The Cat, the Wife and the Weapon

Twenty

Fearing Tom might deck Bob given half a chance, I decided to ride along and help find Dashiell. Maybe I could keep Tom focused on what was important. Too bad his poor kitty got outside again, not only because a cat shouldn’t be wandering around in the dark but because Tom had just been mellowing out, getting a lot of old business off his chest.

We left Finn with the security system armed and instructions not to open the door for anyone. I expected to see Bob outside with a flashlight looking for Dashiell, but he was sitting in Tom’s living room watching TV. I’d tried to understand Bob, had realized after Tom’s story he was probably a bitter man, but any morsel of compassion disappeared when I realized he felt no compunction to find Dashiell. Guess we should be grateful he’d made a phone call.

Tom, to his credit, only offered his brother a dirty look, not fighting words. I followed him into the kitchen and he found a couple flashlights. We went out the back door, which, I noted, was still ajar. Did Bob think Dashiell would come back if he left the door open?

“Be careful out here, Jillian. The drop-off to the creek is pretty steep.” He swept his flashlight left and right, revealing the sparkling, dewy lawn.

I pointed straight ahead. “Last time, I found him by a tree over there near the slope.”

We both hurried toward the creek. Tom’s neighbor to the left had a fence, and I went that way while Tom jogged in the opposite direction calling Dashiell’s name. Slowly we shined our lights over the grass and up into the trees.

I passed the spot where I’d found him last time. Not there. If he’d slipped into the creek, we’d need more than flashlights to find him. I pushed such a horrible thought to the back of mind. He wouldn’t go far, I wanted to believe. But if his blood sugar crashed, he could be lying unconscious anywhere.

When I reached the fence and ran my beam along the bottom, I took a deep breath and thought about cat behavior. Sick cats hide. This was their instinctive reaction, seeing as how a vulnerable cat could become prey to a larger animal. While Tom eased his way down toward the creek, I called out to him. “I’ll search the shrubs around your house.”

I continued to focus my flashlight on the ground, looking right and left as I walked back toward the house. Tom had thick holly bushes lining his house in the back and as I turned the flashlight on them, bright red berries glowed like tiny Christmas ornaments. A great hiding place, I thought.

“Dashiell,” I called. “Come here, baby.”

A tiny meow in response. Plaintive. Afraid.

My heart sped, but not wanting to scare Dashiell, I kept a quiet, even tone as I knelt and extended my hand in the direction of the sound and said his name again.

I moved the light along the ground, but at first I didn’t see Dashiell—though I heard him again.

I did find something, though. Something my brain couldn’t make sense of at first.

A hiking boot.

But as the flashlight captured the shape completely, I realized to my horror the boot was filled by a foot and the foot was attached to a bent leg. The rest of the person was hidden beneath the prickly holly.

“T-Tom,” I said. But I spoke too softly for anyone but Dashiell to hear. I backed up and then ran in Tom’s direction. When I reached him, I said, “Come with me. Now. Something’s very wrong.”

“Did you find him? Is he hurt?” Tom said, following me as I ran back toward the house.

I shined the light on the blue-jeaned leg.

Tom knelt and tried to push aside the thick shrubs, but the holly wouldn’t budge much. Tom’s presence did have a positive effect because Dashiell made his way out. Tom swooped him up.

He said, “Do you have your phone?”

I called 911 and it took only five minutes for a squad car to come squealing around the corner of Tom’s street, siren blasting. It was followed close behind by not only the paramedics, but the fire department. In Mercy, it’s an all-out effort when there’s an emergency.

Deputy Rodriguez rushed to our side. He shook the foot, saying, “Hey. You stuck under there?”

No response.

Tom handed Dashiell to me and ran into his garage. He returned with his hedge cutters.

“Can you pull whoever it is out?” I said.

“Don’t move them,” Marcy, our paramedic friend, said as she came up and dropped to her knees by the prone figure. “I can check for a pulse on the foot. Might need help taking the boot off, though.”

