4 Cupids Curse (7 page)

“Do you have time for some lunch?” I tried for my most seductive voice
, but he merely kissed me on the nose and said he didn’t. He promised to call me later and left as abruptly as he must have arrived.

“Did you see that?” I asked Charlie. “I’m not sure I’ve ever felt quite so dismissed.”

I’m sure if Charlie could talk, he’d remind me that not only had Zak had to cut his business trip short but he was also busy trying to get the Zoo open by the next day. He’d remind me that Zak loved me and most likely didn’t intend to be abrupt, and that I should cut him some slack and get on with my day. If Charlie
had
said that, I might have listened, but instead I found myself sinking into an emotional slump it would take a crane to pull me out of.

Mary lived in a two-story house two blocks behind Main Street. The homes in the area were some of the first built in Ashton Falls, and while many of them were run-down, Mary kept hers as well as her limited funds would allow. Tawny had indicated that Trent had helped her out with a plumbing problem. It seemed our part-time contractor’s assistant was well versed in many aspects of the construction industry. I couldn’t help but wonder why he was working for what most likely barely topped minimum wage when he obviously had the skills to obtain a union job in a bigger town.

“Zoe,” Mary greeted
me as I walked up the front path, “and Charlie. What a nice surprise. Please do come in.”

I wiped my feet on the front mat and checked Charlie’s paws for mud before we entered the spotlessly clean if somewhat cluttered house.

“Can I get you some coffee? Perhaps a freshly baked muffin?”

“Thanks
, but we can only stay for a few minutes.”

“
What can I do for you?” Mary asked as we settled onto the sofa in the living room.

“I wanted to ask you about Trent Everett.”

My conversation with Mary started off much like the others had, with me asking questions about how she’d met Trent and her gushing about how he’d saved her from being homeless when he fixed her plumbing for free. Then I asked about any enemies he might have had, and she swore he was the kindest man to ever grace the earth. Toward the end of our chat, when I was asking about his life before he’d arrived in Ashton Falls, she got a distant look on her face.

“There was something,” she shared. “He got a call while he was here. He went into the other room to take it
, but these walls are thin and I couldn’t help but overhear. It seemed he was speaking to a man by the name of Bruno. I didn’t hear everything that was said, but Trent was upset that this Bruno had talked to someone named Giovanni. He seemed really upset. Madder than I’ve ever seen him.”

“Do you have any idea who
Bruno or Giovanni were?”

“None at all. I didn’t want to admit I’d overheard
, so I didn’t ask.”

“Can you remember anything else?”

Mary tapped her lip with her forefinger. “This is going to sound odd, but Trent seemed to be afraid of this Giovanni, but he also had a tone that indicated respect.”

“Respect? Like perhaps a cruel father figure?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you hear anything else?”

Mary shook her head. “I felt bad for listening, so I moved on down the hall.”

“Old Man Johnson mentioned someone Trent referred to as Reenie. Does that ring a bell?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Did Trent ever mention any siblings or other family members
to you?”

Mary thought about it. “I can’t say that he did. I got the idea that his childhood was painful. I don’t know this for certain
, but I think he was brought up in a family situation grounded in neglect and possibly abuse. He was always really good with my kids, but he seemed uncomfortable around them. He usually planned to stop by when the kids were at school, but he knew I was desperate to have the plumbing fixed. He told me he planned to go out of town for a while, so it seems he spent what turned out to be the last weekend of his life finishing my plumbing upgrade before he was to leave.”

“Did he say where he planned to go?”

“No, just that something had come up and he had to go away for a while. After he was done here, he said he had a job to finish up for you, but I got the feeling he planned to leave right after that. I guess he won’t be taking that trip now.” Mary wiped a tear from her cheek. “Who would do something like this?”

“I don’t know
, but I plan to find out.”

