“Safe,” I said, gasping a bit because for a while there I hadn’t been completely sure things would work out.
“Mrr.”
“It’s good to know you weren’t worried at all. Nice to know that you have that kind of confidence in me.” I opened the door into the house and set Eddie’s carrier on the floor. “Promise to be good?”
My cat blinked up at me, but didn’t say a thing. Which was just as well because, even if he’d promised, I wouldn’t have believed him.
“Here you go.” I opened the wire door. Eddie, who had been lying on his pink blanket, leapt to his feet and pranced into Rowan’s kitchen.
Oak cabinets with brushed nickel drawer pulls and cabinet knobs. Off-white tile countertops with a comfortable clutter of coffeepot, dry goods canisters, and cookbooks. Rowan had been close to fanatic about keeping things clean, but she hadn’t minded a little clutter, especially if the clutter was family heirlooms. She’d told me she had a number of them because she was the oldest grandchild. “None of it is worth a penny,” she’d said, “so the term ‘heirloom’ is a bit of a misnomer, but calling the kids to dinner with the cowbell from the last cow my grandparents owned makes me smile every time.”
In a sudden rush, the full impact of her death wrapped around me. She was gone forever. No more of her dry humor, a type of humor that many people interpreted not as humor at all, but as being cold and distant. My father had a similar tendency, so I’d found it easy to laugh at her comments. The absence of her wry observations was a hole in my life, and it would never be filled, not completely.
I sat on a handy bench and, after I’d finished crying and wiping my eyes, pulled off my boots and put them on the mat next to boots left behind by other Bennethums. I unzipped my coat, but didn’t take it off. When Neil and the twins had left the house, they’d turned the heat down to a level that would have been chilly without an outer layer, even over my bookmobile sweaters, which were long and warm and pocketed, the better for carrying cat treats.
“Eddie?” I called. “Where are you?”
“Mrr!”
Though I didn’t see him, I heard the pitter-patter of Eddie paws as they thumped up the stairs.
“Nothing up there for you to see,” I called. There was nothing upstairs but bathrooms and bedrooms, including the very empty master bedroom. At some point, Neil would open the closet and have to make decisions about Rowan’s shirts, pants, dresses, and shoes. Or would he ask Anya to do the sad task?
I tried to remember Rowan’s sibling situation, but couldn’t quite. Though she’d talked about brothers and sisters and cousins, she’d also had a tendency to drop the term “in-law” and talk about Neil’s blood relatives as if they were hers.
Eddie thundered down the stairs and cantered into the kitchen.
“Why would anyone kill her?” I asked, standing to look at the collection of magnets on the refrigerator. Hal and Ash’s theory about a revenge murder because of a denied loan seemed like a stretch, but I didn’t have any better ideas.
My fuzzy friend galloped around the kitchen table and back into the living room.
Of course, why anyone would kill was a mystery to me, unless your life or the life of someone you loved was in danger. And the idea of Rowan being a dangerous threat to anyone seemed beyond unlikely.
“Then again,” I said, “what defines a threat might be a relative concept.”
“Mrr!” Eddie said as he ran back into the kitchen. He started to take another lap around the table, but he miscalculated his speed. Centrifugal force tipped him over and he slid into the row of boots, knocking footwear everywhere.
Before I could get to my feet, he was up on his, trotting around as if he was proud of his stunt.
“You must have been at the back of the line when the gift of grace was handed out.” I went over to, once again, clean up after my cat. “Or maybe you’re just getting older. You’re four now, if Dr. Joe was right about your age. That’s what, college age for a cat? Not that you would have studied enough to get into any college. And if you’d managed to get admitted, I can see you flunking out after . . . huh.”
I was down on my hands and knees now, and had seen a small flat rectangle on the floor, way behind the boots and underneath the bench. Since I was an unexpected guest, it was my duty to do some chores, so I reached out for the whatever-it-was.
My fingers recognized the shape and texture of an empty sugar packet before my brain caught up.
A sugar packet? But that made no sense at all.
I brought the object into the light and put it on the kitchen table.
Sugar. Rowan hated extra sugar in anything. She’d considered it responsible for death, disease, and general disorder in the world. She’d been a bit of a fanatic about it.
I poked at the thing, reading its print. This particular packet was maple flavored, something put out by a local company. Even still, there was no way Rowan would have bought it and no way she would have allowed it in her house. There was absolutely no reason for it to be there.
Except one.
I backed away from the sugar packet, not wanting to touch it, not wanting to even see it any longer.
My fingers fumbled for my phone. “Hey, Ash? There’s something you need to see.”
Chapter 5
At breakfast the next morning, I held my aunt spellbound while I told the tale. Or at least partially spellbound, because some of her focus was on keeping Eddie off the table.
“But Hal and Ash didn’t think the sugar packet was important?” she asked.
“They’re reserving judgment until it can be analyzed.” My instinctive leap had been to the conclusion that the sugar packet had contained whatever it was that had killed Rowan. There, in her kitchen, I’d seen the scene unfolding. Someone at the front door. Rowan inviting her or him inside. An offer of coffee. Two coffee mugs brought to the kitchen table. Then a request for something not handy. Rowan would have turned away and the killer would surreptitiously have added the poison, with the cover of an innocuous sugar packet if Rowan had happened to see the movement.
I’d envisioned it so clearly that I’d been shocked when Ash and Hal hadn’t seen it along with me. Looking back, I realized that I might have been a little sharper with them than I’d needed to be. I’d been tired, hungry, and worried about getting the bookmobile back home, and during the three hours I’d waited before they showed up—the time it took for the road commission’s salt trucks to get to Rowan’s road—my confidence that the packet had contained poison had grown to one hundred percent.
Eddie, who had abandoned his efforts to get on top of the table, jumped onto his chair. He sat upright with his chin just level with the tabletop.
I spooned up the last of my oatmeal. “And it’s possible I told Detective Inwood and Deputy Wolverson that waiting a week for the lab analysis would be a waste of a week and wasn’t time of the essence in a murder investigation?”
Aunt Frances half smiled. “More like you said they were nuts to ignore what was right in front of their faces.”
“Well.” I grinned. “That sounds more like me, doesn’t it?”
My aunt nodded. “Yup.”
“Mrr.”
• • •
The previous day’s freezing rain had been covered with a fresh two inches of snow overnight. While the main roads were clear, most of the side roads were still exceedingly slippery. Schools were closed and events were being canceled all over the county, but the library had never closed for weather in the history of the library, so I slipped a set of handy-dandy ice grips over my boots and headed out.
My normal morning walking route took me through the tree-lined residential streets of Chilson, zigged to hit the core downtown blocks, and zagged back up to the library. Today, however, I took the route of safety and made a beeline for the main road.