by Delia James
Right? Right.
I pulled my phone out and hit Frank Hawthorne’s number. I wasn’t all that surprised when I got his voice mail.
“Hi, Frank. It’s Anna,” I said when the leave-a-message beep sounded. “I was just wondering—” But what was I really wondering? If he’d heard anything about the murder yet? Or if there’d been any kind of ransom demand for Ruby? Or if there was a New York City connection of any kind, I added, thinking about the phone call to Pam and the area code it had come from. Maybe I should ask if he had any clues about what had really happened to Ramona, or Ruby, or if he’d heard which direction Blanchard was looking in. “—if you’d call me,” I finished, which was more than a little lame. I hit the End Call button before I could start stammering.
Right. Okay. That’s it. I picked my pencil up, again, and faced my half-completed page, again. Work was good. Work would help me focus. It would soothe away some of my aching worry and curiosity. I had done everything I could for now. Anything more would be reckless. If Lieutenant Blanchard caught me doing anything he could label sniffing around, Kenisha would be the one who got in trouble. I could not, for example, walk over to Val’s and ask if she’d heard from Kristen Summers, or try to get her to talk about her old friend. That would be both pushy and unproductive.
So why was I heading downstairs to pull on my jacket and my battered rubber boots to get ready to squish through my garden and across the back lawn of McDermott’s B and B?
Because you’re hopeless, I informed myself as I grabbed my knitted cap with the rainbow pom-pom. Myself didn’t bother to argue.
15
“HI, ANNA.” ROGER pushed open the door to the B and B’s big commercial kitchen. “I thought you might be coming by.”
A cloud of warmth and the scent of baking bread enveloped me as I stepped inside. Roger wore a blue apron with the words BEING THE CHEF MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY on the chest and was wiping his hands on a dish towel. Baby Melissa was curled up in her bouncy seat on the dining room table, fast asleep and looking peaceful and adorable. Several cooling racks of perfectly browned whole-grain bread shared the table with her.
“Val’s in the back,” Roger told me. “Would you take the pumpkin bread with you?”
“Thanks,” I said, for both the directions and the basket of sliced bread, which smelled fabulous. I also headed to the kitchen’s rear door.
McDermott’s B and B had started life as a Georgian-style mansion. It was a big orange brick residence with graceful rooms, narrow hallways and steep stairs. Roger and Val had put a lot of work into restoring and refreshing its grand parlors and bedrooms, but there wasn’t anything to be done about the narrow halls. Not even the one that had been built in the 1930s to connect the main house with what used to be a groundskeeper’s cottage but was now Val and Roger’s private apartment.
Since they spent so much time in a place decked out to invoke the nineteenth century (enhanced, of course with comforts like cable, Internet and central heating), Val and Roger could be forgiven if they went a little ultramodern in their own home. But both of them loved comfort almost as much as their daughter and each other. So the furniture was all either overstuffed or vintage, or both. The pictures on the walls were either of Roger’s family or soothing landscapes and artsy black-and-white photos. Valerie’s family was nowhere in evidence.
Valerie herself was curled up an oversized burgundy armchair, talking on the phone. It turned out I wasn’t going to have to ask if she’d heard from Ruby’s owner. I could hear it for myself.
“. . . It’s a huge mess. I’m so sorry, Kristen.” Val paused and listened intently to the voice coming through the handset. “Yes, it’s true. I’m so sorry, but the police do think Ramona was murdered. Have they called you yet? Uh-huh . . . Wow. Yeah.”
Valerie glanced up, saw me and beckoned for me and the bread basket to come in. “No. They don’t know anything yet. The police are doing their best, believe me. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” While Val listened to the answer, I sank onto the sectional sofa as surreptitiously as I could, setting my basket on the coffee table.