By the time I left Mary’s, the snow was back and I decided it might be a good idea to stop by the market to pick up some canned goods and other supplies, as Ernie had suggested when I was there on Sunday. Luckily, the soup was still on sale for a dollar a can. I threw some refrigerator biscuits into my basket as well. After stocking up on several other nonperishables, I headed toward the produce aisle, and then the dairy case. “So what do you think?” I asked Charlie. “Chocolate or vanilla?”

“More ice cream?” Ernie
asked as he walked up behind us.

“More? This is the first I’ve bought since Christmas.
I used up the last of the vanilla I had the other night with the brownies.”

“Oh
, I just figured the four half gallons Zak bought a while back were for you. I’ve never known him to buy much ice cream until a month or so ago, and I’d heard—” Ernie stopped in midsentence and actually blushed.

“
The ice cream wasn’t for me. He has a guest staying at his house. I suppose it could have been for the guest.”

“Yes, well
, I’m sure that’s it. Is there anything I can help you with? I got in some fresh strawberries I haven’t even put out yet. They’d go nicely with that ice cream. I’d be happy to throw in a basket.”

“Strawberries sound good.”

I glanced at Charlie with a look that said,
See, I told you Zak was up to no good
. Ernie was right; Zak wasn’t a fan of ice cream. If he’d bought four cartons, it had to be for his guest . . . a guest, I believed this proved, who was of the female persuasion.

“It’s going to be close to impossible to track down this Giovanni if you don’t have his last name,” Ellie pointed out later that evening as we shared a pitcher of beer with Levi at Mulligan’s. Levi had ordered chicken wings and French fries, while Ellie and I shared a salad and a baked potato casserole.

“I know
.” I set my beer aside and reached for one of Levi’s fries. “I’m beginning to think Trent was involved in some sort of Italian Mob situation.”

“What?” Levi laughed. “Mary remembers a phone call
during which a couple of names traditionally considered to be Italian are mentioned and suddenly Trent is part of the Mafia? Besides, Trent Everett is hardly a typically Italian name.”

“
Maybe,” I conceded, “but the Mafia angle makes as much sense as anything. This guy moves to town and mostly keeps to himself. He doesn’t make any friends, but in his spare time he runs around town like some sort of contractor Santa. Everyone loves him, but it seems that no one really knows him. He obviously has a past, but no one seems to know what that past might be. My theory is that he was on the run and as a result changed his name and moved to this tiny, out-of-the-way village where no one would find him.”

“Okay, as long as we’re making up stories, where exactly is this
Mafia family located?” Levi asked.

“New York,” I provided. “Or somewhere near there. Trent mentioned
staying with his grandparents in upstate New York when he was a kid.”

“I guess we could have Zak look into
Mob bosses named Giovanni in New York State,” Levi said. “Where is Zak, anyway?”

“Eating ice cream with some
one who isn’t me,” I complained as I refilled my mug.

“Come again?” Ellie asked.

I explained Ernie Young’s comment about the ice cream and Zak’s phone call earlier, letting me know that he’d be busy all night and would catch up with me tomorrow. “It’s clear to me that he’s having an affair.”

“I will admit that Zak has been acting a little odd lately,” Ellie contributed, “but there
’s no way he’s having an affair. He’s probably working, just like he told you. Zak isn’t like us. He has a
big
life. He has contracts with multinational conglomerates worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s actually amazing that he spends as much time here in Ashton Falls as he does.”

“I know. It’s just that I miss him
, and he keeps promising to slow down.”

“And he will,” Ellie predicted. “He’s only been back
in Ashton Falls on a full-time basis for a short time. I’m sure he had a lot of things in the works from before he decided to devote his life to making you happy.”

I smiled. I had to admit he’d been pretty great at doing just that. I understood that he had a busy business life
, but the ice cream and the houseguest had Jealous Zoe on full alert.

“What time do you want me to come by
Ellie’s on Saturday?” Levi asked Ellie.

“The earlier the better. I hope to be there by seven. I’ll have coffee and homemade muffins
waiting.”

