Black Cat White Paws_A Maggie Dahl Mystery

by Mark McNease

  She let the gun ease to her side, then hurried to the back door and closed it. As she did, she looked at the lock, as well as the glass in the door and the door frame. There was no sign of forced entry. That meant whoever had come into her house had used a key.

  She shut the door and locked it, checking the handle to be sure. She turned and saw Checks sitting on his haunches, staring up at her.

  “Thanks,” she said grudgingly.

  “What’s going on?”

  Maggie nearly jumped out of her nightgown.

  “Is that a gun in your hand?” Gerri asked. “Jesus, Maggie, when did you get a gun?”

  Maggie and David’s gun hobby was not something she’d told her sister about. She’d judged Gerri to be the anti-gun sort many years ago and had never felt like having an argument over it.

  “It’s David’s,” Maggie said, engaging the safety. The only person she might shoot at the moment was Gerri, and she didn’t want to take any chances. “I had my own, by the way, and no, we’re not going to discuss it.”

  “So answer my question: what’s going on? It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

  “It’s nothing. I thought I heard someone.”

  “In the house? That’s your idea of nothing?”

  “Nothing I can be sure of,” Maggie said, walking slowly past her out of the kitchen

  “You’re confusing me,” said Gerri, following her into the hallway.

  “I’m going to try and sleep now, we’ll talk in the morning.”

  Moments later Maggie was back in bed, with Checks beside her. He faced away from her, staring at the door as if he’d decided to be a sentry for the rest of the night.

  “You are one strange animal,” Maggie said. “But I could love you. Just give me time.”

  She let her hand fall to the nightstand, making sure the drawer was open and the gun within reach.

  DAY 4

  “I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure,

  could walk on a cloud without coming through.”

  – Jules Verne

  CHAPTER Nineteen

  MAGGIE CONSIDERED HERSELF LUCKY TO have slept at all. She’d gone back to bed after what she was certain had been an intruder’s entry into her home thinking sleep would be impossible, but she’d been wrong. Checks had done his part, settling onto the pillow beside her—David’s pillow, covered with the same pillowcase that had been on it the night he died, and that she’d not washed since—and purring like a furry white noise machine. She was quickly becoming attached to the cat. Never a pet person, she’d been especially leery of felines. She’d met too many that confirmed people’s suspicions about these particular animals: that they were calling the shots in any household they ran, and their human companions merely served at their pleasure. Checks, while displaying some of those tendencies, had also proven to be highly intelligent and, in the case of the suspected intruder, a possible life saver. He didn’t save Alice, did he? Maggie thought as she got out of bed, Checks immediately hopping to the floor when she moved. No, but I bet he would have if he could have. She put on her robe and headed to the kitchen.

  Gerri was already up, eating a piece of seven grain bread slathered with apricot jam, one of Dahl House Jams’ first recipes. David had gotten it from his sister, who’d received it from their grandmother.

  “What’s up?” Gerri said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. She was sitting at the island counter they’d installed, part of the house renovations Maggie was now continuing alone. A smaller table was nestled against a wall, though Maggie seldom used it now that her husband no longer sat across from her.

  “I slept, believe it or not,” said Maggie, walking to the coffee pot and pouring herself a cup.

  “I was talking to the cat.”

  Checks had padded into the kitchen on Maggie’s heels. He’d taken up position between the women and was staring at Gerri, eyeing the toast.

  “What’s he doing?” continued Gerri. “Cat’s don’t eat toast.”

  Maggie ignored her. She spooned nondairy creamer into her coffee, and shoved a piece of bread into the toaster for herself.

  “I think I should go to the police,” said Maggie.

  “About what?”

  “About someone coming into my home in the middle of the night! What else would I be talking about?”

  Gerri waited a moment, then said, “Maggie, you know I love you, so I can say this. Are you sure someone was in the house last night and that it wasn’t a dream, or you weren’t just hearing things? This is an old house, they make noises.”

  Maggie detected judgment in the way her sister called the house ‘old.’ She was tempted to tell Gerri no one was forcing her to stay there, but she bit her tongue and plated her toast instead. She took it to the counter, sat next to Gerri and put jam on her bread.

  “The back door was open,” Maggie said. “I felt the cold air when I was coming downstairs, and when I got into the kitchen the door was definitely open.”

  “Maybe you left it that way.”

  “Are you gaslighting me?”

  Gerri looked at her, perplexed.

  “It’s from a movie,” explained Maggie. “Never mind. Just know this: I heard someone moving around, I came downstairs—”

  “With a gun,” Gerri interrupted. “Remind me to talk to you about that.”

  “We’ll never have that conversation. It’s David’s gun and I’m keeping it. There’s nothing political in owning a firearm.”

  “It makes a statement, Maggie.”

  “Yes, it says, ‘I have gun and if you don’t get out of my house I will shoot you.’ That’s all the statement it needs to make. Now stop changing the subject.”

  “Fine. Someone was in the house. You left the backdoor unlocked, which I understand is a habit you have …”

  “Not since Alice Drapier invited herself into my living room,” Maggie said. “Doors are now locked, and I check to make sure they’re locked. No, this was someone with ...”

