Crossing the Lion: A Reigning Cats & Dogs Mystery

by Cynthia Baxter

  Her reference to individuals who were close made me shiver. After all, those were the exact words Linus had used in his final telephone call to Winston.

  That coincidence aside, I knew Alvira was right. If Linus had kept a diary, chances were good that someone who took the time to read it would find a clue to who might have wanted him dead.

  I was ready to take on the task.

  “Where does he keep them?” I asked. I tried to sound as if I had a casual interest—instead of letting on that it was all I could do to keep myself from racing down the stairs, grabbing the latest volume, and reading every single word.

  Alvira didn’t answer right away. Instead, her eyes traveled downward. “Maybe some of that fudge would help me remember.”

  I decided that handing over the goods at this point wouldn’t hurt. She’d already told me the most important part of what she knew. I felt pretty confident that she’d spill the rest as soon as she had a little sugar in her bloodstream.

  I waited in silence while she tore open the foil, acting as if she hadn’t eaten for days. Just as speedily she broke off a chunk of fudge and stuffed it in her mouth. I wasn’t even offended that she didn’t offer me any.

  I gave her about thirty seconds to chew and swallow before asking, “So is the fudge helping you remember where Linus kept his diaries?”

  “Y’got me,” Alvira replied with a shrug. “Like I said, he was always pretty secretive about them. That’s why he stashed ’em in a place he thought nobody would look. I don’t know what he did with them once he moved out of our parents’ house. If you’re going to look for them, you have your work cut out for you.”

  Glancing around the room, she added, “But I bet he brought ’em with him when he started spending more time out here. Especially the current one. And they shouldn’t be that hard to find, since in a place this big, he probably figured he didn’t have to hide ’em anywhere as mysterious as under his mattress. In fact, I’d bet the rest of this fudge that, as the old saying goes, they’re hidden in plain sight.”

  • • •

  As I tromped back down the stairs, I mulled over Alvira’s story about Linus’s diaries. While I was still ambivalent about whether or not to believe whatever she told me, the idea of her brother keeping records of what went on in his life certainly sounded plausible.

  And because I was eager to get as much information as I could, I decided to accept what she’d told me as the truth. After all, the worst that was likely to happen was that I’d waste some time looking for something that didn’t exist.

  But until proven otherwise, I was willing to assume that they did exist—and to hope Alvira was correct about Linus not necessarily hiding whatever journals or records he kept. Once he grew up and moved away from a little sister with prying eyes, he might not have felt the need to be quite so secretive. However, there were also plenty of places to store them here in this sprawling mansion, which was so big that something as simple as a diary wouldn’t stand out.

  Unless, of course, someone with a great deal of determination went searching for it.

  “Did you find what you needed?” Nick asked as I closed the door, picked up Frankenstein, and slipped it back onto the shelf.

  As the gigantic bookcase slid into place, I replied, “Not yet. But I’m hoping I can still accomplish that before everybody gets back.”

  Especially since that person with determination happened to be me.

  Chapter 10

  “When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.”

  —Ethiopian Proverb

  Perching on the edge of the bed, I told Nick about Alvira’s claim that Linus had been as addicted to journaling as he’d been to making money. I also filled him in on Winston’s take on the woman’s grasp on reality.

  While I half-expected him to dismiss the clue she’d given me, he seemed matter-of-fact about accepting it as the truth.

  “She’s his sister,” he said with a shrug. “She probably knew the guy better than anybody. If she says he kept a diary, chances are it’s true. Go for it, Jess.”

  Feeling encouraged, I left Nick in the bedroom with his law books and headed to Linus’s study. I brought my two dogs with me. I figured that if anyone caught me and I needed an explanation for what I was doing in the deceased’s private sanctum, my story would be that Max or Lou had run in there and I’d had no choice but to retrieve them.

  And if anyone wondered why chasing my dogs involved studying the books lined up on the shelves, I’d explain that I was a passionate reader and couldn’t resist looking at someone else’s books to see if their taste matched mine.

  Armed with an excuse that was a tad convoluted but I was pretty sure I could relate convincingly, I boldly went into the room.

  “Hidden in plain sight,” Alvira had theorized about where Linus kept his journals. If she was correct that I was likely to find the notebooks in the most obvious spot, then the best place to start was his study, since it was the room that served as his home office whenever he was away from corporate headquarters.

  The first thing I did was switch on the overhead light. As I did, thunder that sounded like a bowling alley on a busy Saturday afternoon rolled through the house. For a fraction of a second, I thought I’d brought it on by venturing into a place where I wasn’t supposed to be.

  But I reminded myself that the storm had been raging for days, and I forged ahead.

  I headed straight for the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined the wall behind Linus’s huge wooden desk. It was still covered with stacks of paper. From the looks of things, Missy and Scarlett had barely made a dent in the tremendous task they’d taken on of going through Linus’s files.

  As my dogs sniffed around happily, thrilled to find themselves amid a whole collection of new smells, I parked myself in front of the shelves and began studying the spines of the hundreds of books. Fortunately, Linus had been fairly organized. He’d grouped them by subject.

