Murder Is Uncooperative (15 page)

The familiar sound of the bag of kitten food crinkling and the dry pellets rattling into his dish did the trick. Maui crept cautiously forward until he could reach the dishes. He sniffed at
the turkey, tried a piece and then gobbled the rest down. Then he started on his dry food. Ben stroked his kitten as he ate and Maui started to purr.

“See, he's fine. Now it's time to finish your own dinner.”

I reheated our dishes quickly in the microwave. “Finish your dinner,” I told Ben. “It's almost time for pie.”

Anna and John were still in my room with Jordan but everyone else had finished eating.

“I'll just go and see if I can help,” Mariana said, heading to my room. “My lullabies have a pretty good track record of getting babies to sleep.”

Anna and John came back to the dining room, and I stood up to reheat their meals but Dad interrupted me. “Let me do that, Becky. You finish your dinner.”

Anna was looking a little tearful. “It was nice of Mariana to look after Jordan,” she was saying. “But it makes me wish his own grandmothers were here. He's growing so fast. I hope they'll come for Christmas.”

“Well, if they don't, maybe we should plan a co-op Christmas dinner for people who are alone,” Gwen said. “This was such a good idea, Rebecca.”

Dad returned with warm plates for Anna and John. “I'll start getting the pie and cheesecake ready.”

Gwen got up to help him, and they were happily slicing pies when Mariana returned with a sleeping Jordan. Mariana gave a worried glance at my father and Gwen, but she smiled at Anna and placed Jordan back in his carrier.

“Still got the touch,” she bragged. “I used to sing my son to sleep every night. I hope I'll get more of a chance to do that with my grandson before he gets much bigger. Did I tell you my son is planning on moving back here?”

I thought I saw Cara flinch a little, but I couldn't imagine why.

The rest of the evening went smoothly. Both desserts were a hit. Aiden announced he wanted both the chocolate pie and the pumpkin cheesecake. He glanced at his father to see if he would object to his son eating too much sweet stuff.

“Excellent idea,” was all Jeremy said. “I think I'll have some of both too.”

Then Ben copied them, insisting he wanted some of both desserts too.

“Honey, you said you don't like pumpkin,” I reminded him.

“But it's Thanksgiving,” he answered, as if that explained everything. Which I guess it did.

It was late by the time we'd cleaned up and everyone had left. I glanced briefly at the box of co-op material Jeremy had left on my desk. I was anxious to go through it, but I was too tired to start. The papers I had placed in neat piles were now a little messed up. Maybe someone had accidently brushed them going past my desk. But I was too tired to worry about that. I went to bed.

After the excitement of a big dinner, Ben and Dad both slept in the next morning. So I had time to go through the second box Gwen had given me.

I lifted the file folder Gwen had placed on top of the box, then remembered the material I had gone through before had been messed up. I had arranged some material in folders and others in neat piles, but now some loose papers were lying on the desk.

Ben sometimes went to my desk to find paper to draw on. There'd been an incident when he was much smaller when he'd crayoned on the reports I was summarizing for a client. I'd had to talk to him about which paper he could use and he'd been pretty good about only taking blank paper since then.

I picked up the loose papers and glanced through them, hoping that it would be easy to place them back in the right piles. One of them was a scribbled note.

“This is none of your business,” it said in shaky block letters. “Stay out of it.”

I suddenly felt very cold.

I told myself the note could have been mixed up in the papers before. I might have just missed it.

Or it might have fallen out of the new file folder Gwen had brought. I wondered if the note had been sent as a warning to Les. Was it related to his death? As I put the papers back in the file folders, I realized the newspaper clipping about the missing girls wasn't in the file where I'd put it.

And I knew for sure the note had been left for me.

I thought about who had been in my room. Who had had a chance to find out what I was looking into?

Just about everyone had been in my room at some point. Anna, John, and Mariana had all been in the room with baby Jordan. Jeremy and Gwen had dropped off the second box. Dave had left his coat in my room, and Cara had followed him in when he went to retrieve it before they left.

