Farewell to Felines

by Kathi Daley

  “Nora Bradley owns the land in the hollow. I know she’s been struggling since Mayor Bradley was killed, and I imagine income from the logging operation would be welcome. I could even see her being behind the removal of the cats from the hollow via nonlethal means. But even if she was the one to hire Travis, I don’t see her being the one to kill him.”

  “Yeah, that part doesn’t fit,” Tara admitted. “Do we know who owns the land on the north end of the island that was to be logged as well?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I can find out.” I called Cody and asked him if he could get the information. He said he could and would. I told him about my plan to barbecue that evening, which he thought was great. The warm weather had held, and I imagined he would welcome the chance to be outdoors for a bit after spending the entire day inside at the newspaper office.

  I called Danny and Siobhan and told them about our plans for the evening. Cassie was still at the bookstore and I invited her to join us. With my calls finished, I spoke to her about bringing the cats back to the sanctuary after the store closed, then said my good-byes and headed out. I mulled over the mysteries the group had been grappling with while I picked out thick steaks, fresh asparagus, and ingredients for salad. By the time I got home I’d come to the conclusion that the missing piece in our investigation was Travis’s girlfriend. When I had taken Travis’s wallet to Finn he’d mentioned she was the one who had reported him missing, though Beth had seemed positive Travis didn’t have a girlfriend. Maybe this mystery girlfriend knew why Travis had been spending so much time on the island if the water in the hollow really wouldn’t work for the project he ought to have been spending all his time on.

  Chapter 13

  Cody had the steaks on the grill by the time everyone arrived. It was another beautiful evening, so we enjoyed the food and the weather before we jumped into murder talk. It was nice to spend time with my family and friends, and while I really did hope Finn and Siobhan found their dream house, I was loving the additional time their closeness provided.

  “Anything new with the purchase of the bar?” I asked Danny after we’d all served ourselves and gathered around the picnic table.

  “I called the man who’s renting my boat to say I’m interested in selling and he’s getting a sales contract together. He has cash on hand; once the details are worked out and the contract is signed he can pay me right away. O’Malley’s good with the money I’ll get from the sale as a down payment, so we’re moving forward with a sales agreement between him and Aiden and me. Aiden still needs to sell his boat, but this is a good time of year for that, so hopefully things will move along quickly.”

  “Does Mom know about this?” Cassie asked.

  “No, and I prefer you not mention it until Aiden and I have a chance to sit her down to explain things. She’ll probably feel nostalgic that Aiden is selling the boat he inherited from Dad, but I think she’ll be happy to have him here on Madrona for the whole year instead of just part of it.”

  “She’ll be thrilled,” Cassie agreed. “She’s been wanting Aiden to settle down and have a family. Now maybe he will.”

  “He’s not even dating anyone,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Cassie said with a tone in her voice that indicated she knew something I didn’t.

  “Okay, spill. What do you know?” I asked my younger sister.

  “Let’s just say I’ve seen Aiden twice in as many months dining at Antonio’s with a certain redheaded Irish girl Mom already loves like one of her own daughters.”

  “Aiden is dating Alanna?” Alanna Quinn was the daughter of one of our mother’s best friends, Julianna Quinn. If Aiden and Alanna did hook up both Mom and Julianna would be over-the-moon happy.

  “Based on the fact that they were looking so intently at each other that they didn’t even notice my friends and me sitting across the restaurant, I’d say their relationship has taken on an intimate aspect.”

  I looked at Danny. “Did you know about this?”

  Danny shrugged. “Aiden might have mentioned something, but it seems obvious he isn’t ready to bring the family into his relationship, so I suggest you girls keep this to yourselves until he is.”

  “What do you mean, us girls?” Siobhan complained. “Aren’t you worried Finn and Cody will blab?”

  “Not even a tiny bit. Now, can we get back to the bar?”

  “I bet Alanna is the reason Aiden was interested in the bar in the first place,” I said with a grin. “I’ve had a feeling for quite a while now that there might be something going on between those two other than friendship.”

  “I wonder how long it’s been going on,” Siobhan mused. “Aiden and Alanna have been friends since they were toddlers. If they’re having a romance, it must seem so weird.”

  “So back to the bar…” Danny suggested for the second time.

  “Are you thinking of changing anything?” Cody asked.

  “We are thinking of making some small changes,” Danny answered. “Nothing major that will scare off the regulars, but Aiden and I both agree the bar needs to have a larger beer selection, with a focus on regional microbrews. We want to add a larger selection of whiskey as well.”

  “Do you think the employees will make the transition to sign on with you?” Finn asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Danny said. “Aiden and I both spend a lot of time at O’Malley’s during the winter. We know all the employees and we get along with everyone. I’m hoping for a totally seamless transition.”

  I hoped so as well, though I’d learned that few things in life were as problem free as we hoped they’d be.

  After we’d eaten, Cody and Cassie tackled the dishes while Finn returned some calls, Tara and Siobhan chatted about baby clothes, and Danny and I headed to the cat sanctuary. I hadn’t been sure if Aiden and Danny going into business was a good idea when I’d first heard, but now that I had a larger picture of what was going on in both men’s lives, I could see buying the bar together might be a good move for both my brothers.

