The Death of Perry Many Paws (25 page)

“How are you going to look for the money when you don’t leave the house?” Syra asked.

“I was using the royal we, meaning all of you. But our house backs up on Camden Woods so I could watch out the window. I wonder how close to our backyard the infamous old maple tree is.”

“I never thought of that,” I said. “Camden Woods does run all the way behind the houses across the street. I wonder if the money drop or the location of the body was anywhere near here or over on the other side of the woods by the high school.”

“The articles never mention the exact location of the money drop but that didn’t keep people from looking for it. Somewhere someone must have a basic idea of where the money was supposed to be …”

“It’s not going to be there now, Grace,” Diane warned. “Everyone has already looked for it.”

“I know, but I’m curious, that’s all. It seems like Bing, Syra and Tamsen would be curious, too, as they live right near the woods.”

“I’d like to solve Uncle Franklin’s murder before we solve Raymond Ketchum’s,” I said.

“I don’t want to solve his murder. I just want to be the one to find the money that has been missing for seventy years,” Bing explained.

“Is that the royal ‘I’?” Syra laughed.

“Well, yes. By me I mean all of you, of course.”

Suddenly Raymond Ketchum’s murder and lost ransom seemed so much more real than Franklin’s death, and we lost focus. We began to wildly theorize while Grace continued to check each April 1 edition to see if the mystery was ever resolved. Our favorite theory was that
Raymond had set up the kidnapping himself to get back at his brother for some imagined wrong. He didn’t really need the money so he was satisfied to clean out his brother’s safe, be “released” and return to normal life, a semi-victim/hero for a few days and to let the associates that helped with the hoax have the money. But the kidnappers hadn’t trusted him not to turn them in, so they killed him. Or maybe they wanted him to ask for more money and he wouldn’t do it. It felt better to believe he was the cause of his own death since we didn’t know any differently.

Grace, with Syra’s help, did discover that the kidnapping murder was mentioned in every April 1 edition of the newspaper until 1963. In 1948, 1958 and 1963 the tenth, twentieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries of the event—there were long columns recapping facts and theorizing once again. In 1963 there had been a memorial for Raymond Ketchum that took place in Camden Woods, followed by a treasure hunt. Grace actually remembered going although she had no idea why she and her little sister were in the woods on a treasure hunt. Of course the $10,000 wasn’t found, but enough other goodies had been placed in the woods so the thirty or so participants, mostly children, had each come away with something. It was the last hurrah for the Raymond Ketchum case. In subsequent years the event was occasionally mentioned, warranting just a paragraph in the “Remember When” column.

“I don’t want Uncle Franklin to end up like Raymond Ketchum, with his murder never resolved and people just forgetting about it,” I sighed, putting down my pile of local news sections.

“Even if he isn’t arrested, Ryan will be like Fletcher Ketchum, with people thinking he was involved just because they never found the real murderer. I don’t want Ryan to be the name that keeps appearing yearly in the Franklin Behrends Unsolved Murder column.”

“I know. I know. Don’t worry, Grace,” I said reassuringly. “Now we have to decide if these newspapers were just the collection of an
old man who was interested in the Raymond Ketchum murder because it happened when he was fifteen near where he lived, or whether there is something else appearing every April 1 in this paper that we haven’t found yet.”

“Oh, Sweet Jesus. Look at this!” Diane yelled out. She startled me so much I dropped my pecan tart sticky side down on the rug. I gave her a dirty look as I bent over and peered at it, trying to decide whether it was worth pulling the fibers off.

“Look at this. It’s in the 1951 personal ads. I can’t believe it.

‘You dropped your Elvis magazine in front of the high school. I sleep with it under my pillow. I’ll be in front of the school between 2 and 3 on Thursday with your magazine.’ Frankie.”

It was nine o’clock. A borderline time to call Claudia, but I couldn’t resist. “Hello Claudia, it’s Tamsen. Did Sybil and that Frank guy who was her first husband get divorced in 1951? Really. OK. Thanks. Bye. Yes! Sybil and Frank were divorced in 1951 …”

“… and he went right back on the prowl using his old techniques …”

“… at the high school. That is so disgusting. I hope he got caught.”

“Can I take all these personal ads home, Tamsen? I want to follow through on this guy. But I really need to get going. I promised Scott and Kaleb I’d be home to watch one of the Batman movies with them,” Diane said as she gathered up the papers strewn all over the rug.

It was time to break up for the evening. Everyone left with various sections of the papers and I went up to bed to confess to Cam that I had called and hung up on his mother three times tonight. Mycroft remained in the library, licking pecan torte off the rug.

n Wednesday, the day after our WOACA meeting, nothing went right. Cam had been miffed that I had called his mother all evening and then hung up as soon as she answered my question. I felt that in twenty-five years of marriage I had treated her much better than she treated me, so I should be allowed a little pay-back. We had mildly argued about that for a while and then gone to bed. This morning I had overslept, which meant Cam had intentionally been very quiet getting ready so as not to wake me. I felt that meant he didn’t want to talk to me before he went to work. It was difficult for Cam to be quiet in the morning. He really had to work at it to not make a single sound. Very annoying.

