Клер Донелли - The Big Kitty

*

Sunny stopped shortas a furry gray form zipped across her path, almost over her toes. She followed Shadow to the corner of the house, where he peered around.

By the time she joined him, she could see what had attracted the cat: a dusty black pickup truck turned onto the weed-choked driveway and came to a stop. The driver’s door opened, and a tall, rangy guy in jeans and a denim jacket got out.

One of creepy Gordie’s creepy friends? Sunny suddenly became very away that this guy was standing between her and the street. She narrowed her eyes. What was that bulge on one side of his jacket—a gun?

She took a step back when the stranger’s hand came up, but it went into his breast pocket, extracting a leather case. He flipped it open to reveal a badge.

“Will Price, town constable,” he said. “You’re the person who called 911?”

Sunny nodded, gesturing toward the backyard and the cellar door. “Ada—Mrs. Spruance—asked me to come over. When she didn’t answer the door, I went around this way and found—” She broke off. “Her neck—” With that, she ran out of words and just pointed.

The cop went past her and down the stairs. A moment later, he came back up again. “That can’t have been very nice to find.” He took a notebook from the other pocket in his denim jacket. “Why don’t you tell me the whole story, Ms.—?”

“Coolidge—Sonata Coolidge. You can call me Sunny.” She filled in the blanks. “Ada Spruance came to the MAX office—I work for the Maine Adventure X-perience.” She added, relating her meeting with the Cat Lady at the MAX office and their conversation about Ada’s lottery ticket problem.

The cop frowned in disbelief at her story. “Six to eight million dollars? I figured the local gossip mill had just pumped up the prize money.”

“That’s the amount Ada said,” Sunny replied. “I never saw it. The thing was missing. But it seems kind of—” She bit off the word “convenient” and substituted “weird” instead.

She couldn’t help noticing that this guy was pretty good-looking, in a serious, kind of poker-faced way. His face was long, with a strong nose and a sensitive-looking mouth—at least it would be if he didn’t keep it pursed so tightly. He had odd eyes, kind of grayish with light brown flecks. Actually they reminded her a little of Shadow’s.

Sunny looked down to find the cat at her feet, directing an unblinking gaze up at the cop. Kind of the same gaze the cop was giving her.

“It’s just that I was a little afraid for Ada—you know, maybe someone was trying to take advantage of her somehow. So I talked to Ken Howell at the Crier. He ran a story about it, and it got picked up on TV.”

She paused for breath … and an interior wake-up call. She’d conducted enough interviews to know the tricks. The silent approach could be a potent weapon, inducing a subject to spill his or her guts.

Well, it sure worked like gangbusters on me, Sunny thought. Stop. Let him ask a question.

Even so, she couldn’t help the words from coming out. “It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

“I’d like to think so if I were you.” Those lips she’d been admiring turned into a frown. “Especially if I’d helped arrange it so that every lowlife for a hundred miles around knew that a frail old lady was sitting on a huge pile of cash.”

“B-but I was trying to help her—protect her!” Sunny sputtered. She didn’t get any further because another car pulled into the driveway: an official white sheriff’s cruiser.

Sunny recognized Sheriff Frank Nesbit before he even got out of the car. Over the years, his face had gotten rounder and his mustache grayer as he appeared on billboards with each election cycle, always over the same slogan: “Keeping Elmet County Safe.”

As the sheriff came toward them, however, he wasn’t wearing his avuncular election-year smile.

“Aren’t you supposed to be off duty, Constable Price?” Nesbit asked. “I hope you’re not trying to angle your way into some overtime pay.”

Price shrugged. “This is Ben Semple’s shift. Somehow his patrols always take him to the other end of town, where he nails speeders off by outlet-land. Guess Ben’s just very diligent about enhancing road safety—and county revenue. Problem is, that leaves coverage pretty thin around these parts. You can see how long it takes to get here from the county seat.” He looked blandly at the sheriff. “And how was the traffic coming from Levett, sir?”

“Not too bad—especially since this didn’t sound like a lights-and-sirens job to me,” Nesbit replied. “The 911 call reported an accident, not a crime. Even so, I beat the ambulance here.”

The sheriff shifted gears into constituent mode as he turned to Sunny. “And you must be the young lady who called.”

When he heard Sunny’s name, his smile became a bit more personal. “Mike Coolidge’s daughter? I heard you’d come up from New York to take care of him. The old bandit’s doing all right, isn’t he? Good. Now, what happened here?”

Sunny explained about Ada Spruance’s ticket and their date to search the house.

Nesbit shook his head. “Going from an enormous windfall to a fatal fall down the stairs. Very—what do you call it?—ironic.”

“There’s still a question about that,” Price piped up. “Ms. Coolidge suspected the winning ticket might have been stolen, so she attempted to head off the culprit with a good glare of publicity.”

“That’s right—the wife mentioned seeing something about a ticket on the evening news.”

Nesbit’s smile at the memory faded as Price went on. “Most likely so did every felon within broadcast range.”

“Is there any evidence of forced entry?” the sheriff asked in a clipped voice.

“None visible,” Price admitted. But he directed his gaze to the hinges on the cellar door, rusted in the open position.

Not much breaking required to break and enter here, Sunny had to admit, looking back at the constable. I thought he was just giving me a hard time about the possibility of a crime. But he’s making a case even though his boss doesn’t want to hear about it.

In the meantime, Sheriff Nesbit went down the cellar steps and returned a moment later. “Obvious accident,” he said flatly. “The door to the pantry upstairs is open. Ada was an older woman. The stairs are steep. It would be easy even for a young person up there to lose her balance.” He headed for the police cruiser. “I’ll call in to make sure the remains are picked up—”

He broke off in midsentence as a furry form burst out of the overgrown grass and ran across the driveway. “And then I’ll call Animal Control. They’ll have their hands full collecting all these fleabags.”

Nesbit gave Price a thin smile. “I’ll leave you in charge of the scene until they arrive, Constable.” From the look on the sheriff’s face, Sunny guessed Price would have a long, uphill struggle trying to get that approved as overtime.

As the cruiser pulled away, Sunny glanced down at her feet. Shadow remained where he was, taking everything in.

“So the cats will be hauled off to a shelter?” she asked. “Do you know if it’s humane—nonkill or whatever they call it?”

Price just looked at her. “That sounds like a very New York City idea,” he said. “Out here in the sticks, the budget goes for animal control, not animal rights.”

Sunny was never sure whether it was a Maine thing in general or a Kittery Harbor thing in particular, that ingrained, clannish belief that local ways were always superior to any idea an outsider might have.

It especially stung since he was treating Sunny like one of those outsiders.