Danger in Cat World (Shawn Danger Mysteries Book 1)

by Nina Post

  Shawn idly turned the pages of the anvil book. “Then you heard something?”

  Kendall shook his head. “No. I can turn up the volume pretty loud. It’s insulated, so you can’t even hear it in the main kitchen. It’s possible I was sleeping a little, on and off, but I hadn’t eaten anything and got real hungry. I didn’t have much in the way of food down here, so I went up to the main kitchen and made myself a sandwich.”

  “What kind of sandwich?” Shawn asked.

  Kendall pressed his lips together and held out his hand, fingers up, like one jazz hand. “Uh, rye bread, ham, turkey, lettuce, pickles, mustard. Also had some chips and a pickle spear on the side. Then a slice of apple pie.”

  “Ever drink strawberry-flavored milk?”

  Kendall looked at Shawn as though he said, ‘Do you ever lick doorknobs?’

  “No.”

  “Is there someone who manages the kitchen and supplies?”

  “Westrom. Robert Westrom. He’s in charge of running the house and the kitchen. And he made that pie. He keeps a manager’s book, kind of like that one,” Kendall raised his chin and glanced at the anvil book, “with the rules for doing every single thing. He’s a real stickler, especially in the kitchen. He’s got rules and processes for making coffee, squeezing the orange juice, making a sandwich, where everything should be stored, things like that. He’s in charge of the housekeeping, the deliveries, the outside vendors.”

  Shawn pictured Westrom neatly compressing his trash.

  A cloud passed over the sun and the sky darkened at the narrow windows. “He doesn’t live here?”

  Kendall’s eyes widened. “No, but he’s always here by six a.m.”

  “Why didn’t he show up for work today?”

  Kendall hesitated for a moment, but Shawn took it to be more like surprise at the missing house manager. “I don’t know, Detective. It’s damn unusual for him. He’s completely dedicated to this house. And to Ms. Sylvain, of course.”

  “You described him as a stickler for order.”

  “Yes, I would say he’s a methodical, punctual man.”

  The kind of man who would wear gloves and cover his tracks inside the house? The kind of man who could justify his actions – even killing his employer? “Yet he didn’t show up for work and didn’t call in?” Shawn would check that. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Westrom?”

  “When I left for the estate sale yesterday. So, around three-twenty, three-thirty.”

  “And what was Mr. Westrom doing at the time?”

  “Paperwork. He manages the bills for the house, things like that. He was sitting at the big dining room table.”

  “And how did he seem to you?” Shawn asked.

  Kendall scrunched his forehead. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Focused.”

  As though he were planning something? “Let’s go back to the sandwich you ate in the kitchen upstairs. What time was this?”

  Kendall let out an exaggerated breath. “Whoo, I’m not sure. After three a.m. Maybe twenty, thirty after?”

  “Did you notice anything unusual?”

  “No. I washed everything and put it away. Then I was going to do a quick check of each floor —”

  “Why? Is that your job?”

  “No, but that’s not how we think here. There’s something about Ms. Sylvain that makes you want to,” he gave a little shake of the head, “protect her.”

  Shawn knew how that felt.

  “And we care about this house. It doesn’t feel like we just work here — it feels like this is kind of our home, too.”

  And one of them got too proprietary.

  “Anyway, I was already in the kitchen, so I figured I’d take a few minutes and…” Kendall closed his eyes as though he he had a headache.

  “So you checked the first floor,” Shawn said, prodding gently.

  The anvil-keeper seemed grateful for the guidance. “I went over to the library on the other side of the house – “

  “Did you have a flashlight?”

  “Now that you say it, that was an unusual thing. Normally, we leave certain lights on during the night. Some are on automatic timers. But it was darker than usual. I turned on a couple of the lamps – “

  “Which ones?”

  “Dining room and front hall. They’re dimmers, so I put them on low.”

  “Then you went up to the second floor?” Shawn asked.

  Kendall got a distant look in his eyes. “I went up to the second floor. Checked Lyle’s room – “

  “Lyle?”

  “The tortoise.”

