Cat Telling Tales

29

Yesterday’s snow seemed long forgotten, the morning was nearly too warm, the birds and squirrels were out everywhere, soaking up the sun. At the edge of the cemetery, Joe slipped down from the branches of a thick and twisted oak onto the manicured lawn. February weather on the central coast was always fitful, cold one day, hot the next, but on this day the events to occur were even more at odds: Hesmerra’s burial this morning that marked the end of an unhappy life. The auction this evening that should bring happiness to any number of lives, human and cat. And then, tonight, a late supper to mark what Joe hoped would be an incredibly long and happy married life, as Ryan and Clyde celebrated their first anniversary—and to top it off, it was Valentine’s Day, a strange day, indeed, for Esther Fowler to choose to bury her mother.

This was Esther’s bit of twisted irony? Sending Hesmerra off on a day of love, when there had been little love between them?

The early dew had nearly burned off, its last glitter broken by trails of cloven hoofprints leading away to the woods that surrounded three sides of the small cemetery. Joe could see deer among the shadowed trees, quietly grazing, relinquishing their nighttime pasture to the unpredictable whims of the human world.

The grave markers were all set flat into the velvet grass, its expanse broken only by three miniature hills: outcroppings of boulders that thrust up out of the earth as if shoved up by an unseen hand, and from which, oak trees had managed to grow. Joe headed for the rocky hill nearest the open grave.

Leaping up the boulders, he lay down among them, between the gray oak trunks so he was nearly invisible except for his white nose and white paws. Below him the freshly dug grave was discreetly covered by a sheet of blue plastic edged by a scattering of black earth to hold it in place. The pile of removed earth, too, was dressed in plastic, like a low blue tent. The plain oak casket stood to one side, facing five neat rows of metal chairs, a box that looked to Joe like the cheapest one available. It was a wonder Esther hadn’t nailed together the slats from old orange crates.

The little access lane that ran near the grave was already filling up, a line of cars parked along the edge, two wheels on the macadam, two on the grass. Clyde’s yellow roadster, in which Joe himself had ridden to the funeral in style with the top down and sitting on Ryan’s lap. Charlie’s red SUV was parked behind it, then a couple of police cars. Then Max’s truck, Emmylou’s battered green sedan, a sleek tan Mercedes belonging to Esther Fowler, and a number of cars he didn’t know. He was surprised to see so many folks turn out for Hesmerra. Esther and Debbie stood far apart, at opposite sides of the gathering, pointedly ignoring each other. Tessa clung to Debbie, who had Vinnie firmly by the hand. A half-dozen more cars drew in and parked, the drivers’ windows open to the warming morning, and behind them, Wilma’s car came up the street.

She paused at the turn-in, her driver’s door opened, Dulcie and Kit leaped from her lap and vanished into the woods. Joe could see Lucinda in the front seat beside Wilma, Pedric in the back. Wilma drove on in, parked, and they got out, all three respectfully dressed, no casual jeans today. Lucinda wore a long, slim black skirt, black boots, a soft shawl in muted tones. Pedric was nattily dressed in a tan suit, white shirt, and plain brown tie, his tall, slim figure fashion perfect. Wilma had resurrected what looked like a dark business suit from her working days, narrow skirt, soft white blouse, flat dark shoes. Among the women present, only Debbie wore high heels, apparently unaware that she could not walk across the grass without sinking in. Joe watched her tiptoe over the turf, hunching in her short, tight skirt. An usher escorted her to the front row beside Esther, who was dressed more appropriately in a plain brown suit and flats. Neither looked at the other, neither spoke.

Joe heard a rustle of leaves and then Dulcie was beside him; and when he looked up, Kit crouched on a jutting ledge of granite, her yellow eyes shuttered against the sun. At the grave, four men in black suits stood to one side of the chairs, cemetery employees as rigid and expressionless as plastic department store figures. There would be no indoor service for Hesmerra, just this simple burial. Among the rows of folding chairs, people were sitting down, talking in whispers and occasionally glancing at Billy where he stood to the side between Charlie and Emmylou. Charlie held his hand, and Emmylou’s arm was around his shoulders. When Charlie bent to ask him something, he shook his head. Maybe he didn’t want to go up to the front, beside his two aunts. During the short service, Max Harper stood watching Debbie. Did that make her nervous? She seemed more aware of him than of saying farewell to her mother.

