A Case Of Cat And Mouse

chapter 16

Caroline?” I said. I had to have heard him wrong.

“Yes.” There was a smugness to Ray’s voice that I didn’t like. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Would you like me to call her?”

“Caroline’s married.”

He shrugged. “So? Maybe she got tired of being the perfect little earth mother.”

“She was at the library that night with Kate Westin,” I said. “I talked to them.”

He shrugged. “She walked over from my apartment. I don’t know where she connected with Kate. And before you ask, after Caroline left I was online playing World of Warcraft.”

I believed him. It was all too easy to check. I wondered if Marcus knew what Ray had been doing. And who he’d been doing it with.

Ray looked at his drawing again. “Any more questions?” he said.

I nodded. “Just one. Were you going to do it?”

“Do what?” he asked.

“Lose on purpose, the way Kassie wanted you to.”

He smiled. “That depends.”

“On?”

“On whether she made it worth my while.”

I had no more reasons to stay in the room with Ray so I turned around and left. I went out into the stairwell and sat on the top step. Ray truly was reprehensible. I had no problem letting Maggie and Ruby know what I’d learned. It was up to the co-op whether or not he stayed.

I was stunned that Ray had been with Caroline. And not just because she was married. She was warm and nurturing and kind, and in my experience Ray was none of those things.

So far it felt as though all I had learned amounted to nothing more than gossip. Charles had slept with Kassie. Ray had slept with Caroline, and Russell was still sleeping with Stacey. Not to mention that Kassie had tried to blackmail Charles and Ray and undermine Caroline, Stacey and Kate. And she’d threatened Eugenie. The only person she hadn’t gone after was Rebecca and that was because Kassie had put a large wager on her. The Baking Showdown had a lot more in common with The Wild and Wonderful than I ever would have expected.

I went to Ruby’s studio to collect Hercules. They were looking at something on Ruby’s laptop.

“Did you get what you needed from Ray?” she asked.

“I think so,” I said. “I need to talk to you about Ray. I don’t have time right now. It doesn’t have anything to do with Kassie’s death.”

Her eyes narrowed in curiosity but she didn’t ask any questions. “Text me when you have the time.”

I nodded. “I will.”

“Are you coming to class?”

I reached for Hercules. “I have to take this one home so I might be a bit late.”

Ruby waved at him. “Thanks for hanging with me,” she said.

“Mrrr,” he said in return. Ruby had very rapidly become one of the little tuxedo cat’s favorite people.

I drove home, let us into the kitchen and dumped my things on the table. Before I did anything else I got Hercules his two sardines. There was no sign of Owen anywhere.

I ran upstairs, changed and washed my face. Back in the kitchen again, I made a peanut butter and banana sandwich and filled my water bottle. I crouched down next to Hercules. He’d already made short work of one of the sardines. “I’m going to tai chi,” I said. “Stay out of trouble while I’m gone.” I gave him a scratch on the top of his head and he breathed sardine breath in my face.

“See you later, Owen,” I called. After a long pause I got an answering meow. From the sound he was somewhere upstairs. That probably wasn’t a good thing.

Maggie had just started the warm-up when I got to class. I changed my shoes and slipped into the circle next to Taylor King.

Maggie worked us hard and my T-shirt was damp with sweat by the time we finished the form at the end of class. I had forgotten my towel so I wiped my flushed face with the edge of my T-shirt. “Roma had to go to Minneapolis to give a second opinion on a surgery,” I said to Maggie. “That’s why she wasn’t here.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I guessed it was something like that.” She stretched one arm up over her head. “Is Hercules okay?”

I smiled. “He got a clean bill of health and celebrated with two sardines.”

Maggie smiled. “I think that’s how I celebrated the last time the dentist told me I had no cavities.” She held up one hand. “No wait. It wasn’t two sardines. It was two brownies.”

“Hercules would be happy to celebrate with two brownies if I’d let him,” I said. I pulled at the neck of my shirt. I was still warm.

“Did you bring your water bottle?” Maggie asked.

I nodded. “It’s in my bag. I’ll get it in a second. I just . . . I need to talk to you about Ray.” I held up my hand. “Not right now. In a day or two when things aren’t quite so busy.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “You found out something, didn’t you?”

“I’m sorry, Mags. I did. I don’t mean to be vague, I just don’t want to tell you now and then take off before I can explain everything. And it’s something Ruby should hear as well.”

