by Sofie Kelly
Part of me admired the resourcefulness of our guilty party. He or she had to be good at chemistry and computers and math. On the other hand, these stunts were costing time and money and I was afraid they might escalate to something dangerous.
I turned to Larry. “So, our offender disconnected the camera?”
He turned to gesture at the building. “I think he spotted the camera and somehow managed to disable the Wi-Fi temporarily.” He shrugged. “It’s not hard. He probably used a jammer. He did his thing, then he swiped the SD card. The cool thing is—”
Harry glared at him.
Larry’s face reddened. “I, uh, mean the interesting thing is it looks like he hacked into the program and got it to send an alert when he was ready to leave.”
“To bring us down here on a wild goose chase,” Harry said.
“And maybe to show off a little, too,” I said.
“You want me to put the camera back up?” Larry asked.
I looked at the building. I looked at the pool. I shook my head. “I appreciate all the work you put in, but I think it’s time to bring Marcus in on this.”
“It could just be a kid,” Larry said.
“A kid that climbed up somehow and got that SD card out of the camera,” Harry said. “A kid that could have gotten hurt.”
“Harry’s right,” I said. “The first couple of times it was annoying and yeah, kind of funny, but now . . .” I looked over at the building. “I don’t want to get here some morning and find some kid back here with a broken leg or worse.”
I thanked Larry again for all his work.
“I’m just going to drive him home and I’ll be back to get rid of that.” Harry gestured at the gazebo. “You staying here?”
I nodded. “I’ve got breakfast and there’s lots I can do. Come in for a cup of coffee if you’d like one when you get back.” Like me, Harry now had a master key and the alarm code to the building.
I got my things from the truck and let myself into the building. It wasn’t often I was alone inside. I liked being able to walk around with nothing but silence and thousands of books surrounding me.
By the time Harry came back I’d had my breakfast, brushed my teeth again, touched up my makeup and most importantly made the coffee. I got him a cup and he went to connect the hose so he could empty the pool while I set to work emptying the book drop, which for once was only full of books.
I took an early lunch because once again I needed to make a quick trip to the community center. Eugenie had stepped in to help Elias and since he seemed to be giving her a fair amount of leeway, she and Russell were going to film a quick segment at Wild Rose Bluff. I had mentioned that the library had a reproduction of an original map of the area. Eugenie wanted to use it in her segment.
“I know it’s last minute,” she’d said on the phone. “I’d be happy to send a production assistant to get it.”
“I’ll bring it,” I said. While the map was just a reproduction, it was old and it wasn’t something that usually left the library.
I took the map to the staff photographer, who was all set up to photograph it. The whole process took very little time and I thanked her before I headed for Eugenie’s office.
Eugenie was at her desk with her laptop. She looked up when I knocked on the partly open door. “Oh hello, Kathleen,” she said, tucking a strand of her silver hair behind one ear. “I didn’t realize what time it was.”
“The map has been photographed,” I said.
She smiled. “Thank you. May I see it?”
“Of course.” I set the portfolio I was carrying down on the desk, removed the map and slipped it out of its protective cardboard cover.
Eugenie leaned over to get a closer look. “The original was all drawn by hand? The detail is spectacular.”
“Yes it was,” I said. “And you’re right about the detail. The original artist was very talented.”
“Thank you for bringing it over,” Eugenie said. “This is turning out to be a very busy day. I came in early to help Russell find some clips of Stacey. You know that the two of them are . . . ?” She made a rolling motion with one hand.
I nodded.
“After we finish today he’s going to put together a little montage for her.”
“You’re doing the last part of the filming after lunch?” I asked as I returned the map to its protective cover. Peggy felt more at ease so I wasn’t needed for this episode’s filming. I had told her to call me if there was any way I could help but I didn’t expect to hear from her.
She nodded. “We are. Yesterday went so well.” She glanced briefly at the hallway door. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but Peggy has a much better rapport with everyone and she and Richard work very well together.”
I slid the map back into the portfolio. “Maybe this will be a new career path for Peggy,” I said.
“I don’t doubt that she’d do very well on television if she chose to pursue it.” Eugenie held up a hand and fluttered her fingers. “And this little birdie will be encouraging her to think about it.”
“I’ll let you get back to work,” I said.
She glanced at the computer and sighed. “I don’t mean to be melodramatic but I feel as though I have a bit of a Sisyphean task on my hands.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She gave me a wry smile. “Elias wasn’t happy with the In Memoriam we did for Kassie. He felt it was a little too impersonal, so he asked me to go back through some of the outtakes and other raw camera footage and see if I could find any casual moments of her with the crew or the contestants.”
“You can’t find anything?” I asked.
Eugenie shook her head. “I can find Kassie interacting with people but they aren’t moments that belong in a memorial segment.” She slid behind the computer again and hit several keys. “Take a look at this, Kathleen.”
I came around the desk and Eugenie turned the computer so I could see the screen.
“This is actually from the day Kassie was killed,” she said.
