The Whole Cat Аnd Caboodle

Chapter 18

I had an appointment first thing in the morning to go through the storage area of a local motel to see if there was anything left after their recent renovation work that I might be interested in buying. I left Elvis at the store with Mac and drove up to the highway.

The storage room was like a time capsule from the 1970s. I started making a pile in the hallway of things I wanted, handing them to the young man the owner had sent to help me. I found two lamps; a sleek, curved-edge coffee table; a hanging wicker chair and several boxes of vibrant Fiestaware dishes.

The space was crammed with furniture, mostly bed frames, chests of drawers and boxy-looking chairs. I climbed over a couple of long, low sofas to hand a box of dishes to my helper, whose name was Brent. He had a bandage wrapped around his left hand. “Can you manage that?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, this is fine,” he said, holding up his hand. I gave him the box and scrambled over the sofas. One was piled upside down on the other. I thought I’d seen another lamp but now I couldn’t find it.

“Is there something else I can get for you?” Brent asked. He was maybe twenty years old, with spiked blond hair and strong arms and shoulders.

I had the feeling if I’d said I wanted the faux–Danish modern sofas he would have been able to throw one over each shoulder and carry them out to the SUV.

“I thought I saw another lamp,” I said. “Now I don’t know where it is.”

Brent looked around. He was taller. “Over there,” he said, pointing to the far front corner.

All I could see was a bunch of metal-framed chairs piled haphazardly on top of one another.

“I’ll get it for you.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

He flexed his fingers in a crablike motion. “Yeah, I’m fine. This is just poison ivy. It doesn’t hurt. It just itches like crazy.”

He climbed over the chairs like a monkey making his way up a coconut tree, grabbed the lamp, handed it out to me and climbed over the chairs again. I got a better look at the gauze bandage that covered most of the back of his left hand. There was a red, itchy-looking rash on the back of his wrist, as well. I realized I’d seen the same rash just recently. On Jim Grant’s hand. And on Arthur Fenety’s.

“Did you say that was poison ivy?” I asked.

Brent rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh. I was in the park a couple of days ago, throwing the Frisbee around with some buddies. Stupid thing went into the bushes and I went after it. I guess there’s some kind of infestation of poison ivy all over the park.” He rubbed the bandage with the palm of his other hand and made a face. “It doesn’t hurt, but damn, is it itchy.”

What had Daisy told Charlotte and me? She’d dropped Arthur off and he’d cut through the park to get to Maddie’s house. Could he have had some kind of confrontation with Jim Grant? Grant had claimed he hadn’t gotten in town until the morning after Arthur Fenety had been killed. Could he have been lying about that?

Brent was talking to me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I zoned out. What did you say?”

“Do you want me to start carrying this stuff out?”

“That would be a big help, thanks,” I said.

With Brent’s help I managed to get everything loaded into the SUV. Then we walked back to the office and I paid for the pieces I’d bought. With a little work I was confident that everything I’d bought would sell.

Mac helped me unload when I got to the store.

“Sam called,” he said. “We’re going to get two buses of leaf peepers in about twenty minutes.”

“Is Charlotte here?” I asked.

He nodded. “And Rose and Mr. Peterson are on the sunporch.”

I headed inside and stuck my head around the sun-porch doorway. “Good morning,” I said. Mr. P. was on his laptop and Rose was sitting beside him.

“Good morning, dear,” she said.

Mr. P. looked up and smiled. “Hello, Sarah,” he said.

“Are you having any luck with the information Rose got out of Jim Grant?” I asked.

Mr. P. nodded. “Now that I know his mother’s full name I did a records search. She was married to Arthur Fenety, not that it was legal, of course.” He glanced down at a notepad on the table next to the computer. “Margaret Grant had a small yarn and fabric shop. It went out of business a couple of months after Arthur left town.”

“Do you think he took money from the business?”

Rose nodded. “I hate to call someone a liar, but yes, I do.”

“So why did Jim Grant lie to us?” I said.

“His mother losing her business is a lot better motive for murder than just losing a tea set,” Mr. P. said.

“Rose, did you notice that bandage on his arm and that rash on the back of his hand?” I asked.

“I did,” she said. “He told me it was an allergic reaction to furniture stripper he’d been using.” She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t think that’s true?”

“I’m not sure.” I looked at Mr. P. “Could you check something out for me?”

“Of course I could,” he said. “What is it?”

“I heard there’s a problem with an infestation of poison ivy in the park. Could you find out if that’s true?”

He nodded. “I can do that.”

“Sarah, do you think the rash on Jim Grant’s arm was poison ivy?” Rose asked.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Charlotte said that Daisy told you she dropped Arthur off by the park and he walked to Maddie’s house. Do you think Jim Grant might have met him in the park?”

I twisted my watch around my arm. I wasn’t sure if I should tell Rose about the possible rash I’d seen on Arthur Fenety’s arm. I didn’t want to lie to her, but it just seemed that I was getting pulled deeper into their investigation every day.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s possible.” I hesitated.

“Dear, is there something you’re not telling us?”

“Yes,” I said. “There was a mark on Arthur’s wrist. I noticed it when I checked for . . . his pulse. I just glanced at it and I thought it was some kind of scrape.”

“You think it was poison ivy?” Her blue eyes widened. “Do you think Jim Grant could have been waiting for Arthur in the park? Maybe he followed Arthur to Maddie’s house and poisoned him there.”

Mr. P. looked up from the keyboard. “You’re right,” he said to me. “The park is dealing with an infestation of poison ivy. It’s in all the flower beds and along the sides of a lot of the pathways.”

