“Absolutely.”
“Should that person look in the south half of the county?”
He squinted at the air, then said, “Yes.”
“West of US 131?”
“No.”
It took a few more pointed questions, but I narrowed the location down to East Grand Rapids, a city whose residents were, on the average, in a higher tax bracket than the rest of us. As a moderately paid librarian living in Chilson, however, I was used to everyone making more money than I did, so I drove through the well-tended streets of the town without feeling too much envy or awe.
Thanks to Ash’s hints and a small credit card fee, I’d been able to use the online database of the Kent County Register of Deeds to find an address for the Boggses. “There is no hope of privacy in this world,” I’d told Eddie as I added the address to my phone, but either he didn’t care or thought the statement was so true it wasn’t worth discussing, because he’d continued snoring.
Where the Boggses now lived was an established neighborhood of large stately homes with tree-lined streets, and at eleven o’clock on a weekday morning, there wasn’t a single human being to be seen. There were, however, a multitude of Halloween decorations. Pumpkins sat on hay bales, scarecrows and witches perched on tree limbs, and ghosts peeked from behind shrubbery. It was a charming display and it gave the feel of a community with a real sense of place.
I found the address and parked at the curb of the only place on the street without any Halloween ornamentation. The house of Bogg was Tudoresque, with steeply pitched roofs, big brick chimneys, and decorative half-timbering with stucco filling the space between the timbers. It looked substantial and prosperous and expensive.
It also looked unoccupied.
Well, maybe it just seemed that way. Maybe Gail and Ray were inside, planning their Halloween display. I got out of the car and walked up the brick path that led to the front door. I pushed the elaborate brass doorbell and listened to a deep bonging sound go through the house and fade away to silence. After waiting a bit, I pushed the doorbell again and got the same result.
Nothing.
There were no windows flanking the solid door, and in a neighborhood like this, traipsing around to the windows and peering in could easily trip a security alarm or send a watchful neighbor to the telephone to call 911.
“Rats,” I muttered.
But speaking of neighbors . . .
Another advantage of being female and spatially efficient was that I didn’t tend to project a threatening presence. I returned to the main sidewalk, looked at the adjacent houses, and spotted a house across the street and one door down that had interior lights on. Bingo! I headed on over and knocked, using the lion’s head doorknocker provided for the purpose.
The door was opened by a dark-skinned man who looked to be in his mid-forties. He had a coffee mug in one hand and a pile of papers in the other. “Hello,” he said in a polite, but cautious, tone.
I smiled disarmingly. “Morning. I was looking for Gail and Ray Boggs, but they don’t seem to be home. Love your ghosts, by the way.” I nodded toward the front lawn, where a group of five gauzy figures stood around one of the largest pumpkins I’d ever seen. Each ghost held a different sketch of a plan for carving their pumpkin and they were clearly arguing about whose design would win.
The guy grinned. “Reality becomes art. My wife, myself, and our three kids all wanted to do something different with the pumpkin we grew last summer in the backyard, so this is what we settled on.”
I laughed. “Compromise can be funny.”
“Well, the zombie versus ghost discussion was a little loud, but we worked it out,” he said, smiling.
“It looks great,” I said, then before he could start wondering about the stranger on his doorstep, I told him my name, adding, “I’m from Chilson, where Gail and Ray had a place up until a couple of months ago. I thought I’d stop by to see them.”
“Chilson?” he asked. “You live there?”
“Fifty-two weeks a year. I’m assistant director for the library.”
“No kidding. There’s this restaurant I saw on one of those cooking shows a while back. Do you know it?”
I beamed. “Three Seasons. My friend Kristen owns it.”
“That’s the place,” he said, nodding. “So you’d recommend eating there?”
“If you like high-quality local ingredients cooked by a perfectionist, presented by people who obsess about the size of the garnishing sprigs, and served by staff who know how often the parsley was weeded, then absolutely you should eat there.”
Laughing, the guy introduced himself as Tim Soane. “We’ll have to get up there next summer. But if you’re looking for Gail and Ray, you’re out of luck. They headed down to Florida last Friday.”
“Oh.” I glanced at the vacant-looking house. “They weren’t here very long.”
Tim shook his head. “Few weeks. Seems that’s the way those two operate. A month at this place, a month in Florida, a month in one of their other places. If they get bored or don’t like the weather forecast, they head out.”
I blinked. “How many places do they have?”
“Depends on the day.” He smiled briefly. “They build and buy and sell at the drop of a hat. From what Gail said, it ranges anywhere from three to six. Some of them are time-share condos, so you might count those differently.”
I had a hard enough time moving twice a year. I couldn’t imagine the logistical difficulties of having multiple homes and having to fill them with multiple sets of belongings. I’d constantly be wanting something in another house. “Sounds like a complicated way to live,” I said.
“Well, when you win one of the biggest lotteries in the history of lotteries, you can afford complications.”
My eyes bugged out, then I remembered that, though I hadn’t specifically said I was a friend of the Boggses’, I’d certainly implied so and brought my eyeballs under control. “Well,” I said, “thanks for your time. If I get to Florida this winter, I’ll try to track them down there.”
“Good luck with that.” Tim laughed. “By that time they’ll probably have moved on to Hawaii.”
I nodded, thanked him again, and headed back to my car.
• • •
“What do you think?” I asked.
Eddie, sitting next to his food bowl, was staring at the kitchen counter and not paying any attention to me.
“Hey.” I snapped my fingers. “Over here. There is nothing on that counter of any interest to you.” This was a blatant lie, as he clearly was interested in the empty glass dishes that had held leftovers I’d scrounged out of the refrigerator for dinner, but he knew full well he wasn’t allowed on the counter, so I stood by my statement.
I tapped my fingertips on the round oak kitchen table and he turned his head. “Right. Now that I have your complete and undivided attention, I have some things to discuss with you.”
“Mrr.”
“Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble for anything.” As far as I knew. There was always a possibility that he’d done something horrible that hadn’t yet entered my awareness, but since I was currently in blissful ignorance of any particular Eddie transgression, he had no reason to worry about punishment. Not that he would take punishment as a recommendation to modify behavior. His response would be more along the lines of a sullen teenager’s shrug and a muttered “Whatever.”
Eddie rotated his head, owl-like, to look at me.
“Right,” I said. “Things to discuss. Sorry to say, they’re not about you. Yes, the world revolves around cats in general and you specifically, as it should, but in this particular case I’d like you to just listen.”
My fuzzy feline friend rotated himself a hundred and eighty degrees and settled his unblinking gaze upon me.
“Can you stop that?” I asked. “Please? When you look at me like that, I always feel like you’re trying to tell me something and I’m too stupid to understand.”