The Death of Perry Many Paws (31 page)

I awoke again about an hour later and staggered downstairs, dying for a diet soda and something for my headache. Chocolate would be good. My thawed bagel was on the counter with a roughly cut out heart made from a napkin. I smiled even through the excruciating pain. The newspaper was also lying on the counter. Cam knew I loved to read the paper while I ate my breakfast. I settled into my seat and lavishly covered my cranberry bagel with butter. This was the life, minus the headache and sleep deprivation.

I thought of Franklin sitting at his kitchen table. Had he felt this same contentment as he sat at the table and ate his breakfast and read the paper? I hoped so. Maybe the most simply led lives were the most rewarding. No deadlines. No appointments. No expectations. Just a simple day filled with what brought you the most pleasure—eating, reading, writing, sleeping.

But Franklin had never seemed happy when we saw him. Maybe when we weren’t interfering with his day, peeking in his window and trying to converse with him, he may have been as happy and content as a human being can be. I was having a nagging thought that there might be something important about Franklin sitting at his kitchen table reading the paper and eating his breakfast when I glanced up at the calendar on my kitchen wall. Oh, my God. My annual appointment with my gynecologist was in thirty minutes!

I leaped up from the table and ran upstairs. How could I have forgotten? I usually obsessed and whined about this appointment for days ahead of time. It was all the doctor’s fault for starting Saturday hours. No one planned to go to the doctor on a Saturday. I hadn’t taken a shower last night because Cam and I had been up late talking about Syra’s initials. And now there wasn’t time. I darted into the bathroom and did a cursory cleanup. I grabbed the first clothes I could find and put them on as I raced down the stairs, tripping over my jeans and trying to put my socks on while hopping on one leg. I couldn’t find my purse. I couldn’t find my keys. There was nothing I could do about the grease stain on the front of my shirt I noticed just as I was running out the door.

I sped out of the driveway and realized I had forgotten my coat. I put the car heater up to high. I frantically pawed around in my purse with my right hand while I steered with my left, trying to find my brush. My purse slipped off the passenger seat and fell to the floor, spilling its contents all over the car. I could see my brush but couldn’t reach it unless I bent down and took my eyes off the road for several seconds. Bad idea. I contented myself with a string of curses that would have curled my hair if it had been clean and had any body in it at all. I swerved into the medical building parking lot and almost took out a fire hydrant that someone had placed too close to the road. I parked on the yellow line and bent over to try to grab as many items as
I could reach to stuff back into my purse. The brush still eluded me so I ran my fingers through my hair and tried to puff it up and pretend I was going for the natural look that was so popular among movie stars.

I ran up the sidewalk and banged through the double doors. The elevator was too slow to arrive so I ran up the steps to the second floor where the ob-gyn suite was located. I burst into the waiting room and a dozen pairs of eyes turned and stared. I put my head down and scurried to the check-in window, where I was informed that I was ten minutes late and was to go in immediately; the world of gynecology must have come to a grinding halt in anticipation of my arrival. The nurse led me into the lab room and told me to sit while she took my blood pressure.

“160 over 90,” she reported with a frown. “That’s very high for someone your age.”

I nodded. “I’ve been running …”

“Give me a urine sample and we’ll retake your blood pressure,” she said.

I dutifully went into the bathroom to fulfill my obligation to the little bottle and then spent five minutes washing my hands and cleaning the outside of the bottle before putting it into the little revolving cupboard. Back in the lab room my blood pressure was now down to 140 over 85. I was making progress. The nurse shook her head, still not satisfied, and led me to the scale. I slipped off my shoes but the nurse wouldn’t let me remove anything else. “Up six pounds from last year.” She duly noted it on my chart.

“I know I’m a little overweight …” I tried to explain that the stain on my shirt had to weigh something but she ignored me.

She pulled out one of those government weight and height charts and glanced at it. “Yes, you are overweight for your height and build …”

“But I’m not obese!”

