The Death of Perry Many Paws (8 page)

sat on a stool at the kitchen counter downing diet soda and watching Cam prepare our dinner. There was salad and lasagna, one of Cam’s specialties, in the oven, and garlic bread sticks ready to dip into an oil, pepper and rosemary mixture. Oh, and there was chocolate cake for dessert. Ice cream, too.

I’d told Cam about our adventure in Ryan’s bedroom several times in several ways by now and he kept assuring me that there must be some reasonable explanation.

“It could be some kind of initiation,” Cam suggested, pulling the lasagna out of the oven to set before we cut it. “Teenage boys can get into some really weird stuff.”

“Did you get into weird stuff when you were fifteen?” I asked.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” he said.

“You’re avoiding my question.” I gave him a gentle punch in the rear end. “I promise I won’t tell Claudia.”

“Well, I don’t recall any blood being involved, but we did go through a period of dares as part of an initiation into a club when I was a freshman in high school. Just stupid stuff. I hope this lasagna is firm enough.” He stuck his finger into the hot pan and then jerked it away.

“Don’t put your finger in the lasagna, especially when it’s just come out of the oven. What kind of stupid stuff ?”

He ran his finger under the cold water and pretended that he had to delve deeply into his memory to recall some of the stupid things he’d done when he was fifteen.

“Mmm. Let me think. It was a long time ago …”

“A mere thirty-five years, sweetheart.”

“I seem to remember having to steal a pair of my sister’s underpants to add to the collection …”

“Ryan mentioned underpants, too. What is it with you guys and women’s underpants?”

“Oh, girls’ underpants are very important in the life of a fifteen-year-old boy. Didn’t you ever read
Portnoy’s Complaint
?”

“Gross. Don’t talk about that before dinner,” I admonished. “I don’t remember my friends and I ever talking about or being interested in boys’ underwear. Did you say you had a
collection
of underpants?”

“Not me, personally. The guys, the club, had a collection and to join the club you had to add to it. The sexier the underwear the more status you had. I was lucky because I had an older sister. Some of the guys had to resort to stealing their mom’s underwear which was decidedly
not
sexy.”

“Did Cassandra know you filched her underpants?”

“Naw. She had so many clothes she never missed them.” Cam took the wine and wine glasses into the dining room and I followed him with the salad. As I headed up the stairs to get Grace, I thought of one more question.

“What did you end up doing with this awesome lingerie collection?”

“The same thing you do with all precious treasure. We buried it.”

Grace and I both react to stress the same way—we eat. Cam had to be very flattered by the amount of lasagna we consumed as the three of us kept rehashing the scene in Ryan’s bedroom and all the possible meanings of the bloody shirt. Cam held strongly to the belief it was some kind of initiation. Although Grace and
I were disturbed by the thought of an initiation that resulted in so much blood, we were reassured by thinking that it was the blood of an animal rather than a human—either Ryan’s own blood or Uncle Franklin’s.

“But if it was animal blood, why wouldn’t he just tell me?” Grace questioned.

“Because that would have brought a whole new set of questions and, when you’re fifteen, you hate answering questions,” Cam explained. “Where did all the lasagna go? Should I have made more?”

“No, it’s fine, dear. All he had to say was, ‘it’s animal blood’ …”

“But would you two have left it at that? It probably never occurred to him that you would think it was human blood, especially a murder victim’s. All he saw was two middle-aged women poking around in his private stuff. I don’t think he was angry about what you found as much as he felt violated by you both snooping in his room. Remember how closely Abbey guarded the sanctity of her bedroom? I really should’ve made two batches of lasagna but we used to feed all three of us and have enough for leftovers before …”

“Stop fussing about the lasagna, Cam. There’s plenty.”

“Ryan’s been out late at night. Maybe there
is
some kind of club or something. Hugh’s been arguing with him about being out late on school nights. He’s supposed to be in by nine but the last month or so he’s been coming in at ten or later …” Grace said.

“See, sounds like a group of fifteen-year-olds spreading their wings, breaking curfew and misbehaving in typical fifteen-year-old-guy ways,” Cam reassured her. “They may be doing stupid things that we don’t really understand but I sincerely doubt murder is one of them.”

“And what would be the motive?” I asked. “Ryan didn’t even know Franklin. He may not have even known there was anyone else living on our property. Nothing was stolen. Even if Ryan and his friends had
been snooping around and ran into Franklin there was no reason for them to feel threatened.”

“But maybe Franklin felt threatened by them,” Grace suggested. Cam shook his head.

“Even if he had, he had no means to seriously scare them into thinking they needed to defend themselves. At the most he would have cursed at them. Probably he would’ve just ignored them …”

“What if they started heckling him? Would he have fought back then?” I asked.

“Fought back with what? He didn’t have a weapon. The police didn’t find anything in the cottage disturbed or any signs that someone had broken in or seriously caused a threat to his well-being. There’s just no motive.”

