Cat With a Clue (16 page)

“You're not alone,” I said.

“You're not like my mom.” Dana grinned. “You don't talk to me like I'm a little kid.”

“Well, you're not mine. That makes it easier.”

“Mom's always after me to comb my hair and wash my hands.” Dana looked down at the former tree parts still clinging to shirt and pants. “She wants me to wear dresses to Sunday dinner.”

“Moms will do that,” I said, wondering why, now that I had a solid answer to the female or male question, I was so satisfied. It was very possible that I put too much importance on gender. Did it matter so much to attach a pronoun to someone?

“I wish she wouldn't do so much of it.” Dana kicked at the bottom of the tree. “All she wants to do is change me.”

It was a feeling I understood well, but I also knew that Dana's mom was doing her best. Which meant it was best that I divert the conversation immediately.

“So I talked to Rianne Howe the other day,” I said. “Have you ever been in the back office of Benton's?”

Dana's face lit up. “You've been there? I've only read about it. Is the ship's wheel still there?”

For once, she sounded like a normal kid. “I bet Rianne would let you give it a spin, if you asked. Especially since you know so much about her family.”

“No, that's okay.” Dana's expression went suddenly still. “I don't like . . . I mean . . . I don't go . . .”

Her voice trailed off and her words rose into the treetop and wafted away. Clearly, I'd wandered into territory where I didn't belong. “Anyway,” I said easily, “the wheel is still there. And there are model ships all over the place. Maps of the lakes, too.”

Dana, who had been studying the tops of her shoes, looked up at me. “Charts. Navigation maps are charts. Are they recent or old ones?”

“No idea,” I said. “Why?”

“The older the chart, the more valuable it is as a collectible.”

I squinted, trying to remember, but gave up quickly as to not tax my limited mental faculties. “They looked very chartlike is all I can say.”

Dana shoved her hands into her pockets. “It would be unlikely that they're old, given the circumstances.”

“What circumstances are those?”

The kid tipped her head to one side. “Perhaps I didn't tell you. My mother came into the room before I could completely finish describing the last few years of Talia DeKeyser. Mom says this part is gossip, anyway.”

Before she could go all ethical on me, I jumped in. “Talia's great-niece was killed. A store has been broken into, along with the library and the bookmobile. Any information might be helpful.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Dana glanced toward her house, then back at me. “As you know, Talia DeKeyser spent the last few months of her life at the nursing home.”

I nodded.

“One of the reasons Talia DeKeyser's children had her moved to the home was”—Dana looked at the house again—“that she was giving everything away.”

I didn't grasp why anyone would care what Talia did with her possessions. Then I clued in. “Everything? Heirlooms, you mean?”

Dana nodded. “They weren't valuable things, just family items. It was when she tried to give the mail carrier a vase that their great-grandmother DeKeyser had brought over from Europe that the daughters caught wind of what their mother was doing.”

“Alzheimer's,” I murmured, and Dana agreed.

“From my research, I gather that it can be hard to
detect when it is late onset, which Talia DeKeyser's obviously was. I can imagine that it's easy to attribute forgetfulness to age instead of to consider more dire implications.”

Though I'd already grown accustomed to hearing an adult vocabulary and sentence structure come out of a child, it was a jolt to hear her understand the reluctance to diagnose an elderly parent with a difficult and devastating disease. Not only was the kid bizarrely intelligent, but she also had empathy.

I looked at Dana, wondering if she'd been born this way or if something had already happened in her short life that had instilled that difficult emotion. It was hard to be empathetic; sympathy and pity you could assuage with a check to an appropriate nonprofit foundation. Empathy, though. That could spur you to acts of—

“Minnie? Hi!” Jenny Coburn came out of the house and down the center of the front steps. “How nice to see you. Dana, did you want to invite Ms. Hamilton inside? It's getting dark; the mosquitoes will be out soon. If you'd like to keep talking, why don't you come in?”

Dana and I shared a look. I wouldn't have minded getting to know my young new friend a little better, and I had the feeling she felt the same about me, but doing so under the watchful eye of Mom would be difficult.

“That would be nice,” I said, “but I have to get going. Things to do, socks to wash. All that.”

“Okay. See you later.” Dana walked off to the house, going up the steps the same way her mother had come down them: exactly in the center.

Jenny looked after her, frowning a little, then turned back to me and smiled brightly. “It's hard to remember what time it is, the sunset is so late up here this time of
year. I'm sure she didn't mean to be rude; she's just tired.”

