The Case of the Careless Cat

Some might say Wynton, Kansas, wasn’t much of a place to come back to, but those people have probably never sat in Katie’s Corner Café sipping a cappuccino (yes, Katie makes a mean one) and getting a warm hello and an update from every single person who comes in. Those people could never understand the annual excitement of the county fair or the daily suspense of The Weather Channel. Most of them will never appreciate the magic of twenty children sitting crisscross applesauce on the floor of the library, waiting for me to read them a story, and they probably don’t know that Fred Larsen, our last organist at the Methodist church, studied in Paris before he came back home to care for his sick mother because family still comes first in Wynton.

I’ve lived here my whole life, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Oh, I enjoy getting out and reminding my far-flung nieces and nephews where they came from, but there’s no feeling like driving suddenly into Wynton from the wheat fields and having that first person on the street turn and wave as if my arrival made the sun shine. My husband died when we were still young, and since then it’s just been my cats and me, but I’m never lonely in Wynton.

Of course, there’s a fine line between pleasant socializing and burdensome calls on one’s time. Just last week, returning from my niece Sonia’s wedding in Colorado, I was tired and eager to pick up Watson, my cat of the last twelve years, from his home away from home, with Fred, the organist I mentioned. But right on cue as I turned onto First Street from the highway, elderly Flora Geary flagged me down and came slowly up to my driver’s side window for the obligatory welcome-back and catch-up session.

Flora’s always been polite enough, but she is a passionate member of her church and liable to give anyone she meets a full rundown on its doings. Today, though, she skipped right over that—she even neglected to ask about family or speculate on the chance of rain. After the briefest preliminaries, she got down to brass tacks.

“Listen, Sheri, I know how you love mysteries, and I’ve got one for you. This morning I took my grandson Paul over to Fred Larsen’s for his piano lesson. We arranged it last week, and the housekeeper’s car was in the driveway, but nobody would answer the door. We both called, and even looked into the backyard and the windows, but no sign of anyone.”

“Hmm.” I was intrigued, but also concerned. “You didn’t happen to see my cat, Watson, by any chance, Flora? Fred was taking care of him.”

She frowned thoughtfully. “No . . . no I didn’t see the little fellow. But then Paul and I may have scared him off.”

I laughed. “I doubt it. You’ve seen Watson operating over at the library. He loves people—unless they drive big trucks and stomp around in work boots. But I’ll get over there and let you know what’s going on. Nice scarf, by the way.” I had never seen Flora in a headscarf before.

She touched it absently, as if she’d forgotten she was wearing it. “Oh—thank you. I’ve had it for ages.” Then she reached in through the window to pat my shoulder. “It’s good to have you back, Sheri. Don’t forget to phone me about Fred.”

“I won’t,” I said. As I watched her resume her slow walk, no doubt home from a morning at the senior center, I felt Wynton work its usual welcoming magic. People around here know I have a gift for solving mysteries large and small, and it was nice to feel needed. But at the same time, I was anxious to check on Fred and collect my feline companion.

***

When I came to Fred’s well kept, 1920’s-era home on Sycamore, nothing looked amiss. Cindy Shacklet’s Buick was in the driveway as Mrs. Geary had said. Fred was a confirmed bachelor, and now that he was getting up there, he had Cindy come around to make his dinner and tidy up the place. I was relieved to see only her car, no police. No doubt there was a simple explanation for Fred’s absence earlier.

I parked on the street so as not to block Cindy in and walked briskly up to the front door with Watson’s carrier. To my surprise, the housekeeper was there to meet me. “Oh Mrs. Hudson,” she said, throwing the door open. “I’m so glad to see you.”

She was a large, motherly woman who cared for several seniors in the area but was most devoted to Fred. Usually she greeted everyone with a hug and a smile, but today her eyes were red and teary. “Come in, come in,” she said, standing aside.

She led the way into the impeccably neat living room to my left and crumpled into a chair by the piano. “It’s Fred,” she moaned, sinking into a chair next to the piano and burying her head in her hands. “I just found him and called 911.”

“Found him?” I exclaimed. “Where?”

Sobbing, she explained how she had taken a load of laundry down to the basement and encountered Fred’s lifeless body at the bottom of the stairs, his head surrounded by a pool of blood. I made a quick examination of the scene, with Cindy hovering sadly over my shoulder, which was unfortunate because I noticed she smelled strongly of onion. Passing through the kitchen, I’d seen one sliced open on the counter.

I pointed out splotches of newish paint opposite one another on the baseboards at the top of the stairs. “Did you or Fred do some touching up recently?” I asked.

“Not that I know of.” She examined the spots. “Probably Fred was covering up scuff marks. When he has his recital receptions at the house, the boys tend to tear the place up a bit. Look, here’s some more spots.”

