Kitty Litter Killer (9 page)

“That wasn’t my point, and you know it,” he said.

“I know what your point was. It could be dangerous. But. . .Abbie.” I leaned hard into his chest, smashing my nose flat. “I can’t let it go. Please, Max, you have to understand.” My voice was muffled.

“So you’re just going to collect clues?” he asked softly. “In a notebook.”

“Yes.” I pulled away from him and looked up into his face. “Wouldn’t you do whatever you could to help someone you loved?”

“Yes, but I would also do anything I could to protect someone I love.”

I knew he was referring to me, but I also knew I’d won my point.

We stood in silence for several moments. The tick-tocks of the grandfather clock in the living room echoed down the hall, reminding me of the passing of time. The short amount of time before Abbie’s wedding.

“I can’t stop you,” Max said finally. “I’m not going to try, because it’ll be pointless. Because we’ll fight, you’ll feel guilty, and I’ll feel mean. Just please be careful. And. . .I know you will. . .but please keep the kids out of it.”

“Yes. Yes, I will.” I totally understood his concern, and for once, I wasn’t even offended that he would make a comment like that or imply that I was stupid. “I’ll hire a babysitter for Chris and work only when the kids are in school.”

Our eyes met, and he gave me a slight grin. “You’re incorrigible.”

I rubbed my hands up and down his arms. “I’m trying to grow up. Trying to be more careful.”

“I know,” he said.

“I don’t want to talk anymore about this tonight.” I heard my youngest begin to cry upstairs, followed by Karen’s voice and Charlie’s yell to cut out the noise. “I’ll go take care of him. See the kids to bed. Take a long, hot bath.” I twined my arms around Max’s neck and hugged him hard. “Then I want to lie in bed next to you. I want you to hold me tight, and I want to forget about everything.”

Chapter Seven

On Wednesday morning, after I saw the kids off to school and got Chris settled in his playpen, I called Abbie to make sure she was okay. She assured me she was fine, but I knew she was lying. That just gave me more incentive to get to work.

I hadn’t slept well, so I made an extra-strong pot of coffee. Then, I took one of my new steno pads from the kitchen drawer and reached in my purse for the notes I’d taken at Abbie’s the night before. I stared at my scrawls and felt overwhelmed. I had no clear suspects. No idea where to start. Well, truth be told, there was one clear suspect: Abbie. And if I were really honest with myself, in Detective Reid’s place, I would be looking hard at her, too. But unlike the detective, I had the advantage of knowing Abbie. And I knew for certain that she hadn’t killed Philip.

I tapped my pen on the table and considered my tendency to jump into things without thinking about the consequences. I’d paid dearly for that impulsiveness repeatedly throughout my life. Until this year, the staff at the emergency room knew me by name because of all the times I had thoughtlessly participated in activities that led to some mishap. Like skateboarding with Tommy and his friends at the park, even though I hadn’t skateboarded since I was a kid.

But this past year, since my last pregnancy, a sense of my own mortality had finally penetrated my dense brain.

And even more important than that was the realization that I wasn’t an island. I needed to consider the consequences of my own actions in the lives of others, particularly those I loved most and who depended on me.

Looking back at the last two mysteries I’d been involved in, I knew I had been impulsive. And I wondered if I’d really given my investigations to the Lord.

However, that wasn’t relevant. What mattered was here and now. This time I would. I had to. I couldn’t do this on my own. And this time, the circumstances were even more pressing. At best, Abbie might have to postpone her wedding. At worst, she could be thrown in jail.

I bowed my head and asked for guidance. Then I asked God to have mercy on my best friend.

When I was done, I flipped open the steno pad. One key to finding a murderer is knowing the steps that the victim took minutes, hours, and weeks before his or her death. Philip was pretty much an unknown to me. I hadn’t seen him in years. And I’d had no idea he was back in town until Jaylene mentioned him.

I’d have to begin with what Abbie told me and build on that.

I titled the entry
Philip’s Actions
. Then I wrote what I knew about Philip.

Philip showed up at Abbie’s book signing at the fall festival the weekend before. She refused to talk to him, and he left abruptly. Why?

He caught up with her again at the Gas ’n’ Go on the day he was murdered. How did he know she was there? Was he following her? Or was it a coincidence?

She refused to talk to him. They fought. He left. The he went to the church. How did he know she was at the church?

She didn’t want to talk to him, so she left and went to McDonald’s.

I needed to begin a list of questions I had to answer, so I wrote:

Why was Philip’s car parked down the road? What did Philip want to talk to Abbie about? Where did Abbie’s novel come from, and why was it at the church?

Why did he leave the fall festival so quickly? Because he was mad like he used to get at her?

How did he know she was at the Gas ’n’ Go and the church the day he was killed? Was he following Abbie? Or coincidence?

Why was he back in town?

When I’d investigated the two other murders, the suspects had all been present and accounted for at the time. This time, I had no clear suspects. And no obvious reasons that I knew of why someone would kill a man who hadn’t been in town in years.

The only people on the scene had been me, Ma, and Abbie. And none of us had done it. I tapped the pen on my chin. Linda had been out there, but did she even know Philip?

To Detective Reid, it might appear that Abbie had good motivation. Philip suddenly returned after years, right before her marriage to Eric, who was an old friend and work buddy of Philip’s. But aside from his presence disrupting her life, what good reason would she have to shoot him now?

Then there was Abbie herself. She sometimes holds bits of information back. And I often don’t know what she’s really thinking about a certain situation, incident, or person until long after the fact. She was trying to change, but a situation like this might make her retreat again. I couldn’t depend on the fact that she was telling me everything. I would have to question her again.

