Лори Касс - Tailing A Tabby

Claude and I nodded at each other and made nice-to-meet-you noises as Zofia talked on. “I’ve been having so much fun this summer and it’s all thanks to your aunt Frances.”

“It is?”

Zofia smiled fondly at the man sitting in front of her. “If she didn’t live where she did, Claude and I would never have met.”

“A tragedy,” Claude said, turning to pat her hand. “It would have been a tragedy.”

“Oh,” I said lamely. Remembering my promise to my aunt, I mustered up one last effort. “Leo will be so disappointed, don’t you think?”

Zofia made a rude noise. “Haven’t you seen the goo-goo eyes he and Paulette have been giving each other for weeks? Open your eyes, young lady, and you shall see.” She flung her arms out, palms up. “A wonderful world is out there, just waiting for us to discover it!”

Laughing, I said, “I hope I can be just like you when I grow up.”

“My dear, you can be anything you’d like.” Zofia blew me a kiss. “Toodle-oo!”

Smiling, I waved and watched them pedal off, their feet rotating in tandem.

“Minnie?”

I turned. “Hey, Jari.” All things come to those who are willing to wait outside in a parking lot for a little while. “Can I talk to you?”

• • •

A few minutes later, we were sitting on tall stools at a high table in a local drinking establishment. If I stretched, the tips of my toes brushed the stool’s top rung.

“What can I get for you ladies?” asked a long-haired young man with a notepad in his hand. He went away with two drink orders; a cosmopolitan for Jari and a sedate glass of house red for me. I glanced about, knowing there was no possible way that Kristen would be here, but leery that she might have spies out. If she heard I was drinking a house red, she’d try to force me to eat something horrible, like shiitake mushrooms.

Jari and I made idle chat about the weather, the summer crowds, and the upcoming winter until our drinks showed up. “Cheers.” Jari held up her glass.

“Cheers.” I sipped cautiously at my wine. A little sweet, not much depth, but not too horrible. Thanks to Kristen, I was learning something about wine, but not enough to ruin my enjoyment of a cheap glass of the stuff. The best of both worlds.

Jari took a large swallow of her reddish drink, started to put it down, then took another large swallow. “That’s exactly what I needed,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had.”

“Brush-off Bob giving you a hard time?”

She blinked. “Who?”

I explained the nickname and she threw her head back and let loose with a huge laugh. “That’s perfect,” she said, wiping her eyes carefully with a small square napkin. “Just perfect. Do you have names for the other guys?”

“Not yet.”

“Maybe I’ll try to come up with my own. There’s got to be something good that rhymes with Tim.” She sipped at her drink. “What was it you wanted, anyway? Something else about Carissa, I suppose.” Her newly lighthearted demeanor slipped a bit.

“I’m afraid so.”

Her shoulders heaved; once, then again. Finally she looked up. “Okay. Fire away.”

I had a number of things to ask but thought I’d start with an easy one. “Carissa’s obituary said she’d gone to Wayne State. Do you know what degree she had?”

“Pharmacy,” Jari said. “She’d been a pharmacist ever since she got out of school, but she said she got tired of counting pills and all the insurance hassles. One of the reasons she moved up here was to get away from all that.”

“Don’t pharmacists make quite a bit of money?” More than librarians, I was sure.

“Yeah, I guess. She’d saved a lot, so probably. I asked her once if she thought she’d ever go back to it, but she said she was having more fun selling cars than she ever had handing out medications, so who knows?” Jari shrugged.

“That big Petoskey stone of hers must have cost a lot of money,” I mused out loud, then could have kicked myself. Well, maybe Jari hadn’t heard exactly how Carissa was killed.

“Oh, she didn’t buy that,” Jari said. “Her ex-boyfriend, the Weasel? He gave it to her. She thought it was about the prettiest thing she’d ever seen, so she always had it on the table in her living room.”

Which made it an easy choice for a murder weapon. Right there on display, and quieter than a handgun with the bonus of no registration. “And you never knew the Weasel’s name?” I asked.

“The police wanted to know that, too, but like I told you before, I never knew it.”

“Do you know where he works?” I asked. If I knew where Randall Moffit worked, maybe I could find out who his buddies were and figure out if any of them would be the type to—

“No idea,” Jari said. “Downstate is all I know.”

Downstate? But Randall lived near Chilson. “Are you sure?”

“You bet. I think half the reason Carissa moved up here was to get away from him.” She spun her glass around. “He must have had a good job because she said he gave her lots of nice stuff, but she didn’t like the way he tried to control her. Weird, since they only dated for a few weeks. Carissa said she was embarrassed about how stupid she was to go out with a guy like that in the first place, so she didn’t tell anyone about him.”

“His name wasn’t Randall?”

Jari looked up at me. “You mean Randall Moffit? No, he came after the Weasel. That didn’t last long, though.”

She went on, talking about how Carissa hadn’t wanted to hurt Randall’s feelings, but my brain was locked in place.

The Weasel and Randall were two different people. There were two ex-boyfriends. Zofia had been right, my eyes truly had been closed. How long had they been that way?

And worse, what else had I been wrong about?

• • •

The next evening, after I’d had a determinedly cheerful telephone conversation with Tucker, Eddie and I sat out on the deck. We’d started with me on one chaise longue and him on the other, but he quickly decided that my lap was a better location.

He flopped onto my legs, curled into a large Eddie-ball, and started rumbling out a deep purr.

“So,” I said, petting him, “it’s time to tell Cade that I’ve failed completely to clear his name. I’m no closer to figuring out who the killer is now than when I started.”

Eddie opened one eye.

“Sad, but true,” I told him. “Yes, I know more about Carissa than I did, a lot more, but I still don’t know enough.”

I knew that she’d fled the traffic of downstate for the open roads of northern Michigan. I knew she’d been a pharmacist who’d left it all behind for selling expensive cars, and I knew she’d changed from the serious adolescent my brother had known to a woman who was intent on having a good time. And I knew she’d left behind at least two ex-boyfriends.

Had it been her bad experience with the Weasel that had made her want to take life less seriously? That she needed to have fun, that life wasn’t all work and no play?

Eddie yawned and stretched out, his front claws digging slightly into my skin.

I winced. “Watch it, buddy, those are sharp. Someone should clip them for you.” I thought about getting up and finding the clippers, but that would mean moving Eddie, and it just didn’t seem right.

“You know what else doesn’t seem right?” I asked. “That no one knows the Weasel’s name. How can that be?” But maybe it wouldn’t have been that hard. If you lived alone in a city, didn’t have any neighbors you were friendly with, and weren’t good friends with your coworkers, there would be no reason for anyone to know the name of every guy you briefly dated.

“We need to find out who he is,” I murmured. Whoever he was, I wanted him to be the killer. I didn’t want it to be Greg or Trock or even Hugo. I wanted it to be someone I didn’t know.