A Tale of Two Tabbies (2 page)

I replaced the wood paneling but kept the box.

“What’s that?” Cody asked.

“I’m not sure. Sydney led me to it. I’m betting it’s important.” I looked around the room, which was a complete shambles. “I think I’m going to take Sydney and wait in the car.”

“I’ll come with you. There really isn’t much we can do until Finn gets here.”

“I hope Theresa is okay,” I said as I cuddled Sydney to my chest. “This place is such a mess. I hate to think what might have happened to her if the person who did this is also responsible for her missing choir practice.”

As I predicted, Theresa Lively wasn’t okay. Finn discovered her lifeless body in the trunk of her car shortly after he finished searching her home. Finn speculated that Theresa might have been killed elsewhere, stuffed into her car, and then driven home. He called in a crime scene unit in the hope of finding evidence inside the vehicle that would lead to the killer.

Because I’d found Sydney in the church Finn theorized that Theresa had been abducted from there. I mentioned my idea that it might have been kids who’d locked the cat in the confessional as a prank, but Finn pointed out that it was raining and had been off and on for a good part of the afternoon, so it was unlikely that either the cat or the kids had been out and about that evening. I had to admit that hadn’t occurred to me. I was really off my game. Finn was right: Theresa must have been at the church at some point, although I really couldn’t imagine why Sydney would have been with her.

Cody and I were allowed to leave once Finn took our statements. Neither of us had eaten, but we had Sydney with us, which would make stopping off for a bite difficult, so we picked up takeout and headed back to my place. Cody seemed to be unusually quiet as we drove through the rain-soaked streets. I suppose it made sense that he had Theresa’s murder on his mind, but my intuition told me there was something more.

“Something on your mind?” I inquired.

Cody turned and looked at me. He smiled, but it appeared to be forced. “I’m just trying to figure out who would have wanted to kill Theresa.”

“Is there anything else bothering you?” I prodded.

“No. Not really. Why do you ask?”

“Because you’ve seemed distracted all week. I wanted to talk to you about it on Monday, but you ended up working late, so we never did get together, and then I had to go to Seattle yesterday. This is the first time we’ve been alone since the weekend, so it’s my first opportunity to ask.”

Cody didn’t answer right away, which made me nervous. Really nervous. He’s normally an open book with his thoughts and feelings. I watched his face as he seemed to struggle with some sort of a decision.

“Cody?”

He pulled off the highway and onto the peninsula road. “There is something on my mind,” he admitted. “And I do want to talk to you about it, but I’m trying to make up my mind about something first.”

“Oh, God. You’re going to break up with me.”

“What? Of course I’m not going to break up with you.” Cody looked shocked by my suggestion, as if that were the furthest thing from his mind, which made me feel somewhat better.

“Then what is it?”

Cody slowed the car as he turned onto the drive that led to the houses on Maggie’s estate. “I love you, and someday I hope to marry you and live out the remainder of my life with you. I promise the thing on my mind has nothing to do with my commitment to you. But it does affect us, so I want to be sure before I bring it up.”

I felt the fear I had momentarily squelched come charging back.

Cody pulled up in front of my cabin. I wanted to say more, but Siobhan was heading across the lawn that separated the house she lived in with Maggie from mine.

“Finn called and told me about Theresa,” Siobhan said as soon as I opened the passenger side door. “Poor Theresa. Do we know what happened?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” I opened the side door to my cabin and let my dog Max out for a quick bathroom break. “Cody and I picked up Chinese. Do you want to come in and have some?”

“Sure, I could eat. Finn and I hadn’t gotten around to having dinner before you called and he said he’d be late so not to wait. Maggie has taken off on another one of her secret getaways, so I was just going to have a sandwich.”

“Maggie left again?”

“Right after breakfast.”

I couldn’t deny being concerned about Maggie’s odd behavior. I know she’s an adult and has a right to come and go as she pleases, but she’d been acting secretive lately and I couldn’t help but wonder where she was going that would require her to sneak around like a teenager. I found the entire situation to be unsettling.

