Dying to Read (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #1): A Novel

by McCourtney, Lorena

  Back in her bedroom, she discovered Octavia had calmed down and made herself at home, preferring Cate’s pillow to her own canopied cat bed. The cat had obviously explored her new surroundings. White cat hair decorated everything from Cate’s black sneakers in the closet to the top of the drapery rod at her window.

  “This isn’t home,” Cate warned the cat. “So don’t make yourself too comfortable.” Then Octavia’s blue-eyed stare punched her with guilt. The cat had just lost both home and owner. She had to feel confused and traumatized. Cate amended the statement. “But I’m not going to toss you out on the street to fend for yourself, so don’t worry about that, okay?”

  The cat condescended to offer a purr as she tucked her white paws under her body. Who me, worry?

  Cate took the photocopies of Willow’s employment references into Uncle Joe’s office. She reread the letters. None of the jobs had apparently lasted very long, but the letters glowed with praise. Cate wished she had such enthusiastic references. She picked up the phone to call the name on the top letter.

  Which was when she discovered something peculiar. The letter had a name and address, but no phone number. She flipped through the other references, and the peculiarity expanded. No phone number on any of them.

  A thud, a skid, and papers flew like oversized confetti. And then there was Octavia sitting on the desk with a smug expression, her plump rump anchoring a lone letter remaining on the desk.

  “Octavia! How did you get out of the bedroom?”

  She must not have closed the bedroom door tightly. Cats couldn’t open doors.

  She tried to snatch up the cat, but Octavia eluded her grasp and dashed out to the living room. Cate followed. The cat was faster and more agile than her weight suggested, a Wonder Cat taking sofa and chairs in single bounds, then racing back to the office. She finally thunked down on the desk again, the skid flipping the letter remaining there into Cate’s hands.

  This was a reference from a Mrs. Beverly Easton, with an address on Westernview Avenue. It looked as if it had been written on an old typewriter, a haphazard mixture of lighter and darker letters, the e slightly off-kilter. The woman praised Willow’s “commendable and caring work ethic” and her “cheerful good nature and impressive cooking skills.”

  Cate studied the letter, then the cat, who was now industriously tongue-cleaning her left hind leg. Twice now the cat had targeted this particular letter.

  “Are you trying to tell me something?” Cate inquired. “You think this is the one I should contact first?”

  Nah. What did a cat know? Octavia was an oversized feline, not a PI.

  But neither was Cate a real PI, so maybe this was as good a place as any to start. She found a phone book in a desk drawer and turned to the E’s. No Beverly Easton. Okay, she’d do this in person. Uncle Joe had more faith in old-fashioned legwork than high-tech investigative techniques anyway. He used the internet frequently, but he tended to yell at the TV when he watched crime shows. He said most of the technology they showed, if it even existed, wasn’t available to the average police department and definitely not available to him.

  Cate retrieved the scattered papers, carried the cat back to the bedroom, and opened a can of “wild salmon in a delicate seafood sauce.” She called Rebecca’s cell phone to ask about Uncle Joe, but Rebecca wasn’t responding. She googled Westernview Avenue to pinpoint its location and headed out.

  The drizzle had lifted, and sunshine peeked through the clouds. Much of Eugene was flat, but Westernview Avenue snaked up a ravine—older fifties houses on the left, steep hillside of blackberry vines tangled with manzanita and fir and shiny-leaved madrone on the right.

  The one-story house had a hint of sag to the roof. A picket fence, recently mended with new pickets in several places, enclosed a small yard. No evidence of a “western view,” as the street name suggested. No view of any kind. This hardly looked like a residence for people who could afford household help. The house needed painting, and roots had humped the sidewalk into continent-shaped sections. In contrast to the modest house, however, a new-looking blue SUV stood at the curb.

  There was no doorbell, so she knocked. No response. Another harder knock. Still no response. She tilted her head toward the door. Was that a clunk from inside the house or around back?

