Crossing the Lion: A Reigning Cats & Dogs Mystery

by Cynthia Baxter

  I decided to take a direct approach. “Your husband had Alzheimer’s, didn’t he?” I asked, holding up the notebook that had clued me in.

  “That’s right,” Charlotte replied. “Alzheimer’s or some other type of dementia. I didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “Why not?” I asked, sincerely curious. “It’s a serious illness; people who have it have no control over it. Surely you don’t think anyone would have thought less of him.”

  “It wasn’t my decision to keep it quiet; it was his,” she replied sharply.

  Her voice softened as she added, “I’m sorry, Jessica. I don’t mean to sound so cross. It’s just that this is something Linus and I discussed at length. How all this would be handled, I mean. He’d been experiencing symptoms of dementia for at least two years. He went in and out of a state of confusion. When he was his usual, sensible self, he was actually quite willing to talk about what it all meant.”

  Charlotte’s grip on the dagger loosened. In fact, her entire body slackened, as if she was suddenly drained of all energy.

  “My poor Linus,” she said in a breathless voice, sinking onto the wooden bench. “These last two years have been so difficult. Every day became a trial. At first, it was just little things, the kind everyone experiences as they get older. He’d forget where he’d put his keys or whether he’d hired a new gardener or whether he’d already read that day’s newspaper. He’d forget what he had for dinner the night before—or even the name of the restaurant where he’d eaten it.

  “Oh, we laughed about it at first,” she went on, her eyes clouded. “He joked about how he was getting old and that it was a good thing he had a wife who was fifteen years younger to help take care of him. But after a while it stopped being funny.”

  Charlotte was silent for a few seconds, as if she needed to get her bearings. “Over time, those amusing things Linus kept doing like losing his keys became more serious. He started forgetting important things, mostly the details of his business—meetings he had scheduled, the names of his company’s different divisions, even the names of people he’d worked with for years. Decades, in some cases.

  “Fortunately, the people closest to him did a wonderful job of covering for him,” she continued. “Harry, mostly. But Scarlett, too. They both took care of the things Linus simply wasn’t capable of dealing with any longer. Harry went to meetings in his place, and he read every document that came across Linus’s desk. He even spoke to people on the phone on his behalf, telling them Linus was out of town or tied up in a meeting.

  “As for Scarlett, she began to accompany him everywhere. She did a valiant job of concealing what was going on. She got in the habit of sitting next to him at business luncheons so she could feed him clues like the name and title of the person they were talking to. Both Harry and Scarlett could see the writing on the wall, but they were able to ward off the inevitable. At least for a while.

  “But then Linus started to forget things that were even more basic,” Charlotte went on. “Like how old the children were. I remember the first time I noticed that. It was a Sunday afternoon last winter. Linus had fallen asleep in front of the fire with The New York Times Magazine in his lap. I was in the room with him, reading the rest of the newspaper. When he woke up, he turned to me and said, ‘Is Tag home from school yet?’

  “I told him that he was confused because he’d nodded off and he’d been dreaming.” Charlotte’s voice had become strained, as if simply remembering such a heartbreaking event still caused her great pain. “But I knew that wasn’t the case. By that point it had become impossible not to understand what was happening to him. How could I not, when it was right in front of my eyes every day?”

  “Did Linus ever see a doctor?” I asked.

  Charlotte shook her head. “He seemed convinced that there was nothing anyone could do. I kept showing him articles about promising new drugs, but he refused to believe any of it. I think he’d begun to think of himself as an old man. He had pretty much become resigned to what he saw as his fate.”

  “What about the children? Were they aware of what was going on?”

  “I didn’t say anything to the boys,” Charlotte replied. “But Missy was another story. She and her father had always been close, and she came to visit much more often than either Tag or Brock. She could see for herself what was happening to him. And it hurt her as much as it hurt me. Still, I don’t think even she understood how far it had progressed. How badly it affected him, either.”

