He stepped around—strutted, in fact—twisting his neck to get a look at himself.
“Here, I’ll show you.” I picked him up and took him to the mirror by the front door. He leaned toward his reflection as we neared, purring. I could tell he liked it. “So,” I asked, “how’s that?”
Kinky!
“Don’t go there.”
Kitten with a whip!
“Stop that.” I took him back to the low table, explaining, “Now, the point of all this is the leash.” I waited for a comeback.
Set my people free.
I plowed ahead. “The leash allows us to go outdoors together. It keeps you out of harm’s way, and it keeps me from worrying. I clip this to your harness”—I did so—“and then, when I walk, you walk alongside me. Don’t pull ahead, straining the leash; let it hang limp and walk near my feet. And most important: If I stop, you stop. Got it?”
Piece of cake.
“Good. Let’s try it.” With leash in hand, I plopped the cat to the floor and began walking toward the kitchen. To my immense relief, I did not need to drag him to get him moving, as Mary had tried to do. Rather, he did exactly as I had instructed, walking at my heel. Rounding the dining table several times, I tried speeding up and slowing down, which Mister Puss mimicked exactly. And when I stopped, he heeled and sat.
I leaned down to give him a vigorous rub. “That was freaking fab-ulous,” I told him as he erupted into a loud, rolling purr.
“All right,” I commanded, “again.” And I walked him throughout the loft, tracing a figure eight around the kitchen and living room—faster, slower, stopping—several times. He didn’t miss a single cue.
Returning from the mezzanine, Marson had stopped halfway down the spiral stairs, where he was watching us, quietly amazed.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
Our visit to the building site that afternoon was an ideal trial outing to check Mister Puss’s newly acquired leash skills in the wild. While I was confident he would perform as expected when we arrived at the site, I wasn’t sure what to expect during the ride in the Range Rover, so I put him in the cat carrier—in case he got freaked by the drive.
He was in the backseat, in the carrier, in his harness, with the leash strung through the cage door. Up front in the passenger seat, I held the other end of the leash, which I thought might give the cat a sense of connection and security. Marson glanced over while driving. “How’s he doing back there?”
I checked. “Fine.” Mister Puss sat comfortably in the kennel, nose to the grate. His eyes were wide and alert, showing no agitation or concern, as if taking in the scenery. I asked Marson, “Okay if I try letting him out?”
“Entirely up to you,” he said. “Keep a grip on that leash, though.” The SUV had begun to lurch and wobble along the bumpier paving of the country road.
Reaching back, I twiddled the cat’s nose through the grate, asking, “Care to join us up here in first class?” He purred loudly enough to be heard over the engine noise. So I unlatched and opened the cage door.
Mister Puss sat stone still for a while, then walked halfway out, with his front paws on the edge of the seat. I patted the console, beckoning him forward. Emerging fully from the carrier, he stepped from the seat to the console, where he perched, taking everything in. The overhead foliage whizzed past the windshield as we were propelled through a tunnel of green.
I had shortened the leash as Mister Puss advanced. When a rut in the road challenged his balance, he quickly recovered before hopping over to my lap, where he curled up and closed his eyes.
“Look at that,” I told Marson. “Instant catnap.”
“I don’t blame him. I’d love to nap in your lap.”
“Save that thought for later.” I winked.
Our destination was only a couple of minutes away, but I thought I should check in with Sheriff Simms, so I fished the phone from my pocket and placed a call.
“Hey, Brody,” he said. “I heard from Heather Vance. Sounds like you had a real heart-to-heart with Lillie.”
“We did indeed.” I told him about Lillie’s misplaced affections for David Lovell. I told him about Lillie’s macaroons, about the samples I gave to Heather for comparison to the cookies taken from the church. And I told him about the insurance premium Lillie sent by registered mail—right around the time David died. I asked, “Is there any way to verify that, Thomas?”
“Probably,” he said. “We’ll look into it.”
“Meanwhile, Marson and I are on our way to check on the new house and talk to Clem Carter. We’ve been having too many delays.”
