Gone with the Whisker

Chapter 14

Kate stared at me. “You want to do what?”

I kept my smile affixed to my face. Maybe if I kept it up, I’d look like Clella when I was in my mid-eighties, and not Doris. “I want us to make supper together. And it’ll be something that doesn’t smell much, so you won’t get a headache.”

“But you don’t cook. Not really.”

My smile became a tad rigid. “Just because I don’t, doesn’t mean I can’t.” At least in theory. “Anyone with a fifth grade education should be able to follow a recipe.” I flourished the small pile of printouts I’d made at the library during lunchtime, five cents a page into petty cash, thank you. “Pick one. Any ingredient we don’t have, we can walk over to the grocery store and buy. It’s Friday night, after all. We can make cooking our entertainment for the evening.”

“It’s not like it’s a real Friday,” Kate said, rolling her eyes. “I have to work at the toy store tomorrow morning, you know.”

I had not known. How could I have? For me to know what was going on in her life would have required that she talk to me. “Then I promise we won’t make anything that will take longer than ten hours.”

Kate sighed. “You’re going to make me do this, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely,” I said brightly. Or as brightly as I could through teeth that were starting to clench tight. “It’ll be fun.”

“Fun?” Kate’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

I had no idea. But then inspiration struck. Though my niece didn’t listen to me, she did listen to pretty much everyone else. “Kristen says there’s nothing in the entire world better than cooking a good meal.”

“Yeah? She really says that?” Kate glanced at the houseboat’s kitchen-like area.

“Here.” I held out my phone. “Go ahead. Ask her.”

Kate ignored my phone and, instead, took the stack of recipes. This relieved me mightily, because what Kristen had actually said was, “There’s nothing better than coming up with a new recipe that my peeps are willing to shell out thirty bucks a pop to eat.” She might have given me a pass on the translation, but now I had a chance to prep her for the question. And if I told her approval would result in Minnie Hamilton cooking a full dinner from start to finish, she would probably have paid admission to attend.

“Some of these don’t look too horrible,” Kate said. “Can I pick?”

“Absolutely,” I said rashly, which was why we ended up in the grocery store, filling a cart with a multitude of items to make shrimp pad Thai, a recipe that happened to be on the same page as the far simpler shrimp stir fry, the dish I’d had my eye on when I’d hit the Print button.

After I’d handed over my credit card for an amount that was more expensive than going out would have been and we’d hauled everything back to the houseboat, we read over the recipe and I divvied up tasks. Kate on the sauce, me on the slicing and dicing.

But after she’d watched me almost slice my fingertips off, she forced a switch.

“Have you ever used a knife in your life?” she demanded.

“Sure,” I said, carefully dividing oil into two tiny dishes usually reserved for Eddie’s morning milk. “It’s just that I’m often thinking about something else, and that something else is almost always a lot more interesting than cutting pretty much anything.”

“I can’t believe you have a master’s,” she muttered.

Clearly she had not yet learned that advanced degrees were an inaccurate indicator of life success, but that was something she’d have to figure out for herself.

When I was in the middle of spooning out rice vinegar, I felt Kate shoot me a quick glance. “Have you talked to Deputy Wolverson about what I was saying the other day?”

“About . . . ?” Since my thoughts had been focused on what Rafe had been murmuring into my ear the previous evening, I blinked at her question.

She paused, mid-chop. “You’ve forgotten about it, haven’t you?”

“Of course not,” I said automatically as I tried to remember what she was so sure I couldn’t remember. A bit wildly, I looked around for a clue. Eddie, who was trying to wedge himself into the tiny crack between the dining bench and the wall, was no help. “It’s just I, um, haven’t had time.”

“Really?” The knife dropped onto the counter and she put her hands on her hips. “It was days ago you said you’d talk to Deputy Wolverson about my theory, that maybe Mrs. Price’s husband and Mr. Stuhler’s wife were having an affair, and they killed their spouses so they could be together without paying for a divorce.”

Ah. That. “Yes, but—”

“But what?” She was almost yelling now. “You were never going to tell him, were you? You don’t take me seriously. You never have and you never will.” She lurched away from my outstretched hand. “Leave me alone, okay? Just leave me alone.” She ran out the door, bobbing the houseboat as she jumped off.

