The Trouble with Cupid

by Carolyn Haines

  “She just gets so busy, she forgets,” Sarah said.

  “Come on, let’s get you inside the rectory. You can rest on my couch. There’s nothing in there but fresh air. I’ll take you home once you feel better.”

  Father Dan leads Sarah into the rectory, and as much as I’d like to go and see inside his house, I recognize a golden opportunity to search Eleanor’s car. It’s not that I’m exactly expecting to find the stolen Madonna in the backseat, but I might find some glitter.

  The car is spotless. Suspiciously so, if you ask me. The only thing I find is a rather large plastic sack with a big-box store logo—apparently she’s not into using reusable canvas bags. Despite the size of the bag, there’s only a bottle of perfume, some make-up, and a receipt. I flatten my ears when I whiff the bottle inside the bag. Eau de citrus and rotten eggs. Popping my head up to see if anyone is watching me, I hatch a plan. No one is paying the least attention to me, so I drag the bag out of the car and into the fringe of decorative grasses at the edge of the driveway. I paw some brown leaves over the bag. There. That’s for Sarah!

  Quickly, I prance back toward Lucas, Mai, and Eleanor, hoping to catch some of their conversation.

  “Well, I don’t care what you say. This church yard would look better if it were mowed proper and all these”—she glances at the fire bush—“weeds were cut down. Even the roses need to be removed and replaced. They’ve gotten old and thorny.”

  As if she’s won the point, Eleanor waives airily and heads toward her car. A moment later, her vehicle spins in the gravel, then rushes out onto Meridian Road and speeds off. I guess she figured Father Dan would take Sarah home, or else, as Sarah mentioned, she just forgot.

  That night, someone breaks into the church and steals the silver communion chalice and the money from the collection plate that had not yet been put in the bank.

  Now it’s a real police investigation.

  * * *

  Lucas and Mai ease through the inside of the small church, gloves on their hands, searching for clues. The theft is small by some standards, but Father Dan is shaky and upset. “I just don’t understand why. If someone who needed the money had asked, I’d have given it to them.”

  My job is to stay with him, and calm him down—or at least that’s what Lucas said. Nice as that thought is, I also intend to sniff around and observe and smell what there is to see.

  “Dang it,” Lucas says, and I leap from Father Dan to Lucas to see what he found. A torn envelope with writing in a foreign language. “I can’t read a word of this.”

  “Arabic, the official language of Syria,” Mai says, looking at the scrap in Lucas’ gloved fingers. “I’ve been studying it lately, given the refugee situation.”

  “We have a Syrian family down the road. But they are lovely, hard-working people.” Father Dan frowns at the envelope. “I’ve visited with them several times. One of their boys was here the first time you visited, though the young people did not stay long enough for you to meet them.”

  I pause, remembering the group of teens and the one black-haired youth among them.

  “They are not thieves. They are just not that kind of people. In their own country, the father was a professional and the children all good students.” Father Dan’s voice is emphatic.

  “We met them when we did the neighborhood canvass. Seemed like real good folks,” Lucas says.

  “I agree,” Mai says, “but we have no choice but to question them.” She takes the envelope from Lucas with the tips of her own gloved fingers. “This isn’t an address. It’s more like a grocery list. Somebody must have made the list on the back of a used envelope.” She turns the paper over, carefully, as if some invisible ink will suddenly pop out at her. Then she puts the envelope into a plastic evidence bag.

  Father Dan watches her handling the envelope with grave concern and rising agitation. I rub against him, trying to calm him.

  “I simply cannot have anyone arrested over this. I’ll confess to misplacing the chalice.” Father Dan pauses and gives us a small smile. “After all, at my age, everyone will believe that. And maybe I just forgot that I already deposited the money.” He pats his pants pocket as if seeking a receipt or a billfold. “But you should not bother those poor people. They’ve been through so much already.”

  I listen, but then pad around, my nose and eyes close to the carpet inside the church.

