Killing Cassidy (12 page)

So we ordered bagels and juice from room service along with more coffee, and for what was left of the morning we attacked the notebook, making additions and corrections and trying to make sense of what we knew or surmised. At the end of it we had a table with everything neatly laid out in columns: name, means, motive, opportunity, other salient factors. The neatness was the primary virtue of the thing.

“There just isn't anything to get hold of!” I slammed the pen down on the table. “Jerry's a menace to society, according to the police chief. Mrs. Schneider's trying to save society, according to Mrs. Schneider. That ghastly preacher thinks Kevin was beyond the pale because he was Catholic. His attorney is keeping her mouth tight shut, and his doctor is paranoid. And the great-niece, Mrs. Whatever—or Ms. Whatever, I suppose—is bitter about Kevin's will, but she's also bitter about life in general. There's not a teaspoonful of hard evidence in the whole mess!”

“Oh, I think you're being a trifle too negative about that. Look at all these people who had a financial interest, of one kind or another.”

I looked. “Mrs. Schneider?”

“She said he contributed to her cause.”

“So she did. Okay, so everyone except the doctor had money from him, in one way or another. So what?”

“And the attorney.”

“I think she did, too. She acted odd when the loans came up. Of course she didn't say anything, but I got the distinct impression that she knew something personal about that whole loan business. What I don't see is why you keep harping on it.”

“I'm not sure, myself. It seems to me to be curious, though, and I like to keep the curious in mind. You know, Dorothy, I think we may be approaching this the wrong way.”

“What do you mean?”

“We've considered it, up to now, as a puzzle to be solved. Find the pieces, arrange them in order, and voilà! The true picture emerges. Or, to put it another way, locate all the clues, interpret them, solve the mystery.”

“What other way is there to think about it?”

“I have the feeling that the answers we're seeking will reveal themselves, if at all, only when we really know Kevin.

“What I mean,” he went on when I looked about to object, “is that this crime, if crime there has been, seems to me to revolve, more than any I've ever approached in a long career, around the character of the victim. You knew Kevin for many years, but you'd lost touch of late. I never knew him at all, though I'm beginning to. I think we're both going to have to know him very well indeed before we'll have any idea who might have wanted him dead.”

I considered the matter. “That's a tall order. I suppose we just go on talking to people, seeing him from as many different points of view as we can?”

“That's the idea.”

“Well, you have a point, but we also need any evidence we can uncover.”

Alan the policeman grinned. “Of course we do.”

“Well, then, I'd still like to know more about any other accidents Kevin might have had. Do you suppose the hospital would let us see those X rays Dr. Boland mentioned?”

“Probably not, unless we can think of a good reason. Doc Foley might be able to get them for us.”

“We'd have to tell him why.”

“We may, you know, have to take someone into our confidence, and Doc Foley is our best candidate, I think. For one thing, he was out of town when the trouble began, and—you trust him, don't you?”

“With my life. Well, I
have
trusted him with the care of my life, for years. If he isn't trustworthy, I may start wondering whether you are.”

“Very well, then. I must say I had the same impression, but one evening's acquaintance is hardly sufficient to tell. I'm glad of your testimonial. We'll keep him in reserve as a confidante. Meanwhile, I'm hungry. That wasn't much of a breakfast. Suppose we go downstairs and see what they can give us for lunch, and then—do you still have a headache?”

It rained all day and into the night, but the next morning, Wednesday, dawned clear and cool. I was full of energy.

“Alan, let's go out and see Jerry. Right away, as soon as we've had breakfast. If we get there early enough, he won't offer us anything to eat. And I really do want to ask if he knows anything about accidents, or anything else peculiar that might have happened to Kevin.”

“Splendid. And when we've finished there, had we best pack up some things to ship back to England?”

“Heavens! We've only got two more nights here, and I don't want to haul all that stuff somewhere else. I forgot about it. We should have packed yesterday.”

