The Persian Always Meows Twice Page 8

  “Do you know yet who’s taking over the Foxfire account?”

  “They’re giving it to Rachel Dominitz. Just for the time being.”

  “I thought—”

  “This is an unexpected emergency, Jerry. The transition needs to be handled as smoothly as possible. Once things shake down . . . we’ll see.” After a pause, he added airily, “But we’ll survive!”

  At that point, Jerry noticed my glancing in their direction and asked rather sharply, “Can I help you?”

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt,” I lied. “I just wanted to introduce myself, since we’ve never actually met. You’re Jerry Ross, right? I’m Cassandra McGlone, the groomer Mr. DeLeuw hired for Harpo.”

  “Oh . . . of course. We’ve spoken on the phone.” His handshake was professional, just firm enough. “Great of you to come. This is Charles Schroeder, one of George’s colleagues at Redmond & Fowler.”

  The fellow with the ramrod posture and silver temples also shook my hand and murmured some acknowledgment, but I had the sense that both of them wondered why I’d shown up for the viewing. Suddenly a light came on in Schroeder’s eyes. “You’re the one who found George’s body!”

  That announcement startled Jerry, who apparently hadn’t read the newspaper story, or at least hadn’t remembered that detail. “You were at the house that day?” he asked me.

  I explained briefly how I’d happened upon the murder scene. “You arrived just as I was leaving. I saw you, but I guess you didn’t see me.”

  They both looked taken aback by that comment, and I wondered if it sounded too creepy. Had I accidentally made myself sound like a suspect?

  In a hurry to change this impression, I complimented Schroeder on the kind things he’d said about DeLeuw in the newspaper story.

  He nodded soberly, with a faraway expression. “George and I went back thirteen years. We both started as vice presidents around the same time, and worked side by side on a few accounts. When he took a step back from the firm, a year ago, we felt the loss. But George was an independent thinker, always followed his own instincts.” With a thin smile, Schroeder added, “Those instincts brought him great success . . . most of the time.”

  I wondered if he was implying that George’s instincts had somehow put him on a dangerous path. Probably he was just referring to a few financial gambles that went south.

  Meanwhile, Schroeder’s eye was caught by something happening behind me. “Rachel and her husband just came in,” he told Jerry. “Excuse me, won’t you?” And he strode toward the doorway of Reception 1.

  Left to make conversation with me, Jerry looked a bit uncomfortable. He ran one hand back over his head, the dark hair cut very short, no doubt to camouflage some thinning. In spite of his boyish demeanor, up close I figured him to be nearing forty.

  “I still can’t get my mind around it,” he said. “I talked to George maybe two hours before the police called me. I guess he had my number posted somewhere to contact in case of an emergency. But you got there first.”

  “Yes. Too late to be of any help, unfortunately.”

  Jerry stuffed his hands into his pants pockets, pushing up his suit jacket on either side. “They asked me about his schedule—did he have any appointments at his home that afternoon. At first I thought it was a ridiculous question, as if a murderer would call up and make an appointment! But of course, it could have been someone he was doing business with.”

  “Possibly someone who’d arranged to buy a piece of art from him, but planned to steal it instead,” I suggested.

  “As far as I know, though, nothing was taken.” A crease deepened between his eyes. “No, I’ve got my theory, even though they might never be able to prove it. There was this local guy who came to George with an idea he wanted to develop, some new kind of computer encryption.” His hands came out and gestured cluelessly. “I didn’t understand how it worked, but George seemed to. Anyway, the kid got it into his head that George stole his idea and sold it to somebody else. Got to be a real pain about it. Once, he left this angry message on the house phone while we were working there, and I said, ‘You really oughta tell the cops about this guy. He could be dangerous. ’ But George didn’t take it seriously.”

  I imagined Jerry telling this story to the police—no wonder they had pulled Dion in for questioning. Too bad Nick’s son didn’t have a better alibi for that afternoon.

  “Well, as you say, we may never know,” I commented. “The only witness to the crime may be Harpo, and he’s not talking.”

