He was right, of course. The answer was obvious, but…
“That’s not even really a riddle,” I said glumly. “It’s just a rhyme.”
“Good gravy. They just gave you a confession, and it’s pretty direct as far as their type goes. What more do you need?”
“Ask again in another way,” I demanded, then whispered to Nan to fill her in while Octo-Cat talked with the Sphynxes some more.
Another several minutes passed before Octo-Cat addressed me again. “Well, Angela. They said, ‘You didn’t believe us the first time, but you already know who committed the crime.’”
Octo-Cat thumped his tail hard against Nan’s leg, and she abruptly stopped petting him. “Good enough for you now?” he demanded with wide eyes.
“Not quite,” I answered to his great dissatisfaction. “They say we already know, but I have a whole list of suspects. It could be Mr. Thompson or Matt or even Officer Bouchard.”
“Or it could be the two freakazoids who literally just confessed to murder,” he spat, shooting them a cold look, which he followed up with a hiss.
“What do you think, Nan?” I asked after relaying the latest clue.
“Phooey,” she moaned, rubbing her temples in little circles. “I was never very good at riddles. Either of you could be right with your interpretations.”
I chewed on my bottom lip while thinking about what to do next. “Okay, how about this?” I said, waiting for Octo-Cat’s attention to snap back to me. “Ask them how they killed her. Not how she died, how they killed her.”
“We already know that,” he said, condescension dripping from each syllable.
I shook my fist at him and growled, which was enough to get him to cooperate for a little bit longer.
When he returned to me with their message, he stated it plainly with no commentary. “‘Up it goes and at the same time down, it is here that the answer’s found.’”
“Stairs,” I said, recognizing a version of this riddle from my school days. “Okay, so that was where. I still need to know how.”
He batted a paw in my direction. “You’re insufferable. You know that?”
I could tell his patience hung on by a single frayed thread—mine did, too—but we weren’t done yet. “Oh my gosh, please just ask them already!” I exploded. I’d wrongly assumed that his fondness for the senator would make him more cooperative this time around. Then again, this whole time he’d been certain that he’d already single-handedly solved the case. Who needed facts and testimonies when you have an ego the size of our entire home state?
Octo-Cat groaned and said, “You owe me. You owe me so big for this.”
“Bigger than the mansion you requested after that last favor?” I shot back, refusing to be bested by a cat… again.
He rolled his eyes but revealed the Sphinxes’ next riddle despite his protests. “‘Sure of foot and light of heart, this is how she fell apart.’”
“Now I feel like they’re just volleying my question back at me. This is going to take forever,” I whined, resettling myself on the uncomfortable floor. I couldn’t wait to fill this room with comfortable furniture and wall-to-wall shelves of books. I would have sat in the window seat for this exercise had Nan not settled on the floor first. Seeing as I was more than forty-five years younger than her, I shouldn’t have been having this hard a time.
She reached forward and put her hand on my knee. “Honey dear, if you trust your cat, just let him do all the talking. It seems that might be easier for everyone involved.”
If I trusted him. That was a huge if. Colossal.
Octo-Cat had clearly made up his mind before he’d heard even a single detail about Harlow’s death. But still, I couldn’t deny that the Sphynxes did seem to be confessing to the crime in their own special round-about way.
“You’re right,” I told Nan with a small smile, and then to Octo-Cat, “You don’t need to translate for me. Just talk with them and then catch me up later.”
He eyed me wearily, then hopped out of Nan’s lap and joined our two hairless witnesses in the corner. After several minutes of mixed meows, he trotted back and took up his spot in Nan’s lap once more.
“They did it. They killed her by tripping her when she was on the stairs. They are sorry and say they feel really bad about it. As much as I despise them, it doesn’t seem like they did it on purpose, but who knows?”
“Thanks,” I murmured. I felt a little better, seeing as he’d conceded one point. Earlier he had been certain that they murdered their own in cold blood. Now he was saying that they did it accidentally. Could this whole investigation really been all for naught? Were my instincts that wrong? I was supposed to be getting better with each case, not worse.
Just then, the phone in my pocket buzzed. I fished it out and read the new text message from Mom that popped up on my screen:
Police ruled H’s death an accident. I’m coming over.
Well, that answered that.
I passed my phone to Nan so she could see the message, too.
“You don’t really believe that, dear,” she informed me, setting Octo-Cat to the side so she could push herself up from the floor in one smooth, fluid movement.
I struggled to a stand with far less grace. “I don’t know what to believe any more,” I admitted. The last couple days had passed in a dizzying whirl, from moving to snooping and everything in between. Both my mind and my body were exhausted. Was it possible I was seeing clues where none existed?
One look at Nan told me she hadn’t given up on this yet.
And that was enough for me to keep going, too.
Chapter Fourteen
Mom arrived about ten minutes later. That was the thing with small towns like Glendale—it never took long to get where you were going. I was a bit removed from the main village action, now that I lived on the swanky East side, but everything remained incredibly close and the traffic was generally light.
Nan pranced through the foyer to let her in, a fact which Mom did not seem happy about.
“Angie?” she asked, charging into the living room where she found me sitting with my smart phone. “What’s she doing here?”
Not her politest moment, but my mom and Nan also preferred each other in small doses. Apparently personality types in my family skipped a generation, so if I ever had a daughter of my own, I’d find myself with a little girl who was both too garrulous and too ambitious for her own good. Nan and I had gotten the weirdo gene, and that suited me just fine.
“We were discussing the senator’s death,” I answered, hating the way the corners of my mother’s mouth dipped even further.
“I thought we were working on the case together?” she said, her usual confidence strained. She glanced back toward the door as if debating whether she should make a run for it.
“We were,” I said gently, hating that I’d hurt her feelings yet again. “I mean, we are, but…”
Nan breezed past Mom and plopped down onto the couch. “Oh, come off it now, Laura Jean. We’re all in this together. Right?” She patted the seat beside her and motioned for Mom to join us.
“Right,” I said, offering my mom a quick hug to lift her spirits. “Besides Nan hasn’t been here long. Right?”
“Right,” Nan answered with a wink that I doubt my mother missed. Sigh.
“Well,” Mom said, shaking her head and tilting it to either side—a nervous tic she’d picked up during my toddler years, or so I’d heard. “As long as I’m still part of the club, I have some news to share.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out a notepad. “First off, the death was ruled an accident. They think she may have had too much to drink at a charity fundraiser and then tripped and fell down the stairs.”