“Oh, there's plenty of time. But by all means, let us beard Jerry in his den as soon as possible.”

“And we can hit Mrs. Schneider on the way back; she's close. We'd better call first, though. She's so busy, and I don't think she likes people just dropping in.”

“What excuse do you plan to use this time?”

“Oh.” I thought for a moment. “How about if we wait and call her after we've talked to Jerry? There are lots of pay phones around, what with all that awful development on that side of town. And we can say we were in the neighborhood and wanted to know how the antidevelopment fight was coming. It's perfectly true, too. I really do want to cheer her on. She's taking on the big guys and sticking to her guns. That takes courage.”

So, remembering the way Jerry lived, we put on the oldest clothes we'd brought with us and made our way out to the trailer.

I had to find it from Kevin's house. Presumably there was some sort of drive directly to Jerry's property, so he could get his motorcycle out and get to town, but I had no idea how to find it from the main road. So we approached through the woods as we had done before.

“Darn it,” I said as we got to the clearing. “He must not be home. Look at the cats.”

There were five or six of them pacing around the trailer, yowling. An orange tabby, a small gray tabby, a beautiful long-haired black, a huge black-and-white specimen of what a friend of mine calls a “Holstein cat”—they were in constant motion, and I lost count. The gray one trotted confidently up to us and started stropping itself against Alan's ankle, mewing loudly in anxious little chirps.

“Oh, Alan, they're hungry, poor things. Jerry must have gone off without feeding them.”

“Surely there's plenty of game in the wood.”

“Yes, but when they're raised as pampered house cats, they're not always good at catching their own food. I'm disappointed in Jerry. I thought he'd be more responsible than that, even if he is a little peculiar.”

Alan picked up the little cat so as not to step on it and walked over to the trailer door. “He might be sleeping off a few beers too many. Can't hurt to knock. And Dorothy, if he isn't home, all is not lost. We could finally get into Kevin's house.”

He put the cat down gently and banged on the door. There was no response, but the door swung open. “He hasn't repaired that catch yet.”

“Would it be okay to go in and find some cat food, do you think?” I reached down to pet the black cat, who had approached with great dignity and an imperious look. “Jerry wouldn't mind.”

“No. Wait.” Alan's voice was sharp, curt, official. “Don't come closer, Dorothy.”

“What—?” I stopped and swallowed hard. The smell had reached me.

Jerry's trailer hadn't smelled good the first time, but the stench now was infinitely worse. Sickly sweet, catching at the throat … I swallowed again. The smell of rotten meat. Or …

A
LAN
wouldn't let me go inside. He took out a handkerchief to cover his hand, opened the screen, and made a brief reconnaissance before rejoining me.

“I called the police; they're on their way.”

“So it is Jerry? And he is …?”

“It is, and he is.”

“How did he—” I didn't seem to be able to finish a sentence.

“I don't know, my dear. Not quietly in his bed, however. He's lying in the middle of the floor. There are no obvious signs of violence, but of course I didn't examine the body.”

He sounded grim, and for a moment I wondered why. We had barely known Jerry, and death, for a policeman, isn't quite as shattering as for the rest of us.

Then I understood. He wasn't a working policeman anymore. In fact, as far as Indiana was concerned, he never had been. The retired chief constable of Belleshire, with over forty years of experience, was going to have to stand by and watch while somebody else investigated a case of unexpected death. And the somebody else didn't much care for Alan.

“Alan, he was fine when we saw him on Saturday. This is only Wednesday. How long do you think he's been dead?”

“My dear, how would I know? Some time, certainly, from the stench, but it's terribly hot in the trailer. The central heating was blasting away. That would speed the postmortem changes, of course.”

I shuddered. “And out here in the woods, with that ramshackle old trailer, I suppose there'll be … insects …”

“If there are, Dorothy, they'll help the process of determining time of death. The life cycles are quite definitive, you know—”

“I know.” I've read enough detective fiction to know about maggots, but I certainly didn't want to hear any more about them right now. I was having enough trouble keeping my stomach under control as it was.

