Crossing the Lion (a Reigning Cats and Dog) (2010) (4 page)

“Come sit with me, Jessica,” Betty said. As she patted the couch cushion beside her, a cloud of dust rose up from the dark-red velvet upholstery. She cast me a startled look, then calmly said, “I can’t wait for you to meet Charlotte. You’re going to love her.”

“I’m looking forward to getting to know her,” I said sincerely.

I sank onto the couch next to Betty as gently as I could. I was afraid that if I let any more dust loose in
that room, we all might have to resort to wearing hazmat suits.

I was pleased that the Merrywoods’ two dogs lowered themselves onto the floor next to me. Not wanting to be forgotten, Frederick jumped up and put his two front paws on my knee, asking if he could sit in my lap. One thing about dogs: They can always be counted on to figure out who’s the best ear-scratcher in the room.

“Quite a house, isn’t it?” Winston remarked. He was standing next to the fireplace, pretending to admire a pair of tarnished silver candlesticks on the mantel but probably trying to get his body temperature back up into the normal range.

“Amazing,” I said noncommitally. The little white dog was trembling with excitement, and I worked on his ears with one hand, hoping to calm him down. I scratched the basset’s ears with the other, grateful that I was fairly ambidextrous when it came to keeping canines happy. Frederick, meanwhile, curled up contentedly in my lap. Sometimes I wonder if that dog is part cat.

We sat in silence until Betty, ever the polite houseguest, finally commented, “This is such a lovely room.” Glancing around, she added, “Charlotte clearly has a real passion for old things.”

She’d gotten that right. The room was such an anachronism, in fact, that I half-expected someone to come along and offer us a glass of sherry.

“May I offer all of you a glass of sherry?” Jives asked half a second later. Somehow he’d produced a
small round tray on which were balanced several elegant crystal glasses filled with clear golden liquid. He presented the tray to Betty, who helped herself to one of the glasses. Next he offered one to Winston, then headed over to me.

“Miss?” he asked, bowing toward me slightly.

“Uh, sure.” I wasn’t much of a drinker, aside from wine, champagne, and any beverage that was made in a blender and served with a paper umbrella. Still, it occurred to me that drinking anything
but
sherry in surroundings like these would seem as out of place as wolfing down a Big Mac.

I took a sip, surprised that the experience reminded me of those fire-eaters who used to be a part of sideshows.

Whoa!
I thought.
Whatever type of sherry this is, it sure isn’t something to trifle with!

I was gearing up for a second sip when a tiny woman with a slender frame swept into the room. The first thing that struck me was that she moved with incredible grace even though she was wearing a floor-length skirt. It was made of black satin that matched the lapels of her short black velvet jacket. I’m no fashion expert, but even I recognized that her outfit was extremely tasteful, reflecting classic design and fine workmanship.

Her hairstyle was similarly timeless: a neat gray pageboy with a few strands in front that swooped elegantly beneath her chin. She had clearly been beautiful when she was young. In fact, she was still extremely pretty, thanks largely to her chiseled features—especially
her pronounced cheekbones, which gave her a patrician look. She wore very little makeup, just a hint of pink on her lips and a light dusting of blue on her lids that precisely duplicated the color of her eyes.

“Betty! Winston!” she cried as she crossed the room. “I’m so grateful to you both for coming!”

The three of us rose to our feet. I waited patiently while the others hugged and air-kissed, meanwhile murmuring all the right things about the sad occasion that had brought us here in the first place.

“Charlotte, I must introduce you to Jessica,” Betty said once that was out of the way and she’d sat down again. “She’s a dear, dear friend, and I’m sure the two of you will become friends, as well, even though of course I wish you’d met under different circumstances.”

“Hello, Jessica. I’m Charlotte Merrywood.” As she reached out to shake my hand, her smile was warm and friendly. But the look in those pale-blue eyes of hers struck me as much more calculating. I got the feeling she was evaluating me—not necessarily in a bad way, just as a means of trying to figure out what I was all about.

“I’m so sorry about your loss,” I said.

“Thank you,” she replied with a sad smile. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me that Betty and Winston came at this terrible time to offer me support. If you being here, as well, helps them find the strength they need now, then I’m grateful to you for joining them.”

