The Cat, The Professor And The Poison

Nineteen

By Monday evening, I’d absorbed about all the informa tion I could handle concerning my new smart phone. I practiced over and over how to make and receive calls and could bring up my cat cam videos with ease. Tom wanted me to learn the texting thing, too, but my brain was tired. By then it was dinnertime and Kara still wasn’t home. She hadn’t called, either. Maybe she didn’t realize I’d replaced my phone and still had my old number.

Tom asked for a rain check on the pizza I’d ordered. Since news of the murders had spread, he’d had at least a dozen calls to set up security systems and was meeting with a potential customer.

Candace, Merlot and I were finished with the pizza-Merlot adores pizza-and she was ready to get back to work, when the doorbell rang.

Candace and I both got up.

“Hang on. Don’t answer that yet,” she said. She went to the hall closet, where her uniform hung. And her gun belt. She tucked her very large weapon into the waistband at the back of her jeans as I watched from the edge of the foyer.

Of course she had her gun. She always had her gun. But it hadn’t registered until now that she might need it.

The doorbell rang again, and Candace nodded in the direction of the door and whispered, “Go ahead. I’m right beside you.”

I checked the peephole and saw Evan VanKleet standing on the porch. “It’s okay,” I whispered before I opened the door.

The evening air, rich with the promise of more rain, washed over me when I greeted Evan and invited him in.

The sarcastic attitude he’d worn like a flak jacket earlier today seemed to be gone. He looked troubled and then surprised when he saw that Candace was with me.

“Um, I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said to Candace.

“You never know where I might show up,” she answered.

“Come on in.” I started walking toward the living room, and Candace made sure to fall in behind Evan. “Can I get you something to drink? A Coke? Tea?”

“Nah, I’m good,” he said. He looked around the room for a few seconds. His jeans weren’t the baggy kind he’d worn earlier, and his pale green shirt brought out the color in his eyes. But I noticed that those eyes were wide and that he seemed almost scared.

I took John’s chair, and Evan finally sat down on the couch. Candace chose the overstuffed chair right across from him.

“I-I didn’t come here to talk to the cops-I mean police,” Evan said. He looked at me. “I thought that since you volunteer at the station and you seemed so… I don’t know… nice… that I could explain some things to you.”

“Things you didn’t want to tell us directly?” Candace said.

“Yeah. I guess I thought Jillian could pass it along,” he said.

“I would have told you to tell Candace yourself, so now you get two for one.” I tried to sound light and reassuring. I could tell this was definitely difficult for the kid.

“Okay. I get that. Anyway, Brandt’s the law student. He kept saying over and over before we got to the police station that none of us should say anything, that the family members are always suspects. But I’ve got to talk about this. It’s the right thing to do. My father was murdered, and I want to help you catch whoever did it.” Evan ran his hands through his mop of hair. “I haven’t always done the right thing, but… but-”

“Go for it,” Candace said.

Before he could say another word, Syrah jumped on the back of the sofa right behind Evan.

“Whoa,” he said as he turned. “He’s not a regular tiger cat, is he?” He reached out his hand to let Syrah have a sniff, and my boy rubbed his head against Evan’s fingers.

“He’s an Abyssinian,” I said. “His name is Syrah.”

“Abyssinian. That means he’s descended from ancient Egypt, huh?” Evan said. “His big ears look like those cats in the Egyptian drawings in my old world history book.”

“That’s exactly right,” I said with a smile.

Syrah does like to be admired, and he climbed in Evan’s lap.

Merlot, who had been in the corner of the foyer when Evan arrived, had followed us into the living room and now came from behind Candace’s chair to claim his share of appreciation.

Evan looked so much younger tonight. Maybe he was only eighteen or nineteen rather than in his twenties.

He said, “How much does that one weigh?”

“Merlot weighs twenty pounds,” I said. “But getting back to why you came. You want the police to know certain things, right?”

“I was being a punk earlier. I came to apologize to you, Jillian. To explain. I’m not like Brandt or my mother or Doug. My family is a freak show. The biggest freak is dead, or at least that’s what people will say. But though it didn’t come across that way today, I loved my dad. He was just screwed up.”

“Chief Baca said you acted pretty belligerent. That you didn’t seem to care that your father’s been murdered,” Candace said.

“I was pretending not to care. But I do,” Evan said. “I want the police to find out who killed him. I didn’t do right by him while he was alive, so I can at least be on his side now.”

“How did you ‘not do right’ by your dad?” I said gently.

Evan stroked Syrah and didn’t answer for several seconds. “I ratted him out.” He looked at Candace. “No one but Brandt knows what I did.”