I blinked. I hadn't thought anything about Dana's abrupt departure and didn't know what to say. Happily, Jenny kept talking, and I didn't have to say anything.

“It's so nice that you're making friends with Dana. That's the one thing about this neighborhood; no children.”

I glanced around at the stately homes, most owned by the same families for generations. “Aren't there grandchildren running around all summer?”

“Yes, but they tend to stay in their family groups, doing the same things they've always done with the same people they've always done things with.” She sighed. “It's hard for a well-adjusted adult to break into an established social pattern, let alone someone with . . . someone like Dana.”

“I think she's a great kid,” I said.

“You do?” Jennifer looked at me. “You really think so? She's . . . well, you see what she's like.”

“Different.” I nodded. Which wasn't what Jennifer had meant, but that was the root of it. “And being different is hardest when you're young.”

“True.” Jenny sighed. “My husband and I, we're not like her.”

I flashed back to how both she and Dana had trod the front steps and guessed that mother and daughter weren't as far apart as Mom thought.

“We try to understand her, but we just don't.” Jenny looked back at the house again, then at me. “Do you have children?”

I shook my head. “All I can handle right now is one cat.”

“Well, I hope you have kids someday. You have a knack for drawing them out.”

I was pretty sure she was wrong. Most days I had no idea how to treat kids other than as short adults. People said when I had my own children it would be different, but I was also pretty sure I wasn't nearly mature enough to have kids. Besides, they'd be embarrassed to death if people knew that their mom talked to cats.

“Stop by again,” Jennifer said. “Anytime.”

I told her I would, wished her a good night, and pedaled off into the darkening evening, thinking about chance encounters and inappropriate gifts and about Talia and about the great mystery of what the future holds for all of us at the end.

*   *   *

“Minnie? Is anything wrong?” Otto, in jeans and a polo shirt, peered at me the next morning.

I was standing on his front doorstep, my skin prickly in the chill air. “It's time for breakfast,” I told him.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes it is. It is definitely that time of day.” He raised his eyebrows, still waiting for an answer to the question he'd asked.

“Have you been to breakfast this summer?” I asked, nodding at my aunt's place.

“Well, actually, no.” He looked at the big house across the street. “I haven't been invited, and I didn't want to barge in without being asked.”

My aunt was an idiot. “Come on.” I grabbed his hand and tugged. “I'm inviting you.”

“I can't possibly.” Otto pulled out of my grip. “Frances will—”

“When's the last time you saw her?” I asked, crossing my arms. “How many times have you seen her since the guests arrived?”

“Well.” He rubbed his chin. “We had dinner . . . No, that was the day before the first one arrived. I think we had lunch last week. We were supposed to go to a concert in Petoskey the other day, but there was a plumbing emergency at the boardinghouse and she had to cancel.”

“Otto, it's only June,” I said. “If you don't make yourself part of the group, you're not going to see anything of her until after Labor Day.”

He continued with the chin rubbing. “That's not what she led me to believe.”

I rolled my eyes. “That's because she doesn't quite get how much work running that place is. Trust me. I've been watching this for four summers in a row. If she ever has the time to go out and do something with you, she's going to be too tired to do it.”

“That sounds remarkably unappealing,” Otto said. “I'd hoped to spend a lot of time with her the next few months.”

“Well, then.”

“I'm not sure what you mean.”

“Get over there.”

“Minnie, I'm not sure I should—”

“You may not be, but I am. Come on.” I tugged at his hand a second time, and this time didn't let go until his front door was closed and we were crossing the street.

The entire way, he was hemming and hawing and sounding more like he'd sounded last December. Back then he'd been hesitant about introducing himself to my aunt, then, after a little push, had blossomed into the confident man who'd been squiring her around town for the past six months.

I ignored every one of his worried comments and practically dragged him up the steps and through the
boardinghouse's front door. “Good morning,” I called out. “Any chance you have a little extra?”

When I'd opened the door, I'd heard a congenial babble of voices and the tinkling of silverware. As soon as I spoke, however, the noises ceased. “Minnie?” my aunt said. “Is that you?”

A chair scraped backward and I knew she'd be standing up. “Not just me,” I said, towing Otto toward the dining room. “I brought an uninvited guest. He said he's never had a boardinghouse breakfast, and I think it's high time he gets one.”