  Gerri waited for her to finish. When she didn’t, Gerri prompted her. “What, Maggie? What was this someone with?”

  “A key.”

  Gerri ate the last bit of her toast, wiped her mouth off and said, “Please tell me you had the locks changed on this house.”

  Maggie looked away.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Gerri. “The first thing you do in a new home is change the locks.”

  “We meant to, but then we got busy with the business and the house renovations and everything else.”

  “Who has keys?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I said, who has keys to our house?”

  ‘Our house.’ The words weren’t lost on Maggie and she was not sure how she felt at the moment about her sister referring to the house as ‘ours.’

  “I don’t know, really,” Maggie said. “The realtor, the previous owners.”

  “And where are they?”

  “Seattle. The wife’s father has health problems so they moved there to take care of him. The house had been empty for two years. They let it fall into disrepair. That’s what David liked about the place—he wanted something that needed work.”

  “Who else had keys?”

  Maggie remained silent, thinking about it.

  “Everyone they ever gave keys to,” Gerri said, answering her own question. “That’s why you change them. You have no idea who has keys to your own house. I’m surprised at you, Maggie.”

  “Not as surprised as you were to see a Glock in my hand.”

  “What’s a Glock?”

  “Never mind,” said Maggie. “While I’m thinking about who has keys to my house—my house, Gerri, let’s wait a little while for the ‘our’ business—and getting the locks changed, we should have a conversation with Sergeant Hoyt again.”

  Gerri didn’t respond to Maggie’s comment about calling the house theirs. Instead she slid off the chair and said, “I can’t this morning. I have a breakfast date.”

&
nbsp; “You just ate!”

  “A single, lonely piece of toast with a drop of jam. It’s not a proper breakfast. I’m doing small meals these days anyway, six or seven, with fruit for snacks. I’ve lost three pounds in two months. It’s amazing.”

  Maggie ignored the dieting advice. “Who are you having breakfast with?”

  “Tom Brightmore,” Gerri said. “He owns—”

  “The Brightside Diner,” Maggie finished. “I know who he is. I also know he’s quite a bit younger than you.”

  Gerri stared at her. “Is that ageism I hear, sister?”

  “No. I just mean …”

  “I know what you mean. I know what everybody means with comments like that, and I don’t care. If I was a man going out with a woman ten years my junior I’d be applauded.”

  “So you’re going out with him now?”

  “You’re exasperating me, Maggie, please stop. No, we’re not going out. I had coffee there the other day when I was exploring my new home—my new home, I can say that without your permission—and he was very friendly. We chatted. He told me about himself. I did the same.”

  “Did you leave out the part about three husbands?”

  “It’s best to reveal oneself a little at a time,” said Gerri. “I will tell him when it’s appropriate. For now, today, we’re having breakfast, and not at his restaurant. That’s gauche. We’re going to the River Run Café.”

  “Nice,” Maggie said, surprised. The River Run had amazing views of the Delaware River. “I hope he’s paying.”

  “I’ll pretend to offer,” Gerri said, smiling. “He’ll tell me he’s got it. I’ll drop my wallet back into my purse, and we’ll see what comes of it all.”

  “Well, good luck, if that’s the right thing to say. Just be careful. He’s younger, you’re starting a new life, take it all very easy. Meanwhile, I’ll be going to the police station. Having an intruder come into my home at 3:00 a.m. is not something to ignore. At the very least I should file a report.”

  “I won’t disagree with you. I’m just not sure what you’re going to tell him, considering your habit a habit of leaving the doors unlocked.”

  “Past habit.”

  Gerri started to leave the kitchen. She stopped at the doorway. “Are you planning to tell Sergeant Hoyt about your gun?”

  “David’s gun.”

  “Whatever. The one you had in your hand last night.”

  “I don’t see any reason to,” said Maggie. “It’s licensed, and it’s nobody’s business. If it’s going to gnaw at you, I’d suggest you forget about it.”

  “It’s a hard sight to forget. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready.”

  “Tell Tom Brightmore I said hello. They use our jams at his restaurant.”

  “I’ll do no such thing,” Gerri replied. She waved her fingers at Maggie and left the room.

  Maggie proceeded to eat her toast, wondering about who had keys to her house. She’d make a list if she had any idea who to put on it. For now she needed to get ready. With less than a week until the store’s opening, there was more work planned to prepare the interior. It had all been thoroughly cleaned, and now it was time to pay special attention to the details. Every little decoration, every stroke of paint, mattered.

  She would stop and have a conversation with Sergeant Hoyt on her way to the store. If he advised her to file a police report, she’d do that, too. She couldn’t shake the thought that the whole experience had been meant to frighten her. It had succeeded, of course, but who was behind it, and what they were trying to tell her, remained a mystery.

  “Let’s go,” Maggie said to Checks. “Time’s wasting.”

  She left her half-finished piece of toast on the plate. She grabbed her coffee cup and headed back upstairs, with Checks sauntering slowly after her. The more Maggie was around him, the more she knew he was born sure of himself. It was a trait she envied.