  In a corner by the cabinet where the chalice was stored I spot something and creep forward to investigate. Hair. Black. I sniff and nose it around, thinking it could well be dyed. Of course, for all I know half of the congregation here has dyed black hair, but I don’t think so.

  I think the hair belongs to Eleanor, despite the fact there’s none of the scent of that stinky perfume she wears.

  Just as I start trying to lasso the hair on my tongue to take to Lucas, I see something else. A sprinkle of glitter across the carpet.

  But Eleanor had no glitter on her the day I met her. And there was none in her car.

  Yet, I can’t help but keep thinking Eleanor is somehow involved in all these nefarious happenings.

  And the envelope. How very convenient –or sloppy—that a thief would leave behind such a clue to his or her identity.

  It suddenly occurs to me that this wasn’t the first envelope found at the scene of the crime either. Father Dan had discovered a corner of an envelope by the spot where the missing Madonna had once stood, but any evidentiary value had been ruined by the rains.

  Leaving one envelope might be sloppy or accidental. But leaving two behind rises to a new level. Either we have some very inept criminals, trailing their torn envelopes behind them wherever they go, or someone is trying to frame the Syrians. I race toward Lucas and head butt him to get his attention. Once he is staring at me, I share my theory in a series of meows that draws Mai’s attention.

  “He sounds like he’s trying to explain something.” Mai studies me. “The patterns of different sounds and the pauses are all very much like a language.”

  “Yes, I rather think so myself,” Father Dan says.

  Lucas smiles as if to say “told you so.”

  But none of them understand the point I’m trying to make about the second envelope.

  And none of them seem the least bit interested in the lone black hair I had finally managed to lasso and drop at their feet.

  That leaves the glitter. I prance and paw and snort and meow and they all look at me like they get it that I’m trying to tell them something. Only they do not have a clue what that might be.

  A landline rings from an office in the back, and Father Dan shuffles off to answer it. I give Mai one more try and meow several clear sentences about the two envelopes. For emphasis, I swat the envelope in her hand. Then I simplify things. I tap the envelope and meow once. Then I paw it again and meow a second, single note.

  Mai studies me. I sit. Lucas paces. In the back we hear the muffled tones of Father Dan talking on the phone.

  Mai leans forward toward me and extends the envelope inside the plastic evidence bag. “What are you trying to tell us about this?”

  Now she’s catching on. I politely tap it once, pause, and then tap it again.

  “Two,” she says and leans back. She gives Lucas a long look. “The cat is trying to tell us something about a second envelope. I swear it.”

  “I told you, didn’t I?” Lucas beams down at me.

  All of this is very rewarding, but they are still missing the point.

  Father Dan hobbles back into the room and listens as Mai explains to him that I’ve twice told her something about the envelopes and something about the number two.

  “Oh, you know,” Father Dan says, “I wondered about that too. That wet envelope by where the Madonna was, and now this one in the church. Too much, really, for coincident, don’t you think?”

  At once, Mai and Lucas start talking.

  Within seconds, everyone understands my point. Someone planted the envelopes to frame the Syrian refugees.


  “I wonder if that ties in with my phone call?” Father Dan eases himself down into a pew, his face weary and a bit dismayed. “That was one of my parishioners. And he was warning me that Eleanor is calling around and telling everyone that the Syrian family burglarized the church and should be arrested and deported.”

  A moment later, the pretty blond teenager I had seen that first day we were at St. Andrews’s runs into the church. Her hair is so pale it is almost white, and she hurls herself into Father Dan’s arms. “You’ve got to make them stop it,” she says, and begins to sob. There are flecks of glitter in her hair.

  Mai shakes her head, and whispers, “teen-age angst. I’m so glad I’m past all that.” She takes Lucas’ hand and tugs him out of the church to give Father Dan and the teenager some privacy.

  I start to hang around and listen to the teen girl, but Lucas calls me.

