“I do. Can’t have guests getting hurt up there.”
Millie pressed her lips together.“Seems like a lot of trouble for someone to search the house.”
“Yeah, there are easier ways to find old buckles or buckles that look like they are old,” Mom said. “In fact, I think I’ve seen them at the fabric store.”
“Ones that look like the one on the body?” Millie asked. “It would make more sense that someone just got a replica.”
Mom frowned.“I don’t remember exactly what they looked like, but it behooves us to go downtown and check it out. If we can find who recently acquired such a buckle, then we just may have our killer.”
Nine
Nero and Marlowe had spent a restless night at the foot of Josie’s bed. It was no easy task sleeping with a human. You had to be vigilant so you could judge the right time to inch your way up to the top of the bed and curl up around their nice warm heads while they were sleeping without getting swatted away too many times. And then there was the pressure of waking up early—a necessity if you wanted to lay on their chest and stare at them as they woke. Nero always got a kick out of Josie’s wide-eyed reaction when her eyes fluttered open and she saw his face inches from hers.
While Josie was in the kitchen getting the breakfast ready for the guests, the cats did a cursory inspection of the rest of the house, which would be followed by their plan to search the attic. They found Flora in the dining room setting the table and they trotted in to rub against her saggy panty-hose covered legs to get their morning petting, before heading to the parlor where they could catch some rays from the morning sun.
To their dismay, the parlor was not unoccupied. Esther stood in front of the table where Madame Zenda’s tarot cards were still laid out. She was studying the cards with a pensive look on her face.
“She reads cards too?” Marlowe asked.
“Maybe she’s thinking about taking over now that Zenda is out of the picture,” Nero said.
But Esther wasn’t actually reading the cards. She picked them up one by one, placing them gently in a pile and then sighed as she put them off to the side. “Poor Betty Sue.”
Noticing the cats’ presence, her face cracked into a smile. She sat in the chair in front of her crystal ball and motioned for them to come to her.
“I don’t think Esther can be the killer,” Marlowe said as she trotted over and accepted a tuna-flavored treat that Esther had pulled out of her pocket. “She’s nice and has delicious treats.”
“Sometimes it’s the nice ones that you have to watch out for.” Nero felt it was prudent to exercise more caution in his assessments. He’d been around longer than Marlowe and had witnessed how humans often were not what they seemed.
Jed’s ghost swirled into view. “Have you guys been up in the attic recently?”
“I caught a delicious mouse up there last week.” Marlowe smacked her lips.
“Have you been way in the back where my stuff is? Who else goes up there?” Jed asked.
“As far as we know no one goes up there. That place is crammed full and it’s hard to get around, for humans at least. I don’t even think Josie has been through the whole attic yet,” Marlowe said. “But we were just about to go up.”
“Millie went up there when she was younger but, as far as I know, she hasn’t been up there in decades. She’s probably forgotten about everything up there as it is,” Nero added. “It’s all just a bunch of cast-offs and junk.”
“Yeah well someone’s been up there.” Jed fisted his hands on his hips. “I took a look through the trunk with my things in it and my good dress shoes are missing.”
Nero made a face and thought back to what the skeleton had had on for footwear. What was left of the clothing indicated that Jed hadn’t been dressed up and Nero distinctly remembered the shoes didn’t have fancy buckles like the one on Madame Zenda. “Well youhavebeen dead for three hundred years. I suppose in that time someone could’ve gone up there and rearranged things. Or even borrowed your shoes.”
Jed pursed his lips, apparently contemplating Nero’s words. “I suppose. But the dress shoes that are missing had buckles similar to that found on the body.”
This piqued Nero’s interest. Their first clue! “You don’t say? Maybe we better head up into the attic and see what we can find out.”
“Yes, we need to figure out what is going on around here. I don’t like that people are bandying about the idea that I could’ve killed that woman. I’m no killer. In fact, I was a murder victim myself,” Jed said.
“Are you sure? You don’t seem to remember things like where the treasure is.” Marlowe slitted her eyes. “Maybe with your ghostly amnesia you don’t know what you did last night. Have you blacked out or anything?”
“Certainly not. And I didn’t forget where the treasure is. It’s just that the landmarks have changed and I need to do some looking around to find the spot. I tell you, I’m no killer!” Jed’s voice rose in outrage. “You ask me, it was one of these psychics. Probably jealous that Madame Zenda said she could talk to me.”
Nero glanced sideways at Esther. She was gazing into her crystal ball intently, her kind face a study in concentration. Was she hiding something beneath that pleasant exterior?“Maybe we should do some investigating into each one of them.”
“My money is on that blowhard, Victor,” Jed said. “He’s been running all around the estate trying to conjure me up with some lame chants and incantations.”
“You haven’t tried talking to him?” Marlowe asked.
“No. I haven’t actually triedtoo hard to talk to any of them and even if I did, it wouldn’t be Victor. I wouldn’t give him the time of day.” Jed glanced over at Esther and his face softened. “If I was going to talk to anyone, it would be someone pretty. Like maybe that young filly over there.”
Nero followed Jed’s gaze. He wasn’t sure what Jed was seeing but Nero only saw an old lady with white hair and a network of wrinkles. “Young?”
Jed laughed.“Well, Iamthree hundred years old, so she’s young to me.”
“Okay then, so back to the shoes. We’ll go take a look. See if we can sniff out any nefarious human activity. But I don’t think anyone has been to that part of the attic in decades.” Nero wasn’t sure if he wanted Jed to fixate on Esther. He was getting the same moon-eyed look that he got when he looked at Josie. Apparently the ghost was looking for love and Nero didn’t want to encourage that. He wanted Jed to drift away to the afterlife and not linger in the guesthouse because he had a crush on some human. Then again, maybe if he set his intentions on Esther, he’d leave the guesthouse when she did and they could be done with him.
“I hope it was someone in this century.” Jed’s expression turned somber. “Though I suppose it could be the person who killed me—they were very expensive shoes. Or maybe it was my wife. She was mad that I went off to Europe for so long and there’s no telling what kind of revenge she’d want to enact. Could have taken it out on my shoes.”
Nero mulled this over. Could Jed’s wife’s vengeful ghost be lurking about in the guesthouse? The odds of two ghosts running around were practically nil, besides Nero’s fine senses would have picked up on a second ghostly presence. It made more sense that the shoes had been taken a long time ago, which made them irrelevant to the current happenings. But then how did one explain the buckle?
“Are you sure that buckle was from your shoes?” Nero asked. “I mean, there must be plenty of similar buckles around.”
“That one was old. Back in my day things were handmade so very few of the same thing existed. Sure looked like the buckle I had,” Jed said.
“Too bad the police have taken it for evidence, otherwise I could try to sniff out the age,” Marlowe said.
Nero’s tail twitched in approval. The young cat was coming along nicely in figuring out how to use her superior senses to aid in their investigations. She did have a ways to go in knowing how to use their extensive network of feline detectives though.