“Not you—that Gail. Gaia, as she calls herself.” Elizabeth peered back into the shop. Checking for her sister, Becca thought, and giving Becca a moment to collect herself. “She was a menace.”
“You mean, because of the wolf’s bane?” After Becca threw out the name of the poisonous plant, Clara could hear that she held her breath, waiting.
“So foolish.” Elizabeth frowned. Her bushy black brows arched like a cat’s back, but she didn’t pretend not to understand. “You do know that aconite can bring about arrhythmia, a heart attack, don’t you? If the police found that plant in the shop…well, Gaia should be happy I made her get rid of it.”
“You made her get rid of it.” Becca repeated the words to make sure she heard them correctly.
“Didn’t she tell you?” Elizabeth barely noticed. “Yes, I tried to make her understand the danger. Not that a girl like that takes anything seriously. I was glad when it disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Surely, thought Clara, the older woman would notice the emphasis her visitor placed on the word.
“Re-homed. Tossed. Whatever. As long as it was no longer sitting right there in the Charm and Cherish window. Stupid.” She shook her head again, but slowly, as if consumed more by disappointment than anger.
“So you didn’t take it?” A tilt of the head.
“Me?” Elizabeth laughed, face up in an appeal to the heavens, and then focused those dark eyes on Becca. “You should know better, Becca. You more than anyone. But never mind.” She turned and reached for the door, ready to rejoin her sister. “Just stay clear of this, okay? It’s not safe.”
Clara looked up at Becca then, but her person simply stood there, too stunned to respond. The little calico, meanwhile, couldn’t help but notice how the older woman’s eyes flickered under those heavy brows as she nodded once more to Becca, and then slid over to the cat who stood at her side.
“Especially with your family history,” she said.
Chapter 19
“You’ve been gone all day!”Harriet greeted Clara at the door with an eager sniff.“This is as bad as when Becca had that job of hers. We haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“Did she spend all afternoon with that Tiger?” Laurel circled, her tail lashing with the excitement of the hunt.“Is she bringing him home soon? Are they going to his place?”
“No!” It was all Clara could do to contain her temper.“Everything’s gotten so much more complicated! You don’t understand, either of you. Ow!”
That was in response to Laurel, who had batted her ear. Harriet merely stared, affronted, her own flag of a tail flipping back and forth in annoyance.
“There’s a lot you don’t understand, runt.” Laurel was not going to forgive easily.“Especially about men and women like our pretty Becca.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s this whole situation.” Clara looked at Laurel and then Harriet. The time for secrets, she realized, was over.“There’s something I haven’t told you. A lot, actually.”
With her ears tuned for Becca’s footsteps on the stairs, Clara filled her sisters in on what had happened. The lunch, running into Gaia, and, more disturbing to the little calico, her interaction with both Margaret and Elizabeth. As she described the older woman, tall with that wiry silver hair and a beak-like nose that seemed to draw her dark eyes close together, Harriet rose to her feet. Thinking that her oldest sister was simply getting restless, Clara hurried to finish.
“That look was bad enough,” she said, ears flicking backward at the memory.“But then that Gaia said something that really freaked me out. She said that this Elizabeth was looking for Becca, only she called her Clara. Like maybe she was really looking for me.”
“Huh.” Eyes closed, Laurel sniffed dismissively.“Like the runt of the litter, Clara the clown, would be the feline she sought.”
“I’m the one she saw,” Clara offered, hoping to appease her sister. She had her own thoughts as to why the wiry-haired woman had asked for her, but there was no sense in antagonizing her sisters.“Becca’s smart. She must have figured it out. Elizabeth is taking over the shop. She’s getting rid of stuff, and it looked like she was maybe gardening. That could mean she was doing something else with that poison plant. Plus, she said that her sister was better off without Frank.”
“And she fired Gaia?” Harriet took a while to understand, sometimes.
Clara resisted the urge to nip her older sister.“The girl is lucky! At least she got out alive. But that’s not the strangest thing. This Elizabeth, it’s like she staged all this to bring in our Becca. She spoke as if she knew Frank was going to die. As if she was already planning—”
“Well, what’s going on here?”
Clara turned. Harriet sunk down onto her belly, and Laurel jumped as Becca shut the door behind her. They’d all been listening so intently to Clara they’d missed the sound of their person, who now stood, smiling down at her three pets.
“It almost looks like you three are having a conference. Or, should I say, a convocation?”
“More later,” Clara mewed softly as she turned toward her person.
“No sign of poison.”Laurel had already rubbed her face against Becca’s legs and now stood to bury her brown snout in Becca’s palm.“She’s clean.”
“Well, that’s a mercy!” Harriet made a desultory pass.“There are some odd scents on her though.”
“Really?”Clara pushed in, earning a slight snarl from Laurel.
“Hey, I’m working here!”One brown paw raised to bat her little sister.
“Just when I thought you were all getting along so well.” Becca’s tone was enough to make Clara slink off, tail down. “Ah well, never mind, kitties. Let me get you some dinner. I’ve got some strategizing to do.”
“Sorry.” Clara slipped in behind Laurel as the three cats followed their person into the kitchen.“Can you…?”
“On it,” said Laurel.“Something about this ‘strategizing’ I don’t like.”
“Gaia?” Even before the third can was down on its mat, Becca had her phone out. “Call me please.”
When the phone rang only a few minutes later, Becca grabbed it. By then, she was on the sofa, feet up, with her computer on her lap. Laurel was bathing on the armrest, while Clara, at her feet, sat up at attention. Harriet could still be heard in the kitchen, hoovering up the last few crumbs.
“Hey, Maddy.” As Becca closed the laptop, she put one hand over her eyes. “No, I didn’t get to the police today. I was on my way when I ran into Gaia outside the shop. I was hoping to get her to come to the cops with me, but she bolted, and I ended up talking to Margaret Cross and her sister, and it all got complicated. I’ll go tomorrow, I promise. With or without her, but it would be better if she’d come with me.”
As Clara listened, Becca ran through the events of the afternoon. When she got up to her decision to come home rather than continue on to the police station, Clara couldn’t help but feel like her person was intentionally leaving something out.
“You just don’t want to admit that she messed up.” Laurel, stretched along the couch back, managed to mute her usual Siamese voice.
“You weren’t there.” Clara shifted.“She was afraid. That woman—Elizabeth—seemed to be warning her off.”It made her uncomfortable when Laurel eavesdropped on her thoughts. Besides, she wanted to listen to the conversation.
“Like that’s any different?” The distinctive yowl grew a bit louder.
“Hush, now.” Harriet landed with a thud and, seeing that Becca had taken up most of the sofa, began to knead her instead.
“Come to think of it,” Becca was saying. “I’m going to try Gaia again now.”
Laurel glared at Clara, but Clara only had eyes for Becca as she punched in the by-now familiar number. Something was very wrong. She could feel it.
“Hey!”With a startled mew, Harriet leaped sideways to avoid the laptop, which slid to the sofa beside her.“What’s going on?”