by Leonie Gant
“Is this one of your cases?” Tomas whispered conspiratorially.
“No” I lowered my voice to match his. “A friend of mine worked with her and I’m just here with him.”
“So disappointing.” Tomas shook his head.
The last time I was involved with a funeral that Tomas organized, a second wife turned up and disrupted proceedings quite spectacularly. Obviously Tomas looked at that event not so much as a failed funeral, but as a piece of soap opera like entertainment. Looking back on it I had to agree.
“Your delicious policeman is here” Tomas whispered.
“He’s not my delicious policeman” I said automatically.
“Honey, the way that man looks at you, believe me he is your delicious policeman. You just need to be brave enough to take a bite.”
That threw up a few interesting images. I looked up and sure enough Griffin was staring at me with an expression that could only be described as hot and possessive. For the first time, that thought didn’t fill me with panic. I smiled to myself, maybe I was getting used to this.
“Have you been in to see Catarina yet?”
“No, not yet” I said. “I’m pretty sure I don’t want to see her.”
“Oh you have to see her, Helena really did a fabulous job today” Tomas said excitedly.
Helena was a funeral cosmetologist who prepared bodies for viewing. She was a little unusual in the way she approached her profession, but she had an amazing talent. Tomas dragged me into the viewing area so I could have the opportunity to see Helena’s latest miracle. Reluctantly peering into the coffin I gasped.
“She looks amazing. Seriously she didn’t look this good last time I saw her. I swear Helena’s taken ten years off the woman.”
Tomas smiled happily. It was good to know someone who took so much pride in their work. Looking down at her I noticed a small photo held in her hands where they were crossed over her heart. I looked closer.
“Is that a cat?” I asked.
Tomas nodded. “Yes, it was a special request. According to Peter, her assistant, Catarina loved that cat more than anyone.”
I could understand that. From the little I’d seen of Catarina Badal, human relationships had not exactly been her strong point. At that moment Peter came rushing in with a cat carrier. I could hear what sounded like growling and hissing emanating from the cage. Peter himself didn’t look great either. He had scratches on his hands and red patches on his face.
“Oh my God” I said. “Are you alright?”
Peter sniffed while he placed the cat cage next to the coffin. Hunting in his pocket he drew out a wadded up tissue.
“I’m fine” he said. “Catarina would have wanted Cleopatra here. Excuse me.”
Turning his head he blew his nose, long and loud. I could see an angry red rash building on the back of his neck.
“Seriously Peter,” I said. “Do you need to see someone, you’re not looking very well.”
Peter sniffed again as he tucked the tissues back in his pocket. “I’m okay, I just have a couple of small allergies to cats.”
I looked at him doubtfully. His left eye seemed to be swelling shut.
“Maybe you should go to the restroom and tidy yourself up a bit” I suggested gently. “We’ll take care of the cat for you if you want.”
Peter blinked up at me, his left eye was starting to water and the red rashes on his face seemed to be getting angrier.
“You’re right of course” he said blinking rapidly. “Thank you but you can’t leave Cleopatra” he said.
“Not for an instant” I promised and Tomas nodded beside me.
After watching Peter leave I turned to Tomas and we both hunkered down and looked at the cat through the front of the cat cage. Cleopatra looked unremarkable, if you didn’t take into account that she made a noise that sounded like an out of tune violin interspersed with hissing and her tail lashing.
“Doesn’t look happy” I said.
“Should we take it out?” suggested Tomas. “So it can say goodbye.”
“Did you see Peter’s hands” I said. “There is no way that I am going anywhere near that cat.”
Tomas looked down at his perfectly manicured hands and shrugged. Decision obviously made, he straightened up.
“I have some last minute items to take care of” he said. “Can you stay with the cat until Peter comes back?”
“Sure” I said. When he left I realized that I had volunteered to stay in a room with a corpse and a very angry cat. Faced with a decision between talking to the dead woman or to the cat, I chose the less creepy of the two options.
“So” I said, “I’m guessing you’re a little bit confused right now.” The cat glared at me balefully and started up that growling noise which was quickly reaching a screech.
“It’s okay sweetie” I crooned soothingly. “We’ll get you through this and then I’m sure there’s going to be something very nice for you to eat at the end of it.”
The cat started to quieten at the thought of food.
“That’s right.” I worked my fingers between the bars of the cage in a vain attempt to stroke the calming cat and just barely pulled back in time as the cat let out her claws and took a swipe.
“What the hell are you doing?” I spun around and there was Griffin standing behind me, hands on hips with a quizzical look on his face.
“Cat, Catarina’s cat. Peter asked me to keep an eye on it.”
I stopped as I noticed that Griffin was trying manfully to suppress a smile.
“One of these days you’re going to have to tell me how you end up in these situations” he said shaking his head.
“A pathological inability to say no” I replied.
“Really?” queried Griffin. “You don’t seem to have a problem with saying no to me.”
“You’re different” I said.
“Good” Griffin replied.
“What do you mean good?” I asked, a little irritated.
“Different means I’m special, different means you can’t walk away and forget about me.”