The footage was from the kitchen set. I remembered Rebecca mentioning that they were filming some promos that afternoon.
Kassie was standing in front of Caroline’s workstation. Kate was working at her own station in the background, almost out of camera range. I got a glimpse of Ray behind her.
Caroline was angry. It was easy to see by the tension in her body, the rigidity of her shoulders and how she held the whisk she was using more like it was a weapon than a cooking tool. I noticed Kate in the background sneaking little peeks in their direction and even Ray glanced their way more than once. Maybe he did care about Caroline even just a little.
“You’re a helicopter parent,” Kassie said with the kind of joking tone that people used when they wanted to say something mean but also wanted to be able to say they were just kidding if anyone called them on it.
“I don’t want to talk about parenting with you,” Caroline said, her words clipped and tight. She kept her eyes down on whatever she was mixing.
“Chemicals are in everything we eat,” Kassie continued, “everything we put on our skin. That’s just life. If they were that bad we’d all be dead by now.” She either couldn’t read Caroline’s body language or she didn’t care how she was making the other woman feel.
“Brennan reacts to yellow food dye.” Caroline’s voice was so low I barely caught her words. “He needs to have all-natural, organic ice cream, which I told Oliver’s mother.”
“Caroline had just found out her husband had to take their youngest to the ER. He had been at a sleepover and had an allergic reaction to something he ate. Ice cream, it seems,” Eugenie said softly beside me.
“People like you make me tired,” Kassie said. Her voice was dimissive, as though Caroline’s concern about her child wasn’t warranted. “All-natural.” She made air quote
s around the words. “You do know those terms are meaningless, don’t you? You think those apples you made your pie with were grown only with composted cow dung? Not likely.”
“Go away,” Caroline said. She still wasn’t looking at Kassie.
I wasn’t sure if Kassie hadn’t heard Caroline speak or had just ignored her.
“I have a friend who had a skincare company and her products were all-natural to keep all of you earth mothers happy. But she wasn’t making any money because her line had such a limited shelf life. It looked like she was going to go out of business and the people that worked for her were going to lose their jobs. I told her, you need preservatives, you need stabilizers, that’s why your products have no shelf life. Monique came to her senses, those jobs were saved and she even created more jobs when she moved the company headquarters to Saint Barthélemy and no harm was done.”
She held out both hands and I half expected her to say, “Ta-da!” Instead, Caroline picked up the bowl in front of her and dumped the contents over Kassie’s head. A mix of what looked like flour and cocoa coated the younger woman’s hair, stuck to her face and floated in a cloud around her. In the background Kate dropped the glass jar she’d been holding and Ray gasped, yanked a pot off a burner and came around the side of his workstation, heading for Caroline I was guessing.
I remembered Rebecca talking about this incident. She’d made the bowl being dumped on Kassie’s head sound like an accident.
Eugenie hit pause. “I should have done something sooner. I should have spoken to Elias. Kassie would have been gone and at least she wouldn’t be dead.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “You had no way of knowing what was going to happen.”
She shook her head. “If you make a cake with rancid butter, it doesn’t matter how good the quality of the other ingredients. The final result is ruined.”
She nudged her glasses up her nose. “Enough of me nattering on. We both have work to do. I’ll see you at tomorrow’s meeting?”
I nodded. “I’ll be there.”
I met Kate at the top of the stairs on the way out. She gave me a small, tight smile. “I didn’t think you’d be here until tomorrow,” she said. She was wearing jeans, a loose T-shirt and a baggy sweater she had wrapped around her body. She looked cold.
“I came to see Eugenie,” I said. “I heard you came first in Basics yesterday.”
She nodded. “I was lucky. Everyone else was having a bad day.” She shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. “Kathleen, I need to apologize to you.”
I frowned. “For what?”
“I didn’t mean to but I helped Caroline lie the night Kassie . . . died.”
“It’s okay,” I said, switching the nylon portfolio from one hand to the other. It was an awkward size to carry. “You didn’t do it deliberately to confuse anyone. There was no harm done.”
“Thank you for saying that.” Kate brushed the hair from her face. “Ruby told me what you’ve been doing. Have you managed to find anything to clear Elias?”
“Not yet.”
“He made a better choice with Peggy,” she said. “Kassie truly was a selfish person.” She shrugged. “That kind of thing can get you killed.”
chapter 18
I couldn’t get the video that Eugenie had shown me out of my mind. I kept seeing the look of fury in Caroline’s eyes as she dumped the contents of the bowl over Kassie’s head. I saw the cloud of flour and cocoa hanging in the air. I could hear Ray gasp and the sound of the jar Kate dropped shattering as it hit the floor. It kept playing on a loop over and over in my head.
I drove home and for once Owen was not sitting on a chair in the kitchen. I went upstairs and changed into comfy yoga pants and a T-shirt for tai chi. When I came back downstairs I found him in the living room peering under the sofa.
“What are you doing?” I said.
