Murder and a Song (A Pattie Lansbury Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) (4 page)

            Pattie
had noticed the boarded up front window of the farmhouse, and the damage to the
doorframe.  At least Seth hadn’t been
fibbing about the break-in.

            In
any case, Pattie had believed Seth’s story about getting kicked out of the pub
and sleeping through until morning.  She
didn’t believe that he was a suspect in the murder. “In fact,” she said to
Elaine, “the only reason I’m here is about your missing cat … Is this
O’Malley?”

            Elaine
took the Polaroid photo of the cat from the tent. “Oh, yes, this is him!  That’s his green flea collar.  Is he okay? 
Do you know where we can find him?”

            “What’s
that?  The cat!?”

            Seth
came to the door and snatched the Polaroid out of Elaine’s hand. “That’s
him!  Who took him?  If it was those little brats who robbed us,
I’ll tear them limb from limb!  Where did
you take this photo?”

            “Calm
down, Seth,” Elaine said impatiently, putting a hand on his hairy forearm.
“Pattie was about to tell us.”

            “I
found O’Malley in a tent in the festival camping grounds.  I think he was drawn there by the smell of
food.”

            “That
bloody festival!” Seth roared. “Well, tell me which of those unwashed hoodlums
has him and I’ll go and fetch him back!”

            “Don’t
worry,” said Pattie, “I know where he is, and I’ll go to collect him for
you.  Cats wander sometimes; it’s in
their nature.  He’s probably already sick
of all the noise and getting his paws muddy.”

            “Not
likely,” Seth grumbled. “He’s a typical farm cat.”

            “Please
allow me,” Pattie said sweetly. “He’ll be home safe in sound in time for
lunch.”

            She
left the farm happy to have the opportunity to reunite a roaming tom with his
family.  She took her time walking back
along the farm paths and then crossing the road to the festival grounds.  There was a rare break in the music and she
was enjoying the peaceful walk.  But she
hadn’t gotten far when her mobile phone rang in her pocket.  It took her a moment to figure out what it
was; she’d never owned a mobile, and this had been a birthday gift from Elliott.  He liked to text her photos of the pets that
people sometimes brought him, his unofficial out-of-hours patients.

            “Hello?”
asked Pattie, hoping she’d pressed the right button to answer the call.
“Patricia Lansbury speaking.”

            “Mrs
Lansbury?  It’s D.C. Downey.”  The officer always used his title when he
talked to Pattie on official business. 
Any other time he was just ‘Thomas’.

            “Hello,
D.C. Downey.  How may I help you?”

            “It’s
just an update.  Juliette – Um, Constable
Palmer – went to get statements from the four men in plot 369.  Well, there was only
three
there when she arrived. 
Harry Widmore’s done a runner.”

            “His
friends don’t know where he’s gone?” she asked.

            “If
they do, they aren’t sharing.  Constable
Palmer’s just taking their statements now.”

            “As
it happens, I’m about to pay them a visit to discuss a cat.  I’ll give her a hand.”

            “A
cat…?”

            “I’ll
let you have an update once I have something to share.  Thanks for calling, Thomas!”

Pattie arrived back at the large tent
by the white van.  The meadow was getting
muddier and muddier, and was now carpeted with litter and the occasional
sleeping reveller.  At any one time there
were two or more stages with musicians playing.

            James
Farrell and Toby Draper seemed pretty irritated that they were missing out on
the show.  They stood arguing with
Constable Palmer with their arms crossed.

            “Listen,
gentlemen: this is a murder investigation. 
Either you can give me your statements now, or I can have some of my
friends come to help to take you to the station, and we can do it there.  I think you’re likely to miss a lot more of
the show that way, don’t you?”

            “I
don’t know why you think we have anything to do with it, lady,” said James. “It
was Harry that fancied that woman, not us. 
What’s the point in talking more to us?”

            “I
won’t know what the point is until I talk to you, will I?” Constable Palmer
said patiently. “This is just how these things go.  A man was found
murdered
, gentlemen.  I
should think you’d want to play along just to be on the safe side?”

            The
two men groaned.

            Pattie
made her presence known. “Can I help, officer?”

            “Morning,
Mrs Lansbury.  I could use your help
interviewing these two.  And their friend
Timothy, wherever he’s gone.”

            “What’s
she got to do with it?” asked Toby. “She’s not a copper.”

            “Look,
if we interview each of you at the same time, that means you’re free to run off
to the nearest stage that much quicker, doesn’t it?  You, come with me.  James, please give your statement to Mrs
Lansbury.  If you’re honest and don’t
mess us around, we can be done in twenty minutes.  Let’s go.”

            Pattie
took Toby inside the tent, where they sat on plastic chairs amidst clutter and
refuse.  The young man had a belligerent
attitude, slumping in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest.  Pattie swore that he even stuck out his
bottom lip a little.

            “Let’s
start at the beginning, shall we?” Pattie suggested, taking out her notepad.
“What can you tell me about Mister Widmore’s relationship with Ms Carter?”

            “I
dunno.  Nothing, really.”

            “Had
they grown close?”

            “It’d
only been like a day.  So not really.”

            “Did
any one of you have any altercation with Daryl Hardy?  What about Mister Widmore?  Did they have any reason to be angry with one
another?”

            “Harry?  I dunno. 
Not that I noticed.”

            Pattie
sighed inwardly.  This was going to take
longer than she thought.

            Another
twenty minutes later, she hadn’t gotten any new information from Toby.  Pattie was a great believer that if you took
three people and put them in separate rooms, their stories would soon start to
diverge.  But Toby had little to say on
the matter and remained obstinate.

            “Where
do you think Mister Widmore could have gone to?” asked Pattie.

