The Big Kitty (7 page)

“I thought they got rid of all of you!” He reached out to roughly grab the cat, who lashed out with his claws. Gordie drew back with a yelp, instinctively putting his wounded hand to his mouth, forgetting about his face mask—and only succeeding in smearing blood on it.

The cat went for altitude, swarming up the heavy velvet drapes and releasing clouds of dust into the air. He’d gotten just about level with Gordie’s head before the man managed to latch on to the spotted gray body.

“Gotcha, ya little—” He tried to pull the cat loose, but his captive dug in his claws and held on for dear life. “Come on!” Gordon gave a mighty heave … and brought down the cat, the drapes, the curtain rod, and even the brackets that held it to the wall—all in an even bigger cloud of dust and plaster.

Alternate sneezes and disconsolate yowls came from under the downed curtains, which humped up as the cat tried to escape the heavy folds.

Gordie lay on his back, wheezing and hacking.

“Are you all right?” Will Price asked.

“By bask iz fudd uv stodt,” Gordie hoarsely replied.

“What?” Sunny asked.

“His mask is full of—” Will broke off, shaking his head. “You don’t want to know.”

The cat finally appeared from under the fallen velvet, streaking across the living room and up the stairs.

Sunny and Will got Gordon back into the kitchen and helped clean him up. Gordie took off his sodden mask and threw it away. As soon as he did, he began sneezing. Sunny pressed a dish towel into service, soaking it in hot water and using some dish detergent to clean his scratches. Then she switched to cold water to bring the bleeding down. Will Price stepped out to his truck and returned with a small first-aid kit.

Gordie was almost pathetically grateful. “Aw, man … jeez, thanks,” he said yet again, punctuating his barely coherent words by sneezing into several sheets of paper towel clutched in his uninjured hand. “You’re really good, coming over to help my mom. Most of the neighbors around here wouldn’t care whether she lived or died.”

“People got into fights with her,” Sunny said.

“The damn cats got Mom into fights,” Gordie corrected. “A bunch of chicken farmers way out—” He gestured vaguely toward the town line with his wad of towels and then down at them. “What was their name? Towle? No, those were the people with the dog. Ellsworth, that was it.”

He sat like a little kid as Sunny squeezed some antibiotic cream on the scratches, then covered the whole thing with a gauze pad and some tape. “And then there’s the big boss lady of the neighborhood, Mrs. Yarborough. She told
Mom she wanted this place bulldozed.” He sneezed, hawked, and spat in the sink. “Not to mention that lousy Barnstable pretending to make nice—and then showing what a turd he really is.”

“I think you’d better take it easy,” Sunny told him, rinsing the sink.

“Or at least get yourself thicker gloves before you tackle the upstairs,” Will added, trying to keep a straight face.

Gordie cast a worried glance around. “You don’t think there are more of them, do you?”

“Just be careful,” Sunny said as she and Will decided it would be best to say good-bye and left through the front door. As they went around to the driveway, the constable glanced sidelong at Sunny. “Very impressive, the amount of information you pumped out of him while playing Florence Nightingale.”

“Well, now we know that Ada had at least three ongoing disputes in the neighborhood,” Sunny replied. “Four, if you count Ollie Barnstable.”

“Just the kind of false trails a trained investigator might expect from the prime suspect—if this were an actual crime.”

“We certainly didn’t find any proof, one way or the other,” Sunny admitted. “Especially with the way Gordie’s been all over the place.” She looked at the constable. “But is that enough to promote him to prime suspect?”

He stopped in his tracks, staring at her. “I don’t know how far you’re going to get in this investigation if you didn’t even notice that Gordon Spruance is a tweaker.”

“What?” Sunny turned
around to look at Will Price. He definitely had his cop face on, grim and dead serious.

“You know—meth? Crystal meth? Methamphetamine? He’s using the stuff.”

“How do you know?” Sunny asked.

“How could I not?” Will burst out, then quickly turned to check the windows. All the ones on this side stood closed and curtained.

Still, he lowered his voice. “It’s a classic case—his eyes darting around all over the place, several tasks started and left half finished, impulsive actions. It’s not often you see a guy Gordie’s age with acne, unless the person is a meth user. He had a strong reaction to light in his face—and even you must’ve noticed the paranoia.” Will gave her a measuring look. “Something tells me your
newspaper career didn’t involve much work on the crime beat.”

