Dying to Read (4 page)

“Well, I remember she was a waitress, but she’d be right good at helpin’ people, you betcha. A real carin’ type gal she is, always one to bring home stray critters. Might be she’d go to work for a vetinary guy.”

Jeremiah’s ramblings weren’t going anywhere, Cate realized with a certain frustration. “Well, if you think of anything more or if you hear from her, you let me know, okay? I’ll call you as soon as I locate her.”

“Call me how?”

“The number’s here on the caller ID.”

“Well, don’t do that. I’d have about as much chance of gettin’ the call here as I have of growing more hair on this bald head. They’re always messin’ up stuff like that here at Millview Acres. Miserly Acres, we call it. Too cheap to hire enough help. But they always got somebody comin’ in to tell me to take a pill or haul me off to some fool doctor,” he added sourly. “I’m a-figurin’ on moving to another place in the next few days. I’ll have to call you agin.”

“Fine, but give me a few days to get the case wrapped up, okay?”

“Okay, and you tell Mr. Belmont to get well quick, hear? Though I’m sure you’re an A-OK investergater too,” he added.

“I’ll tell him you called. And he’s supervising the case, of course.”

“Okay. You take care. Don’t take no wooden nickels.”

Cate put the phone down, pleased with herself. At least Jeremiah Thompson hadn’t fired her from the case. However, she wasn’t any further along on how to proceed with finding Willow Bishop. Now what?

 3 

Cate grilled a tuna and cheese sandwich for lunch and contemplated her problem further. Basically, she had only one connection with Willow. The house. So that was where she had to start.

Rain still drizzled from low clouds, and the big old house looked more like vulture or vampire territory than ever. But no detectives swarmed it, and no crime scene tape circled it. That must mean the authorities had concluded the fall was accidental. Good. She could put her nagging suspicions about both the Whodunit ladies and Willow to rest.

No cars stood in the driveway, but she parked out on the street anyway, and rang the doorbell. No answer. She punched the bell again. Again, no response. Apparently Willow hadn’t returned. She jumped when something brushed her legs.

Octavia, looking more bedraggled than regal today, meowed forlornly. She obviously hadn’t spent last night in her canopied cat bed. Cate leaned over and rubbed the cat’s wet fur.

“Hungry?”

Another plaintive meow. Cate felt in her pockets, but she wasn’t carrying anything edible. But she was carrying . . . She pulled the metal object out of her pocket. A key! In the flurry of what had happened yesterday, she’d never returned the key she’d grabbed to unlock the door. If she went inside, she could feed the cat. She could also look around Willow’s room and perhaps peek in a few other places and find something to suggest where Willow had gone.

Would that be an illegal entry? But it wasn’t as if she’d
do
anything illegal inside. It was just that poor Octavia was hungry.

With that righteous motive in mind, Cate unlocked the door and dropped the key in her purse. Octavia scooted inside, raced through the dark dining room, and skidded to a stop at a kitchen cabinet. Cate opened the cabinet door and found both dry and canned cat food, some brand she’d never heard of, plus a dish decorated with a grinning Garfield. She filled the dish, and while Octavia ate and purred approval, she went back to the phone in the living room where Doris had said Amelia kept a “little red book” of numbers. Another righteous thought was that she needed to get names and numbers so she could find out whose key she had and return it. She wasn’t just snooping.

Numbers for the Whodunit ladies were conveniently listed on the first page. More than had been at yesterday’s meeting, although some were crossed out. She copied everything on a scratch pad from her purse. She was skimming the other unalphabetized names in the notebook when a noise at the front door stopped her. Someone trying the door? No, someone unlocking the door. Someone opening the door! The niece? The police?

Somehow she doubted a do-gooder explanation about entering the house to feed the cat would carry much weight with either niece or police. She groaned. All Uncle Joe needed on top of his broken-hip disaster was the police interrogating him about an employee making an unauthorized entry into a private home.

A vision of the door on the third floor torpedoed into her mind. Escape! She took the stairs two at a time. At the second floor hallway, safely out of sight, curiosity stopped her. Who was down there? Maybe just a quick peek around the corner . . .