I hurried after her, keeping her in sight as she ran down the length of the dock and took a hard right, and then another right a few yards later.

Sighing, I slowed. She was headed to Louisa and Ted Axford’s. I watched as she climbed aboard the sleek boat and lingered until I heard Louisa’s calm and reassuring voice.

“Now what?” I asked Eddie as I returned to the houseboat.

“Mrr,” he said. And he said it in a very critical way. Before I’d taken up residence with a cat, I hadn’t understood how judgmental they could be.

“Thanks so much.” I sighed. “I know I screwed up. You don’t have to beat me over the head with it.” I flopped on top of Kate’s sleeping bag. Then squirmed around a bit. “You know what? This is actually very comfortable. No wonder she likes sleeping on this.”

“Mrr.”

“Well, sure, you knew that a long time ago, didn’t you? And you were just waiting for me to acknowledge the combined wisdom of an Eddie and a seventeen-year-old.” The yellow eyes swiveled my way and I quickly added, “Sorry, that came out a little snarky, didn’t it? I apologize. I should never doubt your capabilities.”

His little kitty shoulders went up and down in a sigh, looking for all the world like an aggrieved parent who knew their offspring was lying through their teeth.

In the name of distraction, I said, “But you never answered my question. What do I do now? Is she going to talk to me anytime soon? And by ‘soon,’ what I mean is within the next decade?”

Eddie, who had been sitting on the dashboard, jumped to the floor and stalked past me.

“Okay, you’re right. What I should do is what I told her I’d do: talk to Ash about her theory that Fawn Stuhler and Dominic Price had a thing going and killed their spouses to clear the way for mutual eternal bliss. After their reception of my one-killer theory, I doubt they’ll welcome anything like that.” But I’d have to talk to them eventually, since I’d promised.

Sliding down, getting close to horizontal, I tried to consider Kate’s theory as realistic. I’d never met Fawn, but Rex had been in his late forties, so odds were reasonably good that Fawn was roughly the same age. Nicole had turned forty last winter—I remembered her talking about the surprise party her husband had given her—so Dominic was probably about that, too.

“Not that you have to be the same age to fall in love with each other,” I told Eddie. “There are lots of couples out there who are years and years apart in age.”

I started counting on my fingers. Donna’s husband hadn’t retired since he was holding out for maximum social security benefits, so he had to be at least five years younger. And I was pretty sure Uncle Everett, Aunt Frances’s first husband, had been significantly older.

“Okay, that’s only two couples, but I’m sure I could come up with more if—” I stopped, frowning. Underneath me there were sounds of a cat getting into something he shouldn’t. “Eddie, what are you doing?”

The unexplained noise continued unabated.

I slid over the edge of the bench seat and oozed onto the floor. “Please don’t tell me you’ve crawled into Kate’s luggage again,” I said, peering underneath the lowered table. “You know she hates it when you get your white hairs on her black T-shirts and your black hairs on her white T-shirts.”

A single piece of popcorn rolled out and came to a rest next to my right knee.

“Nice.” I wondered how long it had been there and decided not to think about it. “You could have eaten that and saved—”

A second piece of popcorn rolled out and stopped by my left knee. “Double nice. Thanks for your commentary on my housekeeping—”

“Mrr!”

“I said thank you. What more do you want?”

“MRR!” Eddie crawled out from the darkness, gave me a Look, and stalked off.

“Some days,” I said, watching his tail end, “it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.”

“Mrr.”

* * *

When Kate eventually returned, I was sitting on a front deck chaise, reading, with Eddie flopped across my legs. She stepped aboard, muttered an apology for leaving without telling me where she was going, and slunk inside.

“Not sure that counts as talking,” I said to Eddie. “What do you think?”

He purred, which was the exact response I’d hoped for.

I’d been texting Louisa on and off since Kate had fled for the Axfords’ greener pastures and the fun of playing with a toddler, and when Louisa had asked if I wanted Kate to apologize, I’d responded: In a perfect world, sure. But though Chilson may be paradise, it’s not perfect.

Louisa: Shouldn’t we be trying to make the world more perfect?

