Dying to Read (20 page)

Cate resisted an urge to say, “Yes, would you like to speak with her?” Instead, in her most noncommittal tone, she said, “Yes, I do.” She reached out and gave Octavia’s white fur a reassuring ruffling.

“Mrs. Calhoun says that you removed the cat from her aunt’s home—”

Cate’s determination to be cool, calm, and professional evaporated, and her words came out in an indignant yelp. “I didn’t ‘remove’ her, Cheryl gave her to me! She wanted to get rid of her. She was going to take her to the pound.”

“I see.” Pause, as he no doubt collected powerful legal phrases to hurl at her. Pro bono. Corpus delicti. Habeas corpus.

Unequipped with legal phrases of her own, Cate settled for simple stubbornness instead. “And I intend to keep her.”

“Mrs. Calhoun does not, at this point, have authority to make disposition of any portion of Amelia’s estate. The cat is part of that estate. The will must go through the proper process of probate.”

A lot of words to say . . . what? You’ve got the cat and you’re in big trouble? “But Cheryl inherits everything, doesn’t she? Including Octavia?”

“I am not at liberty to disclose details of the will, but as executor I must abide by its terms. It is my duty to conserve assets of the estate and distribute them properly.”

Conserve assets. Like not letting one stray white cat escape his clutches?

“I’m sorry, but I’m not giving her up. I’m just not. And if you don’t like it, you can . . . sue me.”

Great going, Cate. You just suggested a hotshot lawyer sue you. What came next on this legal eagle’s schedule? A bombardment of court papers? Stolen cat complaint to the police?

“Are you looking for money, Ms. Kinkaid?” Mr. Ledbetter inquired suddenly. “You want payment for return of the cat?”

The question astonished her. Her indignation ballooned. “Money? No, I do not want money. I am not a cat kidnapper.” Inspiration! “Look, since you’re handling the estate and are concerned about money, how about if I pay you for Octavia? Estates sell things, don’t they?”

“You want to buy the cat?” The dignified attorney sounded taken aback. And, unexpectedly, momentarily human. Then, as if wary but curious, he added, “What’s she worth?”

Cate eyed the blue-eyed cat now regarding her from atop the nearby filing cabinet. “Well, I, um, don’t know. She’s a wonderful friend and companion, so that’s worth a lot. She was a stray, but she might be some fancy breed for all I know. She has beautiful blue eyes. She’s deaf, but she seems able to tell when a phone is going to ring.”

Dumb, dumb, dumb, Cate chastised herself. She should be bringing Octavia’s value down: she’s overweight, lazy, and loud, and you could knit a pair of leg warmers out of all the hair she sheds. Instead she was making her into Super Cat. And making herself sound like an irrational nutcase with the phone thing. At least she hadn’t mentioned the door opening.

“She must be a most extraordinary animal,” the lawyer said. Cate couldn’t tell if he was being facetious or patronizing. “Perhaps quite valuable.”

“I guess I probably can’t pay what she’s really worth,” she muttered.

“I see. But you absolutely refuse to return her?”

“I absolutely refuse,” Cate stated with more confidence than she felt. “But if you’ll set a price on her, I’ll try to come up with the money. Maybe I could make monthly payments?”

He ended the conversation smoothly and noncommittally. “Thank you, Ms. Kinkaid. As executor of the estate, I’ll give your offer careful consideration.”

And no doubt check her credit rating.

“We could run away,” Cate suggested to Octavia after the end of the conversation with the lawyer. “Disappear where they’d never find us.”

Mrrow.
Was that asking when? Or how big a supply of cat food Cate intended to take on the trip?

By evening Cate knew she had to call Kyle or he might just show up on her doorstep. And she definitely didn’t want that. Okay, she’d call Mrs. Collier and tell her that this weekend was out, but maybe sometime. That way she wouldn’t have to explain anything to Kyle. Maybe because she wasn’t sure what her explanation was? She got as far as looking up Mrs. Collier’s number on her phone. Then she changed her mind. She wasn’t going to hide behind Mommy. Before she could change her mind again, she punched the number Mrs. Collier had given her for Kyle into her cell phone.

“Kyle Collier here.”

After all these years, there he was. She felt a little light-headed. She didn’t know if she’d have recognized his voice if he hadn’t identified himself. Familiar, but different. More mature? “Hi, Kyle. It’s Cate.”

“Cate, it’s so good to hear from you!”

“Your mother said you’ve moved to a new job in Portland.”