I cleared my throat. “Are we having a moment? Because if we are I think you’re forgetting about the dead woman and her psychotic cat.”
Griffin sighed.
“Yeah, I know. One of these days we’re actually going to have to go on a date that doesn’t involve a dead body.”
“You are such a romantic” I said smiling.
“Trudie, are you in here?”
Griffin and I turned to see Crystal and Edwin tentatively entering the room. Seeing Griffin with me, their reactions were quite different. Edwin went pale and Crystal went red. Kind of described their two personalities in a nutshell really. Thankfully and rather surprisingly Crystal chose to remain quiet. Maybe the woman was learning self-control. After an uncomfortable silence Griffin cleared his throat.
“I’ll speak to you later Trudie” he said.
“Wouldn’t want to get in the way of you accusing other innocent people of murder” Crystal piped in.
I dropped my head. Looked like I spoke too soon. Ignoring Crystal completely, Griffin left the room.
“Did you really have to do that?” I asked Crystal.
Defiantly Crystal flipped her hair back.
“He deserves it, if he put half as much attention into actually finding the murderer as he has done hassling poor Edwin, the whole case would be closed and we wouldn’t be in here with a…what is a cat doing in here?”
“It’s Catarina’s cat, her assistant felt it should be here for the funeral.”
Crystal looked at me strangely.
“Cats are important to some people.”
Crystal turned on Edwin.
“This is what happens when you use your little brain and not your big one, you sleep with the crazy cat lady.”
Turning around she stalked out of the room.
“Why is she being so nuts over this?” Edwin asked with a plaintive tone in his voice.
“She’s never even thought about
who I slept with before and it was just the one time with Catarina. It’s not like it meant anything.”
“Number one, the woman is lying there dead, I really don’t think this is the place for this conversation. Number two, maybe the situation has changed recently and you should start adapting to the new regime” I said.
Edwin looked confused and I didn’t really feel like enlightening him any further. I learned long ago to avoid getting entangled in other people’s love lives, especially friends. Things have a tendency to get messy when you step in the middle of those situations. Edwin looked over at Catarina and his face softened.
“Sometimes life happens so quickly, one minute you’re there and the next you’re gone” he said.
I put an arm around his shoulder. “And that is why we live the best life we can, we appreciate what we have and we tell the people we love, that we love them.”
“Wise words indeed” said a voice from behind us.
Edwin and I turned around and found an older man looking at Catarina’s body. He looked to be in his late forties, his dark brown hair showing streaks of gray.
“You would do well to listen to your friend” he directed at Edwin, “Life just goes too fast and before you know it, you look back and see it cluttered with regrets.”
He looked at Catarina again and I was surprised to see an expression of bitterness on his face.
“My name is Trudie and this is Edwin.”
Still looking at Catarina he nodded. “I’m Evan Webber, I’m Catarina’s husband.”
I felt as much as heard Edwin’s quick intake of breath.
“I’ll go find Crystal” he muttered before quickly making his exit.
Evan’s eyes followed him out of the room and then he looked at me thoughtfully.
“Your young man slept with my wife didn’t he?”
“He’s not my young man” I said, desperately trying not to answer the question.
“It doesn’t matter” the older man said. “It’s not like Catarina and I had much of a marriage left anyway.”
“I’m sorry” I said raising my voice as if it was a question.
“So was I, so many times” he sighed. “I was her English professor in college. When I think of it now I should have realized something wasn’t right. She was so beautiful and full of life, and she wanted me.” He frowned. “I was never the type to catch the attention of a woman like her.”
I didn’t know what to say. Catarina had the looks and personality that were larger than life and Evan was right. He looked exactly like what he was, a conservative English professor.
“I had one thing that she wanted though” he continued on. “I had the social group that she was interested in, that she knew could help her career. I was a networking tool for her. She always got what she wanted and if you got in the way she would walk right over you. She knew what she wanted the first day she walked into my classroom and I made it easy for her.”
I stayed silent. He seemed to be lost in his memories and it was like he had forgotten that I was even there.
“I was so besotted with her I would have done anything that she wanted. I supported everything she did. No matter what she did, I was there for her, through the alcohol, the gambling the other men. I stood by you didn’t I?” he directed at the dead woman. “And when I said I wanted a divorce, you wouldn’t give me one because that would have meant parting with some of the money you’d earned climbing over the top of everyone. Looks like I’m finally free at last” he whispered, tears shimmering in his eyes.
At this point I wasn’t entirely sure whether those tears were from grief or joy. Feeling extraordinarily uncomfortable I almost wept with joy when Peter arrived, looking slightly less inflamed than he had earlier. The cat who had stayed blissfully quiet, took one look at Peter and started yowling again. I could hear the tail swishing against the sides of the cage. Peter slowed as he saw who else was next to the coffin.
“Evan” he said. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”
“Why not?” Evan replied. “She was my wife after all.”
“Only in name” said Peter.
Evan inclined his head in acknowledgment of the truth of that statement.
