Cat Coming Home

28

IT WAS NEARLY midnight when Maudie and Jared finished their pie and coffee and Jared went up to bed. Maudie, in her robe and slippers, waited a little while to make sure her nephew wouldn’t come down again, then headed into the garage, easing the door closed so it wouldn’t squeak. Before throwing the switch for the single light, she drew closed the new, dense curtains she’d bought for the garage window. The single bulb cast the stacked cartons into sharp angles and sent long shadows against the garage wall. Pulling her fleece robe tighter, she stood scanning her labeled boxes of quilting supplies. She was so eager to move them into the new studio and to get to work, to lay out patterns for the new designs she had in mind. Christmas themes kept noodging her, though this late in the holidays whatever she began would be for the following Yule. Strange that Christmas could even interest her, this year.

But she needed something to hold on to, she needed to get involved in her work again. She wanted her studio in order so she could launch into some bright new project; she could heal Benny only when she began to ease her own pain. She imagined the newly furnished studio, the cupboards rich with bright fabric, bolts of yard goods, stacks of cloth squares already cut, the walls alive with her finished quilts. And outside the glass doors the garden blooming with all the bright color California’s winter gardens offered: candy-toned cyclamens massed against their background of red toyon berries and yellow acacia.

But before moving and unpacking her studio boxes, she had another mission. Pulling on a pair of thin cotton gloves, in case later some enthusiastic police detective might want to investigate in here, she approached the cartons of her dead daughter-in-law’s belongings. The nine boxes were neatly sealed with the same slick brown tape she’d used, but they weren’t stacked as she’d left them. And she could see that on the two top cartons the brown tape, which you could buy in any grocery or drugstore, had been slit open and then carefully covered again with a second, matching length.

Benny hadn’t done this. Even if he had been into the boxes rummaging wistfully among Caroline’s things, he’d have no reason to replace the tape. He knew he was perfectly free to look at Caroline’s books and keepsakes, at her hiking clothes, her first husband’s U.S. Marine uniforms and the papers regarding his military career, and Caroline’s few pieces of costume jewelry that were too nice to give to charity.

Slitting open the two resealed boxes with a small pair of scissors, shifting the boxes around to do the back sides, she found all this activity harder with her painful shoulder. The therapy she’d had in L.A. had helped but had been time-consuming and tedious. She lifted the flaps of the first box, reached in to examine the contents

Yes, the items had been disturbed, the order of the file folders was different, and the large brown envelopes had been rearranged. As far as she could remember, nothing was missing, though she’d never thought to make an inventory. Even if something were missing, there was nothing specific she thought would be of value to a burglar: old letters, recipes, maps to backcountry hiking trails, old tax receipts. She worried for a moment about the Social Security numbers on the tax records, but somehow she didn’t think that was what this burglar was after. Only when she selected the carton marked CAROLINE—KITCHEN, sliding aside five stacked boxes with her good arm, did her pulse quicken.

But no, this tape hadn’t been slit, she saw with relief, the box was just the way she’d packed it. Cutting the tape, she reached beneath several layers of carefully wrapped kitchen treasures: an old-fashioned pastry blender, Caroline’s grandmother’s flour sifter and silver pie server, a dozen ornate cookie cutters each wrapped separately, three antique fluted pie pans. Seemed as if, leaving L.A., she’d kept more of Caroline’s things than her own. Sentimental, she thought. Though in fact she’d kept much of it for Benny. She and Maryanne had divided up the keepsakes, Maryanne more than generous in sharing. Benny had loved Caroline so. Maryanne had copies, and CDs, of all the family photographs, so those were easy enough to leave behind. Easing the packages of cooking paraphernalia aside, she drew out the brown, sealed envelope that she’d hidden beneath them.

This was what the burglar had come for, she was certain. Someone had been in the house, had stolen her keys, but apparently hadn’t had time to find this envelope before being startled, perhaps. Before slipping away, leaving the job unfinished. This, she thought, smiling, was what they wouldn’t find now, if they did return. By ten tomorrow morning the envelope would be tucked away in a new safe-deposit box, with a key different from the one that had been stolen, and no one would find the new key.

She’d discovered her extra keys missing the day before, when she’d misplaced her car keys. She’d looked everywhere, then had gone to her desk to get the duplicate set: house key, car keys, safe deposit, and several others which, if she ever lost the originals or her purse were stolen, would supply immediate backup. Opening her big secretary, beside the fireplace in the living room, she’d removed the little stamp drawer to reveal the hidden compartment behind it. Reaching in, she’d drawn her hand back and bent to peer inside. The little compartment was empty. She’d stood there panicked, trying to remember if she’d taken the keys out herself, and knowing she had not. She’d thought, chilled, about someone who now could enter her home any time of day or night, come stealing in when they were sound asleep. It was at that moment that she’d been sure Pearl Toola was in the village, that Pearl had followed her, and had been here in her house. At once Maudie’s plan for Pearl had quickened, the cold, precise path that she longed to follow.

Whether she’d have the nerve to carry it through was in question, but not because she was afraid. She wasn’t. Not because she didn’t have the means. She did. But because of Benny. No matter how Benny might think he hated his mother, if Maudie took such action, that could be the end of any love between them. Such a terrible betrayal by his grandmother could rob Benny of any hope at all for the years ahead, for any kind of normal life.

She knew she was courting disaster by not reporting the break-in or the hit-and-run. Maybe she should call Molena Point PD now, tonight, and report them both, certainly report the rifled boxes, the missing keys. Maybe an officer would come out, maybe take fingerprints.

But was that what she wanted? And it was the middle of the night, what kind of response would she get? If she did report those things, she didn’t want just a cop, she’d want a detective. The person she’d really want to talk to was Max Harper. And before Harper or anyone would take her seriously, she’d have to lay out the whole scenario, explain the significance of what was missing, explain what had gone on in L.A. But even if she did that, what would her word be worth? She stood for some time, conflicted and uncertain, shivering in the cold garage, then turned back into the house. In the warm kitchen she made herself a cup of tea and sat at the table warming her hands around the steaming cup, trying to ease her concerns, putting off any discussion with Max Harper, preferring to deal with Pearl in her own way.