A Curious Affair (8 page)

“Sheriff, you have no idea.”

“That’s true. But I’ll figure you out eventually.” He said this cheerfully, but I sincerely hoped he was wrong. I didn’t want anyone figuring me out, at least not until I understood myself. Tyler added: “I’m betting most people don’t get past the surface layer of cute and cuddly, so they never notice the brain underneath. I think it’s those big, sad eyes. They’re real distracting.”

My heart gave an odd kick. Cute and cuddly. That wasn’t as good as beautiful and exotic, but I’d take it even if it was a bit of a presumptuous thing to say to a near-stranger.

“So what lured you to Irish Camp, Sheriff? You’re not exactly the standard salt of the earth yourself,” I said, changing the subject. The gossips in town had been silent on this point. My words weren’t as distinct as I would like, but he was getting better at understanding me.

“The fishing.” Then he added: “Also a dead partner and a divorce that led me to feel that I wanted a life that
held less violence and fewer inventive criminals. A man can only be used as a blunt instrument against the gangs for so long before he starts to lose his humanity. I didn’t like what was happening to me.”

“We haven’t got a lot of criminal masterminds up here,” I admitted. I was dying to ask for more personal details, but didn’t. I was nosy but not rude. He would have to volunteer the rest of his story, especially about his partner dying. “We do have some good fishing, though, if you like trout.”

“I can’t wait for some better weather. Maybe you can show me some of the best spots.”

Could I? Maybe. If I wasn’t living in a home for the seriously delusional by then.

There wasn’t time for any more conversation, because we found one of the mountain lion’s smelly-butt men. He came staggering toward us, grumbling under his breath. He had a dog with him. And a gun.

Some people are owned, or at least heavily defined, by their most trea sured possessions. Prada shoes make a certain statement. So do hats with earflaps. And, of course, so do Dobermans and a shotgun. The man also reeked of alcohol and worse. I learned that day just how bad a methamphetamine lab smells. Taken together, I read his character as mean, paranoid and irresponsible. And stupid. He actually threatened Tyler with the shotgun. I thought Tyler was going to wrap the thing around his neck. As it was, Tyler settled for taking the rifle away and then whacking him with it, never even breaking a sweat. Maybe after the gangs armed with automatic weapons, mere drunks with shotguns didn’t hold the power to terrify.

I was shaken by the encounter, even though the confrontation was over in about ten seconds. I was suddenly very glad that Tyler was with me, though this
guy was too wasted to be much of a threat and the dog wasn’t as mean as it looked, and wisely refrained from attacking either of us when his master was getting roughed up.

Tyler played it cool and by the book, but I knew he was happy at this unexpected encounter. I shared his happiness, if to a lesser degree. A brief search of the man’s pockets showed us that we had found Tyler’s drug dealer—Arthur Kingsley, his license said—and maybe I had found Irv’s killer, though I would have preferred it if the man had been wearing a denim coat and large wafflestompers.

We turned and hiked back to the parking lot where the sheriff’s Jeep was. I patted my leg and the dog tagged along behind us. I didn’t say anything, but studied Arthur Kingsley from the corner of my eye. He wasn’t a handsome specimen. All the features of his face were scrunched together in the middle, his upper lip almost touching the tip of his nose, his eyes resting on his cheekbones. This was because he was missing teeth. He looked a bit like headhunters had tried to shrink his head but given up after they finished the face. I wasn’t a dermatologist, but his flaccid skin looked like one giant precancerous lesion. Nature had hit this boy with the ugly stick. Twice. And then with the idiot stick to boot. Ugly and stupid—what chance did this guy have? It was probably a kindness to send him to jail before he killed himself.

While Tyler was putting the verbally abusive but now rather subdued drunk into the cruiser, I stole a bandana that fell out of his prisoner’s pocket and slipped it into my own. Atherton would know if this was the right man. The dog I tied up to Tyler’s rear bumper, with a piece of rope, and then fetched him some water from Don’s place. I think the poor abused animal might have been trying to talk to me, but I couldn’t understand him. All I
could do was pat his sable-colored head and murmur reassurances through clenched teeth that all would be well. I was certain that the shelter would take him since he was so gentle. I might have kept him for myself, but with all the strays that had attached themselves to me, I didn’t think it was the right time to introduce a canine into my home.