The minister wore the requisite black habit, his spiel short, dry, and generic. Until this morning, he had probably never heard of Hesmerra Young. He prayed dryly for her soul, then prayed for Billy, which made the boy look down in embarrassment. Joe had never imagined he’d find something as grim as a funeral too short, but this service seemed cruelly abrupt. The four attendants stepped forward, removed the plastic cover from the grave. Lifting the casket by the two heavy black ropes that had been laid under it, they lowered it down into the hole, and deftly pulled the ropes out. Either the cemetery hadn’t seen fit to provide, or Esther hadn’t wanted to pay for, one of those machines that lift the casket securely into its last resting place without the possibility of it falling on its side and dislodging its contents. Esther picked up a handful of earth and tossed it in. Debbie rose and did the same, as Tessa hid in her chair. Vinnie stepped forward, snatched up a big clod of dirt, threw it hard down onto the casket.

Billy was the last to take up a handful of earth and scatter it. He stood a moment, his back to Joe, his head bent, then turned away, perhaps as much from the gaze of his aunts as from this last and final contact with his grandmother. What Billy was feeling had to be as mixed and confused as had been his young life. A child doing a grown-up’s work, taking care of an old woman who preferred to remain as helpless as a child herself, a child held captive by his grandmother’s weaknesses and by her twisted life. Watching the boy filled Joe with a heavy sadness, and when he looked at Dulcie, his dismay was reflected in her green eyes. Kit’s ears were down, too, her yellow eyes sad, hurt that a young boy’s life could be so without joy. For all three cats, the mysterious balance between joy and pain was the deepest mystery they knew, the real meaning of that conflict was too confusing to sort out, in this life.

Billy and Charlie didn’t linger over the grave, the cats could see he wanted to get away. Within minutes, he and Charlie got into her SUV and pulled on around the curve behind one of the black-and-whites, making the circle through the cemetery to the main road, heading away toward the ranch. Nearly everyone seemed glad to escape, moving toward their cars, including Wilma and the Greenlaws. Kit looked back toward Dulcie and Joe, but then she went on, wanting to be with her old couple, caught perhaps in the sadness of the funeral and the fragility of life.

Quickly Debbie turned to leave, too, she was dragging the children away when Max caught up with her. “Debbie?” She turned to look at him, frowning.

“Would you want to come on down to the station? We have some papers we’d like you to look over, they were among your mother’s things. Do you have someone to watch the children for a while?” Joe glanced across at Ryan and Clyde, they were just about the only people remaining. If Max was going to press them into babysitting, he was out of there.

“No,” she said, “I don’t have anyone to watch the children. We just buried my mother, this is not a good time. What is it, that can’t wait?”

“The papers were just brought to our attention, and could be important. You can bring the children, it won’t take long. One of the officers will watch them.”

“This really isn’t an appropriate time.”

“It’s a good time for me,” Max said. “I don’t see the need to arrest you, just for questioning, if you’re willing to cooperate. I’ll follow you down to the station.”

Debbie gave a dramatic sigh, and headed for her car. Opening the back door, she pushed the girls in the backseat.

“Well,” Dulcie said, smiling.

“Come on,” Joe said, racing for Clyde’s roadster just ahead of his housemates. As the cats leaped in, the little cemetery tractor came lumbering along the lane. It stopped at the open grave, uncovered the mound of earth, and began to scoop it over the casket, patting it down with the tractor’s toothy bucket. Soon the two gardeners would lay squares of sod over the raw earth; in a few weeks the grass would fill in, and the velvet lawn would look as if no hole had ever been dug there. Deer would graze on Hesmerra’s grave, leaving cloven hoof prints in the damp grass. Joe wondered if Debbie or Esther, or Billy, would bring flowers to put in a little vase. Off in the woods, two deer had stopped grazing and stood watching the tractor at work, and for some reason, their interest made the fur along Joe’s back prickle. Then Ryan and Clyde were there at the car and, at Joe’s direction, Clyde headed obligingly for MPPD.

