A Purrfect Alibi

Sixteen

Nero stared down into the empty hole in the ground. “Guess someone did take the treasure just like you thought.”

Jed swirled beside him, his ghostly form tinged red with anger.

“Do you think it was one of the psychics?” Marlowe moved closer and sniffed, then shook her head. “No, can’t be. The treasure scent in here is old, but the disappointment scent is new.”

Nero agreed. As he had suspected all along, the treasure was long gone. They’d seen Esther dig the hole, so they knew she hadn’t taken anything out, but even before that the ground had been packed down, the grass grown solid over the top. No one had dug here in many decades.

“Are you sure you told her the right location?” Nero glanced up at Jed cautiously. Jed had claimed that he’d successfully communicated with Esther through her crystal ball. He must have been telling the truth because Esther had come here and dug.

Jed scowled down at him. “Of course I know the right place. Sure, it took me a while to figure it out because the layout of the property has changed, but once I found the old outhouse, I paced it off and this is the spot. The big oak tree is gone, but you can see where it stood.” Jed pointed to a round sunken depression in the ground. “This here is thirty paces northeast.”

Nero and Marlowe nodded. Though the treasure was long gone, it could have been worse. Someone could have bought this old property and put up a strip mall and the hiding spot would be located under a parking lot. At least now they knew for sure that the treasure was gone.

Jed plopped down on the ground. Nero felt sorry for the ghost, he looked deflated. “Darn. I was hoping that pretty little Esther would dig the big treasure up.”

“So you really did talk to Esther?” Nero said.

Jed nodded. “But she’s the only one. I didn’t talk to that loudmouth Victor. I wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

“Huh, then I wonder why he said you were talking to him,” Marlowe said.

“Clearly it was for the television producer,” Nero said. “That newspaper reporter has been hanging around outside and you know she’s going to report back to him. Like Juliette said, Victor is setting himself up to be the star of the TV show.” Nero was sure of it.

“Which makes me wonder how badly he wants that,” Marlowe said.

Nero nodded. “Bad enough to kill.”

“Exactly.” Marlowe started pushing the dirt back into the hole with her paws and Nero joined her. They didn’t want anyone to know that someone had been digging. Especially not that nosey Myron Remington who they’d seen traipsing all over the property. Nero didn’t trust him one bit.

“Never mind that, we need to find out who killed me,” Jed said. “I’m getting tired of hanging around here and something tells me I’m tied to this property until I figure that out.”

“How do you expect us to figure out who killed you?” Marlowe said. “That was three hundred years ago.”

“I don’t know, but clearly someone killed me and took the treasure and given that some of my stuff is missing from the attic, I feel like the answer must be up there.”

“I think that points to someone in your family.” Nero thought about Jed’s earlier accusation that his wife hadn’t been happy with him. Had she killed him? How could they prove that?

Nero didn’t mind putting some effort into that investigation, but his first priority was figuring out who had killed Madame Zenda. Could the two murders be related? Impossible, one had happened three hundred years ago… unless Jed’s wife was really steamed at him and had waited three hundred years to get an even bigger revenge.

Nero closed his eyes and focused. He sniffed the air and waited for that twinge of the whiskers that told him something other-worldly was present. Nothing extra came through, just the vibrations from Jed.

“What on earth are you doing?” Marlowe asked. “We need to get Josie up into the attic so she can help us with the case. We can only do so much as cats. I know she was about to follow us up before Myron interrupted her.”

The shadows were getting longer and Nero glanced to the west where the sun was just dipping below the horizon.

“Good thinking. But not tonight. It’s almost dark and the attic is no place to be without the light of day to illuminate things.” Nero didn’t think Josie would like all those creepy shadows and dark corners. “I think our time is better spent searching the guests’ rooms before they come back from dinner. First thing tomorrow, we will get Josie to the attic.”

My favorite time of day was suppertime, mostly because I didn’t have to serve it. The guests usually went out to eat and the giant mansion was quiet. Today was no exception and I was doubly glad because it gave me a chance to investigate the guests’ prior connections to Madame Zenda.

For once, the cats weren’t getting in the way. Usually they lay on my keyboard or stuck their tails in my face when I tried to use the computer, but tonight they were nowhere to be found. I wasn’t sure what they were up to, but I could hear soft noises on the floors above as I sat in the back parlor, feet up on the coffee table and my laptop on my lap.

Up in the attic, perhaps? I remembered how they’d seemed to want me to follow them up there earlier in the day, and I had a vague notion that I should check the place out, but it was getting dark and I didn’t know what the lighting situation was up there, so now wasn’t a great time. Besides, something told me that I had to wait for the cats. If they had something to show me then they needed to lead the way.

Information on the guests was surprisingly easy to obtain, simply by googling. I guess when you are in a profession that depends on clients you have all your info out there. It wasn’t much different for the Oyster Cove Guesthouse; I needed an Internet presence so people could find me. Apparently psychics needed that too.

