Лори Касс - Lending А Paw

So Lina had heard exactly right.

“Why did I say that?” Caroline bit her lips, smearing the last of her lipstick onto her teeth. “It was a ridiculous thing to say. I should never have said something like that, no matter how angry I was.”

I had to do it. I had to press. For Holly. For Stan. “So why did you?” I asked. “Say it, I mean?”

The air went out of her. “Jealousy. Silly, childish jealousy.”

A perfect motive for murder.

But as I watched her fish a handkerchief from her purse and dab at her face, I didn’t think she had anything to do with Stan’s death. Call it a hunch, call it instinct, call it whatever you want, I simply couldn’t picture any reality in which it could happen. Besides, the car parked outside the art gallery would have been hard for someone to miss seeing at the farmhouse. Even I could recognize a Rolls-Royce when I saw a double R on the front.

So if Caroline was out as a killer, who was in?

“Jealous?” I asked. “Of whom?”

“Whom. It’s so nice to hear that word used properly.” Caroline touched the handkerchief to her nose. “Jealousy is an ugly emotion. It’s embarrassing to admit to the feeling, especially when you consider the woman who caused it.”

“Stan was two-timing you?”

Caroline dipped into her purse for a compact and started patting away the tearstains. “She’s the one who killed Stan; I’m quite sure of it. She has hardly a dime to her name. She must have thought Stan would leave her money, worming her way into his affections like that. Wonderful man though he was, he was still a man, and Lord knows men let their heads get turned around by young women.”

“Who was it, do you know?”

“I saw them at the diner,” Caroline said. “I was downtown on errands and saw them sitting together. Stan said it wasn’t what it looked like, but I saw them. I saw her —I saw the way she looked at him. She wanted something from him, there’s no misinterpreting that. A woman knows.”

“Do you know her name?”

“Stan said I could trust him, but how could I trust a man who’d lie to me? I had enough of that with my first—”

“Her name?”

“The woman who runs that boardinghouse. Frances,” Caroline spat. “Frances Pixley.”

Chapter 11

“Aunt Frances?” I asked. “How could Aunt Frances have been involved with Stan?”

Eddie’s eyes were closed. He was listening, though, I was sure of it. So while I tugged socks over my feet and tied my shoes, I kept talking.

“Caroline must be wrong, that’s all. The whole last winter I did nothing but go on and on about the bookmobile and Stan donating money, and Aunt Frances said she didn’t know him at all.”

I flexed my foot and realized I’d tied the laces on my right shoe too tight. Start the day like that and you never get them the way you want them. Growling to myself, I undid the laces, pushed the shoe off with the toes of the other foot, and started over again.

“And even if she did know him, it’s outside of the realm of any reality that she . . . that she . . .” I couldn’t make myself say the words. Then a thought started to ping around inside my head. If Caroline suspected Aunt Frances of killing Stan, would she tell the police? Had she already? Should I warn Aunt Frances?

“What do you think, Mr. Ed?”

My feline flopped over on his side and batted at my elbow.

I pulled my arm away. “Quit that. I’m not a cat toy, you know.”

He gave me the humans-are-soooo-stupid look and closed his eyes again.

“Thanks so much for your help.” I lightly thumped the top of his head, making it bounce up and down like a bobblehead. “See you later, Eddie-gator.”

His mouth opened and closed without making a sound, but I knew what he meant.

Mrr.

• • •

The boardinghouse was full of the beginnings of love. Unfortunately, it resembled the second mixed-up act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream more than My Big Fat Greek Wedding .

“It turned out okay in the end, though,” I whispered to Aunt Frances. The starry-eyed, middle-aged Quincy was handing twentysomething Dena a bowl of strawberries. Paulette, who’d been picked for Quincy, was giggling with sixty-five-year-old Leo, and Zofia was chatting with Harris, who was a perfect age to be her grandson. “Hermia ended up with Lysander,” I said quietly, “and Helena with Demetrius, just like they were supposed to.”

“That was a play,” Aunt Frances whispered back fiercely. “More than four hundred years old.”

My lips twitched as I watched Quincy pass Dena the powdered sugar. Shakespeare might have written it in the late fifteen hundreds, but it was still relevant.

The eight of us ate waffles and strawberries and whipped cream and sausages until we couldn’t eat any more. “More coffee, anyone?” Zofia, the cook for the day, held up the carafe. “Minnie? Or do you need to get to the library?”

I held out my mug. “Working tomorrow afternoon, off today.”

Zofia tsk ed at me. “They work you too hard down there. One of these days you’re going to work yourself into illness.”

“She does it to herself,” Aunt Frances said. “She makes up the schedule.”

I glanced at her as I poured cream into my coffee. Aunt Frances knew perfectly well that the library had a tight budget. Payroll was the library’s largest expense and since I was salaried, working more hours myself was money in my budget’s pocket.

“Say,” Leo said. “Did they ever figure out who killed that guy you found? What was his name? Stan something.”

Since my gaze was on Aunt Frances when Leo asked his questions, I saw her flinch as clear as the horizon on a cloudless day. “Larabee,” I said quietly, still watching her.

Leo snapped his fingers. “That’s it. So, did they? Find who killed him?”

“Not as far as I know,” I said. My aunt put her silverware and napkin on her plate and stood to take the dishes to the kitchen. “Aunt Frances,” I asked, “have you heard anything?”

She stopped. “No, I haven’t. But then, why would I?”

Zofia chuckled. “You know everyone in this town. How could you not know the richest man in Chilson?”

“Well, I didn’t,” Aunt Frances said, a little too quickly. “There are lots of people I don’t know. And there are some I know far too well.” Abandoning her plate, she took quick steps to the back door and left the house, letting the screen door slam behind her.

After a short silence, Harris was the first to speak. “Wow, I’ve never seen her like that. She sure seems mad about something.”

“Oh, dear.” Zofia fiddled with her spoon. “I hope I didn’t offend her.”

Paulette poured Leo another cup of coffee. “What do you think, Leo?”

He smiled at her. “I think this is a beautiful day. How do you feel about a drive up to Cross Village and lunch at Legs?”

Dena glanced around the table, ending with me. “Shouldn’t somebody go after her? She sounded pretty upset.”

“Not to worry.” Quincy patted her shoulder, his touch lingering a beat too long. “Give her some time to work it out herself. If she’s still upset this afternoon, I’ll talk to her.”

Through it all, I said nothing.

But the worries in my brain were starting to run in tiny little circles, around and around and around.

• • •

Chris Ballou sat cross-legged on my boat’s front deck, a bilge pump in each hand. “You want the good news or the bad news?”

I was sitting on the deck, too, looking at him across the open engine hatch. “I hate questions like that.”

He grinned. “The good news is that your problem isn’t the bilge pump. I can put the old one back in and sell this to some other poor slob.”