I’d returned with: But who gets to decide the definition of perfection? Not sure I want that job and an emoji of a yellow face sticking its tongue out.

After sitting a few minutes longer, I picked up Eddie and my book—because it was way too dark to read, even for me—and headed inside. As I passed Kate, who’d already brushed her teeth, changed into pajamas, slid into her sleeping bag, and started up a video game on her tablet, I said, “See you in the morning.”

She made a grunt-like noise in return, and I went to bed with a calm heart. She might not be talking-talking to me, but I wasn’t getting the silent treatment.

“What do you think about that?” I whispered to Eddie, who was curled up between my right hip and the outer wall.

Once again, his only answer was a purr.

* * *

The next morning, Rafe and I had arranged to meet for breakfast at the Round Table. We hadn’t shared our Friday night because he and some buddies had tickets to a concert at the flat-out gorgeous Great Lakes Center for the Arts, and I wasn’t invited.

He looked at me over the coffee Sabrina had just poured. “You could have gone, you know.”

I hesitated, then reached out for the cream. It was definitely a cream kind of day. Then again, if I could justify the calories, most days were cream kinds of days. “Really? Me and all of your stinky guy friends, hanging out before at Knot Just a Bar, going to hear some band whose music I’ve never cared for, and then going back to Knot Just a Bar afterward to talk about how great the music was?”

“You’d have fit right in,” he said, toasting me with his mug.

It probably would have been fun, if I’d brought along earplugs. His friends were good guys, and they were always willing to expand their circle to include anyone who laughed at their jokes. Still, I liked that the two of us had slightly different sets of friends. I figured it was probably good for our relationship. That is, if the article I’d read in the women’s magazine at the beauty salon last time I was getting my hair cut had any truth behind it.

“How did it go with Kate last night?” he asked.

Grimacing, I said, “Not now, please. I don’t want to ruin my breakfast.”

“That bad?”

“It wasn’t good.”

We sat there, sipping coffee while we waited for our food, and as the caffeine started to work its happy way into my body, my outlook started to improve. “But it ended up okay. And on my way out this morning, I said, ‘Have a good day,’ and she said, ‘You too,’ so I’m going to count that as a win.”

“Speaking of wins . . .”

Rafe let the sentence trail off, and I took the bait. “What did you win?” I asked, looking around. “Don’t see any big stuffed animals.” I craned my head and neck around to see out the window. “A car? Did you win that Lamborghini I see sitting out there?” Not that I could recognize a Lamborghini from any kind of ghini, but that wasn’t the point.

“Better. And just so you know, I was very clever about this.” He beamed.

“Given,” I said, nodding.

“It’s about Dominic Price.”

My coffee cup stopped halfway up. “Nicole’s husband?”

“The very one.”

“What did you learn?” I put the cup down. “Is it something I should tell the sheriff’s office? Who did you learn it from?”

Rafe crossed his arms and glared at me. “Are you going to let me tell the story or not?”

“Is there time?” I flipped my phone over and thumbed the Home button to wake it up. Rafe Stories were rated by his friends by the number of beers they consumed while he talked. Amounts ranged from one short draft beer for the shortest tale to three tall beers for the stupendously long but immensely entertaining Appendix Story. “Okay, I don’t have anything going until tonight. I should be good.”

He frowned. “I could have sworn it was my turn to be the funny one.”

“Not until noon.”

“Oh. Well, okay then.” He looked around, and started. “Late yesterday morning, just before lunch, I ran out of finishing nails.”

This I could believe, because I’d watched him install trim, and I was pretty sure the house would end up with more weight in nails than in any other item.

“So I went up to the hardware store.” He walked his fingers across the table top. “It only took me a second to get the box of nails”—also easy to believe, since he’d practically worn a groove in the concrete sidewalk making nail trips—“so I got in line. The guy in line ahead of me looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him until someone called him Father.”

That seemed overly formal. “Not Dad?”

“Nope. Father as in Father David, the Catholic priest at that little stone church, you know, the one near Dooley, over on the other side of the county.”

I did indeed know that church. The bookmobile and crew drove past it once a week. Made of fieldstone, with a beautiful bell tower and oak double front doors, it recently celebrated its hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary.

