He headed toward the cash register and I picked up my coffee. So if I believed Burtis, neither Idris Blackthorne nor the poker players had anything to do with Tom Karlsson’s death. And there had been a way to get Tom or his body up onto that ridge without anyone in the main house seeing anything.
Was Burtis telling the truth?
Was there any reason for him not to?
I slipped off my stool and walked over to the cash register. “Mr. Chapman took care of it,” the waitress said with a smile.
I walked back to the counter and left a generous tip. Then I went out to the truck. Assuming Burtis hadn’t been stringing me a line, I was back at square one.
So now what?
There was no sign of either cat when I got home. I headed upstairs to make the bed. Hercules came out of the closet as I was pulling up the spread.
“What do you do in there?” I asked. He looked at me blankly.
I dropped into the chair by the window and pulled the carton with Rebecca’s mother’s things closer. With all the turmoil of the previous few days I hadn’t done any more planning for the library centennial celebration. I hadn’t even asked Maggie for her ideas on what to do with Ellen’s drawings.
Hercules jumped into my lap, ducking his head under my arm so he could look too. I reached into the box, pulled out one of the journals and opened it. Hercules shifted so he could see the pages. Maybe he was reading too for all I knew.
Now that I understood what The Ladies Knitting Circle had actually been doing, Ellen’s oblique comments about the women made more sense. After reading a few pages I put the diary back and looked for the journal that spanned the time period when Tom Karlsson had probably been killed. It would have been easier if Hercules hadn’t decided to help. He kept moving around on my lap, trying to poke his black-and-white head inside the box.
“Just sit still for a second,” I said in frustration. “And I’ll get it.”
He made a huffy noise, but he pulled his head back and I was able to find the book I wanted. It started about six months before Pearl and little Roma had ended up at Wisteria Hill. A couple of times Ellen even wrote about seeing Pearl with Roma, and I wondered if she was the one who’d told Pearl about The Ladies Knitting Circle. And she mentioned Sam several times. It was clear she’d liked him and that she hadn’t thought much of Sam’s father. The day Tom disappeared there were several pages carefully cut out of the diary. The entries picked up more than a week later. Hercules put a paw on the seam.
“I see it, too,” I said. I looked down at the little tuxedo cat. “Do you think it was just a coincidence that Tom’s body was buried at Wisteria Hill—that it had nothing to do with what Anna and her friends were up to?”
He covered his face with a paw.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me neither.”
30
I put the journal away, curled my feet up under me, and settled Hercules a little more comfortably on my legs. I thought about the few memories of her father that Roma had shared, like that game of hide and seek with Tom tossing a blanket over her head and telling her to be quiet and then “pretending” to look for her.
Owen wandered back in, stretched out on the floor in front of my chair and started washing his tail. He was acting just a little spacey, which meant he’d been into his stash of catnip chicken parts. He seemed to have gotten over our near accident the night before. I was pretty sure he was most annoyed about having my old sweatshirt tossed on top of him.
My shirt thrown over Owen to hide him.
A blanket thrown over Roma. Part of a game or an attempt to hide her?
Maybe Tom hadn’t been playing a game with Roma. Maybe he’d been going to take Roma away from Pearl. Maybe that’s what had caused Pearl to pick that particular day to run. Was I wrong about Roma’s mother?
“Could Pearl have killed Tom to protect Roma?” I asked Hercules. What else had Roma said about Tom? “He sat me on his lap and let me drive,” she’d said. “I can close my eyes and see the car. It had turquoise and white bucket seats.”
Could those memories be from the same night? The night Tom disappeared?
I stroked the top of Hercules’s head. There was a connection I couldn’t quite make. I glanced at the box of Ellen’s things beside me on the table and suddenly tab A dropped into slot B.
“I have to put you down for a second,” I said to Hercules. I set him on the floor and hurried downstairs to the living room where I’d left my briefcase. I took it back up to the bedroom with me, sat down on the rug with the cats and pulled out the old yearbook and the envelope of photographs.
I started with the pictures. Hercules put both paws on my leg and poked his head in to check out each photo. Owen was content to watch and crane his neck for a better look from time to time.
It took a while, but I eventually found what I was looking for, not in the photos but in the yearbook under the heading TRAVELIN’ MAN.
“That’s piece number one,” I told Hercules. “Cross your paws that I can get piece number two.”
He held out his paw and looked at it.
I pulled the phone down and thought for a moment. “She should be home,” I said to the boys. I dialed Mary’s number and crossed my own fingers that she was home and would have the answer. I was hoping the fact that she was a bit of a pack rat would work in my favor.
It did.
I hung up, set the telephone on the floor, and leaned back against the side of the bed. Hercules climbed up onto my legs and put his paws on my chest.
“I think I know what happened to Tom,” I said. “It’s a bit of a stretch—okay a lot of a stretch—but I think I know who killed him.
“And why.”
31
The phone rang and I almost jumped out of my skin. It was Pearl.
“I need a favor from you, Kathleen, if you have time,” she said.
“What do you need?” I asked.
“I want to go out to Wisteria Hill before we go talk to Detective Gordon. Roma’s going to drive out there with me, but Neil has an appointment. Is there any chance you could join us?” She hesitated for a moment. “I think it would help Roma to have a friend.”
“Of course,” I said. There were things I needed to ask Pearl, and Wisteria Hill seemed like a good place to have that conversation. It was where everything had started and ended in many ways. We agreed to meet at the old estate in half an hour.
“Wish me luck,” I said to Owen and Hercules.
I tucked the truck in next to a muddy, nondescript SUV out at Wisteria Hill and Roma pulled in right beside me. I thought she looked tired. The past few days had been pretty horrible for her and I was impressed by how well she’d handled everything.
Pearl got out of the passenger side of the car. “Hello, Kathleen,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
Her attention was already being drawn to the carriage house and the field behind it. “I’m just going to look around a little,” Pearl said. “It’s been a long time since I was out here.”
I nodded and walked over to Roma.
“Thanks for coming out here,” she said. “She wouldn’t exactly take no for an answer.” She stood with her arms tightly wrapped around her body and for a moment I wondered if I should just keep what I suspected to myself. “I think she just wanted to see where…he was, all these years.”
I put a hand on her arm. “Why don’t you go check on Lucy and the others? I’ll walk around a bit with your mom. I don’t mind.”
She exhaled slowly. “I uh, thank you. I think I will.”
“Take your time,” I said.
Pearl was standing by the side steps to the old house. I walked over to her.