Damn it, she actually had to look at the chart again to make sure I didn’t fall into the obese category.

“No, you are not obese. Just about fifteen pounds overweight for your height and build.”

Ha. I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at her. I felt like I’d won a couple points because deep down I knew she was dying to tell me I fell into the obese category, which, by the way, I was pretty sure she was well-acquainted with herself. Misery loves company and so does fat. She showed me into the examining room and gave me the standard, “Take off everything and put on the gown; it opens in the front. Get up on the table. The doctor will be in shortly.”

Because I was late, I was afraid the doctor would be in before I had time to get modestly settled on the examining table so I hurried to get undressed and clambered onto the table. I spent a lot of time trying to arrange the paper blanket so that it would go around to my back and cover up the expanse of flesh that the short little paper jacket didn’t cover. But if I had my rear covered, then my legs were woefully on display in the front and I had planned to shave them in the shower this morning, the shower I didn’t have time to take. Hairy legs. Fat butt. Hard to make a decision as to which was more offensive. There was a knock at the door and the doctor and the obese nurse entered the room, startling me and causing me to lose my grip on the blanket, allowing it to flutter to the floor. Hairy legs and fat butt both exposed and both silently acknowledged by obese nurse. The doctor shook my hand and didn’t seem to notice my predicament.

He looked over my chart and asked the nurse to take my blood pressure once again. Now it was 130 over 80. He seemed satisfied with that. The nurse left and we chatted about my general health and I asked him about my late period. He assured me it was totally normal and explained perimenopause to me much the same way Diane had. He
gave me several pamphlets about perimenopause, bone health, healthy eating and blood pressure. I assumed I wasn’t supposed to read those while lying on my back during the exam so tucked them under my back while he examined me.

“You should get a television on your ceiling,” I suggested as I lay down and stuck my feet in the stirrups. Cam claims I can’t stop talking when I’m nervous.

“Scoot to the end of the table, please.”

“Or maybe a computer screen. Then you could show information about birth control or breast self-exams or whatever was most relevant to the person being examined.”

“Mmm.”

“Or you could ask them what they wanted to see. I’m not going to have any more children but I love seeing pictures of developing embryos.”

“Mmm.”

“Or maybe you could get permission from your patients to allow their ultrasound pictures to be shown. I’d love to see actual ultrasound pictures. I hear they are so much more detailed now, three-dimensional even. You can actually see the features of the baby.”

“Mmm.”

“But then you already know how much more advanced they are because you see them every day.”

“Mmm.”

“Can you believe Abbey is in college now? I still remember being in this office and listening to her heartbeat with you. Do you remember what a beautiful baby she was? I remember you saying how she was such a beautiful baby.”

“Mmm.”

“Do you remember how nervous Cam was? Cam is my husband. He was more nervous than I was. Of course he could see more of
what was going on so that didn’t help. He has sort of a delicate system when it comes to blood and stuff.”

The doctor got up and put his instruments away. “I’m sorry, were you saying something?” he asked.

“No.”

“You look good. We’ll call with the results of your Pap in about a week. Stay healthy and I’ll see you next year.” He shook my hand and left.

When I was growing up, all ordeals—piano recitals, doctor visits, dentist appointments, haircuts—were followed by a treat. Cam and I had followed that tradition, too, even if it meant keeping Abbey out of school for another half hour to stop at the Dairy Barn for a milkshake. After the morning I had had, I felt I deserved an awesome treat so headed over to Beaton’s Birdsey Café, known locally as BBC, for an early lunch. I ordered their specialty, a chicken salad sandwich on an Asiago bagel and a diet soda and sat back in my booth in the corner to think. I didn’t have anything with me to read, having left the breast self-exam pamphlets and other information in my car, so I pulled out a napkin and began to doodle notes about all the loose ends and oddities that were driving me crazy about Uncle Franklin’s murder.