“Did you bring Ash?” Aunt Frances appeared in the doorway. Behind her, the sun was streaming through the leaves of the trees in the backyard, slanting into the screened porch and the dining room. Her tall, angular figure was rimmed with sunlight, giving her a dazzling aura and making her look as if she'd walked straight out of the sun.

Otto caught his breath at the sight.

“Not Ash,” I said, shoving at Otto's shoulder. “Just your across-the-street neighbor. He didn't want to barge in uninvited, but I made him come over anyway.” I was about to add that I hoped it was okay until I saw my aunt's radiant smile.

She reached out for Otto's hands. “Why didn't I think of this before? Of course you should come over for breakfast. You don't need an invitation, for heaven's sake.” She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek, then turned and escorted him to the dining room.

“Everyone,” she said, “this is my good friend Otto Bingham. Otto, going clockwise, that's Eva and Forrest, Liz, Morris, Victoria, and Welles.”

All six of them greeted Otto with smiles and cheerful ‘nice to meet you's. In short order, they were sliding
chairs around and setting another place. Liz, who was at the buffet, getting out silverware, looked at me. “Minnie, are you eating?”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but there's no time. It's a bookmobile day and Eddie's in the car, ready to go forth and conquer new bookish territory.”

My aunt wrapped a blueberry muffin in a paper napkin and put it into my hand. “Thank you,” she whispered, “for Otto.”

But there was no need for her words. Seeing the happiness on her face was more than thanks enough.

“I
t's a shame your new young man couldn't make it tonight.” Barb McCade looked at me over the top of her wineglass.

“That's right.” Barb's husband, Russell, looked around as if Ash might be sitting somewhere else and waiting for an engraved invitation. “Where is that boy, anyway? Are we going to have to teach him manners?”

The only people sitting anywhere close were a sixtyish couple who were arguing over the price of something in the six-figure range. It seemed to be real estate, but if they were summer people, it could be anything from new landscaping to a new car.

“The boy,” I said, “is close to six feet tall, runs ten miles a day, has a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, and is studying to be a detective.”

Barb elbowed her husband. “And he's a cop. Bet he could take you down, Cade.”

“Of course he could,” Cade said calmly. “I channel my physical powers a different way.”

“You do?” His wife frowned. “What powers are those? I didn't know you had any.”

“I'm pacing myself.” He grinned.

“Possible,” Barb said. “But probable?” She held out her hand and tipped it back and forth.

Smiling, I shook my head. They were at it again.

I'd met these two clowns last summer when Barb had run in front of the bookmobile, waving me down because her husband was having a stroke. We'd raced him to the hospital, and it wasn't until I was relaying information to the emergency room via my cell phone that I realized the sick man was none other than the painter Russell McCade, known as Cade to his thousands upon thousands of fans.

Though his critics dismissed his work as sentimental schlock, his fans—which included me—defended it as accessible art. I'd loved his work from the time I'd received a birthday card illustrated with one of his paintings, but had never dreamed I'd actually meet the artist, let along become a friend of the family via a hospital visit and the letter
D
.

For reasons lost in the mists of time, the McCades had a habit of randomly choosing a letter and then finding words starting with that letter to fit the ongoing conversation. When I'd joined in the game the first time, I'd gone to visit Cade in the hospital, and our acquaintanceship moved into firm friendship. Who cared if they were twenty years older than I was? Who cared if they spent six months out of the year in a place that was warm and sunny? As long as we had the letter
D
, we were good.

“Pathetic,” Cade said, sighing.

Or the letter
P
, which was also an excellent word starter.

“Penny for your thoughts?” I asked. “What's pathetic?”

“A pound would be better. There are profound thoughts up here.” Cade tapped his head.

I searched madly for an appropriate
P
word, but couldn't find one anywhere.

“He was talking about you, Minnie,” Barb said. “And you're not pathetic. You're preoccupied; that's all, right?”

Cade started studying me, and I felt myself squirming. Every time he looked at me like that, I was afraid he was thinking about how I'd look on canvas. Though I'd made it perfectly clear that I had no interest in being the subject of a portrait, I wasn't certain he'd paid any attention to me.

“There's a lot going on right now. The bookmobile, the library director, not to mention . . . well . . .” I glanced around.

We were in Petoskey, eating at the City Park Grill. One of its claims to fame was that it had once been the hangout of Ernest Hemingway, which was nice enough, especially if you were a Hemingway fan, but what I cared most about were the buttery garlic biscuits served as an appetizer. Warm, buttery garlic biscuits, moved with tongs from serving platter to your own individual biscuit plate by a server who would bring more; all you had to do was ask.

