Kittens and Killers

by Diana Xarissa

  Fenella nodded. “When my parents died, my brothers insisted that we sell the house that had been their home for many years. It had been my childhood home, but they were all older when we’d moved into it and it didn’t mean as much to them. It would have been foolish to keep it, really, but I still feel sad whenever I think about that house.”

  Patricia patted Fenella’s arm. “See, you do understand,” she said approvingly. “Howard doesn’t understand at all. After the murder, he made me sell the house. I didn’t get a lot for it, either, because someone had been murdered there. The new owners, they just tore the whole house down and built something new, which was horrible.”

  “It was just a house,” Howard said. “It wasn’t anything special.”

  “You spent a lot of time there when we were courting,” Patricia countered. “It should have had good memories for you, too.”

  Howard shrugged. “I spent a lot of time there repairing things for your parents there. Once they were gone, I was there just as much doing repairs for our tenant. I never had to work as hard at our house.”

  “Our house was newer and we took good care of it,” Patricia said. “My parents did their best with theirs, but after a while it got to be too much, that’s all.”

  “I was happy to see the back of that place,” Howard told her, “and that’s enough for today. Let’s go.”

  Patricia frowned. “Go? But I’m enjoying my chat with Fenella.”

  “I said it’s time to go,” Howard replied steadily.

  Patricia nodded slowly and then looked down at the cat on her lap. “I hate to wake her,” she said softly.

  Howard clearly had no such qualms. He reached over and gave the cat a shove that woke her up and made her leap to the floor. He stood up and then held out a hand to his wife. “Goodbye,” he said to Fenella.

  “It was nice meeting you,” Fenella replied politely.

  He shrugged and then led Patricia out of the room.

  11

  Fenella stood up and looked around the room. The kittens were being passed around and snuggled. The mother cat had found herself another lap and seemed to have fallen asleep again.

  “I hope she isn’t bothering you,” Fenella said again as she walked toward the couple who were sitting with the mother cat.

  “Not at all. She’s sweet enough for me to forgive her for her willingness to befriend just anyone,” the woman replied with a wink.

  Fenella was sure her face showed her surprise.

  “Sit down and tell me what Patricia had to say,” the woman invited.

  Fenella slid into a chair and grinned at the woman, who had a friendly smile on her face. She looked no more than sixty, although the man with her was probably at least seventy. “I’m Fenella Woods,” she told them.

  “Oh, we all know who you are,” the woman laughed. “We all knew Mona, of course, although no one here was actually in her lofty social circle.”

  “I’m not, either,” Fenella replied.

  The woman laughed again. “Most of that circle is long gone, of course. The island has changed so much in my lifetime that I hardly recognize it now. I’m Jeanne Reese, by the way, and this is my husband, Aaron.”

  Fenella smiled at Aaron, who seemed to be staring off into the distance. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “He can’t hear you,” Jeanne told her. “His hearing is terrible.” She reached over and tapped his arm. “Fenella said it’s nice to meet you,” she shouted at him.

  “Likewise,” he said, nodding in Fenella’s direction before returning to staring into space again.

  Jeanne rolled her eyes. “I fell in love with him because we could talk for hours,” she told Fenella. “We probably ran out of things to talk about after a few years anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. At least we never argue.”

  “How long have you been married?” Fenella asked.

  “Oh, forever,” Jeanne said, waving a hand. “Our oldest is going to be forty-five this year, so we’ve been married almost forty-six years.”

  “That’s a very long time.”

  “In our day, divorce wasn’t really an option,” Jeanne shrugged. “Oh, we all talked about being independent women who could live on our own and didn’t need men in our lives, but we weren’t really that different to our mothers. Once we found husbands, we had lots of babies, and we stayed married.”

  “I should probably tell you that I know a few of the women you knew years ago,” Fenella said hesitantly. She wanted to talk about Mabel’s murder, but she was enjoying the conversation she and Jeanne were having. The last thing she wanted to do was upset her.

  “Women I knew years ago? What does that mean?”

  “I’m taking a class with Donna Cannon.”

  Jeanne inhaled sharply. Her husband looked over at her. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  Jeanne looked at him as if she wasn’t quite sure who he was and then nodded slowly. “It’s fine,” she said, patting his arm.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” Fenella said quickly.

  “You haven’t upset me,” Jeanne countered. “Everyone has been talking about Mabel and the murder since Monday, when the article was in the paper. I’ve been doing my best to keep my head down and avoid the subject, but it was bound to come up, really.”

  “I read the article, and Donna told me a bit more.”

  “How is Donna?” Jeanne asked.

  “She seemed fine when we spoke on Monday. I’d never met her before, though.”

  “The last time I spoke to her she was working her way up in the bank and adamant that she’d never marry. You’d think it would be difficult to lose track of someone on an island this small, but with a little bit of effort, it can be done.”

  “You deliberately lost track of her?”

  “Not just her, there were others. I was married and had children. My life was going in a different direction. Cutting my ties felt like, I don’t know, drawing a line between my past and my future. Mabel’s murder was a horrible thing and I felt as if I wanted to put as much space between it and me as I possibly could.”

