Crossing the Lion (a Reigning Cats and Dog) (2010) (21 page)

“Afraid not,” he replied. “All you can do is wait, just like everyone else in the family. But for now, my beauty,” he leered, doing a really bad Dracula imitation, “at last vee are alone.” Patting the bed next to him, he added, “Come into my lair and I vill trans-por-r-rt you to another world.”

I grinned to show him that even though he wasn’t quite ready for
Saturday Night Live
, I still appreciated
his efforts. “But we both have so much to do in this world.”

He sighed. “Rejected! I’m telling you, I’m beginning to wonder if I ever should have agreed to walk down that aisle.”

Playfully, I punched him in the arm. “Wait a minute! You were the one who wanted to get married so badly!”

“I know,” he said, turning serious. “And I must say, I haven’t regretted it for a minute. Now, go chase that killer—and I’ll do everything I can to learn about that pesky Fourth Amendment.”

“I will,” I told him. “I’m even going equipped with bait.” To demonstrate, I reached into a dresser drawer and pulled out the pan of fudge Margaret had sent me upstairs with after our chat. “Actually, it’s more like a bribe.”

“Whatever works,” he said.

Pulling
Frankenstein
off the shelf, I added, “Now, watch this.”

I turned so I could see Nick’s face as the entire unit moved to one side, revealing the hidden door.

His reaction didn’t disappoint me. “Wow!” he cried. “A secret passageway?”

“Remember that hidden staircase I mentioned?” I threw open the door, then swept my hand through the air like a model showing off a prize on a game show.

“That is totally awesome!” Nick exclaimed. “We have to get one of those!”

“Sure,” I agreed amiably. “As soon as we have a crazy aunt of our own to lock in the attic.”

With that, I bounded up the stairs, carefully holding on to the fudge.

“Knock, knock,” I called when I reached the top, opening the door and peering inside. “Anybody home?”

The cats certainly were. All five of them this time, sprawled across the furniture like some exotic collection of throw pillows. The Maine coon seemed to have snatched the best spot, a soft cushion on top of the already soft couch. The black cat was close by, choosing to curl up just a few inches away. The one with the luxurious coat of long white fur lay on top of the couch with his tail hanging down over the cushions, while the gray-and-black tabby, Madeira, Alvira’s favorite, had staked out one of the arms. Even Muffin was among this coterie of cats, although she lay on the floor, keeping herself slightly apart from the others.

A second later, Alvira emerged from the room behind the living area. She broke into a smile as soon as she saw me. “You came back!”

“I promised I would,” I said. “And I brought what you asked for.”

Alvira’s face lit up like the nighttime sky on the Fourth of July. “Fudge!” she cried, eagerly reaching toward the foil-covered pan in my hand.

“Not so fast,” I insisted, pulling it away. “First, you have something
I
want.”

She looked puzzled, but only for a few seconds. “Oh. Information, right?”

“That’s right.”

I sat down on the couch, placing the coveted fudge in my lap so that it was in clear view.

“I’m anxious to hear about that clue you mentioned yesterday.” With a little shrug, I said, “No clue, no fudge.”

“They weren’t supposed to be related,” Alvira said crossly. “I asked you to get me some of that fudge as a favor. I’m planning to tell you my theory no matter what.”

Ah, I thought. So Alvira’s closely guarded piece of information had been demoted from an actual clue to a mere theory.

I decided to remain a tough negotiator. For all I knew, her craving for fudge would quickly be replaced by a yearning for some other treat—and her determination to have me visit her regularly would cause her to delay telling what she knew even further. “In that case, let’s hear it.”

Alvira plopped down next to me. “If you ask me,” she said with a quick nod, “the answer to the question of who killed Linus and why is in Linus’s notebooks.”

“What notebooks?” I asked. Yet I remained wary. While Alvira had impressed me as someone who knew plenty, I hadn’t forgotten Winston’s claim that her own brother had characterized her as less than reliable. I realized that I’d be wise to take whatever she said with a grain of salt.