  The fact that the books I was looking for wouldn’t have titles stamped on their bindings helped. Still, I wished I’d thought to ask Alvira if he preferred spiral notebooks or bound books. At least that way I’d have had an idea of what I was looking for.

  I must have spent ten minutes studying Linus’s book collection, and I still didn’t see anything that looked like a diary. The few volumes that struck me as possibilities turned out to be dead ends when I pulled them off the shelf to check them.

  I finally gave up on the bookshelves. I glanced around the room, looking for other likely spots. Checking the doorway every five seconds, I perched on the swivel chair and opened a few drawers in Linus’s desk. Next I tried the wooden file cabinets on the other side of the room. Signs of organization were here, too, mainly in the form of neatly lined-up file folders. But I didn’t find a single book.

  Where should I try next? I wondered, sighing loudly as I dropped back into the desk chair. By this point, I was convinced that his study was a dead end. That left the second-most obvious possibility: Linus and Charlotte’s bedroom.

  The idea of prowling around in there made me uncomfortable. There was something sacred about a couple’s bedroom, at least as far as outsiders were concerned. Having stumbled upon Charlotte combing through old photographs and other keepsakes all by herself in that room made me even more reluctant to pry.

  But the fact remained that I was lucky enough to have the entire house to myself, other than Nick, who of course would have understood, and Alvira, who didn’t seem to make a habit of strolling the halls during the day. That made this the best time—and possibly the only time—for me to search for Linus’s notebooks in his bedroom.

  I still felt like an intruder as I crept up the stairs and into the master bedroom. I couldn’t help wondering if the walls had eyes. At least the wallpaper in this room didn’t appear to, the way it did in mine.

  The first thing I did was close the door behind me to keep Max and Lou out. I wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible, and the last thing I ne
eded was to be slowed down by the two kings of sniffing-every-single-item-within-reach.

  Once that was done, I took a moment to survey the room. I noticed for the first time that this room was fairly pleasant. The wallpaper was powder blue, splashed with oversize off-white flowers complemented by tremendous green leaves. They looked like lilies of some sort. The furniture was the dark, heavy wooden stuff that filled the rest of the house, but somehow the dressers and bed in here didn’t seem as clunky. The drapes were drawn tightly against the windows so they shut out the gray, stormy day.

  But I wasn’t here to critique the décor. I immediately set about my task. I began by checking the usual places: under the bed, inside the night table, in the top drawer of the dresser. When none of the usual hiding places turned up anything, I stood in the middle of the room with my arms folded across my chest.

  Where on earth …? I thought impatiently as my eyes darted around the room.

  And then I noticed the curio cabinet. In fact, I practically kicked myself for not spotting it right off the bat. The tall, slender display unit stood proudly in the back corner, its curved glass doors crystal clear and its rich wooden surfaces gleaming. It was one of the few items in this house that looked as if someone had taken care of it.

  It struck me as a very good place to stash important things.

  I made a beeline for it, already feeling the adrenaline rushing through my veins. Even in the dim light, I could see that it contained only a few items. But given their diversity, I concluded that they had been hand chosen for this special spot.

  On the top shelf was a polar bear that looked as if it had been carved out of ice. Steuben glass, I surmised, which meant it was of the highest quality. The polar bear stood side by side with a colorful ball that reminded me of a kaleidoscope. That, I knew, was Venetian glass.

  I glanced at the other items only long enough to ascertain that the soapstone carvings of an Inuit fisherman and the graceful clear glass vase weren’t what I was looking for.

  But what I found on the bottom shelf made me feel as if I’d just been hooked up to an espresso IV.

  Neatly lined up were more than a dozen of those black-and-white marble notebooks that schoolchildren have used for decades.

  So they do exist! I thought, certain I’d just found Linus’s journals.

  My hands were trembling as I carefully unlatched the glass door and opened it. I reached for the first notebook and pulled it off the shelf.

  Handwritten on the front in bold black letters was 1992. I hesitated, listening to my heart thump against my rib cage as I contemplated the momentousness of what I was about to do.

  I’d been yearning to find Linus’s diaries ever since Alvira had mentioned them. Yet now that I actually held one in my hands, part of me felt that intruding into someone’s private thoughts was wrong.

  I had to remind myself that doing so could turn out to be the best way of finding his killer.

  I opened the book, aware that blood was pounding through my temples with alarming speed. Inside, I found page after page of handwritten notes, along with the date of each day’s entry.

  Met with Bill Everett, I read. Looks as if merger will go through. Lunch with Tad and Edwin. Tad’s marriage is falling apart—really sad. Makes me appreciate my Charlotte even more. I should remember to bring her flowers more often.

  I cringed. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but peeking inside the head of a man in this manner—even someone I’d never met—was making me feel like a cat burglar.

  Even so, I read on. I found more of the same: short, choppy sentences that summarized each day of Linus’s life. While his writing style made for difficult reading, the journal was explicit about what was going on in his life. He had named names, for one thing. For another, he had recorded his feelings, however briefly, about whatever had happened in his business dealings, his marriage, and his friendships.