  “I suppose I can understand that,” Fenella told her.

  “The police were here. A very polite young inspector talked to me for what felt like hours. It’s all brought back so many memories.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not,” was Jeanne’s surprising reply. “Many of the memories that have been rekindled have been happy ones. Mabel, Marilyn, Donna, and I were like sisters. We grew up together and shared everything with one another. I cut my ties with them quite deliberately, but now I feel as if I made a mistake.”

  “Perhaps now would be a good time to reach out to some of them,” Fenella suggested.

  “I’ve been thinking about doing just that. I’m not sure how receptive anyone would be, though. It’s been a very long time. Tell me about Donna. Did she ever marry?”

  “No, she didn’t. She became the bank’s first female vice president before she retired. She’s still living in the same house her parents once owned. We’re taking a class together on reading old records.”

  “She was always the smartest of all of us. She really should have gone to university, but her parents wouldn’t hear of it. I knew she’d be successful, but I truly thought she’d marry one day. Perhaps no one else ever measured up to Clyde.”

  “Clyde?” Fenella echoed.

  “Mabel’s younger brother. We used to tease Donna because she seemed to fancy him, but she always laughed it off. He was so much younger that I never thought of him as anything other than a younger brother, but he was smart and funny and I hoped one day he and Donna might rediscover one another.”

  “I understand they had a disagreement at Mabel’s funeral.”

  Jeanne shrugged. “It was a difficult time for all of us. Up until Mabel’s death, I think we’d all felt invincible, in that way that young people often do. We were all devastated to lose our close friend and shocked that she’d been murdered. Instead of
the tragedy bringing us closer together, it seemed to drive us apart. Clyde was nearly inconsolable and he seemed to be harbouring a great deal of anger or resentment towards the rest of us. I think he was just angry that we were still alive while Mabel wasn’t, really. He fought with all of us during those horrible first days after the murder and we were all barely speaking by the time the funeral came around.”

  “How sad.

  “It was sad. If I could turn back the clock, that’s one thing I’d change for sure. Of course, I’d also keep Mabel from getting killed in the first place. That would change everything that came after anyway.”

  “You don’t remember what Donna and Clyde fought about specifically?”

  “It could have been anything, really. The dress Donna chose to wear to the service or how many cups of coffee Clyde drank at the house afterwards. As I said before, we were all barely speaking by that point. None of the friendships really survived much after that. Oh, I think we all tried, but there was always tension between everyone. We all felt Mabel’s absence keenly and tried to ignore it rather than address it.”

  “Donna said she hasn’t spoken to Clyde since the funeral.”

  “Really? I don’t remember it that way, but I suppose she could be right. We still went out sometimes, all of the girls, but now that you’ve mentioned it, I don’t recall Clyde coming along. He used to before Mabel died, not every time, but sometimes.”

  “And then Marilyn got married.”

  Jeanne frowned. “Ewan was nice enough, but he felt that once she was married Marilyn’s place was at home with him. I suppose that was common at the time, but he didn’t even like for her to meet the rest of us for coffee or anything. I suppose it didn’t really matter anyway, because she was pregnant not long after the wedding and before long she was on bed rest due to complications. I barely saw her after that.”

  “What a shame.”

  “Her mother took over, you see. Ewan liked it when Marilyn was home, but Marilyn’s mother was obsessed with keeping Marilyn with her at all times. I visited once or twice, especially after the baby arrived and was so poorly, but I never felt welcome.” She sighed and shook her head. “I should have tried harder, I see that now, but I was young and single and it was difficult to see Marilyn suffering so much. It was a real test of our friendship and I feel now as if I let her down badly.”

  Fenella told her the name of the nursing home where Marilyn was living. “Perhaps you should visit her,” she suggested.

  “I haven’t spoken to her since she lost her second child. Can you tell me anything about her life since then?”

  “I met her yesterday, actually. She likes to keep to herself at the home, so Crystal had me take the mother cat in to meet her.”

  “She’s a lovely little animal,” Jeanne said, smiling down at the sleeping cat.

  “She is, yes.” With a knack for charming the very people I want to meet, Fenella added silently. “Marilyn and her husband had a third child, but he had the same medical issues as their first. I don’t believe he survived for more than a few months. Her mother remained living with them, however. Marilyn’s husband passed away about ten years ago, and not long after that Marilyn was badly injured in a car accident. She’s been in a wheelchair ever since, and I believe she moved into the home shortly after the accident. Her mother finally passed away about three years ago.”

  Jeanne sighed. “I make a point of not reading the death notices in the paper. I stopped when the average age of the deceased started being younger than my age. It’s too depressing to read about someone who’d supposedly led a long life and then discover that he was younger than I am when he’d died. I wish I’d known about Marilyn’s mother, though. I would have gone to the service for her, if only to make certain that she was actually dead.”

  “Was she that bad?”