  Jerry looked startled for a split second, until he realized I meant the cat, then laughed. “No, I guess he isn’t.”

  I used that segue to make my pitch about liberating the Persian from his solitude in the master suite and finding him a new home.

  “I sure can’t take him,” Jerry declared. “I’m allergic. Had to take an antihistamine every time I went over to the house to coordinate things with George. Even though he had you grooming the cat, and the housekeeper was always dusting and vacuuming, I’d still sneeze my head off without the medication.”

  “That’s too bad. Do you have any idea if George provided for the cat in his will?”

  He blanked. “None at all. George didn’t discuss private matters like that with me. Guess we’ll find out when the will is probated . . . whenever that might be.”

  “That’s just the trouble.” I explained the consequences that might be in store for Harpo. “Jerry, you must have influence with George’s lawyer. Could you ask if I might be able to board Harpo at my facility until we find out if George left him to anyone? It would be safer than a shelter in every sense. He wouldn’t be around sick cats or barking dogs, and he wouldn’t be in any danger of being put to sleep.”

  The man’s brown eyes turned wary. “Gee, I dunno. What do you charge?”

  “I wouldn’t, for this. I just want to make sure he’s safe.”

  “He’s not very valuable, y’know.”

  Ross thinks I’m going to steal him or sell him? I had to smile at that notion. “I know; George explained that to me. Really, the minute anyone comes forward to give him a good home, they can have him.”

  Ross pursed his mouth while considering this offer. “Sure, I’ll talk to the lawyer. He’ll probably want you to sign a paper, but . . . why not?”

  Minutes later I quit the overly floral-scented atmosphere of the funeral home for the brisk April day outside. It had taken some work, and getting to know more than I’d ever wanted to about DeLeuw’s family and friends, but I just might have achieved my goal of providing a safe haven for Harpo.

  In the process, though, I might have set a tougher goal for myself. Now I really did want to find out who murdered George DeLeuw.

  Chapter 9

  I’d left Sarah in charge of the shop a couple of times now since hiring her, and she’d managed well. As a thank-you, I stopped at a takeout place on my way back and picked up wraps for the two of us. She was pleasantly surprised by the free lunch, and also to learn that Harpo might soon join our roster of boarders.

  “Guess your idea of going to the viewing and asking questions paid off,” she said, pouring herself a mug of coffee from the pot I kept going in the back room.

  “It did, though I probably found out more than I wanted to know about George’s close relationships . . . or lack of them.”

  Ironically, what I’d learned had left me even more curious than before. While I ate, I opened my laptop on the front counter, typed “Renée DeLeuw,” and hit search. The name turned out to be pretty rare, at least on the Internet, but I found one reference that seemed to fit. About four years ago, a woman in her late twenties—my age now—had died alone of an apparent heroin overdose in her apartment in Philadelphia. I searched further and turned up an obituary that, like George’s, omitted the cause of death but did identify the overdose victim as the daughter he’d had with Marjorie. Renée had graduated from Penn State with an MBA, but at the time of her death was supposedly working at a fast
-food restaurant.

  The story struck me as both tragic and mysterious. Renée came from a wealthy, privileged background, had gotten a solid education, and should have had a bright future. But for some reason she’d turned to hard drugs, which undermined all of that potential. I didn’t know at what point George and his wife divorced, or how long they might have had their differences, but I suspected Renée’s death was the final blow. I thought of Marjorie’s bitter tone when she’d commented that the funeral-home slideshow didn’t include even one photo of their daughter.

  Could something have reopened that painful wound recently, and made her so angry that she’d killed her ex-husband? In heels, Marjorie would be tall enough to have swung that chunk of stone. Or she could have hired someone to do it . . . ? But again, a hit man surely would have used a gun. If that stone sculpture really had been used to strike George, it looked like a crime of impulse.