The little gray cat came back, rubbing my ankles and purring urgently. I picked her up and cuddled her, but she wriggled free. Love was not what she wanted right now.

“Alan, what are we going to do about the cats? They're starving. There's sure to be food for them in the trailer. I don't suppose, if I was careful not to touch anything—”

“No. For one thing, you don't want to go in there. The odor is really quite unpleasant. For another, you'd corrupt what may be a crime scene, whether you meant to or not. I did, simply by using the telephone. That was unavoidable, but the cats will have to wait.”

Well, if Alan, the understated Englishman, said the odor was unpleasant, he meant it was well-nigh unbearable. I was quite content not to enter the horrid little trailer, but the gray cat had another point of view. So did the others. They set up a constant chorus of complaint and petition, accompanied by ankle-weaving and, in the case of the black one, a quick, sharp dig in the calf with an unsheathed claw by way of emphasis.

That did it. “I can't stand it. The poor things! I'm going somewhere to buy cat food. Unless you think I need to stay here.”

“I shouldn't think so. Hurry back, because the police will probably want to question you. And don't forget bowls of some sort. You can't use anything at all from the trailer.”

I found a new gas station/convenience store near the turnoff from the state highway. They had cat food, probably at a wildly inflated price, but everything here in Indiana was so much cheaper than in England that it seemed almost reasonable. I picked up several cans in different flavors and a bag of dry food. I remembered the bowls, cheap plastic ones, along with some plastic spoons. I even bought a gallon of designer water. I probably wouldn't be allowed anywhere near Jerry's sink.

I was waiting at the checkout counter, my heavy basket weighing down my arm, when a woman walked in and stared at my hat. She looked familiar.

“Don't I know you from someplace?” We spoke together, in almost the same words, and then laughed.

“Oh, I know now. The voice did it. You're that friend of Kevin Cassidy's, the woman from England—”

“Dorothy Martin. From Hillsburg, but lately from England. And you're Mrs. Schneider.”

“Hannah, right.” She glanced down at my basket. “Have you decided to move back here and acquire a menagerie, or is that a donation to the animal shelter?”

“Neither. It's—oh, yes, sorry.” I unloaded the basket on the counter for the clerk. “I'm buying this stuff for Kevin's cats.”

“I thought they were all set. Living with that crazy neighbor of his.”

“They were, but—wait a minute.” I paid for my purchases and picked up the bags. “Unfortunately, Jerry has died—”

She made a shocked noise.

“—so the cats are on their own again. I suppose they'll have to go to a shelter, but for the time being I'm trying to look after them. We were the ones who found Jerry, Alan and I, so I have to get back there to talk to the police and everything—”

“
Police!
”

“Well, it's an unexpected death. He wasn't sick on Saturday—that's when we met him. And—” I hesitated. How much should I tell her? Then I shrugged mentally. The whole story would be all over town in a day or two, anyway. “—and we're afraid it might not be a natural death. He—I haven't seen him, but Alan says he's lying in the middle of the floor, so—”

“Hmph! Don't know that I'd have expected anything else.”

“Yes, well … we were planning to stop and see you later, perhaps, Alan and I, but now I don't know if—”

“You're welcome any time. But do call first.”

“I remember. I must go.”

The trip had taken longer than I'd planned. By the time I got close to Jerry's trailer (still through the woods), the whole place was surrounded by police cars with flashing lights and blaring radios, and the cats had vanished.

I was annoyed at the hullabaloo. Surely they were making a huge fuss over what might be a very simple matter. And they had terrified the cats.

I stood at the edge of the clearing and called softly, “Here, kitty, kitty.” No response. Maybe no one had ever called them “kitty” before, and I didn't know their names. I could just set out the food, of course, but wild animals might eat it before the cats could get a chance. However, I couldn't stand there all day waiting for frightened cats to return. I popped the top off one of the cans.