“It’s okay, I understand,” Val went on into the phone. “You’re not babbling. You’re upset.” Another pause. “Of course we can. But you should probably know, the town’s swarming with cameras and stuff. They’re probably camped out in front of your place. Do you want to stay here for a few days? Of course it isn’t any trouble. We’re actually closed down this week while we redo the floors, but you can stay in the house. And don’t worry, we’ll have Ruby back and this whole mess cleared up way before Thanksgiving.” Val paused again. “This is me you’re talking to, Kris. I know exactly how bad this is, and I would never feed you a line. We will figure this out.”
Kristen’s answer lasted a long time.
“Okay,” Val said. “Yes. See you soon.” She hung up the phone and blew out a very long sigh.
“Hi,” I told her.
“Hi,” she answered, smoothing her curling bangs back from her forehead. “Come on in. Have a seat. Coffee?” She lifted up the carafe on the round table beside her chair. Val had given up caffeine while she was pregnant. Now that she was nursing, she was still on a fairly limited intake and was determined to relish every precious drop.
“Thanks.” I mean, who was I to leave a friend to drink alone?
Roger’s coffee was as good as everything else he made, and we both took long, appreciative swallows.
“How’s Kristen?” I asked, even though I already had a pretty good idea.
“Not good,” Val answered. “You may have noticed that the world’s kind of exploded over Attitude Cat going missing. About the only good thing is Kristen says her sister was able to go out to Minneapolis earlier than she thought, so Kristen’s on her way back now. We’ll pick her up from the airport. Maybe having her stay here will throw some of the media off the scent.” Val made a face into her coffee. “Kris says her phone has been ringing nonstop. Her PR people and Best Petz are handling most of it, but she’s still taking a lot of . . . stuff.”
“That’s hard.”
“The hardest part is she’s beating herself up. She’s afraid Ramona might have been killed trying to keep—whoever it was—from stealing Ruby.”
“Has she had a ransom demand yet?”
“No. Nothing,” said Val. “It doesn’t make sense! Why would somebody call Kristen saying there might be something wrong with Ruby and then not follow it up with a ransom demand?”
“Maybe whoever called Kristen and Pam wasn’t the kidnapper. Maybe it was someone who knew the kidnapping was being planned and was trying to tip them off.”
“Maybe,” said Val, but her heart wasn’t in it. Then a thought struck her. “Or maybe, you know, Ruby got away. I mean, she’s a cat. She’s not going to stay somewhere she doesn’t want to be. Now whoever tried to steal her can’t make the ransom demand, because they can’t prove they’ve got the cat!”
Which was a real possibility. So real, in fact, I was embarrassed I hadn’t thought of it myself.
“Well, for what it’s worth, we might have an answer soon,” I said.
“Oh?” Val arched her brows.
“Don’t ‘oh’ at me like that. I didn’t do anything. I just asked Alistair to look for Ruby.”
Val stared at me. “That’s a really good idea,” she said. “The sooner this is over, the less time there will be for anybody to really start digging.” Her voice was unusually grim.
“You mean into Kristen’s past?” I asked.
“What have you heard?”
“Nothing, really. She said something about it when we met at the pet clinic, after she had her argument with Cheryl.” I paused. “But Cheryl made a huge deal about how she was going to tell everybody Kristen was a thief.”
“She would,” muttered Val.
“So you know Cheryl Bell, too
?”
“Oh, yeah, I know her.” I won’t say Val’s words dripped poison, but they definitely leaked some intense dislike.
“And Kristen’s past, whatever it is . . . Is it serious?” For the record, I was not prying. I was encouraging. Val clearly needed to talk. I was her friend. Encouraging her was part of my job.
“It’s pretty serious,” said Val. “We . . . She stole some purses, wallets, stuff like that. Sold some credit cards and other things that did not belong to . . . her.”
I did not miss that “we,” and I did not miss the way Val was much more interested in helping herself to a piece of pumpkin bread than she was in looking at me.
“Was that how you met Kris?” I asked.
Val shook her head, but then, more slowly, she nodded. She tore the bread in two and ate half in three large bites. “I don’t know why it’s still so hard to talk about this. It’s just . . . it is.” She started reducing the piece of bread that remained in her hands to crumbs.