“Yeah,” said Thomas, “I read about that. Hope you have a productive talk.”
“Thanks, but I’m planning to probe a bit deeper.”
Marson gave me a quizzical look.
“A bit deeper about what?” asked Thomas.
“About the confrontation Clem had with that preservationist—Kayla somebody—at the parish meeting last week. Clem got all wound up. We’ve dealt with him a lot, and I’ve never seen that side of him.”
“Kayla sure knew how to punch his buttons,” agreed Simms. “Interesting.”
The tract of land where Marson had challenged me to design “the perfect house” was originally owned by Mary Questman’s family, a remnant of the vast holdings they acquired during the heyday of their timber empire.
The site was lightly wooded with birches where it opened to a prairie, which was now held in trust by a conservancy. A stream ran through a craggy ravine, forming a playful waterfall of perhaps twenty feet where some Ice Age mischief had cleaved upper and lower plateaus. When Marson had first taken me there, my heart skipped a beat, and I knew how Frank Lloyd Wright must have felt on his first visit to Bear Run in Pennsylvania. The similarity of the two settings was arresting, and I quickly formed a mental image of the vista that would be enjoyed from a house perched on the upper plateau—a prairie view that would never change, preserved for posterity.
When Mary first showed Marson the land, she told him she’d been tendered many offers for it over the years, but she’d never felt right about parting with it. Later, however, after I had entered Marson’s life, he approached Mary with an idea—our perfect house—and she was all in. She sold him the land for a song. They sealed the deal then and there. As a deposit, she took whatever cash Marson had in his pocket.
Now, as Marson and I approached the building site out near the edge of town, our dreams for the perfect house, once merely a concept, were becoming a physical reality—in steel, glass, and concrete—above that isolated stream in a grove of birches. When Marson first saw my design for the house, he had called it “a faceted jewel in the woods.” For the time being, however, the scene was dominated by a huge sign with burly black lettering against an eyeball-searing background of cadmium yellow: CARTER CONSTRUCTION.
We pulled the SUV into a clearing where various builders’ trucks were parked at slapdash angles—the project may have been behind schedule, but it was good to see plenty of activity today. Getting out of the vehicle, I set Mister Puss down on the gravel, and he looked about, seeming far more interested in the birds than in the house taking shape over the waterfall.
Marson joined me, and we began to trudge with the cat up an embankment toward the building. I noticed Clem Carter standing on the upper level of the house, engaged with another man in what appeared to be a heated conversation. At the bottom of the driveway, Nia Butler, Dumont’s code-enforcement officer, stood beside an SUV that bore the city emblem on its door. She was facing away from us, talking on her phone.
“Uh-oh,” said Marson. As we walked in her direction, he called, “Officer Butler?”
When she turned to us, her eyes bugged. “Sweet Jesus, what the hell is that?”
I realized she was transfixed by Mister Puss, who did indeed resemble a leashed cougar, although a very small one. “It’s a cat,” I explained with a laugh. “A house cat.”
She put away her phone and w
alked over to us. “It’s a kitty?” She hunkered down for a closer look, lifting her granny glasses and twiddling her fingers, which the cat sniffed, purring. “How’d you teach a cat to walk on a leash?”
“He just sorta took to it.”
“My, my.” She stood.
Sounding anxious, Marson asked, “Officer Butler, is there—”
“Mr. Miles,” she interrupted sternly, “unless I’m mistaken, we are all, the three of us here, ‘members of the tribe,’ so to speak.” Her lips curled into a wry smile. “Marson. Call me Nia. And I’ve been wanting to meet your husband. Brody, correct?”
I introduced myself, adding, “And the little guy is Mister Puss. We’re looking after him; he’s Mary Questman’s cat.”
“Nia,” said Marson, “while it’s always a pleasure, I can’t help feeling concerned running into you here.”
She raised both palms in a soothing gesture. “I came along for the ride. I saw that teaser from Glee Savage in yesterday’s paper, so I was curious to get a look at the house—and I must say, it is looking real fine. Congratulations, boys. But Hudson has some issues, I guess, and he needed to talk to Clem.”
