A Bird in the Hand (2 page)

Except when the outdoor event is murder, apparently. The steady downpour was rapidly turning the perfectly shorn park grass into a sludge pit, and from the general tsk-tsking of the crime scene technicians as they scurried around snapping photos and marking possible evidence, someone would have to answer for it. I wasn't quite sure to whom they would send their collective complaints, since neither the chamber of commerce nor the mayor had anything to do with nature's many gifts. At least I didn't think that they did. However, I can attest that sometimes life is indeed stranger than fiction. Perhaps there was something I had missed when researching what constituted mayoral duties.

"I'll just need a moment of your time, ma'am, if you're ready," said a rotund officer whose face seemed to glisten with effort instead of rain. I glanced from him to my husband, waiting, I think, for a sign that it was alright to speak. After all, Gregory's forte is the law, while mine is the ability to insert an entire foot into my mouth.

"My wife's had a great shock, as you might imagine," Greg responded for me, his hand tightening slightly on my shoulder. "Perhaps I could help?" It came out as a question, but the tone spoke volumes.

"That's fine by me," agreed the officer. "If you'd like, ma'am, you can take a seat in the cruiser." He gestured over his shoulder at the black and white parked nearby. "At least it's dry in there," he added with a grin.

That sounded good to me, though I wasn't sure how I'd feel sitting in the back of a police car. Warm won out over vanity, though, and I scurried as quickly as I could go over the wet grass, Trixie a shivering bundle of rather pungent fur in my arms.

I had done my civic duty by discovering the poor man, and if anyone deserved a dry place from which to watch the unfolding investigation, it was me. At any rate, by the time Greg had finished with the officer (and not the other way around, I noticed with some amusement), I was almost dried off. True, my shoes made a funny squishing sound as I walked next to Greg, Trixie again on the leash and trotting at my side, but I was far more comfortable than those whose job included working a crime scene, and I began feeling almost normal as we strolled toward our house.

I managed to keep my many questions under wraps until we got far enough away from the park so as not to be overheard. Gregory, knowing me as he did, gave my arm a slight squeeze as I opened my mouth, preparatory to asking what he'd learned.

"Not even one hint?" I gave him a sideways glance, hoping to surprise Gregory into giving up something I could hang my thoughts on.

"Not now, Caro." He was in his typical legal mode, still digesting the information he'd gotten, so I didn't push the issue. "They'd like us to come down to the station and make a more formal statement," he added almost as an afterthought.

I liked the notion of
us.
I reached for his hand, glad to have someone versed in the law on my side.

We discarded our wet things at the back door, thoughtfully fitted out with a bench to sit on and a basket for our outdoor gear. Of course, the bench was damp, but so were we, and it made little difference whether I sat on it to remove my soggy footwear or not.

Trixie, on the other hand, was in an all-fired hurry to get back indoors. She loves her bed, outfitted with a comfy afghan and a down-filled pillow that once gave me a sneezing fit. I'm alright around feathery items if they aren't nestled next to my nasal passages all night long, and Trixie adores it, so we're both happy. Gregory, being the long-suffering man that he is, has never once mentioned that Trixie now has a very expensive pillow in her doggie bed. It is his silence on the topic, though, that bothers me more than anything else might. It's one of his many talents, this echoing silence, and he tends to use it to his advantage quite frequently.

I managed to wait until we were seated at our antique kitchen table, hands wrapped around ceramic mugs of steaming coffee, before I again attempted to broach the topic of dead-man-under-a-bush. What, I pressed, did the officers have to say on the subject? And did they know who he was?

Gregory's beatific smile behind his coffee mug could have adorned a saint. He stretched the silence out until I could almost feel the snap of electric atmosphere before he answered. Even then, he played it close to the vest.

"Well." He paused and took another sip of coffee, then stood to grab the apple strudel left over from last night's dinner. With arched eyebrow, he silently offered me a slice, and I answered in kind. My eyebrows, however, were bunched together in frustration, and I wanted information more than the delicious dessert from our local bakery. However, I chose to play along and waggled my eyebrows in response. And the strudel wasn't so bad the second time around, either.