The thing that scared me to death was that she had been in the right place at the right time to kill Philip. She had owned a rifle and was an experienced shot, thanks to my father. And then there was her recently published book. The one about a man who shoots his ex-wife and almost gets away with it.

I tapped my pen against my teeth. How could I approach this? Trying to look for rifle owners wouldn’t get me anywhere. We lived in a rural area where most households had rifles because so many people hunted.

I wondered about Max’s statement that maybe the murderer was someone Philip had dealt with as a cop. Someone who had followed him here from New York. That was a possibility.

And what about Philip’s behavior? That was the most puzzling thing of all. He seemed to have been almost stalking Abbie. Why now? After all these years?

I knew of only two people besides Abbie who were angry with Philip. The Adlers. I’d start at the Pet Emporium. I’d buy another Kitty Koller. Then I’d stop by Ma’s shop. I never knew what kinds of clues I’d pick up there.

I also wanted to talk to Eric. In person, preferably. I glanced at my watch. He would be at work now. I grabbed my cell and dialed, thinking of all my arguments to get him to agree to see me. Eric answered on the second ring.

“Trish, I was going to call you. Can you come to my office? I want to talk.”

Well, that was easy. “I was just going to ask you if I could do that.”

“Good,” he said.

We agreed on a time and hung up. I took a deep breath. There was one other thing I had to do even though it made me feel sick. I needed to go back to the murder scene. I probably wouldn’t find anything, but it might help jog something in my head. That meant I had to get a key to the church hall from my mother. And I had to find out when the police would be finished with the scene. Maybe Eric would be able to tell me.

I put the pen down, slapped my notebook shut, tucked it into my purse, and stood. The first thing was to find a babysitter for Chris.

I was counting down to Abbie’s wedding. I intended to see that everything went as planned.

After a quick call to Ma for babysitter advice, which she gave me only if I promised to stop by the shop, I decided on Gladys, who went to church with my mother and had lived in a house across the street from my folks’ farm since I was a kid. She watched her great-grandchildren on a regular basis, so I wasn’t putting her out. She was perfect.

Gladys’s house smelled like laundry detergent and cinnamon. A strange but very appealing combination. She had a round face that matched her round waist. When I was little, I visited her often, and she’d ply me with chocolate chip cookies by the dozen and homemade root beer by the gallon.

“Well now, Trish, you just come right on in here. And here’s that adorable little boy your mama’s brought by.” She reached out and took Chris right from my arms. He beamed at her.

“Can I get you somethin’ to drink?”

“No, thank you.” I was eager to begin my clue collecting.

“Your mama told me you’re going to solve this dreadful crime. Someone like Philip Grenville wasn’t the kind of person you’d want your daughter to marry, but nobody deserves to die that young and in such a tragic way.”

I agreed wholeheartedly. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Well, your mama says you’re the best sleuth around, so I’m sure you can do it.”

“I’m not sure I agree with that.” I wished my mother would keep her mouth shut about my investigating. “I don’t even know how to start this time.”

“Well, you just need to clear your head.” I followed her into the family room, where she put Chris on the carpeted floor next to a baby very near his age. Then she turned to me. “You know what I think?”

I shook my head, knowing she would tell me what she thought no matter what. “You need to look at people without moral values. Or people who are strangers in town.”

I wanted to ask her how I could determine whether people had moral values, given that some of the worst killers in history had seemed like the salt of the earth. However, her idea about strangers in town was one that I needed to examine. “Do you have any suggestions? Do you know of anyone who has been in town recently who doesn’t live here?”

Gladys pursed her lips and tsked. Then she planted herself on a brown, suede-like sofa. “Why, yes, I do. The good-looking boy. The one everyone fawns over, including two of my granddaughters.” She tsk-tsked again. “Why, even your mother goes googly-eyed. I’ve never seen Doris have no sense like that before.”

There was only one man who fit that bill. “Do you mean Clark? The WWPS delivery guy?”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, why? He’s just a delivery guy. What in the world would he have in common with Philip?”

She snorted. “He’s just too good looking for his own good. He was a model, you know. In New York. Still goes up there a couple times a month.”

That confirmed my suspicion that he knew he looked good. “I’ve never seen his picture anywhere,” I said.

“Well, of course you haven’t. My lands, Trish. You wouldn’t read those kinds of magazines.”

“What. . .”

Gladys raised an eyebrow.

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t bother to ask how she knew. “Does my mother know?”

Gladys shrugged. “Your mother is too smitten by him. She refuses to believe it.”

That was odd, but then, Ma was unpredictable. This was an interesting fact. Philip was from New York. Clark was from New York.

“Why is Clark here? Do you know?”

She shook her head. “Something about his mama, I think. Philip moved her to a nice trailer on the other side of Brownsville, next county over.”

I remembered Clark had said something about his mother being sick. This was more and more interesting. I needed to get that autographed bookplate for her and deliver it personally.

“Models do drugs and. . .do other things for money,” Gladys said. “I see it enough on the news. Like all those actors and actresses.”

I nodded as if in agreement, but I didn’t like to make blanket assumptions like that.

“Mark it down,” she said. “There’s something funny with him. It’s not right for a man to do that kind of thing. Modeling, indeed.”

I left “do that kind of thing” alone and said my good-byes. Chris didn’t even look up when I walked out the door. I may have found the person I could leave Chris with when I started working with Max. And I’d made up my mind about that. Once I solved this mystery and got Abbie married off, I was determined to work at Cunningham and Son.

I walked into Adler’s Pet Emporium. No one was behind the counter, and I yelled hello while I picked out another Kitty Koller.