Лори Касс - Pouncing On Murder

Aunt Frances pushed her papers together in a sloppy pile. “Not my story to tell,” she said briskly. “Do you have everything?” She nodded at my box.

I wanted to ask whose story it was to tell, but let it go. “Everything but an answer to one question. If you can ask me how things are going with Tucker, I get to ask you how things are going with Otto.”

The faintest blush of pink gave her cheeks a springlike look.

“Never mind,” I said, holding up my hand. “I think I figured it out.”

We made our good-byes and I hefted my box. I went out through the dining room and the living room, and it was then that I noticed an addition to the long-standing arrangement of framed photos on the narrow table behind the sofa. Uncle Everett. The same photo that had, until recently, been on her bedside nightstand.

I gave my aunt a silent cheer and headed home.

• • •

That evening, an unaccustomed fit of domesticity overcame me and I went all out in the dinner department, to the extent of stopping at the grocery store and buying specific ingredients.

“Mrr.”

“Lettuce is, too, an ingredient,” I said to my feline critic. “It’s listed right here.” I leaned down and held the cookbook in front of his face. “See? Right there under Caesar salad. And don’t get excited about the anchovies, because I didn’t buy any.”

Once upon a time, Kristen had made me try them, and they were okay, but I knew that if I bought them for this meal, I’d use half a dozen and then the rest would turn moldy in the refrigerator. Unless I shared them with Eddie.

“Sorry, pal. I didn’t think about that. Next time.”

He sniffed at the cookbook, then jumped up onto the back of the dining bench to criticize from a distance, but that must have turned boring because he started snoring five minutes later.

I stirred and whisked and cut and broiled and soon I was sitting at the table with a nice meal of salad, brown rice, and shish kebabs. “See?” I pointed at my full plate. “I can, too, cook. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

Eddie opened one eye, then shut it again.

“Yes, I can tell you’re confused.” My fork went into a marinated and broiled chunk of green pepper. “See, it’s not that I can’t cook; it’s that I don’t like to.”

Eddie’s head popped up. He stared at me with wide-open eyes.

“Yeah, I know. I’ve been scamming people for years with the Minnie-can’t-cook theory. But I didn’t start that story. Because I don’t cook, people assume I can’t. The story grew all by itself.”

“Mrr.”

I nodded. “Sure, early on I could have explained myself, but I didn’t, and now the fiction is being taken as fact.” I ate my salad and thought about the myth that I’d accidentally perpetuated. It had its benefits, but there was an element of hovering deceit that was starting to bother me.

“What do you think, Eddie?” I asked. “Should I make sure everyone knows that I’m perfectly capable of, well, maybe not baking, but of cooking as well as the average single person? Should I clear this up? Eddie?”

His snores grew louder. I rolled my eyes at him and reached for a book.

• • •

By the time I’d washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen—tasks that fulfilled nothing in me and were part of what drove me to cold cereal and takeout—a warm wind had blown up from the south. The temperature had skyrocketed, and there was no way I was going to stay inside on the first evening of the year that you could round up to sixty degrees without cheating too much.

I zipped my windbreaker and looked at Eddie, who was sitting on the dashboard, watching seagulls flap past. “Want to come with me?”

Eddie turned and almost, but not quite, looked in my direction.

“Come on, it’ll be fun. We don’t have to go far. A mile at most. I can put on your harness and your leash and—”

My cat hurled himself to the floor, raced across the kitchen, and bounded down the stairs in one leap. He pushed open the bifold closet door and the last I saw of him was the tip of his tail snicking into the closet.

“I take it that’s a no on the walk?” I tipped my head, listening for an answering “Mrr,” but there was nothing.

“Fine.” I took a marker and wrote where I was going on a small whiteboard, just as I promised my mother I’d always do as long as I lived alone, shoved my cell phone into my pocket, and headed out.

Two minutes later, it was clear that I wasn’t the only person in town who wanted to get out into the warm sun. Half of Chilson was out and about on the downtown streets and waterfront. Families with children in strollers, families on bikes. A few singles, like me. Couples walking hand in hand. Friends walking in loose groups. And absolutely everyone was smiling.

“Minnie, hello!” Aunt Frances and Otto—a hand-in-hand couple—strolled toward me.

“Long time no see,” I said. “What’s up with you two?”

Otto, the man I’d practically had to push into my aunt’s arms, smiled. “Why did no one tell me how sudden a northern Michigan spring could be?” He gestured toward the blooming forsythia bushes and the blossoming daffodils. “Didn’t it snow last week? This is glorious!”

I grinned, suspecting that his enthusiasm was due, in large part, to the growing relationship between him and Aunt Frances. “We don’t want everyone to know,” I said in a stage whisper. “Even more people would move up here.”

Otto laughed. “You’re a transplant yourself. Isn’t that a little hypocritical?”

“Didn’t you know?” I looked at him with mock impatience. “It’s okay if I’m hypocritical.” A couple sitting on a nearby bench waved hello in my direction. “Excuse me,” I said to my aunt and her paramour. “I need to go talk to these nice folks.”

“Hey, Minnie,” Irene Deering said. “Want to sit a minute?”

Adam slid over a few slow inches. “Have a seat,” he said. “We have an excellent spot for watching people launch their boats.” Their car was at the nearest curb behind the bench—Adam hadn’t walked far.

I sat. The friendly criticizing of boat launching was a popular pastime. “Anyone back into anything yet?” The previous year I’d watched a guy jackknife his pontoon boat into a piling. It had happened so fast that no one had had time to stop him, and the results hadn’t been pretty.

“Not so far,” Irene said. “But there was this huge cigarette boat that—”

“Shh!” Adam waved her to silence. “Would you look at that?” His voice was full of reverence. “Perfection. Pure perfection.”

It would have been an excellent time to call out for P words, but Irene was rolling her eyes. “Don’t mind him,” she said. “He gets like that around wooden boats.”

“Well, he’s not the only one.” I was wide-eyed myself at the mint-condition Chris-Craft being backed down the boat ramp. Twenty-eight feet if it was an inch, in the classic runabout style. “That one’s a beauty.”

“One of these days I’m going to get my own,” Adam said.

I smiled. “You want a woodie?”

“With all his heart and all his soul,” Irene said. “He’s been talking about it for years. I’m pretty sure it’s one of the reasons we moved up North, so it would be easier for him to find the right fixer-upper.”

“Not sure I’ll have as much luck with that now.” Adam pulled in a short breath as the owner of the Chris-Craft climbed into the boat and started the engine. “Henry said he’d find me a boat.”

The backs of my hands tingled. “Oh?”

“Sure,” Adam said. “We used to drive around, looking. Henry was one of those guys who knew guys with boats sitting in their barns. You wouldn’t believe some of the wrecks we saw. But I’ve never restored a boat, so for my first one I need something a little easier.”