When things aren’t right between Cam and me, it bothers me way out of proportion to how it should. That’s just the way I am. I have a small circle of loved ones and as long as everything is all right with them nothing else bothers me, but if the smallest thing isn’t going right within my circle I’m all discombobulated until it’s right. Cam had probably forgotten the whole thing by now and I was stewing. This annoyed me even more. In addition to this stewing, I finally got my period. Now, was this the period I was supposed to have before and it just arrived really late, or should I count it as the period it wasn’t time
for yet, arriving early? If I’m going through perimenopause I suppose I should keep track of things like this.

I stomped downstairs to have a diet soda and a bagel. Usually Cam left a bagel out to thaw but he hadn’t this morning. More passive-aggressive behavior intended to annoy me. I coupled his name with some various swear words I’d been wanting to try out and liked the sound of it. It kept me entertained while I microwaved my bagel into submission and then toasted it, topping it off with a full half-inch of peanut butter. Screw losing fifteen or twenty pounds. I was going to eat what I wanted and get as fat as I wanted.
That
would show Cam. Bing had been kind enough to leave some tortes, so I polished off my bagel with a lemon torte chaser. Good to round out the protein with some vitamin C.

I wandered out of the kitchen trying to decide whether I wanted to start playing around with the idea I had for a new book, a non Perry Many Paws book. I’d been tossing the idea around since the night of the break-in, making a few odd notes here and there but I had yet to really work it through. Cam had put the “SB” monogrammed handkerchief in the Chippendale table. Since I was going to use that in my book, I decided to take it to my desk to use as inspiration. I opened the drawer and fished around but it was empty. I bent over and stuck my nose right in the drawer so I could see into all four corners but it was definitely empty. I wandered around the first floor systematically opening drawers and looking inside in case Cam had moved the handkerchief for some reason. After twenty minutes of diligent drawer searching I came up empty. No handkerchief. Perhaps Frankie had found it and was willing to return it to me after he finished sleeping on it.

I sent Cam a brief email asking him where the handkerchief was. As was fitting for my current state of mind I did not include any endearments or queries as to how his day was going. About ten minutes later he replied stating that he had not moved the handkerchief and
that it was in the drawer of the table at the bottom of the stairs. I wrote back to reiterate that was where I had looked and it was empty. He wrote back to reiterate that he had not moved it and it was in the drawer of the table at the bottom of the stairs. There was only one thing to do.

I went to the table and yanked out the drawer. I got my camera and I took several photos from various angles. I then went back to my computer, downloaded the photos and sent them to Cam. No words, just the photos. All ten of them. Cam’s reply was short and sweet: Did you get your period?

And so the morning progressed. Not to be too indelicate but my period was coming with a pent-up vengeance and the cramps were bad. Plus I had a raging headache. I took a lunch break and popped a couple aspirin with a diet soda and a pecan torte. And then a lemon torte. I was checking the personal ads just in case someone had found my missing handkerchief when the phone rang.

“Hey. It’s me. How’re you feeling?” Cam sounded so cheery. It wasn’t fair. Did men ever get cramps anywhere other than their legs? Or a raging headache other than when they had been drinking?

“I feel terrible. I need a blood transfusion and I have a headache and cramps and I can’t stop eating sugar.”

“Should you call the doctor?”

“No, I think it’s normal for my stage in life. Where was my bagel this morning?”

“I was in a bad mood so I didn’t thaw it. I was being a jerk. You know how it is when we disagree.”

“Yeah. We act the same way we did when we were in our early twenties. We haven’t developed any more mature coping skills since then.”

“Why don’t I bring home Chinese for dinner tonight? You probably don’t feel like cooking.”

“I don’t even feel like
living
right now, but yeah, that would be good.”

“Why don’t you go take a nap or something? That’s good for a headache.”

“I might. You sure you didn’t move Sylvie’s handkerchief ? It’s really driving me nuts that I can’t find it.”

“I swear. I never touched it after I put it in the drawer. Actually I forgot all about it until you emailed me. Maybe Sylvie is back to haunt the Behrends house.”

“If so I hope she can use some of the voodoo on me so I’m back to normal.”

“Me too sweetheart. Bye.”

Now what was
that
supposed to mean? I felt more emotionally back together and was looking forward to beef and broccoli for dinner but I still had cramps and a headache so I went back to the library and laid down on the couch with the red fleece throw over me. It’s times like this I especially like being a writer and not having to venture into an office when I don’t feel well. Mycroft was also snoozing on the floor next to me and I could see his legs moving rhythmically like he was chasing something at his usual very slow pace.

What had become of Frankie the stalker? I’d have to find some way to ask Sybil about him. I’d like to fill in the blanks on what kind of personality just followed women around waiting for them to drop something, and then tried to meet them. What had Sybil seen in him? Of course, she’d been very young. It was hard to make good romantic decisions when you were eighteen and hadn’t had much life experience.

Uncle Franklin hadn’t had much life experience at fifteen. What had happened to change him from an outgoing, creative and imaginative young man to a recluse for the rest of his life? It had to be more than just an incidence of mono. Whatever had plagued Franklin hadn’t affected his health as an adult. He was rarely ill. He had never been in
the hospital in the twenty-five years that I’d lived here. That’s pretty healthy for a man in his eighties. He seemed more emotionally haunted than physically ill. Like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd,” he was alone and haunted by something. But when you are haunted by something in your past does it appear seventy years later and kill you? He didn’t go insane by listening to the beating of the Tell Tale Heart. He was stabbed in the neck by someone very real. Someone invaded his home and ended his life.