Fred was not a neat painter, which was odd, because he was meticulous in most respects. I took in the splotches and then beat a hasty retreat upstairs to look for Watson and get out of the way of the police.

It took a while to find my furry partner, and longer still to coax him out from under poor Fred’s bed. I stroked and cuddled him and got him to accept a few cat treats, and he comforted me, too. Even though I had just seen Fred’s lifeless body, it was hard to believe I’d never again hear him tease out the intricacies of a Bach fugue at the Methodist church, never play Mozart violin and piano sonatas with him on Sunday afternoons.

But even though I was sad, I couldn’t stop my mind from working. I couldn’t help noticing the chaos, so unlike Fred, on his desk: the cat hair, the overturned coffee cup,  the papers Watson had apparently scattered over the desktop and onto the floor when something frightened him. Some of the writing had been obliterated by coffee, but Fred’s checkbook was open nearby, and he had clearly been balancing it. I saw Cindy’s name among Fred’s notes, and that led me to reflect on her devoted service, the spotless kitchen with the onion she had cut open on the counter, the barely discernible splotches of fresh paint on the baseboards at the top of the steep cellar stairs. I even thought about Flora Geary’s unwavering faith, and the fact that she was wearing a headscarf for the first time in probably forty years.

By the time I was finished thinking and Watson was calm enough to go into his carrier, the thumping and bustling downstairs had quieted. No one had come up to bother us, so I knew Garth Streeter, our town’s only detective, had concluded Fred’s death was accidental. I had no time to lose.

Garth and I had briefly been high-school sweethearts before Frank Hudson swept me off my feet, and we’ve enjoyed a cordial, if competitive, relationship ever since. In fact, after Garth’s wife left him two years ago, we caught dinner and a movie a few times, but I think my talent for doing his job grated on his nerves, so we went back to being just friends. To his credit, Garth always takes my views seriously, even though I’m only an amateur. But that doesn’t mean he’s happy to see me appear when he’s working a case.

Now he sighed with exasperation as I came downstairs to the front door, where he was wrapping things up with Cindy. “You didn’t tell me Sher—Mrs. Hudson was here, Ms. Shacklett,” he said, a little sharply.

“I’m sorry, detective. I was so upset, I guess I forgot.” Cindy looked as if she might start crying again.

“Oh well, no harm done. I’ll notify Fred’s brother, and you go home and have a nice rest.” He patted her consolingly, but looked at me, knowing what was coming. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to drop a bomb on his Peaceable Kingdom.

“Excuse me,” I said, descending the last stair to join them. “I couldn’t help overhearing. Am I right—you’ve concluded Fred’s death was an accident?”

Cindy gazed at me with round, red eyes. Garth shuffled his feet uncomfortably. “Ye-es,” he said slowly. “Terrible fall. Ms. Shacklet thinks maybe your cat tripped him up,” he said, nodding at Watson’s carrier.

I was indignant. “Before accusing an innocent animal, detective, maybe you can explain why there are paint spots on the baseboards at the top of the cellar stairs that appear to be fresh?”

“I told you—” Cindy began, but I was having none of it.

“Did you question the neighbors about why Cindy’s brother stopped by here this morning? I’m sure somebody saw his truck.”

Cindy gaped at me. “How did you—I mean, how can you?” she said, and began to cry.

“Now, now, Sheri,” Garth said, leaping to her defense. “I’ll look at those paint spots, but I’m not at all sure they prove anything. And if Tom Shacklet did stop by, I’m sure he had a perfectly good reason.”

I ignored this. “Did you never stop to wonder, detective, why Cindy would have cut open, but not sliced, exactly one onion, which is probably still sitting out in the kitchen?”

Garth put his arm around Cindy, who was sobbing uncontrollably. “Now see here, Sheri. Can’t you see you’re upsetting Ms. Shacklet with these insinuations? Why don’t you just come right out and say what you’re getting at?”

“Fine.” I laid out the evidence point by point, just as Watson and I had put it together. “When Cindy invited me to view the scene, I immediately noticed the onion, cut in half, with nothing else around it, and sure enough, when we came close together at the head of the stairs, I smelled onion on her face, which suggested to me she had rubbed it in her eyes to make herself cry.”

Here Garth himself had a sniff and jerked back, confirming my observation. I continued, “I then noticed that some fresh-looking paint on the baseboards didn’t quite match the old paint. The paint was sloppy, which wouldn’t be like Fred. I hypothesized that someone, probably Cindy, had filled and painted over two small holes near the top of the stairs. I believe you will find they were screw holes, and I believe someone, probably Cindy, stretched a wire between those screws, which then tripped poor Fred. As Cindy no doubt knew, he was on blood thinners, so when he struck his head he bled out quickly.

