The Death of Perry Many Paws (38 page)

“Sorry. The police have been checking into all that and haven’t found anyone.”

“Maybe it’s someone obscure, like the victim’s grandson’s ex-wife’s ex-con cousin.”

“That’s certainly obscure enough. Officer Donny said they had reopened the Ketchum case. With the technology they have now they can recheck the ropes, the bullet and other forensic clues, run them through a database of known criminals and old cases to see if they get any matches.”

“I don’t think that will tell us who killed Franklin ...”

“If they know who killed Ketchum they may be able to find his grandson’s ex-wife’s ex-con cousin. And that might be Franklin’s killer.”

“I just want it all over before Abbey and her friends come home for Thanksgiving,” I sighed. Cam took so long to reply that I thought he had fallen asleep. I closed my eyes and pulled the blankets up around my neck. I felt Cam kiss my cheek and whisper in my ear, “It will be.”

It was Tuesday again. I ate my breakfast that morning wondering if I should cancel WOACA that afternoon. I didn’t feel great but mostly I didn’t want to embarrass Grace. Everyone would know Ryan had been arrested for terrorizing me and smashing thrift store dishes all over my
kitchen. I hadn’t spoken to Grace yet and meeting her for the first time after the incident in front of all our friends could prove awkward. I tried to call her a few times but no one answered. They still had a land line and no caller ID, so I didn’t work myself up to a snit thinking she was trying to avoid me. Although I wouldn’t blame her if she were. Poor Grace. Among my calls to Grace, I received a call from Syra saying Bing was making crème brulee for the meeting. Crème brulee is one of my favorites so I decided that was a message from somewhere telling me the meeting should take place.

In light of everything that had happened recently, Cam planned to hover around the house in case one of my friends went berserk and tried to kill me. He settled in the living room with a backlog of
National Geographic
s and today’s paper. He left Mycroft with me in case one of my friends needed something sniffed. I still hadn’t been able to reach Grace and wasn’t surprised when she didn’t show up for the meeting. She had enough to deal with at home and there wasn’t much solace anyone in the group could give her under the circumstances.

“Do you think we should do something for Grace?” Diane asked, wiggling her spoon under the crunchy sugar of the crème brulee to scoop out the custard underneath. “Mmm. Yummy, Bing.”

“Do you think she’ll still have her Halloween party at the bookstore?” Bing asked. It seemed like an odd question since he had never gone. “There’s enough for everyone to have two desserts or to take the other home if you want.”

I had a sliver of the braised sugar on my spoon and was licking it like a lollipop. “I tried calling her all day but didn’t get her. She must know we all support her and we’re here if she needs us. She’ll let us know when she’s ready.”

“What about the party?” Bing repeated. “It would be awful if she didn’t have the party.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. The invitations are all out. It’s only three days away. My guess is it will still take place, but who knows.” I glanced over at Syra and noticed she wasn’t eating. Her head had fallen back against the couch cushion and her eyes were closed. “Are you OK, Syra? You look beat.”

She opened one eye, rubbed her hands on her face and sat up. “This is the week the radiation treatments started to make me tired. The exhaustion comes around the middle of the series of treatments. I don’t feel bad, just tired.”

I don’t know what possessed me but I just blurted it out. “Do you have an embroidered linen handkerchief left over from when you were married?” Not surprisingly, she stared at me like I was nuts.

“No, but I do have a tissue in my purse if you need one.”

“Me, too!” Bing reached into his pocket and pulled out a travel pack of tissues and handed it to me. “Is this okay or do you have to have linen? Do you have an allergy to paper or something?”

“No, it’s just that I found a linen handkerchief with ‘SB’ embroidered on it and I thought maybe it was Syra’s …” I knew I sounded stupid but I had to get this out in the open.

“Why would Syra have ‘SB’ on her handkerchief when her last name is Foster?” Diane asked. “And does anyone still have monogrammed linen handkerchiefs anymore? I think my great-grandmother had some but she was born before the turn of the century. The last century, not the one that just turned.”