“And Brandt, not quite a lawyer, by the way, decided information should be withheld from the police?” Candace’s tone was hard.

That tone worried me. I was sure that getting angry with Evan wouldn’t help. Hoping to maintain the connection between Evan and me, I said, “Brandt seems to have a lot of power in your family. That must be difficult to deal with.”

Evan took a deep breath and blew out through his lips like he was inflating a balloon. “No kidding. He kept hammering into all of us that the relatives are always suspects and that we didn’t have to tell you anything.”

“You ‘ratted out’ your father,” Candace said. “What does that have to do with his murder?”

“I’m not sure, except that’s what led to him moving to that farm. See, I went to visit Dad in his lab about a year ago. The door was locked, but he’d given me the code, so I went in to surprise him. First thing I saw were these animal carriers, about five of them… and there were cats inside. My father was supposed to be doing research with ferrets and their immune system. But he had all these cats.”

“So you asked him what he was doing,” Candace said.

“Right,” he said. “But what I didn’t tell you today is that my dad was bipolar. He took medicine for it most of his life. He’d go off his meds every now and then, and I could tell that day in the lab that he was definitely off. It was his eyes, you know?”

Like the look he had in his eyes the day I met him at Robin’s farm? That’s what was wrong with him, I thought. “What about those cats?” I said. “Do you think he was researching their immune systems rather than working on the ferrets?”

Evan said, “I didn’t know what was up, but I got a bad feeling because the cats looked thin. Not really sick, just thin. Since my father was a cat lover, that seemed odd. And when I asked him about them, he told me to forget what I’d seen and keep my mouth shut. Said he had a plan that was better than winning the lottery.”

“Did you ask him what he meant by that?” Candace asked.

“He kept rambling on about amino acids and millions of dollars. He was obviously using the lab for something he shouldn’t, and he needed to get back on his medicine. That’s all I could think about.”

“What did you do, Evan?” Candace said.

“I told my brother. He said I had information about improper use of a research lab and that what my dad was doing was a crime. He said I had to tell the department head. God, I didn’t want to do that.”

Candace said, “Brandt tells you to ‘rat out’ your father and then tells you to not talk when the police ask about his murder. That’s messed-up thinking, Evan.”

“I know,” he said, his anger finally flaring. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Did you tell the department head about the cats?” I asked.

He took a deep breath, seemed to be trying hard to keep his emotions in check. “Brandt said I could do it anonymously. And rather than the department head, I sent a letter straight to the college president, thinking he’d know about my dad’s illness, help him get back on his meds and send him back to work.” His eyes grew moist, and his lips trembled with emotion. Syrah leaned his head back and looked up at Evan. He knew the kid was upset. “But that’s not what happened. They fired him. And all because of me.”

Syrah wasn’t the only one who could tell this was tearing Evan up inside. I saw it, too. Evan knew his father had been doing something wrong, but he still loved him.

“You felt guilty, huh?” I said.

“Oh yeah. So I decided to leave the dorm and move in with him, make sure he stayed on his meds. Mom always made sure he took them, but see, she’d left him, and Brandt had been away for years. He didn’t care if Dad took his pills or got in trouble or got fired. He hated him.”

“I’m trying to understand, but I’m not sure what this has to do with your father’s murder,” Candace said.

I made room for Merlot, who wanted to squeeze in next to me on the chair. “I think I get it. It explains why Professor VanKleet was in Mercy,” I said.

“Okay. That’s true.” Candace looked at Evan. “Please keep connecting the dots for me.”

Evan said, “My dad was still obsessed with his research idea, whatever it was. Said he could make it without the college lab.”

“That scared you, didn’t it?” I said. “You knew he wasn’t well enough for real research without his medication.”

“Definitely, and the next thing I know, he’d disappeared. A mentally ill man with an obsession fell off the face of the earth. And Mom and Brandt couldn’t have cared less.” He sighed. “That’s why he came here. To continue his research without Big Brother watching.”

“That much I get,” Candace said. “But there’s something else that you didn’t talk about at the station. You’ve had your own problems, right?”

“Brandt said you’d know all about it,” Evan said. He’d lifted his chin, and the hostility was back. “But what exactly do you know?”

Candace leaned toward him, her arms folded on her knees. She said, “I know you got arrested and kicked out of school, but I don’t know the details. Your father gets in trouble, then you. That’s what I’m seeing-a pattern.”

Evan rested his head back against the sofa, eyes to the ceiling. “We’re both criminals, huh? That’s what you see?”

“She’s got to explore the possibility, Evan,” I said. “If you’re telling us what you believe led up to your father’s death, you should tell it all,” I said.