What a gracious woman, I thought. I decided on
the spot that she had every right to evaluate me. After all, I was pretty much an intruder, a stranger who’d come at a time when Charlotte and the rest of her family would surely prefer to be with people they knew well.

Charlotte took the glass of sherry Jives offered from the tray and lowered herself onto an upholstered chair with legs carved like lion’s paws. Glancing down at the two dogs still hovering nearby, she commented, “I see you’ve met Admiral and Corky.”

Smiling, she added, “Corky—he’s the smaller one—is a shih tzu and Lhasa apso cross. Admiral, the basset hound, is his much older brother. It’s obvious that they’ve both taken a shine to you, but please let me know if they’re bothering you.”

“Not at all!” I assured her.

“Jessica’s a veterinarian,” Betty informed her, her voice bursting with pride. “She loves animals—and they love her.”

“A veterinarian!” Charlotte exclaimed. “How fascinating. And how rewarding it must be to work with animals. Where is your office?”

“I have a mobile-services unit,” I told her. “In other words, a clinic-on-wheels. I treat animals all over Long Island.”

“She takes care of dogs, cats, even horses,” Winston added proudly.

“In that case,” Charlotte said, with a warm smile, “I can see why Admiral and Corky already adore you.”

Returning her smile, I said, “They both seem like great dogs.”

“They belonged to Linus.” Suddenly Charlotte’s face sagged, and all the light went out of her eyes, as if someone had flipped off a switch. “They were completely devoted to him. In fact, the two of them keep looking at me, as if they’re asking where he is …”

Her voice trailed off, but not before I heard the beginnings of a sob. It was almost a relief that at that moment a booming clap of thunder set the entire house to shaking.

“My, this storm is turning out to be quite powerful,” Charlotte commented, quickly regaining her composure. Glancing out the velvet-framed windows, she added, “I do hope we don’t lose our electricity.”

That’s all I need
, I thought morosely, being stuck in a haunted house on a remote island with no lights, no heat, and—worst of all—no coffeepot.

“Aw righty, that’s done.” A brash female voice, as abrasive as the screeching of a microphone, suddenly cut into the room. “Yer rooms are all ready for the loikes o’ you. Even got fires burning, warmin’ things oop a bit.”

A wiry woman about my age had come rushing in, bearing an elegant silver tray piled high with cheese, crackers, and fruit. She was dressed in a dowdy dark dress that looked as if it had been designed by the same person who’d clothed the sour-faced souls hanging in the hallway. She wore a starched white apron over it, and on her large, pigeon-toed feet were boxy shoes with thick rubber soles. Her bright red-orange
hair was pulled up into a loose topknot, with plenty of tendrils spilling over her face and neck. But her hairstyle looked haphazard, as if she simply couldn’t be bothered to fuss with it—as opposed to going for a carefully calculated bed-head look.

The woman walked quickly and kept her head down, as if she was one of those people who’s continually in a hurry. As she neared the sofa, I noticed a smudge on her cheek. At first I thought it was coal dust. At second glance, however, I decided it looked more like eyeliner gone awry.

“Blimey, the bunch o’ you are wet as all get out!” she cried, setting the tray down on a table. She looked us up and down, meanwhile wiping her hands on a linen dish towel she’d pulled out of her apron pocket. “You’ll catch yer death, every last one o’ you. You’d be wise to do what that gentleman over there is doing, standing by the fire and warming ’is ’ands.”

Eliza Doolittle, is that you?
I thought, blinking.

“What a marvelous suggestion for combating the rawness of this chilly evening,” Charlotte said kindly, even though none of us budged. “Thank you so much for your concern, Gwennie.”

Ah, I thought. So this is the famous Gwennie, the maid who spends her free time hauling suitcases and posing for steroid ads.

“Come on, now, ’elp yerselves,” Gwennie said, bustling around as she distributed forks and napkins. “Everybody ’oo comes off that ferry is always ’ungry. Shattered, too. Something about being out on the
open seas makes everyone knackered. Sometimes even a bit dicky.”

I deposited Frederick on the carpet, then stepped over to the tray the thoughtful Gwennie had brought and smeared a water cracker with Brie. She was right: I was famished. As for being a bit dicky, I couldn’t say.

“Are the children back yet, Gwennie?” Charlotte asked.