“Yes. I’m really excited about it.” He talked about the new job with the gourmet food company and his apartment with a view of the Willamette River. He didn’t mention his broken relationship with Melanie in Atlanta or ask what Cate was doing now. “We have an awesome line of specialty teas. I remember how much you like to try different kinds. I can bring some along this weekend—”

“About this weekend,” Cate interrupted. She’d intended to say not this weekend, but maybe later, but it came out differently. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

A moment’s silence until he said, “Are you saying not a good idea for this weekend, or not a good idea for
any
weekend?”

“Any weekend, I think.”

“I see.” He sounded mildly stunned by that reaction. “Any particular reason?”

“Um, no. Just . . . um, no.” Brilliant dialogue, Cate. Any more um’s and you’ll have a catchy new song: um, um, um. Clap, clap. Um, um, um. She tried to be more articulate. “It didn’t work before, and I don’t think it would work now.”

“I wasn’t asking for a lifetime commitment, Cate. I just thought we might enjoy seeing each other again.”

Reproach. Oh yeah, Kyle had always been good at reproach. And now she felt like a total idiot. As if she had some overblown idea of her own hotness, and all he had in mind was a cup of tea.

She stuck to her decision anyway. If her relationship with Kyle had been God-solid, would their Cappuccino Conflict have exploded the way it had back then? “I don’t think so. But it was nice of you to think of me.”

“We had such plans, Cate.” A long silence from Kyle, as if he was thinking over their past together. “I think the breakup was a big mistake.”

“Maybe it’s the breakup with Melanie that’s a mistake.”

Huff of breath, as if he hadn’t realized this topic would come up. “Melanie is what this is really all about, then?”

Cate felt a splash of dismay. Was it? Was she letting some petty jealousy thing sabotage a wonderful possibility?

“You figure Melanie dumped me, and that’s why I’m running back to you? And now you’re going to give me the brush-off? Well, that isn’t what happened. I finally realized Melanie and I were no more right for each other than you and I were, and I had to get out. How did you know about Melanie anyway?”

“Your mom. My mom.”

“Oh yeah, the good ol’ Mom hotline.”

“You used it to get in touch with me!”

A couple of minutes on the phone, and they were squabbling again. And they didn’t even have a cappuccino machine to get it going. Kyle apparently decided to back off and start again with a new, less confrontational tactic.

“What are you doing now, there in Eugene? Have you gone back to teaching?”

“I’m a private investigator. I’m involved with a murder. I have a blonde wig. I’m buying a deaf cat.”

It took him a bit of time to absorb all that. Finally he said warily, “Are you all right, Cate? You sound . . . different.”

Was she all right? A high-powered lawyer was after her for catnapping. A good-looking knight on a white horse had walked out on her. She was tangled in a hotbed of could-be killers. Which added up to . . . what?

“I’m fine, Kyle.” She said the words out of reflex, but with some astonishment she realized they were true. In spite of the temporary weirdness of her life, she
was
fine. But Kyle was obviously feeling down, and she didn’t want to sound as if she were clicking her heels with exuberance, so she toned down her enthusiasm. “I’m looking for a different job. My health is great. My car’s running good. So everything’s fine, it really is.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Kyle said, even though he didn’t sound convinced.

“Kyle, look, I know that back then, down in San Diego, we both thought our relationship was ordained by God. That he choreographed our meeting, and he meant for us to be together. But people make mistakes about God’s will. I think we did. You said it just now. That you and Melanie weren’t any more right for each other than you and I were.”

“I said that?” He sounded surprised.

“You said that.”

“This really was a mistake, wasn’t it?” Kyle said. He actually sighed. “I’m sorry I bothered you. I guess I’ve just been feeling kind of lost and looked for something familiar to grab on to. But don’t tell me to grab on to God,” he added roughly. “I’ve already been through that with my dad.”

Okay, she wouldn’t tell him that, although it was what she was thinking. Neither would she tell him she’d pray for him, because she’d do that, whether he wanted her to or not.

“Actually, I appreciate your contacting me. It’s helping me straighten out my head about some things too.”

 15 

Yes, her head was straightened out about Kyle. No more letting her subconscious sabotage her present by dragging around something from the past. So, should she call Mitch? Although it wasn’t as if she’d chosen Mitch over Kyle. She’d just un-chosen Kyle.

Two days later, when she was still waffling about calling Mitch, he called her with a brisk rundown on what he’d dug up on the internet about Cheryl and her husband.

