A Curious Affair (9 page)

I hung up the phone with an insulting degree of enthusiasm and turned to Atherton.

What’s wrong?
he asked warily.

“Atherton? If I asked you to do something for me, would you?”

His wariness increased.

Perhaps. What do you wish me to do?

“I want to make sure that you don’t get sick. Would you be willing to see a veterinarian?”

What is a veterinarian?

“It’s an animal healer. He would give you some medicine to make sure that you don’t get sick.”

Oh. Irving did that. A woman in a white coat came to his
house and she stabbed us with needles. I didn’t like it, but Irving
said we must do it to stay well
.

“Irving said…You mean, Irving could talk to you? Like me?” My voice got a little high-pitched.

Not as clearly as you. He did not understand us so well. But
he always listened and tried to comprehend
.

I shook my head, trying to adjust my world to this
information. Could it be that I wasn’t the first person in Irish Camp to hear cats talking? Then, with a bit of insight that was damn near blinding: Was Irv’s insistence on solitude a side effect of having strange cats talking at him whenever he went into town? I had certainly been avoiding town for this reason. Was Irv’s feeding the strays his way of bribing them into silence?

Jillian?

Or, was this some new form of delusion I had invented so I felt less of a freak? It wouldn’t do any good to ask Atherton if he was an illusion. Obviously, if I was crazy, he would say what ever I needed to hear.

Instead of worrying about it the way I used to, I went to shower. I would need a while to steam my jaw open enough to face a social situation.

Irving’s nephew, Peter Jordon Wilkes, had inherited everything. Molly whispered the news to me over a commemorative scotch, preferred to the casseroles some neighbors might have dropped around in lieu of attending the funeral. She uttered this remark in the same tone of hushed outrage as a country vicar finding out his faithless house keeper had been putting arsenic in his tea. She was taking this matter very personally. That Irv might have had anything of value and not left it to her seemed an insult to her feminine charms. What I wondered at was her belief that Irv had anything of value to leave to anyone.

I nodded and looked concerned, though Molly had dumped Irv long ago and I could see no reason that she should have been chosen to inherit anything from him. And, in spite of my words to the sheriff, I would have been more impressed by the appearance of this will had Irv’s
everything
included something of obvious monetary value—perhaps an old family portrait painted by Whistler, or jewels he’d smuggled out of Korea after
the war, or a cache of gold ore dug out of that old collapsing mine shaft at the back of his property.

The last thought gave me pause. Could there actually be gold on his own property? Not ore. The mine was played out. But could the recent rain and attendant mudslides have unearthed another golden treasure on our hill? Gold needn’t have been discovered on Irv’s land—in fact, it most likely wasn’t since he was at the top of the mountain and gold, being heavy, washed downward. But might he have found gold somewhere else and backtracked to the source—and when he had, it turned out to conveniently be on his own land?

I would have to talk to Atherton, ask him if he had ever seen Irv digging in the dirt or playing with pretty yellow pebbles.

Avoiding cold drinks and alcohol, I managed to convince someone to give me a plain coffee, which I hid behind as I watched and listened to this strange crowd gathered in Irv’s memory. A few of us were there because Irv had helped us in a time of crisis. Cal wasn’t the only person to have enjoyed his philanthropy, and I think the others didn’t know how else to pay their respects to the man who had helped them or their loved ones through a difficult time. They looked ill at ease, though; and grateful though they were, they didn’t stay long in The Mule.

I eavesdropped subtly on the crowd but gained nothing from it. Half of the others in the room sounded like their lives were one long hangover left from the four-year party in high school begun when they still had hopes of achieving some form of greatness. Or at least escape. I had nothing to say to them. I couldn’t help them relive their glory days as jocks or cheerleaders, and their inability to face their current reality scared me.

The rest were like Molly and Dell. They had abandoned all hope of a life beyond Irish Camp and were
filled with a numb fatalism about the remainder of their days. I wanted desperately to flee from them because they reminded me of my own recent despair, but couldn’t leave yet. I had to wait for the nephew.