  As I’m prancing outside, I race through the tall grasses at the edge of the property, and think of the plastic bag from Eleanor’s car. Perhaps she planted the envelopes—which is a worthy supposition given her recent attempts to create trouble for the Syrians. Maybe I better take a look at that receipt in the bag after all.

  Recriminating myself for not having reviewed it the first time, I dig out the receipt from the bag as Lucas and Mai gather around me.

  “What’s this?” Mai reaches down and picks up the bag. She sniffs the perfume, wrinkles her nose, and says, “Eleanor wore this scent, though why I surely can’t say.”

  Lucas takes the receipt. “And she bought something called yard ornament.”

  Above me, the two detectives look at each other and nod.

  * * *

  “You can’t take the cat to question the Syrians.” Mai says it like she’s the boss.

  “Sure, I can. Trouble knows how to behave. And look what he told us about the envelopes and how he led us right to that receipt.”

  We are all standing outside the church, and Father Dan, looking tired beyond his endurance, has retired to his rectory. The blond girl, who quite exhausted him, has left.

  “I mean—”

  Before she can say anything more, I head butt her leg. I’ve got part of this figured out, thought I’ve yet to find the motive and have a few queries unanswered. But I have enough to push them in the right direction if I can only convince them to listen to me.

  Eleanor stole the statue so she could blame the Syrians. Perhaps she then felt badly for Father Dan and tried to replace the first Madonna with the metal one. When the stolen statue didn’t stir up enough agitation, she stole the chalice and the money so she could blame the Syrians all over again. The glitter in the pretty blond girl’s hair suggests she’s somehow involved, yet I don’t think she’s the culprit. She’s too sweet on that Syrian chap unless I misread the way their hands brushed lightly that first day I saw them.

  With all those thoughts in my head, I meow a whole paragraph of explanations, aiming my words at Lucas and Mai.

  Lucas looks at me, his face twisted in puzzlement. He almost never understands me—one of his human shortcomings.

  But Mai is studying me hard. Is it possible she is learning some cat language as well as Vietnamese, French, Spanish, and a sampling of Arabic?

  Meowing as slowly and precisely as I can, I tell Mai. The horrid-smelling woman with the black hair stole the Madonna and the chalice to support her campaign against the Syrian refugees. She planted the torn snippet of an envelope in the garden, but when the rain damaged the ink on it, she somehow entered the church, stole the chalice and money and planted the second envelope. Perhaps as a church member entrusted with keeping the church and grounds up, she even has a key.

  Mai watches me, listening carefully to each cat syllable.

  “I swear, this cat is meowing in a language again. Just like before, with the envelopes. I mean each sound is distinct, and there are patterns that reflect a language.”

  “Yes.” I meow and rub against her.

  * * *

  Despite her new respect for my language and detective skills, Mai convinces Lucas not to bring me into the house when they question the Syrian immigrants. They leave me in Lucas’ vehicle with a firm order to stay put.

  It won’t be the first or last time I disobey a daft human directive.

  With the windows down and a cool February breeze blowing in, I don’t stay in the vehicle long, but leap out and start my own investigation. This one takes me straight to their trash can. If someone planted the envelope to frame this family, no doubt an easy place to steal the torn envelopes was the family trash can. It doesn’t take me long to find small flecks of glitter on the ground.

  I was hoping to find Eleanor’s dyed black hair or sniff out her eau de citrus and rotten eggs perfume. But the glitter throws me.

  Why would the pretty blond girl be digging around in the Syrian’s trash can? I think of that sweetness between her and the Syrian boy. I can’t for one moment think why she might be involved in stealing envelopes from his family’s trash to implicate them in a crime.

  Yet the evidence suggests that she prowled around the trash can, and that hints that perhaps she did take an envelope out of their rubbish and plant it in the church.

  Frustrated—and I admit disappointed—I head back to the front door, and wait for Lucas and Mai. When they finally come out, their heads are together and they are chatting away. They don’t think the Syrians stole the Madonna, or the chalice, and they were given permission to search the house, and did so. While I’m glad to see that, I am also frustrated not to have been inside the house.