  She followed the cracked and bulging sidewalk around the house. An empty wheelchair stood near the back door. And a woman in faded jeans, heavy jacket, and stocking cap lay on the sidewalk with her head in a flowerbed of pansies.

  Another body? No, no, no!

  Cate ran to the prone figure, crouched over her, and tried to loosen the zipper at the woman’s throat. A gurgle and slight movement told her the woman wasn’t dead. At least not yet. Frantically she tried to remember what she knew about CPR. Clear the airway. Tilt the head back. She stuck two fingers in the woman’s mouth to clear it.

  Something rammed her in the shin, throwing her back to the sidewalk. She blinked, her bottom stinging from contact with the hard concrete.

  An elbow. The woman had whacked Cate in the shin with an elbow! And now, definitely not dead, she was glaring over her shoulder. Bewildered, Cate scrambled to her feet, only to find an arm clamped around her throat, her body skewered against a solid wall of muscle.

  She clawed at the arm. But even as panic roared through her and she kicked backward into whoever … whatever … was behind her, a sour thought slammed into her head.

  What can you expect, when you take advice from a cat?

  “She tried to choke me!” the woman on the ground yelled. “Stuck her fist in my mouth!”

  “I did not!” That’s what Cate tried to say, but with the arm cranked around her throat, it came out in glug-glub gurgles.

  “The wedding ring wasn’t enough? You came back to see what else you could grab?” a male voice close to her ear accused.

  Cate glubbed more protests, but the arm didn’t loosen. The figure on the ground twisted to a sitting position. Her sharp brown eyes peered at Cate.

  “Hey, wait a minute. I don’t think she’s the girl I told you about.”

  “She isn’t?” The arm loosened slightly.

  “Let go of me! I thought she was dead!” Cate slammed her heel into his instep, but sneakers pitted against male boots had all the effect of a bicycle in a demolition derby.

  “So if I’m dead, why’re you sticking your fist in my mouth?” the woman challenged.

  Cate put both hands on the encircling arm and yanked. The arm still didn’t let go, but she got a little more breathing space.

  “You were lying there. I thought you’d fallen out of the wheelchair! I put my fingers in your mouth to clear your airway so I could give you CPR.”

  “Who are you?” the woman demanded with a fraction less hostility.

  “Isn’t she the woman who worked for you?” the male voice asked. “The one who stole your ring?”

  This time Cate used her own elbow to wham him in the ribs, although she was the one who oofed when the blow hit the solid rib cage. She suspected it was confusion more than effectiveness of the jab that made him finally release her.

  She turned to look at him. Tall, brown-haired, wide-shouldered, paint-blobbed. He returned the glare, the hostility only marginally marred by a dribble of paint on his nose.

  “She looks like your description of the woman who worked for you and stole your ring,” he said.

  “She looks some like her, all right,” the woman conceded. “Red hair, same size, pretty and all. But not her.”

  “Her, meaning Willow Bishop?” Cate asked.

  “You know her?”

  “Kind of.”

  “She worked for me after I fell on the sidewalk and messed up my back and got my legs like this. Useless as a couple of noodles. Then she took off, and so did the wedding ring I usually kept in my bureau drawer.”

  Cate didn’t like the sound of this. Amelia Robinson tumbles down stairs, jewelry and Willow go missing. Here, a ring and Willow disappear. W
as Willow Bishop something other than the sweet grand-niece Jeremiah Thompson wanted to find?

  “Okay,” Cate said cautiously. “So, you just fell out of the wheelchair?”

  Cate now noted that the woman wasn’t lying on bare sidewalk. Her forearms were in the flower garden, but she had a square of black plastic spread out under her.

  “No, I didn’t ‘fall out of the wheelchair,’ ” the woman mimicked. “You try weeding a flower bed from a wheelchair and see how well it works.”

  “Beverly says her pansies are special because they keep blooming all winter, so she likes to treat them special. I helped her get down on the ground so she could weed them from a lying-down position,” the man explained in an if-it’s-any-of-your-business tone.

