Six Cats a Slayin'

by Miranda James

  “Lord, I hope it will,” she said. “Dad and I are so numb from years of dealing with her that we can’t take much more.”

  She looked ready to start crying, and I knew she wouldn’t want to break down in front of the customers.

  “Try to focus on your work for now,” I said, “and pray for your mother. It’s out of your hands, so concentrate on being there for your dad and taking care of your customers and making sure they get the medicines they need. That’s important.”

  Jenny smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Harris. I will do that.”

  On the way to my car, my cell phone sounded. I pulled it out and found a text message from Kanesha. She had new information and wanted to talk to me. She also asked if I could come to her office sometime in the next thirty or forty minutes.

  I responded to say I would be there in less than ten.

  I hurried to the car, put my newest purchases in the trunk, then drove to the sheriff’s department a few blocks away.

  By now the deputies and personnel at the front desk knew me, and the deputy on duty today simply waved me on to Kanesha’s office. I headed down the hall.

  Kanesha’s door was open, but I knocked to alert her to my presence. She seemed engrossed in her computer. She turned toward the door, frowning. The frown didn’t go away, but she motioned me in and asked me to shut the door.

  “You’d better sit down,” she said. “What I’ve got to tell you is pretty shocking. Threw me for a loop, I can tell you.”

  Alarmed, I almost stumbled into the chair and sank into it. I had never heard Kanesha say anything like this. “What is it?”

  Kanesha said, “Got a short prelim report from the autopsy. Minimal information, but one significant thing. Gerry Albritton was born a male.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Looking back, I felt grateful that Kanesha had warned me to sit before she shared her news. I didn’t know when I had been more shocked than I was at hearing that Gerry was evidently transgender. My mind began to clear, however, and questions occurred to me.

  “She must have had surgery, correct?” I asked.

  Kanesha nodded. “The information is only preliminary, like I said, but the pathologist estimates that it was done at least twenty years ago, probably longer.”

  “I would never have guessed,” I said.

  “In addition, she’d had plastic surgery on her face, but it’s difficult to say how extensive it was.”

  “Maybe that’s why Melba thought she looked familiar. She might have known Gerry as a man, but she would never think to link the man she knew with Gerry.”

  “For the moment, I don’t want this to go any further,” Kanesha said. “That’s a good point, though, about Melba. I might consult her on this to see if she can come up with potential names for me to check on.”

  “I won’t say anything to Melba,” I said, “or to anyone else, though I don’t think I’ve ever sat on information this sensational before.”

  “It’s a twist I would never have expected,” Kanesha said. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it and figure out all the implications for her murder.”

  “It will certainly add to the list of potential motives, I should think,” I said.

  “If the killer knew it,” Kanesha said.

  I felt chagrined. “Of course. I wonder if anyone involved in the case knew anything about her past.”

  “So far no one has admitted to it,” Kanesha replied. “Finding out who this woman used to be may be an impossible task.”

  “There must be a link somewhere,” I said. “Unless she systematically destroyed everything that could provide that link.”

  “It’s possible she did,” Kanesha said. “I never met the woman when she was alive, so I really don’t have a grasp yet on her personality. Give me your take on her.”

  “Let me think a minute.” I recalled my meetings with Gerry and tried to put together some cogent thoughts to share with Kanesha. What had Gerry’s personality really been like?

  “The first thing I’ll say,” I told Kanesha, “is that Gerry was hard to read. She came across as brazen.” I gave a short description of the first time I met the woman. “At the time I was a bit freaked out, I guess, at her flirting. It’s not anything I’m used to. That put me off, I have to say, and I tried to stay away from her after that.”

  “Did you see her again before the party?” Kanesha asked.

  “A few times when I was out with Diesel, walking to work,” I said. “I always made the excuse of needing to get to work, though, so I could keep the conversations short. She wasn’t as flirtatious at those meetings.” I thought for a moment. “I also saw her the morning of the party. Someone had destroyed her decorations, and she was outside looking at the damage. I walked over to talk to her.”

  “Did she have any idea who had caused the damage?” Kanesha asked.

  “She said she had a few ideas, but she didn’t mention any names,” I said. “She asked me a few questions, like whether I was interested in selling my house and whether Helen Louise owned her building. Then she got a text message, and not long after that I left.”

  “Before you went to the party, how would you have summed her up?” Kanesha asked.

  “Forceful. Determined. Attractive. Intelligent.” I grimaced. “I didn’t think a lot of her taste in interior—or exterior—decoration. The inside of her house is way too modern for my taste, and that Christmas display is unbelievably tacky.”

  “I agree with you on that,” Kanesha said. “Do you think that was deliberate?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it was,” I said. “I think she liked being provocative. She obviously had courage, too.”

  “Why do you say that? About courage,” Kanesha said.

  I took a moment to think about how to express what I meant. “I don’t completely understand what brings a person to the realization that she or he was born in the wrong body, so to speak. I haven’t experienced it myself, and no one that I’m really close to has, either. But I think to act on that realization, especially to face the necessary surgeries and other treatments, takes a lot of courage. If Gerry faced all that successfully, I don’t think she’d balk at much else, do you?”