The McCades and I were sitting in the back of the restaurant. Cade wasn't exactly a recluse, but he didn't make any efforts to be a noted celebrity, either—much to the dismay of his agent—and I was happy enough to sit in the back corner, where it was a little darker and far quieter. From the six-figure couple, we were hearing an occasional tone of frustration from the man and a sporadic “Bob!” from the woman, but other than that, all was peace and calm. She looked vaguely familiar, and I surreptitiously studied her for a few moments, trying to figure out where I'd seen her before.

“The break-ins,” Barb said.

“And the murder of Andrea Vennard, a former resident of Chilson,” Cade added. “There is indeed a lot going on.”

“You two were out of town when most of that happened.” In Chicago at a show of Cade's work, specifically. “How did you know?”

“The newspaper,” Cade said. “It's a marvelous invention. You should try it someday.”

Barb shook her head, making her ponytail of graying brown hair flick around the sides of her neck. “Don't believe a word he says. He heard it from the neighbors first, then dug through the papers afterward.”

“Corroboration.” Cade sipped at his beer, a draft from Short's Brewing Company that was so hoppy I could smell it from across the table. “One must have corroboration.”

Suddenly I remembered where I'd seen the six-figure woman. She'd been the woman at the used-book store, haggling with the clerk over books she was trying to sell.

“Does that detective have any ideas?” Barb asked.

“All avenues . . .” I said, then stopped.

Cade set his beer on the table with a sharp
bang
. “All avenues of investigation will be explored, especially wide-open and freshly paved avenues that could easily lead to the wrong person.”

“Sorry,” I murmured. Cade had been the lead suspect in a murder investigation last summer. “I didn't mean to bring up bad memories.”

“Not bad,” he said, “so much as annoying.”

I glanced at Barb and, judging from the tight expression on her face, I wasn't sure she agreed with him. “Anyway,” I went on, “Detective Inwood and Ash aren't telling me much. It is an active investigation.”

“Ah, but you have some ideas, don't you?” Cade eyed me. “You are full of the things. Ideas ooze out of you.”

I made a face. “Ooze? You make me sound like a mud puddle.”

“Flow? Gush? Emanate?” Cade asked. “Exude. Escape. Discharge.”

“Oh, ew.”

“Percolate,” Barb said.

“Excellent!” Cade exclaimed. “And a
P
word to boot. You win this round, my darling.” He toasted his wife. “And now,” he said, turning to me, “your idea. No denials; I can see it in the set of your shoulders, and slumping like that will not change the facts.”

I sighed and straightened. It wasn't fair that a man who'd grown famous painting landscapes could see into my head by looking at my posture.

“And now, young lady, it's time to share.” Cade made a come-along gesture. “What's your idea?”

“It's about books.”

The McCades frowned, exchanged a quick glance, then looked back at me.

“What's about books?” Barb asked. “The break-ins or the murder?”

“Both.”

“How do you figure that?” Cade asked.

I looked at him closely, but saw no trace of the Patient Look, the expression that meant I was being humored and coddled and been found amusing in a condescending way. My previous boyfriend had used that expression too often, and I was still sensitive to its use.

“There were three break-ins,” I said, holding up the requisite number of fingers. “The Friends' book-sale room, the bookmobile, and Pam's antiques store. During each incident, every book was tossed onto the floor, but
according to the records of both Pam and the bookmobile, no book was stolen.”

“And the book-sale room?” Barb asked.

I shrugged. “No way of knowing. They don't need to track books the way we do. But someone was clearly looking for something, and since the bookmobile and Pam's store were both broken into after the sale room was, I figure he didn't find whatever it was.”

“Or she,” Cade murmured.

“Or she,” I agreed, a little chagrined that a male had had to correct my gender usage.

Barb frowned. “But what about Andrea Vennard? How does she fit in?”

“That's when it all started,” I said in a low voice, leaning forward. “Andrea was killed. Then the library was broken into, then the bookmobile, then Pam's store. In a town this size, it's hard to believe that all those crimes aren't connected somehow. My guess is that someone is looking for a book worth a lot of money, and Andrea got in the way. Maybe,” I said slowly, thinking of a new possibility, “a book that's been in a family for a long time and no one realizes its value.”