“So in a day or two the three of us will sit down and you can tell us what you found out.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “I need to get going.” I was hungry. I had wolfed down my makeshift sandwich on the way down the hill but I was pretty sure I’d used all that energy in class. There was chili in my freezer and soup in my fridge and I was going home to have some of one of them.

Rebecca was sitting on the bench under the coat hooks changing her shoes. “I brought you something,” she said, gesturing at her canvas tote bag.

“For me or for my two furry roommates?” I asked with a teasing smile.

“For you.” She pretended to think about her answer for a moment. “Although . . .”

I laughed. “Next time Roma gets after me about their diet I’m just going to tell her to call you. Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

Rebecca stood up and took a rectangular metal cookie tin from her bag. “I babysat Roma,” she said. “I changed her diapers. She doesn’t scare me.” She smiled and handed me the cookie container.

I eased the lid up on one corner and peered inside. There were two slices of a Swiss roll inside. I looked at Rebecca. “I smell orange and hazelnut and something sweet.”

“It’s probably the honey,” she said. “I was going to make my chocolate raspberry roll, but this was my grandmother’s recipe and I thought it might bring me good luck.”

“Just based on how delicious this smells, I don’t think you need any luck,” I said. My stomach growled loudly.

Rebecca laughed. “Thank you for that vote of confidence,” she said. “Sometimes I want to pinch myself. I can’t believe I made it this far. I can’t believe I made it on the show at all.”

I closed the lid of the cookie can before I was any more tempted to eat both slices of cake here and now. “What makes you say that?” I asked, setting the container on the bench. “You finished in the top three in the regional qualifier.”

Rebecca sat back down and started to tie her shoe. “That was far from a sure thing. In fact, if Dorrie Park hadn’t dropped out, there’s a very good chance that I wouldn’t be on the show right now.”

“She’s the one who left the contest right before the semifinals.”

Rebecca nodded. “Some kind of family emergency. She was a talented baker and extremely creative. She would have placed ahead of me for certain.” She held up a hand before I could object. “That’s not false modesty on my part, Kathleen. I know my own strengths and weaknesses. Ray, Kate and I were the top three bakers but I have no idea in which order we were ranked. If Dorrie had stayed, who knows how things might have worked out?”

I stepped out of my tai chi shoes and stuffed them in my bag. “Well, they worked out well for you and I hope they worked out for her as well.”

“As far I know, they did,” Rebecca said. “One of the crew said Dorrie just got back from Paris.” She glanced at her watch. “Heavens! I need to get going. Everett is waiting.”

“Thank you for the cake,” I said.

She got to her feet again and reached for her own bag. “You’re welcome. Enjoy.”

When I got home Hercules was nowhere to be seen. Owen was in the kitchen sitting at the table. I glared at him and pointed at the floor. “Get down,” I said firmly. This was getting to be a habit. I took a step toward him. He made more grumbling sounds than were strictly necessary but he jumped to the floor and went to have a drink.

I hung up my tai chi bag and picked up the things I’d dumped on the table earlier. After I’d washed my hands and splashed water on my face I got myself a bowl of soup and warmed it in the microwave. I was at the table crumbling crackers into my dish when Marcus called.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m in the middle of . . . something. I’m not going to make it.”

I knew “something” could be a new case, a current case or even an older one that was working it’s way through the system.

“It’s okay,” I said. “One question, though. Does Ray Nightingale have an alibi for the night Kassie was killed?”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

“He was with Caroline Peters.”

“One of them told you,” Marcus said.

I was nodding even though he couldn’t see me. “Ray did.” I hesitated. “And you need to ask more questions about the lorazepam.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Trust me, you do,” I said.

“No, Kathleen, I really don’t.”

I got it that time. He knew about Stacey. I didn’t know whether she’d told him herself, or Russell had, or he’d found out some other way.

He knew. Why was I surprised? Marcus was good at his job.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really have to go.”

“Stay safe,” I said. “I love you.”

I set the phone on the table and went and got one slice of the Swiss roll from Rebecca’s flowered tin. It tasted even better than it smelled. The cake, with hints of spices, honey and vanilla, was wrapped around a creamy orange-flavored filling with just a hint of nutmeg. I had a feeling Rebecca was going to be the next episode’s Hot Shot of the week as well.

As I licked orange filling from the back of my fork I thought about what Rebecca had told me. How could she not have made it on the show? She had described the young woman who had dropped out of the qualifier as being talented and creative. But so was Rebecca.

Curiosity got the better of me. I got up and got my computer. When I got back to the table, Owen was in my chair.