Owen jumped at the sound of my voice, smacked his head on the front edge of the couch and yowled.
I went over and kneeled down beside him. “Let me see,” I said gently. I didn’t think he was hurt. He hadn’t hit his head very hard.
He shook his head vigorously.
“Let me see,” I repeated, putting one hand on his back.
I felt all over the top of his head, gently probing with my fingers. Owen didn’t even wince and it didn’t seem like there was any kind of injury under his fur. “You’re okay,” I said, smoothing his fur. He muttered and gave the sofa the stink eye.
I reached over and felt along the edge of the piece of furniture, just to be sure there were no staples or nails that he could have gotten cut with, but there was nothing but smooth fabric. But it did look like there was something under the couch.
I put an arm around Owen and leaned sideways so I could look underneath. He immediately shifted so my view was blocked. “I’m trying to see what’s under there,” I said.
He meowed loudly and tried to look injured and pathetic. “You’re fine,” I said. I gave him a little scratch under his chin. Then I shifted sideways again, and again Owen managed to block my view.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said. I was getting exasperated. I turned around, picked up the cat, set him down behind me and crouched close to the floor for a better look under the couch. Two paws stepped on the side of my head.
I squinted up at him. “What is wrong with you?” I snapped in frustration. Before the cat could get any more in my way I swept my arm under the piece of furniture in a wide arc, bringing several items out from underneath.
Owen had climbed off my head. I sat up and looked at my spoils. There was a thumb drive, a small pencil, half a package of gum, a lighter and an orange key chain with a tiny retractable knife shaped like a key. The thumb drive was the one Marcus had been looking for. I had seen the lighter in his SUV. He’d used the key-chain knife a couple of times to open bags of cat food out at Wisteria Hill. He’d asked me about the gum and while he hadn’t said anything about a missing pencil I was willing to bet that was his, too.
Owen had forgotten all about his head. He was suddenly engrossed in the area rug in front of the couch.
“Where did all this come from?” I said.
He pretended he hadn’t heard me. I stuck my head in front of him and put my face close to his. “All of these things? How did they get under the sofa?”
“Mrrr,” he said. He gave me his best innocent face, but just like a person he couldn’t quite look me in the eye.
I moved so I was in his range of vision again. “Owen, did you steal Marcus’s things?”
He gave me a sulky look.
I shook a finger at him. “We don’t take things that don’t belong to us.”
He muttered under his breath. “And we especially don’t take things that could start fires.” I wondered how the cat had managed to get in and out of Marcus’s SUV on two different occasions to snag the gum and the lighter. At least now Marcus knew about Owen’s ability to disappear. I wasn’t sure how I could have explained what happened otherwise.
I picked up the thumb drive and the key chain. There were teeth marks on the package of gum. I didn’t think Marcus would want that back. As I reached for it Owen stretched out a paw and pulled the pencil toward him.
I snatched it away from him. “You’re walking on thin ice, mister,” I said sternly.
He looked down at his feet, puzzled, and then his golden eyes came back to mine.
“It’s a figure of speech,” I said. I jammed the pencil and everything else into my pants pocket.
I got to my feet and rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. Could cats have kleptomania? Did Owen need a kitty therapist? Or maybe I needed one for even asking the question.
I was setting the table when my phone chirped. It was a text from Ruby asking if I could bring Hercules to class. She had an idea for the concept for another calendar. She wan
ted to pair Owen and Hercules with different artists from the co-op.
Need to see Hercules with one of Maggie’s pieces
The idea was a good one, and even better, I was happy to have Ruby focusing on something other than Kassie’s murder. I texted back a yes.
I made a big bowl of spaghetti for supper with extra cheese because it had been that kind of day. Owen moped around by my feet. I’d eaten about half of my pasta when my cell rang. I picked it up. I didn’t recognize the number on the screen, and I was about to set the phone down when I realized the area code was the one for Duluth. Dorrie Park went to school in Duluth.
“Hello,” I said.
“Is this Kathleen Paulson?” the voice on the other end asked, no pleasantries, no preamble.
“It is.”
“I’m Dorrie Park. You left me a message about the baking contest.”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. “Yes, I did.”
“So you’re what? Doing a little more digging into the people who are left on the show so no big secrets come out about the winner?”
“Something like that,” I said, shifting sideways in my chair and pulling one leg up underneath me.
“I shoulda guessed this would happen. What’d you want to know?”
I decided not to beat around the bush. “You dropped out right before the semifinals. But you were good enough to make it into the top three. Why did you leave?”
“I had a family emergency.”
“You dropped out of the contest for family reasons and less than a week later you were in Paris.”
“So?” she said.
I wished we were having this conversation face-to-face. It was impossible to read Dorrie Park from just her voice. “So you were a student working two jobs and suddenly you’re posting photos of yourself in front of the Eiffel Tower.”
There was silence for a long moment. “Look, I don’t think I did anything wrong, but I don’t want to get in trouble.”