Cody tossed a match on the fire while I let Max in, dried him off, and then opened a bottle of wine. We all served ourselves and then settled around the table in my breakfast nook. The waves just outside the window were crashing as the wind increased in velocity.

“We might lose power,” Siobhan suggested.

“I have a flashlight and some candles in the cupboard. I’ll get them out just in case.”

“It might be a good idea. I noticed the lights flickering in the big house before you arrived.”

In spite of the storm, I really love the coziness of my little cabin. Although it isn’t all that well insulated and tends to be drafty, it provides sturdy and secure shelter from the elements. It had originally been built as a summer cabin, but when I’d expressed my desire to move out of my mother’s house Maggie had offered to let me move in.

“Do we have any theories about what might have happened to Theresa?” Siobhan asked.

“Not so far. I really can’t imagine who would want to hurt her. She seems so nice, and not the least bit confrontational or controversial. The whole situation is beyond odd. I mean, the fact that Finn found her in the trunk of her car is absurd and no matter how hard I try I really can’t come up with a logical explanation as to why poor Sydney was locked in the confessional. The whole thing is just too strange.”

“What about the box?” Cody asked. “The cat led you to the box; perhaps the solution to the murder is contained inside it.”

“I guess we can try to get it open after we eat. It
is
a metal box and it
is
locked.”

“I have bolt cutters up at the main house,” Siobhan volunteered.

“I have a tool kit in my trunk,” Cody offered. “I’m sure I have something that will work.”

“The first thing I probably should do after dinner is go and see to the cats in the sanctuary,” I said.

“I’ll help you,” Siobhan offered. “I was actually heading over to do just that when I saw you pull up.”

The Harthaven Cat Sanctuary is really Maggie’s baby, but I fill in for her when she’s away. The sanctuary was built to shelter the island’s feral cat population after a law was passed making it legal to dispose of any cats on your property by any means necessary.

After we finished our meal Siobhan and I bundled up and made a mad dash through the rain toward the large indoor/outdoor structure. When we arrived I entered the first cat room, reserved for moms with kittens, and began the process of providing food and water, as well as clean linens and cat box litter. Each cat room has both an indoor and an enclosed outdoor area, where the cats can lie in the sun, climb trees, and romp to their hearts’ content.

I picked up one of the resident kittens and cuddled it. Maggie made sure all the kittens born at the facility were given large doses of human interaction. Once they turned eight weeks of age they were spayed or neutered, given shots, and adopted out to new families. The mama cats who could be rehabilitated were likewise altered and then adopted into forever homes.

“Did Maggie give you any hint as to where she might have gone?” I asked Siobhan.

“No. As usual, she simply told me that she would be gone for a couple of days and asked me to let you know. I promised her that we’d look after the cats and she mentioned that Marley knew she was going to be away and had promised to cover for her at the store.”

Marley Donnelly was Maggie’s best friend and business partner. Between them, they owned and operated the Bait and Stitch, an eclectic shop that sold both fishing and sewing supplies.

“It’s so odd the way she keeps disappearing. I mean, where could she possibly be going that she feels the need to keep her destination a secret?”

“Do you think she’s having an affair?” Siobhan wondered.

“I honestly doubt it, but even if she does have a guy, so what? She’s a single woman. Even if she’s meeting a man she really has nothing to hide.”

“Unless the man she’s having the affair with isn’t single.”

Siobhan had a point. If Maggie was involved in a relationship with a married man she would have cause to hide it, but Maggie really didn’t seem the sort to become involved in anything illicit. Sure, Maggie tended to speak her mind, and that did land her in hot water at times, but she also had a solid moral code that she tended to live her life by.

“You don’t think she’s sick?”

“Sick?” Siobhan parroted.

