were waiting for the set to be cleaned up before the Basics judging. He was wearing a long-sleeved orange T-shirt that still managed to show off his muscled arms and his ubiquitous Vans—this pair was orange and red. When I used to watch the original version of the show I’d always wondered why everywhere was so clean during the judging. Did the bakers scurry around after they were finished to make each station presentable? It turned out a bunch of production assistants and a couple of producers were the ones scurrying around to make everything look good again, while the bakers got to step outside for a few minutes’ break.

“Thank you for the mouse,” I said to Russell. “It’s so small and perfect.”

He held out his closed hand and when he opened his fingers another tiny mouse sat on his palm. “One for Hercules and one for Owen,” he said with a smile. “I have their names right, don’t I?”

“Yes, you do,” I said, taking the little paper creation from his hand. “Thank you for mouse number two. You know, I think they need names.”

Russell wrinkled his nose and pulled his mouth to one side as though he were deep in thought. “Russell is a very nice name,” he said, “or so I’ve heard.”

I nodded and held up the paper mouse. “Russell, meet Russell.”

The human Russell bowed his head. “It’s a pleasure.”

“If this is Russell, then the other mouse has to be Eugenie, don’t you think?” I said.

“Eugenie and Russell,” he said thoughtfully. “Russell and Eugenie. In either combination the names do work well together.”

“Then it’s settled,” I said with a smile.

He gestured at his paper creation. “Be careful. You know what they say: When the cat’s away, the mice will play.”

He gave me a cheeky smile and walked off.

Everything ran so smoothly that filming actually finished a bit early. To my delight Rebecca was chosen Hot Shot—the week’s best baker, in other words. For the Favorites segment she’d made her honey-sunny bread. Richard had complimented the flavor and Peggy had noted both the texture and the crispness of her crust.

Caroline had made a spicy tomato sourdough loaf, which had coaxed a smile from the usually serious Richard. And Ray’s sourdough focaccia with rosemary, sea salt and garlic had filled the set with its delicious aroma as it baked.

Sadly, Stacey was eliminated. Her basic sourdough loaf hadn’t held its shape and was overbaked. And both Richard and Peggy had felt her sourdough biscuits were too heavy and too bland.

Maggie and I had been standing together, watching the final judging segment. We hurried over to Rebecca.

“I knew you were going to win Hot Shot,” Maggie said, folding Rebecca into a hug.

“The credit has to go to my mother’s recipe,” Rebecca said, bright-eyed with excitement.

“The credit has to go to you,” I said, stepping up to hug her as well.

Stacey came up behind Rebecca and tapped her on the shoulder. “Congratulations, Rebecca!” she said with a smile. “You deserve being the Hot Shot baker this time.”

“I’m sorry you’re leaving,” Rebecca said. “It’s been such a pleasure to get to know you.”

Stacey nodded. “You as well.”

Maggie leaned toward me. “I have to get going. I have some more illustrations for next week that I have to work on.”

“I had fun Friday night,” I said. “We have to do it again.”

“Pizza?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

I loved Maggie’s pizza. “Absolutely.”

Maggie raised a hand in good-bye to Rebecca and headed for the community center.

Caroline, Ray and Eugenie joined us then. Ray and Caroline were still wearing their aprons and Caroline had a dusting of flour in her hair.

“I need to try that bread,” Ray said to Rebecca.

“So do I,” Caroline said. “What made you think of adding walnuts?”

They dragged Rebecca away, all of them talking at once.

Beside me, Stacey still had a smile on her face.

“That was nice of you,” I said.

“You’re wondering why I’m not sulking and going off somewhere to lick my wounds,” she said.

I shook my head. “No. I’m just impressed by the way you’re handling the fact that you have to leave the show. It isn’t easy to be gracious about someone else’s win when you lost something.”

“Actually it is easy,” Stacey said, brushing a bit of what looked like orange zest from the sleeve of her sweater. “I never expected to make it on the show, let alone get this far. I’ve gotten way more out of this experience than I ever expected, so I’m happy.”

“I’m sorry to see you leave,” I said.

“I’m not going yet,” she replied. “I’ve already taken the time off so I’ve decided to stay here a bit longer, maybe explore the town a little.”

I smiled. “Come see the library if you have time.”