“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to,” I said, and I tried to mean it.
“Yeah, actually, I do.” She crumpled her napkin around the crumbs. “Because you’re going to find out eventually. I just hope the whole world isn’t going to find out with you.”
I waited. Val picked up her cup and studied her coffee and then her comfy living room with its scattered baby towels and toys. I could tell she was thinking about Roger and Melissa.
“You know . . . ,” she began. “Well, no, you don’t. My family . . . I came out of an abusive home.”
“Oh, Val. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. Her face had gone so hard and sad, I almost didn’t recognize her. “When I was sixteen, I decided I’d had enough, and I ran away. I was on the street for a while after that. I started stealing because it was better than some of the alternatives. Plus I had this sweet freckled face, and it let me get away with . . . just about anything.” She made her eyes go wide and blinked up at me, suddenly looking absolutely innocent and more than a little scared.
“I met Kristen in Cleveland and we teamed up. It was safer as a pair, not to mention easier. She’d play lookout and I’d . . .” She waved her hand. “Grab whatever wasn’t nailed down too tight. It was an awful life. We tried to go straight a few times. We’d get jobs, mostly hotels and restaurants, where they didn’t ask too many questions and were willing to pay under the table. But, you know, when that’s what you’re doing, the money’s awful, and the managers cheat you . . . and so we kept on stealing, usually from the guests. Then we’d skip town and set up someplace else.”
Even I can occasionally recognize when it is time to keep quiet. Now was definitely one of those times.
“Eventually, we drifted into Boston, and, well, we wound up having to get out of town kind of quick.” Val turned the cup in her hands, looking at it from a fresh angle.
“Should I ask why?”
“Kristen got arrested,” Val said. “And then she skipped out on bail.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘oh.’ She got a good lawyer, and it got cleared up. But, you know, it did happen, and it’s a part of the public record.” Val took a long swallow of coffee. “Anyway, when we were trying to figure out where to go next, Kristen told me she had a friend in Portsmouth who’d let us crash with her, and so we came here.”
“Was the friend Cheryl?” I asked.
Val nodded. “She even had a real spare room. Things were pretty good, so we stayed. And then . . .” Val paused and I watched a slow flush creep up her throat. “Then I tried to steal Dorothy Hawthorne’s purse.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Right on Market Square. When you’re a pickpocket, little old ladies are usually your best marks. Usually,” she repeated with a rueful headshake. “She caught me, of course, or rather, Alistair did. I thought I’d be going straight to jail.
“Instead, she took me back to the cottage, gave me a cup of tea and a long talking-to and . . . Well, I got out of there as fast as I could, and I figured that was that. Just another do-gooder. Except, after that, all of a sudden I couldn’t snatch a darned thing. Not a purse, not a wallet, not a piece of bubblegum from the candy store. Nothing. Every time I tried, I’d trip or get distracted, or my hands would start shaking. It was spooky.” She shivered.
“Did Dorothy put a spell on you?” I asked incredulously.
“Not on me, exactly, more on what I was doing. Doomed me to failure. She started following me around, too, and talking and talking and talking. It took a while, but eventually I started listening. I started learning about the true craft, and after that, my life really began to turn around. I moved out of Cheryl’s, took some legit jobs at the motels by the highway and got my GED at night school. Dorothy helped me get my business loan to open the B and B, and then I met Roger, and the rest is history.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “So, now you know.”
I did. I also leaned over and squeezed her hand. “It’s okay, Val. It’s over and done with. You’re safe now.”
She smiled gratefully, and her eyes were shining with unshed tears.
“Thanks, Anna. The problem is, I’m really not.”
16
“WHAT DO YOU mean?” I asked.
As an answer, Val picked up the remote control and aimed it at the TV. She hit a button and the screen blinked on to show a talk-show set with two people seated on a couch while an immaculately coiffed blond spokeswoman leaned toward them from her armchair.
