Cat With a Clue

Chapter 7

The next day, after the police had come and gone, I stood in the back doorway of Pam’s antiques store.

It was a horrific mess.

Linens, shoes, clothes, and books lay scattered everywhere. Slowly, I walked through the store, bits of broken glass and porcelain crunching under my feet, bits that had, until yesterday, been whimsical teapots, adorable mugs, stunning vases, gorgeous candlesticks, and hand mirrors that had probably survived two world wars.

Standing in the middle of the room, I turned in a slow circle. Even the framed prints and photos on the walls had been tossed onto the floor, their glass shattered and frames broken. The noise filled me, and I wanted to plug my ears against a memory that was only in my imagination.

I crouched and picked up a metal lunch box, one from the female-themed collection Pam had been growing the past few months. Supergirl was still flying, but one of her arms was a little dinged.

Just like Pam.

My friend had returned to her store late the previous night to make sure she’d turned off the coffeepot. “I always double-check before I leave,” Pam had said as I drove her home from the hospital. “But when I was getting ready for bed, I just couldn’t remember. I had to go back.”

I’d nodded. Though the library’s coffeepot had a timer attached, on my way out I always made sure there was no heat. Not that I distrusted electronics; I just trusted my own senses more.

“So I walked back to the store,” Pam had gone on. This made sense, since her small house was only a few blocks from downtown. “It was a beautiful night. I was looking at the stars, thinking how lucky I was to live in a place where you could actually see the Milky Way without driving for miles to get away from the city lights. I cut down the alley, like I always do, and went to the back door. “But . . .” She gave a pained noise. “But the door was partly open. There was no possible way I’d left it that way. Something was seriously wrong.”

She’d looked over at me. “I know I should have left right then and called the police—I know they do hourly rounds downtown all summer—but I had to look inside. I mean, it’s my store.”

Her last words were emphatic and heartfelt, and I knew exactly how she’d felt. If I hadn’t had Eddie with me the morning I’d found the bookmobile garage broken open, I might have done the same thing. Sometimes the right thing to do takes second place to what you have to do.

Pam had continued on with her tale. That she’d pushed the door all the way open. That she’d seen a large shape moving around inside the shadows. That she’d called out in anger. That the shape had moved toward her, shoving her aside with so much force that she’d fallen hard against a counter. The shape had run into the poorly lit alley and vanished.

Struggling to her feet, Pam had put her hands on the floor to push herself up and fallen back down from pain. She’d extracted her cell phone from her purse and called 911. The city police had arrived quickly, the ambulance right behind them. In the emergency room, Pam was told she had a broken arm and that it would take eight weeks to heal.

“Eight weeks,” she’d said, as I helped her out of my car and into her house. “I have a store to run. A store to clean up! I can’t . . . I don’t . . .”

“Shh,” I’d told her, helping her out of her clothes and into her nightgown. “Don’t worry about that now. Get some rest.” I pulled back the bedcovers and tucked her into bed. “Sleep now. That’s what you need more than anything.”

“Sleep?” she had asked sleepily. “I can’t possibly go to sleep right now. I have too much to do . . . too much to figure out . . . too much . . .”

And she’d been out.

I’d soft-footed it across the room and shut the door behind me. I turned to leave, then went the other way and stopped in the kitchen. After reassuring myself that she had food in the refrigerator edible for someone one-handed, I’d driven home and settled into bed with a purring Eddie, thinking that if I’d been a truly good friend, I would have offered Pam the comfort of my cat.

“What do you think?” I’d asked him, yawning. “Would you mind being someone else’s security blanket for a few days?”

“Mrr,” he’d said, lightly sinking the claws of one front foot into my arm.

“Okay, maybe it was a bad idea.”

“Mrr.”

“Okay, it was a bad idea.”

“Mrr.” He’d retracted his claws and snuggled up against my shoulder.

In seconds, he was snoring as only an Eddie could. I’d lain awake for a few minutes, thinking, then closed my eyes and, still making plans for the next day, had fallen sound asleep.

Now I turned in a small circle, surveying the damage. The stunning shock of seeing the shambles of Pam’s geniuslike retail displays had retreated, and I started to take a hard look at the damage.

