Dying to Read (17 page)

Radford’s dark eyebrows scrunched in confusion at these out-of-the-box comments, but he held his hand out to Cate. “Radford Longstreet,” he said.

Cate, figuring she’d rather have Radford confused than knowing she was suspicious of him, said, “Maples and oaks are friendly, but poplars are terribly unsociable.”

“That’s, uh, interesting,” he murmured, and Cate could see him mentally slapping a “kook” label across her purple lump. Good. He turned his attention back to Willow. “I won’t keep you. I just wanted to say hello. It’s been a difficult time, coping with the tragedy of Amelia’s death. I was out of town at the time, so it was a terrible shock to get back and find out what had happened.”

Hey, that wasn’t true! “But Willow saw—”

This time it was Cate who got the swift kick in the ankle, and she hastily changed direction. “Willow saw all these lovely old trees that were being cut down, and you could almost hear them crying. A terrible tragedy.”

Still looking baffled but turning a shoulder to ignore kook Cate, Radford said to Willow, “Perhaps we could get together sometime, so we can share our memories of Amelia.” He looked up at the house. “Sometime when her niece isn’t around.” His acid tone suggested
niece
wasn’t the word he would have liked to use, that he was thinking something considerably more descriptive.

It sounded like a strange suggestion to Cate. Willow made a noncommittal mumble. Radford headed back to his Mustang, and Cate suddenly realized that as a PI she was again failing here. Radford topped her suspect list, and she was letting him get away without extracting so much as a smidgen of information out of him.

“Maybe you should give Willow your address, in case she needs to get in touch with you,” Cate called after him.

He turned. “Why?”

“In case she, um, hears something about Amelia’s death. Or needs to talk to you.”

“What’s there to hear?”

“Have the police talked to you?”

“They had a few questions. Nothing important.” Radford strode up to Cate and stared at her. “I don’t know who you are or what this is about, but I find this dialogue . . . upsetting. Amelia and I were deeply in love, and I’m extremely distressed by her death.”

“You came here today to offer your condolences to Cheryl?” Cate suggested.

“Condolences? To that greedy . . . woman?” Again he sounded as if the word he used were a poor substitute for what he wanted to call Amelia’s niece. Obviously no lost love between Radford and Cheryl. “Cheryl completely cut me out of the funeral. I didn’t even get to say good-bye to Amelia properly.”

His distress sounded sincere—or he was experienced at faking sincerity.

“It was a private service,” Willow said. “I don’t think it amounted to much anyway.”

“I’m not surprised,” Radford muttered.

Still no clue why he was here today. Cate fished. “So you came here today to ask where Amelia is buried?”

“Why I’m here is none of your business.”

Radford stalked back to the Mustang, jumped in, slammed the door, and squealed the tires as he roared down the street.

“I think you ticked him off,” Willow observed. “Though he was already ticked off at Cheryl, wasn’t he?”

“He was
lying.
He wasn’t out of town. You saw him that very morning Amelia fell down the stairs, on your way home from the deli.”

“I suppose I could have been mistaken.” Willow was still gazing down the street, where the Mustang had disappeared around the corner. “But I don’t think so. And I just thought of something. I don’t remember Amelia ever actually using that old back stairway. But Radford smokes, and she wouldn’t let him smoke in the house, so sometimes they went out and sat together on that rickety old landing at the top of the stairs so he could smoke there.”

Willow seeing him in the area the morning of Amelia’s fall put Radford Longstreet in the vicinity at the time of her death. This new information put him at the top of the stairs with Amelia, if not specifically that morning, at least occasionally. And, if he was also included in the will . . .

Was that why he was here today? Checking on what Amelia had left him? But Cheryl must have won today’s round, whatever it was, or he wouldn’t have been so angry when he left.

Inside the house, Cheryl moved across the room toward them. The drapery at a front window fluttered behind her, as if she’d been standing there watching their encounter with Radford. Angry lines cut deep parentheses around her mouth. A streak of dust decorated her pink T-shirt, and several straggly strands hung out of her sleek hairdo. A large cardboard box stood near the bottom of the stairs, the head of a stuffed owl sticking out the top of it. Apparently Cheryl and Scott were in the process of discarding mementos of old husbands.

Cheryl rolled her eyes. “I cannot see what Aunt Amelia saw in that man.” She shuddered delicately.

“Love is blind?” Willow suggested.

