Kitty Litter Killer

by Candice Speare Prentice

  “Did you go with Philip to the fall festival?”

  June shook her head. “No. I had to work that day, so he dropped me off at my job and then he went out there to see if he could talk to Abbie.”

  “Did he say anything about being there? Anything unusual? Like maybe about someone he’d seen besides Abbie?”

  June pursed her lips and frowned. “You know what? He was acting funny. He didn’t say anything—that I remember. But he was a bit late picking me up. And he was distracted. I thought at first he and Abbie had quarreled, but he said no.”

  “Well, if you think of anything else about that, let me know, okay?”

  She agreed.

  I scooched forward to the edge of the couch. “Did Philip have any signs of having been in a fight with someone?”

  She sighed. “You mean that black eye?”

  “Yes.”

  “He got that last Sunday. We ate lunch after church, and then he took the car out for a while. When he got back, he had that shiner, but he refused to tell me what happened.”

  “Do you know Jaylene and Henry Adler?” I asked.

  June’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “Vaguely. I’ve heard the name. Pet store?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because they hated Philip for some reason.” I stared at my hands before looking up at her. “I really appreciate your time. You’ve been more help than you realize.”

  “You’re welcome. I want to make things as right as they can possibly be for Abbie.” June smiled again. “Philip would have wanted it that way.”

  I stood. “I’ll leave you now. If you think of anything else, would you call me?”

  She stood up, as well. “Yes. And I’ll tell Mary that she needs to speak with you.”

  She followed me to the front door.

  “Trish?” she asked softly. “Will you tell Abbie what I told you? I think it might be better coming from you. Well, at least easier right now. I—I think this will take some adjustment for her. And it will be easier if she doesn’t have to see me while she’s figuring things out.”

  “Yes, I’ll tell her.”

  June touched my arm. “When she’s ready to hear it, please tell her this. Philip was happy she was successful. And he wanted to tell her that he couldn’t think of anybody better than Eric Scott to take care of her.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I walked to my SUV feeling overwhelmed by the information I’d just learned. Philip had not died the bad man I thought he was. Although I was relieved, now I wondered how to deal with all the anger and resentment I felt toward him. At first glance it might seem simple. He’d changed. He was trying to make things right. God had forgiven him; therefore, I should. But feelings can’t be eradicated that easily.

  I thought about the song “Amazing Grace” and realized that though I’d sung it in church all my life, I’d never grasped the depth of the simple truth. God can walk into someone’s life and so totally transform them that they aren’t the same person they were before. Even someone who has hurt other people so badly.

  The Bible says that God leaves the past behind. I couldn’t do that so easily. How odd to be in the position of having to forgive a dead man. That might take some time. But I did feel an odd sense of relief. If a tragic death can have a good side, Philip’s did.

  And now I had to prepare myself to tell Abbie what I’d found out—why Philip had been so insistent about talking to her. And I would have to watch her go through the same emotional processes I was going through, only magnified hundreds of times.

  Given her already fragile emotional state, I had a feeling she would take her response to what I told her and add it to the heaps of guilt she was already carrying. But I hoped that gradually she would be able to come to peace with Philip’s death. And take the gift God offered her through Philip’s change of heart—freedom from the past. And his wish that she would be happy with Eric.

  Lord, please give me the right words.

  I shivered from the cold, stuck my keys in the ignition, and turned on my SUV, but I didn’t go anywhere. Instead, I blindly stared at June’s house, trying to think of the best way to handle this. Maybe I should ask Abbie to meet me somewhere for lunch so I could tell her in a neutral place. If she was in public, she might not retreat so quickly into herself.

  I dug through all the junk in my purse for my cell phone. As I called her, I made a mental note to clean the mess.

  “How are you?” I asked when she answered.

  “Hanging in there.” She sounded livelier than she had that last time I spoke with her, and I hated to think I might spoil that.

  “Anything new?” I asked.

  “No. I spent some good time with Eric. He just left.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. “Listen, can you meet me for lunch?”

  I heard her inhale. “Today? I don’t really want to go out in public right now. I hate it when people stare at me.”

  “Let’s go somewhere out of town. Where no one will notice us.” I thought about it. “You know that really great Italian place near Angelica’s? It’ll be my treat.”

  “I don’t know. . . .”

  “Abbie, you need to get out.” How could I convince her? “But more than that, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Something you have to tell me?”

  “Yes. About Philip. Please.”

  “About Philip.” She paused. “You just talked to June, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Abbie didn’t say anything for a moment, and I flicked my keys with my finger, making them jingle.

  “I won’t be able to convince you to tell me on the phone, will I?” she asked. “Or to come over here?”

  “No,” I said.

  She sighed. “Okay. I know you wouldn’t ask me if you didn’t think it was important.”

  “Oh, Abs?” I said quickly before she hung up. “Would you please bring a blank bookplate with you? I need an autograph for someone.”

  I arrived at the restaurant before Abbie and got a table right away. After I slipped into my chair and put my sunglasses on the table, I pulled my steno pad from my purse to make notes. I hadn’t felt right making notes while I was talking to June, but I needed to do so now before I forgot anything.