After a few minutes, I had a plan, and pulled out my cell phone to start its implementation.

“Tom? It’s Minnie Hamilton. Sorry to bother you on your one day off, but— What’s that? No, I don’t need any cookies. Something happened last night, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to help.”

An hour later, a small band of downtown business owners had converged on Pam’s store. I handed out work gloves I’d borrowed from the marina office, told everyone to watch for broken glass, and put them all to work.

We piled and we sorted and we swept and we cleaned and we talked a little too loud, trying to keep the fear at bay. Chilson was a haven for so many of us, a place of calm and peace and serenity. Sure, unhappy things came around every once in a while, but to have something like this happen, something malicious and evil, well, this was different.

At one point, I held out my hand for cash donations and ordered a stack of pizzas from Fat Boys. When I came back, arms laden, I held out my hand again. “Take your money back,” I said. “Those guys heard what we were doing and wouldn’t take any money.”

But no one, from Cookie Tom to the Shomins to Shannon Hirsch, an attorney at the other end of downtown, would take their cash. “We’ll leave it for Pam,” the owner of the jewelry store said. “It’s not much, but she’s going to need it.”

Everyone nodded.

“Even if her insurance company pays out,” said the hardware store’s owner as he picked up a slice of pepperoni and sausage, “it’ll take weeks, if not months, to get a check, and she’ll need cash to replace stock.”

Which was far easier said than done, because Pam’s buying trips were done in the slower seasons, not in the busy summer. We all knew this, but since there wasn’t anything we could do about it, we ate and drank the soda and water that the Fat Boys had also donated, and got back to work.

Late in the afternoon, as Reva Shomin and the owner of the bike shop were trying to wrestle a corner cupboard back into the exact position we’d all decided it had been yesterday, a loud voice cut through the chatter.

“What on earth are you doing?”

The cupboard thumped to the floor, rocking a little, then going still. Everyone looked at each other, then as one, they all looked at me.

I swallowed and turned to face Pam, who was standing in the front doorway with her hands on her hips. Well, technically, one hand on one hip because the other hand was poking out of a sling, but whatever.

“Um,” I said. Earlier, I’d thought about calling her and making sure she was okay with us going ahead and cleaning up. But I hadn’t wanted to wake her if she was still sleeping, and since she’d left her purse behind in my car, a purse that had contained the keys to the store, I’d figured I’d get started, then call her a little later.

“I meant to call you,” I said lamely. And I had; I’d just ended up so busy I’d forgotten all about it. I suddenly remembered my mother’s admonitions to think first and act second. Maybe next time I’d remember her advice at a moment when I could implement it.

“Hey, Pam,” Cookie Tom said, nodding. He probably would have waved, but his hands were busy because he was hauling books from one of the carefully sorted piles. “Maybe you should sit down. You look a little pale.”

He was right. I guided her to a tall stool that the owner of a local bar had hauled in for us to use. “Just sit a minute,” I said. “You can direct everything from there.”

“But . . . but I don’t even know all these people,” she said, bewilderment clear on her face.

This was because our work crew had accidentally hauled in some passing tourists who had seen the activity inside and been more than willing to roll up their sleeves and pitch in.

“They’re people who want to help,” I said, opening a water bottle and handing it to her.

“But—”

“Drink,” I told her. “I’m willing to bet you haven’t had enough fluids today, and I know they told you at the hospital to make sure you stay hydrated.”

Not really paying attention to what she was doing, Pam took a sip of water. “How did . . . Why are . . .” She shook her head and glanced around, her eyes wide. “Everything’s almost done. I thought this would take days.”

“Many hands make light work,” I said, nodding as wisely as I could.

Pam blinked. “I can’t believe . . .”

Before she could go all teary, I nudged her hand, encouraging her to drink. When she was doing so, I started listing our accomplishments. “We decided to sort things into groups. Things broken beyond repair, things that were damaged but still saleable, and the things that weren’t damaged at all.” Her expression turned pensive, and I hurried on. “The busted-up pile was the smallest by far, and we took lots of pictures for your insurance claim.”