“Boysenberry,” Levi requested.

“Boysenberry it is.”

“Did you decide on
the paint color?” I asked.

“Not yet. I’m going to go by
to talk to your dad tomorrow. He seems to have his finger on the pulse of the paint-and-wallpaper industry.”

“Yeah, he’s the best,” I said
, in a tone that conveyed less enthusiasm than the words indicated.

“You still mad about Sunday?” Ellie asked.

“I’m not sure
mad
is the right word, but yeah, I’m still upset. There’s just something about Blythe. Something I don’t trust. I’m pretty sure she’s trouble; I just don’t know exactly what her game is quite yet.”

“Have you considered,” Levi asked, “that she doesn’t have a game
? Maybe she’s exactly who she says she is.”

“Look
, I know you think my problem with Blythe is all wrapped up in my jealousy of any woman who might monopolize my dad’s time. But I promise you that’s not it. There’s something not quite right about her, and I promise you I’ll find out what it is.”

The snow had temporarily stopped by the next morning, although the sky was heavy with clouds just waiting to dump the couple of feet of snow the National Weather Service predicted would fall by the weekend. Charlie and I took advantage of the brief reprieve to shovel the snow off the decks, then go for a quick snowshoe. I’d secretly hoped that Zak would miss me so much that he’d work things out and stop by the previous evening, but he hadn’t. I don’t know why I was so surprised about the number of hours Zak seemed to work. He was a successful businessman who’d made millions in the computer software industry. While Levi, Ellie, and I had spent our high-school years attending football games and going to weekend parties, Zak had built a software company in his garage, which he’d sold for tens of millions of dollars by the time he was twenty-one. For the next few years, he’d traveled the world, but he’d recently decided to start a new enterprise and had moved back to Ashton Falls. At least he lived here full-time in theory, though he tended to spend a lot of time traveling to business meetings of one type or another.

I made a fresh pot of coffee and then went into shower
to dress for the busy day ahead. Zak had somehow managed to pull some strings, and the county had completed the inspection and signed off on the permits, allowing us to open on time. The only concession was that we would be unable to use the cages located in the hallway where Trent’s body had been found. The bear cage was located at the end of its own wing, so most of the facility was ready and waiting for the dozens of new guests Jeremy and I were expecting to accommodate.

As the day wore on
, my excitement turned to despair as the much-anticipated opening of Zoe’s Zoo came and went without any animals being dropped off or a single call concerning a stray dog or nuisance wildlife was received. I’m not sure what I was expecting exactly, but I certainly wasn’t anticipating that no one would even drop by.

“Maybe people figured with the murder investigation
, the Zoo opening would be delayed again,” Jeremy offered. “We’ve changed the opening day about a million times. I guess people must have lost track.”

“Maybe. Still
, it seems like we would have gotten a call from
someone.
Are you sure the phone lines are working?”

“Checked them seven times,” Jeremy confirmed.

“I figured it might take a while to get back into our old groove, but the total absence of customers makes me feel like the community doesn’t really need us,” I complained.

“They need us.” Jeremy put his arm around my shoulder. “We’ve been closed for three months.
It’s just going to take a while to remind people we’re back.”

“I guess.”

“Listen, I wanted to ask if I could come in late on Wednesday of next week. Gina has a doctor’s appointment and I’d really like to be there.”

Gina
is Jeremy’s ex-girlfriend, who realized she was pregnant with Jeremy’s baby last fall. She was a model at the peak of her career and planned to have the pregnancy terminated until Jeremy offered to step up, pay all of her expenses, and raise the baby on his own if she went through with the pregnancy.

“No problem,” I responded. “I think it’s great that you want to be involved in every step of the process. How’s Gina doing
, anyway?”

“Not good,” Jeremy answered. “She’s to the point in her pregnancy where she feels fat and bloated. She’s no longer able to work and
is bored to tears. I’ve tried to do what I can to make her comfortable and provide some level of entertainment, but everything I do seems to be wrong. I’m pretty sure she’s regretting her decision to follow through with the pregnancy.”