The two cats beat Max to the station by minutes, as the chief dawdled along behind Debbie, who in his presence seemed compelled to obey every village speed limit. By the time the two little girls had been settled in the conference room with Officer Brennan, Vinnie complaining all the while, Dulcie and Joe were under Max’s credenza. They watched Debbie flounce in, into one of the leather chairs as if she owned the place. Behind her, Max was saying, “I can’t give you any guarantees. We’ll do what we can. If he’s put away for a while, you won’t have to hide from him.” He sat down at his desk, leaning back. “Were the transactions all on Molena Point property?”

“Some were here,” Debbie said. “Most of them, they couldn’t have pulled off here, in their own territory. They had deals going in five states, sales I’m sure can’t be legal.” She looked at him pleadingly. “If he finds out I was here, that I told—”

Max said, “You have no choice. You were ordered to come in.” That seemed to ease her, she looked uncertain, but relaxed a little. He said, “How did you get your hands on the papers without him knowing?”

“Late at night, when I was sure Erik was asleep. I photographed whatever papers were in his briefcase that day. I didn’t dare use his copier, I was afraid he’d check that little counter thing that keeps track. I took digital photos, put them on my computer, printed them out, put them on a disc, then erased the hard drive.” She looked intently at Harper, a more intelligent look than the cats had seen, a look not just of anger now, at being hauled into the station, but of a canny malice. “They’d sell one house several times. Sell it over and over again.”

“You mean buy it back, and sell it again?”

“No, they didn’t buy it back. They just kept selling it. Out-of-state buyers, people who never even flew out to see what they’d bought. They looked at the pictures and maps he sent, took his word for everything. People who wanted investment property. Erik invented fake titles, drew up fake escrow papers, fake deeds. He and Alain made the sales just after the yearly property taxes were paid, so no one would inquire about a tax bill, find it was in the wrong name.” She went quiet, looking down at her hands. Max waited, relying on that void in a conversation that will prompt an interviewee, uncomfortable in the silence, to frantically fill up the empty space, revealing perhaps more than he intended.

Debbie fidgeted, and sighed. “They’d buy old, rundown foreclosures, too. Take pictures, doctor the pictures on the computer to make them look like a nice renovation, nice landscaping. Advertise them on the Web, for sale by owner. They’d double the price, again sell to some out-of-state buyer who didn’t have time to come out and look at the place, who wanted coastal real estate for investment. I know of one buyer, bought five houses. Erik’s agreement was, he’d rent the houses out for them until the market went up and they could make a profit, he’d keep ten percent of the rent, send the buyer the balance. That part was legitimate, and why not? He’d already made a hundred percent profit on the deal. It was easy to find tenants, people scrambling for low rent. They did all this under fictitious Realtor’s names, so if the buyer wanted to sell, or came out here and got a look at the house, he couldn’t track them down.”

“Did you plan to bring this to the attention of the police or the real estate board, either here or in Eugene?”

She looked down again. “I . . . Eventually, I meant to. I made the copies so I’d have some power over him. So he’d give me a decent support settlement and child support.” She looked up at him pleadingly. “If I went to the cops right away, I’d lose what power I had. I thought . . . I meant to wait until I could bargain for a cash settlement. Then give him the papers I had, and that Mama had, and promise to leave it alone. Maybe, then, I’d bring you copies. It . . . It was for the children,” she added lamely.

Max didn’t look like he was buying all this. Nor were Joe and Dulcie. What made her think Erik would believe her when she promised to back off? What made her think he wouldn’t get really angry and turn more violent? Joe guessed that now, with Hesmerra dead, and Sammie dead, Debbie was feeling a little less cocky in her expectations.