“Got them right here,” said Kirk, owner of the local photography studio, tapping his laptop. “I’m finishing up the file names.”

“Same with the slightly damaged stuff,” I said. “Kirk will burn DVDs so you and your insurance company will have records.”

“You . . . will?”

“Not a problem,” Kirk said, smiling at her. “Glad to help.”

“Really?” she asked.

I rolled my eyes. “And over there, at the other laptop, Trudy is finishing up an inventory.” Trudy, an accountant, waved a manicured hand in our direction but didn’t look away from the computer. She’d been happy to help out, and even happier to know that her specific help wouldn’t involve the lifting of anything heavier than her computer’s mouse.

“When it’s done,” I told Pam, “Trudy will e-mail you the spreadsheet. We didn’t know how you track your stock, so Trudy put the data into lots of columns. You can sort it any way you need and compare it against your existing list.” I didn’t have any firsthand knowledge of Pam’s inventorying practices, but I knew without a doubt that this capable woman kept accurate track of the items in her store.

“I . . . don’t know what to say.” Pam clutched the water bottle hard enough to make the thin plastic crackle. “I . . .”

“Don’t say anything,” Kristen held up two large handfuls of antique cookie cutters. “Unless you want to tell me where these buggers go.”

Without a pause, Pam said, “In a wire basket. It was on the butcher-block kitchen island.”

As Kristen bustled off to display them properly, the owner of the shoe store held up a pair of large dolls and asked, “Pam? How about these?”

She slid off the stool and, within seconds, was deep into the business of directing the placement of the hundreds of items in her store.

I watched for a moment, making sure she was steady on her feet, breathed a short sigh of relief, and then returned to my self-appointed task of sorting the books.

* * *

“What’s missing?” I asked Pam.

We were eating the last of the pizza, and everyone else was long gone. For the past hour, Pam and I had been comparing her inventory list against Trudy’s list and the pictures Kirk had taken.

Pam swallowed a bite of mushrooms and olives and said, “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure.”

“Bzz! Wrong answer. We’ve worked too hard for that kind of response. Try again.”

She laughed, and I sent up a small prayer of thanks to whomever might be listening for the quick return of her warm laughter. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. “What I meant was, I can’t see that anything has been stolen. It looks like this was just vandalism.”

I studied the two lists and murmured, “Another one.”

“That’s right,” Pam said. “You had two up at the library, didn’t you? The book-sale room and the poor bookmobile. Well, they say things come in threes.”

“They also say drinking coffee as a kid will stunt your growth.”

Pam looked at me. “You do drink a lot of coffee.”

“Didn’t drink a drop until I was in college.”

“Then why are you so short?”

“Because you can’t breed midgets and raise giants,” I said, quoting my grandfather, who had also told me to pay attention not just some of the time but all of the time. This was my mother’s father, and she’d learned many of her stock phrases from him, but somehow I’d always found it easier to listen to Grandpa.

And somehow that made me think of something. I went to the back of the store, trying to put myself back in time to when I’d walked in that morning. After a moment, I asked, “Can you pull up the first pictures Kirk took?” Kirk had been my second phone call and, after I’d explained what had happened, he’d been the first to arrive, camera and lighting equipment in hand. He’d set up quickly and snapped away, finishing just as the rest of the troops trooped in.

“Hang on a sec.” One-handed, she clicked open the appropriate computer file. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“Three things.” I pointed toward the rear wall, to a display in the middle of the room, and to some shelving near the front door. “What do those look like in the pictures?”

“A mess,” Pam said. “Hard to believe it looked like that a few hours ago,” she said in a wondering tone. “And hard to believe that all those people would drop their plans for the day and help me. I barely know most of them. And you,” she said, her voice cracking. “You’ve done so much for me, I can’t—”

“What you can do is look at those pictures,” I cut in. If she started bawling, I would, too, and soppy tears on top of too much leftover pizza wouldn’t sit well in my stomach. “Really study them. Tell me if you see what I see.” Which sounded a little too much like that Christmas carol, something completely inappropriate in June.