A ripple eddied through the room and I looked up to see which conversational rock might have been thrown into our midst. It didn’t take long to spot him. He was tall, lean and looked an awful lot like Irving, though he lacked Irv’s kind eyes. There was something primitive about those eyes, soulless, animal—though that seems wrong to say because I believe that animals have souls and that their eyes are as compassionate as any human’s. And there was also—now, don’t laugh—an aura about him. I couldn’t see it exactly, but I could sense it.
Murderus-
lopithecus
, I thought, the modern sociopath’s early ancestor. I didn’t smile at this joke because, well, it wasn’t a joke. I knew I was looking at Irv’s killer.

“That’s him,” Molly all but hissed as the stranger hung up his damp denim jacket on the coatrack by the door. Denim jackets were common enough up here, but this one still gave me what my Scottish grandmother would have called a
cauld grue
. I rubbed my free hand down my arm, trying to smooth the gooseflesh. It took an effort to feign nonchalance as I turned back to Molly. It didn’t help my supernatural dread that over her shoulder I could see Atherton perched on the window box, smashing down the dried remains of last autumn’s chrysanthemums that hadn’t wintered over. His eyes were fixed, too wide and a bit wild. His nostrils were flaring as he drew in fast breaths from the crack in the ill-fitting window.

I exhaled. Atherton had followed me. I had asked him not to, but the cat had a mind of his own.

And now that I thought about it, this was probably a good thing. It shouldn’t be hard to get hold of the nephew’s jacket and take it outside. The act was a
formality, though. I already knew that I was looking at Irving’s killer.

I let Dell introduce me to the nephew. It was hard to meet his eyes and I couldn’t bring myself to shake his hand, though I still have a hard time explaining why. He didn’t look like a killer. His voice was not sinister. It was quiet; not so much soft as utterly inconsequential. Nor was he especially large or threatening, though I could see that there was strength in his bony hand. But within seconds of being introduced it felt like someone with a sledgehammer and homicidal intention was at work inside my skull, frantically trying to beat a way out. I couldn’t be near him for more than a second. I could barely breathe.

Part of it might have been because he was wearing Cal’s aftershave. On this man it made me feel sick. It was an obscenity, a violation of Cal’s memory. I could feel my lips wanting to curl back from my teeth. If I had been a dog, I would have snarled.

I backed away from Wilkes and into Sheriff Murphy. It was a sudden relief to see, or at least feel, the strong presence of the law at my back. I didn’t even mind the large hand that settled on my waist for a few seconds longer than was necessary to steady me.

“Tyler, have you met Peter Wilkes?” I asked. I sounded almost normal. My incipient panic had been aborted by his presence. Still, though I had arrested my snarl, I could tell that Tyler was eyeing me with a concerned gaze. Something of the horror and rage that I had been feeling had transferred itself into his awareness. Our Irish sheriff had a bit of the fey about him.

“Yes. We met earlier today. Mister Wilkes, good to see you again.”

“Sheriff,” the light, inoffensive voice answered. Wilkes didn’t seem to notice me huddling away from him,
which made me very happy. I never wanted to get near this creature again.

“That’s all good, then,” I said. I turned away from both men, checking my face in the fly-specked mirror behind the bar. I looked fairly normal. Pale is my natural winter state. For Tyler’s benefit I said, “Gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse me. It’s been a long day and my jaw has had enough of cold and conversation for one night.” I managed a quick turn back in their direction and an unfocused half-smile.

I knew that Tyler continued to stare at me, so I made myself walk toward Molly and pulled out some social blither for the ex-girlfriend and Mrs. Jameson, the Baptist minister’s wife, whose iron-gray-haired, iron-willed presence in The Mule I couldn’t even begin to fathom. Perhaps she had had car trouble and stopped in to phone for a tow truck. Or she had come down with dementia and forgotten that this was the house of iniquity and sin her husband preached against.

Molly didn’t want to let me go. She was enjoying herself, playing the near-widow. She began telling me about how Mrs. Jameson had been Irv’s grammar school teacher, reaching for sentiment in the old battle-axe that I doubted was there. I nodded politely as Molly chattered, trying to get away but not finding a long enough pause in the conversation to do it gracefully. All I wanted was to get to Peter Wilkes’s coat and take it outside to Atherton, but Mrs. Jameson had other plans for me. She had found out that I was a writer and planned to pick my brains clean about a book her nephew was writing.