“That’s the whole problem. There’s no reason for anyone to hurt Franklin. He was a harmless old man who had no contact with the outside world. It all seems so random …”

“That’s what’s so scary as far as Ryan is concerned,” Grace interrupted. “If there’s no motive and no reason for someone to murder Franklin, it just makes it seem more likely that it was a horrible accident, a prank or a dare gone tragically wrong. It’s easy to see a fifteen-year-old, especially one as hostile and unhappy as Ryan, being involved in something like that.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” Cam said solemnly, “we have a two-victim crime.”

With that sad thought we cleared the dinner dishes and moved into the library for coffee and dessert. I find nothing more comforting than sitting by a fire in a room filled with books, a dog snoozing at my feet and a huge hunk of chocolate cake and two scoops of ice cream by my side. Although snuggling in bed with Cam on a stormy night runs a close second. In an attempt to move the conversation off Ryan,
I told them about the trip to Claudia’s and the identification of all the children in the old picture.

Grace picked up the photo and looked at it again. “I can’t believe this girl is Syra’s and Bing’s mother. Neither of them have ever mentioned having roots in Birdsey Falls.”

“I know. I thought they just happened to move here ages ago. They never said they were coming home.”

“Maybe they weren’t coming home,” Cam suggested. “Maybe they’d never been here before. It sounds like their mother may have taken off from Birdsey Falls when she was a young girl and worked her way down the New York State Thruway …”

“Cam, that’s so rude. We have no idea what happened to their mother.”

“True. But my point is I doubt Syra and Bing ever lived here. I certainly don’t remember them growing up, do you, Grace?”

“No.”

“Maybe their mother talked about where she grew up and they decided, as adults, to check it out and ended up staying. When did they move across the street, Tamsen? Do you remember?” Cam asked.

“Yes. Thirteen years ago when Abbey was just going to kindergarten. I remember because I was glad a woman my age was moving in across the street. Someone to visit with while Abbey was in school. And I was hoping she would have children, maybe a playmate for Abbey. Both she and Bing were in their thirties.”

Grace set the photo down and put her feet up on the ottoman. “Do you remember where they came from? Why they came here?”

I was finding it very difficult to enjoy the relaxation of the fire in the fireplace while wracking my brain for information going back more than a decade. “No. We probably talked about it when I first met them but I don’t remember. I remember Syra telling me about Bing’s
agoraphobic tendencies and how I had felt honored that he would wander over to our house and visit even if he never went anywhere else. But we became friends and they just were Syra and Bing and I accepted them at face value. I know Syra went to college and Bing didn’t, I do remember that discussion.”

“No talks about childhood or where they came from?” Cam asked.

“Not that I remember. I never felt they were being secretive, though. It just seems like it never came up or, if it did, it was so normal it went in one ear and out the other. Nothing suspicious. Can you think of anything, Grace?”

Grace shook her head. “I’m too enmeshed in my own problems to remember anything not directly connected to Ryan, Hugh and the whole mess that is my life.”

We all sat silently looking at the fire and thinking our own thoughts. Mycroft was the only one able to sleep without a care in the world. A dog’s life looked pretty good right now. When the doorbell rang Cam went to let Hugh in. After a brief greeting and the offer of coffee and cake, Cam and I excused ourselves and left Hugh and Grace alone to discuss their problems. I heard the front door close around 2:00 a.m.

repeat— I’m not a brave person, and the horror of finding Uncle Franklin coupled with the ugly scene in Ryan’s bedroom had not been conducive to making me bolder. One more incident and I would join Bing in the world of agoraphobia. He certainly seemed happy enough staying in his house and baking all day. When he needed some outside stimulation he wandered over to our house and brought us baked goods. If he was desperate for company he joined the weekly WOACA meeting and listened to discussions on menopause, hot flashes, empty nests, marital woes and teenager frustrations, to name a few.

We didn’t really know a lot about Bing. Syra insisted that Bing was really just a happy, simple guy who loved to stay in the house and bake and occasionally socialize with the few people he felt comfortable with. He was compassionate, a good listener, never seemed troubled or unhappy, except in empathy, and he certainly was an excellent pastry chef. He and Cam were friendly but Bing was much more comfortable around women and didn’t have any male friends. Syra said that since his only real interest was baking, it was difficult for him to find a common ground with other men. I frequently envied him his uncomplicated and serene world.

Unfortunately my world was more complicated and chaotic than ever before. Between the murder, Grace’s marital problems and her
fears about Ryan, Cam’s empty-nest anxiety, Diane’s caregiver issues and possible affair and Syra’s breast cancer recovery woes, I continued to float around in post-traumatic stress and tried to be supportive, although I was clueless about what to do. I felt over-whelmed. If I hadn’t wanted to see Grace in the morning I would have just stayed in bed, preferably with the covers over my head.

Grace didn’t talk much at breakfast. She was tired and depressed and I didn’t want to press her for details of her talk with Hugh last night. She left claiming she had to get to the bookstore and open it because her manager had a doctor’s appointment. Cam was mumbling about an email that he’d sent Abbey yesterday that she hadn’t answered yet and I had to remind him, for the hundredth time, that she had a life of her own and that’s exactly what we wanted her to have.