First on the list was motive. It could have been a robbery. We were surprised that Franklin had over $800 in a paper bag in his closet. Who knew what else he had of value in his cottage? Just because no one knew about it didn’t mean there wasn’t something valuable in there. Or was the motive revenge? Did something happen in his youth, something that someone waited until now to repay? Seemed unlikely, but if someone were in prison or didn’t know where Franklin was, it could have taken this long to get to him. Or maybe someone was afraid of
what he was writing. Ryan and his friends had seen Franklin writing every night at his desk. We had found See
Here
of what appeared to be an autobiography. Did someone kill him for pages
1
-
22
? Why? And how about the quote from Edgar Allan Poe I had found in Franklin’s boyhood desk? That quote certainly sounded like the words of a man who had something to hide and was tortured by it. For a young boy to copy those words out of a story meant they had a strong meaning for him. It was like he was confessing to something. But what? Did someone from the long-ago indiscretion come back for revenge?

The waitress brought my diet soda in an old-fashioned cola glass with a red and white striped straw. I thanked her and returned to my list.

The second item to consider was means. How did someone get into Franklin’s house and kill him? That was pretty easy. He didn’t lock his doors. And it appeared that someone had taken the letter opener from his own desk, snuck up on him and shoved it in his neck. He was an old man. It would have been easy.

The third category was the one that kept me awake at night—that coupled with the house sounds that made me think people were pouring into my house like a battalion of carpenter ants. Loose ends. This was a major problem. Too many loose ends and unanswered questions.

“Would you like a refill?” I looked up at the waitress and down at my empty glass. I nodded my head. “Your sandwich should be out soon.”

“Thank you.”

Loose ends. Loose ends. Too many loose ends. I was making ink dots on my napkin as I counted all the loose ends. I should call this category “things that are driving me nuts.” The first one had to be Syra and Bing’s mother, Hetty Foster. Or Mary Willard. What was the deal with her? Her life had been less structured than Sybil or Claudia’s but she had been from a wealthy family. How did she end up wandering
the NYS Thruway hooking up with and having children by men she didn’t even know?

Then there was Ryan and the bloody shirt. If I believed his story, then this was resolved. Did I believe him? I wanted to, for Grace’s sake. But I didn’t really know him. I couldn’t cross Ryan and his shirt off the list yet. Then there were the seventy newspapers from April 1, one newspaper each year starting in 1938. Were these a clue or were they just trash, an old man’s eccentricity? I had heard about people hoarding old newspapers or magazines but never someone hoarding just one from each year. If I were a graduate psychology student, there might be material for a master’s thesis here. A twist on the traditional paper-hoarding psychosis. How much time did we want to spend searching these papers for an answer to his murder? That was difficult to determine.

“Would you like a piece of paper, Hon?” the waitress asked as she slid my sandwich plate onto the table.

“No, thanks. I’ll just start numbering the napkins if I need to use more than one.”

“Can I get you anything else? I’ll keep an eye on your drink for refills.”

“Thank you!” This waitress really understood me. I was feeling a good connection between us. I would have to ask for her next time I came in.

After a few minutes devoted to culinary pleasure I returned to my list. I had to pick a chunk of chicken salad off my “motive” paragraph.

Back to the loose ends. The bloody shirt. The newspapers. I wasn’t sure if the next thing that popped into my head had to do with the murder but it was something I didn’t understand and I needed to. Diane’s alleged flirtation with the policeman, Donny something. I’d known Diane a long time, since we were young mothers together. I had never seen her flirt with anyone. I’d talked to this Donny guy and
there was nothing wrong with him. He was younger, maybe fifteen years, than we were. He was nice looking. He didn’t have red hair or freckles so obviously he couldn’t be textbook handsome, but he was passable. I hadn’t witnessed Diane flirting with him but I had Grace’s take on the situation and had noticed how Diane was dressed more provocatively, fewer twin sets and more V-necks. I tapped the pen against my cheek as an empty glass was whisked off the table and a full one replaced it.