“Linus was a fanatic about his notebooks,” she said, so caught up in what she was saying that she
seemed to have forgotten all about her chocolate payoff. “Journals, I suppose you’d call ’em. Or diaries. They weren’t something he told most people about, since when he first got started, he thought keeping a diary was kind of a girl thing. But even as an adult he wrote in them religiously.”

I had to admit that what she was saying sounded pretty plausible. “Did he write personal information?” I asked. “Or just notes about the day-to-day workings of his business?”

“Y’got me there,” Alvira admitted. “All I know is that ever since he was a kid, Linus recorded everything. I suppose his scribblings started out like any other kid’s diary. He’d write about where he went that day, who he went with, what exams he had coming up, what girl he had a crush on—”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” I interrupted, “how do you know so much about what your brother wrote in his diary when you were both children?”

She shrugged. “How d’you think? Like any self-respecting little sister, I figured out where he hid it—under the mattress—and peeked at it every chance I got!”

I didn’t doubt that part for an instant. “But keeping a diary as a child is one thing,” I pointed out. “How do you know it was a practice he continued into adulthood?”

“Because I used to tease him about it,” Alvira explained. “I’d say, ‘Still keeping those diaries, Linus? Do you really think one day somebody’s going to
want to sit down and read your years’ and years’ worth of jottings?’ And he’d always say the same thing: ‘They’re not for other people, Alvira. They’re for me. It’s what I do to keep my head straight. You could say it’s my form of therapy.’”

“I see,” I said. Still wary, I added, “But it sounds as if you never actually saw them. Once the two of you grew up, I mean.”

“Nope. That’s why I don’t know if he was writing about his personal life or his business dealings. But either way,” she added, her eyes narrowing, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote something in ’em that would help the police figure out who killed him. Maybe he was blackmailing somebody—or somebody was blackmailing him. Maybe he had a secret life none of us knew about. Maybe he was even doing something shady with the business. I’d find it hard to believe, given what I know about my brother. But when you come right down to it, who knows what other people are capable of—even people they’re close to?”

Her reference to individuals who were close made me shiver. After all, those were the exact words Linus had used in his final telephone call to Winston.

That coincidence aside, I knew Alvira was right. If Linus had kept a diary, chances were good that someone who took the time to read it would find a clue to who might have wanted him dead.

I was ready to take on the task.

“Where does he keep them?” I asked. I tried to sound as if I had a casual interest—instead of letting on that it was all I could do to keep myself from
racing down the stairs, grabbing the latest volume, and reading every single word.

Alvira didn’t answer right away. Instead, her eyes traveled downward. “Maybe some of that fudge would help me remember.”

I decided that handing over the goods at this point wouldn’t hurt. She’d already told me the most important part of what she knew. I felt pretty confident that she’d spill the rest as soon as she had a little sugar in her bloodstream.

I waited in silence while she tore open the foil, acting as if she hadn’t eaten for days. Just as speedily she broke off a chunk of fudge and stuffed it in her mouth. I wasn’t even offended that she didn’t offer me any.

I gave her about thirty seconds to chew and swallow before asking, “So is the fudge helping you remember where Linus kept his diaries?”

“Y’got me,” Alvira replied with a shrug. “Like I said, he was always pretty secretive about them. That’s why he stashed ’em in a place he thought nobody would look. I don’t know what he did with them once he moved out of our parents’ house. If you’re going to look for them, you have your work cut out for you.”

Glancing around the room, she added, “But I bet he brought ’em with him when he started spending more time out here. Especially the current one. And they shouldn’t be that hard to find, since in a place this big, he probably figured he didn’t have to hide ’em anywhere as mysterious as under his mattress. In fact, I’d bet the rest of this fudge that, as the old saying goes, they’re hidden in plain sight.”

•  •  •

As I tromped back down the stairs, I mulled over Alvira’s story about Linus’s diaries. While I was still ambivalent about whether or not to believe whatever she told me, the idea of her brother keeping records of what went on in his life certainly sounded plausible.

And because I was eager to get as much information as I could, I decided to accept what she’d told me as the truth. After all, the worst that was likely to happen was that I’d waste some time looking for something that didn’t exist.

