by Sofie Kelly
“No,” Roma said, shaking her head. “Jaeger or Ellis or whatever his name was.”
Maggie frowned, tenting the fingers of one hand over the top of her teacup. “Are you sure? Jaeger was a mask-maker and before that he did paintings with religious imagery—which is probably how he got into forging religious icons. Why was he out sketching an old house?”
“It might not have been him,” Roma said. “I just caught a quick glimpse of the person over by the far side of the house. Whoever it was had a hood up. It was starting to rain.”
Maggie was staring off into space. “Maggie, where are you?” I said, waving my hand in front of her face.
She shook her head. “Sorry. I can’t stop thinking about Jaeger. Now that we know who he really was, I’m wondering why he picked here to start over in the first place. We have a great artists’ community, but he didn’t exactly fit in. Most of us aren’t looking for fame and fortune. We just want to make art and pay our bills.”
“Maybe he just wanted to lay low,” I said.
“Except he wasn’t,” Maggie said. “He just couldn’t seem to live a quiet life, even after he’d gone to so much trouble to create a whole new identity for himself. And now he’s dead.”
“‘It is not, nor it cannot come to good,’” I said quietly.
They both turned to stare at me.
I shrugged. “Hamlet.”
Roma played with her tea, and then she leaned back in her chair and studied Maggie across the table. “You think he was running another scam, don’t you?” she said.
In my mind I could see Jaeger, floating faceup in the water, with that ugly gash on the side of his head.
Maggie shifted in her seat. “Now that I know about his past, I do. And I can’t help thinking that he might have been using—or trying to use the co-op in some way.” Her long fingers played with her fork. “We’re starting to do a decent business online. Some of the artists like to pack their own work for shipping. Jaeger was one of them.”
“So you think what?” Roma asked. “That he was forging artwork again and using the store to ship it to somewhere?”
Maggie shrugged. “I know it sounds crazy, but yes, maybe. I don’t believe Jaeger created a completely new person just because he was embarrassed about his past. He was up to something. I just don’t know what.”
12
Roma and Maggie insisted on washing the dishes for me. I was too restless to sleep after they left. I tidied up the kitchen and set the table for breakfast. I’d told Roma I’d take her turn out at Wisteria Hill in the morning.
I was hoping I’d get a chance to talk to Marcus. I knew it would be a while before he could piece together what had happened to Thomas Karlsson, so there really wasn’t anything I could do for Roma, other than be there for her. But maybe Marcus would have some insight into what had motivated Christian Ellis to turn himself into Jaeger Merrill.
Maybe it was nothing more than looking for a new start. On the other hand, maybe Maggie was right. Maybe Jaeger—Christian—had been up to something. Now that Marcus and I didn’t seem to be at odds so much with each other, maybe he could tell me something, anything that would put Maggie’s mind at ease. She already had enough to deal with.
Hercules and Owen were both upstairs in the bedroom. I crouched beside them, groaning a little because my ankle really didn’t want me to get down so close to the floor.
I kissed Owen’s head and scratched under his chin. “That was such a nice thing you did for Roma,” I said. “I’ll make an extra batch of crackers for you this weekend.” I stroked Hercules’s fur with my other hand. “You, too,” I said. “And I promise I’ll figure out how to tell Maggie you are not a boot person.”
Getting up again was harder than getting down to the cats’ level had been. Rebecca’s box was still on top of the chest of drawers. I moved it over to the table by the window, sat in the big chair, and took the lid off once more.
I set the bound book full of sketches and notes aside and lifted out one of the journals. The pages were yellowed, covered with the same tight, neat handwriting as the sketches.
October 19, 1960
Spent the day making apple pies with Anna. Must have peeled two baskets’ worth of apples. Decided I was sick of apples. Had a slice of the first pie out of the oven. Decided I was wrong.
I could see where Rebecca’s sense of humor came from. I flipped back a few pages.