“As an infatuated bat.” Cheryl made a dismissive swish of manicured hand, as if she were clearing an unwanted picture from an Etch-a-Sketch screen. She smiled and reached out to clasp Cate’s hands warmly. “I’m so glad you’re here. I was going to call you later if I missed seeing you today.”

“Willow said you wanted to talk to me?”

“First, I must apologize for my actions the day we first met. I was so very upset that day. I still am, of course, but I was really in a daze that day, so soon after Aunt Amelia’s death.” Cheryl put a hand to her throat as if reliving the traumatic experience. “It was just a terrible day.”

“No need to apologize. I understand.”

“Anyway, I don’t know what in the world I was thinking, letting you take our sweet kitty. I’ve just kicked myself ever since. Olivia meant a great deal to Aunt Amelia, and of course I want to give her a good home.”

Cate, even though she’d first felt nimbly maneuvered into accepting Octavia, now had the unexpected feeling she was being maneuvered in the opposite direction. Warily she said, “
Octavia
has a good home with us. There’s no need to be concerned about her.”

“I’d really like to have her back,” Cheryl said. “She belongs with me, you know. And she needs the special diet Aunt Amelia provided for her. I’m so fond of her, and it’s important to me that she’s happy and well cared for.”

Cate hadn’t seen any signs of fondness or concern about Octavia’s welfare when Cheryl shooed the cat out of Amelia’s office and complained about her excess of white hair. Nor had Cheryl struck her as being particularly “dazed” that day.

“I think she’s happy with us,” Cate said. “I’m taking good care of her.” Octavia might like her high-priced cat food, but they’d discovered she’d also happily chow down on almost anything edible.

“I want her back.” Cheryl smiled, but her voice took on an edge. “In fact, I really must insist on it.”

“You gave her to me,” Cate pointed out. With an edge of her own, she added, “I intend to keep her.” She wasn’t about to give Octavia back to someone who couldn’t even remember her right name, someone who’d planned to dump her at an animal shelter. What was this all about anyway?

A man appeared at the top of the stairs. Cate assumed he was Scott Calhoun. Not quite as good-looking as Radford, but definitely in the tall, dark, and handsome category. Was there some family trait—like aunt, like niece—that gravitated to this genre of men? The touches of silver in Scott’s neat beard and dark hair gave him a distinguished maturity, but Cate placed him as several years younger than Cheryl. A preference for younger men another family trait? He wore jeans and a sweatshirt, scruffy enough to be mildly disreputable looking, but taking nothing away from a man-in-charge confidence. He came down the stairs and crossed the room to stand by his wife. She immediately snuggled under his arm and put a hand on his chest.

“Is there a problem here?” he asked, his tone genial. He gave Cate’s purple-headlight bump a glance but didn’t make any reference to it.

“This woman is refusing to give the cat back,” Cheryl said.

“You must be Cate Kinkaid, the woman I talked to on the phone. Cheryl said you and Willow looked so much alike, and there is a remarkable resemblance, isn’t there?” His glance flicked between them before he stepped forward and held out a hand. “I’m Scott Calhoun.”

Cate shook the hand, still wary in spite of what appeared to be his effort to defuse an uncomfortable situation with Cheryl.

“We do want to thank you for putting us in touch with Willow. Having her here to look after the house is a great relief for us,” Scott said.

Cate didn’t mention that she’d tried hard to talk Willow out of the job. “You’re welcome.”

“About the cat—”

“I’m very fond of her, and she has a good home with me.”

“I’m sure she does, and this is really just an awkward misunderstanding. Cheryl was so upset that day. She just wasn’t thinking straight when she let you take the cat.”

“She didn’t ‘let’ me take Octavia,” Cate pointed out. “She gave her to me.”

“I’m sure you can understand how distraught Cheryl was that day,” Scott said, smoothly sliding over the differences in their versions of Cate’s acquisition of the cat. “We really want to make Amelia’s beloved pet a part of our lives. We can come to wherever you live to pick her up. We don’t want to inconvenience you in any way.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’m glad to have her.”

“This is quite important to us. The cat is family, you know, as beloved pets are.”

Family? When Cheryl didn’t even know her right name, and all he could call her was “the cat”? “I’m sorry, but I’m really quite attached to Octavia now.”

A faint line cut between Scott’s dark brows. “We don’t want to be unpleasant about this, but we really must insist that the cat be returned.” His tone, like Cheryl’s, had hardened, but in a more conciliatory tone he added, “We’ll be glad to pay you for your time taking care of her, or any expenses you’ve incurred.”

