Лори Касс - Pouncing On Murder

Irene elbowed me. “Did you hear that? ‘My first one,’ he says.”

“That implies there’s going to be at least two,” I said.

“Probably won’t even be one, without Henry.” Adam sighed. “I didn’t get the last names of half the guys we talked to, and Henry drove so many back roads I don’t know where most of them were.”

“But you remember the boats,” Irene said, rolling her eyes again.

“Well, sure. There was this Century that would have been great, but the engine was blown. I mean, I can do some mechanical, but a whole engine? Not my thing. I want to do the woodwork. Take this Hacker-Craft. If there’d been less hull rot, I would have picked it up in a minute.”

Irene nudged me. “He’ll go on like that for hours,” she whispered. “You’d better escape while you can.”

“I’m good,” I whispered back. And I was being completely truthful, because it was a fine night, and I couldn’t think of a better place to be than sitting there in the warm night with my friends, watching boats go in and the sun go down.

It was all very good indeed.

Except for that tapping sorrow for Henry.

And that nagging worry about Adam.

• • •

The next day was another day off for me, which made two in a row and would be the last time I had two days off in a row until after the book fair, so I wanted to make the most of it. I’d go for a long bike ride or maybe a long walk, wash the outsides of the houseboat’s windows, even eat outside if it was warm enough.

So when I woke to a steady drumming of rain on the roof, I heaved a huge sigh.

“Mrr,” Eddie said, sleep heavy in his voice.

“Yeah, I know.” I turned sideways, which made him slide off my collarbone and onto the bed. “Oh, stop whining. Maybe you didn’t want to move, but you don’t mind this.” I snuggled him close and kissed the top of his fuzzy head. “There. Any complaints now?”

He yawned and rolled over.

I gave him another kiss. “You’d complain if you were served your favorite stinky wet food every day for a week, saying you wanted more variety.” I slid my arm out from underneath him and got up. “If every day of the entire year was warm and sunny, you’d complain that it was too hot.” I padded to the shower, talking back over my shoulder. “If I stayed home every single day, you’d complain because I’d disturb your naps.”

At the door to the shower, I paused and looked back.

He’d already moved and was curled up onto a loose Eddie-shaped ball on my pillow.

Cats.

• • •

I ate a bowl of cereal and a piece of toast for breakfast, then spent a happy couple of hours reading. Some might call rereading Cynthia Voigt’s Jackaroo for the fifty-second time a guilty pleasure; I called it therapy.

At noon, I went all out and made a fried egg sandwich with a side of steamed broccoli for lunch.

“Don’t tell, okay?” I said to Eddie as I picked up the sandwich. “About the cooking thing, I mean.”

He was sitting on the bench seat across from me, and the bottom of his chin was level with the tabletop. I was pretty sure he was hoping to get his own plate at the table, but I was equally sure that was never going to happen.

After chewing and swallowing, because I always tried to maintain my table manners, even if my dining companion was a cat, I asked, “So, what should we do with the rest of the day?”

Eddie didn’t say anything, so I picked up my phone and sent Tucker a text.

Day off for me. Recommendations?

A couple of minutes later, my phone dinged. Assisting on a hip resurfacing, Tucker wrote. Come watch—we start in 30 min.

Which meant that the surgery would start three and a half hours before I arrived.

Maybe next time, I texted back. I started to type, Good luck, but stopped. Maybe surgeons were like actors and being wished good luck was bad luck. Of course, texting Break a leg didn’t seem appropriate, either, so I sent my standard Miss you! and set aside the phone.

“I still don’t have any plans for the day,” I told my cat, who looked at me intently.

“No,” I said, “I’m not going back to bed to nap away the afternoon. You can do that if you’d like, but I’m going to do something productive.”

A bright light flashed. Half a second later, thunder crashed overhead.

Eddie’s yellow eyes didn’t blink.

“Nice try,” I said. “But just because I’d be risking life and limb by going outside right now doesn’t mean my only alternative is to do what you want. And stop that. Your sighs don’t influence me at all.”

Which was a downright lie, but he didn’t need to know that.

Eddie jumped up onto the back of the bench and flopped down onto the lap blanket I’d had on my legs when I was reading. My brother and sister-in-law, Florida residents, had given the beach-themed cotton throw to me for Christmas, and Eddie seemed to particularly like lying on top of the palm trees.

I watched Eddie settle down at the base of his favorite tree and thought about snapping a cell phone photo and sending it to Matt, my brother. I could ask him if—

“Brothers,” I said out loud, and reached for my phone.

Half an hour and four phone calls later, I had the numbers for all of Henry’s sons. While living in a small town can limit some of your options, it can also make it relatively easy to get the information you need.

From oldest to youngest, their names were Mike, Dennis, and Kevin. Ages went from forty-three down to thirty-nine. Occupations were a firefighter, a computer programmer, and a piano tuner. Locations were upstate Maine, Denver, and Southern California.

Three sons, three different time zones. I pondered the wisdom of calling, then decided that thinking too much might stunt my growth, and dialed.

When Mike Gill answered, I introduced myself, saying that I’d been a friend of his father’s, was sorry for his loss, and that I was calling because I’d heard a developer was trying to convince the heirs to sell the property.

“Same old Chilson,” Mike said, chuckling. “Rumors run around up there faster than the speed of light.”

“Well, I don’t know how much people are really talking. I ran into Felix Stanton yesterday and he happened to mention it, that’s all.”

“If Felix told you, he’s probably telling everybody.”

Which sounded like a fair assessment of Mr. Stanton. “If you do sell, I hope you give someone a chance to buy your dad’s maple-sugar-making equipment. There’s a lot of history there, and I’m sure someone would love to have those things.”

“Not going to happen,” Mike said.

“Oh.” The light around me went flat. “I see.”

“No one’s going to get Dad’s things,” Mike said confidently, “because next year we’re all going to be up there.”

“You mean . . . you’re not going to sell?”

“I won’t lie to you—we thought about it. We got together via Skype the other day and hashed it out. With Mom and Dad both gone now, it’s on us to make it a point to get together. We’ve talked about it for years, especially now that we all have kids, but it never seems to happen.”

“Scheduling can be hard,” I murmured.

“Absolutely. But the three of us used to help Dad with the syrup every spring—it’s not rocket science, just a lot of wood and a lot of time—and we figured it’s time to start doing it with our own kids.”

He went on, describing the plans they were making to get a neighbor to collect the maple sap—“We’ll let him take at least half”—and how they were going to time their vacations, since syrup making was so completely weather dependent, and how they were already collecting canning jars.