As I’d already known, Madame Zenda and Esther had worked together a few times. Not that that should make me suspicious because Esther wasn’t trying to hide the fact. She’d mentioned it right off. Except it hadn’t been right off. It had only been after the murder. Initially the two of them had acted as if they barely knew each other and had exhibited the same undercurrent of animosity that I’d felt between all of the guests. Had Esther realized that the police would find the connection and made sure to mention it right away so as not to appear as if she was hiding something?

From what I could find on the Internet, they’d been crossing paths for over twenty years. Appearing on telethons together, local television shows and even a circus stint. I didn’t find any bad press about either one of them.

Victor, on the other hand, had a more checkered past. I found the article from the Dayton Ohio Examiner about the scam that had been referred to earlier. Apparently, he’d been a personal psychic to a rich widow, Mary Chambers. He’d told her he was communicating with her dead husband. The widow’s family had claimed he was a fraud and made a lot of commotion in the papers. There was talk of a lawsuit since Mary had paid him thousands. Mary passed away of natural causes and a lawsuit was never filed and nothing had ever happened to him, except a bunch of bad press.

According to the article, Victor had met the widow on a Dreams Divinity seven-day cruise. I’d never heard of them but apparently there were cruises that featured psychics. They gave group readings and passengers could hire them for private readings as well. Sounded like a perfect place to find a mark that would willingly spend money thinking you were letting them talk to their dead loved one.

A quick glance at some press for that particular cruise told me that Madame Zenda, Esther Hill and Victor Merino were listed among the featured mediums. Not Gail though. Interesting. Was it possible that Madame Zenda knew something about Victor’s scam with the woman and Victor didn’t want her to tell anyone? But why spill the beans now, when it was all in the past? A picture of some of the mediums and passengers on the cruise showed Victor smiling like the cat that ate the canary, his mustache even larger than it was now. Was he smiling because his plan to scam rich widows was well under way?

I googled Gail Weathers but couldn’t find a thing. Odd… then again, Victor had alluded to her being an unknown. Maybe she was just starting out? She certainly did drink a lot of tea, so maybe she needed the practice.

Thud.

I jumped as a Murano glass paperweight rolled across the green-and-gold oriental rug. Must have toppled off of the side table. Instinctively I looked for the cats, but they weren’t here. A cold chill crept up my spine, then I laughed. All this ghost talk was getting to me. Clearly the paperweight had just rolled off. Flora must have put it on its rounded side instead of on the flat bottom when she’d dusted.

I shut the laptop and headed to the kitchen to check that everything was in order for breakfast. I whipped up some waffle batter and put it in the fridge. I wanted to get the breakfast set up quickly the next morning so I could be ready to test out my suspicions that the cats really were trying to show me something in the attic.

“There’s nothing in here but tea.” Marlowe backed out from under the bed and sneezed. Nero glanced around the room. The other cat wasn’t kidding; the place was loaded with tea tins. White, black, green, herbal. You name it and Gail had it in her room. It made him wonder why Gail was often seen in the kitchen pantry taking Josie’s Earl Grey. Maybe she was just cheap.

“Well, that about does it. We’ve scoured all of the guests’ rooms and haven’t found one thing.” Nero was disappointed. It wasn’t as if he’d expected to find a smoking gun or anything, but if the killer was one of the guests wouldn’t they have had paper that matched the note or a big red pen? Though a crafty killer would have thrown those things out…

Marlowe turned up her nose. “Other than that noxious cologne in Victor’s room.”

“That did smell horrid, but his velour lounging suits are soft to the touch.” The velour was so soft, it must have been very high quality—clearly Victor Merino was a human that liked the finer things. Everything in his room had been top-notch, from the offending cologne to the expensive luggage to the clothing.

“So, what now?” Marlowe sat and looked at Nero with her head tilted to the side quizzically.

Nero glanced out the window. The moon had risen and cast a soft glow over the landscape. The guests weren’t back yet, but he’d heard Josie knocking something over in the back parlor earlier and she was now rattling around in the kitchen. The guests would return any minute and it would only be a few hours before Josie went to bed, which meant they had a little time to go down to the bait wharf and meet with the other cats to find out if any of them had discovered anything.

“We meet the others.” Nero headed toward the cat door that Millie had installed for them in the old storeroom on the first floor.

Nighttime was Nero’s favorite time to visit the bait wharf. He loved the play of the moonlight on the waves and the fact that the gulls were all tucked in their nests—or wherever they went at night—and wouldn’t be rudely swooping down on them.

When they arrived on the docks, Harry was sticking his paw in the water trying to skewer a fish with his sharpened claws. He did this all the time, although Nero didn’t know why. It had only worked once and even then Harry had been so surprised that he fumbled the fish and it slipped back into the water with nary a backwards glance.

The gang was all there. Juliette lounged on the concrete slab under the tuna scale. It was probably still warm from the sun beating on it all day. Stubbs was curled up on top of a lobster trap, his tail around his nose. One green eye slid open as Nero and Marlowe approached. Poe and Boots had been batting around a piece of rope and they stopped and turned to Nero.

“Anymore news about that movie producer?” Nero asked.