  “If you want to feed everyone I’ll start on the cat boxes,” I said as Danny and I entered the sanctuary.

  “I need to say hi to Whiskey first.”

  I watched in stunned silence as Danny entered the main cat room. Midnight, or Whiskey, as Danny was calling him, trotted right over and sat in front of him. He said something to the cat before lowering his hand. The cat responded by placing his paw on Danny’s hand and then quickly removing it.

  “You taught him to high five?” I asked.

  Danny reached into his pocket and took out a salmon treat. He gave it to the cat, who took it and ran off to eat it. “Technically, it was a low five, but yeah. It’s the way Whiskey and I show our affection without all the hugging and baby talk.”

  Suddenly I felt like I’d been transported to another dimension, where everything was upside down and inside out. If Danny and Cassie were correct, it looked like Aiden might be dating his childhood buddy, who we called Alanna but he called Al, and Danny, who had never been one to commit to anything or anyone, was talking about getting a pet.

  When the cats were taken care of we washed up and returned to the cabin, where Siobhan had set up the whiteboard. Cody and Cassie were finishing up the dishes and Finn was walking back toward the cabin from the main house, where he’d gone to make his calls. As soon as we’d all gathered, Finn jumped right in.

  “I just spoke to Mark Benson, who informed me that the reason he paid Travis’s tuition was because of a deal he made with his son.”

  “A deal?” I asked.

  “It seems Mr. Benson has been trying to get his son to agree to work in the family business for a year before going off on his own, but up to that point Devon had refused. Mr. Benson said Devon came to him last fall with a proposal. He’d work for his dad for a year when he graduated before doing anything on his own if he’d pay his roommate’s tuition. Mr. Benson said he’d met Travis in the past and he seemed like a good ki
d, so he didn’t mind helping him out. He accepted his son’s proposal.”

  “So Devon lied?” I asked.

  “It sounds like it,” Finn agreed. “He did tell the officer who interviewed him that he had no idea his dad had paid his roommate’s tuition, and it appears it was his idea all along.”

  “What about the girlfriend?” I asked. “Did you track her down?”

  “The person who reported Travis missing is a local girl named Marie Trainor. I spoke to her this afternoon and she said she met Travis shortly before Christmas. Apparently, she and Travis had been dating ever since. He was supposed to take her out this past weekend, but he never showed. When she didn’t hear from him by Monday she called in the missing persons report.”

  “Marie Trainor owns the land on the north end of the island that the logging company is interested in,” Cody said. “She inherited it from her grandfather two years ago. It seems not only is the logging company interested in her trees but there’s a home developer who might be interested in buying the land once the trees are cleared out.”

  “Sounds like Marie had a motive to want the cats gone and a boyfriend with the know-how to make it so,” I said.

  Finn stood up. “It seems Ms. Trainor and I need to have another conversation.”

  After Finn left we all sat around not talking about much of anything. It felt like we’d figured out who tainted the water and why. But who killed Travis? Marie? Had he perhaps had second thoughts and she decided to eliminate the possibility that he would tell what he knew? Or had someone else killed Travis for an entirely different reason altogether?

  “What now?” Siobhan eventually asked. “Do we keep working on this or wait to see what Finn finds out?”

  “Let’s assume Travis did taint the water in the hollow to help Marie. Let’s even assume Marie knew about what he was doing. We still don’t know who killed him, and let’s not forget this whole thing started with us trying to find out who killed Thea. I say we work on those questions while Finn confirms the water-tainting part of the mystery.”

  “If Travis decided to taint the water in the hollow to help Marie and the Bensons aren’t part of it, why did Devon lie about the reason his father paid Travis’s tuition? It makes no sense to lie. He could have told the officer he asked his dad to pay Travis’s tuition. And for that matter, why make the deal at all?” Tara asked. “It sounded like he had to promise his dad he’d do something he very much didn’t want to do to get the money for Travis. Why would he go to that length to help him, even if they were friends?”

  “Good question,” I responded. “It does seem Devon went above and beyond for Travis. There must be more going on than we realize.”

  “So what do we do?” Danny asked. “I doubt asking the guy why he lied will get us the answers we need.”

  “Other than his name and the fact that he’s Drake Benson’s nephew, what do we know about Devon Benson?” Cody asked.

  “That he was Travis’s roommate. They seemed to be close. Could they have been studying similar fields?”

  Cody got up from where he’d been sitting on the sofa, went over to the dining table, and booted up my laptop. After a minute he typed in some commands and we all waited. I assumed he was digging around in Devon Benson’s life.

  “According to an interview conducted by the campus newspaper, Devon was planning to go into environmental law,” Cody informed us several minutes later. “Devon is an undergrad in the middle of his junior year, and at twenty-one, he’s quite a bit younger than Travis, who was twenty-six.”

  “I wonder how an undergrad and a grad student ended up as roommates,” Tara said.

  Cody looked at me. “Do you still have Travis’s student file?”

  “Finn has it in the main house,” Siobhan said. “It’s on the desk in the guest room.”