I asked, “Who’s Hudson?”
Marson said, “He’s the city’s building inspector.”
Nia explained, “Hudson’s in charge during construction. After it’s occupied, my turn.”
“Those distinctions aside,” said Marson, “this is not looking good.” He directed our attention to the top deck of the house, where Hudson stood with a roll of blueprints tucked under one arm while dashing notes on a clipboard, yelling something at Clem Carter, who was also yelling, looking so red-faced—even from a distance—I feared he might have a stroke.
Nia was apathetic. “Boys will be boys. They’ll work it out.”
I wasn’t so sure. Hudson was now trudging down the embankment, looking pissed. He made a beeline for his SUV, hopped in, slammed the door, started the engine, and honked.
Nia leaned in our direction to stage-whisper, “Gotta go,” then made a dash for the SUV as Hudson flung the passenger door open from inside. Nia hoisted herself up over the running board, pulled the door closed, and off they roared, spraying gravel.
From the upper deck, Clem had spotted us. He pointed to the garage—which was not yet finished but served as a temporary construction office—indicating we should meet him there.
Marson asked Clem, “What the devil was that all about?”
Clem was sweating and still agitated as we seated ourselves on folding chairs around a long folding table, one of several in the garage that were stacked with plans, schedules, invoices, and all manner of paperwork, none of it having any apparent order. Tools were strewn about in disarray—try finding that angle grinder when you need it. Mister Puss sniffed at the bare cement floor and sneezed. It had been poured only recently and still had the dusty smell of lime and damp sand. Clem blotted his neck and forehead with a rumpled handkerchief before answering Marson’s question.
“It was nothing,” he said. “A miscommunication.”
Marson persisted: “About what?”
“Materials. Specs. ‘Unauthorized changes,’ according to Hudson. The jerk.”
I knew Clem was married, but I’d never met his wife, and I didn’t think they had kids. He was in his fifties with an impressive build that had begun to turn paunchy. His reddish hair, still thick and full, was streaked with silver—and today, it was matted with sweat.
“What sort of changes?” asked Marson. He reminded Clem, “Brody’s the designer. And this will be our home. But we’re behind schedule and over budget. I’ve heard complaints that subs aren’t getting paid. And now the city inspector is finding ‘issues’ with the work.”
“Okay, okay, I get it. You have a right to be concerned, but no need to be worried. Honest.” Clem tried to be accommodating and detailed for us the issues raised by Hudson, as well as the various reasons the project had fallen behind schedule—a long winter, supplier problems, undependable subcontractors, and finally, bad luck.
However, there was more to it, I was sure. “Clem,” I said, “this is awkward, but we need to get it in the open. It’s no secret that you’re overextended with that spec house on the west side.”
He’d begun a project two years prior, during a boom, building a fat-ass house in a new development, tricking it out with “features” intended to appeal to some unknown but status-seeking buyer. The boom, however, had passed. The market for houses like that had dried up. And not to be snobby, but the design was pure crap. I couldn’t imagine that he’d find a buyer at any price, let alone a price that would cover what he had in it—and the meter was still running on the loans, with most of his resources tied up.
“Yeah…,” he said slowly, “that’s a problem.” He stood and pulled himself together. “But look. That’s my problem, and it won’t be yours. This house of yours, it’s by far the best project I’ve ever built. Swear to God, it’s an honor to be part of it. I will not let you down; you’ll be in by winter. And the problem on the west side? Someone, or something, is bound to come along and turn things around.”
Feeling better, having cleared the air, we all shook hands and parted with smiles. Clem Carter went back to work with his crew. Marson, Mister Puss, and I climbed into the Range Rover and headed back to town.
But I had to wonder: What was Clem banking on to “turn things around”? Why the optimism that something would save him from the bad investment he’d made?
At the parish meeting a week earlier, Clem had argued strongly in favor of building a new St. Alban’s, rather than restoring the old church. As a member of the parish, he could have a leg up in snagging a plump, lucrative construction contract.