I know Tyler wanted to tell me to be careful around the mutt. And he was right, of course. But that is one lesson I will probably never learn this side of the grave. Cal and I had this in common. We’d been bitten and scratched more than once while rescuing injured animals, but there you go. In some people, compassion wins over common sense every time.

The sheriff’s cell phone worked fine, and for a wonder he was able to get a signal up on the hill. He ordered Farland Tulloc to find Dawg, and for both of them to head for Sublime immediately. I eavesdropped openly and could hear Farland’s usually phlegmatic voice growing animated as he understood that they were making a genuine drug bust. Maybe it was the bonus he would receive.

Tyler and I had another cup of ghastly coffee while we waited for the deputies. I insisted that we remain outside with the dog even though my jaw was throbbing. I didn’t mention that this was because I had the feeling the mountain lion was close by and I didn’t trust it not to help itself to a doggie snack.

Tyler kindly refrained from conversation. I found the silence companionable, even though Tyler spent a lot of time staring at me and the dog with an expression I can only call speculative.

He was probably thinking that I shouldn’t be allowed along on their search for the meth lab. Not technically. But I knew the area, and I could tell that Tyler was by now half-convinced that I was some kind of super nature
guide—which I was, but not because I had ever earned my Girl Scout merit badge. Thanks to the mountain lion, I was the only one who knew—more or less—where the men had been staying, and everyone agreed it would save time if I showed them the way to the mine. The sheriff might have had a procedural qualm or two about including a civilian on a raid, but Dawg and Farland knew Cal’s widow and they wouldn’t raise any objections to having the search time shortened and getting off the mountain before it rained.

It turns out they could have managed without me. The smell from the old mine shaft was abundant and horrible and all too easy to find. As labs went, it was small and unimpressive. Still, it was a ser vice to the community to shut it down. Methamphetamines are killing America and every battle won is a triumph for our health and life.

The other man mentioned by the mountain lion was missing from camp, but that there were two of them was not in doubt. I had no way of knowing which bedroll was his, so I took dirty socks from the piles of clothes on both sleeping bags. Everyone else was so busy taking pictures and bagging evidence at the back of the caved-in shaft that they didn’t notice what I was doing.

The socks reeked, even above the smell of chemicals, but I added them to my coat pockets. Thank God I found no underwear because duty might have compelled me to take it and that would have just been too gross for my increasingly touchy stomach. I finally had to walk some distance away to escape the miasma of odors. It wasn’t just the chemicals used, either. The men had been hunting for their meals, and maybe because compounds they used to make their drugs had destroyed their ability to smell, they had taken to dumping the offal just outside the mine opening.

I wasn’t too surprised to feel the mountain lion
watching me when I stepped outside. I didn’t turn to face it in case Tyler was watching.

“The other man isn’t here,” I murmured, knowing the cat would hear me.

No, he left. He went in a man machine—a large dark one
. The growl was soft.

“We’ll keep looking for him,” I promised, and walked away. I didn’t want to be rude, but what I didn’t need was to encourage any thoughts of friendship this mountain lion might have been entertaining. A friendly tabby—even a bevy of strays—hanging about my house could be explained and even ignored by my neighbors; a mountain lion could not.

My jaw had locked solid by the time the job was done, but I managed a smile and thumbs-up for Tyler when we started back for the parking lot, all of us burdened with trash bags stuffed with lab equipment and camping gear confiscated as evidence. Dawg had to carry the portable generator, which was really heavy, but he didn’t seem to mind, even though it was beginning to rain. He was talking excitedly about getting a haircut before being on the news. He had a terrible crush on Mary Jane Brighton, our local anchorwoman.

I noticed that at no point did Tyler say anything to the deputies about finding Irv’s murderer. Maybe because he was being a thorough investigator and content to wait for forensic evidence before declaring Irv’s death a crime. Or maybe because he sensed that I hadn’t completely signed off on the idea that we had the right man.

My footsteps slowed slightly as I thought about this. It occurred to me that maybe he still wasn’t sure that Irv had actually been murdered. I was getting ahead of myself in thinking he was convinced there had been a crime. Tyler might still believe it was an accident and just be humoring me while he waited for forensic evidence to come in.