No. She reminded herself about what happened to curious cats, which probably also applied to curious assistant PIs. On the third floor, she congratulated herself. A quick sneak down those outside stairs, a dash to her car, and she’d be home free.

Except here came Octavia thundering down the hall, stalking her like a were-beast from some horror story.

“Go away!” Cate whispered as she frantically flapped her fingers at the cat. “Shoo!”

The cat sat on her plump rump and eyed Cate reproachfully.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Cate whispered. “But you belong here and I don’t.”

Octavia didn’t understand the words, of course. She was a cat, and deaf besides. But she certainly knew how to lay on the guilt with those blue eyes. Cate muttered another apology, got the now-locked door open, and squeezed outside. A quick dash down the stairs, then another around the house through the rain. This was going to work!

Until a voice stopped her in her tracks.

Reluctantly, she turned. A woman stood under a red umbrella beside the open door of a silver BMW in the driveway.

“Willow?” The woman was slim and blonde, stylish in a fur-trimmed leather jacket and heels. Late fortyish. Very put-together. “I thought you’d moved out.”

Cate reluctantly approached the car. “Amelia told you that?”

“The officers who came out to tell me about her fall said the house appeared to be empty, and I came over to—” Then Cate saw an emergence of the puzzled expression that was almost familiar. “But you’re not Willow. Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Cate hastily produced her identification card and an explanation about how and why she’d been here the day before. “And then I found the body out there at the foot of the stairs. A terrible tragedy.”

“Yes, a terrible tragedy,” Cheryl echoed, although it was a preoccupied-sounding statement as she stared up at the house.

“I came back today because I’m still looking for Willow. A family member is trying to locate her.”

“And you were snooping around back of the house because . . . ?”

With sudden inspiration Cate said, “I was worried about the cat. She got out during all the confusion yesterday, and I wondered if she was okay. She was around back of the house when I last saw her yesterday.”

“Did you find her?”

“Not out back, no.” Perhaps not a spandex-cling to the truth, but no actual lies there. Preferring to get away from that subject, she added, “Someone said yesterday that Amelia had a niece?”

“Yes, I’m Cheryl Calhoun. Amelia was my aunt.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss.”

The woman stared up at the house again as she elbowed the car door shut. Finally, as if jerking back from some private thoughts, she nodded. “A tragic loss, yes. Thank you.”

The words and tone were appropriately solemn, but if Cheryl was in deep mourning over her aunt’s death, Cate didn’t see any real sign of it. The thought occurred to her that if Cheryl was Amelia’s only heir, this property was now hers. Was that also what Cheryl was thinking as she stared up at the weathered hulk? Was it valuable? The house was old, but prices for vintage places were sometimes quite amazing. And the top-of-the-hill, end-of-the-street parcel was huge, probably dividable into several lots.

“I don’t suppose you’d know where Willow might have gone when she left here?” Cate asked. “Her great-uncle in Texas is really anxious to locate her.”

“No idea.” Cheryl paused and tapped a glossy fingernail on the handle of the umbrella. “It just seems very peculiar that she took off right after Aunt Amelia’s fall down the stairs, don’t you think? Maybe something a private investigator would want to look into,” she added with a meaningful lift of well-groomed eyebrows.

“We’re not that kind of agency,” Cate said, even though she wasn’t certain what kind of agency they were. Uncle Joe had assured her that most of his current work was mundane: finding a deadbeat husband, running background checks, serving a subpoena. Not the thrilling car chases and gunfights that occurred regularly on TV crime shows. But there was more than routine work in his past, Cate was certain. He didn’t talk about how he’d gotten his limp, but she doubted it was while running a background check on his computer.

“Well, what I need to do is go in and check on Amelia’s jewelry.”

“Check on her jewelry?”

“If Willow saw Amelia fall down the steps, maybe she decided it was a good time to grab the goodies and run. Willow had worked here only a few months, and I have no idea who she is or where she came from. In the business you’re in, I’m sure you run into unsavory people all the time.”

