It couldn’t have been the movers she’d mistreated. The rain we got a few days back would have already washed their prints away. No, whoever these belonged to had been here recently.
Animal control certainly came around frequently, but they had no reason to go peeping in her windows. Hmmm.
For a moment I wondered whether I should go share my findings with Officer Bouchard, but he had already told me Ms. Miller’s death was an accident. Still, doubts continued to nag at me. If the new neighbor made enemies of me and Nan so quickly, how many other enemies might she have accrued over the years? Judging by the way she’d treated the moving company she hired, I’d guess that not many people had positive run-ins with the old woman, which made the string of suspects impossibly long.
I didn’t even know where to begin. I knew nothing of Angela Miller’s life before she moved to town and really knew nothing about it since. She’d only lived next door for two weeks, which meant if I were going to investigate, I’d be flying more or less blind.
No, I needed to tell the police what I’d noticed about the bootprints. They at least had a few more channels available to them, channels that weren’t always open to novice investigators like myself.
Already past the point of mental exhaustion, I returned to the backyard and found Officer Bouchard chatting with one of the paramedics gathered at the scene.
“Forget something?” he asked with a knowing glint in his eyes. He’d known me long enough to guess that the wheels in my head were now spinning wildly out of control.
A slight breeze blew past, sending a shiver straight through me. I wrapped my arms around my torso and said,“I found something odd. I was wondering if you could check it out.”
He murmured something to the woman beside him, then followed me around the house.
“See.” I pointed at the boot prints in front of the egress window. Now that he knew everything I did, I could take myself off the case. Ms. Miller had hated me. She wouldn’t want me investigating her death anyway.
“What are we looking at here, Angie?” Officer Bouchard squinted, then squatted down to get a closer look.
“Bootprints facing in toward the window. Someone was either trying to look inside or trying to get inside.” My eyes went wide as I voiced this revelation aloud.
But he seemed neither curious nor bothered. He simply shook his head and said,“Mmm. I don’t think so.”
Odd. Why was he so quick to dismiss my concerns? I knew Officer Bouchard well enough not to suspect foul play, but not even being willing to consider this new evidence? Definitely odd.
“What makes you so sure it’s not a clue? I mean, really stop and think about it. Maybe her death wasn’t really accidental after all.” I bit my lip, waiting to see what he would offer in response.
My friend raised one foot and showed me the sole of his shoe.“The pattern matches, see?”
I studied the mix of straight lines and swirls stomped onto the ground, then compared the marks on the bottom of the officer’s shoe. Sure enough, it was a match. Except for one small detail.
“But yours is much smaller than that pair,” I pointed out, hoping it wouldn’t offend him. Men were sometimes funny like that.
“They might not be mine exactly. But they could have been left by any of our team here. We all wear the same kind.” He set his foot back down and furrowed his brow. “I’m afraid you’re looking for smoke where there isn’t any fire, Angie. I know it’s scary, but I can assure you, what happened to your neighbor was nothing more than good old-fashioned bad luck.”
“Well, if you’re sure.” I wrapped my arms around my torso again, needing that small bit of comfort. Whether or not Officer Bouchard agreed with me, something felt very wrong here.
He just shook his head and offered me a kindly smile.“I happen to be surer than sure. Nobody uses a bag of feed as a murder weapon. Can you imagine?”
Unfortunately, yes, I could.
8
“Date night go that poorly?” Nan asked me when I appeared in the foyer after a sluggish walk home. “Don’t tell me the wedding’s off!”
“Everything’s fine with me and Charles,” I mumbled, sloughing off my shoes and leaning back against the door with a heavy sigh. “With the neighbor, not so much.”
Nan was at my side in an instant.“Oh, what did that evil witch do now? I have half a mind to go over there and slap her silly. It’s just our—”
“Nan,” I interrupted, then took a deep stuttering breath before revealing the harsh truth. “She’s dead.”
A strangled noise escaped Nan’s throat, telling me she now felt quite similar to how I had at receiving the news.
Octo-Cat came trotting gaily down the stairs, his tail held high with a jaunty twist.“Well, that’s one less problem in our lives. Will you break out the catnip or shall I?”
I turned on him so fast, I almost lost my footing and had to reach out for the banister to steady myself.“Octavius Maxwell Ricardo Edmund Frederick Fulton Russo, soon-to-be Longfellow too, how dare you talk like that? A woman is dead!”
He plopped down on the bottom stair and regarded me stonily.“One, I am not taking UpChuck’s name. Try that again, and I will be removing the Russo from my formal title as well.” He paused so long, I almost spoke again, but I also knew better than to interrupt a cat mid-list.
“Two, that hag made our life miserable,” he continued after nearly a full minute stretched in silence. “You and Nan can act all lovey-dovey if you want, but I know the truth. You hated her, and you’re glad she’s gone.”
“That’s it!” He had me in a proper rage now. I was so angry that I was shaking. How could he act so cavalier? This was beyond the pale even for him. “Go to your room and think about what you’ve done.”
Octo-Cat hung his head and laughed mirthlessly.“My house, my rules. Or have you forgotten that all of this is mine?” Another long pause punctuated this rhetorical. “I get that you’re having some trouble processing this all right now, but there’s no reason to take it out on me. Now if you’ll please, I need my Evian topped off.”
“I take it he just said something nasty,” Nan mused from her place beside me. Sometimes I really envied her for not being able to hear the cat’s constant stream of commentary on our lives.
I scoffed, continuing to stare daggers at the bad kitty before me.“When does he ever say anything else?”
He shifted his weight from side to side, looking bored with the whole thing.“You humans are weakened by your sense of moral purpose sometimes. A cat, being the superior intellectual creature he is, can see the world for exactly what it is. Humans always like to complain that life isn’t fair, but it seems to me that justice was served. The lady next door simply got whatwas coming for her. Got it? Now don’t at me.” Having said his piece, he lifted his tail up high and sauntered away while I watched in silence.
“I told you to stay off Twitter!” I yelled after him. It was definitely not to my benefit that I’d taught Octo-Cat how to download apps on his iPad. I doubt he was able to type out his own tweets, but it was bad enough he’d begun adopting the lingo. If he and Pringle ever put their heads together—and realized the cat had the tech while the raccoon had the agile fingers—they could cause some real damage on the interweb.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t my most pressing problem at the moment. “The police said it was an accident,” I told Nan, speaking hardly above a whisper lest Octo-Cat overhear and add more of his garish commentary.
Nan raised an eyebrow at me.“But you’re not so sure.”
“You know me too well,” I said with a sigh when usually these words would be accompanied by a laugh.
“I found large footprints in front of the basement window. Someone was looking in. Possibly planning a breakin.”