I tried not to feel deflated. It seemed likely we did have Irv’s killer. Irv could have easily stumbled on their operation while searching out the old gold mine, and the man we arrested was certainly violent enough to have killed someone while sober. But the fact that the cave-in at the site was an old one made me think that Irv wouldn’t have bothered with this place. He would be looking for something that a man could work alone—something reasonably safe. And someplace not so well known. Irv would have been watching for something new, some parting on the rock that broke open because of all the rain we’d been having. If I had been thinking, I would have gone looking for mudslides along the river where freshly disgorged nuggets might have slid down into the stream. That was a much more likely place for Irv to work than a mine or some coyote hole. All he’d need is a gold pan and maybe a sluice box.

Also, now that I was watching the path, I noticed again that the tread on the drug dealer’s smallish hiking boots didn’t match the pattern or size of the ones I’d seen in Irv’s cabin. There were other stray prints as well, but they didn’t match the ones at Irv’s either. There was also the matter of the missing denim coat, though he might have thrown it away if he had gotten blood on it.

Maybe the wafflestompers and coat belonged to the other man and he never came this way, I thought again, trying to be optimistic about the current state of affairs. And chances were good that he would be found soon. This was a small community and we knew everyone who lived there. The cats were diligently looking for him.

The mountain lion was looking for him, too. Also, I could tell that for all his seeming calm Tyler wanted the other man badly. I just needed to be patient and let the law—and the cats—do their work.

I kept my word to the cats and got a giant sack of cat kibble at the grocery store. I also threw in a bag of raw peanuts for the squirrel. The clerk on the afternoon shift was new and didn’t recognize me, so I was feeling fairly confident of making it home with no one in the neighborhood any the wiser about me inheriting the strays. But of course my luck ran out in my own driveway, not twenty feet from my door. Isn’t that always the way?

Abby, my feline-unfriendly neighbor, chose that day to visit on her way back from her volunteer job at the library, and peering through the bare butterfly bush at my opened trunk as I unloaded my telltale groceries, she immediately spotted the heifer-sized bag of economy cat kibble dragged halfway out of the hatchback and left drooping over the bumper while I rested my muscles for a moment. It’s nice that they have clerks to help load stuff into your car, but what do they expect to happen when you get these things home?

“Jillian,” she called. Hurried footsteps came crunching
down the leaf-strewn driveway. I might have imagined it, but there seemed to be a bit of panic in her voice. Abby won’t admit to having any phobias, but she doesn’t do well with cats, snakes, bees or white dogs.

“In here,” I admitted, since she’d seen me anyway. I straightened my spine and turned to face her.

“I just heard about Irv. It’s so sad. I hardly know what to say.” But she would think of something. She always did.

“Yes.” It wasn’t just my tightening jaw that kept my answers short. I was hoping that if I looked incredibly busy that Abby would go away. But no such luck. She crow-hopped down the last of the littered drive and stopped at the garage door. She’s a stickler for proper social conduct, and she wouldn’t step into the garage without an express invitation. It was sheer pettiness, but I didn’t make any offers.

“You’re feeding Irv’s strays?” Abby looked at the sack of kibble laying half over the bumper and had no doubt guessed that I hadn’t switched my diet. Then, with a certain amount of hurt at my betrayal: “But why? You don’t like cats.”

“Compassion.” And their promise not to talk to me when anyone else was around, since it made me act a bit crazy. I looked at the huge amount of food I had purchased and said more hopefully than truthfully, “It won’t be for long. I’m going to talk to the people at the animal shelter about finding them homes.”

Abby nodded dubiously but didn’t say anything more. We exchanged the minimal levels of polite chitchat required of neighbors living less than fifty yards from one another, and then she climbed her way back up the drive to her idling car. I waited until I heard the vehicle slip into gear and begin rolling through the gravel before I turned back to my battle with the kibble. I dragged the fifty-pound sack inside the garage while Atherton
perched on the fence Cal built with the optimistic belief that it would keep the deer out of our vegetable garden. (Ha! Like it ever worked!) The cat watched my struggles with unblinking eyes and a twitching nose.

I invited Atherton in after I had put out several pie tins of kibble for the other, now very hungry cats, and a handful of peanuts for the bossy squirrel. After a short, surprised look, the cat followed me inside.

I left the groceries on the counter while I caught my breath, and we went into the living room. We both sat down on the sofa. I pulled out the things I had collected in Sublime and laid the socks and bandana on the coffee table.

“We found a smelly-butt man down by the river today,” I began.

With the sheep man
.

“Yes. Do you think any of these things belonged to the person who killed Irving?”

Atherton sniffed, and then sneezed.

No. These aren’t the right men. This one does have very
smelly feet, though
, Atherton said kindly—being understanding about my poor human sense of smell that would lead me to confuse feet for a butt.