  Sarah and I had just finished eating when we got a drop-in customer who taxed all of our skills. A middle-aged bearded man named Luke brought us a cat his wife had adopted from a shelter a few months back, a pale gray longhair mix that they called Stormy. He wanted to board the cat for a couple of weeks while they took their two preteens on a spring break trip to Disney World. And as long as Stormy was in my care, they figured they’d have him professionally groomed. I could tell at first glance, even through the grill of the carrier, that he needed it.

  This could be a lucrative arrangement, I knew. Unfortunately, certain clues told me that Stormy lived up to his name in temperament.

  “The folks at the shelter told us we’d have to groom him a couple of times a week,” Luke admitted. “We tried in the beginning, but he put up such a fight, we finally gave up. I don’t know what he went through as a kitten, but sometimes he can be a little tough to handle.”

  I heard a hiss before Luke even opened the carrier, and suggested he bring it straight back to the grooming studio. At that moment I wished I had two assistants, because we had to leave the front counter unstaffed—I figured I’d need Sarah’s hands along with my own for this job. Fortunately, a few months back Nick had installed a video intercom that was triggered when someone came in the front door. It let me see who it was and tell them I’d be out in just a minute.

  Sarah and I had to tip Stormy out of the molded-plastic carrier, and he still tried to hang on to it with his front claws. Once on the table, he calmed a little as his owner petted and talked to him. But his long silvery coat was a mess, full of obvious mats.

  “These are probably causing him pain,” I explained to Luke, “which isn’t making him any happier. I think it’s going to take too long, and stress him too much, to comb and cut out every mat separately. If you want to leave him for a couple of hours, what I’ll do is a lion cut.”

  I explained that this involved shaving almost the whole cat, except for the face, the neck ruff, the paws, and the end of the tail. “It will take a while for the coat to grow back, but meanwhile, he’ll have no matting and you’ll have less shedding.”

  When I showed Luke a picture of the typical result, he chuckled uneasily. “Oh man. If I bring him home looking like that, my wife might kill me!”

  “Do you want to call her and put me on so I can explain? Maybe you can e-mail her a picture of it too, so it’s not as much of a shock.”

  I did spend about ten minutes on the phone with his wife, and in the end they agreed to leave the cat with me to be shaved.

  That was the easy part. After Luke had gone, Sarah and I got Stormy onto the grooming table and into a harness. She held the leash while I took on the challenge of maneuvering an electric shaver without cutting him. A cat has very thin skin, and the mats of hair pulling on it didn’t help, even without his attempts to twist around and bite or scratch me. Halfway through, I wished I’d gotten permission to give the animal some kind of natural sedative to ease his stress . . . and mine.

  As I was concentrating, my cell phone rang twice, but I couldn’t stop to answer it.

  Finally, with Sarah’s invaluable help, I had turned Stormy into a miniature and very grumpy silver lion. We removed his harness to shave the last few spots, shooed him into an empty cage, and gave him some food to help him recover from the assault upon his dignity.

  At that point I finally checked my phone messages. The first was from Jerry Ross. He said George’s lawyer had agreed to let me keep Harpo at my facility until the will was probated or someone from DeLeuw’s circle offered to take the cat.

  “To make it clear that this is a business arrangement,” Jerry added, “George’s trust is willing to pay seventy-five percent of your boarding fee for as long as the cat is in your care. Is that acceptable?”

  “Certainly.” I wasn’t going to risk queering the deal by bargaining for more. It would be guaranteed income for weeks, maybe even months, to come.

  “Okay. They’ll probably e-mail the contract over to you this afternoon.”

  I waited until I’d hung up to cheer, “Yesss!” and high-five Sarah. When I told her the good news, she grinned. “We’ll have to make up a real nice condo for Harpo. He’s used to the best.”

  The second call also was a welcome one—Mark, checking to see if I’d learned anything helpful at George’s viewing. Since the vet had no real stake in solving DeLeuw’s murder, I dared to think his interest was more personal than professional. His message did allow me to tell the clinic receptionist that I was “returning a call from Dr. Coccia,” which got a quick response.

  “The best result from the viewing,” I told him, “is that they’re going to let me board Harpo until all of this is decided. No more worries about him going to a shelter.”

