Words With Fiends (20 page)

But when she flipped on the television, it seemed that every movie she clicked on was an angst-filled drama. With a groan, she turned off the set again and wandered over to her computer. She was halfway through a word game match with Martha that she was eager to end, mostly because the woman was already 157 points ahead of her.

“Luck of the draw,” Darla reassured herself, conveniently ignoring the fact that of the twenty or so matches they'd previously played, Martha had beat her all but twice. Unfortunately, this turn she was once again stuck with a rack of low-point letters, so the best she managed was
s-n-a-g
. She pressed play, and then sat back with a thoughtful frown.

The word reminded her of Hamlet. It occurred to her that, save for the one time, the wily feline hadn't indulged in any of his usual book snagging activities since she'd learned that Master Tomlinson's death had actually been murder. Maybe now that he had Brody the feline behavioral empath to mind-meld with, he didn't need to resort to such crude methods of communication.

Or maybe for once even Hamlet was stymied and had no idea who the killer was.

Splat!

The unexpected sound came from the vicinity of the kitchen. Darla gave a reflexive shriek, only to laugh at her edginess when she saw Hamlet stalking his way into the living room.

“Speak of the furry little devil!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been, and what kind of trouble are you getting into there in the kitchen?”

She jumped up from the couch and headed in the direction from which the cat had come. Sure enough, she could already see that a small volume lay sprawled on the tile floor of the unlit kitchen. So much for taking a break from knocking books off of tables! Hands on hips, she turned again to face the cat, who had settled on the sofa back once more, panther-like tail languidly waving.

“Have you been digging through my cookbooks?” she demanded in mock outrage. “I thought you liked my cooking. Fine, what will it be, Mexican or Caribbean cuisine? Oh, wait, I think I have a copy of
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
, if you prefer.”

When Hamlet merely gave her a cool green stare, she relented and added, “Okay, so I've never actually cooked out of that one. So sue me.”

Smiling a little, she shook her head and went into the kitchen to retrieve the wayward book. But as soon as she turned on the overhead light, she realized that the fallen volume was not one of her cookbooks, after all. Instead, it was the copy of
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
that she'd meant to reread.

But how in the heck had it ended up in her kitchen for Hamlet to kick off the counter?

She picked up the book and stared thoughtfully at its bleak cover for a few moments before shutting off the light switch again. Hamlet was still lounging on the sofa back, but this time his green eyes were tightly shut.
Sleeping . . . or else, pretending to?

She snorted and set the book down on her coffee table.

“Maybe I'll just go to bed early,” she announced to no one in particular. No way was she going to finish off the day with a grim read like Hardy's classic. Then, on impulse, she picked up the book again anyhow.

“Might as well remind myself how it ends,” she told the sleeping feline. “It's been, what, almost twenty years since I read the darn thing.”

She settled on the sofa beside Hamlet and scanned the pages, racing through the account of country girl Tess being seduced by the local rich cad, Alec, and having an out-of-wedlock child who dies in infancy, then going on to marry a nice young man—appropriately named Angel—who leaves her when he finds out about her past. Darla slowed her reading a little as it got interesting again, with Tess hooking up once more with the cad, whom she then murders right before Angel returns to tell her that all is forgiven. Then came the slowest pursuit scene in the history of literature, and an anticlimactic capture, followed by more platitudes.

“Ugh, there's a reason I read this just once,” she said with a groan as she plowed through the final pages. The entire book, she determined, was a sanctimonious exercise in angst and intolerance, topped by a generous dollop of misogyny.

And then she reached the novel's final paragraph, which stopped her cold. She read it again, and then she spoke its first line aloud.

“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.

Slowly, she closed the book again. Classical allusions notwithstanding (best as she recalled, Aeschylus was one of the grimmer Greek tragedians . . . something about Prometheus and that liver-eating eagle) the words were more than a melodramatic conclusion. On impulse, she flipped the book back to its cover again, nodding as she reread the novel's subtitle,
A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented
. Now, a few pieces of the dark puzzle that was Master Tomlinson's murder slowly began rearranging themselves in her mind.