Finally, pastry consumed and crumbs carefully dispatched, Gregory spoke. As I was trying to get everything he knew out of him, I kept my frown to minimum wattage. He has been known to clam up whenever he thinks folks need to learn patience.

"Apparently he is, or was, a private investigator from the city." He took another sip of coffee, running an inquisitive tongue around the edge of his mouth in search of stray crumbs. I shook my head in distaste and handed him a serviette (napkin in Yank-speak). The man may be close to perfection, but he still has issues with table manners that I've never been able to correct.

When we townies refer to "the city," it is
the
city we mean—New York City. Our smallish burg, located in upstate New York, is as far removed from the hustle and bustle of NYC as the earth is from the moon, yet anyone who finds out where we are from seems to think that we should be on intimate terms with Broadway and Central Park.

I raised my eyebrows at Greg, tacitly asking for more.

"He had a business card in his pocket that the police department wants to keep hushed up for the time being," he went on. "But since I've already seen it, I imagine it would be alright to let you know what it said."

"And?" I risked Gregory's ire with my question, but either the sugar had mellowed him or he was tired from his ride. Whatever the cause, he spilled the beans without seeming to hesitate.

"It's a business card from the mayor's office."

Now I was entirely flummoxed. Why in the world would the mayor be running a private investigation company? I said as much, and the look I got in response told me my error.

"Aha!" I countered his stare with an innocent one of my own. "The mayor has
hired
the man in question. And has not employed him, so to speak." I took a sip of coffee, keeping my mouth occupied while I watched my husband struggle with his self-restraint. It was certainly a sight to behold, and I found myself quite enjoying the spectacle. Gregory dislikes losing control in any form, and I was witnessing a mighty battle right at my kitchen table. Finally he was able to answer. Unfortunately, most of it was not repeatable, but it was definitely worth the wait.

With as much dignity as I could muster, I rose and placed my mug in the sink, pausing to kiss the little bare spot on the top of my husband's head. (It is only a swirl, he likes to point out, but I recognize a burgeoning bald patch when I see one.) Knowing his character as well as my own, I knew that he'd come clean sooner rather than later, and I'd have the information I desired.

In addition to my interest in crime, I'm also enthralled with the inner workings of the legal system (my spouse's influence) and our local HOA (my own curiosity). The latter has my interest because of an ongoing battle with one of my neighbors, the dreaded Cat Lady of the neighborhood. I am convinced that she has taken in every stray since this subdivision was built, and probably began her collection long before that. I have tried to keep count of the myriad felines seen slinking around her house, first with a journal that held descriptions of said cats, but that soon became an exercise in futility. I discovered that it was nearly impossible to keep track of every cat according to markings and color, since after a while they all appeared alike to me.

The next step was to employ my rarely used high-powered birding binoculars, a gift from my husband in yet another attempt to lure me into the great outdoors. Of course, I kept my enterprise to myself, knowing how Gregory feels about the principle of individual privacy. He deems it nearly as sacred as the right to share the road with large trucks, something that keeps me in a state of agonized suspense whenever he heads out for one of his rides. I have threatened to put neon flashing signs on the back and front of his jersey to give fair warning to drivers that might not notice his slight frame peddling away on the side of the road. I traded my damp clothing for my favorite bedtime ensemble, feeling the need for comfort rather than fashion. Snuggled deep into a ratty chenille bathrobe, I headed into my study and settled in for a session of spying on Mrs. Cat Lady. Notebook and several sharpened pencils at the ready, I retrieved my binoculars from my desk drawer and held them up to my eyes in order to check the lenses. I aimed them out the window toward the offending domicile and nearly dropped them in my astonishment. Staring back at me, a grim smile playing on her lips, was my neighborhood nemesis herself. I had been caught red-handed, and there was no doubt about it.

I froze as I was, hands glued to the binoculars, taking the position that less movement was to my advantage, and if she couldn't see me move, then she could not see
me
. Alas, I seem to recall a nephew believing the same erroneous adage. Whenever he wanted to sneak into the kitchen for some forbidden treat, he would plop his pudgy hands over his eyes and declare that I couldn't see him. Of course, such sweetness always earned him said forbidden treat, so perhaps there was a method to his madness after all.