“All I see is a mess,” Pam muttered, but she kept looking. “A big, fat mess. I had no idea I had so much stuff in here. How could I have accumulated so much in such a short time? And what’s—” She stopped abruptly. “Hang on. The hatboxes are on the floor, but they’re close to where they should be. Same with the linens and the wooden puzzles and everything else. There’s only one category of item that’s scattered far from where it should be.”

“Exactly,” I said. “The books.”

* * *

The next morning was Monday, a library day, but I stopped at the sheriff’s office before going into work.

“Good morning, Ms. Hamilton.” Detective Inwood’s greeting was a salute with a powdered doughnut. “If you don’t make any jokes about cops and doughnuts, you’re welcome to a pastry.”

I blinked at the man. As far as I could remember, he’d never before invited me to partake of anything inside the office. Had he had a personality transfer since we’d last talked?

“Take advantage while you can,” Ash said, walking into the interview room, handing me an apple fritter with one hand and a cup of coffee with the other. We brushed hands during the transfer and smiled at each other. “Hal got another grandkid yesterday.”

“Congratulations!” I transferred my smile from Ash to the detective. “Girl or boy?”

“Girl,” he said, beaming. “Emily Grace.”

It was a nice name. I said so, and his smile went a little wider. For a second I was worried that the unaccustomed expression might send his face into spasms that could end up freezing there forever, but it went back to normal as he began to eat.

I breathed a sigh of relief. There was only so much dramatic change I could take in any given time span.

“Have a seat, Ms. Hamilton,” the detective said. “Unless this won’t take long?”

“Sorry to dash your hopes,” I said, sitting, “but I have a new theory.” I’d texted Ash yesterday about Pam’s store, but hadn’t said anything about what Pam and I had both noticed at the end of the day.

True public servant that he was, Detective Inwood didn’t even blink at my statement, even though I was sure he would have been content to never hear another idea from me the rest of his career. He and Ash sat across from me. “One of these days,” the detective said, “you’ll sit on this side.”

I glanced up at the stained ceiling tiles near the doorway. A few months back, when I’d mentioned that I’d thought the stain looked like a dragon, he’d said it wasn’t a dragon at all, that I needed to see it from that side of the room. One of these days, I’d break out of my rut and remember to actually do so.

“So, what’s your new theory?” Detective Inwood asked.

“This first part isn’t the theory,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you knew about Andrea Vennard’s old high school boyfriend, Steve Guilder. You know she had a personal protection order against him?”

Inwood brushed powdered sugar off his jacket. “Yes, Ms. Hamilton, we’re very aware of the documents issued out of this county.”

I colored the slightest bit. “Well, it was a long time ago. I just thought I’d mention it.”

“We’re exploring all avenues of investigation,” Detective Inwood said, and I almost mouthed the words along with him. “That includes looking into any possible suspects from her business downstate.”

“I heard she owned a business. What was it, anyway?”

The detective popped in the last bit of his doughnut. “The theory?” he asked around it.

I decided not to be miffed that he wouldn’t tell me. There were lots of other ways I could find out. “It’s about books,” I said.

Ash glanced at his supervisor. His supervisor, who was still in the act of taking a pen from his shirt pocket and flipping open a small notebook, didn’t glance back. He also didn’t write anything down.

“What’s about books?” Detective Inwood asked.

I almost said “Everything,” but knew that would earn me raised eyebrows from the detective and a shake of the head from Ash. “The murder. The break-in at the Friends’ book-sale room. The break-in at the bookmobile garage. The break-in at Pam Fazio’s store on Saturday night.”

The detective sat back. “The break-ins are the jurisdiction of the city police. If you have information, you should speak to them directly.”

Which he would prefer, I was sure. “It all ties in with the murder,” I said quickly. Though the city police were well trained and experienced, they weren’t the ones investigating Andrea’s death.

“How, exactly?” Inwood asked.

“It’s all about the books,” I repeated. He made a rolling motion with his hand, so I kept going. “As far as anyone can tell, nothing was taken from the sale room. And we know that nothing was stolen from the bookmobile or from Pam’s store. But it was the books in her store that were examined most closely.”

