The Tail of the Secret Identity: A Beatrice Young Cozy Cat Mystery (Beatrice Young Cozy Cat Mysteries Book 3) (2 page)

“Poached eggs and fruit salad for me,” said Janice, Nancy’s best friend and the ultimate devil in a blonde, well-toned package.

Beatrice thought some kind of witchcraft must be involved in Janice’s perfect perky blonde ponytail and taut skin. She didn’t look all that different from when she was on the cheer team.

None
of them did. Meanwhile, with her long gray hair, crow’s feet, and bat wings under her arms, Beatrice looked exactly her age. Then again, they almost all had husbands to impress. Beatrice only had
herself
to impress, and she was sufficiently impressed with still being alive, able-bodied, and in possession of her wits.

Lucky bounded over and promptly jumped into the lap of his favorite yoga queen—Joan. She gasped and began cooing as she stroked his plush black coat. He started to purr immediately and gazed up at her with loving green eyes.

“Hello darling,” she said, scratching his favorite spot at the base of his tail. “How’s my handsome boy?”

She smiled up at Beatrice. “I’ve been thinking of getting a cat. Ever since the, well, since the divorce, the house has seemed pretty empty. The girls say I should get a dog but I always had cats growing up.” Her expression clouded. “And Bob was allergic.”

Bob was the ex-husband. He had left Joan a couple of years before for—the old story—a younger woman. Of all the yoga queens, Joan was the one Beatrice liked best, mainly because she was actually
nice
. She had Jane Seymour’s long, ashy brown hair, almond eyes, and shy smile.

“I can help you. In fact, I had a beautiful Himalayan who just wandered in here today.” Beatrice reached out to scratch Lucky’s ears, a bit jealous of his fixation on Nancy. He turned away and butted his head against Joan’s arm.

Nancy’s cell phone rang. The ringtone was, believe it or not, “Fancy” by Iggy Azalea. Beatrice cringed.

“Heeeellloooooo!” she trilled. “Who is this? Sheriff! Lovely to hear from you…”

There was a long pause. Beatrice looked over just in time to see Nancy’s face go paper-white. “No…” she whispered. “That can’t be…”

The smartphone slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor. Nancy’s eyes rolled back in her head and she fell out of her chair and landed hard on the floor.

4

There was a collective gasp and then Nancy’s friends leapt up and went to her side.

“Nancy, Nancy! Can you hear me? Are you okay?” Janice asked.

Beatrice sat frozen in place. Lucky, however, acted immediately. He raced over to the phone spinning on the floor and batted it towards Beatrice’s feet. It hit her toes. A voice floated out: “Hello? Nancy? Hello!”

Beatrice grabbed the phone. “Sheriff?”

“Bee! Is Nancy okay?”

The mayor’s wife was groaning as her friends lifted her back into her chair. “I think she just passed out. What’s going on, Jake?”

Sheriff Jacob Roy pause. “Bee, I need to trust you to keep this to yourself. Bernie’s dead.”

Beatrice’s stomach felt like it was going to sink into the floor. Bernie Sullivan was Nancy’s husband and the mayor of Ashbrook.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“Not sure. His secretary found him. Died right at his desk. I’m there now.”

“Natural causes?”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “Definitely not. Gunshot wound to the chest.”

Beatrice stared down into Lucky’s eyes. He looked back gravely. “This is serious, Jake. Who would walk into the mayor’s office and kill him?”

“I dunno. But if you want to help me find out, you’d better get over here lickety-split.”

He didn’t have to ask her twice. Sheriff Jacob Roy and her had been on the outs recently, thanks to a rather tricky extortion case involving her friend, Nathan. She’d kept the matter from him, out of deference to Nathan. Needless to say, that didn’t go over well.

If Jake was inviting her to the crime scene, that was a sign that they’d finally patched things up.

Dr. Violet came in and was immediately mobbed by the yoga crew.

“You have to help Nancy!” Janice said, clutching her arm. “She fainted dead away.”

“I’m a vet not a doctor, but I’ll see what I can do,” Violet said, throwing a rueful look Beatrice’s way.

“I have to go,” Beatrice said. “Petunia, the cat with the eye infection, is in my office. Send me the bill?”

The vet shook her head. “How about you keep me in cheesecake brownies and we’ll call it a deal?”