“It was lovely to meet you Trudie. Thank you for listening to the sentimental ramblings of an old fool.”
I watched him leave, noticing that he seemed to be holding himself a little straighter as if a burden had been lifted from him.
“He’s right” Peter mumbled as he went to grab the cat cage. “He always was an old fool, even when he was younger. He couldn’t see that he never had a chance of holding on to Catarina.”
“Why didn’t they just divorce?” I asked.
“Catarina, didn’t want to lose any of her money to him in a divorce. Being married to him didn’t make one tiny bit of difference to the way she lived her life, so she just refused to divorce him. It probably gave her some perverse kind of enjoyment to know that he was trapped. Last I heard he had started seeing another professor at the university and wanted to marry her. Catarina liked the idea of standing in the way of his happily ever after, purely because she could.”
I looked back at the coffin with a sense of distaste. Peter followed my look and his features tightened.
“She wasn’t always like that” he said tightly.
“Of course not” I said. See, I was learning how to lie like the best of them.
Chapter Nine
Catarina’s funeral was unlike any funeral service I had ever seen. Admittedly the crowd was small but there was not one tear from anyone that I could see. The eulogy was given in the same way that a stock report would be given, just a litany of the highlights. Admittedly from what I’d heard about Catarina’s personality, I wasn’t really surprised but I had thought that there must be someone who would mourn her passing. Someone other than the cat who spent the entire service in her cage, growling and hissing, providing a surreal backdrop to the extremely uncomfortable situation.
Later standing in a corner during the wake with Crystal and Edwin I looked around the subdued group again. At the wakes I had been to previously, there would be any number of emotions on show, from devastation to a bleak humor as people discussed their memories of the dearly departed. Today there seemed to be nothing. I could see poor Tomas had no idea what to do with himself. It was like a party where no one had any clue why they were there, and were trying to work out how much time they had to stay before they could make their escape without seeming to be rude.
“This is starting to creep me out” Crystal murmured.
“Got that right” a voice came from behind me and I spun around to find Travis Cooper standing there with a grin on his face and holding a huge plate of food.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, possibly not as surprised as I should have been. The man seemed to pop up in the strangest places.
Travis shrugged and that crooked smile of his started to show.
“I came to be your date.”
I rolled my eyes holding back a sigh. “People don’t bring dates to funerals.”
“The husband did” Travis motioned to where Evan Webber was standing next to an older woman, his head bent to hers as if unwilling to miss a single word that she said.
“You are kidding me” Crystal said unable to stop herself from looking in the direction he was pointing.
“Afraid not” said Travis, a little too gleefully.
The man seemed to get a perverse pleasure from seeing the all too human foibles on show. Despite the fact I wouldn’t put it past him to be here purely for the entertainment value I felt my eyes narrowing at him.
“Were you planning on telling us the real reason why you are here or did you want us to play twenty questions so you can be entertained?”
“See that’s why we’re perfect for each other” Travis said. “You understand me.”
I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. We weren’t perfect for each other. Travis just had a complicated history with Gr
iffin that I knew part of but not all. Somehow I had become this bone of contention between them. Travis seemed to enjoy pushing Griffin’s buttons by being around me and behaving slightly inappropriately. I didn’t take him seriously but unfortunately Griffin still reacted badly when Travis came anywhere near me. Fortunately he and Ramos had left the funeral after the service, thereby missing the most lacklustre wake ever.
“I’m actually working today.”
“Ooh” said Crystal scanning the crowd. “Who’s the dirty cheater? It’s him isn’t it?” she said pointing to a possible aspiring actor who was obviously looking at character parts as a mob enforcer. His shirt was unbuttoned just a little too much with gold chains showing on his extraordinarily hairy chest. He was speaking intently to Peter who was holding the cat cage in front of him as if it was a shield. Travis’s hand shot out and clamping over Crystal’s arm pulled it down.
“No it isn’t” he hissed, “and it might not be a great idea to bring attention to one of the more vicious debt collectors in the country.”
“Really, what would he be doing at Catarina’s funeral?” I asked quizzically as the three of us turned to look at him.
“Seriously people” Travis said. “Stop looking at him. Believe me, he is a man you do not want to get the attention of.”
We turned back to him.
“I’m actually here for the husband.”
“Why would you be looking into the husband? Who’s he cheating on?”
Travis looked at me sourly. “You know I don’t just take on cheating jobs, I do have other skills.”
“Of course you do” I said, hoping I was conveying my sincerity appropriately.
Travis looked at me in disgust. “As we know Catarina and Evan’s marriage was not a happy one, both pretty much divorced except for the paperwork. Evan started seeing a professor from college, much more his speed. He’s trying to convince Catarina to give him a divorce so he can marry the academic of his dreams. Catarina refuses and now Catarina is dead. Evan can now marry the woman he loves, no harm, no foul. Problem though is that Catarina was removed from the picture in a pretty unsavory way. The professor has got a daughter who, understandably, is a bit concerned that the wife of her future stepfather was dispatched in such a way. I have been hired to look into the case to ensure that mom is safe with her prince charming.”