  “That is terrific,” Mark agreed. “No family members stepped up, I gather?”

  “No. I asked around, but . . . they’re a strange crowd.”

  Some clinic staffer interrupted Mark to ask about X-ray results. When he got back on the line, he said with a chuckle, “Never easy to carry on a long phone conversation here, but I’m curious to hear what else you found out. We don’t have many murders in Chadwick, and people are kind of anxious to get this one solved.”

  I saw my opening. “When do you get off work? Want to grab a bite to eat?”

  “Hey, that sounds good. Maybe the diner?”

  We made plans to meet there at six thirty. My heart was still pounding from my bold move when I clicked off.

  Sarah noticed, of course. “It must be more than just rescuing DeLeuw’s cat to make you smile that big.”

  “Got a late appointment with the vet,” I said. “Actually, more of a dinner date.”

  “Congratulations, girl! You’re on a roll today.”

  I tucked my cell back into my purse. “Seems that way. I just might start looking forward to phone calls if they all turn out like this.”

  * * *

  The diner, Chad’s, occupied a prominent spot toward the north end of Center Street, along the now-defunct railroad line. Its façade was chrome, embossed with an Art Deco sunburst pattern, and its name blazed in neon turquoise above the door. Someone obviously chose “Chad’s” because it sounded cool and retro. I doubt that the town’s founder, Revolutionary War general Grayson Chadwick, ever went by that nickname, and the owners of the diner were Phil and Addy Panopoulos. They did have a framed head shot of actor Chad Everett—very young, in a cardigan, with slicked-down 1960s hair—just inside the glass-walled vestibule. Maybe that explained it.

  A drizzle had started after sundown, and even from a distance I could spot Mark already waiting in the vestibule. I normally saw him in scrubs, but he’d changed into a more approachable combination of dark jeans, a plum button-down shirt, and a hooded rain jacket. With little time to plan, I’d fallen back on the same outfit I’d worn to DeLeuw’s viewing.

  I was only a few minutes late, and hoped he’d accept my excuse. “I spent a couple of hours this afternoon giving a lion cut to a very uncooperative longhair, so it took some time to make myself presentable.”
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  “Well, you definitely succeeded.” His admiring smile set my pulse racing again as he held open the diner’s inner door for me.

  The nostalgic décor of Chad’s always boosted my spirits, even though it re-created an era long before I was born. The booths, chairs, and counter stools all were upholstered in turquoise vinyl, which popped nicely against the black-and-white checkered floor. Cream-colored walls displayed not the clichéd shots of old movie and TV stars, but photos from Chadwick’s own past. These included a sock hop in the high school gym and an exterior view of the old movie theater with people lined up for a 1940s war bonds drive. As a new resident, I enjoyed perusing these glimpses into the town’s history.

  The place was bustling that evening, as usual. I’d been perfectly happy for us to meet at an informal restaurant with reasonable prices, but it suddenly occurred to me that everybody in Chadwick came here. Did I want the whole town buzzing about the cat groomer having dinner with the local vet? Not since high school had I worried about being the subject of gossip. I’d gone to a big college and had my first apartment in a sizable town, where I’d felt pretty anonymous.

  But hey, Dr. Coccia and I were just getting together to discuss our mutual interest in Harpo’s welfare. And, of course, in the DeLeuw murder. That was a much hotter topic of gossip around town these days.

  At least with our animal-oriented jobs, we found plenty to talk about. While scanning the menus, we discussed Dawn’s new kitten. I said she already was becoming so attached that it would be a shame if anyone did claim Tigger.

  “She may not have much to worry about,” Mark said. “I have a feeling someone’s pet had a litter in the garage and that little guy just wandered off on his own. Any owner who didn’t bother to spay the mother or take care of the babies is probably glad to be rid of him. Too many people out there like that. But you were smart to warn her not to give him away to just anyone.”

  I savored the compliment. “I told her, if somebody says they lost a kitten, ask how old it was, what color it was, and if it was a boy or a girl. If they answer wrong, or even seem like they’re guessing, don’t hand him over.”