Beatrice smiled and poked her head into the kitchen. “Zoe, I have to fly. Sheriff just called. Something serious came up but I can’t tell you what. It has to do with the mayor … oh darn, I said too much.”

Zoe was at the industrial mixer, spoon in hand. “I can’t hear you!” she yelled. “Just go.”

Ashbrook was so small that it was as easy to walk anywhere as drive. The mayor’s office was two streets over and so she walked over briskly on foot, Lucky and Hamish trotting at her heels. The two cats had garnered great fame in their town for helping solve crimes and she hoped she could rely on them once again.

The prettiness of Ashbrook made it hard to believe that murder could be afoot. It was your typical New England tourist town—low brick shops with hand-painted signs, cobblestone streets and black wrought iron lanterns lining the wide sidewalks. Reggie Miller, head church volunteer and number one Beatrice Young fan, waved to her from outside the tall white church. She waved back and hurried on to city hall just a block away.

The building was eerily silent. Deputy Parker Smith sat in the foyer with Bernie’s secretary. A plump woman who loved cheerful floral skirts and high pumps, Bridget Miller was Reggie’s sister and a long-time city hall employee. Mascara stained her cheeks but she made no effort to wipe it away with the ball of tissue clenched in her hand.

Beatrice rushed over. “Bridget, I’m so sorry.” She put a hand on her shoulder.

The secretary looked up, eyes red. “Who would do something like this?” she said in a hushed voice. “Bernie never hurt a soul.”

“Don’t you worry, we’ll get to the bottom of this.” As if backing her up, Hamish rubbed against her leg and Lucky head-butted her foot while purring.

Beatrice went on into the mayor’s quarters. There was an outer office and waiting room with Bridget’s desk, which was cluttered with photographs of tawny Pomeranians. She opened another door and stopped short at what she saw. The mayor was slumped face down, over his desk, still seated. She backed away slowly. The sheriff was carefully photographing the scene. He looked up.

“Almost done here, Bee.”

Averting her eyes from the disturbing scene, Beatrice shooed the cats out and then paced the office with its tall rows of beech bookshelves containing volumes on a wide variety of topics from American politics to environmental issues to social justice. There was also a surprising number of true crime novels and, even stranger, books about living off the grid.

Beatrice ran her finger along the spines.
How To Forage For Food
,
Building Shelter in the Woods
, and
Advanced Wilderness Survival Tactics
were some of the titles. She had no idea that the mayor was interested in wilderness survival. After all, he was married to
Nancy
. They liked golfing, shopping in Portland, and dining in the finest restaurants. She had never heard about them going camping, hiking, or anything like that.

Well, people can surprise you.

Or else Bernie Sullivan knew someone was coming for him and he was planning his getaway.

The sheriff’s camera stopped clicking and he put a gentle hand on her arm. “Let’s go sit in Bridget’s office for now.”

Beatrice felt relieved. She was good at solving crimes. Crime
scenes
—not her thing.

They sat on the plush couches right outside the mayor’s office. Hamish sniffed diligently at the door, his fluffy tail twitching. The sheriff ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. His craggy face looked even more tired than usual.

“What a day,” he said, putting the camera aside. “I’ve already notified state police. They’re going to be all over this one.”

“So what do we know?” Beatrice asked, leaning in.

“Not much. Bernie came in around 8 a.m. Bridget says he seemed normal, even upbeat. She went out to the deli around the corner to get him his usual coffee and bagel. When she got back, he was dead. No one had seen anything. There were no signs of struggle or forced entry. Someone just walked through the front door and shot him.”

“Bernie must have known the person. Wouldn’t he stand up if it was an intruder?”

The sheriff stroked his bushy moustache. “Maybe. Bee, I got a weird feeling about this.”

“Weird feelings and hunches are my bread and butter. Let’s have it.”

He snapped on a pair of gloves and fetched a zip lock bag out of the mayor’s office. In it was a fine leather wallet. Jake took it out and then removed a card.

Beatrice frowned. “It’s his drivers license. But it’s one of the old ones. Paper.” She peered at it. “I haven’t seen this type in a while.”

“Here’s the thing, I’m as old as all get-out so I remember exactly how these licenses are supposed to look.” He pulled out his own wallet. “In fact, I have my old expired one right here.” He took it out and held both up for comparison.