“That’s my seat,” I said.

“Mrrr,” he replied, blinking his golden eyes at me. I suspected that was his way of saying “finders keepers.”

I set the laptop on the table, scooped up Owen and set him on my lap once I’d reclaimed my place. It didn’t take us long to find an article in the Chronicle about the regional baking contest. I scanned the photo that accompanied the piece. Dorrie—short for Dorian—Park was in the front row between Kate and Rebecca. She looked to be nineteen, maybe twenty. She had black hair twisted into two buns, one on each side of her head, and choppy bangs. The left side of her nose and her left eyebrow were pierced. She wore a black T-shirt under a red-and-black-plaid shirt and black Doc Martens. She was looking directly at the camera and while she wasn’t smiling it seemed to me there was just a tiny hint of something—arrogance maybe—in her dark eyes.

I leaned against the back of my chair and began to stroke Owen’s fur. He laid his head against my chest and looked up at me.

“Rebecca said that if Dorrie hadn’t dropped out she might not have made it onto the show.”

Owen wrinkled his nose.

“I know, that does sound wrong.”

“Mrrr,” he agreed.

“It occurs to me that it’s also possible that if Dorrie Park hadn’t left the contest, Ray wouldn’t have made it onto the show.” Was I too judgmental where Ray was concerned? Too suspicious?

Owen’s whiskers twitched. He looked from me to the computer.

Maybe not.

It wasn’t hard to find Dorrie Park’s social media accounts. They were full of photos from her recent Paris trip. I checked the date of the first photo that had been posted. She’d arrived in Paris less than a week after she’d dropped out of the qualifier.

“Whatever that family emergency was, everything was all right pretty quickly,” I said to Owen.

I took a quick look at some of Dorrie’s other photos. She was a student at the University of Minnesota Duluth, living in a basement apartment with three other young women. She didn’t have a car and she could get pretty creative with ramen. In other words, she seemed like a typical broke student.

“So how did she afford a trip to Paris?” I said.

Owen cocked his head to one side, considering my question, at least from my perspective.

“What if someone gave her the money?”

“Mrrr,” Owen said. That made sense. At least to him.

“What if Ray gave her the money?”

I didn’t trust him. He was an opportunist. I was convinced he had used his past connection with Kassie to help him make it onto the show. So why wouldn’t he get rid of the competition? And while it seemed that Ray had an alibi for Kassie’s murder, I couldn’t help thinking it was possible he’d manipulated that somehow, too.

I decided to send Dorrie Park a message via social media. It was a long shot but I couldn’t think of any other way to find out if my suspicions about Ray were correct.

I explained I was a researcher with the show and I had a few questions for her. I added my phone number and crossed my fingers I’d hear back from her.

Owen had gotten bored at some point in the process and jumped off my lap. He was lying on the floor now, fishing under the refrigerator with one paw.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He just continued his efforts to reach something under the fridge.

“Did you lose that frog Marcus got you under there?”

“Mrrr,” he said. I didn’t know if that was a yes or a no. Mostly it just sounded like aggravation.

The small space under the refrigerator seemed like a tight fit for Ferdinand the Funky Frog, but nonetheless I got one of my extra-long cooking chopsticks, crouched down next to Owen and poked around underneath. I didn’t find a catnip frog or even a dusty stinky cracker but I did realize there was a piece of paper under there. After some finessing and a lot of cat commentary I managed to slide the paper out onto the kitchen floor.

“Is this what you were after?” I said to Owen. There was a clump of dust on his paw and I reached over to brush it off.

The page looked to be the image of a check that had been deposited electronically. I picked it up for a closer look. The check was made out to a holding company: Mulberry Hill Holdings. There was something familiar about that name but I couldn’t place it. I did recognize who wrote the check. It came from Sullivan Enterprises. Sullivan Enterprises was Sean Sullivan, gym owner and Kassie’s father. I looked at the amount. Five hundred thousand dollars. Sean Sullivan had written a check to someone for half a million dollars. The page must have slid under the refrigerator when Owen knocked down some of the papers that had come from Kassie’s desk. How had she gotten this? Was Kassie Mulberry Hill Holdings or . . . ?

I got to my feet, picked up my phone and scrolled through the list of contacts. Lita answered on the third ring.

“Hi, Lita,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you at this time of night.”

“Kathleen, it’s eight thirty,” she said, an edge of laughter in her voice. “What time do you think I go to bed?”

“Umm, after eight thirty?”