  “Mitch is here painting my bedroom,” the woman said. “He’s going to do the outside of the house too.”

  “Mitch Berenski,” the man said. He didn’t offer to shake hands, although Cate didn’t know if that was because he didn’t want further contact with her or because his own hands were paint smeared. “And you are?”

  She yanked a card out of her purse and slammed it into his hand. “I’m here on official business.”

  He inspected the card but gave her a skeptical look. “You don’t look like a Joe.”

  “I work for him. I’m Cate Kinkaid, an … uh … assistant PI. I have my own identification card.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  After several awkward minutes, Cate finally found her own card where she’d stuffed it in a side pocket of her purse when the police officer had returned it. The guy examined the card critically, then glanced back at her. Perhaps checking to see if she really did have hair growing out of her left ear? Finally, without comment, he handed the card back.

  “Maybe we should all go inside to figure this out, then,” he said. “I don’t want Beverly getting chilled there on the ground.”

  He didn’t sound convinced that Cate had any business being here, but his concern for the woman somewhat lessened Cate’s annoyance with his treatment of her. He scooped Beverly up in his arms and settled her into the wheelchair. Beverly took off the stocking cap and shook out curly gray hair. Mitch opened the back door, and she wheeled herself inside.

  The door opened into a sunshine-yellow kitchen that also looked recently painted. Pansy decals decorated the cabinets. Mitch Berenski’s work? Nice, though Cate made the admission to herself grudgingly.

  Beverly kept going, leading the way into a living room with an old brown plaid sofa, a modest-sized TV, pansies in a vase, and a lineup of teddy bears on a shelf. A metal wind chime of dolphins hung over the front door to signal when it opened.

  Cate perched on the sofa. Mitch remained standing. Cate deliberately ignored him as she explained to Beverly that Belmont Investigations had been hired to find Willow because of an important family matter. She pulled the copy of the reference letter out of her jacket pocket.

  “I had an address on Meisman Street where she’s been employed most recently, but she’s no longer there. I thought I’d check back with former employers to see if they knew anything helpful. This is the copy of your reference letter for Willow.” To forestall questions from either of them, she added, “The similarity in our appearance is purely coincidental. We aren’t related or anything.”

  Cate glanced between Mitch Berenski and Beverly. He looked the more hostile of the two, the one who most needed convincing. She handed the copy of the reference letter to him.

  “I was going to call, but there was no listing in the phone book.”

  “That’s because this is all I use now.” Beverly indicated a cell phone tucked into an embroidered holder on the wheelchair.

  Mitch read the letter, frown lines cutting between his dark brows, then handed it to Beverly. “Did you write this?”

  Beverly read the letter more slowly than he had. “It was written on my old typewriter, that’s for sure.” She traced a fingertip across a line of irregular print. “It always makes those funny e’s. And Willow was a really good worker, just like this says. She made the best ever meat loaf. But then she left so suddenly, and my ring was gone too …”

  “So you didn’t write the letter?” Mitch asked.

  “I don’t actually remember writing it, but maybe I did. Sometimes it seems like my brain doesn’t work any better than my legs anymore.” She snapped the paper with a forefinger. “But that’s definitely my signature.”

  Mitch took the paper back. “She could have typed the letter on your typewriter, then got you to sign it in with something else.”

  “That’s not fair,” Cate accused. “You didn’t actually know her. If you did, you wouldn’t have mistaken me for her and attacked me.”

  “I didn’t attack you! I merely … restrained you. I thought you were trying to harm Beverly.”

  “I gather from this that neither of you has any idea where Willow might be now?” Cate asked.

  “No. But if you find her, get her meat loaf recipe for me, will you?” Beverly sounded wistful, as if she really missed that meat loaf. “Great spaghetti too.”

  “I’ll take you out for meat loaf or spaghetti anytime you want,” Mitch offered. “I know a great Italian place over near the mall.”

  Beverly reached over and patted his arm. “You do enough for me already. How’s the bedroom coming?”