  I wrote a small paragraph about Philip’s transformation—something I was still having trouble wrapping my mind around. Then I began adding specific clues.

  Philip making amends. Had he approached someone with a real grudge? A grudge big enough to kill him?

  To my last notation about Philip leaving the fall festival abruptly, I added: He was distracted—maybe disturbed by someone or something. What? And he’d been in town for a couple of weeks.

  He got the black eye the Sunday after the fall festival. He went somewhere alone after church.

  Then I tapped my pen against my lip. After talking to Gail, I had another potential suspect for my list. Linda Faye King.

  I wrote: Linda. Possibly slept with Philip long ago. She was trying to avoid him now. Was she angry enough about the past to kill him? Or possibly afraid of him for some reason?

  Something niggled in my mind. The fall festival seemed to be the one place where all my suspects and Philip had been at the same time.

  Clark, Linda, the Adlers. . .Hayley and Leighton. I paused my mental rundown of suspects and bit the end of my pen. What about Gail and her daughter? Though I hated to think about it, there was definitely some hostility there. Just to be thorough, I jotted down Gail.

  My quest for information would continue that afternoon. I’d drop by Clark’s mother’s after lunch with the bookplate.

  And maybe it was time to look for houses—a good excuse to see Linda. I yanked out my cell and gave her a quick call at her office. She was in, and we agreed to a meeting on Saturday afternoon when we could discuss what I had in mind.

  I put away my phone and looked at the names on my list. I needed to find out more about Hayley and Lei
ghton. Sammie and I would go visit the kitten again. But I’d give Angelica a call a bit later and try to pry some information out of her.

  I was concentrating so hard, I didn’t notice Abbie until she joined me at the table. I shut my notebook and put it away. She kissed my cheek then slipped into her seat and pulled a bookplate out of her purse. “Who is this for?”

  “Clark Matthews’ mother, Eunice.”

  She wrote on the plate and then handed it to me. “So is there a reason for this?”

  I tucked the plate into my purse and met her gaze. “Yes. I’m trying to find a killer.”

  “Still hard at work on my behalf,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.” She clasped her hands on the table. “I don’t deserve the kind of friend you are to me.”

  “Don’t be silly.” I reached across the table and squeezed her hands. “You’ve put up with so many of my faults.”

  “No more than you put up with mine.” She smiled. “Hey, how many people have a best friend—a true best friend? And you’ve been mine since before kindergarten.”

  We touched the tips of our index fingers, something that had been a sign of our friendship for years. When we were little, we decided we wanted to be blood sisters. We’d pricked the ends of our fingers to make them bleed and then held them together. Strangely enough, that childish action meant more today than it had then. It represented the covenant of our friendship.

  We were both silent for a few minutes after that. My mind was filled with a montage of memories. Finally, Abbie broke the silence.

  “Eric suspects that Nick Fletcher is investigating Philip’s murder on his own time.”

  I tried hard to look innocent, but she’d caught me off guard, and I was sure my face gave me away.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” she asked.

  I stared at the tablecloth. “I can’t say.”

  The corners of her mouth twitched. “I understand. Eric says he can’t officially know what Nick is doing because he’d have to order him to stop, so he hasn’t told Nick he knows. However, during one of their conversations, Eric mentioned offhand to him the name of someone at the state police who might be able to feed him a bit of information, and vice versa.”

  I glanced down at the table to cover up my surprise. While I was glad for what Eric was doing, I was pretty sure Abbie didn’t understand the implications. Eric was a letter-of-the-law kind of guy. Black-and-white. For him to be encouraging Corporal Fletcher to step outside the system, even in such a subtle way, told me just how frightened he really was for Abbie.

  “So what did you want to talk to me about?” Abbie asked.

  No getting around it. Things were getting more complicated by the minute.

  “Why don’t we order,” I said. “Then I’ll tell you everything.”

  We didn’t have to wait long for our server. I ordered the Tuscan chicken; Abbie ordered lasagna.

  “Are you really going to eat?” I asked.

  “I’m going to try,” she said. “Talking to Eric helped.” She smiled softly. “He understands why I kept things from him. All in all, I’m feeling a bit more upbeat.”

  “I’m so glad.” I hoped I wasn’t about to shatter her good feelings into a million pieces.

  I began by telling her how June looked. How well she was doing despite everything. How pretty the house was. How nicely June had kept things up.

  Abbie put a finger in the air in front of my mouth. “You’re avoiding telling me something, aren’t you?”

  I sighed. “Yes.”

  The muscles in her face tightened. “That means I should brace myself.” She sat up and straightened her shoulders.

  I took a deep breath. Then I blurted out everything. As I spoke, a gamut of emotions washed over her face. Several times, I could tell she was on the verge of tears.

  “That’s it,” I said when I was finished.

  “That’s it?” She swallowed hard.

  “Yes, that’s it.” I’d done the right thing by bringing her here. Abbie would not fall apart in public, and I needed time to get through to her.

  I watched her jaw clench and relax and clench and relax, as if she were chewing gum. I knew the signs. She was about to let loose.