“No,” Cate said, her own resolve hardening. “She’s a part of my family now.”
And I’m not giving her back.

Cate had first tried to give Octavia away to any neighbor who’d take her. But now she was accustomed to the furry body snuggling up to her back or feet at night. She liked having Octavia there to greet her whenever she got home, even if the greeting might be a yowl of complaint. And no matter what either Cheryl or Scott said about fondness or wanting her to be a part of their lives, Cate couldn’t see Octavia comfortably sprawled on one of those burgundy velvet chairs in the Springfield home. Something else was going on here, and whatever it was, Cate didn’t like it.

“The cat is, of course, part of Amelia’s estate,” Scott said. “So it really wasn’t Cheryl’s prerogative to let you take her. We apologize for that. But it is, at this point, a legal matter. She must be returned.”

“No.”

“If you refuse to return the cat, we’ll have to take up the matter with the legal firm handling Amelia’s estate,” Scott warned. “In fact, if you refuse to return the cat, now that we’ve given you ample opportunity, this might even have to be pursued as a criminal matter.”

“Criminal?”

“Theft.”

Cate suddenly had visions of a major assault: lawyers brandishing legal papers, cops storming in with a cat net. No matter. No way was she letting these people have Octavia.

Cheryl stepped forward, her stance threatening. “If you let anything happen to Olivia—”

“Octavia.”

Cheryl ignored the correction. “There will be serious consequences. I’m warning you—”

“I’ll consider myself warned,” Cate shot back. “But I’m not giving Octavia back.”

Willow had remained silent during this exchange, and she didn’t now mention the sack of cat food. Cate gave her a stiff nod and headed for the door, but she was only a few blocks from the house when her cell phone rang. She pulled over to the curb to answer it.

“Cate, it’s me, Willow,” Willow said, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. “I don’t know what’s with Cheryl and Scott. Cheryl hates cats, and Octavia in particular. She never could stand all that shedding hair. I’m glad you didn’t let them scare you into giving her back.”

“It sounds as if they may have me arrested for catnapping.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it? But Cheryl doesn’t know anything about that sack of cat food, so you can have it anyway. That’s what Amelia would want, I’m sure. It’s that special, high-priced kind Octavia likes. You can come get it some other time, when they’re gone.”

“Well, we’ll see.”

“And I’ll see what I can find out about why Radford was here, and why Cheryl was so upset about it.”

“How?”

“Don’t you know? Eavesdropping is a fine art among the hired help. Maybe I’ll turn into a PI myself!”

“Willow, I don’t think you should get involved—”

“Gotta go. Cheryl’s coming. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

 13 

Cate drove to the hospital, but Uncle Joe was asleep when she reached his room. Rebecca was sitting patiently by his side, a magazine open on her lap. She whispered that he’d had a bad day, and Cate tiptoed out without waking him.

Back home, she was startled to see a familiar SUV parked at the curb. She dashed through the aisle between the house and garage. A neatly tied black lawn bag stood by the back of the garage. The ladder leaned against the house now. Cate stopped short. Mitch stood at the top of the ladder, another black bag in hand.

“What are you doing here?” Cate yelled up at him. Dumb question. It was obvious what he was doing. Cleaning gutters. Just what he’d said he was going to do.

He tossed the partly filled bag to the ground and came down the ladder. He was in his old paint-blobbed coveralls, now with a couple of soggy leaves stuck in his hair instead of paint on his face. “After I finished with the garage, I noticed the house gutters needed cleaning too.” He took off his gloves and slapped them against the ladder.

“But I thought . . . I mean . . .”

“You didn’t think I was coming?” he challenged.

“Well, after yesterday—”

“I said I’d be here. Yesterday didn’t change that.”

Cate wavered between appreciation that he’d come in spite of their confrontation, and exasperation that he’d shown up when she assumed he wouldn’t. A man who lived up to his word, no doubt even if he had to climb mountains, swim rivers, or crawl through walls of fire, and she’d skipped out. A one-upmanship banner waving right at the top of the flagpole.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help,” Cate said. Although he obviously hadn’t needed help. He’d also brought his own lawn bags in which to stash the gutter gunk. She knew he wouldn’t accept payment, so she made another offer. “Maybe we could donate something to your church’s Helping Hands project?”

“The project can always use donations.”

“Okay, then. Well, uh . . .”