She smiled back at me. “I’d like that.”

Richard was heading in our direction.

“Excuse me, Kathleen,” Stacey said. “I have to let Richard tell me he thinks I’m a great baker even though we both know by the face he made when he tried my biscuits that he’s a little iffy on that.”

She was still holding her apron and she leaned over now and set it on the end of Rebecca’s workstation. As she did, the fine silver chain she was wearing around her neck slid out of her dress. I caught sight of what looked like a tiny red heart-shaped paper pendant hanging from the chain. I hoped that meant Stacey had someone special to commiserate with. Even though she hadn’t expected to make it this far, being ousted had to sting a little.

I started for the truck when I realized that Charles was ahead of me, headed in the same direction. I caught up with him at the curb.

“We need to talk,” I said.

He shrugged. “Yeah, I figured this was coming.” He gestured at the grass. “You wanna walk?”

I nodded and we started walking away from the building that housed the set.

“I saw you talking to Elias yesterday,” Charles said.

“When you told me that Elias warned you not to tell anyone that you slept with Kassie, why didn’t you tell me the two of you stood on the street and argued where anyone could have heard you?”

“Duh! Because it doesn’t make him look good.”

“Him shoving you doesn’t make him look good?” I said. “That’s what you were worried about?”

Charles held up a hand. “First of all, I may have been a crappy boxer but I still could have laid the dude out right there if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t and I wouldn’t. Like I told you before, I learned my lesson about getting physical with people. I let him shove me like that to let off a little steam. And second, like I said, it doesn’t look good for Elias to be putting his hands on me and saying he’ll take care of things and then a couple of hours later, Kassie is dead. I know how the police think.”

I exhaled loudly. “Well, it looks worse when the information comes from a witness who heard the two of you instead of from Elias or you.”

“Look,” he said. “I just don’t think he killed her. I really don’t. And the guy’s been good to me. I wasn’t going to hang him out to dry.”

Charles just didn’t seem to see he hadn’t made things better.

“You also didn’t tell me that you used to box in Chicago.”

At least this time he had the good grace to blush. “Where Kassie’s father had a gym. Yeah, I probably should have said something about that. I only knew the guy by reputation, which was enough, believe me. I swear, though, I didn’t know Kassie was his kid at first. Do you think I would have slept with her if I had? Jeez, I don’t have a death wish.”

I kicked a rock and sent it bouncing along the ground in front of me. “When did you find out who she was?”

“Elias told me when I told him about the two of us hooking up.”

I had no reason to disbelieve him but I wasn’t sure I should believe him, either. Not that it really mattered. “How did you get down to Eric’s the night of the murder?” I asked.

“I drove down with some of the crew, Norman and a couple of the camera guys.”

The last piece slid into place. “Well, unless you happen to be some sort of sprinter, you have an alibi for Kassie’s murder.”

Charles grinned and patted his ample midsection. “The only time I run is for free donuts.”

“So why didn’t you say where you were from the beginning?”

“What does it matter?” he said. “You know, and I assume you’ll tell your boyfriend so the police will know. And anyway, I’m not even a suspect.”

I was pretty sure Fred the Funky Chicken would have been able to tell he was hiding something. “Oh, humor me,” I said.

His mouth moved but no words came out.

There was a bit of a breeze and the wind lifted my hair. I pushed it away from my face. “Charles, I hope you don’t play cards,” I said.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because you can’t bluff to save your life. Tell me why you didn’t mention you had an alibi or I’m going to think there’s a reason you don’t want everyone to know you were helping wait tables at the café.”

His gaze slipped away from mine.

I stopped walking. “Wait a minute. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“No,” he said. He really wasn’t a very good liar. A lot of people weren’t.

I just stood there looking at him.

Charles swiped a hand over his face. “Okay, okay. I didn’t tell you because I was trying to downplay the whole thing.”

“Because?” I prompted.

“Because I’ve been watching you. Sometimes you’re too smart for your own good.”

I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or a criticism.

“I was afraid you’d figure out what I was really trying to do that night,” he said.

“Which was?”

He shook his head. “I was trying to get into the kitchen, okay? I wanted to find out what Eric’s secret ingredient is in that chocolate pudding cake. Dessert Week is coming up.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “You were going to steal Eric’s recipe? You’ve got to be kidding. You couldn’t have fooled anyone. Every single person in Mayville Heights has eaten that pudding cake. More than once.”

