The Death of Perry Many Paws (16 page)

It was only a home pregnancy test but I felt like I was carrying a concealed weapon in my purse as Diane turned onto my street. I was thinking about who I’d least like to run into right now and had just decided it was definitely Claudia when Diane swung into my driveway and announced, “Oh, look. Your mother-in-law’s here.”

As soon as Diane had given me the pregnancy test kit, I had wanted to use it right then. She offered me her bathroom but I wanted to be alone when I got the results. I had no idea how I would react, either way, and I wanted to be alone or with Cam. I certainly couldn’t excuse myself and do the test when Claudia was there. Every single time Claudia pops in on us unannounced I say that
this
is the worst
possible time for her to show up. But right now I believe she had outdone herself and this truly was the worst possible time for a visit.

I found her sitting in the solarium drinking a Bloody Mary and turning all my plants around. She gave me a little wave when I entered. “You need to keep rotating your plants, dear, so different sides face the windows. It’s how the plants exercise, first all moving one way toward the sun and then moving the other. Plants need to exercise.”

“I’ve never seen an overweight plant.”

“Exactly right, dear. We could learn a lot from them.” Since Claudia had never participated in any kind of exercise, much less one that would cause her to break a sweat, I knew she was referring to me and the ten, well maybe fifteen, pounds that I needed to lose. If were pregnant I could flaunt my extra weight in her face. But having a late-in-life baby to annoy your mother-in-law was probably frowned upon in most responsible parenting circles. I checked to make sure my purse was firmly zipped and set it down before joining her. She held up her drink.

“You didn’t have any coffee on,” she said making it sound both like an accusation and an excuse to be drinking.

“Making a pot of coffee is probably no harder than making a Bloody Mary,” I countered. She turned and blessed me with a dazzling smile. “You may be right, dear.” Yeah, that would be the day. She gestured me into the room and sat in one of the brightly upholstered wingback chairs, crossing her trim ankles and gently smoothing her wool skirt over her knees. I sighed and sat down in the chair across from her, lured into her web until she was ready to release me.

“I hear that you were a bit confused last night and panicked and called the police.”

“Really it was Cam who first thought of calling 911.”

“He does like to humor you, I know. Sometimes it is so difficult to deal with hysteria.”

“I wasn’t hysterical.”

Conversing with Claudia was like fencing. Cam was adept at putting a stop to it by interjecting his boyish charm and defending me while at the same time not irritating his mother. I was lucky. Although Claudia thought she had Cam wrapped around her finger, he saw through her.

“We never had a break-in while I lived here,” she announced proudly.

“How fortunate for you. These are different times, Claudia.” I claim temporary insanity regarding my next comment. “You never had a murder when you lived here, either.” Well, that hit home. She set her drink down and her eyes filled with tears. I’m such an insensitive clod. I blame it on hormones. I reached out to her although I didn’t actually touch her.

“I’m sorry, Claudia. That was insensitive.”

“Poor Franklin,” she sniffed. She reached in her purse and brought out a lacy handkerchief and wiped her eyes. I wondered if I should tell her about Sylvie’s handkerchief. The Birdsey Falls rumor mill hadn’t circulated that information yet unless Cam went around the office today telling everyone that a ghost had left a hanky in his house last night.

“That’s a lovely handkerchief. No one uses such lovely things anymore. Now it’s all paper and people leave them all over the place. A tasteful cotton handkerchief is so much classier.” I most likely would have rambled on like this for another five minutes but Claudia reasserted herself.

“It’s linen, not cotton, and not very absorbent.” She folded the handkerchief and returned it to her purse.

“Do you want a tissue?”

“No. I’m fine now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

As Claudia and I sat staring at each other, neither of us knowing what to say next, Mycroft stretched where he was lying across the room in a patch of sun, and made a rude sound. Claudia didn’t move a muscle.

“So, I had lunch with Thelma and Ted Harrington today,” I said. “Do you remember them?”

“Of course. They live at Bugg Hill, don’t they?”

“Yes. It’s quite nice out there although nothing compared to Ashland Belle,” I offered as a sort of peace token.

“The Harringtons would never be able to afford Ashland Belle. I don’t think they ever did more than scrape by their entire lives. But then, their parents did the same. The pattern just repeats itself.”

“Diane has done well, so maybe the pattern is broken now.”

“Diane did what women are supposed to do, marry well and have babies. As I recall, Scott is from the Kinney family in Rutland. His grandfather was a judge and his father started the law firm he works for. Diane married well.”

Faint praise for one of my best friends. I wondered what Cam would say if, when he came through the front door tonight, I announced, “I’m pregnant and I slapped your mother.”

Instead I said, “The Harringtons were at Franklin’s funeral and had good memories of him.”

“I talked to them at the funeral and sent a note afterward thanking them for coming and for the flowers they sent.”

“Ted remembers doing treasure hunts with Franklin and playing basketball with him.”

“Franklin was
quite
athletic but he was more interested in reading and drawing maps and making puzzles. My other brother, Alden, who was killed at Pearl Harbor, was interested in history and politics and wanted to be governor one day. Being killed at Pearl Harbor destroyed those plans. Franklin was less outgoing.” Her voice trailed off.

Now that was an understatement.