“Anyway,” he went on, “some guy I didn’t know asked Father David how Don was doing.” Rafe paused and gave me a meaningful look. “At least that’s what I thought he said.”

I rolled my hand in a move-along gesture.

“You are the worst audience ever. Father David said he was suffering, but would make it through with faith and God’s grace. And then . . .” Rafe drew the word out long. “The guy asked Father David how the congregation was dealing with the murder of one of its members.”

My breath sucked in and I almost choked on my coffee. “Dom. Not Don, but Dom.”

“Exactly. But I had to make sure, so I inched forward and said how my girlfriend had known Nicole, and how sorry you were. And that you’d never met Dom, but would like to give him your condolences.”

True enough. I waited, because the story was surely not over.

“Father David said Dom would be fine, because even though he—that’s Father David—only saw Dom during the summer, he knew Dom was faithful, loyal to the church, and very devout. That Dom was raised with the old ways, and followed them himself.”

Huh. Interesting.

“Clever, huh?” Rafe did the one eyebrow thing.

It was. “Yes, and you know what this means?”

“Yeah. It means Dom most likely doesn’t believe in divorce, so Kate’s wacky theory might be right. When are you going to tell her?”

An excellent question. “I don’t suppose ‘never’ is the right answer.”

“Nope.”

“Then I’ll say . . . later.”

Rafe eyed me. “You sure about that?”

Not a chance. “Absolutely.”

* * *

I wasn’t due at the library until afternoon, so I used the opportunity to drive out to the gas station–slash–convenience store I had visited so fruitlessly a few days earlier.

When I’d mentioned to Rafe that I was doing so, he’d given me a look I didn’t recognize at first. Only when I studied it for a moment did I clue in.

“You,” I said, narrowing my eyes, “are looking at me askance.”

“As what?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, mister,” I said mock-severely. “You know I’ll win that game every time.”

Rafe laughed, and the inside of my heart swelled with happiness. Love, I thought. This was what love can do to you.

“I think there are better ways you could be spending your time, that’s all,” he said.

“Because I could be doing . . .” I raised my eyebrows. “Oh, hang on. I know. I could be sanding. Or painting. Or sanding. Or painting.”

“Well.” He shrugged. “Yeah. The sooner the house gets done, the sooner you can move in.”

Once again, I toyed with the idea of moving before the renovation work was done. And once again, I instantly rejected the idea. Living with dust, noise, and general constant disruption of construction was not conducive to quality reading time.

More important than my preferences, however, were Eddie’s, and Eddie definitely wouldn’t like it. Plus, the whole place was filled with cat toys. Painting tarps would turn into cat caves. Electrical cords for the power tools would be chewed. Wood trim that was cut, finished, and ready to install would be tested for clawing capacity. And it didn’t do to think what he might do with sandpaper.

I’d shuddered. “Tomorrow,” I’d told Rafe. “I’ll work hard tomorrow, I promise.”

Rafe had wished me good luck with my convenience store mission, and I’d spent much of the journey crossing my fingers and toes that the trip would be productive. Not that I had to be right and Rafe wrong, but I certainly wouldn’t mind it.

I entered the store and looked around for my little friend.

“Good morning.”

The guy behind the counter spoke in a friendly manner, and even had a smile on his face. He had the same long hair and same skinny build as my friend, but was a few years older and miles different in demeanor. This was a guy who might actually engage in a conversation.

“Morning,” I said, smiling back. After introducing myself, and learning that his name was Mason, I said, “I stopped by a few days ago and talked to a young man about leaving a note. I’m looking for the person who has worked here the longest.”

“A note?” He frowned. “I haven’t seen any note. Who told you—” He stopped, sighing. “Was it a guy who kind of looked like me, only younger?” I nodded, and he said, “My cousin. I told my uncle I’d . . .” His expression segued into something that wasn’t exactly a smile. “Well, never mind. I’m the one who has worked here the longest. What can I do for you?”

I blinked. The longest? Mason might have been thirty years old, but couldn’t be much older than that.