“Let’s do it,” Rodriguez said, untying the dirty boot.

Once the foot was bare, looking waxy in the artificial lights, she pressed two fingers on the ankle. She moved her fingers around the top of the foot, searching for what was apparently an elusive pulse. Finally she looked up, her lips pressed tightly together, and shook her head. “His foot is cold and there’s no pulse. Unless this is a woman with very large feet, you’ve found a dead man.”

Firefighter Billy Cranor came running up, holding a gigantic battery-powered light. “Will this help?”

“Light him up, Billy,” Rodriguez said, still kneeling by the body.

Billy only illuminated what we all could see—the leg and bare foot. Nothing more. He said, “How the heck did he get under there? Unless someone was trying to hide him under one of the meanest bushes I’ve ever tangled with.”

“You’re gonna have to cut away the holly to get to him,” a voice behind me said. “Let me get my camera before you start. We’ll probably need crime scene tape, too.”

It was Candace. She wore sweats and no makeup. Even in the dim castoff from flashlights, I saw dark circles under her eyes.

“Tom, Jillian, can you go inside, please?” she said.

“Sure,” I replied.

Dashiell was purring, but I knew he was purring more from stress than from anything else.

Tom said, “I’ll step aside, but I’m not leaving until I know who died in my backyard.”

Candace uttered an exasperated sigh. “All right. Just stand back.”

I was glad to leave, but when I remembered who was inside the house, not quite as relieved.

“All this firepower for a cat?” Bob said with a laugh when I came in through the front door—the door Candace had suggested I use. “Tom is the man in town, I guess.”

The police cars, fire engine and paramedics had gotten Bob’s attention.

“Are you kidding me?” I said, feeling all my Southern upbringing abandoning me. But I regrouped and said, “There’s a dead man out there. Right under the dining room window.”

The TV still blasted, sounding about ten times louder than it probably was. I went over and stabbed the off button. When I turned around, Bob was headed for the dining room.

Holding Dashiell close, I followed.

“Wow,” he said, peering out the window. “Who is it?”

I pulled the drapes shut because I didn’t want to be like the people who stop and gape at an accident scene. I said, “We’ll find out soon enough.” I went to the kitchen to test Dashiell’s blood sugar before we had a feline emergency to deal with, too.

After I finished, with Bob hovering behind me, I read the monitor and found though Dashiell’s sugar level was a little high, he wasn’t in trouble. I picked up his water dish, walked past Bob and took Dashiell to Tom’s room, where his little cat bed sat in one corner. I wanted to find him a safe place to stay because I expected the house would soon be flooded with emergency responders all wanting to hear what Tom, Bob and I had to say. Now what? I thought. I was stuck in this small house with a narcissistic, overgrown adolescent. Heck, Finn was more mature than Bob. Finn. I needed to call him, let him know the situation.

I’d no sooner disconnected after telling Finn we’d encountered a problem and didn’t know how long I’d be, when Billy Cranor came busting through the front door with Karen in tow.

“Billy Cranor,” she was saying, “you take your hands off me or I’ll have a serious talk with your mother when we meet at church on Sunday.”

Billy gave me a pleading look. “Mrs. Hart, could you keep Tom’s mother company while we’re busy outside?” He looked past me and saw Bob. “Who’s he?”

“One of my other sons,” Karen said, shaking free of Billy’s grasp.

Billy’s mouth agape, he seemed to be processing this information. All he said in response, however, was, “Okay. Whatever.” He left.

“What in heaven’s name is going on?” Karen said. “I heard sirens and saw the lights. Where’s my Tom?” She looked back and forth between Bob and me and I saw panic in her eyes.

“He’s fine,” I said. “He’s outside helping the police.”

Her shoulders slumped and she closed her eyes. “For a minute there, I thought something terrible had happened.”

“Don’t worry. Tom’s okay. But something terrible has happened,” I said. “There’s a body in Tom’s backyard.”