Stubbs yawned and sat up. “I put a tail on that nosey dame reporter, Anita Pendragon. She met with that movie mogul. She’s involved in something.”

Nero nodded. No surprise there. “Has anyone picked up any other clues about the murder?”

Boots bestowed his look of superiority on them. “I have heard that it is someone closely tied to the guesthouse.”

Marlowe practically rolled her eyes. “No one else in town knew her, so that’s kind of a given.”

Boots looked down his nose at Marlowe. “Are you sure about that?”

Marlowe frowned and glanced at Nero who nodded his head slightly. It was most likely that the killer knew Madame Zenda and he was certain she didn’t know anyone in town.

“What about the buckle?” Nero asked.

“Nothing new on that,” Harry said. “I talked to Louie Two Paws earlier today. The police haven’t made much progress. They are checking out all those guests at the guesthouse. Seems that some of them have a shady past. But nothing new on the buckle.”

Shady past. Nero wasn’t surprised at that either. Judging by the way they acted so secretive amongst each other at the guesthouse, he knew they were the type that would often be up to something.

“What about you?” Juliette purred. “You’re in the guesthouse with all of the suspects. Surely you have found out something by now? And have you followed up on my clue about your velvety jogging-suit wearing guest and the movie producer?”

“We didn’t find anything in his room, but we do have something on the buckle that might be of interest,” Marlowe said.

Poe turned to look at her. “Do tell.”

“Jed’s ghost verified that his shoes are missing from a trunk in the attic. The shoes with the buckle,” Marlowe said. “Jed’s suit is in there and all his other things, but no shoes.”

“So someone has been in the attic,” Stubbs said.

“Looks that way,” Nero said. “Though I don’t see how. Josie keeps it locked.”

“And the buckle on Madame Zenda really was Jed’s buckle?” Poe asked.

“Most likely,” Nero said.

“Points to one of those guests even more,” Juliette said. “But you found no indication in their rooms that they were the culprit? No drippy red pens or smells of old buckles?”

“No,” Nero admitted. “But we have made another enlightening discovery.”

The other cats stilled and looked at him in anticipation. He drew the moment out for a few seconds basking in the attention, then continued. “We know for sure that the treasure is long gone.”

Boots frowned. “The ghost told you that?”

“Sort of. He suspected such and once he remembered exactly where he had buried it, he had one of the guests dig it up. Marlowe and I inspected the hole ourselves and it’s been empty for centuries.” Nero felt a bit sad about that. Josie could have used the money to complete renovations on the guesthouse. If she had treasure, she could get out from under Myron’s thumb.

Juliette looked at him curiously. “So Jed is talking to the guests. They’re not all frauds?”

“Nope. Turns out at least one, Esther Hill, really can talk to ghosts. Jed has been communicating with her through her crystal ball,” Marlowe said.

“Is that so?” Boots tugged on his long whisker, curling it up at the ends in that showy way he preferred. “Well then, surely this Esther Hill has made it known that she can communicate with Jed? After all, that seems to be the reason they are all at the guesthouse, so they can earn their way to fame in the movie.”

Nero and Marlowe exchanged a glance. Esther had been very quiet about her communications with Jed. She hadn’t bragged once about talking to the ghost. “No, actually I don’t think she has.”

“Well, maybe not to anyone at the guesthouse,” Marlowe said. “We don’t know if she has mentioned it to Anita Pendragon. She might not want the others to know that she can talk to Jed because… well… look what happened to Madame Zenda after she announced that she was going to talk to him.”

Nero nodded enthusiastically. He could have kicked himself for not thinking of that but was proud that Marlowe had. “Yeah. Good point.”

Stubbs poked around in one of the lobster traps. “If Esther is keeping quiet because she’s afraid the killer will target her next, then that means she isn’t the killer.”

“There’s something else that may be in play here.” Poe paced the outskirts of the group, his tail swishing, head down, apparently deep in thought.

“What?” they all asked.

He stopped and faced them. “Thus far, we’ve been assuming that Madame Zenda was killed because she said she could talk to Jed’s ghost. Whoever killed her didn’t want her talking to the ghost because they wanted the fame. A movie deal would be quite lucrative. Or that someone had a vendetta against her.”

“We did determine that most of them have crossed paths before,” Nero said.

“Yeah, Esther knew her real name,” Marlowe added.

“And a movie deal could make them a lot of money.” Juliette preened behind her ears. “Don’t forget I did find the clue about Victor talking to the movie producer.”

“How could we forget?” Poe asked. “But let us consider another reason. What if the murder wasn’t about Madame Zenda at all? What if it was about the guesthouse?”

Nero didn’t like the way that sounded. “What do you mean?”

“The body was found with the buckle and a warning to stay away from the guesthouse. Maybe that’s what the killer really wanted—for people to stay away—and Madame Zenda just happened to be a convenient target.”

“Why would someone want to scare people away from the guesthouse?” Marlowe asked.

Poe shrugged. “Beats me. But if I’m right, then whoever it is has a reason worth killing for.”