But until proven otherwise, I was willing to assume that they did exist—and to hope Alvira was correct about Linus not necessarily hiding whatever journals or records he kept. Once he grew up and moved away from a little sister with prying eyes, he might not have felt the need to be quite so secretive. However, there were also plenty of places to store them here in this sprawling mansion, which was so big that something as simple as a diary wouldn’t stand out.

Unless, of course, someone with a great deal of determination went searching for it.

“Did you find what you needed?” Nick asked as I closed the door, picked up
Frankenstein
, and slipped it back onto the shelf.

As the gigantic bookcase slid into place, I replied, “Not yet. But I’m hoping I can still accomplish that before everybody gets back.”

Especially since that person with determination happened to be me.

P
erching on the edge of the bed, I told Nick about Alvira’s claim that Linus had been as addicted to journaling as he’d been to making money. I also filled him in on Winston’s take on the woman’s grasp on reality.

While I half-expected him to dismiss the clue she’d given me, he seemed matter-of-fact about accepting it as the truth.

“She’s his sister,” he said with a shrug. “She probably knew the guy better than anybody. If she says he kept a diary, chances are it’s true. Go for it, Jess.”

Feeling encouraged, I left Nick in the bedroom with his law books and headed to Linus’s study. I brought my two dogs with me. I figured that if anyone caught
me and I needed an explanation for what I was doing in the deceased’s private sanctum, my story would be that Max or Lou had run in there and I’d had no choice but to retrieve them.

And if anyone wondered why chasing my dogs involved studying the books lined up on the shelves, I’d explain that I was a passionate reader and couldn’t resist looking at someone else’s books to see if their taste matched mine.

Armed with an excuse that was a tad convoluted but I was pretty sure I could relate convincingly, I boldly went into the room.

“Hidden in plain sight,” Alvira had theorized about where Linus kept his journals. If she was correct that I was likely to find the notebooks in the most obvious spot, then the best place to start was his study, since it was the room that served as his home office whenever he was away from corporate headquarters.

The first thing I did was switch on the overhead light. As I did, thunder that sounded like a bowling alley on a busy Saturday afternoon rolled through the house. For a fraction of a second, I thought I’d brought it on by venturing into a place where I wasn’t supposed to be.

But I reminded myself that the storm had been raging for days, and I forged ahead.

I headed straight for the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined the wall behind Linus’s huge wooden desk. It was still covered with stacks of paper. From the looks of things, Missy and Scarlett had
barely made a dent in the tremendous task they’d taken on of going through Linus’s files.

As my dogs sniffed around happily, thrilled to find themselves amid a whole collection of new smells, I parked myself in front of the shelves and began studying the spines of the hundreds of books. Fortunately, Linus had been fairly organized. He’d grouped them by subject.

The fact that the books I was looking for wouldn’t have titles stamped on their bindings helped. Still, I wished I’d thought to ask Alvira if he preferred spiral notebooks or bound books. At least that way I’d have had an idea of what I was looking for.

I must have spent ten minutes studying Linus’s book collection, and I still didn’t see anything that looked like a diary. The few volumes that struck me as possibilities turned out to be dead ends when I pulled them off the shelf to check them.

I finally gave up on the bookshelves. I glanced around the room, looking for other likely spots. Checking the doorway every five seconds, I perched on the swivel chair and opened a few drawers in Linus’s desk. Next I tried the wooden file cabinets on the other side of the room. Signs of organization were here, too, mainly in the form of neatly lined-up file folders. But I didn’t find a single book.

Where should I try next?
I wondered, sighing loudly as I dropped back into the desk chair. By this point, I was convinced that his study was a dead end. That left the second-most obvious possibility: Linus and Charlotte’s bedroom.

The idea of prowling around in there made me uncomfortable. There was something sacred about a couple’s bedroom, at least as far as outsiders were concerned. Having stumbled upon Charlotte combing through old photographs and other keepsakes all by herself in that room made me even more reluctant to pry.