  Which meant that Alvira’s theory that his journals might contain a clue about what had been going on close to the end sounded more solid than ever.

  But the day-to-day details of Linus’s life in 1992 seemed too remote to be related to his alleged murder. I needed more-recent information.

  So I slipped his journal from 1992 back onto the shelf and reached for the notebook that was the farthest to the right.

  As soon as I pulled it out, I saw that the date written on the cover was 2007.

  That can’t be, I thought, staring at it. This is much too old. What about the most recent years? Didn’t Linus keep a diary throughout his life?

  I checked the shelf again, wondering if perhaps he’d run out of storage space. But the notebooks weren’t tucked in that tightly. There was still a good inch left—certainly enough room to store his journals from 2008 and beyond.

  Which meant he’d stored his most recent diaries somewhere else.

  Either that or someone had removed them.

  Yet instead of feeling defeated, I felt energized. The fact that someone had gone out of their way to conceal Linus’s final diaries increased my certainty that they contained clues about his murderer’s identity.

  Which, in turn, increased my determination to find those missing journals.

  • • •

  Even though I had a feeling the notebook thief had found a really good hiding place, that didn’t stop me from examining every nook, cranny, shelf, cabinet, and corner I passed. I searched the bedrooms, wondering if whoever had killed Linus had also stolen his notebooks and hidden them in their room. But I found nothing. Next I went back downstairs, figuring I’d use the rest of the time I had to prowl around, looking for any secret doors or hidden staircases I’d missed.

  I was standing in the front hallway, trying to plan my strategy, when I heard the sound of voices outside.

  They’re back! I thought, a wave of disappointment washing over me.

  I darted into the closest room, which was the sitting room directly off the hallway. Even though I wasn’t doing anything sneaky at the moment, the fact that sneaky behavior lurked in my immediate past made me feel guilty.

  Which, in turn, made me want to act un-guilty. So I sank into a big, comfy, upholstered chair in front of the fireplace, acting as if I’d spent the entire time the others were away warming the soles of my feet.

  Corky sauntered into the room, wagging his tail and looking for love in all the right places. Admiral followed a few seconds later. But after a glance in my direction and a polite wag of his tail, he settled in front of the fireplace, resting his chin on his front paws.

  I’d just started to fondle Corky’s wonderfully soft ears when I heard the front door open, then a couple of seconds later slam shut. I stood up, planning to put on my best expression of surprise and stroll over to greet whoever had just come in. But then I heard someone say, “I’m certainly glad all that’s over.”

  Instantly I froze. Something about that voice sounded off. It took me a second or two to realize that it was Gwennie’s voice.

  What was odd, however, was that it didn’t contain even a trace of a Cockney accent. In fact, the British accent she was now using sounded decidedly upper crust.

  Is it possible she’s a fake? I wondered.

  “It’s always hard being around all of them at the same time.” This time I heard a male voice I immediately recognized as Jives’s. At least his accent sounded the same as usual.

  Silently, I crept to the other side of the room and positioned myself in the corner, next to the door. Standing there enabled me to peer through the crack between the door and the jamb. For once, I was glad the house was so full of shadows, since it greatly reduced my chances of being spotted.

  Sure enough, Gwennie and Jives stood in the front hallway, pulling off rubber boots and shaking out umbrellas.

  Gwennie sighed tiredly. “I’m so glad we’ll be done with all of this soon,” she said as she unbuttoned a half-soaked trench coat.

  “Me, too,” Jives agreed. “I’ve had about enough of the buttling business.”r />
  What’s this? I thought, frowning in confusion. A career change on the horizon?

  “You think it’s fun making beds and cleaning up after people?” Gwennie demanded shrilly, still speaking with a British accent that was light-years away on the social scale from the one I’d heard her use up until now.

  An explanation came soon enough.

  “And I’m really getting tired of speaking in that ridiculous Cockney accent,” she grumbled. “I feel like a character in a Dickens novel. If I hear myself saying ‘blimey’ one more time, I swear I’m going to shoot myself.”

  “Relax,” Jives insisted. A second later he moved into my line of sight, verifying my initial impression. “At least all those years of studying at that drama school in London turned out to have some use.”

  “He-e-ey!” she protested teasingly. “I was pretty impressive as Hedda Gabler, wasn’t I? And the critics loved me as Varya in The Cherry Orchard.” All the lightness went out of her voice as she added, “At least the ones who bothered to show up.”

  “I like to feel my training paid off, as well,” Jives said, sounding a trifle wistful. “And I’m not talking about the rave reviews I got for my portrayal of Estragon in Waiting for Godot.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  They’re actors! I thought. Which meant, fake accents aside, neither one of them was what they appeared to be.

  “We’ll find out how good we are at acting soon enough,” Gwennie replied.

  I pressed my nose even closer to the doorjamb, hoping she’d expand upon that comment a little.

  Instead, she commented, “The old man got quite a send-off, didn’t he?”

  “I’ll say,” Jives agreed. “Not that I’d expect anything else, given how important the old codger was.”