Лори Касс - Tailing A Tabby

I glanced around the end of a monstrously sized boat and spotted a wall clock. Twenty to six. Thanks to my speedy parking of the bookmobile and a complete neglect of the usual vacuuming of Eddie hair, I had twenty minutes before the place shut down for the night. I eased away from Chris and the salesguy—neither one of them so much as flicked a look in my direction—and went off in search of a talkative employee.

“Hey there.” Another middle-aged guy approached, dressed in a navy blue jacket, red polo shirt, off-white pants, and penny loafers. Not quite twin clothing to the other guy, but close. “Is Rob helping you and your husband?” he asked.

I tried not to make a horrified face. The notion of being married to Chris Ballou made my head want to turn inside out. Nice enough guy, but not husband material. At least not for me. I pulled the obituary picture of Carissa out of my purse and held it out. “Do you remember seeing her in here?”

The guy looked at me. “What are you, some kind of cop?”

I babbled on about Carissa’s death, about being a friend of a friend, and about trying to help her family. When I saw him nodding agreement, I nodded back. “So, you can see what I’m doing here. Just trying to help, right?” I held the picture a little closer. “Have you seen her in here?”

He looked, frowned, then nodded. “Too bad about her being killed and all. I heard a girl died, but I didn’t know it was her.”

“So you knew Carissa?”

“Not by name,” he said, “but she’s a hard one to forget. One of those sparkly people. Shame that she was murdered.”

I slid the picture back into my purse with care. “Yes,” I said. “It’s a great shame.” I waited a moment, then asked, “Was she in here to buy a boat?”

“Now, that I don’t know.” He tipped his head in the direction of Hugo’s office. “She came in and talked to the boss. Not sure what that was all about,” he said, half grinning, “but Annelise didn’t like it at all.”

Annelise. Mrs. Edel. The co-owner of Crown Yachts. The woman who’d felt the need to primp before coming into her husband’s workplace. So Annelise didn’t like another woman talking to her husband. Yet the husband had said it was strictly business.

Hmm.

“So,” I said, “Annelise didn’t like Carissa?”

He was still grinning. “Annelise doesn’t like any female younger than eighty getting close to Hugo. The jealousy thing happens to women, sometimes,” he said seriously. “That change-of-life stuff.”

“Really?”

My sarcasm was clear, but the guy didn’t seem to notice. “Yeah. I can tell you stories.” He laughed, then said, “Of course, that boyfriend of hers didn’t like it, either.”

I frowned. “Annelise has a boyfriend?”

“Nah, that Carissa. He came in here all mad about Hugo taking his girl out to dinner, but he came in on a Saturday, and Hugo’s never here on the weekends.”

“What did the boyfriend look like?”

“Ah, I don’t know. Kind of scrawny, but not real scrawny. Had hair the color of a living room wall, if you know what I mean.”

A soft electronic ping went off. The guy looked toward the front door. “Excuse me,” he said, looking at an elderly couple who’d just walked in.

Timing is everything, and this was perfect. I said thank you and good-bye, yanked Chris out of a discussion of trout fishing, and headed home.

• • •

“Hey!” I called through the houseboat’s screen door. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Eddie looked at me. He was sitting exactly in the middle of yesterday’s local paper, which meant he was also sitting in the middle of the dining table, a place where he wasn’t allowed to set foot. At least when I was in the room. What he did when I wasn’t within scolding distance was something over which I had absolutely no control.

More than once I’d walked down the marina’s dock and, through the houseboat’s windows, spotted Eddie sitting on the kitchen counter, napping or idly grooming himself. I’d pound up the dock and burst through the door, reprimands at the ready, only to find my cat sitting innocently on the floor. I had yet to decide whether that whole routine was a coincidence, or whether it was something he planned with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker.

Now I clapped my hands three times—the “Stop that right now!” signal—and watched Eddie slither off the table and onto the bench seat. “You are a horrible cat,” I told him. “And stop looking at me like I’m the stupid one. If you didn’t do the things I tell you not to, I wouldn’t have to yell at you, see?”

Bonk!

“Eddie! Will you cut that out?” I reached for him and snuggled him to my chest, because the loud bonking noise had been his head thumping against the edge of the table. “That had to hurt, you silly thing.” I kissed the back of his furry neck and sat down on the upholstered bench. “You’ll give yourself a concussion if you keep that up.”

His deep purrs indicated that there was nothing wrong, but what did I know about cat head injuries?

I snuggled him again. “You be careful or you’ll end up like Greg Plassey, thinking that getting whacked in the noggin with a golf ball is a perfectly normal occurrence.”

“Mrr.”

“Well, exactly.” Carefully, I gave his head a slow pet. “There’s got to be something seriously wrong with him to shrug something like that off. Just because it’s an accident doesn’t mean he shouldn’t take it seriously.”

Eddie jumped off my lap and back up onto the newspaper. I started to swipe him off the table and back onto my lap, but he reached out with a paw for the newspaper and snagged it with his slightly extended claws.

Rip!

“Oh, good job.” I detached him from the newsprint, slouched, and settled him on my chest. “Don’t tell me that was an accident, buddy boy. I’ve known you long enough to know when something was intentional.”

Eddie stared at me through unblinking yellow eyes.

“Huh,” I said. “I wonder…” But no. The idea was far too far-fetched.

Or was it?

I looked at Eddie. “Am I nuts?” He didn’t say anything, which was probably the safest possible answer. “If I sound nuts, just tell me, okay?”

He dug his front claws into my shirtfront just the slightest bit, then retracted them. I took the action as a reply of “Have I ever held back from telling you that you were being stupid?” To which the answer was, of course “No.”

Since both of my hands were busy with Eddie, I used my elbow to tap the newspaper. “Greg Plassey had that accident with the golf ball. That didn’t make the paper because he didn’t tell anyone, but there were other accidents that we’ve read about in the last couple of weeks.”

Eddie’s eyes opened ever so slightly.

“There was Trock’s bicycle accident, remember?” I ran my hand over Eddie’s back, and his eyes closed again. “He was run off the road by an SUV. And then there was that boat accident, the one where Hugo Edel was almost blown up.” It hadn’t made sense then and it didn’t make sense now, because how could a guy who made and sold high-end boats for a living blow up his boat? Okay, it could have been an operator error of some kind, but from what I knew about Edel, he was as safety-conscious as a first-time mother.

“So that’s three accidents this summer,” I told Eddie, who might—or might not—have been interested in what I was saying. From the sound of his snores, I was guessing he wasn’t, but maybe it was a trick. “Three typical summer accidents, but they all happened within a couple weeks of each other and they all happened to guys about the same age.”

“Mrr,” Eddie said sleepily.