“Thanks,” I said. I looked at Rose. “We don’t know for sure that Jim Grant was even in the park, let alone that he saw Arthur. He said he didn’t get here until Tuesday morning.”

“And if James did follow Arthur, where did he get the poison and how did he get it into Arthur’s coffee cup?” Mr. P. asked. He looked at Rose. “We can’t jump to conclusions.”

She nodded. “All right.”

Mr. P. looked at me. “I’ll see if James Grant had any connection to a source of napthathion.”

Rose looked at her watch. “Liz should be on her way to Phantasy right now. Maybe she’ll find out something that will help Maddie.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” I said.

The two busloads of leaf peepers kept us busy until lunchtime.

Rose came in, looking dejected, to relieve Charlotte.

“You talked to Liz,” I asked.

“I did.” She shook out her apron and pulled the neck strap over her head. “There are at least half a dozen people in Maddie and Charlotte’s neighborhood that have that pesticide in their garage or garden shed.”

“Didn’t anybody pay attention to the ban?”

Rose tied her apron at her waist. “It doesn’t look that way,” she said. “The police are going to say Maddie had lots of opportunity to get the poison that killed Arthur.”

I leaned over and gave her a quick hug. “Maybe Alfred will come up with something.”

“I’m not giving up,” she said with a frown.

I smiled. “I didn’t think you would.”

Rose went to straighten a collection of old tin camp kettles. Mac was on the phone. I decided to go take another look at my morning’s treasures before lunch. As I went past the sunporch door Mr. P. beckoned to me. “I might have found something,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Do you remember what time Maddie said Arthur arrived?”

I thought for a moment. “Between quarter after and twelve thirty.”

“And you said his sister dropped him off at the park?”

I nodded. “She said it was such a nice day he wanted to walk.”

Mr. P. hiked his pants a little higher. Not that they were too low to begin with. “Sarah, how long do you think it would have taken him to walk to Maddie’s house?”

I shrugged and tried to picture the trail that ran through the woods and out to the sidewalk on the other side. “No more than ten minutes.”

“Which means his sister would have dropped him off sometime after noon.”

I nodded. “That sounds right.”

“Daisy Fenety was in the dentist’s chair at eleven forty-five.”

I frowned at him. “Do I want to know how you know that?”

He smiled. “I doubt that you do.”

“So, Daisy would have dropped him off around eleven thirty or so?”

Mr. P. nodded. “I think so.”

I rolled my shoulders forward to work out a kink. “Where was he for that extra time?”

Mr. P. nodded. “Exactly. I asked Royce Collins if he saw Arthur. He delivers flyers in that area Mondays and Fridays. He did.”

Royce had been the mail carrier in Charlotte’s neighborhood as far back as I could remember. I had no idea how old Royce was, but Gram always said you could set your watch by him.

“Did he say what time he saw Arthur?” I asked.

“Royce figures it was about eleven thirty.”

“Then it was,” I said. “That means there’s at least a half an hour unaccounted for.”

Mr. P. nodded. “Exactly.”

I left Mr. P. to see if he could figure out what had happened in the missing time and hoped he wouldn’t break any laws doing it.

I spent a chunk of the afternoon updating the store’s inventory list. Avery and I washed and dried all the dishes I’d brought from the motel, and Rose arranged some of the pieces on a long, low seventies-style buffet that Mac helped me set up in the window.

“Do you have any plans for dinner?” Rose asked.

I remembered then that I hadn’t gotten to the grocery store. Again.

“No,” I said.

“We’re going to McNamara’s for clam chowder and cheese biscuits. Why don’t you join us?”

“That sounds good,” I said. “Yes.” After the middle of September I’d decided not to keep the store open on Friday nights. There wasn’t enough business. “I have to take Elvis home first. What time should I meet you?”

“Six thirty,” she said.

I pulled the elastic out of my hair. “I’ll see you there,” I said.

Rose and Avery decided to walk to Liz’s and set out together. Mac wanted to put another coat of varnish on the top of the table. I was carrying a box of old sheet music to the car when Nick pulled into the lot.

He smiled when he caught sight of me.

“Hi,” he said, walking over to me and taking the box out of my hands.

“Hi,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to give you a heads-up that the police found a safe-deposit box belonging to Arthur Fenety. In Rockport.”

I exhaled loudly and shook my head. “Was there anything of Maddie’s in the box?” I asked.

“I can’t answer that, Sarah,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you about the safe-deposit box as it is, but I figured news would get around town pretty quickly, anyway.”

It was as close to a yes as I was going to get.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “Thanks,” I said.

He smiled. “You’re welcome. I had fun last night.”

“It’s been a long time since you were up on that stage.”

He shifted—self-consciously it seemed to me—from one foot to the other. “It felt good.”

I smiled. “It sounded good, too.”

His smile got wider. “I’m going to pretend you’re not just trying to flatter me.”

“I wasn’t.”

Nick pulled his keys out of the pocket of his Windbreaker. “I’ll let you get back to work,” he said. “Tell Jess next time the chips are on me.”

“I’ll do that,” I said. I couldn’t exactly tell him he was the reason they’d actually been on me last night.

Nick headed for his SUV and I walked over to Mac. Behind him I could see Elvis prowling around the shed.

Mac was wiping down the top of the table. “Was Nick looking for his mother?” he asked.

I shook my head. “The police found Arthur Fenety’s safe-deposit box.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“I have a feeling it might be bad.”