And only two days ago, when David Lovell died at the organ in the church, his swan song had been accompanied by a mysterious incense fire in the center aisle. Had that fire spread, the option of restoration would have gone—literally as well as figuratively—up in smoke.
Chapter 8
Joyce Hibbard had been on my mind. A complex and accomplished woman, she also struck me as adrift and, for lack of a kinder word, compromised.
She was adrift on her career path, which had made such radical swings—from law, to the fashion industry, and much later in life, to the priesthood. This was not the reasoned evolution of a calling. Rather, this was the thrashing of frustration.
And she was compromised—emotionally, perhaps even ethically—by the enormity of two life-defining choices she had willfully made. She had joined with a gay man in a marriage of convenience because they calculated it would advance their careers. And now, as her husband phrased it, she had “teamed up for the hocus-pocus” of the priesthood, not because she truly believed what she preached, but because she was in the mood for a challenge.
It was not my place to judge Joyce, let alone to censure her. As far as I knew, she had not hurt anyone with these deceptions, and it might even be said that her instincts were laudable. Nonetheless, I was unable to shake the disquieting notion that she was acting out a lifelong charade and—at a fundamental level—could not be trusted.
She was also at the nexus of an odd and fragile triangle with her husband, Curtis Hibbard, and his erstwhile lover, Yevgeny Krymov—a triangle that might have become a quadrangle, had David Lovell lived. Which suggested a tantalizing stew of possibilities regarding David’s untimely demise.
On Saturday, therefore, when Marson asked me if I wanted to join him and Mother Hibbard for lunch, I didn’t hesitate to tag along. They were meeting at First Avenue Bistro to compare notes regarding the status of St. Alban’s fix-or-build dilemma. Only ten days remained for the parish to reach a decision; otherwise, the city would make the decision for them and condemn the old church building.
We decided to walk from the loft to the restaurant, and I regretted that we would not be able to strut along First Avenue with Mister Puss. He had been quite the elegant little gentleman during our prior day’s outing to the construction
site, but we’d be pushing our luck if we thought Nancy Sanderson would allow a cat, however well behaved, inside the Bistro.
Because lunch would be crowded on a Saturday, Marson wanted to beat the rush and had asked Joyce to meet him a few minutes before noon. When we arrived, Joyce was already there, and Nancy had seated her at our favorite corner table, between the fireplace and the front windows, where we could keep an eye on the entire room as well as activity on the street. The noontide bustle of Dumont’s main drag was hardly cosmopolitan, but it offered a lively note of connection to the outside world.
Joyce stood as we approached the table. “Brody. What a nice surprise. Lovely of you to join us.” She leaned forward for a smooch, accompanied by a strong whiff of her secret sauce.
The restaurant was already getting crowded, and as the three of us were settling at our table, I noticed a family arrive—parents and their adolescent daughter—who looked familiar. “Oh,” said Joyce, “it’s the Olsons.” And she was up again, greeting Bob Olson, the senior warden of St. Alban’s parish vestry. He ushered over his wife, Angela, and their pretty daughter, Hailey, whom I remembered from the parish meeting, now nine days past.
Angela was saying, “Hailey isn’t doing so well—the shock of David’s death. I guess we’re all in shock. What an awful tragedy.”
Bob held his arm around their daughter, who hung her head. Bob said, “Hailey was in the choir, and right now—Saturday noon—this is when they always practiced for Sunday services. So we’re here for a nice lunch instead. We could all use a little boost.”
Joyce cooed something about God. Marson and I offered words of commiseration and assured the girl there would be happier times ahead. As we sat again and they moved off to their table, Bob glanced back to thank us with a discreet thumbs-up.
And then, Glee Savage arrived.
We were on our feet again with a round of greetings, which was considerably more upbeat than our encounter with the Olsons. Even with David’s death barely three days ago, there was an aspect of Glee’s exuberant spirit that simply would not be tamed. “So,” she said, beading me with a grin beneath the floppy brim of her big flowered hat, “have you figured it out?” She’d seemingly gotten word that I was on the investigation.
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