He laughed. “I grew up just down that road and started working here when I was maybe thirteen, shoveling the sidewalk for two dollars cash, no questions asked. A couple of years ago, the owner wanted to retire. I was working downstate, but when I saw this place listed, I started working the numbers.”

It was a familiar story. Lots of young people who grew up in the region left for downstate jobs after high school or college, and after a few years many of them started looking for ways to move back. “And we all lived happily ever after?” I asked, smiling. It had worked for Kristen.

“Hoping so,” Mason said. “We’ll see what my accountant says at the end of this year. But what was it you wanted?”

I repeated what I’d told his cousin, that two people who didn’t live that far away had died unexpectedly, that they were loyal bookmobile patrons, that I figured they were customers of his, too, and that I was wondering if anyone was putting together a fund for flowers or a donation.

Mason was shaking his head. “I was out of town for a few days for a family wedding and I’m still catching up. Who died?”

“Rex Stuhler, who owned a pest control company with his wife, and a summer resident, Nicole Price. Did you know them?”

Mason looked at his hands. At the counter. At the rolls of scratcher lottery tickets. “I guess. Sort of.”

Until now, Mason had been a friendly and talkative guy. Now, suddenly, after mentioning Rex and Nicole, he was acting like his cousin. Hmm. “Did they come in here often?” I asked. “If I remember right, Rex’s house is only a mile or two south of here, and Nicole’s family cabin is just a few miles over—”

“I didn’t know them,” Mason snapped. “Okay? And I’m sorry, but I have to get back to work.” He hurried to the end of the counter, opened a door that revealed a tiny office, and entered, shutting the door behind him.

“That was weird,” I said out loud.

And also very suspicious. Which meant I was right and Rafe was wrong about this trip being a waste of time.

But though I did feel a fractional ounce of happiness about that little fun fact, most of me felt sad. For Rex. And Fawn and Nicole and Dominic, and all the other people who were touched by murder. Then again, even if Fawn had an alibi the night her husband had been killed, it was still possible that she’d been involved. And could she and Dom really have been having an affair?

I sighed, cast one last look at the firmly closed door, and left.

* * *

“Minnie, is that you?”

Since I’d answered my desk phone as “This is Minnie, how may I help you?” the question seemed unnecessary, but since I was pretty sure the caller was Max Compton, I decided to give him some slack.

“Max, is that you?”

He chuckled. “Bright as a shiny new penny, that’s what you are.”

“Pennies can be shiny and old at the same time,” I said. “And that’s what you are.”

“Is this the first meeting of Chilson’s Mutual Admiration Society?”

I laughed. “Let’s call it a pre-meeting meeting. What can I do for you, Max?”

“It’s my—” He moaned. “It’s my heart,” he said, gasping.

“That’s too bad.” I patted my desk for the pen I knew was underneath one of the piles of paper. “I could call nine-one-one if you’d like. Or should I get Heather on the phone?” Ah, there it was. I unearthed the pen and clicked it open so I could start the draft agenda for the next staff meeting. Graydon usually did this, but he’d asked me to do it this time around.

“Not sure I can make it that long,” he wheezed.

“That’s too bad. Is there anything I can do to help you in your last moments on this earth?”

“I might . . .” He coughed. “I might make it a little longer if you brought me a large print copy of The Runaway Jury. You know, that John Grisham book? It might be the only thing that gets me through this week.”

Which was why, an hour and a half later, when I should have been going over to the house to start sanding the study’s baseboard, I was instead walking into Lakeview Medical Care Facility with Max’s book in my hand. He was waiting for me, rolling his wheelchair forward three inches, back three inches, forward, back.

“You made it!” he almost shouted, beaming.

I handed over the book. “And you seem to have made a miraculous recovery.”

“Eh?” He peered up at me and gave a fake cough. “Oh, yes. Much better.”

“Why are you coughing? I thought it was your heart this time.”

“All connected,” Max said vaguely, turning to the first chapter, and I lost any chance at conversation with him.

“You do realize that the next bookmobile librarian won’t be nearly as accommodating when it comes to personal deliveries, don’t you?”

“The next one?” He sat up straight. “Minerva Hamilton, what are you saying? You’re not leaving Chilson, are you?”

“Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention.”