“I was a general-assignment reporter,” Sunny told him. “I handled whatever came my way.” She stalked over to her Mustang, but hesitated with her hand on the door. “Okay, maybe I’m overreacting, but it’s just hard to wrap my head around. I could accept the idea of drug addicts in New York. But here? Gordie Spruance? He got left back a couple of times, so he was still going to high school when I started—not that I was friendly with the guy. But I still remember when people started calling him ‘Gordo,’ and how at first he was happy to have a new nickname.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming up here,” Will said.

“It was a stupid joke out of Introductory Español—‘Gordo’ is like the Spanish version of ‘Fatso.’”

“With a high school career like that—and a mom like Ada—I’m surprised he didn’t start taking drugs a lot earlier,” Will joked.

Sunny laughed, then got serious again. “Do you really think he could have killed his mother?”

Will looked at her, a hint of humanity stealing out from behind his stern cop face. “What do you think?”

“I suspected that he might have stolen Ada’s lottery ticket,” she admitted. “That’s why I tried to get some coverage about the story.”

“Most tweakers get in trouble stealing money to support their habits.” Will had returned to his cold, professional form. “And they don’t have much impulse control. If the mother caught him with the ticket—” He shrugged. “Anything might be possible.”

“Still,” Sunny said, “drugs, in Kittery Harbor?”

“They turn up in tonier—and stranger—places than this.” Will grimaced. “Not that Frank Nesbit would believe it.”

Sunny laughed. “The See-No-Evil Sheriff.”

“Not blind—selective,” Will replied. “He can see lots of evils when they’re the kind that result in fines to fill the county coffers.”

“Is that what they mean when they talk about making crime pay?” Sunny asked.

“As I’m sure you’ve heard often enough in your career: no comment.” Will tried to contain a wince at the noise as Sunny wrestled her damaged door open. “I still have some connections on the Portsmouth PD. I can check in and get an idea about the local meth situation—and whether Gordie Spruance has ever turned up on their radar.”

“I’ll follow up on the neighborhood end of things,” Sunny said.

“Sure, though somehow, I don’t think Ada Spruance got killed in a dispute over petunias,” Will said over his shoulder as he went to his pickup.

“From what little Gordie had to say, I think it’ll turn out to be a bit more serious than that,” Sunny agreed. “Though don’t dismiss flowers so easily. There’ve been a couple of times I was afraid Dad would have a relapse when he found her cats had peed on his roses.”

With that, Will pulled out of the driveway, and Sunny headed home, mulling possible suspects the whole way.

Lots of people—including even her dad—had had beefs with Ada Spruance. But Gordie had mentioned the names of three people who might be more seriously involved. The top slot on Sunny’s mental list was filled by Veronica Yarborough,
head of the homeowners’ association. Sunny had met her a couple of times, since her dad was a member of the board. Each time, Veronica had given the impression of bestowing a great favor just by visiting their house. If being not very nice was a character trait of cold-blooded killers, Veronica Yarborough would fit the profile nicely. But Sunny would have to look into all of them and not let her personal feelings prejudice her against Veronica.

At least, not very much.

*

As she came
up the walk to her front door, Sunny spotted Shadow kicking dirt near one of her father’s rosebushes.

Guess it would make sense for him to do his business where the ground has already been dug up,
Sunny thought,
but I don’t think Dad will appreciate the extra fertilizer.

She went inside to make a list of the things Shadow would need if he was going to stay. Kitty litter and a litter box, a proper cat bed, food—he couldn’t keep eating their tuna, after all. Closing her eyes, Sunny tried to remember the brand name on the cans she’d seen in Ada Spruance’s kitchen.

She opened her eyes and went back to her list. This was probably going to cost a bit. But maybe that was a good thing. It would make it clear to her dad that she intended for Shadow to stay.

Mike Coolidge was not happy when Sunny returned with a big bag of pet purchases, but even his laser glare of disapproval didn’t make Sunny back down. “I said Shadow would be staying with us, at least till we find him a decent place to live,” she told him in no uncertain terms.