“Oh my sweet good Lord. Who is it?” she said.

“We don’t know yet,” I answered.

Her fear resurfaced. “Where’s Finn? Where’s my grandson?”

“He’s at my house,” I said. “I just finished talking to him. He’s safe.”

Karen rushed to me and gave me a giant hug. “Bless you, Jillian.”

I glanced at Bob, who’d gone unacknowledged by his mother. I could see the hurt in his expression. Old hurt. The kind of disappointment he’d probably experienced most of his life.

“This is all very heartwarming,” Bob said. “But since it looks like we’re stuck here for the duration, anyone want a drink?” He eyed his mother. “Wine, Mom? Oh, I forgot. You prefer vodka.”

Any sympathy I might have felt for Bob a second ago disappeared.

Karen paled and pulled her fleece robe around her. I looked down and could see she was wearing emerald green silk pajamas with cream piping around the hems.

She said, “I will forget you said those words, Robert. This is a difficult situation. I could use a glass of water about now. My mouth is so very dry.”

Not wanting to leave her alone with Bob, I took her hand and we went to the kitchen together. I hadn’t noticed what a mess the kitchen was while attending to Dashiell. Knowing Tom as well as I did, I decided the overflowing garbage, the dishes in the sink and the beer cans lined up on the counter were all Bob’s doing. Tom may have been stubborn enough not to pick up after him, but I wasn’t.

But before I could tackle the kitchen mess, I heard Candace’s voice in my head: Evidence can be anywhere. I always preserve the crime scene as thoroughly as I can.

If the man outside had been the victim of foul play, Tom’s home would become part of her crime scene. As difficult as it was to do nothing about garbage, cans and dirty dishes, I poured both Karen and myself glasses of water. With my hand on her back to guide her, we went out to the living room. Karen sat in a padded dining room chair in the corner by the TV. Tom’s dining room was too small to accommodate all the chairs around his table, so he used two of them for living room seating.

Karen still seemed stunned but finally looked around and realized Bob was present. “Oh. You’re staying here. I forgot. What do you know about this horrible turn of events?”

“About as much as you do. Dumb cat gets out again and then all hell breaks loose in the neighborhood.” Bob chewed on his thumb, glancing anxiously back to the dining room.

“Dashiell’s smarter than a tree full of owls. Some cats are even smarter than certain humans,” I said. I didn’t add aloud that Dashiell was probably smarter than Bob, but from his expression, he got the message.

I heard the muted jumble of voices outside and those sounds, combined with the whirling police lights flashing blue and red through the front curtains, made me feel as uneasy as Bob appeared to be. I wondered then if he knew who was lying dead under a holly bush outside. I even went so far as to consider the possibility he had something to do with the man’s death. I blinked away these thoughts. The thought of Karen and me sharing space with her son, possibly her murderer of a son, was too unsettling.

We didn’t have to wait long for Deputy Rodriguez to join us. He looked at me, probably because I was the only friendly face in the room. “We need you and Mr. Cochran down at the station so we can take your statements.”

Karen rose abruptly, spilling her water all over the floor in front of her—and she didn’t even seem to notice. “What about me?”

“Were you here within the last several hours?” Rodriguez said.

“No, sir,” she said. “But I live right around the corner.”

“We’ll just need Mr. Stewart, his brother and Mrs. Hart for now,” he said.

“What am I supposed to do?” she said.

“Go on home. I can drop you off, if you’d like.” He glanced at her slippered feet. “Not safe walking home in the dark without shoes, Mrs. Stewart.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” she said, seeming confused as she stared down at her feet.

I swallowed, finally ready to ask the big question. “Do you know who the dead man is?”

“The stranger who’s been causing problems in town. Guess he crossed the wrong person,” Rodriguez said.

“Rory Gannon?” I said.

“Yup,” Rodriguez answered.

For some reason, I wasn’t surprised.