  “Was he there, in his room?”

  “No. Thought maybe he had gotten hungry, too. I checked the lady’s bedroom because the door was open. It’s never open at night. She wasn’t in there, but I saw the mess – things thrown all over the place, and that wasn’t like her – then headed down to the first floor.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed, “I guess to check the gardens. Figured she couldn’t sleep and took Lyle out to sit in the garden or maybe the solarium.”

  “Does she often have trouble sleeping?”

  “Yes, she does.” Kendall nodded and stretched out a little in the chair. “Sometimes she’ll sit in the solarium with Lyle and look up at the moon and stars. But then I thought of looking into the sitting room. Looked like she was sleeping in there at first.”

  “Did you turn the light on?” Shawn asked. Kendall’s prints would be on the light switch.

  “Yeah. I came right up to her and…” he stared off at a point behind Shawn. “So I ran down to the kitchen and called 911. Didn’t have my cell on me. I waited until the police got here, and they took it from there.”

  “Do you know of any enemies she had? Anyone angry with her?”

  Kendall seemed like he was ready to say no, but then considered it more. “I don’t think so. But who knows. Who knows.”

  “I’ll know.”

  Shawn got a list of the names and jobs of all of the employees who worked at the mansion. There were five, including Kendall Peterson.

  Robert Westrom, the house manager, was missing. No one had been able to reach him on the phone.

  An employee known only by the name “Skitch” also lived in the house, in the sub-basement. His background check turned up some misdemeanors, but Shawn was far more interested in tracking down Carolyn Lewis, the only employee with an armed robbery conviction, as soon as possible. She was the one at the most risk of leaving town. She had held up five pharmacies in the western part of the state for their oxycodone, hydrocodone, and Xanax. She was also responsible for overseeing Haviland Sylvain’s personal care consumables.

  A Vincent Shuttle lived in town, but didn’t seem at risk for getting suspicious and leaving.

  Haviland Sylvain could have used a good HR manager.

  Lewis’s address was a ground-floor unit in a plain, dirt-brown, three-story apartment building in a more run-down part of Jamesville, the kind with chain link fences. He knocked, and there was no answer, but he sensed that someone was home.

  He went around to the back and looked in the window. Cramped kitchen, the type where you couldn’t open the oven and the fridge at the same time. A percolator steaming on a burner, one mug waiting. She was probably alone.

  Carolyn Lewis walked into her kitchen. She was wiry, almost too thin, high-strung, with blonde hair and a sharp face. She wasn’t dressed to work — she was wearing cut-offs, flip-flops, and a faded Ghost Slugs t-shirt. When she spotted him through the window, she retreated. He rolled his eyes and knocked on the door next to the window. He was standing on a sad square of concrete, with one desperately unhealthy plant suspended from a hook, and a broom propped against the building.

  “Carolyn Lewis? Jamesville County Police. Just need to talk to you.”

  A heavyset woman in a flower-print muumuu gave him a cold stare from her balcony.

  After nearly a minute, Carolyn reluctantly went back in the kitchen and opened the door, then turned immediate
ly away to the actively gurgling percolator. Shawn stepped in and watched her pour some coffee into a Svalbard Expedition mug with the image of a walrus on it. Didn’t seem like the kind of trip Carolyn Lewis would or could take.

  She didn’t offer him a cup, not that he’d want any from her.

  “That plant out there is pretty mad at you.”

  A smile flickered on her face.

  “I hope I’m not keeping you from anything,” Shawn said, all politeness. It smelled like cabbage and curry, threads of it in the air outside from another apartment. Somewhere close by, a baby was shrieking like an angry pterosaur. He was glad he didn’t have any kids to screw up.

  “I don’t work today. I don’t work every day. Need time to myself.” Carolyn’s leg jiggled. “Look, if this is about — I see my parole officer on schedule.”

  “Oh, I’m not here about that.” Shawn waved that off and closed the door behind him. “We’re just looking into something involving your employer.” He left it at that.

  “My employer? You mean Ms. Sylvain?”