  I head butt Lucas and Mai and with some effort steer them to the trash can. This takes some serious maneuvering. I keep pointing to the glitter, but it might be too small for them to see with their weak human eyes. But then Mai spots the tiny, sparkling flakes.

  She looks at me again, something dawning in her expression. “Lucas,” she says, and points to the glitter.

  “Like in the church,” Lucas says.

  “Like in the garden,” Mai says.

  So they did notice the glitter.

  “The blond girl, you know, the one who came crying in the church,” Mai says. “She had glitter in her hair.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that too.” Lucas glances down at me, and I meow to say I’m glad they both saw the glitter.

  “Do you think a judge would give us a search warrant? Based upon glitter?” Mai doesn’t consult me, but keeps her eyes on Lucas.

  “Probably not. Anyway, we don’t know her name or where she lives.”

  “That’s easy to fix.” Mai pulls her cell phone out, consults her contact list, and calls Father Dan.

  A moment later, we have a name and an address. The blond girl is Melissa, and she lives two doors down from the Syrians. The night Lucas and Mai canvassed the neighborhood, no one had been home at that house.

  “Why don’t we just knock on her door and chat with her. We’ll have to get a parent’s permission since she’s a minor, but we can just explain we’re gathering general information.” Mai eyes Lucas.

  “Worth a shot,” Lucas says.

  But I’ve got a better idea. I don’t need a search warrant. I just need somebody to open doors for me.

  * * *

  Moments later, Lucas, Mai and I are standing outside the door of a well-kept but decidedly modest older home. It has a stand-alone garage in the back, which dates the house. I notice the garage door in the separate building is up a few inches, and suddenly I itch to explore. But I don’t want to miss any exchange between Lucas, Mai, and Melissa. Reluctantly, I stay put.

  Lucas rings the bell a second time, and just as he is reaching to do so again, the door opens. I pull back my head and arch my tail in surprise.

  Sarah. The frail woman with the migraine that Father Dan had helped from Eleanor’s car into his rectory to escape from the dreadful perfume—and perhaps from Eleanor herself.

  What is she doing at Melissa’s house?

  How is she involved in all
this?

  “Yes?” She speaks it politely, yet with a definite tentative quality.

  Mai, no doubt realizing she is the least threatening in our crowd, steps forward a small step. “Good afternoon, ma’am. My name is Mai Thi Pham, and this is Lucas Kelly.”

  I meow and step forward. I do hate being ignored.

  Mai gives me a sideways look before she continues speaking. “We are detectives with the Tallahassee Police Department.” She pauses and reaches inside her jacket. “If you will give me just a moment, I will show you my badge.”

  “I remember you.” The frail woman says, her voice so low even I have to strain to hear it. “From being at Father Dan’s. I saw you both in the garden. When the statue was stolen.”

  “Yes,” Lucas steps forward. “But we didn’t have the chance to meet you. But now we can.” He offers his hand, and the woman takes it. Then she and Mai shake hands.

  “I’m Sarah Browning.” She wipes her hand lightly against the sides of her pants and can’t quite meet either Lucas or Mai in the eyes. “Is Father Dan all right?” The woman’s anxiety sounds in her voice. “I…we…worry so about him. Being alone and all.”

  “Father Dan is fine,” Mai says, in her soothing, calming voice.

  I purr to agree, though everyone is ignoring me.

  “How may I help you?” The woman’s voice fluttered a bit, and her hand moves up toward her face, and then drops.

  “Momma?”

  We all look up and past Sarah and see Melissa standing behind her.

  Melissa pushes up beside her mother and puts a protective hand on the woman’s shoulder. “What is this about?” She sounds very assured.

  “We’d like to come in and ask you some questions about the missing statue at St. Andrew’s,” Lucas says.

  “And the chalice and the money.” Mai steps forward, eyeing Melissa closely.

  Without missing a beat, Melissa answers. “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. My mother is not well, and I will not have you upsetting her.”