“Like she said, I don’t see how it’s connected to his murder,” Evan said tersely.

He was shutting down. I had to get him back. I wanted to see that vulnerable, caring young man again. “Maybe it’s not connected, but you want the killer caught. That means you have to trust Candace to figure it out.”

“She thinks the bad boy of the family did it. I can see it in her eyes,” Evan said.

“Then you’re not reading these eyes too good, Evan,” Candace said. “I’m a police officer. A victim’s advocate. Your dad was a victim, and it sounds to me like you are, too. But if you’re not straight with me, I can’t help.”

He stared at her, his defiance slowly fading. “Okay. Here’s the deal. When my dad disappeared, I went a little nuts. Even thought I might be bipolar, too. I started drinking to kill the fear, made friends with a bunch of kids. They probably thought I fit right in, but they were frickin’ weird. And just so you know, they found me; I didn’t find them.”

“I don’t understand,” Candace said.

“Here’s how it happened. I got caught by a campus cop one night passed out in front of my dorm. He woke me up, filled me with coffee. He seemed like a nice guy, said he wanted to help me out. He didn’t arrest me, just told me I needed to get my act together. The next day he introduced me to this girl Rosemary-said she was a great girl who had this rep for helping people out. Helping kids like me who didn’t have any social skills and couldn’t make friends.”

“And of course Rosemary had plenty of friends?” Candace said.

“Yeah. Lots,” he said. “It was all their idea, the thing with the truck. But they ended up with a reprimand. I got arrested and thrown out of school.”

“Tell me about the thing with the truck,” Candace said.

“They were protesters-or thought they were,” he said. “After my dad got canned, everyone started talking about the lab and the ferrets. They decided the ferrets needed to be freed. And I decided that since I’d been worried about those cats, why not the ferrets, too?”

“Tell me about the truck,” Candace repeated.

Evan’s eyes were downcast. “We chained ourselves to a big campus truck. We were carrying signs about freeing the ferrets. We planned to stay all night, but I got rowdy and the whole thing came to an end pretty fast.”

“You got arrested that night,” Candace said.

“Yeah. Just me; none of the others.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” I said.

His hands were clenched at his sides. “Yeah, it was. I was drunk and they weren’t.”

“So you went to the Denman city jail? And your mom had to bail you out?” Candace said.

Evan’s throat had red blotches that were spreading up to his face. “ Douglas bailed me out. I don’t think Mom had the money, and since she’d taken a job at the college, I think she was super-embarrassed about what I’d done.”

Candace said, “So your new friends were some kind of animal rights activists?”

“Not really. They wanted to stand out. Be heard. But they weren’t hard-core, bomb- making idiots. They were just holier-than-thou idiots. They should’ve done a spot on Sesame Street about taking care of pets and it would have been more effective.”

“But you were the only one who got hauled off to jail,” I said.

“Yeah, a real bummer, and you know what the irony was? The guy who took me there was the same one who told me Rosemary could help me. Those campus cops are a bunch of doofuses.”

“This campus officer who helped you find these so-called friends took you to jail?” I said, incredulous. Not such a nice guy after all. And pretty suspicious. I wondered whether Candace was thinking the same thing.

“This was a public incident,” Evan said. “He didn’t have much choice.”

“Rosemary’s last name?” Candace said.

“Why do you want to know?” Evan said, looking cautious.

“Because I’m going to talk to her and find out exactly how unradical this girl is,” she said. “Did you ever get the sense she knew about your father, knew about the cats in the lab? That she set you up because of what your dad did?”

Evan sat straight up, and this made Syrah leap from his lap and scurry into the kitchen. “Rosemary? That’s crazy.”

“She could have been more of an activist than you realized. Maybe she discovered where your dad went after leaving Denman,” Candace said.

“She got close to me to find out about him? No way. She never even asked me questions about Dad,” Evan said.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” Candace said. “Lots of leads turn out to be dead ends, but we have to go down those roads, following the evidence.”

But though Rosemary might be a lead, I was still stuck thinking about that campus cop. He seemed way too involved, and this whole “Let me lead you to some friends” thing seemed pretty contrived to me, even though Evan obviously hadn’t thought so.

“Please don’t bother Rosemary. She’s just a weird girl who has nothing to do with anything.”

Candace stared at him. “Prove to me you want to help us.”

He hung his head. “ Bartlett,” he said. “Rosemary Bartlett.”

“Now,” Candace said. “Besides Rosemary, were there any other new friends who-”

But the sound of the back door opening made her stop. I was hoping it was Kara, but Candace wasn’t taking any chances.

She stood and put a finger to her lips and reached into her waistband for her gun.