  “That’s where you work? Haviland Sylvain’s house?”

  “Yeah.” She drank some of her coffee. Shawn didn’t think Carolyn Lewis needed any more caffeine at the moment.

  “Do you have another job, Ms. Lewis?”

  She held the mug in front of her mouth. Her nails were bitten to the quick.

  “I work at a nursery on the weekends, and some on the weekdays.”

  Shawn hoped she didn’t work directly with the plants, considering the ones she abandoned on her porch.

  Carolyn abruptly whirled around and headed out of the kitchen into the living room, coffee sloshing over her mug onto the linoleum. She sank onto a threadbare blue recliner, worn to white at the headrest and cushion. It creaked when she settled into it. A long, motel-style heating unit stretched under the front window.

  Shawn took the edge of the shabby brown sofa. The small room had a homespun braided rug on the thin carpet, a velvet painting of what looked like Sherilyn Fenn, a basket of magazines – Real Simple was on top – a chipped wood veneer coffee table with a bong on it, a roll of paper towels, an open bag of Lay’s, a small rounded silver box, and a suspense novel, the spine almost white with bending.

  Shawn tilted his head at the wall. “Sherilyn Fenn, huh?”

  Carolyn shot a glance at the velvet painting. Some part of her body was constantly in motion, but she seemed compulsive about it. “Yeah.”

  That brilliant line of conversation out of the way, he figured he would ask about her job.

  “How long have you been employed at Ms. Sylvain’s house?” Shawn asked, and felt a spark of energy. One of these people had murdered Haviland Sylvain, reclusive paper heiress and former physics professor. One of the people she employed – had trusted to let into her house – had bludgeoned her to death. The world was pared down to that and nothing else. His entire reason for existence was to solve this murder.

  “I don’t know. Almost a year, I guess.” She looked out the window and gnawed on her fingernails.

  “And what do you do for her?”

  She switched position, sitting cross-legged. “I oversee her personal care consumables.”

  “Ms. Sylvain’s personal care consumables?” Shawn leaned forward and rested his forearms on his legs.

  She grimaced in response, brought one knee up. “It may seem easy to you, but it isn’t. Every toiletry item has to be travel-sized, for one thing. What is this about? Why are you asking me about what I do for her? You can call my parole officer. I’m clean.” She chewed on one of her nails. Shawn didn’t think there was anything left for her to gnaw on. She forced away her hand as though it had a mind of its own then rubbed the heels of her hands up and down her calves.

  He ignored the question. He remembered looking through the drawers in the heiress’s bathroom and finding only small bottles.

  “Could you be more specific?” Shawn asked.

  Carolyn rolled her eyes. “I keep a written record of purchase and expiration dates for every single personal care consumable in the house, including her bedroom and bathroom.” She had a note of pride in her voice.

  “The tortoise’s bathroom, also?”

  “Lyle’s bathroom, too, yeah. You know about that?” She laughed, and it was like the tired smoke drifting off a pile of charred coal.

  “Any chance you like strawberry milk?”

  She looked at him like he was an imbecile. He smiled a little, to encourage her.

  “Uh, no. Gross. I like chocolate milk. What kind of a freak drinks strawberry milk?”

  He put up his hands. “Just curious. So, how often did you work there?” Shawn wondered why Haviland Sylvain had hired this person.

  “Every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.” She pulled up her legs and folded them under her. “No benefits, but she takes care of my health stuff.”

  “How so?”

  “Like one time, I had an abscess, and she paid for the whole thing. And she covers my anti-anxiety meds.”

  “What pharmacy?”

  She recoiled. “I resent that. I already told you to check with my parole officer.”

  “Resent what?” Shawn figured Carolyn was used to having her conviction follow her around wherever she went, and was tired of being defined by it. Too bad.

  She clamped her jaw tight and looked away.

  “I just want to know what pharmacy you get those meds from,” Shawn said in a non-threatening voice. “I know about your conviction. That’s not why I’m here.” But it’s why I’m here before I interview anyone else.

