Pearls Gone Wild

by Diane Vallere

  “I talked to the detective last night,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “He called. He said he wanted to come over today. He said a couple of people told him about George and my fight at the party and that raised questions in his investigation.”

  Warning bells went off in my head. “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him about everything—George’s meltdown and how scared I am about having this baby.” She put her hand on her belly. “He said I didn’t have to talk to him if I didn’t want to, but I want this to be over.”

  “Cat, when he said you didn’t have to talk to him, did he ask you if you wanted a lawyer to be present?”

  “Yes, but my lawyer was George’s friend. I don’t know if they know how he was feeling. I don’t know if they knew this was coming.”

  “Um, Cat, I don’t think what George’s friends think of you should be your biggest concern. It sounds like Detective Madden is looking at you as the main suspect.” She picked up the blender of avocado-banana-yogurt mixture and poured it into her mug. She took a sip and stood very, very still, not saying a word for upwards of a minute. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She turned to face me. Her unfocused eyes moved up my sweater until she reached my face. “No. I am definitely not okay.” She grabbed the blender and dumped the contents into the sink and then tossed the empty blender in on top of it. Droplets of green goo splattered out and landed on the backsplash and on her apron. She threw her towel onto the counter and stormed out of the room.

  My first instinct was to follow her. I stood up and got as far as the doorway when I stopped to think about things from Cat’s point of view. In the past four days, she’d gone from being a happily married wife about to give birth to her first child and celebrate her ten year anniversary to facing life as a single mom while mourning the death of her husband. He’d left her, and then he’d left her. There would be no hope for a reconciliation, no explanation for his decision or for his timing. For the rest of her life, Cat would question whether George’s friends knew of his dissatisfaction, whether there was something deeper at the root of his change of heart. I didn’t think she was the type to let other people’s opinions shape her view of herself, but it would make it hard to reach out for help from people she no longer trusted.

  When I’d first moved to Ribbon and started my life over, I’d felt alone. Cat’s new reality was ten times more challenging than mine had been. I’d survived my own circumstances, but I hadn’t had the extra burden of a baby on the way.

  And the most frustrating thing of it all, the one thing that none of us were saying because of how it would make us appear, was that Cat couldn’t be mad at George anymore. Her “Men Are Rats” rant prior to the party had been her knee-jerk reaction to being left in her third trimester by a man who selfishly said he was leaving her when she needed him the most. Nobody would have questioned her anger. But they’d fought at the party at the mall, and that was the single most damning evidence against her. Who knows how many people saw her throw her drink in his face. George had brought her wrath onto him by his actions, but when he was murdered, everything changed. George became the victim, not Cat.

  And we still didn’t know why.

  I wandered into the living room and sat down next to Logan. He looked up at me and meowed. I ran my hand over the top of his head and scratched his ears. I picked him up and carried him to the fireplace. He put his front paws over my shoulder. Again, I looked at the photos on the mantel. The last one was of Cat when she’d just started showing. She and George stood next to each other. One of his arms was around her and the other was on her tummy. The look on his face was pure joy: eyes wide, smile even wider. Cat looked at him and he looked at the camera and anybody who saw that photo would think this baby was going to be born into the best marriage ever.

  I set the photo facedown and noticed something taped to the back of the frame. It was a piece of white paper wrapped around a small, lumpy object.

  I should have left it alone.

  We both know I didn’t.

  I peeled the tape away from the frame and unwrapped the object. It was a tiny gold key. A poem had been typed on the paper:

  Roses are red

  Violets are blue

  This life has been perfect

  With just me and you.

  Below the poem, written in George’s handwriting, was a personal note:

  My Dearest Kitty-Cat, Our family grows by one! No matter what happens, you’ll never be alone as long as I’m alive. There are no words to say thank you for what we have so I won’t even try. Love forever and ever, George.

  P. S. Look in the flue!

  “What’s that?” Cat asked from behind me.

  I looked up suddenly and closed my hand around the key. “It’s—it’s—” I searched her face as what I’d just read sank in. I was never intended to see this. Cat was.

  And if what I thought was correct, it changed everything. I held the paper out toward her. “You need to see this.”

  “I can’t take any more bad news.”

  “It’s not bad news, I promise.”

  She crossed the room and took the paper. Her red hair fell forward while she read it, hiding her expression. It wasn’t a long note but she stared at the paper for a very long time. A large fat tear plopped onto the paper. Finally, she lowered it and looked at me. “Where did you find this?”

  “It was taped to the back of the last photo on the mantel.” I held out the key. “It was wrapped around this.”

  She took the key and turned it over in her fingers. Slowly, she crouched down and peered inside the fireplace. She reached her hand up into the flue and moved it around. Her body tensed for a moment, and then she leaned forward more and pulled something out. It was a small box wrapped in paper with little pink and blue bows printed on it.

  “How did this get in there?” she asked. I didn’t reply, because it seemed we both knew the answer.

  “If you had started a fire, it would have been destroyed.”

  “It was a joke. George baby-proofed every square inch of this place and I asked him how he was going to baby-proof the fireplace. He said not to worry—that he had something special in mind for that.”