Cheryl Calhoun was fifty-six. She’d had two years at the University of Washington and an eighteen-year marriage that ended when the husband divorced her and quickly married another woman. She had a son and daughter, both living back East. Cheryl’s interior decorating business wasn’t going under yet, but neither was it flourishing. Their Springfield home was valued by the county assessor’s office at $625,000, less than what they’d paid for it. Scott Calhoun was fifty-one and had been with the local branch of a national stockbroker firm since coming to Eugene five years ago. He was active in a couple of civic organizations. He had grown children, but Mitch hadn’t been able to pinpoint where they lived. Neither Cheryl nor Scott had anything except minor traffic citations on their police records. They’d been separated briefly a year or so ago, but the court action was dropped. They’d taken a Caribbean cruise together shortly afterward.

“I can probably locate his children,” Mitch added. “If you think it’s important.”

“No, that’s fine. I don’t think it matters.”

On the surface, the Calhouns looked like any ordinary divorced-and-remarried couple. Middle-class, law-abiding, conservative lifestyle. With their twin BMWs, they obviously liked status symbols. So did a lot of people. The house value looked high to Cate, but it was in an area of similarly valued homes. The fact that it had dropped in value was probably more an indication of lower property values all over the country, not bad judgment on their part.

Nothing there to suggest Cheryl was desperate enough to concoct a push-auntie-down-the-stairs scheme.

However, there could be some under-the-radar problems. Troubles with Cheryl’s business. Scott’s earnings might also be dropping in an uncertain stock market. They could be in over their heads on the house even if not on a cliff brink of losing it. There was also Krystal’s close-to-vicious comment about Cheryl being so busy trying to hold on to her husband, and the possibility of his “roving eye.” Could Cheryl have figured a hefty inheritance would add some twinkle to her marriage?

Mitch didn’t bring up the subject of Kyle and the previous weekend, and before Cate could decide how to do so, he said he’d be out of town for a couple of days on business. End of conversation.

Cate stared at the silent phone in frustration. He’d done it again. He’d said he’d look up information about Cheryl and Scott, and he’d done it. The man who lived up to his word, even if he had to plow through ex-fiancés to do it. Commendable.

Cate touched her finger to her tongue and drew a five-pointed figure in the air.
Give the man a gold star. Sure, give him two.
She drew another star with her finger, then punched both with her fist.

Cate and Rebecca moved Uncle Joe from the hospital to a rehabilitation center. In his condition, he couldn’t literally drag his feet about going, but he certainly did so verbally. He wanted to come straight home. Cate spent the next day working on the case from the files, an old situation concerning a daughter adopted out at birth.

She went for a run that evening. Usually a run both invigorated and relaxed her, and this was a beautiful time of day. She slowed to a walk as she neared home. The setting sun turned clouds into streaks of pink and gold, and birds twittered in the trees. But she felt neither invigorated nor relaxed. Maybe she should take up bird watching. She apparently wasn’t going to need any time for male relationships. Then she was annoyed at herself for the grumpy attitude and took off at a hard run.

As she rounded the corner a block from the house, she almost ran over the older couple who lived two doors down from Uncle Joe and Rebecca. The Martins? Madsens? They walked hand-in-hand almost every evening. Cate skidded to a halt and apologized.

Mrs. Martin/Madsen waved off the apology. “I just wish we had the energy and ability to do what you do.”

“It’s a great evening to be out.”

“I’m glad we ran into you,” the woman added. “In fact, I was thinking perhaps I should call you. A man came to the house yesterday asking about you.”

Cate tried to squelch a mild flicker of alarm. “Asking where I live?”

“No, he knew where you live. He wanted to know about you. Something about a background check. How long you’d lived there and if we knew where you worked and what hours, and if you’d been in any trouble, what kind of people came to the house. What other people lived there, were there pets, or noisy parties, all kinds of nosy things. He even peeked in the trash barrel Rebecca had set out for the garbage truck.”

“Some man wanted to know all that about
me
?” And he checked the
trash
?

“We thought it probably had to do with a job you’d applied for,” her husband added.

Cate couldn’t remember applying for any job involving national security, corporate secrets, or government contracts. It seemed unlikely the people at Wily Coyote Pizza would care if she indulged in noisy parties at home. Or what was in her trash.

Yet simply because the man said a background check was what he was doing didn’t mean that was actually what he was doing. But, if he wasn’t running a background check for a job, what
was
he doing? And what did he intend to do with the information?

“We told him we didn’t really know much about you, but from what we’d seen you were a very well-behaved young woman of exemplary character. And that Joe and Rebecca are lovely people too.”

A nice report, even if it did make her sound like an elderly spinster. “Thank you.”