Mitch grabbed the partly filled bag and put a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m doing the house gutters too. They looked as if they needed cleaning just as much as the garage gutters.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you.”

He snapped his head around to give her a sharp look, as if he suspected the statement was something other than complimentary, and Cate had to admit she wasn’t sure what it was. He dropped his foot back to the ground. “Look, I may have come on a little strong with my concerns about your work. As you pointed out, none of my business.”

As an apology, it wasn’t all that great. But he was admitting he’d overstepped boundaries. He probably deserved an apology too. She’d been a little over the top with her sarcastic “big, strong man” retort.

“I may have . . . overreacted,” she said.

“Even though it was none of my business, I did a little surfing on the internet last night and before church this morning. I found out a few things that might interest you.”

“About what?”

“People.”

“Knight in shining armor galloping in on his white horse to rescue helpless damsel in distress again?”

Something momentarily flashed in his blue eyes, but he stayed above her level of snideness when he said, “I’m fairly adept at galloping around on the internet.”

No doubt much better than Cate. She could find some good shopping sites, and she had to admit that she’d checked up on her ex-fiancé and his current fiancée a few times, but she was no expert at going beyond shallow surface information. “I don’t want to be involved in anything like illegal hacking.”

“What I found might be information the people involved would rather you didn’t know, but I didn’t do anything illegal.”

They eyed each other as if neither could decide where to go from that point. Finally Cate said warily, “There are steaks in the freezer.”

“Steaks?”

“I think I mentioned something about a barbecue.” She motioned to the gas grill sitting near the back door. “We should be safe from gunshots here.”

He didn’t quite grin, but almost. “I barbecue a mean steak. If that wouldn’t be too much big, strong man help.”

Cate’s not-quite-a-smile acknowledged her sarcastic words from yesterday. “I’ll go thaw the steaks in the microwave.”

He touched her arm lightly as she started to walk away. “How’s the bump on your head?”

“It draws attention. I don’t think it’ll ever catch on as a fashion statement, though.”

She thawed T-bones, tossed a salad, buttered slices of French bread, and made iced tea. By the time she went back outside, a second bag bulging with gutter trash stood by the garage, and Mitch had the gas grill going. Octavia dashed out with her.

Mitch, as he’d said, did indeed barbecue a mean steak. The T-bones came out just right, neither overdone leathery nor underdone bloody, and he grilled the toast to perfection. They ate at the picnic table in the backyard, spring sunshine filtering through the trees, with a pleasant accompaniment of kids splashing in a kiddie pool in a nearby yard, a lawn mower running farther down the street, and the scent of lilacs drifting from the bushes along the back fence. Octavia industriously tongue-washed her hind leg under the table, occasionally pausing for a luxurious roll in the grass.

Their conversation, about Uncle Joe’s condition, the weather, and the state of the economy, was a little stilted but not hostile, and the tightly reserved atmosphere between them loosened by small degrees. She asked for an address to send a donation to Helping Hands at his church and he said he’d check on it for her. He didn’t mention her working at Computer Solutions Dudes again, but he did offer to mow the yard, where yellow dandelion blooms already loomed over the grass. After they’d eaten, he presented the leftover bone from his steak to Octavia, who pounced on it as if she’d just captured dangerous prey. Cate showed him the mower in the garage, admitting she didn’t know anything about starting it, but a few minutes later he had it revved up.

A handy kind of guy, Beverly had said. Cate watched him cut a smooth swath around the perimeter of the yard, carefully avoiding the daffodils Rebecca had planted at the edge of the grass. Beverly was right. Very handy. When he took a break from the mowing, they sat at the picnic table, drinking more iced tea, and he had her laughing about a handyman job he’d had as a kid, when he was supposed to build a doghouse for a neighbor’s dog named Maurice, but he got carried away and built what came to be known as Maurice’s Mansion.

After he finished the mowing, he got his notes from the SUV on what he’d found on the internet.

“My search was rather restricted, because I didn’t have that many names to work with, but on those I had, no one comes up with a rose-scented ‘I am innocent’ badge attached.” He spread the papers on the picnic table. He had, of course, been able to find information Cate hadn’t.