Then, as Hamlet opened one emerald eye just a slit, she slowly shook her head. “‘Justice' was done,” she repeated, and gave the feline a considering look. “In the book, maybe . . . but in real life, I don't think it was.”

BUT SUSPICIONS WERE NOT FACTS, AND GUESSING WASN'T
knowing.

Darla found herself silently repeating that sentiment like a mantra the next morning as she showered and got dressed. The subtitle of
Tess
was
A Pure Woman
 . . . and there were two women involved in this particular scenario of betrayal: Grace Valentine and Jan Tomlinson. Swiftly, Darla did the mental math again just to be certain that she hadn't jumped to conclusions on the betrayal part of her scenario. Given Chris's age, the picture of Grace had to have been taken about sixteen years earlier. And she recalled Hank saying after the break-in of the dojo office that Master Tomlinson had been his stepfather for almost twenty years. So the sensei and Dr. Tomlinson had been married at the time that he apparently had cheated on her with Grace!

But, motive aside, was either woman physically capable of killing him?

Grace, she knew, was a trained martial artist. She wasn't sure about Dr. Tomlinson, but considering that she'd been married to an expert and her sons were also professionals in the field, chances were that she had at least a passing knowledge of the techniques. So despite Master Tomlinson's size and expertise, and assuming Reese's argument that the man simply had been taken unawares because he knew his killer, it was possible that either one of them could have done it.

And then there was the matter of the Botox. The doctor obviously would have access to such a drug. Grace, with her “mob wife” connections, probably attended the sort of wrinkle-erasing parties that Jake had told her about. Get enough wine flowing, and maybe she could sneak out with a syringe of the drug. Besides, wasn't poison considered a woman's weapon? Intimate, clean, easy.

Then she moved on down her mental checklist of evidence . . . or, at least, interesting observations. The sensei's office after the break-in had smelled of smoke for a few critical moments. Grace was a smoker. As for Jan Tomlinson, Darla had seen her taking a couple of quick puffs that day outside the dojo; still, the way she'd hurriedly discarded the cigarette made Darla guess that she was in the final throes of quitting. Or maybe an ex-smoker, who lapsed in times of stress. Given the fact that the woman was an MD, Darla guessed that she'd probably witnessed an aberration.

Then Darla frowned. Of course, that didn't explain why Dr. Tomlinson would have had to break into her own late husband's office. Moreover, just because Hamlet had pointed his paw at a classic novel filled with murder and betrayal didn't mean that she was interpreting his cat logic with any accuracy. Heck, since he'd left the book in the kitchen for her, maybe he'd simply been hinting that he wanted a nice kidney pie for supper one night.

“You're slacking off, Hamlet. Guess your crime-solving days are behind you,” Darla observed with a resigned shake of her head. “But I sure wish you could tell me who Master Tomlinson's real killer is.”

A sharp
meow
cut short her musings. Hamlet—apparently immune to her criticism—was reminding her that breakfast was what was foremost in
his
thoughts at the moment. Turning her attention to the insistent feline, she filled his food and water bowls. Then she grabbed herself a yogurt from the fridge before starting the coffeemaker.

While Hamlet crunched away at his kibble, she took her breakfast over to her computer and pulled up her game screen. Martha was the sole “friend” who had taken a turn since last night. Unfortunately, Darla still had a big point gap to make up, but at least this time she had a decent rack of letters to play with.

“Finally,” she said in satisfaction, shuffling the
R
,
J
,
D
,
O
,
S
,
N
,
and
W
for the best word to set down.

SWORD. DROWNS. JOWS
.
Not huge points on their own, but tagging onto the right existing word, and landing a triple tile or two, could net her a big score this turn. She was contemplating the most advantageous layout when the coffeemaker ended its cycle. Feeling triumphant, she went to retrieve her caffeine fix. But when she returned to the living room a minute later, coffee cup in hand, what she saw sent her into true warrior mode.

“Hamlet, get down from there!”

During her brief absence from her computer, the cat had abandoned his food bowl and uncharacteristically jumped up onto her desk. He turned and shot an innocent green gaze her way as if to say,
What, I'm not allowed up here?
Then, before she could stop him, he deliberately wandered across her laptop before hopping down again.