  CHAPTER Twenty

  MAGGIE COULDN’T TELL WHAT SERGEANT Hoyt thought of her. He was a difficult man to read. She wondered if his stoicism was part of his personality, or something he’d developed from his years on the police force. She assumed a certain detachment was necessary in a job that included dealing with criminals, community members and the occasional corpse. She thought these things as she sat across from him in the same conference room she’d been in with her sister during their previous visit to the station. He’d offered her coffee again and she’d accepted, happy to have a prop between them while she told him about the previous night’s intruder.

  “You actually heard someone downstairs?” he asked.

  He’d hadn’t acted all that surprised to see her. Maggie wondered if, after finding her and Gerri hiding in Alice Drapier’s basement stairwell, he’d come to expect this kind of thing from her.

  “I was dreaming …” she started to say.

  “Dreaming?”

  He made another note on a yellow legal pad. He had not turned on the recorder this time. She wondered if he kept a file on her.

  “Yes, but the sound wasn’t part of the dream. The cat woke me up.”

  “So you heard meowing?”

  She began to feel patronized. She looked at him to see if there was any hint of a smile on his lips.

  “Urgent meowing,” she emphasized. “That’s what woke me up. It’s like Checks knew someone was in the house and he was trying to warn me.”

  “Checks is the cat?”

  “Yes, at least he inhabits a cat.”

  Her attempt at humor failed.

  “Go on, Mrs. Dahl. So you went downstairs …”

  Maggie did not mention the gun. She wasn’t at risk of being charged for possessing it, but she thought it best not to add that particular color to the scene. She’d also not said anything to him about her meeting with Dahlia Getty. She was still trying to piece everything together. She would tell Hoyt about these things when the time came. For now she was only there to talk about a stranger coming into her house.

  Hoyt thought a moment and set the pen down.

  “Mrs. Dahl …”

  “Maggie.”

  “Mrs. Dahl,” he said, “why would someone come into your home and remain downstairs? Is there something they might be looking for?

  Like the half million dollars we didn’t find in Alice’s house? Maggie thought.

  “And how did they get in? You told me you didn’t lock your doors.”

  “David made me lock them,” Maggie said. “I fell back into the habit of leaving them unlocked when he died. But after Alice came into my house, I locked them again. I know I did.”

  Hoyt wrote several sentences, then put his pen down and eased back into his chair.

  “From what you’ve told me, nothing was taken. The door was open. Maybe you left it unlocked, maybe you didn’t. Maybe a strong wind invited itself into your house.”

  Maggie started to protest. Hoyt put his hand up, stopping her.

  “Whatever happened, you were unharmed. The intruder left rather than confront you. It could have been a homeless person looking for food …”

  “In Lambertville? I didn’t know there were any homeless people here.”

  “You’d be surprised. There are also people who wander at night, they take sleeping pills and suddenly they’ve walked around for an hour without remembering it. It happens.”

  Maggie was disheartened in the extreme. She’d come looking for support and advice, and instead she’d run headlong into a skeptic. If there was some connection between Alice’s killing and her middle-of-the-night intruder, he wasn’t making it.

  “What if it’s related?” she asked.

  He stared at her. “Related to what?”

  She sensed he knew what she meant but had not wanted to give it credibility.

  “Alice’s murder. What if he was trying to tell me something?”

  “Assuming it’s a man, and that it’s one man,” he said impatiently.

  Maggie knew then he’d been humoring her and had decided to stop
.

  “Maybe it was a band of thieves,” he said. “Maybe it was a tribe of some kind, men, women, children, pets.”

  “You don’t need to mock me.”

  “One, I’m not mocking you. I’m illustrating how irrational you’re being. Two, I’m conducting an active investigation into the death of Alice Drapier and I don’t need these distractions. You broke into her house—”

  “I had a key!”

  “That is beside the point. You did not have her permission, and she didn’t give it to you from the grave. I let that slide, which was against my better judgment and very much against department protocol. And now you’re convinced her killer is trying to scare you off. From what, Mrs. Dahl? Is there something you’re not telling me that has this man after you?”

  Maggie clenched her teeth. “No,” she lied. “Nothing that I’m aware of. Maybe he’s afraid I know who he is. Maybe he thinks I saw him.”

  Hoyt looked at his watch. “I’m late for an interview,” he said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but if you’d like to file a report you can see the desk sergeant. In any event, I need to end this conversation. I’m a punctual man.”

  “Fine,” Maggie said. She reached down and picked her purse up from the floor. “I appreciate your time.”

  “So are you going to file a report?” he asked.

  Maggie was already formulating her next move. Hoyt was not on her side—at least not yet—and it might be best to pull back, to let the whole intruder business slide for now. She’d decided while being mildly reprimanded by the sergeant that she was right—whoever killed Alice was telling her to stay away. And that she would not do.

  “I think you’re correct, Sergeant Hoyt,” she said as he led her to the door. “I was sleeping, I was exhausted, I probably imagined it all.”

  “I’m not saying you did.”

  “And you’re not saying I didn’t. I’d rather let it sit, maybe it was a figment of a very tired imagination. I’m sorry to take up your time.”