“I noticed that,” I answered, thinking I would have to take my coat for cleaning now that my pocket was contaminated with foot stink, and hoping that whatever was wrong with this guy’s feet wasn’t contagious. I was also feeling a bit discouraged that we hadn’t managed to find Irv’s killer straight off. I wasn’t enjoying playing sleuth, a job which had so far been everything from unpleasant to downright painful, but I didn’t have enough money to hire a real detective to do the work for me. It would have to be someone from out of town. We had only one private eye in the area. His name was Graham Belle. He ran a small business that he called
The Curiosity Shoppe. I liked Graham, but he was some sort of distant cousin of Nolan’s and I didn’t want to go anywhere near our mayor with my theory that Irv had been murdered. He’d find out eventually, but later was better than sooner.

The heater clicked on with a soft
whoosh
. Atherton stared fixedly over my left shoulder. I turned to see what had riveted his gaze, but nothing was there except my long-neglected knitting bag sitting in Grandma Linn’s old wing-backed chair.

“Atherton? What are you doing?”

Watching
.

“Watching what?” I asked, wondering uneasily if a mouse had gotten inside. I hated catching the things. They always squeaked so distressfully when I caught them in the mop bucket.

The yarn
.

“Oh. Um…why?”

It moved
.

I turned and looked again. Sure enough, a stray blue wisp of mohair was caught in a current of hot air. It swayed slightly.

“You’re watching it because it moved.” Against my better judgment, I asked again: “Why?”

Because it moved
. His green eyes flicked in my direction.
It’s a cat thing
.

“Ah.” I nodded, pretending to understand. I cleared my throat. “Well, I’m getting hungry for dinner. Would you like…” I trailed off, trying to think what a cat might like. Probably not tomato soup with oyster crackers, or Cap’n Crunch cereal. It seemed wrong to serve him kibble when I wasn’t going to eat it. I reviewed the slim stock of canned goods at the back of the cupboard. “Would you like some tuna?”

The giant head cocked, and unblinking eyes turned
my way. Atherton reminded me of the helpful mountain lion, and I said another prayer that creature hadn’t followed me home from Sublime.

I’m not sure
. Would
I like some tuna?

Would he? Then, I thought to myself for the hundredth time: Why, of all the creatures on God’s green earth, did I have to hear cats? I didn’t understand them at all. A dog would have been so much easier to deal with. All you had to do was watch the ears and tail and you knew exactly where you stood.

“I think you would. Most cats do.” I hurried to the kitchen, hoping I could find the can opener.

I didn’t have any mayonnaise, so I made my tuna sandwich with Italian vinaigrette. It wasn’t bad and it helped moisten the rather stale bread that was all I had on hand—unless you counted a very old box of frozen waffles. I know this sounds disgraceful, but my jaw had been so tight for the last few weeks that all I could manage was soup, so I hadn’t bothered with anything like proper grocery shopping until today, and I didn’t think Atherton would care for grapes or instant coffee.

I paused, tuna sandwich on plastic plate in one hand, Grandma’s yellow tea-rose porcelain saucer full of plain tuna in the other. Atherton was eating off the fine china since it was the only kind of saucer I had within easy reach, and a half can of naked tuna would look silly in the middle of a salad plate.

“Where would you like to eat?” I asked. “Would you prefer the floor?”

The green eyes stared at me, probing deeply, asking if I was a species bigot, a rude hostess who treated all her feline guests badly. Or was I so uncivilized that I refused to act like the rest of my species and actually ate off the ground?

“How about on this table? I think you can reach,” I suggested, feeling myself flush as I said about my millionth
prayer that the cat couldn’t actually read my mind unless I willed him to.

I set both plates on the breakfast room table. To my relief, Atherton hopped into a chair but didn’t climb on the table itself. He had to stretch a bit, but was very tidy with his meal. In fact, he made less mess than I did. The jaw was a little better, but I had to poke the bread between my teeth and then grind it against them with my tongue until I had a soft paste.

I like tuna
, he said later, sitting back to lick a paw.

“Good. It’s a kind of large fish that lives in the ocean.”

He nodded.

What’s wrong with your mouth?
Atherton asked, surprising me. In my experience, cats ask for food and comment on your body odor; they don’t generally inquire after your health.

“My jaw is locked shut. It’s called TMJ. It will get better eventually—the doctors promise. It’s worse in the winter when it’s cold. I got hit by lightning a while ago and it did something to my face.”