But surely none of those people—the people I was starting to consider friends—would have a reason to leave me a threatening note.

I sat there for a moment, shivering even though warm morning light was pouring into the room.

Then I stood up. The only way I could see to deal with this was to find out more about what was going on in this building.

I tore open the box Gwen had given me last night.

I hoped to find something more about the missing girls. But the new box contained nothing more than sets of minutes and old photographs.

Many of the pictures had nothing to indicate when they were taken or who the people were. They were the same kind of photos I'd seen before—members at meetings, with a large cake celebrating a co-op anniversary, summer picnics outside, and parties held in the common room.

I smiled at one picture showing a group of young people in front of a basketball hoop that must have been newly installed.

I looked closer and saw that one of the children looked like Amy Cole, one of the missing girls. She was standing beside a hulking teenage boy. This picture was one of the few with names noted on the back. Yes, that was Amy in the picture and the boy beside her was listed as Eddie Cole. Her brother, I assumed.

A small blond girl was named Cara. The last name was different, but she might have changed her name when she married. I looked closely at the picture. The triangular face and small stature were familiar. I was sure it was Cara. The hair, though fair, was not the almost white blond her hair was now. “Unusual for hair to get blonder as you grow up,” I muttered to myself. So Cara had grown up in the co-op.

My attention was caught by a redheaded teenager who looked very much like Jeremy's son Aiden.

I quickly checked the names on the back of that picture, finding that it was, indeed, Jeremy.

But I was sure Jeremy had told me he had moved into the co-op when his marriage broke up. Was I mistaken? Or had he lied?

I felt tears in my eyes. Frustration, I told myself. But I could feel my heart beating too quickly as I tried to ignore the fact that one of my neighbors had left me a threatening note and the man I was starting to think I was interested in had possibly lied to me.

I brushed the tears away and tried to cope the way I dealt with everything, by trying to understand it, to find out what was going on. It was what made me a good reporter, I told myself. It was what made me strong.

I put my feelings aside and looked through all the papers, putting the minutes in order of date and trying to sort the photos by subject. I didn't find any more pictures of Jeremy. And I didn't find anything more about the missing girls. Although I was impatient, I knew I was going to have to wait to see if Dave could find out anything more from the newspaper's archives. That would have to wait until tomorrow at least.

And the co-op office was closed today for the Thanksgiving holiday. I would have to be content with what I had.

I was surprised when Dave called a few minutes later and asked if he could take Ben for the day. This wasn't his weekend to have him, and I had expected him to be spending time with Cara.

“There's this new movie out I think Ben would like. I thought I'd take him to see it, then have dinner out somewhere.”

I'd read about the movie he'd suggested. It was supposed to be suitable for kids but with jokes that adults would appreciate too. The animation was supposed to be stunning. I had thought about taking Ben to it myself, but the cost of movies meant we didn't go as often as we wanted to.

I had planned on taking Ben to the playground. But I wasn't going to stop him from spending time with his father. Dave had missed several of his weekends with Ben lately and I knew my son missed his dad.

“Sure, that'd be fine.” Ben was awake by then, so I arranged a time for Dave to pick him up and then passed the phone to Ben so he could talk to his father.

As I expected, Ben was excited about the idea of seeing the movie and spending time with his dad. He was jumping around in his bedroom. I thought a little time spent outdoors would both calm him down and give him the exercise he wouldn't get at a movie theatre, or the burger or pizza place his father would no doubt take him to later.

Clouds were starting to blow in, but it wasn't raining yet. I could see a few children in the play area at the back of the co-op.
When we got down there, Ben was thrilled to see Aiden. He ran over, eagerly chatting about the movie he was going to see.

Jeremy stood up from the bench where he'd been sitting at the edge of the playground. Thinking about the note I'd found, and the picture of Jeremy in the co-op so long ago, I hesitated before joining him. But his smile was so welcoming, I thought my nervousness was ridiculous. Jeremy had been so friendly. He couldn't be responsible for the note. And I must have misunderstood what he'd said about moving into the co-op after his di-

I walked over to join him.