  “No, I think you’re right,” Kanesha said. “I hadn’t thought about it that way, frankly.”

  “I have a question for you now,” I said.

  “Go ahead,” Kanesha replied.

  “Why did you share this particular bit of information with me?” I said. “You’re not always forthcoming on the details of the cases you’re working on when I’m around.”

  “No, I’m not,” Kanesha said. “This case is so different from any other I’ve worked. I’m great at solving problems and pulling together and interpreting evidence. Intricate police work is what I’m really good at, but sometimes you make these imaginative leaps that pull things together into a picture I hadn’t quite grasped yet. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “I do, and I’m extremely flattered,” I said. “I’ll be honest with you: Everything seems jumbled most of the time, but then suddenly the pieces shift, and I can see everything in a different way. It’s hard to explain, but it just happens.”

  Kanesha smiled tiredly. “I wish I could get it to happen. The thing is, I’m hoping you’ll be able to do that in this case. I need every bit of help I can get if I’m to have any hope of solving it.”

  “All I can say is, I’ll do my best,” I replied. “Whatever information you do have about her life, I’ll need to see, however.”

  “I believe you now know pretty much everything I know at this point,” Kanesha said, “but I’ll put together a summary for you and e-mail it later. How’s that?”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Are you still working on the assumption that she was killed by poison put into her snifter of brandy?”

  “Yes,” Kanesh
a said. “I have a deputy working on compiling statements from witnesses. I want to be able to track her movements and those of the snifter during the party, but that’s going to take some time. Before I forget, I want to thank you for encouraging Mr. Harville to bring his wife in. That was an interesting story they told.”

  “I’m relieved that Milton realized how important it was to tell you, and that Tammy agreed to come with him. Is Tammy still a suspect?” I asked.

  “She claims to have an alibi for the time she was absent from her home—an alibi that also allegedly explains her use of a disguise. I’m considering her a suspect until her alibi can be corroborated. Plus, we’re going through statements from witnesses at the party to see if anyone mentions seeing her or a woman fitting the description of the disguise she was wearing. All this is going to take some time, given some of the details I’m not at liberty to share.”

  “What about Tammy’s expertise in chemistry?” I asked, not quite ready to move on. “According to Milton, she knows how to make her own cyanide for use in gardening.”

  “They told me that as well,” Kanesha replied. “It is an extremely important point, but if her alibi pans out, well, it becomes moot.”

  I figured I wouldn’t get any more out of her about Tammy, at least for now. I wondered whether Tammy’s alibi had anything to do with her procuring more pills. Unless Milton or Tammy herself enlightened me, I probably wasn’t destined to know.

  “I presume you’ve been through Gerry’s papers,” I said. “Did you find anything that could shed light on this?”

  “We’re still going through all her effects, including her papers,” Kanesha said. “We haven’t found a will. We don’t know yet who her lawyer was. She had to have one for the real estate deals, but the odd thing is, in searching her home, we haven’t found any contracts, deeds, mortgage documents, leases, or anything else that relates to real estate.”

  “That is very strange. I’ve been curious about the source of the money she used to buy four houses,” I said. “The three in my neighborhood, for example. None of them is a mansion, but they’re all on decent-sized lots and two of them are three stories. According to the values I found on the county property tax website, those three are worth, collectively, over six hundred thousand dollars. The other house isn’t in as good a neighborhood, as far as real estate values go. I think it is valued at about a hundred and five thousand.”

  “Close to three-quarters of a million total,” Kanesha said. “If she bought them outright, without mortgages, that’s a lot of money to throw down in a short space of time.” She shrugged. “But she might have made down payments and planned to pay the mortgages every month until they sold.”

  “The fact that you haven’t found any kind of paper trail for her real estate deals has given me an idea, and it has probably already occurred to you,” I said.

  Kanesha nodded. “Yes. Someone else supplied the money and stayed in the background, while Ms. Albritton made the deals.”

  “Exactly,” I replied. “I’ve had an idea about who that could be. Did Melba tell you what she overheard Jared Carter say to Gerry at the party?”

  “When Ms. Albritton pulled him aside?” Kanesha said. “She did, but I’d have to dig out my notebook to see exactly what she told me. Right now I’m drawing a blank.”

  “It’s not much to go on,” I said, now feeling uncertain about my hunch. It was really nothing more than that.

  “That’s okay,” Kanesha said. “In the past your not much to go on has usually turned out to be on the mark.”

  “All right. Melba heard Jared say, Sure thing, Ronni. Now, Melba heard the word as honey, but the room was full of people talking pretty loud. I think Jared must have said Ronni, as in Ronni Halliburton, the name on those deeds. If he knew that name, maybe he knows a lot more about the real estate transactions.”

  “I think you’re on to something,” Kanesha said. “At least it’s a potential lead. One more than I had before.”