  “Is that why you hid the notebooks?” I asked. “To keep Missy from finding out?”

  Charlotte looked startled. “I didn’t hide Linus’s notebooks. I knew he’d kept a journal for years. He kept them right in our bedroom. But it wasn’t anything we ever talked about. And I just assumed that at some point he’d stopped—probably because it simply became too difficult for him.”

  “He did stop,” I said, glancing down at the notebook I was still holding in my hand. “But not until fairly recently. Still, I can see by what he was writing the difficult time he was having.”

  “To stand by and watch a man deteriorate like that, someone who was so capable and so strong, was painful beyond belief,” Charlotte said, shaking her head sadly. “But it turned out that the way he was for all those months paled beside what happened to him over the past few months.”

  I waited in silence, able to see for myself how hard she was wrestling with the demons in her head.

  “Starting last spring, poor Linus became afraid of everything.” She swallowed hard. “Even things that didn’t really exist. At least not outside his own mind.”

  “Are you talking about paranoia?” I asked.

  Charlotte nodded. “I can’t think of anything else to call it.”

  “What was he afraid of?” I asked gently. The image of all those bills and legal documents stuffed into the suit of armor in the hall flashed through my mind.

  “Linus became convinced that all kinds of people were out to get him,” Charlotte explained. “At first it was people he knew. He thought Harry was trying to destroy him. Then he became convinced that Scarlett was stealing corporate secrets and selling them to his competitors. It reached the point where he didn’t trust anyone at work.

  “But it got even worse,” she continued, her eyes distant as she gazed off at something I couldn’t see. “He began to distrust the children. He would rant and rave about how they were trying to steal from him. He believed they were determined to take away this house and all his money. Then it spread. He decided all the usual suspects were after him: the FBI, the CIA, even the Boy Scouts. He must have been in one of his paranoid states when he hid those notebooks. In here, of all places.”

  “But why here?” I asked.

  “I can’t be positive,” she replied, “but he probably wanted to put them in a place where no one would find them—including the servants. He didn’t want anyone to find out, even though you only had to spend five minutes with him to see it for yourself. I’m sure he chose the boathouse because in his muddled mind he decided it was a place he could reach in an emergency by using the secret passageway that his ancestors had built into this house.

  “You see, it all ties in to the later stages of his illness,” Charlotte went on. “It got to the point where he was terrified all the time. He would drink cup after cup of coffee at dinner every night because he was afraid to go to sleep. He talked about having locks installed everywhere, but I kept telling him that no one could get onto this island without our permission.

  “Given the state he was in, it’s not surprising that he also began to mistrust the servants. Even Cook, who had been loyal to him and this entire family forever. I know she thought the world of him. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve even thought at times that she had a crush on him.”

  “Charlotte, did Linus also begin doing things that were … strange?” I asked cautiously.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, sounding suspicious.

  I hesitated, wondering ho
w much to reveal about all the papers Nick and I had found stuffed inside the suit of armor—including legal documents.

  But it didn’t take me long to decide that I had nothing to lose. “I understand your neighbors initiated a lawsuit over something he put on the balcony of your apartment in the city.”

  “Oh, dear,” Charlotte said, her face crumpling. “That … that contraption he built last winter. It was a monstrosity he constructed out of cardboard and coat hangers and aluminum foil. He was convinced it would help keep away the evil forces that were after him.

  “I tried every way I could think of to make him understand that what he was doing made no sense. But logic didn’t mean much to him over this last year or so.” Raising her eyes to meet mine, she said, “The man suffered, Jessica. He was so terrified. It was horrible to witness.”

  The more I listened to Charlotte describe what Linus’s final days had been like, the more compassion I felt. Not only for Linus but also for her. Charlotte had watched the man who was the center of her world, someone she had loved and shared nearly her entire adult life with, fade away before her eyes.

