I was restless when I got home. Roma had an early surgery at the clinic so I was driving out to Wisteria Hill to feed the cats in the morning. Now that Roma lived in the old farmhouse full-time, I fed the feral cats only when she was out of town or tied up with a patient. I hung my old jacket on the doorknob and went down to the basement for my heavy rubber boots. Roma had warned me that the path around the side of the old carriage house was wet and muddy.
While I was down there I decided to try to figure out why Owen was spending so much time in the basement. A waist-high workbench took up almost half of the back wall of the cellar. Harry Taylor had told me it had been built by the previous owner of the little farmhouse. Owen had taken over part of the knee-level shelf. It looked like the stash of a hoarder. He’d dragged down the old sweatshirt I’d told Maggie he’d swiped from me. There was a mitten that I recognized as belonging to her, several catnip chicken body parts and three black feathers. They looked like they might have come from a grackle.
I leaned against the bench holding the feathers, trying to make sense of how and why Owen had them. The little “war” between Hercules and the large bird was exactly that: between the two of them only. The bird hadn’t so much as lifted a wingtip in Owen’s direction, probably because it was Hercules who liked to hang around the maple tree the grackle considered to be its territory. Owen was generally prowling the yard or rooting in Rebecca’s recycling bin.
So how had Owen gotten those feathers? From another bird? I didn’t think so. From what I’d seen, the big black grackle kept all other similar birds at bay.
Could Owen have taken a run at the bird? I thought about the various squabbles he and Hercules had been having the past several months. There was an element of tit for tat in all of it.
I blew out a breath. No, it was just too preposterous to think Owen and Hercules were fighting because Owen had gone after the bird Hercules had been jousting with for the past year. They were cats, after all, not people.
I took my boots and the three feathers and went upstairs.
Owen wandered into the kitchen from somewhere carrying the disembodied head of a yellow funky chicken. He dropped it next to his water dish.
“Why do you have these?” I asked, holding out the black feathers.
He blinked at me.
I leaned forward, one hand on my knee. “If you’ve been after that bird, you have to stop.”
“Mrr,” he said, dropping his head to study a spot on the floor.
“Hercules and the bird are like . . . like Austin Powers and Dr. Evil.”
I shook my head. What was I doing? Trying to explain to one cat that he had to stay away from the so-called archenemy of another cat by referencing a movie from the 1990s, albeit one both cats had watched with Maggie and me.
I straightened up. No, this was crazy. I held up the feathers. “Bad,” I said sternly. “Very bad.” Then I dropped them in the garbage can.
Owen gave a snippy meow and turned his head so he wasn’t looking at me.
“Don’t do that again,” I warned, glaring at him. I wondered if as far as he was concerned all I’d been saying was “blah, blah, blah,” for the last minute.
I went to the sink and washed my hands. When I turned around again Owen was studying my things by the door.
“Mrrr?” he asked.
“I’m going out to feed the cats in the morning,” I said in answer to what I was assuming was his question. “And before you ask, no, Marcus isn’t going with me.”
He cocked his head to one side.
“He’s working. Some new information in the case.” I blew out a breath. “I’m starting to think we’re never going to find Margo’s killer.”
“Mrr,” Owen said again.
“It’s not Rena and I’m glad about that. I don’t know her very well, but I like what I know.” I checked the back door, making sure it was locked.
Owen was still watching me.
If anyone heard me having a one-sided conversation with a cat, they probably would have thought I was more than a little delusional, but the fact was, saying it all out loud helped me make sense of things. And the conversation didn’t usually feel so one-sided, although I wasn’t going to admit that to anyone.
I made myself a cup of cocoa, put three marshmallows on top and sat at the table with my cup, quickly giving myself a marshmallow mustache. As much as I enjoyed a cup of coffee, you couldn’t put marshmallows on top.
“Everything seems to be tied to that picture,” I said. “Everything comes back to that.”
Owen launched himself onto my lap and sniffed in the direction of my mug. “Freeze, mister,” I warned, putting one arm around him.
He looked up at me, all furry gray tabby innocence.
“Marshmallows are not cat food,” I said, frowning at him. “Not in this life or any other.”
He made a sound a lot like a sigh.
“Yes, I know, your life is so hard.” I leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “And I meant what I said before: Stay away from that grackle or your brother is going to destroy every chicken you have. Think of it this way: Maggie is your friend and the grackle is Hercules’s friend . . . sort of.”
Owen made a face, which could have meant he was considering my words or that he was wondering when I was going to stop talking.
I picked up my mug and took another drink.
My computer was still on the table. With both of my hands occupied, Owen took the opportunity to stretch out a paw and touch the keyboard, waking the laptop up. He looked at me again, expectantly, it seemed to me.
“Okay, maybe we should see what we can find out about the history of that drawing,” I said, pushing my mug to one side and pulling the computer closer.
Owen immediately turned to look at the counter. He meowed softly.
“Yes, I suppose the research would go better with a couple of stinky crackers,” I said. I got up, set him on the chair and got the crackers for him. When I turned back around he was up on his hind legs, looking at the computer screen with one paw on the edge of the keyboard.
I swept him onto my lap again and held out a cracker. He took it from me and murped a thank-you.
I opened my Web browser and typed in my favorite search engine. “You have marshmallow on your whisker,” I said, keeping my eyes on the screen.
He dropped his head and took a couple of furtive swipes at his furry face.
The history of the Weston drawing was, I discovered, a little murky. It had turned up almost fifty years ago in the private collection of a New York businessman, although there was no provenance with the piece and no record of where or when he’d purchased it. It had been believed that the drawing was part of a collection of Weston’s work housed at the Butler Institute of American Art. Since there were photographs of the drawing from more than one exhibit at the museum, some people believed the piece had been stolen, but the institute had no paperwork to back up the claim.
“Interesting,” I said to Owen, raising an eyebrow, Mr. Spock style.
His response was to paw at the touch pad and bring up another site.
Charles Holmes had purchased the drawing for his private collection, although he had been generous about lending it and other artwork in his collection for exhibit as long as the displays were accessible to as much of the general public as possible. Before his death, Holmes had agreed to loan the Weston drawing and two other watercolors for this tour because it was taking the artwork to an audience that didn’t usually get to see such pieces.
There had been rumblings about the authenticity of the drawing for decades, I discovered, but if Charles Holmes had been aware of it—and it was hard to believe he hadn’t—I couldn’t find any public comments he’d made on the subject.
I leaned back in my chair and picked up my mug. My cocoa was cold. I got up to warm it up and set Owen on the seat again. “What do you think?” I said as I waited for the microwave. “Should we look up this generation?”