“Bernie’s has square corners but yours are rounded!”

“Just so. And look closer. The lettering on mine is made of little dots.”

“His looks like something you’d make on a typewriter. But, what are you saying Jake? That this is a forgery?”

The sheriff carefully put the license back in the wallet. “I’m not saying anything yet. Only, don’t you think it’s a little strange for our town’s mayor not only to have an old-fashioned license but one that looks different?”

“I see what you mean by ‘a weird feeling,’” Beatrice said. “So what now?”

“Let’s take Bridget back to the office and do a proper interview. The state police will be here soon enough anyway to properly case the crime scene and deal with the body. Let’s go.”

5

Beatrice didn’t believe in police work without coffee and snacks. She swung by the café first and picked up a fresh carafe plus enough croissants and muffins to feed an army. She also checked on Petunia, who seemed to be responding well to the eye drops. Gunk had stopped leaking out of her eyes and it looked like Dr. Violet had given her a bath too. She looked perfectly content to curl up in a ball and sleep in the café office.

She headed back over to the police station on foot and texted her best friend (and ex-husband) Matthew Thompson to tell him that she had a new—and it was a big one. She had texted him that morning but he still hadn’t replied. Blast him. As if he had something better to do, like his job as a park ranger. Pfft.

Bridget was sitting in the sheriff’s cramped office when she came in. Her face was blotchy but she’d managed to clean it up a bit. The deputy sat on the sofa. Hamish and Lucky settled beside him. Beatrice really had to get them cat beds for this office—after all, they spent so much time in it.

The sheriff sat behind his ancient desktop computer. It had a thin layer of dust on it and stacks of files caged it in. He pushed some of the clutter aside, putting the rest on the floor.

“So Bridget, you’ve been working for the mayor for how long?”

“Seven years while he’s been in office.” She sniffed. “And five years before that while he worked in a support position to the old mayor, Brent Crosbie.”

“Has there been anything unusual going on in his life lately?”

She shook her head slowly. “Bernie was always a private person. He didn’t talk a lot about his life. But he was always a kind man. When he hired me I was nothing but a grocery store clerk. He said I was bright and that he’d teach me everything he knew. And that he did.” Tears welled up in her eyes again.

“What about all the wilderness survival books?” Beatrice asked gently. “I didn’t think he was much of an outdoors person.”

Bridget shrugged. “He started asking me to order that stuff online a few months ago. Mentioned something about retirement. After all, his final term was going to be up next year so I thought he was just wanted to get away from it all for a while.” She blinked. “Though you’re right. Bernie was never an outdoorsy guy.”

“And what can you tell us about Bernie from the time before he arrived here? What was it, about 15 years ago?” the sheriff asked.

“Nancy might be able to help you there. Like I said, Bernie was private. He never talked about his family or his life before Ashbrook. He didn’t volunteer anything so I didn’t ask. I got the sense he was from the south somewhere and that he’d never worked in politics before. And…” she paused.

The sheriff leaned in. “What is it?”

“He did have one strange trait. I mean, I was probably the person he trusted most in the world. Maybe even more than his wife—sorry for saying that but I’m not sure they were especially close. But he always seemed to be testing me or something.”

“Testing you how?”

“Well, there was this time when he told me that he’d … killed someone. In his past. And that if I wanted to, it’d be really easy for me to find out who and when. He asked me not to tell anyone. That it would ruin him. I didn’t say anything for an entire month—I just didn’t think it could be true. I mean, I trusted the man with everything in me. I knew it was wrong, that I should have told you, but I couldn’t…

Bridget looked down at her hands, struggling for words. “And then, after a month, he told me it was all made up. He’d never killed anyone, he just wanted to see if I’d tell people about it. He laughed it off like it was a silly joke. I did too, but now I realize it was mighty strange…”

Beatrice and the sheriff exchanged looks. “First I’ve heard of this,” he said. “He would have had to have a criminal record check before he became mayor. If there was any suspicion of foul play he’d never have been allowed to run.”

Bridget wrung her hands. “Please, don’t think badly of Bernie. He didn’t have a lot of friends. It was a pretty weird way to test me, but I feel he really needed to know that he could trust me.”