May 17, 1960
Ladies Knitting Circle meeting at the library. Anna still prefers yarn from western Canada but Mary-Lee wants to try a mill from back east. Sammy drove me up the hill. He’s such a sweet boy, nothing like his father. Thank heaven.
“The Ladies Knitting Circle?” I said to Hercules. “Remind me to ask Rebecca about them. Or Mary. And do you think Sammy is the mayor, Sam Ingstrom?”
Abigail—with some input from Maggie—was already working on a display about the various groups that had met in the library over the years. My favorite so far was the Young Women’s Deportment Society from the early sixties. Abigail had unearthed five or six photos of several teenage girls walking through the stacks wearing white gloves and balancing books on their heads. She’d admitted, with pink cheeks and a self-deprecating laugh, that one of them was her.
I yawned. Suddenly all my restless energy was gone. My ankle was throbbing again, my head hurt, and pretty much everything else ached. I pushed myself up before I got too comfortable in the upholstered chair. “I’m going to take a bath,” I said to Hercules.
I filled the tub with hot water. Maggie had given me a packet, made of cheesecloth and tied with string, and told me to add it to my bathwater. It smelled of chamomile and roses. I tossed it in.
I soaked until the water cooled, then spread Rebecca’s salve on my ankle and wrapped it carefully with the cotton strips that had been in the bag. When I went back into the bedroom, wrapped in my oversized blue robe, I found Hercules sitting in the wing chair, his black-and-white head bent over the journal I’d forgotten to put away. It almost looked as though he was reading.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He looked up and meowed.
“Find anything interesting?”
He lifted a paw and gently patted the book.
“Careful,” I warned, bending over to look at my scabby forehead in the mirror. I had no idea that there were so many variations of blue-black.
Herc meowed again, more insistently this time. Translation: Look at this now.
I crossed over to the chair. The cat had his paw on the open spine of the journal where the pages came together. “What is it?” I said.
He dug at the inside edge of the page and then looked at me. If he could have talked he would have said, “See?” He had that kind of expectant expression on his face.
I picked up the diary. He watched me intently. At first I didn’t see anything. Then as I turned the book toward the light I saw a tiny sliver of cut paper.
“Are there pages cut out of this book?” I asked Hercules.
I moved the journal closer to the lamp on the table and ran my finger along the spine where the pages came together. Two pages had been cut from the book, very carefully with what I was guessing was some kind of thin blade. The remaining tiny scraps of paper were sharp edged—there was no feathering of the cuts as far as I could see in the dim light. It looked as if the pages had been cut out recently.
“That’s odd,” I said. Hercules looked at me unblinkingly. I flipped slowly through the rest of the journal. There were at least three other places where pages had been removed. “Do you think Rebecca did this?” I asked. Hercules didn’t so much as twitch.
No, that didn’t make sense. If there were things in Ellen’s diary that Rebecca didn’t want anyone to read, she just wouldn’t have given them to me in the first place. Secrets had kept Rebecca and Everett apart for most of their lives. If she had found something embarrassing written in her mother’s diary she wouldn’t keep it hidden, no matter what it was.
Hercules stood on his back legs and put his front paws on the edge of the cardboard box that held the rest of Ellen’s things. The extra weight made it tip over. The carton bounced off the edge of the chair and landed on the floor, spilling the other three bound books onto the rug. Hercules landed beside them, sheepish and disheveled.
I looked at him, slowly shaking my head. “Please tell me you didn’t damage those other journals,” I said.
He looked at the books, and then he looked at me and murped.
“You better be right,” I warned, reaching down to gather up everything.
Hercules held out his left paw and gave a pitiful meow.
“You’re not hurt,” I said.
He ducked his head and looked sideways at me around his whiskers, his paw still extended.
I laid the diaries on the bed and picked up the cat, setting him on my lap. “You’re such a wuss. Let me see.”