“This morning Flora Geary and her grandson Paul saw Cindy’s car at the house, though for some reason she didn’t answer the door. Further, I believe that someone will have seen Cindy’s brother’s truck parked here briefly when he stopped by to pick up the tools Cindy used on the baseboards. I found Watson under the bed, which is where he always goes when workmen come to the house, so I am certain he was here.”

By now Garth was looking concerned, while Cindy was looking angry, though still tearful.  “First of all, I don’t know why I never saw Flora or her grandson, but I can tell you one thing, she always pursed her lips when she saw poor Fred, and she told me once she ‘disapproved’ of him.

“I loved Fred Larsen. After I found his body I was so shocked, I couldn’t even cry. I was just numb, and knowing how suspicious you are, I did rub on a little onion, but you and Detective Streeter here both saw me cry plenty since, so that means nothing.

“As for my brother, yes, I did find some tools here, and since he did some odd jobs for Mr. Larsen, I thought he might have left them, so I called him. He took the tools, said he could use them, but we think they probably belong to somebody else who was here yesterday afternoon while I was gone to the store for Mr. Larsen. And that somebody has now skipped town! He told us both he was leaving last night.”

“Somebody else?” Garth looked at me, flummoxed.

“I assume you mean Gideon Bruce, the hairdresser?” I asked.

They gaped, but Cindy recovered quickly. “Yes. Mr. Larsen’s secret lover!”

I smiled, feeling a little sorry for the poor naïve woman. “Cindy, you know there aren’t any secrets in Wynton. Besides, when your brother dropped by, it seems he startled Watson off Fred’s desk upstairs. I couldn’t help noticing the mess, and then I got to looking and saw that he was figuring out how much money he had. It looked as if he’d called in a loan he’d made to you, by the way.”

“I was paying it back,” she said, defiantly.

“But now he suddenly needed the rest of the money,” I said. “Gideon was leaving town—he was far too talented with hair to stay long after the cancer finally took his sister last spring—and I believe Fred planned to join him, somewhere that was less of a fishbowl than Wynton.”

Cindy struggled against the net closing around her. “It wasn’t like that at all! They were fighting and yelling. Fred wanted to give all that up and marry me.”

I shook my head. “No, Cindy. I know how badly you must have wanted that, but it’s just not true. And when you had to face the truth—and pay back the money—it was just too much, wasn’t it?”

“Now just a gosh darn minute here,” Garth weighed in. “You’ve made a lot of interesting observations, Sheri, and I’ll be sure to have them checked out, but how do we know for sure Ms. Shacklet’s version isn’t true? This Bruce fellow could have strung a wire just as easy as her. Even Flora Geary has enough DIY in her to do that, if she was bound and determined.”

This was preposterous, but I kept my cool. “All right, then, detective, where’s the laundry?”

“The laundry! What the Sam Hill?”

“Didn’t you say you found the body when you were taking laundry down to the basement, Cindy? Where’s the laundry now?”

“In the machine, of course,” she said, too quickly.

For all his shortcomings, Garth is a detective, and if you dangle enough clues in front of him he can put two and two together. “You mean to tell me you found Mr. Larsen’s bleeding body and stepped over it to put in a load of wash?” he asked.

***

Once Garth accepted my version of events, Cindy realized she didn’t have a chance. She made a full confession that afternoon, and the notes Fred had made about his plans confirmed it. I filled Flora Geary in while Watson snuggled on my lap, and then I met up with Garth at Katie’s Corner Café for a cappuccino (mine) and a black coffee (his).

“I have to hand it to you, Sheri,” he said. “You got poor Fred and his family a measure of justice today.”

“Thanks,” I said, suppressing a grin. I knew how hard it was for Garth to acknowledge my part in solving the crime.

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” he continued. “Fred had students young and old coming and going all the time. How did you know Cindy was talking about Gideon Bruce?”

“Oh that,” I said, laughing. “It was Flora Geary’s headscarf. She was wearing one when I saw her as I came into town, and she never has before, so I figured Mr. Bruce hadn’t kept his weekly appointments at the senior center this morning. Of course I knew he and Fred had been close for a while, so when Cindy so passionately tried to pin the crime on Gideon and said he’d skipped town, I made an elementary deduction.”

Garth put down his empty mug and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Sheri, you never cease to amaze me. Don’t suppose you’d like to take in the second show of a movie this evening?”

I smiled and reached over to squeeze his big, rough hand. “I’ll take a rain check, Garth. Tonight I plan to spend a quiet evening in with Watson. He’s had a hard time of it while I was gone.”

 

Bio
Lorna Wood is a violinist and writer in Auburn, Alabama. She was a finalist in the 2016 Neoverse contest, and her genre fiction has appeared in Canyons of the Damned, Every Day Fiction, Dark Magic (an Owl Hollow Press anthology), and Mysterical-E, among others. She has also published literary fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and scholarly essays, and she is Senior Editor of Gemini Magazine.