She did laugh then. “Sometimes after nine. What do you need?”

“Have you ever heard of a company called Mulberry Hill Holdings?” I crossed my fingers.

“Of course. That’s one of Elias Braeden’s companies.”

I gave a small fist pump.

“I think he named it after that piece of land Idris Blackthorne owned out by Wisteria Hill,” she said. “Ruby would own it now, I think.”

Mulberry Hill. Rebecca had mentioned it when we were talking about Everett’s family homestead. That’s why the name had seemed familiar to me.

“Thanks, Lita,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” she said. I heard the rumble of Burtis’s voice in the background. “Burtis says to tell you he has the house high score at the moment.”

“Tell him I said that all good things must come to an end and his end is nigh.”

Lita was still laughing when she hung up.

I pulled out a chair and sat down. Owen leapt onto my lap and put two paws on my chest.

“Elias,” I said. “He’s Mulberry Hill Holdings.”

One ear turned sideways and his expression soured a little bit. I stroked his soft fur. There was another dust bunny on his tail and I picked it off. “I can’t find anything that points to someone else being Kassie’s killer, and there are random things like his fingerprints and the fact that Elias was in the building that suggest he did it. And I don’t know what to make of this check.”

Ruby was a strong person, but if Elias really had killed Kassie, I didn’t see how she would ever get over the betrayal.

And just that quickly I was angry. Angry at Elias for only telling part of the truth or maybe even none of it. Angry that Ruby had put her trust in someone I didn’t think deserved it, even if he hadn’t killed anyone. Angry at the prevarications and omissions from just about everyone involved with the show.

I set Owen on the floor and grabbed my keys and my wallet. “I’ll be back,” I told him. I didn’t think about whether or not it was a good idea to go confront Elias. I just went.

It wasn’t hard to find the man. His fancy SUV was in the parking lot at the community center. I signed in with Thorsten and on a hunch climbed the stairs to the second floor. I didn’t see Elias giving up his private workspace. The hallway was dark with just a bit of light spilling out from one open doorway.

I was right. Elias was in the office, talking on his cell phone. “I’m going to have to call you back,” he said to the person on the other end of the call when he noticed me standing in the doorway.

I set the image of the check in front of him. He looked at it and the only reaction I saw was a tiny twitch at one corner of his mouth. “Where did you get this?”

I had the urge to say from under my refrigerator, but I resisted the impulse. “Kassie had it.”

He leaned back in the chair. “She kept hinting she had something.”

“Sean Sullivan gave you half a million dollars.”

“He invested half a million dollars in my company.”

“It’s the same thing.”

Elias shook his head. “No, it’s not. Half a million dollars to me is a gift. Half a million dollars to my company gets him a tiny piece of it. In theory.”

I remembered what Eugenie had said to Russell and me: “I do have more than enough money to relieve Elias of any financial obligation he might have to Sean Sullivan, Kassie’s father.” Would she have spent half a million dollars?

He gestured to the chair in front of the desk. “Have a seat, Kathleen.”

I sat down, picking up the piece of paper as I did. “Kassie thought this was important. Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “You would have to ask her and since she’s dead, you can’t.”

I thought about doing something dramatic like slapping my hand on the desktop. Instead I stared silently at him for a moment. Then I said, “You’re lying.” I leaned across the desk. “If it weren’t for Ruby, I would take this to the police and wash my hands of you. I would leave you to twist in the wind. But I can’t do that. You’re the closest thing to a father Ruby has. And that more than anything tells me what a kick in the head life has given her that you . . . you of all people . . . get that honor.” I struggled to keep my voice under control and shook the paper at him. “This is just one more thing that makes you look bad. One more thing in a long list. You better be innocent, Elias.” My voice cracked. “You damn well better be innocent, because if you’re not, you’re going to break Ruby’s heart.”

All the lines on his face had seemed to have gotten deeper. That was the only sign that my words had affected him at all. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t kill Kassie, Kathleen. I swear on—”

I cut him off. “Don’t go there, Elias,” I warned, hoping my voice conveyed how angry I was in that moment.

“The money was for me. Sully made it look like an investment in my company because neither one of us wanted to explain why he’d given me, personally, half a million dollars. He still has several boxers and I’m involved in several TV projects. Optics. You understand that.”

“I do.”

His face hardened. “What he didn’t tell me was that he’s being investigated for insider trading, which puts all of his business practices under a microscope.”