I gently felt all over his paw. He didn’t so much as wince. “I think you’ll live,” I told him.
I ran a hand over the closest leather-covered book. “Do you think there are pages missing from any of these other books?”
He reached over with his “injured” paw—which didn’t seem to be hurt anymore—and lightly scraped the cover.
“Good idea,” I said.
Two of the remaining journals had at least a few missing pages. I’d have to look at all of them in better light in the morning to be sure. I put Hercules on the floor, gathered everything back in the box, and set it up on the chest again.
Someone had taken a great deal of care to cut pages out of Ellen Montgomery’s journals. It wasn’t something I could see Rebecca doing.
So who else would care about what was written in some old diaries? Everett? That didn’t seem likely. He wasn’t the kind of person who worried about what other people thought. He’d let Wisteria Hill sit empty and neglected for a long time now while people in town speculated about his reasons.
Lita? She was one of the few people who had access to the old house. What reason would she have to remove pages from Ellen’s journals?
Could Everett’s granddaughter, Ami, have done it? I wasn’t sure Ami had ever even been inside the house at Wisteria Hill.
Yawning, I put the lid back on the carton. “I guess it doesn’t matter, anyway,” I said to Hercules who had started washing his face. “I’ll call Rebecca tomorrow and tell her. Maybe this is just another one of the mysteries of Wisteria Hill.”
13
Derek Craig was sitting in his police cruiser when I got to the top of the driveway at Wisteria Hill in the morning. He got out of the car and walked over to my truck.
“Good morning Ms. Paulson,” he said. “You here to feed the cats?”
“I am,” I said, reaching for the canvas bag of food and the jugs of water.
“Could you sign in for me, please?” he asked, offering his clipboard.
“Have you been here all night?” I asked as I signed on the line that read AM Feeding. This had to be Marcus’s idea. He was über organized, one of the reasons Maggie always insisted we’d be a good match. I’d told her if we were using that reasoning, the perfect woman for Marcus would be Mary, the kickboxing grandmother who worked at the library and made the best apple pie I’d ever eaten. She actually enjoyed adding new books to the computerized card catalogue system.
“No ma’am,” the young policeman said. “I got here at six.”
My large metal thermos was on the floor of the passenger side of the truck. “Would you like some coffee?” I asked. “It already has cream and sugar.”
He smiled. “Yes I would. I didn’t think to fill one of those. Cup I brought with me was gone in the first fifteen minutes.”
He walked back to his cruiser and got the thermal mug that had been sitting on the dash. I filled it with coffee and he gave me another big smile. “Thank you,” he said. He gestured to the cat food and water. “Could I carry something for you?”
I wasn’t nearly as stiff as I had been and my ankle felt pretty good—the combination of Rebecca’s salve and Maggie’s herbal soak—but I knew the path around the side of the carriage house was probably still muddy. “Do you think you could carry the water jugs around to the side door?” I said.
He set his coffee on the roof of the truck and grabbed the water. “Lead the way,” he said.
It had rained a little sometime during the night and the path through the scrub at the side of the carriage house was slick and slippery, but we made it to the door without either one of us, or the cat food, ending up on the ground.
“Thanks,” I said.
Derek handed me both jugs of water. “If you need anything, just yell.”
I nodded. “I will.”
He started back around the old building and I leaned on the door, pushing with my good hip against the moisture-swollen wood. It opened with a groaning sound—the door, not me.
I stepped inside, leaving the door a couple of inches ajar so I could see better. There was no sign that anyone had been in the space. The cats were probably still in their shelters.
I carried everything over to the feeding station, set out the food and water and then retreated back by the door. The cats had learned that the sound of someone moving around meant food, so I knew they’d be out in a moment.
A couple of minutes passed and there was no sign of any of the cats. I didn’t hear anything either. Had all the people in the field behind the old carriage house scared them? Had they bolted? Then I thought about Lucy. The little cat didn’t scare easily. If she was still here, then so was the rest of the colony. I leaned against the rough wooden wall of the building and continued to wait.