“I wasn’t trying to steal anything,” Charles said, his jaw clenched. “I just wanted to know what his secret was so I could make a couple of adjustments to my lava cake recipe. No harm, no foul.”

I sighed. “There is no secret ingredient, unless it’s the fact that Eric puts his heart into every recipe he creates.” I had liked Charles up to now, but suddenly I wasn’t so sure how I felt about him.

He was shaking his head again before I finished speaking. “I’m an ex-con, Kathleen. I’m not like Caroline, making healthy versions of comfort food for her five kids. Or like Rebecca, using recipes that go back three or four generations. I was raised by a single mother who was also raised by a single mother. Neither one of them knew how to cook.”

“No one is asking you to be Rebecca or Caroline or anyone else,” I said. “Be who you are. For all you know there will be someone watching who will get inspired by you.” I looked at him for a long moment and then I turned and walked away.

I drove home and had a late supper with Owen and Hercules. I had left chicken soup in the slow cooker and the delicious smell filled the kitchen. After I’d eaten and the boys had given me their most mournful looks, Hercules decided to go out into the porch and stare out the window—maybe looking for his grackle nemesis. Owen decided to stay in the kitchen and do everything possible to get in my way.

The phone rang as I was finishing the dishes. It was Marcus. “Hi,” he said. “I just wanted you to know that I’m having dinner with a couple of the guys from the workshop and then we’re heading back.”

“I miss you,” I said. “Drive safely.”

“I will,” he promised. “Did Lucy and the other cats like their new place?”

I explained how well things had gone that morning. Then I told Marcus how I had discovered that Charles had an alibi. I realized from his response that he already knew.

We said good-bye and I set my phone on the counter. I finished the dishes and tidied the kitchen. Then I got out the envelope that Eugenie had given me on Saturday.

I spread the papers across the table, deciding that I would sort things into three piles: one for Peggy, one for Eugenie and one for anything I was unsure about. Everything else could be recycled. I was just getting started when my phone rang again. It was Roma. I had called her during the afternoon to check on the cats—who seemed to be adjusting well. She had said she’d call me after supper.

“Smokey went back to the carriage house maybe an hour ago,” she said. “Which made me a little anxious, but Eddie saw him return to the cat house about five minutes ago. I think that’s a good sign.”

“Number one, you have to come up with a better name than ‘cat house’ for their new home. And number two, has Eddie been out in the yard watching the cats all day?” I asked.

“No,” she said, somewhat indignantly. There was a brief hesitation. “He’s been watching from the porch. With binoculars.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Roma, that man loves you to the moon and back.”

I pictured the goofy smile she got on her face whenever the conversation turned to Eddie. “I know,” she said.

I told Roma if she needed me in the morning to call. “I’ll be up. Owen thinks if he’s up, everyone should be up.”

She laughed and said she would.

I said good-bye and turned back to the table. My furry early-riser had jumped onto a chair and seemed to have started sorting the papers without me.

“Owen,” I said sharply.

He jumped at the sound of his name and one paw knocked a pile of pages on the floor. I groaned and I might have muttered a word under my breath that librarians generally did not use.

Owen immediately jumped down and started nudging papers toward the table.

I crouched down next to him and began to gather the rest.

“Merow?” he asked, a little tentatively it seemed to me.

“No, I’m not mad,” I said. “Just next time wait for me, please.” I realized if anyone had heard the conversation they would think I was talking to a person and not a cat.

Owen suddenly peered in the direction of the refrigerator. He stretched out a paw and snagged a piece of paper that had slid partway underneath.

“Thank you for your help,” I said as I took it from him. It looked to be a photo of a couple of teenagers, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old.

Owen just sat there staring at me.

Okay, it seemed that I was missing something. I took a closer look at the picture. The two teenagers, a boy and a girl, were on a tire swing. She was wearing a bikini top and a tiny pair of white shorts. He was wearing denim cutoffs and a tank top. I recognized the boy. “That’s Ray Nightingale,” I said, tapping the page with a finger.

Owen murped his agreement and began to wash his face.

I studied the girl. “Hang on a minute. That’s Kassie.”