  My cell phone chose that moment to ping, startling me and causing Kanesha to frown.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  I pulled the phone out of my pocket and held it up for her to see. “That noise is a signal that I have a new video from the surveillance cameras Frank installed at my house.”

  “Surveillance cameras?” Kanesha said, obviously puzzled. “Why do you need to surveil anything?”

  “The kittens,” I said, busy locating the app on my phone. Once I found it and opened it, I pulled up the video and played it.

  “You’re recording the kittens?” Kanesha asked, beginning to sound irritated.

  “No, not the kittens themselves,” I said as I watched the video. “Cameras are set up on the front door and in the shrubs under the living room windows.”

  “Trying to get video of the kid who left the kittens, in other words,” Kanesha said. “That makes more sense.”

  The video showed the same dark hood pulled close around the child’s face. Her head came up out of the shrubbery so she could see the kittens in their cage through the window. She stayed in that position for nearly a minute, according to the video timer. Then the head disappeared briefly. It reappeared in front of the door. I was excited. Maybe now I could see the child’s face.

  The face inside the hood was that of a horrible gremlin.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I must have groaned. Kanesha asked, “What’s the matter?”

  The leering face of the gremlin moved upward as the child reached for the envelope. Then the child darted back into the shrubs. The video continued for another thirty seconds, but the child did not reappear.

  Kanesha repeated her question, and this time I responded.

  “That child is a lot cleverer than I expected.” I told Kanesha what I had seen. “I thought the whole idea of the video cameras was clever, but this child is smarter than I am. Or more devious, perhaps.”

  “No clues at all?” Kanesha asked.

  “See for yourself.” I handed her my phone and told her how to start the video.

  She watched it all the way through. It was about three minutes long. Then she watched it again before she returned the phone. “Frustrating,” was her only comment.

  “I didn’t see anything that I could use to identify her.”

  “You think the kid’s a girl?” Kanesha said.

  “Yes. Gut feeling, more than anything, though I think the handwriting in her notes looks like a girl’s,” I said. “It reminds me of Laura’s handwriting at that age.”

  “I wish you good luck in finding out who the kid is,” Kanesha said. “I’ll be in touch if I dig up anything more.”

  That was my cue to leave. “And if I come up with any potentially helpful information, I’ll let you know.” I nodded, turned, and left her office.

  On the way to the car, I realized I had been gone a good half hour longer than I had intended. I should have texted Stewart to let him know I was going to be late. I texted him then, saying I’d been delayed but was on the way home. He responded less than a minute later: No problem.

  I drove home and pulled into the garage. I opened the trunk and hauled out the two large bags of books. I had to set one down to unlock the door. But when I tried to open the door, it wouldn’t budge. That was odd. This door did sometimes stick when we had a lot of rain, but we hadn’t had rain for more than a week. I tried to open it several more times, then knocked on the door to attract someone’s attention.

  That didn’t work, either, and by this time I was getting pretty peeved. Something definitely wasn’t right. I picked up the bags and carried them out of the garage and around to the front door. I unlocked it and was relieved when it opened easily. I picked up my bags and pushed the door open. The hall was darker than usual, and for a moment I felt a frisson of fear. Had someone broken in to the house and was now lying in wait?

  Then s
uddenly the hall came alight with a dazzling effect, and I heard Stewart say, “Surprise!”

  My eyes took a few seconds to adjust. I set down the bags beside my feet and gazed around the hall in stupefaction.

  The banisters of the stairs had green and gold garlands woven through the balusters and twined around the newel posts. At regular intervals a small wreath had been affixed to a baluster. More garlands, red and gold this time, hung on the walls, strung with twinkling Christmas lights. Ornaments that sparkled in the lights hung from the garlands. All that was needed to complete the picture was the Christmas tree that we would decorate tomorrow night.

  I finally saw Stewart standing in the living room doorway, watching me and smiling broadly. “Well, what do you think?” he asked.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, a bit overcome by it all. “How did you manage to do this? Was I gone that long?”

  Stewart laughed. “I didn’t do it all by myself. Azalea helped, and so did Laura and Frank.”

  Laura emerged from the living room holding my grandson. She laughed. “Oh, Dad, your expression is priceless.”

  Frank and Azalea came out of the kitchen and approached us.

  “Thank you all,” I said. “This is a wonderful, beautiful surprise.” I surveyed their faces, and they all were smiling.

  “It was Stewart’s idea,” Frank said. “His design, too, so he gets most of the credit. We were only the worker bees.” He made a buzzing sound, and Laura laughed again.

  I looked at Stewart, who I had come to think of more as the younger brother I never had than as a mere boarder. I walked over to him and pulled him into a hug, and he squeezed me back.

  “Thank you,” I said softly as I released him.

  “Merry Christmas,” Stewart replied. “I thought we needed some Christmas spirit around here.”

  “There’s plenty of it here now.” I went next to Laura to kiss her cheek and have a look at my grandson. Charles Franklin Salisbury had recently turned six months old, and he was a healthy, happy infant. At the moment he was sound asleep in his mother’s arms.