  “So because I was afraid of Philip and angry at him, he wasn’t allowed the satisfaction of asking my forgiveness. That’s selfish of me, isn’t it?”

  I was right about her blaming herself. “It’s not that simple,” I said. “You can’t—”

  “But it’s worse than that. Not only did I not allow him to talk to me but I’m still terribly angry at him. How’s that for ironic? I’m angry at a dead man. That’s really selfish.”

  “I understand. That’s how I—”

  “And now”—she slapped her hands on the table— “even dead, he’s making my life miserable. He had the nerve to die in the middle of my wedding plans. And I’m mad about that. How’s that for selfish?”

  “Well, you—”

  “And to top it all off, I’m a suspect. Is this right? Is this fair? He makes everyone’s lives miserable for years, then he comes riding into town like some kind of heroic, dying, movie-hero cowboy, ready to fix everything. And he wants the woman he left behind plus all the townspeople to forgive him. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  “I’m not sure he was expecting—”

  “Then he ups and gets shot by a bad guy and doesn’t even have to follow through on his plans. And he dies and goes to heaven, leaving the rest of us here to pick up all the pieces and try to put things back together.”

  “That’s probably—”

  “And the worst thing is that I’m a Christian. I’m supposed to be rejoicing that he turned to the Lord at the end of his life. Rejoicing that he was delivered from the fires of hell.” She glared at me. “I’m glad he didn’t go to hell, but I am not rejoicing. I’m just plain mad.”

  Abbie had a way with words. Considering she was a writer, that was to be expected. She’d managed to express some of what I’d been thinking, only better. And she summed it up quite nicely.

  I waited to see if she was done. She appeared to be. She was breathing hard, and her face was flushed. Truthfully, I was glad to see her feisty and angry instead of morose and depressed.

  “Well. . .” I paused long enough to give her a chance to interrupt me. She didn’t. That meant her tirade was over. “You’ve probably just expressed some of what I was feeling, too.”

  Abbie finally noticed I was speaking and stared at me with wide eyes. “You mean you don’t think I’m horrible for thinking all of that?”

  I shook my head. “Absolutely not. I’m having some pretty deep issues of my own about this.”

  “Really?”

  “You’d better believe it.” I leaned toward her. “So did June at first, and she’s his mother. I think she suspected you’d feel all of this, which is why she didn’t want to tell you herself.”

  Abbie blinked as tears filled her eyes again. “I’m a wreck. A total emotional basket case. I go from one emotion to the other in a matter of seconds.”

  “I know,” I said. “Do you want me to tell Eric?”

  “No. I’ll tell him.” She pulled another tissue from her purse.

  Our food arrived, and Abbie turned her head so the server wouldn’t notice her tears. After the server left, I reached over and patted Abbie’s arm.

  “I’m so sorry. I knew this would be hard. Will you be able to eat?”

  She blew her nose and smiled valiantly. “How could I waste the best lasagna on the East Coast? I’m going to try.” She managed to eat half her meal, and I did the same.

  To give her time to recover, I did most of the talking— about the kids and Max. I told her I wanted to go back to work.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “You’ve never been able to be at home and settle. Even when you were a kid.”

  We chatted about a few more things and avoided the topic of Philip altogether. When we were
done, I paid our bill and we both stood. I pulled her into a tight hug.

  “I love you. This will work out. You wait and see.”

  “I want to believe that,” she said.

  So did I.

  “Oh,” said Abbie, reaching into her purse, “I forgot to give you this.” She pulled the smashed button I’d found in the parking lot from her pocket. “This isn’t mine.”

  I took it from her and dropped it into my purse. Perhaps it just belonged to a church member.

  We exchanged good-byes, and I watched her leave, shoulders slumped. I ached for her.

  I went to the bathroom before I left. That’s when I realized I’d left my sunglasses on the table. I went back to get them and noticed a couple walking into another room of the restaurant. I would recognize Linda anywhere. I also recognized the man with her. Leighton Whitmore. Hayley’s husband! Why were they together?

  And that’s when I remembered there were two other people who’d had gold buttons on their jackets. Linda Faye King and Hayley Whitmore.

  I’d brought my headset with me, so I was free to make all the calls I needed to as I drove.

  First, I called Clark’s mother, Eunice Matthews, to ask if I could come by and deliver her bookplate. She seemed eager for the visit and explained how to get to her house. Then I called April to see if she wanted to come with me to visit Eunice, but April informed me that she was, like, way over Clark and that Linda could have him. But did Linda want Clark? Or did she have her sights on a wealthier man—Leighton Whitmore?

  As I drove to Eunice’s house, I called Corporal Fletcher. I needed to update him while everything was fresh in my mind.

  “Fletcher,” he snapped into the receiver.

  “This is Trish Cunningham. Is this a good time to talk?”

  “Mrs. C.” His tone lightened. “I’m on the road, so yeah. You have news for me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Well, just shoot. I’ll ask questions if I have them.”

  I told him everything I’d learned so far. Several times, he grunted. I even mentioned Leighton and Linda. Then I told him about my visit with June and everything we’d talked about, including Philip’s change of heart.