  “Then there were the physical changes,” she went on. “He lost the ability to take care of himself in even the simplest of ways. I was afraid that if I brought him to a hospital, he’d be forced to live in a horrible state for a long time. He couldn’t stand to be reduced to such humiliation.”

  “It must have been awful for you,” I said, sincerely sympathetic.

  “It was,” she said sadly. “But it was even worse for poor Linus. He became someone else—or, even worse, nothing more than a shell. He was frightened and unhappy all the time. No one should have to experience what that man experienced. No one. Which is why someone had to do something to help him.”

  I froze. Those words—and the way she said them—shot through me like an electric shock.

  Suddenly everything was clear.

  “You killed him, didn’t you?” I asked calmly.

  For a few seconds, she simply stared at me.

  “You have to understand,” Charlotte finally replied, “that he wasn’t Linus Merrywood anymore. He was already gone.”

  “She loved him,” another voice interjected.

  Startled, I looked up and saw that Missy had appeared in the doorway of the boathouse.

  “Mother thought the world of him,” she continued. “She couldn’t bear to watch him suffer.”

  “You knew about this?” I asked, surprised.

  Missy nodded. “Mother and Daddy had a relationship that was truly special. They were practically the same person. The two of them adored each other. In fact, I don’t know how she’s going to manage without him.”

  She kept me fixed in an intense gaze for what seemed like a very long time before she said, “Whatever she did, it was only because she loved him so much. She couldn’t bear to see him in such agony.”

  Turning to her mother, Missy said, “Why don’t you give me that silly dagger, Mummy? Surely you didn’t expect to use such an ancient thing, did you?”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” Charlotte said, looking distraught. “I just need everyone to understand.”

  “Jessie understands,” Missy assured her in a soothing voice. “And we can trust her, Mummy. She’s not any danger to us. She’s not going to say a word.”

  Meekly, Charlotte handed the dagger to her daughter.

  I held my breath, afraid that Missy might change her mind. For all I knew, she could impulsively decide she needed to do what she believed her mother was incapable of doing.

  But I started to breathe again when she leaned over and put the dagger in the corner, out of her reach as well as her mother’s.

  When she stood up straight again, she turned to face me.

  “I finally figured out what you were up to, Jessie,” Missy said in a low, even voice. “All those questions you were asking, those private conversations you held with every member of the household … I tried to discourage you. That’s why I wrote that ridiculous note on the wall, hoping you’d get the hint.

  “I know that didn’t dissuade you, but I think you understand now,” she went on, studying me anxiously. “And I’m right, aren’t I, Jessie? About Mummy and me being able to trust that you’re not going to tell anyone?”

  • • •

  “A nice hot cup of tea—that’s what you need,” Margaret insisted.

  I had to agree. Since I hadn’t been wearing a jacket or gloves when I’d followed the yellow brick passageway out to the boathouse, I was chilled to the bone.

  It was a relief to come back into the house with Charlotte and Missy, the three of us talking loudly about the quick tour of the grounds we were all pretending we’d just taken. Missy had made a beeline for the dining room to let Max and Lou out and put everything back in order, and Charlotte had retreated to her bedroom.

  I, meanwhile, headed into the kitchen to find a way to warm up my insides, now that my outsides were coming out of the deep freeze. I also needed time to think about the morning’s events.

  The cup of Earl Grey went a long way in warming me up. After Margaret had set me up with an entire pot of tea and toddled off to let me recover on my own, I eagerly slurped it down, marveling over its effectiveness. In fact, I’d pretty much shaken off the chill and was deep in thought about what I’d learned in the boathouse when I felt a warm, comforting hand on my shoulder. I also heard the tip-tip-tip of paws against the kitchen floor.

  “There you are,” Nick said, leaning over to plant a kiss on my cheek. “When I woke up and found that you were gone again, I didn’t know what to think.”