Ah. I had a friend who was kicked by a deer. Her jaw
wouldn’t open either
. He paused, then added:
She died
.

“I’m very sorry.” And, oddly enough, I was. I reached out to pet Atherton but his body tensed, so I just took his plate and carried it into the kitchen.

I spent a few minutes washing up. Atherton watched from the window ledge, fascinated by the water running from the tap. I didn’t know what to do about him. I wanted to keep him near me at least until Irv’s murderer was found. He was my only witness and needed to be kept safe, but this was going to be challenging. The cat was a lot like me—worse in some ways of course, and a lot hairier, but I easily saw the similarities. He was a creature so wary, so alone, that he didn’t even seek warmth or companionship or the usual things a pet would want. He
probably didn’t even know he could want them. Or he hadn’t. Maybe that was changing, I thought, looking at the saucer I was drying. They said old dogs couldn’t learn new tricks, but maybe old cats could. He wouldn’t be the first creature corrupted by a soft life.

Of course, that raised the question of whether I wanted him corrupted. Did I want to be the one responsible for keeping him in warm blankets and tuna from here on out? Was I ready for another relationship? With a cat?

Molly called that afternoon and told me that they were holding a wake for Irv at The Mule. I was a bit surprised at the invitation, but pleased since it seemed to mean that Dell and company were going to let me into their group, at least in this marginal way. As little as I wanted to spend any time with them, I knew I would probably have to if I wanted to find Irv’s killer.

The idea that I was truly committing myself to the search bothered me a bit, and I realized that I actually felt nervous about doing so. What was I doing playing detective? I was a sheep dressing up in wolf’s clothing to hunt a dangerous person, and eventually the real wolf was bound to notice he was being stalked.

And yet…damn it! Irv had been murdered. That was wrong. So wrong. And I was the one—unfortunately—who had the best chance of finding out who was responsible.

As I hung up the phone, I noticed that the light was blinking on my answering machine. As always, this made my heart sink. I knew who it was and I couldn’t ignore it. I like my editor—really—but I don’t like to call New York. It isn’t just that the phone is the instrument of Satan, though it is. Along with the general evil of contact, there is some mental time-space difference that happens every time I call the east coast and it leaves me feeling jet-lagged after even the shortest of conversations.
There is probably some scientific formula or identified psychological condition that explains this, but I don’t understand anything except that in the migration of my thoughts, originating in California and traveling thousands of miles over fiber optics—or satellite relays—and into my editor’s ear, if not his brain, leaves me feeling as hungover as the morning after a pub-crawl. Also, the conviction grows yearly that though we were both educated in the English language, we have somehow ended up speaking two different dialects. Normally, I would send an e-mail instead of returning the call, but I had a feeling that things with Irv might take a while and there was a chance I would be a bit late getting my project turned in. There was an etiquette to this, a traditional way of suing for favors. This plea for more time required actual voice messaging.

In the old days, this constant near-miss of deadlines would never have been a problem, but lately my attention and dedication to work had been, at best, intermittent. Deadlines had become like tax payments: something to be handled in the eleventh hour and made by the skin of one’s teeth. And, frankly, the subject of my latest work had gone from something already less than gripping to a project I couldn’t look at without yawning. Which was my own fault, of course. There are no boring subjects, just boring writers. And there always seemed to be something more important demanding my time—laundry to wash and muddy floors to mop. Ah, the glamour of a writer’s life.

Atherton cocked his head at me, sensing my annoyance. I sighed and picked up the phone. It was almost seven in New York, but I knew my editor would still be in his office.

“Work before pleasure,” I told Atherton, but his gaze remained blank. I guess this wasn’t a concept that translated into Cat.

It turned out that the news was at once better and worse than expected. My boring project was being shelved for the time being. I gave a silent hurrah. I’ve learned that there aren’t enough exciting adjectives—or verbs or nouns—to rescue a story when the author is uninterested, and I think my editor knew I was a few adverbs short of a thrilling piece and was happy to put me on something else. Needless to say, I was pleased to ditch my old project. As it happened, my editor wanted a piece on the perils of feline leukemia in domestic cats. The magazine was doing a special animal edition for April and I was being given the job of convincing people that they needed to inoculate their pets against this invisible killer. The timing was convenient since it reminded me that I was going to need to talk to a vet about the strays. I could kill two birds with one visit.