“Darn it, cat!” she exclaimed, rushing over to see what havoc he'd wrought. Hamlet wasn't exactly a featherweight, and his oversized paws could have damaged the keyboard. If nothing else, he had to have messed up her game.

She set down her coffee cup and settled back into her chair to assess the damage. The keyboard appeared none the worse for wear, she saw in relief. As for the game, he'd managed to step on a combination of keys that had sent a couple of random letters onto the screen, leaving only five of them remaining on the rack. An easy enough fix . . . no harm, no foul. Had she not seen his lapse into mischief, she'd probably have passed it off as a bit of caffeine deficiency amnesia and assumed she had done it herself.

“Well, Hamlet, you're not a bad player,” she conceded, addressing him where he now sat atop the sofa back. The remaining letters on the rack had been shuffled by his paw work, as well, and now spelled out—most appropriately, Darla thought with a smile—WORDS. And, even better, she saw the perfect spot for this arrangement where she could get a good fifty points.

Before she played, however, she hit the recall key to bring the two errant letters home again. As she watched, the
J
and the
N
came sliding back to the rack from where Hamlet's paw work had sent them.

“What the—”

Heart beating more quickly, Darla dragged the two letters back to where they'd been on the screen, tagged vertically onto the first letter of the horizontal word ACRID. Now, the word going downward read JAN.

“Jan,” she repeated, slowly turning in her chair again to face Hamlet. “Are you trying to tell me that Jan Tomlinson is the one who killed the sensei?”

Hamlet blinked once and then shut his emerald eyes. Darla gave herself a mental shake. “Will you listen to yourself?” she exclaimed. “No way is Hamlet writing messages about killers' identities.”

She pictured herself telling Reese that she knew who killed Master Tomlinson because Hamlet had typed it out on her keyboard. The detective would laugh himself sick . . . and then probably have her bundled off to a nice padded cell somewhere. No, this was way too much of a stretch.

Besides, she reminded herself, Reese was the detective. He'd already implied that he had a few ideas of his own as to who'd murdered Master Tomlinson. And it wasn't like Reese didn't have years of professional training along with the considerable resources of the NYPD behind him. All she had on her side was a wily feline whose track record in crime solving, despite her recent doubts in ability, was pretty darn good. Maybe if she ran her—or rather, Hamlet's—theory past Jake . . . ?

“Not your job, Nancy Drew,” she said in imitation of what she knew her friend's response would be to
that
. From day one, despite the PI's grudging acknowledgment of Hamlet's seeming ability to intuit bad guys, Jake had persisted in encouraging Darla to butt out of police business.

And she would . . . at least, for the moment, Darla virtuously decided. Today, she had other things to worry about, like getting Hamlet used to walking on a lead in the great outdoors.

And so, after shutting down her game, she carried him and his gear down to the bookstore a bit earlier than usual so she could spend a few minutes of quality time prowling the neighborhood with the feline. If all worked out well, she'd follow Brody's advice and make this a regular routine for them.

“All right, Hammy,” she said once she'd buckled him into the harness and snapped on the leash, “we're going to make a test run outside. I know it's cold, but you've got that warm fur coat. And we haven't had any more nasty snow flurries in the past couple of days, so your paws will stay nice and dry. You up for this?”

By way of response, Hamlet leaped from the counter and, leash snaking behind him, padded toward the front door.

Smiling, Darla picked up her keys and flipped up her coat collar so that it covered her ears, rather like Roma's little mauve sweater. The comparison made her smile slip a little. She fervently hoped for Robert's sake that everything with the dog would work out. With luck, Bonnie the rescue lady would soon ring James to let him know that the teen had been approved as a doggie foster dad.

Steeling herself for the blast of arctic chill, Darla looped Hamlet's lead over her wrist in Brody-approved fashion and opened the front door. It was cold, just as she'd feared, but the sun was shining as brightly as it could be for a late winter morning. Maybe a few minutes of this would be bearable.