“Dinner was great last night,” he said. “Thanks again for organizing it.”

His gorgeous smile was welcoming. I still felt nervous, wondering if I should ask him about the picture I'd found. But I hesitated. If someone was trying to warn me not to investigate, then announcing I was still looking into things would be stupid.

“It was nice, wasn't it?” I said, trying to sound casual. “And everyone helped too. So it really wasn't much work at all. Thanks for bringing the wine, and the casserole. I'm pretty sure Ben ate some of the sweet potatoes as well as the marshmallows. He was always so easy to feed when he was a baby. I never had much of a problem getting him to try new things. But now he's turned fussy. And he's usually such an easy-going kid.”

Jeremy didn't seem to notice anything amiss in my manner. “I think Aiden went through a picky stage at about the same age,” he said. “Fortunately he's going through a growth spurt right now, so he pretty much eats everything. Not that he doesn't have favorite foods, though. I think he'd live on hamburgers if I let him.”

I laughed. I really thought I could like this guy. It was crazy to think he had anything to do with the note. “With Ben, it's pizza,”
I said. “He thinks pizza is just about the best thing on earth. Spaghetti is almost as good, but broccoli or salad, not so much.”

“I think I felt the same about vegetables when I was his age. I remember my mom making me stay at the table until I ate at least some of my peas. I used to really envy this kid I knew who had a dog. One little slip from the plate to the floor and the vegetables were gone.”

I thought that part of Ben's problem was that his dad didn't make him eat balanced meals when they spent time together. But I wasn't going to share that with Jeremy.

“I guess I just need to keep giving him healthy food and hope he eats at least some of it,” I said. “I look forward to him growing out of the picky stage.”

“Cheer up,” Jeremy said. “Once he reaches puberty, you won't be able to keep food in the house. I remember when I was that age and my mom complaining about how much groceries cost every week. I guess I'll have to start saving up for when Aiden's that age.”

I looked at my little boy, laughing as he tried to use the teeter-totter with the much bigger Aiden. He kept rising to the top and shrieking with protesting laughter until Aiden pushed off and let him down again. It was hard to imagine him as a gangly teenager, eating mounds of food and growing quickly. I hoped his dad and I would be able to cope with the teenage hormones.

Jeremy had given me the perfect opening to ask if he had lived in the co-op as a teenager. But then he went on.

"So,” he said. “I gather you used to work at the
Sun
.”

“Yeah, I was a reporter for a few years. I liked it. It was always exciting. Now I'm doing contract work, mostly writing and editing for corporate clients but also some articles for magazines and newspapers.”

“That's a coincidence,” Jeremy said. “I'm self-employed too. I do graphic design—mostly ad or newsletter layout, or designing logos and packaging. But I get to do some illustrations. And I paint when I have the time. I like the freedom of being self-employed, but it's been a bit tough finding work in the current economy.”

“Tell me about it! But working from home makes it easier to spend time with Ben when I need to. And moving into the co-op has really helped us. We were spending so much to rent the condo we lived in. And the stairs were really hard for my father. The co-op was really a life-saver for us.”

“Yes, it's been a good place to live. And to raise kids in. Aiden likes the co-op a lot. And of course . . .”

Again there was a chance to ask him about the picture. But we were interrupted by shouts from the two boys. They had moved to the swing set and were yelling at us to watch how high they could go.

“Of course,” Jeremy went on, “Les was a bit concerned because Aiden spent a lot of this summer with his grandparents in Ontario, his mother's family. You know we've had a bit of trouble with over-housing in the co-op? Some of the children of the older members have grown up and moved out. So the members are living alone in two or three bedroom apartments. And they don't want to move, but the co-op is trying to encourage them to downsize to a smaller apartment. So Les was a little concerned when Aiden wasn't around for a couple of months. It's up to the board to set a good example. Anyway, Aiden is back at school now, and he lives with me every second week. So I guess I can keep my two bedrooms.”