The information he had on Radford Longstreet was similar to what Texie’s niece had found, except he’d turned up an additional marriage. The Radford name was a morph from Romar Lomax. There was an even greater difference than Cate had guessed between Radford’s and Amelia’s ages. There was some suspicion about him in the deaths of former wives, and he’d definitely come out a winner after each marriage, but no actual charges had ever been filed. The Mustang wasn’t paid for, but he had an impeccable credit record under the Longstreet name and no black marks on his Oregon driving record. He had a local address at an upscale condo complex, and Mitch had also found a cell phone number for him. No job record of any kind.

“What do you think?” Cate asked.

“He may have just had really bad luck with wives and wanted to start a new life with a new name here.” Mitch said. “He may have a comfortable income from investments that I couldn’t locate. And I guess a guy really can fall for a woman twenty years older than he is.”

Mitch didn’t sound convinced Radford had changed from serial husband to solid citizen. Neither was Cate. A little gruffly, he added, “I don’t want to pull some big, strong man interfering act, but if you want to talk to him, I could come along.”

“If I do decide to contact him, I’ll let you know. I appreciate the offer.”

“Peace?” he said.

She smiled. “Peace.”

His findings showed that Doris McClelland lived frugally off Social Security. She’d formerly owned a hybrid Toyota Prius, but it hadn’t been paid for, and she’d recently traded her equity for a much older Ford Escort. She had some past-due bills, and she was behind on her property taxes. Which suggested she had, as Texie said, lost some sizable amount of money she’d had available when she bought the Prius. Cate remembered Doris saying that day at Amelia’s house that she could buy a new car with what Amelia had spent carpeting the place. The observation took on a more ominous meaning now.

Cate pictured a scenario: Doris confronts Amelia at the top of the stairs. They argue. There’s an angry shove. All followed by a good acting job from Doris when she and Cate “discover” the body together later that day.

But no, it couldn’t have been that way. Doris had said she’d never been upstairs before.

Yeah, right. As if killers were bound by some vow of truth.

Mitch had found that Willow’s legal name was Winona Bishop. She had traffic violations in Oregon, a shoplifting arrest in California, a bad credit rating, and an award of appreciation from Save Our Tree Friends. Mitch didn’t have a full name for Texie or Coop, or the names of the other Whodunit women, so he hadn’t been able to come up with anything there.

But altogether, it was a rather impressive showing for a limited search time. A handy man indeed. Cate asked about two more names.

“What about Cheryl and Scott Calhoun?”

“Who are they?”

Cate explained their part in her list of suspects, and he said he’d see what he could find out. The cell phone in Cate’s pocket jingled as she was gathering up his notes. He’d said she could keep them.

“Cate?” The woman’s voice sounded vaguely familiar, but Cate couldn’t place it until she’d said, “Yes, this is Cate,” and the woman said, “I got your phone number from your mother. Am I calling at a bad time?”

“Mrs. Collier?”

Cate realized Mitch was looking at her, as if he heard something strange in her voice. As he definitely had. Kyle’s mother . . . calling
her
? She dropped back to the bench by the picnic table.

“Yes, this is Emily. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Your mother told me you were in Eugene now. They sound happy with their retirement in Arizona. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine.” A generic answer to a generic question. At one time she and Kyle’s mother had talked fairly often, but she surely hadn’t called after all this time to check on whether Cate was gainfully employed and getting her teeth cleaned regularly.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m calling,” Mrs. Collier said, and Cate managed an ambiguous murmur. “Kyle asked me to.”

“Kyle?”

“He’s just moved to Portland to take a new position with a gourmet foods company. He’d like to drive down to Eugene to see you this coming weekend. Under the circumstances, he thought it would be best if I called first. To pave the way, I guess you might say.”

“What about his fiancée?”
Is she coming too?

“Kyle and Melanie are no longer together. I think you know how sorry Doug and I were when you and he broke up. We’re hoping . . . Well, I’ll give you his number, and you can make arrangements with him about this weekend.”

Cate picked up the ballpoint pen Mitch had been using when they’d looked at his notes. She hesitated when Mrs. Collier gave her the number. Kyle wasn’t calling her himself. He had his
mother
do it? She wasn’t sure what that said about him, but it made her uncomfortable. But when Mrs. Collier said, “Did you get that?” and repeated the number, Cate scribbled it on a corner of the notes.

“He’s anxious to hear from you,” Mrs. Collier said. “I hope you’ll call him right away.”

Cate stared uneasily at the number. So why wasn’t Kyle calling her, instead of asking that she call him? “I’m not sure this is a good idea. Things are different now . . .”

“Your mother didn’t say anything about your being involved with anyone.” She sounded alarmed.