Shadow himself turned out to have some strong opinions. When Sunny arranged his new pet bed, he ran to recover the fake-fur coat lining from the pillow he’d slept on previously, clamping it in his jaws and dragging it to Sunny, who placed the ratty thing over the new bed’s fleece lining.

Sunny shook her head. “Whatever floats your boat.” Then she turned to her father. “Do you have Veronica Yarborough’s phone number?”

“It’s in the phone book in the kitchen drawer,” Mike told her. “Look under S for ‘snooty.’”

*

Even for a
Sunday afternoon, the neighborhood was quiet as Sunny walked to her appointment with Veronica Yarborough late the next day. She’d felt lucky to wedge her way into Veronica’s very full social calendar.

Apparently everyone had decided to do their weekend yard work the day before, so Sunny walked through empty streets, with the occasional burst of football-related crowd roar coming through open windows. She arrived at her destination purposely early and stood for a moment, taking in the shiny white clapboard house with its columned front porch and third-floor dormer windows. Twenty-five years ago it had been the Leister place, home of the blondest and most popular girl in her grammar school class. How many times had Sunny walked up that drive in her best dress and party manners, just because all of the golden girl’s classmates had been invited? And she hadn’t even liked Jane Leister, damn it.

When Sunny was a kid, the house had engraved itself
in her memory under the heading “Stately Home.” Certainly it was the most expensive place in the neighborhood, more suited to the upper-class enclave of Piney Brook. It stood out among the more modest houses in the surrounding blocks, but in a more graceful way than some of the McMansions that had popped up in recent years. Those looked just plain ugly.

Now Sunny found herself walking up to the front door yet again, dressed in a good suit from her reporting days. From the front, the place didn’t seem to have changed at all. A quizzical smile tugged at Sunny’s lips.
Funny how some places stick with you,
she thought.

Veronica Yarborough opened the dove gray door. The Icelandic wool sweater the president of the homeowners’ association was wearing probably could have paid for Sunny’s good suit three times over. Well, at least she wasn’t a blonde, just an elegantly tall brunette with a frost of silver in her hair.

“Ms. Coolidge, how nice to see you.” Veronica sounded about as chummy as the queen of England greeting a commoner upon whom she was about to bestow a medal.

Not for the first time, Sunny found herself wondering how this woman had elbowed her way to power in the homeowners’ association. Not only was she an outsider, she was a pushy outsider. That was the way Sunny’s dad had described Veronica when she’d first arrived a few years ago. When Sunny had called up from New York, Mike always had a funny story about the bossy new neighbor, telling everyone how things ought to be run in the association.

But maybe, just as the sea wore away the rocks on the
Maine coast, it was Veronica’s relentless pushing that had brought her to the position of the neighborhood’s queen bee.

And as such, Veronica did her best gracious-host impersonation. “Why don’t we step into the family room?”

The living room Sunny remembered had become a formal parlor, and a very grand mahogany table now dominated the dining room, with a silk runner and a crystal bowl of flowers in the middle. Beyond that, however, was all new territory. The old rear wall of the house had been moved back a good fifteen feet, enlarging the old kitchen, adding a breakfast nook, and creating a large, airy space that housed leather couches, reclining chairs, a wall-mounted entertainment center, and a fireplace. French doors gave a view of a carefully rustic garden centered around a pool that Sunny didn’t remember, either. With its varnished wood and pale peach paint on the walls, the whole place seemed more northern California than southern Maine.

“Very impressive,” she said.

“Thank you.” Veronica took in her surroundings with a smug smile. “We had considerable work done before moving in.”

She gestured toward one of the couches. “Welcome to the neighborhood,” she said, then fluted a laugh. “Or rather, welcome
back
to the neighborhood, considering you’ve lived here before.”

Sunny managed an equally insincere smile. “Yes, we even met a couple of times.”

Veronica didn’t quite know how to answer that. Stepping over to the counter separating the seating space from the kitchen, she asked, “May I offer you a sparkling water?”

When Sunny said yes, Veronica took a bottle from the built-in refrigerator and poured them both wineglasses of bubbly water—an expensive, imported brand, of course. No generic seltzer from outlet-land here.