The cat’s golden eyes flicked to me for a moment without missing a pass of his paw over his face.

I straightened up, still holding on to the picture. “Ray and Kassie knew each other when they were kids?” I had recognized who they were pretty quickly. They had to have recognized each other.

“Why didn’t Ray say something?”

Owen seemed as puzzled as I was.

Could he have been involved in Kassie’s death? No. That didn’t make sense.

I probably should have just called Marcus with the information, but I didn’t. I reached for my cell and called Maggie instead. She was probably still in her studio at Riverarts.

Maggie confirmed that Ray was there or at least he had been about ten minutes earlier when she’d gone down to her Bug to get the new paintbrush she had left in the car.

I told her I needed to talk to Ray and she didn’t even ask me why. She just said she would be at the back door to let me in.

I stuffed all the papers back in their envelope except for the photo. That I took with me. Owen disappeared into his basement lair. Figuratively for a change, not literally. Hercules had gone out onto the back step and was staring at the sky again. I stopped to give him a head scratch.

“Please don’t start a war with the grackles,” I said. “I don’t want to come home and find out I’m living in The Birds.”

As promised, Maggie was at the back door to let me into Riverarts. Ray was one of the newer members of the artists’ co-op. He’d had to wait a while for studio space in the converted school, and he was there a lot.

“Come on up when you’re done with Ray,” Maggie said. “I’ll show you next week’s illustrations.”

I said I would and she headed back to her studio, her long legs taking the stairs two at a time.

Ray’s space was on the second floor of the building on the right-hand side of the hall at the end. I knocked on his half-open door and after a moment he called, “Come in.”

The space was incredibly tidy. A huge commercial shelving unit, painted black, filled one end wall. The opposite wall held several glass display cases with Ray’s collection of vintage ink bottles.

There was a big drafting table next to the window and a long workstation in the center of the room.

Ray was working by the window. He looked up, surprised to see me. “Hey, Kathleen,” he said. “Are you looking for Maggie?”

“No,” I said, “I’m looking for you.”

“What do you need?” he asked. “No offense, but I have a tight deadline on a project and the show has put me behind.”

I put the printed photo of him and Kassie on the drafting table.

“So Kassie and I knew each other when we were kids,” he said with a shrug. “We went to the same school in Chicago for a while. We hung out sometimes. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is she’s dead and you didn’t tell anyone you knew her.”

“I hadn’t been around her in I don’t know how long. We didn’t know each other anymore. Kassie was as surprised to see me as I was to see her.”

“Did either of you tell Elias you knew each other?”

“No. Neither one of us wanted it to look as though there had been some kind of collusion between us. She didn’t want to leave the show and why should I? I worked hard to get to be a contestant. Probably harder than she had to be a judge. So we agreed to act like we didn’t know each other. It wasn’t a big deal. So we hung out when we were teenagers. It wasn’t like that gave me an advantage or anything now.”

He seemed indifferent to the fact that someone he had been friends with had been murdered.

Ray glanced at the photo again. “Look. It has to have been at least fifteen years since I saw Kassie. We might as well have been strangers. I can’t tell you or the police anything about her. I don’t know anything.”

“Do you know where this picture came from?” I asked. I reached over and took it before Ray did something to it.

“I don’t have a clue,” he said. “Maybe she found it somewhere and was going to show it to me and then she didn’t get the chance.”

I remembered when I’d first met Ray. It was after the murder of artist Jaeger Merrill. Jaeger Merrill had been a mask-maker who could take what other people saw as garbage and turn it into art. He was also a liar and a forger, in essence a con artist. He reproduced religious icons—top-quality fakes. He had fooled some of the best art experts in the world. And he used everyone he met. He and Ray had been friends, as much as someone like Jaeger Merrill had friends.

Ray had tried to further his career by fudging an endorsement from another artist. Not only had he not thought about the damage it could do to the co-op’s reputation, it had been clear he didn’t care. All he’d seemed to think about were his own self-interests.

“My work will stand on its own merits. All I’m doing is getting someone to pay attention for a minute,” he had insisted when he was caught.

There wasn’t anything else to say in respect to his friendship with Kassie. I thanked him and headed for the stairs up to Maggie’s studio.

One thing I was sure of, Ray had lied to me the first time we’d met and I was certain he was lying now.