“Not good for you.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“So Sean Sullivan paid you five hundred thousand dollars to hire his daughter because she had aspirations of being a TV star, which wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up. And then he made that money look like an investment in your company, which also wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up.”

“Yes.”

I folded the piece of paper and put it back in my pocket. “Kassie found out.”

“She did. I was having some temporary cash flow problems. I shouldn’t have taken the money. That was stupid.”

“She must have been angry finding out her father had so little faith in her that he paid you to hire her.”

Elias gave a humorless snort of laughter. “You didn’t know Kassie. She was going to use that payment to blackmail her father. If he’d pay me half a million dollars so she could do the Baking Showdown, he could pay more than that to get her on some other show.”

I wondered what had happened to Kassie to turn her into such a self-absorbed person.

“Do what you want with the information, Kathleen,” he said. “I didn’t kill Kassie Tremayne. And this is the last time I’m going to say that.”

I nodded. Then I got up and walked out.

My hand was shaking as I signed out at the back door. I said good night to Thorsten and walked over to the truck. Some small part of me wanted to believe that Elias wasn’t a murderer. But if he hadn’t killed Kassie then who had?

Wednesday morning just after we opened, Harry Taylor and his brother, Larry, arrived at the library.

“Do you have something already?” I asked.

“Ever see any of the James Bond movies?” Harry asked.

“I’ve seen all of them.”

He inclined his head in the direction of his brother. “He’s Q.”

“It wasn’t complicated,” Larry said with a smile. He handed me a small cardboard box.

I opened the flaps and peered inside. “This is the camera?” I said. The contents looked like a tiny robot spaceman in a white spacesuit with a black-visored helmet.

Larry nodded. “Wi-Fi, night vision, motion detector, 360-degree panoramic view, SD card and it will send an alert to my smartphone if anyone is around the gazebo.” He looked at me a little uncertainly. “I hope it’s okay that the alerts go to my phone. I couldn’t have them go to Harry’s. All he has is a flip phone.”

Harry gave him a look that said this wasn’t the first time they’d had a conversation about his phone.

“You could send the alerts to my phone,” I said.

Harry shook his head. “I don’t think that it’s a good idea for you to come down here in the middle of the night to confront whoever has been pulling these stunts. I’m sorry if that seems sexist.”

I recognized the size and strength difference between the two of them and me. “No, it’s not. But I’d feel a lot better if you’d call the police when you get an alert.”

“We can do that,” Harry said.

I noticed he’d said “can” not “will.” I also knew arguing wouldn’t get me anywhere.

Harry and Larry installed the camera just under the back roof edge across from the gazebo. Unless you were looking for it you couldn’t see it from the ground or with a cursory glance at the building.

I was just walking back around the building when I caught sight of Caroline Peters coming up the sidewalk. She saw me and raised a hand in acknowledgment. I waited for her at the bottom of the steps.

“Hi,” she said as she reached me. “Ray called me after you two talked last night. I just came from the police department.”

I stuffed my hands in my sweater pockets. “I’m glad to hear that,” I said.

“I’m sorry I deceived you. I’m sorry I deceived everyone.” She played with the knotted bracelet around her left wrist. “No one knew about Ray and me. I wanted to keep it that way. When I left his apartment I was going to walk back to the café and just join everyone else. Then I met Kate.” There was a second’s pause. “She said, ‘So you got tired of working on your bread and decided to come out for a walk, too,’ and when I opened my mouth ‘Yes’ was what came out. I didn’t mean to lie. It just happened.”

“I believe you,” I said. That was the thing about lying. It was surprisingly easy.

“Thank you,” she said, and a little of the tension left her body.

I hesitated about whether to say anything else. The fact that I truly liked her won out. That and I didn’t trust Ray as far as I could throw him, as Rebecca would say. “Caroline, your life and your marriage are absolutely none of my business,” I said. “But Ray Nightingale is not someone worth blowing up your life over.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded. I had no way to know if Ray had just been a reckless fling or if she had feelings for him. I hoped it was the former.

“I should go.” She looked in the direction of the sidewalk.

I nodded. “Thank you for coming. You didn’t have to.”

“Yes, I did,” she said. “I tell my kids to tell the truth all the time. I tell them when they’ve made a mistake to admit it. I need to start practicing what I preach.” She gave me a small smile and headed toward the sidewalk.

I started up the steps. I realized that Kate didn’t have an alibi anymore unless she had some kind of secret romance going on as well. It didn’t exactly seem likely, given her soft-spoken, quiet demeanor. Neither did the idea of her being a murderer. So now what?