“1800s,” Bing clarified.

“Right. So why would you think Syra would have an antique handkerchief like that monogrammed with the wrong last initial?” Diane asked me. Little did she know that once I cleared up this handkerchief mystery I was going to focus on her relationship with Officer Donny and see if my suspicions were right.

“When I was married, ages ago, my initials were ‘SB’,” Syra wearily admitted. “I went back to my maiden name when I got divorced. So I was ‘SB’ for a period of time, a long time ago. No monogrammed handkerchiefs, though, Tamsen. Sorry.”

Of course she would hardly admit it. And I thought it was strange she didn’t even ask me why I wanted to know. Was it because she knew why? Or was she just too tired to care. No one else seemed to care, either. Surely they weren’t all guilty of breaking into my house. I was getting paranoid. Bing and Diane had started a side conversation and Diane was writing down the crème brulee recipe. Syra and Mycroft were dozing, enveloped in the heat of the fire. I really missed Grace. I politely waited until Diane had put the recipe in her purse before attacking her.

“Did your whole flirtation thing with Officer Donny stem from your need to keep him from suspecting Kaleb?” That effectively killed the side conversation and woke up both Syra and Mycroft. Grace would have been proud.

“Huh?” Bing said staring at me. Diane played around with her purse and refused to look in my direction, as if there was more than one person who had flirted with Officer Donny and had a son named Kaleb. I intrepidly forged ahead.

“When it dawned on me that Kaleb was Franklin’s newspaper delivery boy as well as mine, it occurred to me that he might be suspected of killing Franklin. Not many people go to that cottage on a regular basis. Kaleb was there every day. He had more opportunity than anyone …”

“Stop it! Kaleb wouldn’t hurt anyone. You know that, Tamsen. You’ve known him all his life. Why are you saying these things?” Diane burst into tears and Bing was finally able to give someone his little tissue packet. She ferociously pulled out several tissues and handed it
back. “Why are you being so nasty? I would never accuse Abbey of murdering anyone.”

“I’m not accusing Kaleb, Diane. I’m just putting two and two together and wondering if your flirtation with …”

“I am not flirting with him. Why do all of you keep saying that?”

“Because you are,” Syra stated. “We’re not judging you, but we couldn’t help but notice it. It was so out of character.”

“There’s no point in denying it, Diane. We did all notice. Are you really attracted to him or does it have to do with keeping his attention away from Kaleb? That’s all I’m asking,” I said more gently.

“He started it,” she said defiantly. “I mean, I was scared for Kaleb. It was awful …”

Bing wiggled over next to Diane and put his arms around her. I could picture Hetty comforting him the same way, rocking him back and forth and saying meaningless comforting things to him.

“Tell us about it,” Syra urged.

Diane sniffed and blew her nose. Bing moved back to his portion of the couch to give her some space while she composed herself.

“Right after you found Franklin, the police kept questioning us. You probably don’t remember, Tamsen, because you were in some kind of a daze …”

“Shock. She was in shock,” Syra said.

“OK. You were in shock. But those of us not in shock were scared, scared there was a killer loose in the neighborhood and then scared of saying something that would make us look suspicious. I mean, I’ve never been questioned by the police before …”

“So your natural inclination was to flirt with him?” Syra interrupted. “That wasn’t mine.”

“Mine, either,” whispered Bing.

“Of course not! But when he first interviewed me I got the distinct impression that Officer Donaldson, the one you call Officer Donny, was attracted to me. It was weird. I haven’t felt that for a long time. I’m the mother of five; I’ve been a full-time mother so long that I sort of forgot I was also a woman. His interest made me feel, well, pretty again. And young. Come on, you remember what it felt like in high school when you thought someone found you attractive …”

“No …” Bing shook his head.