And finally there was a twitch of motion over by one of the support beams. I held my breath. Lucy came cautiously out of the darkness, scanning the area. She saw me and stopped. Would she go for the food or back to the shelters where the cats slept?
She did neither. She started purposefully across the floor to me, stopping maybe a dozen or so feet away. Lucy and I had a kind of rapport that I couldn’t explain, other than in the unexplainable logic of cats, she just seemed to like me. Now she tipped her head to one side and looked up at me.
“Hey puss,” I said softly. “I bet you wonder what’s going on.”
She meowed softly.
“You’re safe. Marcus is taking care of everything. You know Marcus, the big, cute, annoying guy.”
Lucy meowed again and then turned and headed for the feeding station. I had no idea if she somehow understood what I’d said, been reassured by my tone, or if all she’d heard was blah, blah, blah and now she was hungry.
Like she’d sent off some sort of invisible signal, the other cats came out to join Lucy for breakfast. I looked each one over as usual for any signs of illness or injury. As far as I could tell in the dim light all seven cats were just fine.
I felt myself relax a little. At least one thing was going right. Maybe everything else would fall in place today.
As quickly as I had the thought, I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck as though a slight breeze had blown over my skin. A karmic warning, maybe, that life wasn’t going to work out so easily?
At the edge of my vision I saw something move behind me. I looked back over my shoulder. It wasn’t a warning from the universe. It was Marcus. Okay, maybe it was a warning from the universe after all.
“Hi,” he whispered, moving to stand very close beside my left shoulder. I could smell the citrusy shampoo he always used.
“Where’s Roma?” His breath tickled my bare neck.
“There were some things she had to do,” I whispered back.
Marcus was studying the cats, the same way I had, looking for any sign they weren’t okay. “You all right?” he said. “How’s your ankle?”
“A bit stiff,” I said. “But I’m okay. Rebecca brought me one of her herbal concoctions. I have a doctor’s appointment on Monday, by the way.”
“Good,” he said. He didn’t l
ook the slightest bit guilty about telling on me. “The cats look all right.”
“Lucy took her time coming out, but once she did, the rest followed her. I’m hoping they won’t get spooked and take off.” He was so close to me I could actually feel the warmth coming off his body. Or maybe it was the carriage house that was getting warm and stuffy.
“I’ve told everyone to stay away from this building,” Marcus said.
“Have you always been a cat person?” I asked.
He smiled. “I told you I had a paper route when I was a kid, didn’t I?”
I nodded. It was one of the few things Marcus had shared about himself, sitting at my kitchen table having breakfast not long after we’d first met.
“I was nine. It was a Saturday morning, it was raining and I had maybe four more papers to deliver. I was on Mountain Road, just a couple of houses above yours, and there was this little ginger cat, scrawny and wet under a tree.”
“And you rescued it,” I said, glancing over at the feeding station where the cats were still eating.
“I put her inside my raincoat and took her home. I had this crazy idea that I could hide her in my bedroom without anyone finding out.”
“I take it that didn’t work?”
Marcus laughed. “Well, it might have if I hadn’t had the idea to dry the cat with a blow dryer.”
“You didn’t?” I couldn’t help laughing myself.
“It wasn’t one of my better ideas,” he said. “I probably scared her out of one of her nine lives. She managed to squeeze into this little space behind my dresser and she wouldn’t come out.” Something changed in his expression and he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “My father, in his three-piece suit and white shirt, spent a good fifteen minutes on the floor, coaxing the cat out with a sausage. I thought for sure he’d take her to the animal shelter. But he just said, ‘Put up posters and if you can’t find out who owns her, you better start saving that paper money because she’s going to need shots.’”
He shrugged. “No one came for her so that’s how I ended up with Abner and I guess that’s how I became a cat person.”