“Ted mentioned Franklin being sick and having to drop the basketball team. Do you remember that?

“Franklin was in delicate health as a teenager. It sort of came on him suddenly and he never seemed to get back to his former self.”

“Ted and Thelma thought he might have had mononucleosis. Is that true?”

“I was only six when he first got ill so it’s hard to remember. He missed a lot of school. I was jealous. I recall I pitched several temper tantrums about the unfairness of the situation.”

Gee, imagine that.

“It seems odd that a bout of mono would lead to his eventual withdrawal.”

Claudia straightened her skirt and took a sip of her drink. “Tamsen, does it really matter now?”

“Maybe not. But I can’t understand why someone would kill Franklin. Discovering why he became a recluse seems like a good place to start.”

“It’s not your job to determine who killed him. Let the police handle it. I doubt that we’ll ever know.”

“And doesn’t that bother you?” I asked.

“Knowing who did it and why will not bring him back.”

“But don’t you want someone to pay for his murder? We can’t have a society where people just go around killing people and there are no consequences.”

“I’m not advocating that. But sometimes we have to admit that there are things we may never know and may never understand. Why Franklin became a recluse and why he was murdered may be two of those things. We have to learn to accept certain things in life.”

I wasn’t willing to do that.

“Was there a reason you stopped by today, Claudia? Did you need something?” I asked.

Claudia finished her drink and I swear she looked suspiciously at my purse as she rose and walked to the door. “No reason. I just thought you might have something to tell me.”

It was as if she had X-ray vision.

Cam called to say he was coming home early and I was at the front door to greet him when he got out of the car. I opened the front door and yelled to him, “I’m not pregnant and I didn’t slap your mother!”

He looked up at me and grinned. “Fantastic! What’s for dinner?”

bet most people haven’t explored every nook and cranny of their own home. No matter how small your house is—and I’m not trying to sound like Claudia comparing house sizes—but you probably haven’t looked at every inch of it. In my case, there were entire sections of my house that I hadn’t explored. I’ve set foot in every room at one time or another, but not really explored the unused rooms or the old things that have been left behind by previous generations of Behrends. Cam and I often talk about taking one room at a time and weeding out all the useless junk, but we haven’t gotten there yet.

Grace admits there are papers and cartons her grandfather stored in the basement of her bookstore that she’s never looked at. Diane has bags of clothes that friends have given her for the kids that she hasn’t sorted yet. Syra buys books at a much faster rate than she can read them. Even Bing hasn’t looked at all the recipes in his dozens of cookbooks. If we didn’t have something to finally get to what would we have to strive for? The more things we have that need our attention, the more time we buy ourselves in this lifetime to get it all done. So, at the risk of shortening my time on earth, I decided to poke around in the attic and see if I could find anything of Franklin’s that might give me a clue to who he was and who wanted him dead. I felt that the answer to his murder was who he had been, rather than who he had
become, and therefore, going through his cottage again was not going to tell me anything new.

Last night had been peaceful and restful in comparison to the previous one. I hadn’t made anything for dinner so we ordered in pizza and wings, again. I told Cam about my lunch with Diane’s parents, the visit from his mother and my pregnancy scare. He was suitably interested in the lunch, a little surprised by his mother for just showing up and absolutely astounded at the pregnancy scare. We weren’t stupid. We used birth control. Cam offered to double up on the birth control and we got hysterical imagining him wrestling with that precaution during a moment of passion. I’d been thinking that we should just stop having sex until after menopause but then I changed my mind and decided to just stock up on pregnancy tests as Diane had done. We’d eventually get through this perimenopause stuff.

There’d been no more odd noises in the night and no more mysterious handkerchiefs. Cam had put the one Mycroft had found in the drawer of the Chippendale table in the front hallway. I checked after breakfast and it was still there. I’d had a dream where the “SB” handkerchief was floating around our house at night spying on us and reporting back to Claudia’s
linen
handkerchief. If Sylvie’s handkerchief had been out during the night it had safely made it back to its drawer and looked like it was settled in. Feeling confident that all was well, I decided to tackle the attic, where the really old stuff was stored.

I put a scarf over my head to avoid having to wash my hair after I was done in the attic. I had just washed it last night and the more often I washed it the faster the semi-permanent hair color washed out. I hated coloring my hair so liked to put it off as long as possible. I put on old clothes, collected a broom, a flashlight, a duster, wet wipes, a huge garbage bag for junk, a smaller garbage bag for treasures, a spiral notebook and pen, a mini-cooler with four diet sodas, my cell phone, a bottle of water and a rag (in case something was so filthy dusting alone
didn’t reveal what it was), a bottle of glass cleaner, a shoebox for small keepsakes, some bandages, a pair of rubber gloves, a candy bar and my camera. I put most of this stuff in an old backpack Abbey had used in high school. All I needed was a walking stick and I’d be all set.

Mycroft desperately wanted to come with me but he could no longer make it up the stairs to our bedroom on the second floor, much less up two more flights to the attic. I actually attempted to pick him up to see if I could carry him up three flights of stairs but couldn’t even get him an inch off the floor. I gave him some doggie treats and a big kiss and asked him to stand guard and keep Claudia out while I was gone. Only I didn’t call her that. And Mycroft knew who I meant.