  “One more wall. I can finish it tomorrow. Then I’ll get the furniture in the other bedroom pulled away from the walls and covered so I can do that room.”

  “You’re going to church in the morning, aren’t you?” Beverly asked him.

  “Well, uh …”

  Obviously not an enthusiastic yes.

  “I need a ride. Marcie can’t take me tomorrow.”

  “Oh, well, sure. I’ll pick you up and take you then.”

  Cate saw a satisfied smile, close to a smirk, on Beverly’s face, and she realized what the woman had just done. Sweetly coerced a foot-dragging Mitch into going to church. Cate stood up to leave, then thought of an additional question.

  “How did you acquire Willow as an employee?”

  “After I got hurt, I was in a nursing home for physical therapy for a couple months. When I came home I still needed help, so my son came up from LA to get me settled. I think he saw an ad she ran in that little free paper that comes out every week.”

  “So you don’t know if she had references from previous jobs to show him?”

  “It’s not easy to find someone for a job like this when you can’t pay a lot, so he may have figured he was lucky to get her and not even asked.” She held up a forefinger. “Wait, I remember now. She said she didn’t have a reference from her most recent employer because the woman was dead.”

  Cate felt a cold trickle of uneasiness. “Dead?” she repeated.

  “A fall off a balcony or deck, something like that.”

  A fall. The uneasiness increased from a trickle to a stream.

  “Then, by the time she picked up and left,” Beverly continued, “my son had got laid off from his job and couldn’t afford to hire someone else for me. But the church has this Helping Hands thing going, and they send someone to do house cleaning and other stuff. I appreciate everything they do. But no one makes meat loaf like Willow.”

  “How long did she work for you?”

  “Couple of months, I guess.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  “I don’t know. One day she just said she had to leave, and she went. That very day.”

  “And you really think she stole your wedding ring?”

  “She’s gone and the ring’s gone,” Mitch cut in.

  “Circumstantial evidence,” Cate muttered. Then she blinked at her own unfamiliar words. She’d read or heard them somewhere, sure, but they’d certainly never come out of her mouth before. That inner PI surfacing again?

  Cate was at the door before she had one last question. “Did you report the theft to the police?”

  “I guess I should have, but I never did. I
kept thinking, oh, maybe the ring just accidentally got in with her things, and when she realized it, she’d bring it back.”

  Roll of eyes from paint-blobbed Mitch. “Beverly is the kind of person who always sees the best in people.”

  “Unlike you.” Cate’s neck still felt kinked where he’d put a mugger’s hold on it.

  “Well, not always me either,” Beverly said. “I was kind of hasty thinking you were sticking your fist in my mouth. I’m sorry about that. If you find Willow, maybe you could ask her about the ring?”

  “I’ll do that.” Cate headed out the front door, wind chime tinkling. “Thanks for your help. Give me a call if you think of anything. The number’s on the card.”

  “Oh, wait,” Beverly said. “I want to give you something.” She wheeled to the shelf, grabbed a teddy bear, and handed it to Cate. “That’s Rowdy.”

  “I couldn’t—”

  “That’s what I do with my time. Make teddy bears. I’d like you to have him. Helping Hands gives them out to kids in families they help sometimes.”

  “Well … thank you very much then.”

  Mitch followed her outside, hands in the pockets of his paint-daubed khaki coveralls. Apparently the painting was a fairly lucrative occupation. Cate noted now that the SUV was a Cadillac Escalade. They didn’t come cheap.

  “What will you do now?” he asked.

  “Check out some of Willow’s other former employers.” Cate glanced at her watch. Time to get out to the hospital to see how Uncle Joe was doing and pick up Rebecca. “But not today.”

  “Got to rush home to the husband?”

  For a moment she thought he was fishing for personal information. Another look at his scowl and she decided he was simply still skeptical about her. Did he think she had some scam going? Convincing little old ladies she was a private investigator so she could make off with their teddy bears?

  When she didn’t respond, he added, “Look, I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. But you have to be suspicious of almost everyone these days.”