  “I’m probably being unfair to her, but I don’t think she was good for Marilyn. Marilyn was as only child and I often wondered, in light of the difficulties that Marilyn had having children, if her mother had suffered miscarriages or stillbirths before or after Marilyn arrived. Whatever the reason, she doted on Marilyn, although it might be more accurate to say that she was obsessed with Marilyn. I really think Marilyn agreed to marry Ewan more to get away from her mother than because she cared about him. We always used to laugh about how getting married was the only way she would ever get out from under her mother’s thumb.”

  “But it didn’t work out that way.”

  “No, not at all,” Jeanne sighed. “I have four children myself, so I do have some sympathy for Marilyn’s mother. It’s very easy to become obsessed with your children, especially when they’re small and need you for absolutely everything. Letting them grow up and become independent men and women is hard to do and incredibly bittersweet. When my first child was born, I used to sit and watch him sleep for hours. I couldn’t tear my eyes off of him. I obsessed over everything he ate, over his sleeping habits, over each milestone. It wasn’t until I had my second child that I began to relax a little bit.”

  She laughed and then patted her husband’s arm. “Do you remember how crazy I was when little Aaron was born?” she asked.

  He stared at her for a minute and then nodded slowly. “You didn’t sleep for months.”

  “I didn’t, and then we had Anna, and I was too tired to keep measuring every bite of food Aaron put in his mouth. I think Marilyn would have been a lot better off if her mother had had more children.”

  “We don’t always get what we want,” Fenella said softly.

  Jeanne nodded. “As I said, I do wonder if she’d lost other babies. I can’t imagine how difficult that must be for women. I fell pregnant easily, carried all four babies to term, and had easy deliveries. I do appreciate that many women, maybe even most women, aren’t that fortunate.”

  “Was Clyde at Marilyn’s wedding?” Fenella asked.

  “No, although I know he’d been invited. When Marilyn sent out the invitations, she sent him his own, rather than including him with his parents. He was just twenty or twenty-one and still living at home, so she didn’t have to send him a separate invitation, but it was a kind thing to do.”

  “Was that before Mabel died?”

  “Yes, but only about a week before. I can remember it clearly, really. Marilyn sent each of us our own invitation, actually, even though we were all living with our parents and she could have included us in the invitations she’d sent to them.”

  “Mabel lived on her own.”

  “Yes, and that may be why Marilyn did what she did. She had to send Mabel her own invitation, after all. She may have wanted to make sure she treated us all the same.”

  “If she hadn’t, would that have caused any arguments within the group?”

  “I don’t know,” Jeanne shrugged. “We were all young and silly, really. We bickered amongst ourselves about anything and everything. It was tricky, our foursome. Alliances changed constantly within the group. Mabel always wanted to include Clyde in things, which didn’t help. Donna always agreed with her, which caused problems between Donna and Marilyn. At any given time, I was probably only happy to see two of the other three, but which two changed constantly.”

  “But you worked with Mabel. How was that?”

  Jeanne smiled. “That was good, actually. I rarely fought with Mabel. She and I spent a lot of time together and we nearly always got along.”

  “You didn’t mind her inviting Clyde along to things?”

  “Not really. He was good company and it was sometimes helpful to have a man in our group. We didn’t get as many odd looks in pubs when we had him with us. Women weren’t meant to spend time in pubs on their own in those days.”

  Fenella nodded. “It was only Marilyn who didn’t want to include him, then?”

  “I wouldn’t say she didn’t want to include him, it was more that she sometimes wanted to have fun with just the girls. Maybe it was because she was about to get married and she knew she wouldn’t get to see as much of
us once that happened. I’m not sure, really.”

  “What else did you all disagree about?”

  “Nothing and everything,” Jeanne laughed. “None of it was serious, but we could bicker about the weather, politics, religion, what movie to go and see, which actor was better looking. As I said, nothing and everything. The only thing we never fought about was men.”

  “Really?” Fenella was surprised.

  “I know, it’s odd, but we had ironclad rules about men. The most important rule was that no man was ever allowed to come between any of us. It wasn’t always easy, but we always stuck to the rules.”

  “You said it wasn’t easy. Who had the most trouble with it?”

  “Marilyn, although it wasn’t her fault. She was beautiful, you see, really, truly striking. We actually developed the rules when we were still in school, after a boy I started seeing met Marilyn and broke up with me the next day. She refused to go out with him, and we worked out the rules from there.”

  “How often were they tested?”

  “In our school days, quite regularly, but once we were out of school, it became less of a problem. Then Marilyn got engaged and it was even less of an issue.”

  Fenella nodded. They seemed to have wandered far away from the things that she really wanted to discuss, but it was interesting learning more about the group of friends.

  “You seem to know a lot about all of my friends,” Jeanne said. “What can you tell me about Clyde?”

  “I met him yesterday, too,” Fenella admitted, flushing. “He’s at the same home as Marilyn.”

  “He is? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It is a small island, after all. There are only so many places men and women our age can go. Does that mean he and Marilyn have rekindled their friendship?”

  “No, I don’t believe they speak to one another.”

  Jeanne sighed. “I’m not surprised, but it’s a shame. How is Clyde, though?”

  “He seemed well, although I only met him for the first time yesterday. He never married either.”