I had a feeling, though, that my neighbor would not be as understanding.

"What in Heaven's name are you doing, Caro?"

I nearly fainted for a second time that day as Gregory entered my study, careful eyes noting my stance at the window and the binoculars in my hands. There was no hiding my guilt, and I did what came naturally to me: I turned the tables to the best of my ability.

"And what in Heaven's name are you doing in here? Spying, perhaps?" Gregory hates to be accused of anything vaguely resembling a crime. "Or maybe," and here I gave him a smile that would disarm even the most persistent mole, "maybe you are checking on the health of your wife?" I all but batted my lashes, taking the opportunity to tuck the offending binoculars behind my back.

Gregory is rarely taken aback. He has lived with me for nearly twenty years and is accustomed to my whims, but he has never allowed himself the pleasure of delving into my mindset, no matter how it might or might not affect him directly. That is certainly one trait that has endeared him to me. Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion that he chooses not to as a measure of maintaining sanity. Mentally tossing my head at this thought, I continued to hold the smile as I began shuffling sideways in an attempt to unload the binoculars on my desk.

"You know, Caro, sometimes I can't, for the life of me, figure you out." And with a shake of his head, Gregory turned around and left my study, leaving me to finish my strange two-step without an audience.

Except for Mrs. Nosey Grayson. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder to see if I could still spot her at her window, but my eyesight has begun to act its chronological age lately, and I could see nothing but a blur where I thought her house might be standing.

Not that it really mattered, I thought as I flipped through my notebook, a smile of satisfaction on my lips. With the amount of ammo contained in those pages, I would be able to blast her from here to kingdom come at the next HOA meeting. The thought did my heart good, and I tucked all of my spy gear away to wait for that moment of triumph, when I would once and for all banish those pesky felines from using my yard—and the rest of the neighborhood—as their private litter box.

The last HOA meeting we had attended had garnered quite a bit of attention in our town's local tabloid. Apparently it is considered a form of entertainment when one chooses to speak up in a public meeting. Of course, "speaking up" is a euphemism for the shouting match that Feline Fancier and I had over—what else?—stricter laws for animals. I was for, she against, and it went something like this:

"Ladies, I must insist that you let each other finish before commenting." This came from Avery Stanton, the HOA president, a rather meek-looking man whose wife sat as vice president and spent every meeting glaring at her poor spouse if he did not run the meeting to her specifications. It always amused me to think that he was also our town's vice-mayor, especially since Mayor Greenberg—also known as His Highness and several other unflattering sobriquets in our house—was as overbearing as Mrs. Stanton.

"I don't know who died and made you the queen of cats," this was me, virtually spitting the words across the room, "but I for one am sick of your brood using my yard as their litter box!" This was followed by a triumphant toss of the head to a spattering of applause from those around me.

"And I don't know who died and made you—made you queen of the neighborhood!" This was Cat Lady's rather weak response (in my opinion), but it garnered some support from the folks nearest her.

And so it went,
ad nauseam
,
ad infinitum
, and all the rest. To say the least, it was probably the closest some of our neighbors had gotten to excitement in quite a while. And it did put some color into Avery's thin cheeks. I don't think the poor man has had much to be excited about in his life.

I took another peek out the window. The sky had taken on a pearly glow as the gray clouds began to break apart, letting a feeble sun soak up the damp patches scattered around the yard and street. The sight made me perk up considerably, and I stood another moment by my desk, tapping one finger against my chin. An idea was beginning to take shape in my rather active imagination, and the more I thought about it, the more sensible it became.

The Cat Lady's back windows faced the park, I mused. It was possible—okay, more than likely probable—that she used those binoculars of hers to watch more than my window. What were the chances that she might have seen something amiss at said park earlier that morning, or perhaps the evening before? Not knowing the time of death for that poor man, I was allowing for a larger window of opportunity. Maybe, just maybe…