“What,” the detective said, hunching forward the tiniest bit, “makes you think it isn’t simple vandalism?”

“Two things,” I said. “One is that there’s been no real damage. Nothing has been taken, nothing maliciously destroyed. Sure, there were things broken at Pam’s store, but we did an inventory, and, considering the number of breakable items that could have been shattered into teensy-tiny bits, the number of things broken was surprisingly small.”

Thirteen, to be exact, and most of the broken bits had been from one large mirror. I’d swept up the pieces, hoping, for the first time ever, that the tale about the seven years’ bad luck for whomever had broken the mirror was true.

“And number two?” Detective Inwood asked.

“It was too much work,” I said.

His bushy eyebrows went up. “How’s that?”

The librarian was about to explain vandalism to the law-enforcement officers. It was a good day. “Straight vandalism,” I told them, “wouldn’t have been so thorough. Vandals go in, destroy everything in sight, and leave. Whoever broke into the bookmobile garage, Pam’s place, and the Friends’ room was very methodical. There are three thousand books on the bookmobile,” I said. “And each and every one was taken from its shelf and tossed onto the floor. Every one,” I repeated, tapping the scratched table with my forefinger. “Would any vandal be so thorough?”

Inwood and Ash looked at each other, and I knew I’d scored a point. “They were looking for something,” Ash said.

I nodded. “Had to be.”

Detective Inwood made a noise of dissent. “There are no ‘have to’s when you’re talking about crime,” he said. “You never know what people will do. But”—he put up a hand to stave off my knee-jerk protest—“you have a valid point.”

It took me a moment to realize that the detective had given me a compliment. Or, if not a compliment, at least it wasn’t a brush-off, and with Detective Inwood, that was pretty much the same thing.

“So, what I’m thinking,” I said, “is the person who killed Andrea is looking for a book. Andrea must have been, too, because why else would she have been in the library when it was closed? And since none of this happened until after Talia DeKeyser died, maybe the two things are linked. Maybe it was a book Talia owned, maybe it was valuable, and maybe both Andrea and her killer were trying to steal it.”

The detective frowned. “That’s a lot of maybes, Ms. Hamilton. And what book,” he asked, tapping the tip of his pen onto his notepad, which was still as pristine as snow on a winter’s morning, “could possibly be worth killing for?”

“Not that long ago,” I said, “one of Audubon’s first editions went up for auction and sold for almost twelve million dollars.”

The two men across the table from me blinked, but then Ash thinned his eyes to slits. “That book is, what, three feet tall? There’s no way one of those could be in the library without everyone knowing about it.”

I grinned. Having a well-educated boyfriend was kind of fun. “Just an example, gentlemen. There are other rare first editions that sell for a lot of money.”

“How much?” Inwood asked.

“There was a first folio of Shakespeare’s that sold for over six million,” I said. “And a Canterbury Tales that went for seven and a half.”

“Okay,” Inwood said, putting his pen to paper, “other than old first editions, what book could be worth killing over?”

“A signed copy of a rare first edition would send it to another price range, if the signature was authenticated.” I thought a little bit. “Or it could have been some sort of tell-all journal that was given away by accident.” I didn’t see how something like that could have gotten into circulation at the library, but the breaker-inner/killer wouldn’t necessarily know how the library put books into the system. Besides, the donations box for the Friends of the Library book sale had a sign that the library had first dibs on donations.

Inwood, who had been writing furiously, glanced up at me. “But why would something that rare be in the library or Ms. Fazio’s store?”

“Haven’t you ever watched Antiques Roadshow? Rare things are found all the time in weird places.”

He thought, then nodded. “Anything else?”

“No, it’s just . . .” I put my hands in my lap, not wanting Ash or the detective to see how they’d turned into hard fists. Pam’s phone call was still fresh in my mind. Could you do me a favor? that strong and capable woman had asked hesitantly, as if she wasn’t sure I’d help her. As if she’d had been dealt a blow almost too hard to bear.

I looked at my hands, then directly at Inwood, staring him flat in the face. “Just find out who did this to Pam.”