  She walked to the sofa and sat down, and then slowly tore the paper away from the box. Inside was a small antique jewelry box. Cat fit the key inside the lock and opened it. A tiny ballerina spun to the tinkling tune of Love Story. Two small boxes were inside. One had a tag that said, “Pearls for baby.” The other had a tag that said, “Pearls for mother.”

  A mother of pearl-handled baby rattle was inside the first box. A thick strand of the most glorious pearls I’d ever seen was inside the second. A certificate of authenticity was nestled inside the box under the necklace.

  Slowly Cat closed the box and looked at me. “What does this mean?” she asked. Tears streaked her face and moistened her shirt, but she didn’t sob. She already knew what it meant. She just needed me to tell her.

  I stooped down in front of her. “It means George wasn’t a rat.”

  “But he said he needed space. He told me to leave him alone.”

  “I don’t think he said that because he wanted to. I think he was trying to protect you.”

  “From what?”

  “From whoever it was that killed him.”

  19

  MONDAY MID-MORNING

  After finding the hidden present that George had left behind, there wasn’t much to say. Cat let go of the emotions that had been building up inside of her and cried on my shoulder for the better part of an hour. For once, I knew to keep my mouth shut. Of all of the situations that I’d been through, this one was unprecedented.

  “I can’t do this,” Cat said. “I can’t. I can’t give up my store and be a stay-at-home mom. I can’t stay at the store and raise a baby. I can’t let the police arrest me for my husband’s murder and plan his memorial service at the same time. I don’t want to give birth in a prison! And I can
’t let somebody get away with taking him from me and destroying the memories of my marriage.”

  “So don’t.”

  She looked at me. “Don’t what? Which one?”

  “All of them. Any of them. Aside from the baby, that’s how I feel almost every single day.”

  “But it’s exhausting.”

  “I know. So don’t focus on the can’ts. Focus on what you can do. Like me. I can get a job. I can take care of Logan. I can eat a salad for dinner once a month. Stuff I can control. It’s not much, but it helps me deal with the other things, the things that feel impossible.”

  “So where do I start? Because right now it’s all so overwhelming that I can barely breathe.”

  “You have to be the one to figure that out,” I said.

  “I can’t.”

  I didn’t say it out loud, but she was kinda stepping on the whole concept.

  “Cat, remember back when I first moved to Ribbon, I was hired to work at Tradava and my boss was killed? And how people suspected me?”

  “Yes, but you proved them wrong.”

  “And you know how I proved them wrong? By accident. I didn’t know what I was doing. I suspected everybody. I suspected you.”

  “Me? Why would I kill your boss?”

  “I don’t remember my reasoning. I felt like the walls were closing in around me and I was going to lose everything I had and it was supposed to be a brand new life and before I even got out of the gates, it was over. I thought I was being framed. And I didn’t trust anybody, and I made a lot of accusations that could hurt people. If you knew then that I told the police that maybe you killed Patrick, we probably wouldn’t be friends right now.”

  She stared at me, either processing what I said or wondering if she could return the favor by connecting me to the murder of George with means, motive, and opportunity. Finally, she looked down at the pearls in her lap. “I never realized how you felt when that happened. I was so mean to you. You came to my store and I kicked you out. It never occurred to me that you were fighting for your life. I’m a bad person. A bad friend.”

  I might have let Cat believe that I didn’t remember my reasoning, but the details of that time in my life were as fresh as if they’d happened yesterday. I’d gone to Cat’s store because I suspected her and nobody would listen to me. I’d planned to try to catch her in a lie or an admission of guilt, to try to get evidence to take to the police. I hadn’t seen her as a person who had problems of her own, only as a person who could take the heat off me with a little redirection. Neither one of us was innocent in this scenario.

  “That’s all in the past,” I said. “Let’s concentrate on what we can do to help you out now.”

  “Sam, tell me what to do. Please? Until this is all over, make my decisions for me. When I met you, you were a hot mess. No offense.”

  “None taken.” (ish).

  “But now you have it all. Career, relationship, friends, pet,…I think you even lost a couple of pounds recently.”

  If there had been any recent weight loss, it had been thanks to Cat’s vegetable-at-every-meal approach to her pregnancy. And if I had anything to say about it (which it seemed as though I was about to), I was going to put a stop to that right now.

  “Are you sure about this? Because if I do this, it’s only going to be until George’s murderer is caught and I’m only doing it if you don’t question what I tell you to do.”

  “I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life.” She put her hand on her pregnant belly. “Even this.”

  “Okay, for the foreseeable future I make your decisions for you, starting with this. Get a fresh banana.”

  “A banana? You never eat bananas when you’re stressed.”

  “You’re right, but I’m making your decisions for you, not my decisions for you.”

  “That’s not what I asked you to do.”

  I signed. “Fine. Get a bag of pretzel shells and meet me in the living room. We’re going to recap what we know and then come up with a plan.”