I think that I was in some kind of shock, because I was unable to focus on the conversation. Instead, Mrs. Jameson’s neck fascinated me. It was as wrinkled as an elephant’s leg, though a good deal thinner. It was all I could
do to pull my eyes away from the loose folds of grayish skin that slipped up and down every time she swallowed or said a word with the letter
p
in it. Instead, I tried staring at the black velvet bow in her steely hair and nodded repeatedly as she told me the excruciating details of what seemed the most ridiculous mystery plot I’d ever heard. In some ways, she reminded me of my maternal grandmother, a righteous woman of Puritan stock whose dead bones were probably still quivering with outrage at my lack of feminine homemaking virtues. Mom had come by her limited world view honestly. Though I wanted to, it was impossible to just walk away from my grandmother’s disapproving shade, so instead I looked at the painting over her shoulder, nodded at intervals, and kept saying
Uh-
huh, hm, really?

Finally, feeling desperate enough to do the unthinkable, I reached into my purse and took out a business card. I never do this, since I would rather have my skin removed by a dull potato peeler than give advice to a beginning writer who probably doesn’t want anyone telling him the brutal realities of the business, but I pushed the card into her hand and suggested that Mrs. Jameson have her nephew contact me so we could talk about his project. I then made a mental note to change my phone number in the morning just in case he did call.

I leaned toward Molly and performed an air kiss that took her completely by surprise. At last I was ready to escape. I oozed my way toward the door, doing my best to get lost in the clouds of cigarette smoke just in case Tyler was still watching me. I made it to the coatrack by the red door and oh-so-casually lifted down Peter Wilkes’s coat. It smelled of Cal’s aftershave and I wanted to cry that this memory was being taken from me, forever corrupted by this horrible man. I didn’t put the jacket on since it would obviously be too large and I couldn’t claim to have made a mistake if anyone saw me
with it. Also, the smell made me sick and I’d sooner have wrapped myself in a corpse’s shroud.

I stepped outside. It was cold and beginning to rain, but a huge improvement over the atmosphere inside. Atherton had seen me make the switch and was waiting on the bench just outside the door.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” I asked in a whisper.

Atherton sniffed once and then backed away. His fur began to rise.

Yes, that’s smelly-
butt man. He can’t hide his scent from
me with that other stinky smell
.

My eyewitness—and nose-witness—had spoken. I looked the coat over, hoping for a blood spatter, something I could show to the sheriff and ask to have tested for Irv’s DNA. There wasn’t anything that I could see. Perhaps it had already been washed. Could laundry detergent remove all traces of blood? I didn’t know.

“His name is Peter Wilkes. He is Irv’s nephew,” I said. “Wait for me here. I’ll just be a second. I have to put this coat back before someone notices it’s missing.”

Tell the sheep man to take him away. Tell him to put him
in a box
.

“It’s not that easy. The sheep man won’t arrest this guy unless we have proof that he’s the one.”

Proof
.

“Proof that a human can understand. Smell isn’t enough.”

I stepped back inside and swapped coats. My own jacket was denim but of a much lighter shade, and it had a faux fur lining. My hands didn’t shake as I made the switch. My attack of nerves were gone. I knew who the killer was. All that remained was to prove that he was the one who had done this heinous deed.

It didn’t surprise me any when Tyler appeared at my side. I didn’t have to look up at his face to know it was him. Tyler is tall—at least to me—lean and muscled
without being freakish. In other words, he has adequate muscle for doing real things and not just exercising in the gym. His badge at eye-level was also a hint to his identity. There was only one man in town whose occupation was stated on his chest in shiny gold.

“Are you alright?” Tyler asked softly. “Frankly, I’ve seen corpses with better color.”

“I’m fine. Just very tired. It was a long day. And the smoke in here is a bit much.” I let my words come out indistinctly. I wasn’t faking pain, just the degree I felt. I also kept my eyes on another of the bar’s bad paintings. This one was really bad, a portrait that any kindergartener could have drawn, but it was hung in an expensive antique frame. I wondered where they got their art. Not the gallery across the street. Hell’s bells, Renoir could have scribbled his name on it and still no one of any taste would have touched it.