Six Cats A Slayin'

TWENTY-NINE

I finished the task at hand and found room for the gifts I’d wrapped in the hall closet. Then I went to the den and called Kanesha’s cell phone. I perched on the corner of my desk. Diesel chose the sofa and stretched out to relax.

Kanesha answered right away. “Had an interesting talk with Jared Carter a few minutes ago.”

“In your office?” I asked. How long had it been since Melba stormed out of his house? I glanced at my watch. Close to ninety minutes.

“Yes, why do you ask?” Kanesha said.

“Oh, no reason,” I replied lamely. “Just wondered. I thought he’d be busy pulling teeth, I guess.”

“He made the time to show up here and asked to see me,” Kanesha said. “I asked him if he was Gerry Albritton’s silent partner, and he admitted it right away. Surprised him, I believe, that I had figured it out. I didn’t mention you.”

“Good.” I didn’t want Jared Carter to know I played any role in this. “Was he coming to you to tell you this himself?”

“Yes,” Kanesha replied. “He also told me he thought Gerry had been embezzling from the account he set up to fund her real estate purchases.”

“That’s serious,” I said, hoping I sounded surprised enough to fool her.

“The amount he mentioned is serious,” Kanesha said. “I asked him how certain he was that Gerry was the culprit. Was there anyone else who could have done it? Also asked that.”

“Was there?” I asked.

“He hemmed and hawed a bit, but he finally said that Gerry’s assistant, Jincy Bruce, could have done it. He seems to think she’s smart enough to have figured out how, but she can’t be all that smart if she thought she could get away with it.”

I had a sudden thought about that. “Unless you can prove that she murdered Gerry, she could get away with it. That might have been her motive, if she’s the killer.”

“I’m trying to locate Ms. Bruce so I can talk to her,” Kanesha said.

I remembered then that I had seen Jincy earlier, coming out of the office building where Jared Carter had his practice. I related this to Kanesha. While she pondered that, I tried to work out Jared’s potential movements this morning. If Jincy had seen him in his office, and Melba had talked to him at his home, and then he had went to Kanesha’s office, he had had a busy morning.

“Carter didn’t say that he had talked to Ms. Bruce this morning. If she did go to see him, he might have asked her about the missing money,” Kanesha said. “I’m going to talk to him again. If he did confront Ms. Bruce, she may have bolted. Talk to you later.” She ended the call.

I remained where I was, cell phone in hand, and considered the idea of Jincy Bruce as the murderer. I didn’t have any idea how long she had worked for Gerry, but maybe long enough to become aware of her personal habits. For example, her predilection for brandy in a particular snifter. Jincy would know that putting poison in that snifter on a night when everyone else was drinking champagne out of flutes would ensure she’d avoid poisoning anyone else by mistake.

The times I had seen her during the party, she had been at the door. That didn’t mean, however, she couldn’t have slipped away long enough to add the poison to Gerry’s brandy. There were so many people milling around, not many would have noticed her absence from the front door or her presence as she moved through the rooms in search of Gerry and her snifter.

One potential sticking point, when I considered any suspect, was the poison itself. Did Jincy have any kind of access to poisonous substances? It would be a whopping coincidence if she, like Tammy, had the knowledge and skill to distill it for herself. Maybe she and Tammy were working together, I thought for just a moment. But that was a little too far out to take seriously. Identification of the poison that killed Gerry should help narrow down the suspects to only those who had access to it.

For now, I thought, Tammy—despite the alibi she claimed to have—and Jincy were strong candidates for the role of murderer. But I was forgetting someone, I realized. Deirdre Thompson. The conversation Helen Louise and I had heard had been ugly. The women obviously despised each other. What I gathered from Gerry’s part of the conversation was that she had something she could hold over Deirdre’s head in order to force Deirdre to do whatever it was she wanted from the doyenne of Athena society.

I couldn’t recall ever hearing a breath of scandal about Deirdre Thompson. She had the reputation of pinching pennies, despite her rumored wealth, but that wasn’t anything to encourage blackmail. I hadn’t discussed Deirdre with Kanesha, although Helen Louise and I had certainly related what we overheard to the deputy. Had Kanesha ruled Deirdre out somehow? I would have thought she had as much opportunity as anyone to poison Gerry’s brandy. The murder had to be premeditated, because who carries poison on them as a regular thing? Deirdre could have brought it and seized the chance when she saw that snifter.

Even if I didn’t recall ever having heard about any scandals involving Deirdre Thompson, I knew two people who might have. One of them was working in the kitchen; the other might be upstairs on the third floor. I headed for the kitchen, texting Stewart on the way. I asked him to join us in the kitchen if he was still at home.

Diesel scrambled off the sofa when he saw me head for the door. He meowed loudly a couple of times, as if to ask me where I was going in such a hurry. “Going to talk to Azalea,” I told him.

Azalea wasn’t in the kitchen when Diesel and I first walked in, and I started to call out for her. She appeared behind me carrying an empty laundry basket. Startled, I turned when I heard her footsteps.

“Were you looking for me?” she inquired.

“Yes, I wanted to talk to you,” I said. My cell phone buzzed, and I checked it. Stewart had responded to my text. Down in a few.

“What about?” Azalea set the empty basket on the table and regarded me calmly.

I knew I had to approach this in the right way, because Azalea, as a rule, did not hold with gossiping about anyone. In the past, however, she had occasionally given me useful information about people.

“Why don’t we sit down for a minute?” I suggested.

Azalea pulled out a chair and sat. I did, too, and Diesel stretched out on the floor by me.

“It’s about the murder that took place at the party the other night,” I said. “Kanesha is investigating it, of course, and I’m helping her in my own way.”

Azalea nodded.

“One problem is that no one seems to know who Gerry Albritton really was. The other is the motives anyone might have had for wanting her dead.”

“I can’t help you with that first part,” Azalea replied. “I don’t know who she was, either. Don’t recall ever knowing anybody with that name. Same with the second part, since I didn’t know her.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “I think you probably can help with the second part, though. In the past you have shared information about people you used to work for, or that friends or relatives might have known or worked for. I’m hoping you might have information in this case about one person in particular.”

Azalea’s tone was not encouraging. “Who might that be?”

“Deirdre Thompson,” I said.

“Why do you want to talk about that dreary old biddy?” Stewart asked as he entered the kitchen. “Sorry, couldn’t help overhearing. Is that why you wanted to talk to me?”

“Yes, I thought that you and Azalea might be able to answer my questions about her.”

Stewart pulled out a chair and sat. “What questions?”

I glanced at Azalea, and she nodded.

“Are there any scandals or rumors of scandals in her past that would embarrass her badly if they became known now? Especially if someone could prove the rumors true?”

Azalea and Stewart looked at each other. Slowly, they nodded, almost in unison.

“Rumors, certainly,” Stewart said. Azalea nodded in agreement.

“Rumors about what?” I asked. Surely they weren’t going to turn coy now.

“There have been several over the years,” Stewart said.

“Murder,” Azalea said at the same time.