  “I’ll go and grab it,” Danny offered. “Anything else while I’m over there?”

  “The chocolate ice cream in the freezer,” Siobhan responded.

  I took Max out for a quick walk while there was a lull in the conversation. Apollo followed us to the door, so I let him come along. I didn’t want to miss anything, so I planned for this to be a short walk, but both animals seemed to appreciate my effort.

  “We don’t have a lot of time, so do what you need to do,” I instructed Max, who was busy running up and down the beach. He had been cooped up all day; I didn’t blame him for being hyper in the evening. Unlike Max, who had a lot of pent-up energy, Apollo seemed content to walk along beside me as I strolled down the beach. I’d hoped to have some time tonight to prompt him into leading me to a clue in Thea’s death, but so far, the discussion had been all about Travis and the water in the hollow. It was looking less and less like Thea’s death and whatever was going on with Travis were related, but I supposed it was still a possibility we should consider. There were some connections. Thea had worked for and been fired by Caldwell and Benson; Benson’s nephew had been Travis’s roommate and his brother had paid Travis’s tuition. There was talk that Thea might have been attempting to blackmail someone using information she found during one of her temp jobs. She’d been asking questions about legal statutes and Caldwell and Benson were attorneys. There didn’t seem to be an obvious link between the two murders, but my gut told me that we should continue to dig around beneath the surface.

  I looked down to inform Apollo that we’d be turning around and realized he was no longer beside me. I stopped walking and looked around. “Apollo,” I called. Max had come running, but I still didn’t see the cat. “Here, kitty. Where are you? It’s dark and I can’t see you.”

  “Meow,” I heard from a distance.

  The sound was coming from the direction in which we had just traveled, so I turned around and called to the cat once more. I still didn’t see him, but Max seemed to know where to find him. I followed him to a rock grouping that was beneath the waterline during high tide but exposed during low. Low tide wouldn’t be for another couple of hours, though the tide was out far enough that the rocks were accessible from the beach side.

  “What’d you find?” I asked the cat.

  The way the rocks were formed often trapped items from the sea; heavy items settled into the sand, while lighter objects were washed back out with the next tide. At first, I wasn’t sure what Apollo was looking at; I thought it was a log but then realized it was a bat. Thea and Travis had both been hit with blunt objects. Could Apollo have just found the murder weapon used in one of the murders?

  I picked up the bat and headed back to the house. Finn should be able to match the bat to the wound. He’d also be able to check for any blood residue that might have survived the ocean. If this bat was used in a murder, chances were Finn could prove it.

  Chapter 14

  Saturday, March 17

  When Finn had returned the previous evening he’d told us that Marie had admitted Travis was the one who tainted the water in the hollow. She hadn’t known what he’d done at first, but he’d confessed to her that he’d been adding chemicals that wouldn’t harm the cats but would drive them away when they spoke just two days before he disappeared. She also told Finn that while she appreciated Travis’s effort to help her, she didn’t want to do anything illegal, so he’d promised to clean up the water before anyone found out. It was her belief that he’d gone to the hollow on the day he’d disappeared to undo what he’d done.

  Finn asked Marie about Travis’s relationship with Devon and the money he’d apparently helped him raise, but she said she knew very little about him before he came to Madrona Island. The only thing Travis had told her was that he’d been involved in a relationship before he’d come to the island and he felt it was time for a change.

  This was the first mention of Travis having been in a serious relationship. When I’d mentioned to Beth that Travis’s girlfriend had reported him missing her response was that he didn’t have a girlfriend. If Travis had been in a serious relationship wouldn’t his student assistant have known about it? This
ex of his might be worthwhile tracking down.

  While we’d waited for Finn we’d gone through Travis’s student file again. It looked like he and Devon had gotten a room together Travis’s third year of grad school and Devon’s sophomore year as an undergrad. I guessed they must have met and become friends the previous year. When Travis was required to do another year, the pair decided to maintain their living arrangements.

  I woke early the next morning and headed out to see to the cats. I hoped to finish my chores early enough to take Max for a long run before I had to go in to work. I was just finishing up in the cat sanctuary when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”

  “Cait, it’s Beth.”

  “How are you, Beth? I’ve thought about you often since finding out about Travis. I knew you’d take the news that Travis’s body had been found as hard as anyone.”

  “I do miss Travis. I still can’t believe he’s really gone. The reason I’m calling is because I know something that probably isn’t relevant to what happened to Travis, but in light of everything, I decided I should share.”

  “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “When we met last you told me that Travis’s girlfriend had reported him missing. At the time I told you that he didn’t have a girlfriend.”

  “But he did?”

  “No, I didn’t lie. In the six months I knew Travis he didn’t have a girlfriend. But he was in a relationship. A pretty serious one.”

  I frowned as I tried to sort things out. “Travis had a boyfriend,” I realized.

  “He’d been involved in a long-term relationship with his roommate, Devon Benson. I maybe should have told you right away, but we didn’t know Travis was dead and he was really private about his sexual orientation. I didn’t want to betray his trust. Most people just thought they were close friends.”