One of the two people was Pam Abernathy, dressed in a severely tailored navy skirt suit. The other was a slim white man with rich dark hair just starting to go gray around the temples. He wore a dark suit and a red power tie. Every inch of him screamed “lawyer.”
“. . . And that’s why I was so glad for this chance to explain our position,” said the suspected lawyer smoothly. “Mrs. Bell would have come herself, but she is home by the phone. She didn’t want to miss the possibility of news regarding the health and welfare of her beloved Ruby, who the whole world knows as Attitude Cat.”
“So, it is true that Cheryl Bell claims that Ruby is her cat?” inquired the spokeswoman.
“Ruby is her cat,” Lawyer Man answered. “Cheryl rescued Ruby when she was just a kitten, abandoned in a laundry room. Cheryl sat up with her, night after night, feeding her milk from an eyedropper while her then roommate, Kristen Summers, was out on the town with her friends. Cheryl . . .”
“Cheryl skipped out on her rent,” interrupted Pam Abernathy, “leaving Ms. Summers stranded and in dire circumstances, along with the cat you are claiming Mrs. Bell loved so dearly.”
“That’s right, Pam.” The spokeswoman gave Pam an encouraging smile that could have lit whole city blocks. “You and Kristen Summers—who, I should remind our audience, is the CEO of Attitude Cat Enterprises—you say it was Cheryl who ran away first.”
Pam’s answering smile was thin and razor-blade sharp. “I have no doubt Cheryl had more than a few late nights after Kristen brought Ruby home. She was a pretty famous party girl during and after her marriage. But let’s consider this.” Pam crossed her ankles and leaned in. “This baseless lawsuit came only after Cheryl got a whiff of the millions that Ruby and Kristen earned. If Cheryl was so very concerned about the welfare of a beloved pet, why didn’t she take Ruby with her when she ran away to Manhattan? Why was it Kristen who, looking for a way to meet her personal obligations, took Ruby to the initial audition? And why . . . ?”
“And why are you ignoring Ms. Summers’s criminal record?” shot back Lawyer Man. “Or the criminal gang she associated with?”
Val slapped her hand over her mouth. I snatched the remote out of her hand and hit the Power button to shut the TV off.
In the other room a phone rang, followed by some clattering and banging from the kitchen. Val glanced toward the door.
“It’ll be
okay,” I told her. “This hasn’t got anything to do with you.”
“I know, I know.” But there was a little hiccup behind Val’s words. We could hear Roger’s voice on the phone, but not what was being said. Worry furrowed her forehead.
“Were you still living with Cheryl and Kristen when they found Ruby?” I asked.
Val shook her head. “Kristen told me what happened, but I’d moved out by then, so I didn’t actually see any of it. I was trying to talk Kristen, well, both of them, really, into going straight with me.” She pulled another slice of Roger’s pumpkin bread out of the basket and took a bite. “Kristen wanted to, but Cheryl . . . Something was going on with Cheryl. Kris said Cheryl was in some kind of trouble, and she was going to stay and try to help if she could.”
“They must have been close,” I said finally.
“I don’t know about that.” Val brushed a few crumbs off her knees. “I don’t think Cheryl really got close to people. She always struck me as somebody who was going to find the angles and work them.”
Which made this lawsuit perfectly in character, then.
“What ended up happening?”
Val shook her head slowly. “They had some kind of a blowup, but the few times I asked about it, Kristen just clammed up.”
“Was it about Ruby?”
“No. That much I’m sure of. But Cheryl vanished pretty quickly after that and left Kristen hanging. That was when she took Ruby to the audition and . . .”
“The rest is history?”
“Yeah.” Val sighed. “And like history always does, it’s come on home.” She glanced toward the doorway. “That was the house phone that rang,” she muttered. “Not the B and B phone. Who . . . ?”
“Roger knows, right?” I asked. “About your past?”
“Of course he knows!” she snapped. “Do you think I could have married him without telling him?”