“He went to a couple of other houses.” The husband pointed across the street. “The Carmichaels over there, and the new people next door to them.”

“You didn’t ask for identification?”

The couple exchanged glances.

“We should have, shouldn’t we?” the woman said, her tone apologetic. “But he seemed so nice. Very polite. We wanted to help, you know? Rebecca said you’ve been looking for a job for quite a while.”

“What did he look like?”

“Six-foot-one or two,” the husband said, his tone going important. Witness stuff. He looked off into space, concentrating. “Lean build. Narrow face. Heavy eyebrows. Dark hair, good length, not straggling around his shoulders. Blue slacks, short-sleeved white shirt, gray tie with red stripes. He was quite tan, as if he’d been somewhere other than here for the winter.”

The wife looked at him with an expression somewhere between amazement and skepticism. “I didn’t see all that.”

He didn’t quite polish his fingernails on his shirt front with satisfaction, but he definitely looked pleased with himself.

“Anyone can have a tan these days,” his wife scoffed. “At any time of year. You go to one of those tanning booth things. Or buy that stuff in a bottle or spray can. It doesn’t mean you’ve been somewhere.”

“The tan looked real,” the husband insisted.

“Did you see a car?” Cate interrupted before this escalated into a full-scale Battle of the Tans. Even as the couple squabbled, she noted they were still holding hands.

“I didn’t see one,” the woman said.

“I did. It was parked down in the next block. A dark sedan.”

The husband obviously prided himself on his powers of observation. But “dark sedan” was about as helpful as “green grass.”

“He had a little notebook and wrote everything we told him down in it. A black notebook,” the woman said. Her glance at her husband said she may not have noticed the car, but she’d noticed that notebook. Had he?

The notebook thing made Cate remember that the police officer asking questions after Amelia’s death had used such a notebook. Could a plainclothes detective be investigating
her
in connection with Amelia’s death? A more ominous possibility loomed, someone with darker and more dangerous motives than the police. Radford Longstreet? He was tall and dark-haired. Coop? No, he was blond. Unless he had someone asking questions for him. Actually, anyone, male or female, could hire a snoop. Did someone think that because she’d found the body, she knew more about Amelia’s death than she actually did? Or that she’d acquired incriminating information since then?
Did
she know something that she didn’t even realize she knew?

“Did he ask about my daily schedule, when I come and go?” Was he trying to pinpoint her movements so he could ambush her?

Exchanged glances again.

“No, I don’t recall that,” the husband said.

Okay, don’t complicate this with wild speculation.
It probably did have to do with a job she’d applied for at some time, maybe even weeks ago. Maybe that cashier job at the big warehouse store. Or the application with the vacuum cleaner manufacturer. Maybe they wanted to be sure their employees weren’t out to steal parts and construct dangerous new vacuum weapons
.

She thanked the couple and headed on home. Her cell phone rang just before she reached the front door. She dropped to the steps to answer it. Willow. With a surprising announcement. Radford had called her late the previous evening, the call apparently timed so it would come when he was sure Cheryl wasn’t at the house.

“He wants to talk to me,” Willow said. “He wanted to come over right then, but I wasn’t about to go for that, of course. But I did say I could meet him somewhere.”

“I can’t believe he wants to get together and reminisce about Amelia.”

“No. It’s something else.”

“Willow, why would you meet with him at all, anywhere, any time, for any reason? He may be a killer!”

Radford’s call to Willow struck her as worrisome for another reason. Someone was canvassing the neighborhood asking questions about
her
. Was there some connection?

“He says he has a business proposition for me.”

“What kind of legitimate business proposition could he have? I don’t like this. Just give him the brush-off.”

“He says he’ll pay me $250. And it’s nothing illegal or dangerous. So I said I wasn’t agreeing to anything, but I would talk to him. We’re supposed to meet in the food court at the mall tomorrow afternoon.”

“You said you had all that ‘big money’ coming from somewhere. Why bother with this?”

“A woman can always use an easy $250.”

Cate gave a snort of exasperation. “So why are you telling me? You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?”

“I was hoping you’d come with me.”

“No way.”

“Please, Cate? I’m uneasy about meeting him alone, even if it is a public place.”

“Then don’t.”

“Maybe it’s something about Amelia’s fall. Maybe he knows something. Doesn’t that interest you?”

Yes, Cate reluctantly admitted, that did interest her. “But why would he be willing to pay you money if
he
knows something? Maybe he’s more than sleazy. Maybe he’s a weirdo psychopath.”