  She fidgeted, gathered her straw-like hair – she should drink more water, maybe get some omega-3 – twisted it around, and set her head against the back of the chair. “Rite-Aid on Hardscrabble Road.”

  Shawn waited a moment before asking, “You said you keep a written record of all of the personal care consumables in the Sylvain house. Do you have that book here, or do you keep it there?”

  Carolyn curled her lip. “Why would I keep it here? You think I take my work home with me?”

  “Where do you keep the book at the house?”

  “Robert makes me keep it in the kitchen.” Carolyn rolled her eyes. “There’s a cabinet in the island.”

  “Robert Westrom, you mean?” Shawn leaned forward and idly picked up the round silver box. He removed the top and found what looked like loose tea.

  “Yeah, him.”

  “You don’t like Robert?” He brought the box to his nose and smelled it. Bergamot.

  “He’s a control freak. Thinks he’s the boss of everyone. Did he pay for my abscess appointment? No. She did.”

  Funny, in this sad, dingy apartment, to find a silver and gold piece from, he guessed, the early twentieth century, made by the elves in Tiffany Studios.

  “Is he the boss, though?” Shawn asked, putting the top back on.

  “I suppose,” Carolyn conceded, jittering her foot like she was trying to shake it off her leg, staring at the box Shawn placed back on the table. “But he doesn’t have to be in our faces all the time, telling us what we’re doing wrong. Like, it’s not our job to worry about his job, but he thinks it should be. I have to remind him that I’m not being paid to do his stuff, too.”

  Shawn reluctantly took his eyes off the round box. “What about the other employees in the house? What do you think of them?”

  Carolyn snorted.

  Shawn raised his brow to encourage her to continue.

  “Kendall, he’s like a sheepherder, but with anvils. Freakin’ Paul Bunyan. Vincent, a total spaz. Skitch…I mean, don’t know why she takes in people like that.”

  Shawn laughed in his head.

  “Back to your job. You track the purchase and expiration dates, and make sure to buy only travel-sized consumables.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.” She flashed her eyes wide as though Shawn was the biggest moron who ever walked the earth. He was fine with that.

  “Anything else involved i
n doing your job at the Sylvain house?”

  She sighed. “I check the FDA website for recalls. And checking the ingredients against a list of stuff she won’t use.”

  “Won’t use? Like what?”

  “You know, ingredients with a hundred syllables that were created in a lab. She won’t use products with any ingredient from that list.”

  “Does Ms. Sylvain give you a credit card to buy these consumables for the house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And it’s not Robert Westrom’s job to stock any consumables like soap, maybe in the kitchen?”

  “No, it’s all me.” She puffed out her chest and raised her chin. “I’m the soap master.”

  “What other kinds of things do you buy for the house? Shampoo…?”

  “Yeah, everything like that. Ms. Sylvain’s cosmetics, her bath and shower stuff, dental stuff” — she drew out ‘stuff’ so it was stuuuff — “feminine hygiene products.” She rubbed her arm along the side of her chair. She kind of reminded Shawn of Comet when he had spent too much time alone – just rubbing up against everything.

  “Did you resent that?”

  “Why would I? I got a job. Who else is going to hire me?”

  He nodded, waited a second. “Do you know anyone who was angry with Haviland Sylvain?”

  Her eyes narrowed and turned flinty. She rubbed her palms against the recliner’s armrests. “Why?”

  “Please answer the question.” He wanted to get as much in as possible before telling her why.

  “We grumbled sometimes, but not directly about her. Usually it was Robert who pissed us off.”

  “Was Robert angry with her for some reason?”

  She snickered. “Robert? All he cared about was doing things right, you know? He cared that everything was in its place and on schedule, and that the vendors were kept in line.”

  “Did Haviland do something to throw off Robert’s schedule or–”

  Carolyn scrunched up her face. “No, nothing like that – she knew how Robert was.”

  “Could you tell me where you were yesterday — Wednesday — from, let’s say, nine p.m. to four a.m.?” Shawn asked.

  Carolyn looked disgruntled and shifted her body around, but eventually answered. “I worked at the house that day until three —”