Or, he thought, was she only making up Erik’s scams? Maybe for some agenda of her own? Maybe setting him up for something he really hadn’t done? Joe had little doubt Erik Kraft had knocked her around, he could see the fading shadows of bruises on her face and neck—unless she was an artist with the makeup, he thought with interest. A little purple eye shadow, carefully applied? Yet it made perfect sense that Kraft, known for his ironfisted business ways, would be raking off all he could, and that he wouldn’t be soft with Debbie. If Kraft and Alain were into illegal deals, and he found out Debbie had proof, Joe didn’t doubt that he’d turn more violent, just as Debbie feared.

Max said, “Your mother was in on this? You knew about the papers she had?”

Debbie just looked at him.

“You knew your mother was cleaning the Kraft offices,” he said patiently. “That she took that job with the night crew of Barton’s Commercial Cleaning, in order to gather evidence.”

Reluctantly, Debbie nodded. “I knew.”

“Did you put her onto that company?”

Again, a nod.

From the shadows, Dulcie glanced up at Joe. Everything seemed to fit, just as Emmylou had said. Debbie and her mother working together to bring Eric down, Debbie in contact with Hesmerra all along, unknown to Billy. Was it possible that Hesmerra had, at some point, balked at any more spying? Decided to pull out? Maybe she wasn’t sure that Eric had killed Greta, after all? Maybe she’d wondered if Perry Fowler had? Maybe she’d grown to like Eric, didn’t want to think him guilty of murder or of the scams?

Or maybe Hesmerra grew afraid of him, became nervous that he might find out what she was up to? Maybe she decided to go to the cops with what proof she had, before Erik turned on her.

But going to the law would destroy Debbie’s power over Erik before she had a chance to extort money from him. Would that make her angry enough to stop Hesmerra? To kill her own mother? From the looks of the sales contracts and letters, the rake-off for this operation could have run into the nine figures, and people had killed for a lot less. In a way, that seemed a far stretch: No matter the bad blood between them, they were mother and daughter. Except, Joe thought, murder within a family wasn’t all that unusual, it was often the first place the police would look, in an investigation.

But what of Alain? Where was she now, having left town when her deals went awry? Where had she gone when she pulled out to save herself?

As for that, was Erik down in southern California straightening out the branch office as Fowler claimed? Or had he already flown off to the Bahamas on vacation? Or had Erik and Alain both skipped? The two lovers gone off together taking with them the money gleaned from their various scams?

If they had, did Perry Fowler know that? Had Fowler, all along, been in on their operations and lied to protect Erik? Or was he, as he appeared, aware only of Alain’s wrongdoing and ignorant of Erik’s own involvement?

It didn’t matter where Erik was the morning of the fire when Hesmerra died; what mattered was, where was he when someone poisoned her whiskey? As to that, where was he when Sammie was killed?

And wherever he was, Joe thought, smiling, did he know how vulnerable he had become? Did he know that, from the evidence laid out on Max’s desk right now, plus whatever else the detectives and the CSI team might find, there could soon be a warrant out for him, an order that could perceptibly change his opulent lifestyle?

Joe was sorry to have missed Max’s interview of Fowler; he hadn’t known about it until he glimpsed a notation among the papers on Max’s desk. He pictured the pale, wimpy Realtor slouched in the leather chair farthest from Max’s desk nervously answering the chief’s questions—nervous simply at having to deal with the police, or from more than that?

From what Joe could see of Max’s notes Fowler had known nothing about Erik’s scams. Possibly, Joe thought, Fowler had suspected what Erik was up to but hadn’t wanted to think badly of his partner? Hadn’t wanted to rock the boat, hadn’t wanted to confront Erik? Hadn’t really wanted to find out what was going on? Some people were like that, didn’t want to know all the facts, to see what was too awkward, too painful.

And how convenient that many of Erik’s scams had been made through bogus real estate firms and nonexisting escrow companies, venues that Erik had fabricated, and were not connected to Kraft Realty. Given that Fowler didn’t appear to have much backbone, he might latch onto that fact as exonerating the firm itself from any connection to Erik’s crimes, ignoring those that did involve their partnership. Foolish, Joe thought, and self-destructive. But hey, we’re dealing with humans, here. What’s a cat to expect?