“Isn't there a new used-book store?” Cade asked. “Have they had a burglary?”

Ash had told me that they'd been incident free, and I told the McCades so.

Cade sipped his beer. “You think Andrea's murder was committed by the same person who's responsible for the break-ins.”

I nodded.

“Does anyone know,” Barb asked, “why Andrea was in Chilson?”

“Oh, we know why.”

“We do?”

“Well, sure,” I said. “She came up for her great-aunt's funeral. Talia DeKeyser.”

It was as if I'd tossed a restrictive force field over them just after they'd witnessed a shocking sight. Both stared at me, unblinking and unmoving. Just at the point where I was beginning to wonder if time had indeed stopped, Barb turned to her husband.

“You're going to have to tell her.”

“Yes,” he said, breaking the spell I'd unwittingly cast.

“Tell me what?”

Cade pulled in a long breath. Then, instead of doing the expected thing and letting it out in a long, gusting sigh, he picked up his beer. When the only thing left on the inside of the glass was a sticky foam, he returned it to the table. “Sorry,” he said to his wife, “but I do believe I needed that.”

“Wanted, not needed.” She patted his arm and half smiled. “It's all right. I have the car keys.”

There was a long pause. I tried to be patient, but was on the verge of using my foot to whack at someone under the table in the hopes of kick-starting the conversation, when Cade started telling the story.

“This was when Cal, Talia's husband, was still alive. About five years ago, I'd guess.” He turned to Barb, who nodded confirmation. “Barb and I had bought our lake house the year before, and we were still getting to know the area and the town. Still meeting people and getting to know the neighbors.”

It was a familiar story. Newcomers, if they didn't use some sort of method to establish a social network—volunteer work, church activities, whatever—took a long time to develop friendships.

“We were in Benton's,” Barb said. “Mr. Smart Alec
here was at the candy counter, trying to guess how many jawbreakers he could fit into his mouth before his jaw actually broke, when this tall, old guy spoke up and said he could take in fifteen.”

Cade laughed. “And then an elderly woman, who was standing next to him, said his mouth was much bigger than that, he'd be better off guessing twenty, and did he want to try an experiment?”

I smiled. “That was Talia and Cal?” All the stories I'd heard about them, I'd never once heard they were funny.

Barb nodded. “We were instant friends, despite the age difference.” She smiled at me. “One of these days we're going to have to get some friends our own age.”

“Age is nothing,” Cade said, waving off the issue. “What matters is that you laugh at the same things.”

“I laugh at you every day,” his loving wife told him.

He ignored her and said, “We went out to dinner with Talia and Deke a few times—”

Barb saw my puzzled look and interrupted. “Deke was Cal's nickname. From DeKeyser, and from his playing pond hockey into his sixties.”

Cade barely slowed down. “One day they invited us to dinner at their home. Barb insisted on bringing salad and bread, so when we arrived, she and Talia went back to the kitchen, while Deke and I mixed drinks in the dining room.”

It was an easy picture to summon; women and men in separate rooms, all four chatting easily and comfortably. Of course, the picture I was bringing to mind was incomplete, since I had no idea where the DeKeysers had lived, so I asked.

“Just a few blocks from downtown,” Barb said. “In
the historic district.” She described a house I had seen many times, a Victorian home of gingerbread trim, lace curtains, and creaking wooden floors, the kind of house where grandmothers grew up, the kind of house that could almost make you smell lilacs and taste homemade ice cream.

“In the dining room,” Cade said, bringing me out of my historical fog, “the bottles and glasses were on a sideboard. Also on the sideboard was a stack of books.”

Books?

Cade gave me a crinkly smile. “You are suddenly a little more interested in this story, I see. Yes, there was a stack of books. Picture books was what I noticed. Books to read to the grandchildren on a rainy day.
Blueberries for Sal
,
Stellaluna
,
Make Way for Ducklings
,
The Little Engine That Could.
”

I nodded at the names, all as familiar to me as the back side of my teeth.

“At that moment,” Cade continued, “I just glanced at the pile. But then Talia called for Deke's help to reach a dish on a high shelf, and I was left alone.”

“You looked at the books.”

“Exactly,” he said, nodding. “I was in the home of an acquaintance and didn't feel free to finish mixing the drinks, and I didn't want to sit uninvited. Yes, I could have stood there and been bored, but why do that when there are picture books at hand? An artist can always learn something from other artists. Our research never ends.”