“They're only steps, Hamlet,” she warned him as he walked over and sniffed at the edge of the stoop. “Don't worry, you've gone up and down steps a million times.”

They made it down the stone stairs without incident, and after a few halting stops and tugs, the two of them settled into a brisk pace down the sidewalk. Despite the cold, Darla found herself grinning broadly at the sight of the large black cat padding gracefully before her. She felt rather dramatic and more than a bit dangerous. It was like she'd stepped from one of those high-end magazine ads, the kind where a gorgeous woman in a slinky gown walks a sleek panther down the street while marveling passersby stare after her. To be sure, she was dressed in boots and a puffy down coat, but close enough.

Her fellow morning walkers seemingly agreed . . . at least, with the sleek panther part. From the smiles and comments that came their way, it seemed that she was dismissed as just a crazy cat lady. Hamlet, however, was a feline star!

“Time to go back,” she told him a few minutes later. “We've got a business to run. But don't worry, I'll let Robert take you for a stroll tomorrow, too.”

Feeling invigorated by the walk, she decided to put aside the worst of the past days' events from her mind and concentrate on selling books. Unfortunately, that vow lasted only until James arrived right at ten to start his shift. Between customers, she related what she knew of Grace Valentine's meltdown at the dojo the previous night, and the fact that Chris had seen his mother being hauled off in handcuffs in front of everyone.

“Poor kid. How is he ever going to show his face there again?” she mused as James shook his gray head over the unfortunate event. “And it's funny that even Reese seems to think there's some bad juju or something going on with that dojo. And he's not a woo-woo kind of guy.

“Actually, juju is a term of West African origin,” the professor dryly observed. “Perhaps you are referring to feng shui, which is an East Asian concept regarding the optimal orientation of—”

“Juju, feng shui, whatever,” Darla said with a wave of her hand, cutting short the lecture. “But I wonder if it really is possible for bad luck to be attached to a place like that.”

“I hesitate to speculate on such matters, although it is interesting nourishment for contemplation. Will you continue to attend classes there?”

“I'm not sure,” Darla replied after a moment's hesitation. “Let's see what happens after the tournament. Maybe by then Reese will have finally made an arrest, and we can all feel comfortable going back there again.”

By mutual consent, they let the subject drop for the remainder of the morning. Darla also kept quiet about her own newly formed theory as to Master Tomlinson's probable killer: none other than his grieving widow, Jan. If she was wrong, then she risked destroying the woman's reputation, which would be murder of a different sort. “Because Hamlet says so”
wasn't
a valid enough reason to accuse someone of so serious a crime.

Robert came in around two, freeing James for lunch and Darla to catch up with paperwork. After she'd paid a few bills, she rejoined him on the floor—ostensibly to help him with restocking, but more to gauge his mental state. To her relief, while he seemed a bit more subdued than usual, he gave off a more optimistic vibe than he had since the first time Roma had been taken from him.

While they stocked, they chatted about inconsequential things, like how Operation Walk the Kitty
had been a rousing success, at least the first time out.

“You should have seen Hamlet,” she said with a proud smile in the feline's direction. “He looked like he'd been walking in harness for years. All the people passing by probably thought he was one of those trained movie cats.”

“Yeah?” Robert gave Hamlet an approving look of his own. “Maybe we should take a video of him and send it in to one of those, you know, funniest animal shows.”

“Not a bad idea. It's about time Hamlet started earning his keep,” Darla replied with a smile. “Just be sure you get a good shot of the store's name on the front door. Free publicity, you know.”

The rest of the afternoon progressed at a brisk pace, though Darla noticed that the later the hour, the quieter Robert grew. No doubt he was anxiously awaiting word on Roma's fate. She was equally concerned, and it was only with an effort that she refrained from prompting James to call the rescue people for a status update. Even so, she still wasn't prepared when she finally heard a few notes of a Beethoven symphony that was James's cell phone ring tone.

He pulled the phone from his trousers pocket and frowned at the caller ID.

“If you do not object, I believe that I should take this call,” he said to Darla as he pressed the “Talk” button. Giving her a little signaling nod in response to her questioning look, he spoke into the phone, “Professor James T. James, here.”