“It’ll just be a few more months and t
hen she can get on with her career, and you and Morgan can start building a life.”

Jeremy’s baby was due in April and he’d recently found out
Gina was having a girl he planned to name Morgan Rose, after his favorite heavy-metal drummer.

“Does Gina want to be part of
Morgan’s life after the birth?”

My mom had only been eighteen when she realized she was pregnant with me.
After my uptight and stodgy grandparents found out she was expecting, they shipped her off to an “aunt’s,” where I quietly, under the shroud of absolute secrecy, was delivered into the world. My grandparents wanted an anonymous adoption, but my dad fought hard and convinced them that he would raise me in isolation from the judgmental eyes of their aristocratic friends.

“She says no
, but I’ve pretty much decided that if she ever changes her mind, Morgan and I will welcome her to participate as much or as little as she likes.”

“My mom wanted nothing to do with me for the first four years of my life,” I shared. “And then
, out of the blue, my grandfather’s representative notified my dad that she wanted to arrange a visitation.”

“How’d it go?”

“Terrible. I was escorted to a huge and intimidating estate, where I cowered in the closet in spite of my mother’s clumsy attempt to parent me, until someone took mercy on me and returned me to my dad.”

“Sounds pretty awful. Still
, Gina will always be Morgan’s mother, whether she decides to act accordingly or not. I intend to make her a part of our life from the beginning. I’m planning to have photos of Gina in Morgan’s room, and I’m going to make sure she knows who her mom is from an early age.”

“That’s probably a good idea. My dad never really talked about my mom before she appeared in my life
, so the whole thing was a huge shock.”

“So do you have a relationship with your mom now?”

Good question. “Not really,” I answered. “She pops up now and then and we share a brief visit. She was in town last summer, but we didn’t connect, although she sent me an awesome snowboard for Christmas, which is about the most thoughtful thing she’s ever done. My mom has money. A lot of it. She’s spent most of her life traveling the world spending it.”

“Sounds awesome.”

“Sounds lonely,” I disagreed.

“Oh
, look.” Jeremy pointed toward the front window. “It looks like we have a customer.”

I looked out
of the window as a small boy around six or seven got out of the passenger side of a four-door sedan. He didn’t appear to have an animal to drop off, so I figured he’d come by to adopt. I felt bad that we didn’t have any animals
to
adopt and hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed. I watched as the boy said something to the driver and then walked up the walkway Jeremy had recently shoveled. He couldn’t quite manage the door on his own, so he knocked and waited for Jeremy to answer.

“This where you bring animals to get new homes?”
the boy asked.

“It is
,” Jeremy answered. “Would you like to come in?”

Jeremy stepped aside and the boy entered.

“Do you take all kinds of animals?”

Jeremy looked at me. I nodde
d. How bad could it be? The kid was probably six, so I doubted he had a gorilla in the backseat of the car.

“We take most kinds of animals,” Jeremy confirmed.

The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a brown-and-white hamster. “This here is Squeaky. Mom says he has to go.”

“We’d
love to find a home for Squeaky,” Jeremy replied. “Do you have a cage?”

“No. I g
ot him from a friend, but my mom didn’t want him, so I hid him in my sock drawer. Mom did the laundry today.”

“I see
.” Jeremy smiled. “I think we have a cage in the back. If your mom doesn’t mind waiting, you can help me look for it. That way you can be assured that Squeaky is all settled before you leave.”

“What’s assured?”

“Comfortable,” Jeremy replied.

“
I want Squeaky to be comfortable. I’ll ask her. Can you hold him?”

The boy handed his sweet little pet to Jeremy. It really was too bad his mom wouldn’t let him keep the low
-maintenance animal. I know I have a unique way of looking at things, but as far as I’m concerned, every kid needs a pet.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Zak informed me later, after I complained to him on the phone. “I’m sure the shelter will be filled with four-legged friends in need of homes in no time at all.”