He let out a huge breath. “Don’t do that to an old man. I’m not sure my heart can take it.”

“You told me last winter that your heart was as healthy as a fit seventy-year-old.”

“Things can change,” he said, going back to the book. “You never know.”

Which was true enough, but I didn’t want to think of Lakeview without Max, so I shoved the reminder of his advanced age into the back of my brain, murmured a good-bye, and turned to leave. But before I took a single step toward the entrance, I pivoted and headed down an interior hallway. A few rooms down I saw the CNA I knew best.

“Hey, Minnie,” Heather said. “What are you doing here on a Saturday?”

I inched closer. “Don’t tell anyone, but Max has me wrapped around his pinkie. I made a delivery just for him.”

Heather laughed. “Sounds like Max.”

“Say, would Lowell Kokotovich happen to be working today? I met him at the reading hour the other day and wanted to talk to him about something.”

“Um, I think so.” Heather glanced down the hallway at a white light just outside a resident’s room that was blinking. “I have to go,” she said, hurrying off. “Lowell’s probably in Otter Lane.”

I called a thank-you and made my way around Lakeview’s big square. Eventually, I found Otter Lane and Lowell Kokotovich, who was standing at a cart outside a resident’s room, poking at a computer screen with a stylus.

“Hi,” I said, approaching. “I don’t know if you remember me, but—”

“Sure. From the library.” He nodded, then frowned. “It’s Saturday, isn’t it? There’s not a reading hour today, right?”

I refrained from saying that every hour was reading hour as far as I was concerned. He didn’t seem the type to appreciate the joke. “No. I wanted to talk to you about something else. You said you’d lived in the same town as Nicole Price. She was a regular bookmobile patron. Some of us were thinking about putting together a donation in her name, and I wondered if you’d be interested.”

“Oh. Uh.” He looked at me, looked at his computer, looked at me, then back at the computer. “I, um . . . oh, look, there’s a call light I have to answer. Sorry.”

And he hurried off, just like Heather. But the white light above the room he entered wasn’t blinking.

Hmm, I thought as he closed the door.

Very, very hmmm.

* * *

Late that night, I was dead to the world when a scratch-ing noise woke me from a dreamless sleep. Kate had abandoned me for the attractions of Aunt Frances and Uncle Otto, and Rafe was helping a buddy move, so I’d had no one to tell me that spending four hours on my hands and knees sanding, sanding, and sanding some more was Too Much for someone who normally spent her time either behind a desk or behind a steering wheel.

Around nine, Rafe had hauled me to my feet, fed me pizza, walked me home, and helped me tumble into bed. “Sleep tight,” he’d said, kissing my forehead. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Even if they had, I probably wouldn’t have woken unless they’d bit me down to the bone. However, my ears had become sensitive to noises related to Eddie getting into things he shouldn’t and I was wide awake in an instant.

I sat bolt upright. “What are you doing?” I called.

Scritch-scritch-scritch.

Throwing back the sheet, which was my only cover on such a muggy night, I put my feet on the floor and stood up. “Where are you?”

“Mrr.”

His response had come from the kitchen, but the noise had stopped. I padded back to bed, flopped down, and was almost asleep when the noise started all over again.

Scritch-scritch.

“Eddie!” I yelled. “Cut it out!”

Scritch-scritch-scritch.

I flung back the sheet, stomped up the stairs to the main cabin, and fumbled for the light switch. Brightness exploded into the room, and like the proverbial deer in the headlights, Eddie stopped what he was doing and stared up at me. But defiantly, which wasn’t at all deerlike.

“For crying out loud,” I muttered.

Because my furry little friend had managed to extract a Tonedagana County map from my backpack and unfold it. His right front paw was poised over the northeast part of the county, and his claws were extended and about to rip right into Bowyer Township.

“Nice try,” I said. “But no way am I letting you plot the next bookmobile route.”

“Mrr!”

“Because I said so.” I took the map away from him, folded it in a way no mapmaker would ever recommend, and shoved it into the backpack, which I zipped shut and shoved under Kate’s sleeping bag.

“Mrr,” he said in a manner that could only be called a sulk.

I rolled my eyes and went back to bed.

Cats.