  Both Max and Lou seemed ecstatic to see me, almost as happy as I was to be reunited with them. Max jumped up and gently placed his paws on my thigh, craning his furry white neck in an attempt to cover my face with sloppy, wet dog kisses. Lou staked his claim on my other thigh, resting his chin on it and gazing up at me adoringly. His tail was in high gear, making me glad there were no antiques in the vicinity.

  As the dogs settled beside me, one on each side, Nick plopped down in the seat next to mine. Reaching for my hand, he asked earnestly, “So tell me: What have you been up to?”

  “What makes you think I’ve been up to anything?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.

  “The look on your face,” he replied without missing a beat. “I can read you like a book, Jess, and from what I can see you’ve been up to plenty.”

  I was still trying to come up with a creative explanation when I was saved by the bell—the doorbell, in fact, its chime echoing through the otherwise silent house.

  “Falcone,” Nick said, stating the obvious.

  My feeling of dread about his arrival on the scene was even greater than it usually was.

  Less than two minutes passed before Margaret reappeared. “Sorry to interrupt the two of you,” she said, “but that detective is back again—and he wants to talk to you, Jessie.”

  I rose from the table with Max and Lou flanking me like the Secret Service, and Nick close behind. As soon as my entourage and I stepped into the hallway, I spotted Lieutenant Falcone standing by the door.

  He was bent over, pulling a pair of rubber boots off his shoes. For balance, he was holding onto the suit of armor, clinging to the knight’s shoulder as if he was a close friend. He was also muttering to himself, no doubt taking it personally that the rain still hadn’t let up.

  “Lieutenant Falcone!” I greeted him heartily, trying to hide my nervousness.

  He nodded at me, then Nick, peering at us both with his dark, piercing eyes. “Sounds like you had some excitement around here this morning. I understand a coupla the people I tol’ not to leave the island didn’t take me seriously.”

  “Gwennie and Jonathan,” I agreed, nodding. “I found them heading to the dock early this morning with their clothes and their passports.”

  “Seems to me that doesn’t do much for their claim that they had nothing to do with Linus’s murder,” Nick commented.r />
  “I’ll question them again, but I still got nothin’ on ’em,” Falcone said with an air of resignation. “No hard evidence, not on those two or any of the other suspects.”

  Turning to me, he said, “What about you, Docta Poppa?” he asked. “Did you get anywhere with figurin’ out who killed Linus Merrywood?”

  I remained silent. I could feel Nick’s eyes on me, as if he, too, was eagerly awaiting my answer. But I wasn’t just stalling. I was giving the question serious thought.

  Ever since my encounter with Charlotte and Missy in the boathouse, I’d been dreading this moment. There was a part of me that was anxious to show Falcone the stuff I was made of. That part wanted to reply with a resounding yes, then launch into all the details.

  Yet there was also another part of me that wasn’t prepared to turn Charlotte in. I had lots of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that even imagining her spending the rest of her life in prison was horrifying.

  But that wasn’t the real issue. I believed in my heart that she had not committed cold-blooded murder. She had loved Linus with all her heart, which was the only reason she had done it.

  As I replayed in my mind the conversation she and I had in the boathouse, I realized that, when you came right down to it, I didn’t know for sure that Charlotte had killed her husband. Not really. After all, she hadn’t actually admitted to anything. She certainly hadn’t come out and said that she was the one who’d brought a birthday cake into the house that was made with the one ingredient that was guaranteed to put an end to her husband’s life.

  And I couldn’t rule out Missy as the murderer. After all, she, like Charlotte, had been torn apart by what was happening to Linus. And while she was a far cry from Betty Crocker, I remembered her mentioning that when she was a Brownie, Cook had taught her and the rest of her scout troop how to bake. It was possible that she had whipped up two egg-laden chocolate cake layers in her kitchen at home, then brought them with her to Solitude Island. Or perhaps she’d simply brought two ready-made layers of chocolate cake to Solitude Island after picking them up at a bakery or supermarket on Long Island.