“Not yet, Missus,” Gwennie replied. “But I’m sure they’ll be ’ome soon.” Glancing toward the window, she added, “Cold, dark night like this—nobody in their roight mind should be out and about. Still, it’s not as if they didn’t have good reason.”

Turning to us, Charlotte said, “I’m sorry my children aren’t here to greet you. My two youngest went to the funeral home early today to make arrangements for Saturday and they’re not back yet. I’ve decided to let them make all the difficult decisions, since at this point it’s more than I can cope with.”

Smiling wanly, she added, “Missy and Brock are taking such a load off my shoulders by dealing with all those details. As for my oldest, Taggart, he had some business to attend to in the city today, but he’ll be back shortly.” With a tired sigh, she added, “There’s been so much to do, ever since …”

Once again, she let her voice trail off. It didn’t matter, since we all knew exactly how she would have finished her sentence if she’d had the strength.

“The children were all at the house last night, weren’t they?” Winston asked gently.

“That’s right,” Charlotte said. “We were all here
together, celebrating Linus’s seventy-fifth birthday.” Her voice thickening, she added, “That’s the one good thing, I suppose. That poor Linus had one last night with his entire family around him, I mean. His business partner, Harry, too. He’s in the city at the moment, but we expect him tomorrow. And his assistant, of course. She was totally devoted to him—”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Merrywood,” Jives interrupted, stepping into the room abruptly. I’d forgotten about him, mainly because he’d disappeared as soon as he supplied everyone with a glass of that high-octane sherry. Since I hadn’t heard him approaching, he seemed to materialize out of thin air. “Miss Scarlet has arrived.”

I blinked. Miss Scarlet?
Don’t tell me
, I thought.
She’s the killer—and she did it in the kitchen with the candlestick
.

“Wonderful,” Charlotte said. “Please show her in, Jives.”

I braced myself for a pretty but flashy young woman, someone with too much makeup and platinum-blond hair worn in a 1930s style—a wavy perm, maybe. And a startlingly bright red dress, of course.

But while the woman who strode into the room a couple of seconds later was indeed young, little else about her bore any resemblance to my imagined version. In fact, she seemed determined to present herself as far from flashy as possible, even venturing into the realm of prudishness.

She didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup at all,
although her thick tortoiseshell glasses made it difficult to get a good look at her eyes. She wore her dark-brown hair pulled back into a tight chignon, a style that struck me as strangely severe. It was consistent with her surprisingly stiff posture. She carried herself as if she wasn’t quite comfortable in her own body. As for her outfit, it also seemed unusually prim for someone in her mid-twenties, consisting of a conservative black suit with a tailored jacket and a slim, hip-hugging skirt.

True, she wore a red scarf, but it was a tasteful shade of burgundy. In one hand she clutched a leather portfolio of the same color, which made her look efficient—and important.

“Miss Scarlet,” Jives announced with great ceremony.

I couldn’t help noticing that as he said her name, his lips curled disdainfully.

O-
kay, I thought. So there’s no love lost there.

But I turned my attention to the new arrival.

“Hello, Miss Scarlet,” I greeted her. “I’m Jessica Popper.”

She looked startled, then laughed. “Oh, heavens. That’s just Jives’s idea of a joke. My name is actually Miss Sandowsky. Scarlett Sandowsky—with two
T
s, like Scarlett O’Hara.”

That’s a relief
, I thought as I shook her hand.
So I’m not living in a board game, after all
.

Still, I couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard joined us in the conservatory.

“Scarlett, I’d also like you to meet Winston and Betty Farnsworth,” Charlotte said. “Winston and Linus were good friends. They knew each other from the club.”

“Hello,” she said politely, shaking their hands, as well. “I am—I
was
—Mr. Merrywood’s personal assistant.”

My eyebrows shot up. Why would a man in his seventies need a personal assistant who was so young? I wondered. Not to mention one who was so pretty, once you got past her attempts at concealing that fact.

I couldn’t decide if I was being sexist or simply suspicious, the way a good investigator should be. I decided to hold off on forming any opinions until I got to know Miss Scarlet—uh, Scarlett—a little better. In the meantime, I headed back to that Brie.

“Scarlett is practically a member of the family,” Charlotte commented. “She’s been so helpful to Linus over the past two or three years.”