“While an affair with a married man isn’t Maggielike at all, trying to prevent us from worrying is
very
Maggielike. What if she’s sick with something potentially terminal, like cancer, and she doesn’t want to worry us, so she just disappears without a word when it’s time for her treatments?”

Siobhan frowned. I could tell she was considering my theory. As much as I hoped it wasn’t true, it made more sense than any other theory I’d managed to come up with so far.

“Do you really think she’d lie about something like that?”

“She might,” I answered.

“Yeah, I’m afraid I have to agree. Hiding a serious illness sounds exactly like something she might do. How can we find out for sure?”

I paused to think about Siobhan’s question. We could ask Marley. Of course even if Maggie confided in her, I sort of doubted Marley would spill her secret. Going through Maggie’s stuff seemed like an invasion of privacy, but maybe the next time she announced her departure prior to leaving I could follow her. I mean, it really isn’t spying if you just happen to be going in the same direction as someone you just happen to be worried about.

I’ve talked to Cody about the situation and he thinks I should just butt out. He insists Maggie is an adult and entitled to her secrets. It isn’t that I don’t think Maggie has a right to live her life as she sees fit without interference from the nieces she has been nothing but wonderful to. But I do worry about her. A lot.

“I’m not sure we can know for sure unless Maggie decides to fill us in on what’s going on,” I eventually answered.

Siobhan looked at me in the way only a sister who really knows you can. “Is something else wrong? I mean in addition to the fact that Maggie is being secretive and Theresa has been murdered.”

“Cody is being secretive as well. I tried to talk to him about it, but he said he needs to make up his mind about something. At first I thought he was planning to break up with me, but he says it isn’t that.”

“Of course it’s not that. Cody loves you. He’s planning to build a life with you. If he needs to work out whatever it is he’s dealing with, I’d give him some space. I don’t know what’s on his mind, but I do know he’d never hurt you.”

“I guess you’re right.”

After the sanctuary was cleaned and all the cats fed, Siobhan and I headed back to the cabin. Cody had managed to open the box and the contents were laid out on the table. There was only one item: a small black notebook.

I picked it up and looked inside. Most of the book contained blank pages, but there were a few with numbers and letters across the top, followed by dollar amounts below.

“What do you think this represents?” Siobhan asked.

“Maybe bank accounts?” I speculated. There were five pages in all that followed this pattern.

“If the numbers across the top are bank account numbers they aren’t for our local bank,” Cody supplied. “Unless they’re abbreviations, or perhaps some type of code.”

“I’m going to assume the notes in this book are an important clue as to what’s going on, but what do we do with them?” I thumbed through the book, trying to make sense of what I was looking at. “If these amounts represent actual dollars we’re talking about a lot of money.”

Cody looked over my shoulder. “I’d say it’s a ledger of some sort, but Theresa didn’t seem like someone who’d have a lot of money, and there must be almost a hundred grand written down here. Maybe more. Theresa lived in a nice house in a decent neighborhood, but it was small, and she drove a decent car but certainly not a luxury model.”

“Maybe it isn’t her money. Or maybe she’s keeping track of something else,” I suggested.

“Like what?” Siobhan asked.

“I have no idea."

“Maybe we should just turn the book over to Finn,” Siobhan said.

I paused before responding. Siobhan had a point. Finn was the actual cop around here, and I had no reason to doubt he’d do everything in his power to find Theresa’s killer. Still, there was a small voice in my head that kept nagging at me that we were going to want to refer back to this information at some later date, and Finn might not be able to provide it. It wasn’t unheard of for the sheriff to assign a different deputy to an investigation as serious as the murder of a longtime resident.

“I guess we should give the book to Finn, but I’m going to take a picture of each page first.” I took out my phone and began snapping a photo of each page. “Just in case we need to reference them at some point.”

I loaded the photos I’d just taken into my computer and then filed them in a folder named Sydney, because the book had come to us directly through Theresa’s cat. On the surface the file didn’t look to be important, but my intuition told me it was going to be very important indeed. It would be a few days before I understood just how important it actually was.