“I guess.” I knew Zak was right
, but I was still disappointed we didn’t have a better turnout.

“I’ll come by the Zoo to see
you in the morning, since I won’t be able to see you tonight.”

“You won’t be seeing me tonight? You just got home. I thought we’d do something
together.”

“It’s Thursday.”

“So?”

“You have book club on Thursdays.”

“I could skip.” I was trying for a deep, sultry voice.

“Are you getting a cold? You sound a little raspy.”

“No, I’m fine.” So much for sultry.

“You know I’d love to see you tonight
, but I really do have a lot of work to catch up on, and doing a computer search for your victim is going to put me even further behind. I really should stay home and work, and you should go to book club as planned.”

“I could come by after,” I offered.

“I’ll probably work late. Let’s just get together tomorrow.”

“Yeah, okay
,” I said with a sigh.

After I hung up
, I decided to check all the doors and windows before setting the alarm and closing up for the day. I was fairly certain that whoever had killed Trent had simply come in through the front door, which he’d most likely left unlocked when he arrived, but the incident had left me with a temporary feeling of vulnerability. After confirming that the windows, doggy doors, and outside exits were all secure, I headed toward the larger cages in the wildlife wing of the facility. Although this part of the Zoo was still taped off, I found I couldn’t quite make myself leave without checking the exits in this hallway as well.

I flipped on lights as I worked my way down the hall. The first room was a smaller enclosure with an indoor
/outdoor area that had been specifically designed with raccoons in mind, of which we usually have several at any given time. Beyond the raccoon enclosure was a medium-size cage where we kept coyotes or the occasional bobcat, and beyond that were two large enclosures designed to accommodate the bears we seemed prone to attract.

As I reached for the light switch after checking to make sure everything was locked
, I noticed that one of the branches of the artificial tree we had built in the middle of the room for the cubs to climb on was bent at an odd angle. I stepped into the room for a closer look and noticed something peeking out from under the artificial turf. I bent down and pulled back the flooring to discover a brass button much like the one I’d seen on the man in Rosie’s earlier in the week. The longer I studied the button, the more certain I was that it belonged to the man who I’d already decided was linked to my evil “stepwitch” in a dark and sinister way.

As I did on most Thursdays, I met with the eight members of the senior-center book club to discuss the latest in literary entertainment. Most people didn’t understand why I chose to hang out with this particular set of geriatrics because the generation gap was more of a gorge, but in my opinion, the depth of experience and insights of the group members more than made up for the difference in our ages.

“Wasn’t sure you’d be here
.” Pappy kissed my cheek as I sat down next to him.

I shrugged. “Zak had work to do and I’d read the book
, so I figured why not.”

“How was the opening?”

“It was a bust,” I admitted. “We did manage to acquire one new guest: a hamster named Squeaky. I’m pretty sure Jeremy is going to keep him, though. The little guy is really cute, and Jeremy spent most of the day playing with him.”

“
Sorry to hear you didn’t have a better turnout. I suppose folks might have been put off by the body that was found in your cage. Any word on who might have killed that nice young man?”

“
Not officially. I found a button in the cage while I was locking up,” I informed him. “I’m certain it belonged to a man I ran into at Rosie’s. I took the button to Salinger, who said he’d look into it.”

“You’re t
alking about the man who thought Blythe was someone named Adriana?” Pappy asked.

“Yeah
. How did you know?”

“
Your dad mentioned it. He was telling me about your lunch, and it came up.”

“Can you believe Dad’s actually thinking of moving in with th
at woman?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much. I get the impression he’s just toying with the
idea, that he’s far from being committed to a course of action.”

“I hope you’re right. It’s much too soon
. Besides, I’m pretty much convinced Dad’s new girlfriend is evil.”

“Evil?” Pappy laughed. “Why would you say that?”