Cate decided not to offer the information that her experience with private investigation hadn’t been much longer than a bad date.

Cheryl raised a hand, palm outward. “I’m not making accusations, of course. At least not yet. I do wish Scott were here,” she fretted.

“Scott?”

“My husband. He’s up in Seattle at a conference. He was very disturbed about all this when I called him last night. He’s going to rush home as soon as he can.” Cheryl started toward the house steps, but a gust of wind almost tore the umbrella out of her hands. For the first time she apparently noticed that Cate was wet and cold. “Would you like to come inside and warm up? Although it’s not all that warm inside. Amelia always did keep the place cold as an igloo. That’s why I came back out to get a heavier jacket.”

“I’d appreciate a chance to warm up.”

“To tell the truth, this is such a creepy old place that I hate to be alone in it, especially with Aunt Amelia dying here only yesterday. Who better for company in a creepy old house than a private investigator?”

Again Cate held back on listing her shortcomings in that area. Inside, Octavia met them at the door. Thankfully, cats couldn’t ask incriminating questions, such as,
Oh, you’re back again?

“There’s the cat now,” Cheryl said. “Spoiled rotten monster that she is. You wouldn’t believe how much that cat food Amelia feeds her costs. And white hair! It’s all over the place. Shoo!” She flapped the umbrella at the cat.

“Did the police say anything about how your aunt happened to fall?” Cate asked.

“All the officers said last night was that Amelia had fallen on the steps and was dead. They did ask a lot of questions about her health and medications. She took all those pills, but I always suspected she was more of a hypochondriac than actually ill. But it’s a wonder something ghastly hadn’t happened here long before now.” Cheryl waved a hand around the living room. “Just look at this.”

Cate wasn’t certain what she was supposed to look at. The sleek furniture? The garish but probably expensive painting over the fireplace? Nothing dangerous so far as she could see. “The inside of the house isn’t nearly as gloomy as the outside,” she offered tentatively.

“But it’s all so
wrong
.” Cheryl waved her arms with a fervency that Cate thought a bit overdone considering that they were talking furniture, not worldwide injustice. “My interior decorating business specializes in feng shui . . .” She whipped out a card and handed it to Cate.

Interiors by Cheryl. Feng Shui to improve your environment and your life.
Cheery rays streaming from a golden sun decorated the card, apparently the cheerful life you’d have if you got your environment properly feng-shuied.

“Proper alignment makes all the difference in our lives.”

Is that what she needed? Her own life was not exactly well-aligned. Dead-end job situation. Fizzled romantic relationships. Bad haircut. Bank balance that looked like a ten-year-old’s piggy-bank savings. Lack of success with the easy assignment Uncle Joe had given her. But she doubted any of that was because her bed wasn’t properly aligned with the door or wall. “Do you plan to live here?”

“Live here?” Cheryl almost shuddered. “No way. We have a lovely home over in Springfield. My husband is with a prestigious stock brokerage firm here in Eugene. I don’t know what I’ll do with this place. This is a terrible time to sell, with prices so low, but renting is such a hassle. But Scott will know what to do.”

“That’s good,” Cate murmured.

“Now I’m going upstairs to see what that woman made off with. I know there’s a valuable squash blossom necklace, possibly an antique. Amelia and one of her husbands traveled the southwest extensively. I remember emerald earrings and a rather spectacular necklace to match. Oh, and that fabulous ruby tiara and earrings.”

It sounded as if Cheryl had already decided Willow had stolen the jewelry. She tapped her chin with a manicured finger, and Cate suspected, given a little time, she could come up with an itemized list of every piece of jewelry Amelia owned. All of which, plus the house and whatever assets the apparently wealthy Amelia owned, now belonged to her. Cheryl didn’t look like a push-auntie-down-the-stairs type, and a dead body would surely do terrible things to the feng shui of a place, but if the stakes were high enough . . .

Oh, c’mon,
Cate
, she mentally muttered to herself.
You’re seeing suspects like termites marching out of the woodwork. The Whodunit ladies, Willow, now the niece.