  My experience with the local police had resulted in an unexpected friendship between me and the lead homicide investigator, Detective Loncar. The last time we’d “worked” together (he’d insist on the quotes if he read this), I’d learned that his daughter had recently had a baby but his wife, unhappy with him, had kicked him out of the house and asked for a trial separation. Loncar had never liked my involvement in his cases, but we’d broken through the initial gruff detective/amateur sleuth phase.

  One of the many problems with this case was that Detective Loncar wasn’t around. If I could talk to him, I could gauge how serious the police were about Cat as suspect. I could offer up counter theories. He might not want to hear them, but once they were out there, he wouldn’t have a choice.

  I had no experience with Detective Madden prior to his arrival at Catnip the night of the murder. He was acting like the nicest guy in the world, but if he thought Cat was guilty, nice wouldn’t matter. He’d talk to everybody, collect evidence, and build a case. And once he felt his case was iron-clad, he’d go to the judge for an arrest warrant.

  If I looked at things the way Madden was, I saw a pregnant, hormonal wife and a dead husband. I saw pearls from said wife’s store knotted across said husband’s throat. I saw witnesses who could place the wife at the same party where the victim was, describe a public argument, and place her at the scene of the murder during a window of time that I couldn’t account for because I was looking for my bra in a bush outside of the mall. If Madden was already asking Cat if she wanted a lawyer present, I had a feeling he’d be meeting with the judge sooner rather than later.

  But with the exception of the time I’d spent creating/retrieving my garments, I’d been with Cat. I knew she couldn’t have done it. Which meant:

  A) Somebody else had a reason to kill George;

  B) Somebody else wanted to make it look like Cat did it;

  C) We had little to no time to figure out who.

  Good thing I like a challenge.

  “Cat, last night I saw Shana outside of your store after hours. And before you say anything, I know it was her—with her blue and black hair and her largely synthetic wardrobe, it would be hard not to recognize her.”

  “So she was outside my store. She worked the late shift and probably parked on that side of the mall.”

  “She threw something away in the trash bin outside of your exit.”

  “We usually put the trash by the gate in the mall for the cleaning crew, but after the gate malfunction, she might have made other arrangements.”

  “But remember the security officer who came into your store the night of the party? Aguilar?”

  “What about him?”

  “How well do you know him? He was kind of rude to us when he first came into your store after the crash. Does he always act like that?”

  “I know some of the mall security guards, but not all of them. They don’t like the store owners because we blame them when we’re robbed, but they say we should have better loss prevention measures. I think Aguilar was new, though, because I don’t remember seeing him before the night of the party. Why?”

  “Last night he was outside Catnip. He took whatever Shana threw out.”

  “He took her trash?”

  I nodded. “Normally I’d say you should talk to outlet security, but considering they’re possibly involved, I’d go straight to the police.”

  “Is that what you would do? Call the police?”

  “Do as I say, not as I do,” I said. “That detective on the case—Detective Madden—call him. He’s in charge of the investigation.”

  “But we don’t have proof that anybody did anything wrong. You said yourself that we couldn’t just go around accusing people without proof.”

  “Did I say that?” She nodded. “Tell him you have reason to believe Officer Aguilar is involved, and then tell him what I saw.”

  “And how do you want me to explain that you were hanging out in the park
ing lot outside of my store?”

  “Don’t mention that part. Call him and invite him over. Show him the baby rattle from the fireplace. Let’s see how he reacts and figure the rest out as we go.”

  20

  MONDAY, NOON-ISH

  This was the least relaxing vacation I’d ever had. Between Cat’s troubles at the outlets, an unfamiliar detective, and Dante’s general Dante-ness, I was more stressed than the day I had to present end of season projections to the CEO of Bentley's. Plus Logan had fought back on the diet by eating one of Cat’s casseroles that had been left out, and I was out one pair of pink lizard boots. Nick had provided the only shining spots in a week of pre-holiday chaos.

  With Cat at home resting, it was left to me to keep an eye on those who were minding the store. I headed to Catnip. Shana was behind the register and Lela was close by, folding a table of sweaters. She saw me, dropped the sweater, and walked away. “I’m taking my break,” she said to Shana.

  She wore another of her expensive outfits. Today it was a taupe tweed skirt suit that may or may not have been Chanel, a crisp white shirt, and a belt with a gold H in the front—instantly recognizable as Hermés. It was as if she’d been given a list of luxury brands to flaunt in front of her co-workers and customers.

  I’d heard of looking the part, and between the designer wardrobe I’d accumulated while working at Bentley’s New York and the more recent acquisitions from my employee discount at Tradava, I had complete confidence in my own personal style. This woman made me look like my wardrobe came from a dollar store. Cat had mentioned that Lela’s spending habits helped the bottom line, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel entitled to extras on the side. Even the priciest items become affordable when you implement a five-finger discount.

  I watched Lela leave the store and then ducked into the lingerie department.

  “Excuse me, do you have these in any other colors?” a woman asked.

  I recognized the voice and turned. Joyce Kenner, the wife of half of Kenner & Winn, stood next to me. She held an assortment of lace panties that were clipped to individual clear plastic hangers. Shopping for intimate apparel fell under “personal business,” and from the looks of the assortment in her hand, Mrs. Kenner’s business was booming.