“… and it made you look at him in a different light? He made me feel good about myself. It’s like some long-buried flirty feelings were dredged up and dusted off. Still, I didn’t plan to do anything about it, just enjoy his attention but then …”

“You fell in love?” Bing asked, his eyes wide with anticipation. Diane reached over and patted his leg, the same way I pat Mycroft when he attempts to follow me up the stairs but can’t get his leg up to the first step.

“No, I didn’t fall in love. I just sort of savored the feeling.”

“So what happened to put you in major flirtation mode and buy those low-cut sweaters?”

“They weren’t that low cut, Syra. Just regular sweaters …”

“But not something you usually wear. Those sweaters were definitely out of character,” I pointed out. “Come on, Diane. We’ve known you forever and you never wear suggestive clothing, ever.”

“I know. I know. It’s just that the police began to question Kaleb. He’s the newspaper boy. He makes his deliveries before school so he was there early in the morning …”

“Oh, my God. He must have found Franklin that day before I did. He would have been there way before I went out to check on him.” I realized. “Why didn’t he say some …?”

“That’s the problem! Don’t you see? Kaleb did see him when he took him the newspaper …”

“But he didn’t say anything?” Bing asked. “That seems strange.”

“Yes. Yes. It seemed strange to the police, too. So they kept questioning him and questioning him and I was so scared, not that Kaleb would have murdered Franklin, but that it looked suspicious …”

“But why didn’t he report it?” I asked. “Why run away?”

“Because he was scared! He was scared the killer might still be there. He was scared that the killer might have seen him and go after him, too. He was scared he would be late for his eight o’clock math test. He’s just a kid. He ran away. People don’t find murder victims every day, you know.”

“I never have,” Bing offered.

“But the police thought his behavior was suspicious and Donny kept coming to the house to talk to Kaleb and to Scott and me. I got caught up in the flirtation because it felt good and it gave me a chance to stay close to the investigation and to plead Kaleb’s innocence. It just sort of snowballed, the flirty feelings, the protective feelings, the fear. I just wasn’t myself. But it’s different now.”

“What do you mean?” Syra asked. “How’s it different?”

Diane ran her hands up into her jungle of hair, sending it shooting off her head like an electrical charge. “Scott noticed. He saw how Donny treated me and how I responded. But the worse thing is he noticed one of my home pregnancy kits missing …”

“Oh, no! That’s totally my fault,” I cried.

“I mentioned a while ago that I was down to just one and we were joking around about having to take a weekend trip out of town to stock up again. I kept it right in the linen closet and when he went in there to get soap he noticed it was gone. He thought Donny and I had …”

“Had you?” Syra asked.

“No! Of course not. Donny never even touched me except maybe to take my hand to comfort me or to touch my arm or something. Nothing sexual. Ever. But it took a while to convince Scott. He almost called you, Tamsen.”

“I wish he had. I’m so sorry he misunderstood.”

“It’s good, actually. It got everything out in the open. I realized I had been making a fool of myself. Scott and I realized we needed more couple time. Lots of good came out of it. Most importantly, Donny finally believed Kaleb was guilty of nothing more than immature judgment. It all turned out all right.”

“So you and Scott are good? Because I can talk to him if you think I should,” I offered.

“No, thanks, we’re good. Everything is settled,” Diane assured us. “Even Kaleb seems to have put it behind him.”

“Are you pregnant, Tamsen?” Bing asked. “It would be fun if you had a baby!”

“Fun for whom, Bing? No, thankfully I’m not pregnant. Just starting the ‘change’.” Bing had been to enough WOACA meetings that he needed no further explanation about the ‘change’. He looked disappointed about my baby news.

“I guess that solves the Diane and Donny mystery,” Syra sighed, resting her head on the back of the chair and closing her eyes.

“Not quite,” I said. “Is Donny’s real name Donald Donaldson?”

“No, worse,” Diane smiled.

“What could be worse?” I asked.

“Milton. Milton Donaldson. That’s why he’s always gone by Donny.” We all agreed that he’d made a good choice.