            “I
dunno.  I’m not his keeper.  He was gone by early this morning.  Didn’t take any of his stuff.  Didn’t take the van.  If he’d gone to wash he would have been back
by now, and he wouldn’t have gone to one of the stages without asking us first.  We talked over the festival schedule last
night and agreed there was nothing we were bothered about seeing until ten
o’clock.  Which was half an hour ago –
thanks for that.”

            “I’m
only assisting with the investigation, not in charge of it,” Pattie replied
curtly.  If there’s one thing that rubbed
her up the wrong way, it was sarcasm. “Had Mister Widmore ever committed a
crime?  Did he ever get violent?”

            “No
more than the rest of us,” Toby replied flatly.

            “Do
you think that he was capable of murder?” she asked.

            Toby
shrugged. “No more than the rest of us. 
Can I go now?  Are we finished?”

            Pattie
could see that she was getting nowhere. 
She stifled a sigh and took out the Polaroid of the farmer’s cat.
“Where’s the kitty?”

            “I
dunno.  It didn’t come back this
morning.  I guess it found somewhere else
to get fed.”

“Get anything out of them?” asked D.C.
Downey over the phone.

            Pattie
swapped the mobile to her good ear. “Nothing useful.  Constable Palmer says the other two were less
than co-operative too.  I’m not sure what
else to do with them.  Perhaps a grilling
down at the station?”

            “We’ve
got their home addresses, and they seem more concerned about their stupid
festival than anything else.  Let’s see
if our man Harry Widmore turns up again. 
If not, we know where to find the others.”

            “Alright.  Please keep me informed, Thomas.  This one is going to keep me awake.”

            “You
bet, Mrs Lansbury.  Stay safe.”

            Pattie
had just come back from another visit to Seth MacGowan’s farm.  She’d spoken to Elaine and persuaded her to
part with one of O’Malley’s favourite toys. 
Pattie had an idea.

            When
she got home, she put the kettle on and greeted Simba, who purred and butted
her until the kettle began to whistle. 
Pattie might have given in and gotten a mobile phone, but she’d never
stop using the stove to warm her water. 
She made herself some Lady Grey tea and sat in the lounge waiting for
Tyson to show up.

            Tyson
was a handsome stripy blue moggy that she’d adopted three years ago from a
policeman friend of her son’s.  This
friend had come from a nearby town where they had a bit of a problem.  They had a special precinct where they
trained police Alsatians for the whole of Yorkshire: sniffer dogs to detect
drugs and explosives.  Pattie had joked
that they should borrow her cat Jasper, who could ‘smell’ when someone was lying,
to give them some extra training.  Her
visitor hadn’t believed her, of course (more fool him), but he’d said, on the
topic of cats, perhaps he could help her? 
For a long time, a stray cat had been wandering into their dog compound
and eating their food and distracting them from their training.  Curiously, the cat wasn’t the least bit
afraid of the dogs, and the dogs didn’t mind the cat either.  It was as though the cat thought it was a dog
itself.

            Recently
however, the precinct had taken on a wider catchment area and inherited another
dozen dogs.  These were far less tolerant
of a strange animal in their midst, and the cat was causing chaos.  Maybe Pattie was the perfect person to take
the moggy off their hands?

            Pattie
had obliged, and was delighted to see the smart-looking, silvery tom jump out
of the carrier that D.C. Downey had brought him in.  The people at the station had named him
‘Tyson’, for his fearless attitude, and he responded to the name.

            That
wasn’t all.  Tyson seemed as well trained
as any Alsatian: Pattie found that he was incredibly good at sniffing out
treats.  Pattie occasionally secreted cat
treats around the house to keep the cats entertained.  She eventually had to keep Tyson locked in
the bedroom with a bowl of kitten milk to give the others a sporting chance at
getting there first, otherwise he would dash around the house and snap up every
one of them inside of two minutes.  It
transpired that Tyson was a first rate tracker.

            By
the time Pattie had finished her tea and eaten a Kit Kat, she heard the
familiar thud of Tyson coming into the house from the upstairs window.  He usually kept himself to himself, and
abhorred the company of other cats, so made his entrance and exit via the
discreet opening above the fence.  Pattie
went upstairs to greet and feed him. 
Once he’d devoured his small meal, she gave him half an hour to become
interested in something other than sleeping, then offered him O’Malley’s toy,
which she’d gotten from Elaine MacGowan.  Tyson sniffed it, then recoiled, repulsed by
the smell of another cat.  Pattie fed him
a crunchy treat, which he wolfed down. 
Then she offered him the toy again.

            She
had worked out the best way to make use of his skills a while ago.  It had taken over two years of
experimentation, but now she knew how to persuade Tyson to track with his
advanced nose.  A cat’s sense of smell
was only a fraction of that of a dog’s – still fourteen times that of a human –
but Tyson was an exceptional case. 

            She
had never tried an experiment on this scale though.  If a cat could smell something from miles
away, then perhaps this would work…

            Pattie
rattled the box of cat treats.  Tyson
turned his silver face to her expectantly. 
When she proffered the cat toy instead and opened the window, Tyson gave
her one last hopefully look, then leaped outside.

            Excited,
Pattie dashed downstairs, put on her boots, and scoured the front lawn for Tyson’s
long, stripy body.  There he was!  She scampered after him, across the garden
and onto the street.  Tyson trotted casually
down Shepherd’s Street with his nose to the ground, waited patiently at the
street corner, then safely crossed the road. 
It seemed to be working, but then Tyson stopped and turned around.  He came right back to Pattie and meowed for a
treat.

            Pattie
sighed and let him follow her back to the house.  So much for that idea!

            Then
her mobile began to trill.  This time she
recognised the number.  It was D.C.
Downey.

            “Mrs
Lansbury?”