His stare hardened. “Mrr!” he yelled, his whole body twitching with the effort.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s nice to know that you think I’m stupid. Anyway, I wanted to discuss my recent findings about people who had dealings with Dale Lacombe.”
Until Eddie, I’d never known how talking out loud to a four-legged companion could help straighten out your thoughts. It helped that Eddie seemed to pay attention to what I was saying and inserted the occasional contribution, but I was under no illusions that he actually understood the one-sided conversations. He was just a cat, after all. A lovable and personality-laden dork of a cat, but there was no way that any cat’s brain power could match that of a human.
“Mrr,” Eddie said agreeably.
“Right.” I nodded. “So here’s the thing. Dale Lacombe was a jerk of the first order and it was a surprise to basically no one except his wife that he wound up murdered by person or persons unknown.”
The phrase, one I’d heard on television dramas and seen in print numerous times, rang oddly in my ears.
“You know,” I said, frowning, “why am I working on the assumption that it was one person who killed Dale and is trying to frame Leese? Why couldn’t it be two people? A whole host of people, like the Orient Express?” Drumming my fingers on the table, I considered, then rejected the idea.
“Nope. Too complicated, especially for a small town. Someone would have talked or confessed or acted weird enough that eyebrows would have gone up and next thing you know it would have been on Facebook or tweeted all over the place.”
“Mrr,” Eddie said.
“Glad you agree.” I got up and opened the cupboard door that housed his treats. “But let’s keep in mind that two people might have had a small conspiracy going. I know, I know, there’s that proverb that two can keep a secret only if one of them is dead. Still, it’s a possibility.”
Eddie swiped a paw at the air and made a chirpy sort of noise in the back of his throat.
“Sorry.” I opened the canister of treats and tossed one onto the floor. “We’re going to skip the remote possibility that Dale’s death was an accident. If it was, why bother moving the body to Leese’s truck? If it had been an accident and someone had been afraid of being found guilty of negligence or something, it would have been far easier to drop the body in a lake.”
By this time, the treat had long since disappeared down Eddie’s throat, and the only sign that a treat had ever existed was a wet spot on the floor in the shape of a cat tongue.
I tossed down another moist tidbit.
“So we have the Boggses and Daphne Raab. As the people who Dale sued to get payment, they should be high on the suspect list. Daphne certainly didn’t have a good word to say about him.” I watched Eddie snuffle up the treat. Ms. Raab had been an unpleasant woman, but unpleasantness didn’t equate to being a killer. Which was a good thing, because I’d met a number of unpleasant people in my life, and if they were all killers, it wouldn’t be long before the human species would murder its way to extinction.
“And then there are the Boggses.” The lottery winners. The couple who skipped from one house to another at the drop of a hat. I made a mental note to see if I could find out how long ago they’d won their pile of cash.
“Plus, there’s Rob Driskell. You know, the building official. The guy with the temper.”
I saw again Driskell’s reddening face and clenched fists. If his anger could flare up so fast against a man who was dead, what could have happened if he and Dale had met face-to-face? A burst of violence seemed possible and even likely.
Eddie bumped the top of his head against my shin.
“And there’s the guy from the car accident.” I needed to call Leese and ask his name. I still couldn’t think of a reason for a twenty-some-year gap between incident and revenge, but anything was possible, I supposed, and—
“Mrr!”
“One more treat,” I said, “and that’s it. Winter’s coming. You don’t get out as much when it’s cold in spite of that fur coat and we don’t need you getting any fatter or especially any sassier.” I dropped a third treat to the floor and remembered what Daphne had said. “And I can’t forget about Carmen. Remember? She and Dale separated not long before he was killed.”
I knew there were statistics about the number of murders committed by spouses, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to go in search of them. After all, what did statistics mean for any given for-instance? Well, a lot, really, because they provided odds for any given event happening, but it was hard to think in those terms.
“Everybody thinks they’re going to beat the odds, right?” I looked down, but the only thing that remained of Eddie’s presence was a tiny piece of cat treat on the floor. I looked up and saw the tip end of his tail vanishing through the doorway to the dining room.
“Once again,” I told him, “you were no help at all.”
“Mrr,” he called back, which could only have been cat language for “Whatever.”
“Thanks,” I called. “If I ever have kids, it’s good to know that I’ve had training for dealing with teenagers.”
“Mrr.”
The next day, since I’d scheduled myself to work a stint at the reference desk from midafternoon until the library closed at eight, I slept late and didn’t leave the boardinghouse until almost ten o’clock.
It was one of those picture-perfect autumn mornings that you long for during the sweltering days of August. The air had a fall tang and the leaves still hanging tight to their trees were so brilliantly colored, they almost hurt my eyes at the same time that I couldn’t bear to look away.
The sidewalks were long emptied of the summer tourist traffic, and I knew most of the few people out and about by name. Yes, winter wasn’t too far away, but Chilson once again belonged to its year-round residents. We had our town back. Life was good.
I could practically see the aura of contentment that surrounded me as I walked into the toy store. Before the bells had even stopped jingling, Mitchell popped out of the back room. “Good morning, sorry I was—oh, hey, Minnie.” He grinned. “You back for Sally’s birthday present?”
Someday I’d get used to the hatless, shaven, and socially presentable Mitchell, but today wasn’t that day. It was a good thing that he’d found full-time employment, and an even better thing that he seemed to be enjoying it so much; it was the sudden change that I was having a hard time adjusting to. Who would ever have guessed that the perennially underemployed Mitchell would ever have found a career passion and true love in the same year?
“That’s right.” I leaned against the glass counter. “It’s on Halloween and I’ve promised not to buy her anything black or orange.”
“Gotcha.” Mitchell smoothed back his hair, a gesture similar to the way he’d formerly rearranged his hat. “She’s into horses, right? Does she collect Breyers?”
I frowned. “Isn’t that ice cream?”
He ushered me over to a display of blue and yellow boxes. “And horses,” he said, pointing.
“Huh.” I studied the array of plastic horses, horse-type equipment, horse barns, and other horse-oriented paraphernalia that, since the closest I’d ever come to a horse was the carousel ride at the Ohio amusement park Cedar Point, I hadn’t the least chance of identifying. “I have no idea if she’s into these or not. Let me text my sister-in-law and I’ll let you know.”
“Isn’t your brother an engineer?”
“Sort of.” Matt thought he had the best job in the world, and since he was an Imagineer for Disney, it was possible he was correct. If you were an engineer.
“If that kind of thing runs in the family, how about this?” Mitchell stepped over to another area of the store, the one that displayed models of cars, boats, planes, and tanks, and held up the perfect present for Sally.