Last Licks (11 page)

Will just shrugged. “Anything to get Ollie into a better mood,” he said.

“Okay,” Sunny told Luke. “Just give us a few minutes to chat with him first.”

I guess it’s my lot in life, helping out upset creatures—cats, bosses, whatever,
she thought.

They arrived in Room 114 to find Ollie sitting in his wheelchair—and nursing a bad mood.

“Are you having pain in your leg from sitting too long?” Sunny gave him a worried glance.

“I’m suffering from a pain in the butt named Stan Orton,” Ollie growled.

“I figured you’d be looking into him.” Sunny shot a
See? I was right!
glance at Will.

“I found out that he snookered me on that real estate contract.” Ollie sounded really annoyed with himself. “No wonder he kept pushing me to seal the deal. He didn’t own that parcel of land, he only had an option on it, and it was due to expire. If I had known and waited, I could’ve dealt with the real owner and gotten what I wanted for chump change.”

He shifted in his chair with a deep groan. Sunny wasn’t sure if the pain came from his leg or his wallet. “Instead, I just found out that I paid that creep Orton eight times what he paid for the option.”

“Maybe I have something that will take your mind off that,” Will offered. As he told Ollie of their run-in with Alfred Scatterwell and the games he played, Sunny saw her boss pay more and more attention.

“So we need someone to take a very close look at the guy,” Will concluded.

“Like I did with Orton—even if I left it a little too late!” Ollie scowled, but slowly nodded, his expression showing he was a hundred percent on board with the project.

“And if you find some way to make a profit of your own, well, I wouldn’t mind you skinning that cat.” Will looked over at Sunny, who winced. “If you’ll pardon the expression.”

I’m just amazed at the idea of Ollie using his nasty powers for good,
her wisecracking alter ego put in. She changed the subject.

“We bumped into Luke Daconto in the corridor,” she told Ollie. “He was bringing his guitar to that sing-along thing he does, and he specifically asked me to invite you to come. Would you like to go?”

Ollie shrugged his heavy shoulders. “I’m already in the wheelchair, and
Judge Judy
is just about over.”

Sunny took command of the chair and wheeled Ollie toward the solarium. Will walked alongside. As they came closer, they heard Luke noodling away on the strings, one of those snatches of songs he did between sing-alongs.

“That’s the intro to ‘California Dreamin’,’” Ollie said, glancing up at Will.

“You really know your music.” This was a side of Ollie that Sunny had never seen before. Luke was happy to see them arrive, his white teeth showing through his beard in a smile.

“Since we have a couple of guys here today, what do you say we go with something more manly?” Luke strummed his way into “Show Me the Way to Go Home,” and Ollie picked it up immediately. His singing voice was deep and surprisingly powerful.

“Let’s take it around again,” Luke said, still strumming. Now everybody in the room was singing, even the lady who Sunny had previously seen just beating the time with her hand. When she heard Will chime in, Sunny smiled.

The song ended to rousing applause. “Good singing,” Luke complimented the group, then looked over at Ollie. “Very good singing, Ollie.”

Ollie grinned a little awkwardly, patting his belly. “Back in the day, they used to tell me I had an opera singer’s diaphragm.”

“I wish I had that,” Luke confessed. “Some gigs I’ve played, I’ve gone hoarse trying to put a song over to a crowd that’s busy talking.”

He played a couple more moldy oldies that Sunny’s grandfather would have known, then he swung into a completely unexpected rendition of “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” complete with a phony Scots accent. The older members of the audience fumbled with the song, but picked up on the chorus. Ollie enjoyed bouncing his voice off Luke’s.

For a finale, Luke suggested that Sunny, Ollie, and Will try a little harmony on “You Are My Sunshine” while the others sang as a chorus. It took a little while for Ollie to learn to moderate his voice, but when he did, the song sounded pretty decent.

“Thank you, everybody,” Luke told the group. “Really great job.”

The little old lady who tapped in time to the music turned to Ollie. “You really have a beautiful voice. Do you sing in a choir?”

“Uh, no,” Ollie replied, abashed. “I just sing for fun.”

The ladies started moving off in their walkers and wheelchairs, but Will approached Luke as he put his guitar in its case.

“It’s pretty sad, what happened to Ollie’s roomie,” Will said. “And it just seemed to happen out of the blue.”

“Yeah.” Luke kept his eyes on the case, making sure the clasps snapped shut. “That’s the thing about strokes. You never expect them.”

“Sunny was pretty shocked to get the news. She’d been visiting with Gardner that afternoon, and he seemed his usual self.”

Sunny wanted to give Will a kick, but she followed his lead, giving Luke a sad look.

“You saw him pretty often,” Will went on. “Did you think he was getting better?”

Luke looked up from his guitar case to meet Will’s eyes. “I’m a music therapist, so I’m not the guy to talk to about Gardner’s physical progress. You should talk to Jack and Elsa about that—or even Dr. Gavrik. All I can say is that I’m glad that Gardner seemed happy in the time before he passed away.”

“But he didn’t seem weaker or sicker lately, did he?” Will pressed.

Luke looked from Will to Sunny and back. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s just that we had an odd conversation with Gardner’s nephew, Alfred.”

“Ah.” It was hard to tell with that big, bushy beard, but Sunny thought she caught a brief flicker of distaste from Luke at the mention of Alfred’s name.

“Yeah, he talked a lot about the Scatterwell name and the Scatterwell fortune, going to the right schools and knowing the right people.” Luke’s lips definitely twisted under all that facial fur.

“But he didn’t really talk much about his uncle, except for the inheritance,” Will continued.

“I don’t think they got on that well.” Luke could only shake his head. “It’s a shame, really. From what I heard, it’s not as though they had a lot of relatives.”

“I guess family feeling doesn’t mean much to Alfred.” Will watched Luke carefully as he said, “He just had his uncle cremated, barely a day after Gardner died. We went over to see Alfred, and he already had the little box in the middle of his living room table.”

“That’s . . . kind of quick, isn’t it?” Luke looked as though he wanted to say something else but reconsidered it.

“We thought the same thing. Makes us wonder if Alfred was covering up anything that might have happened to Gardner. I heard you were around kind of late that night. Did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

“I saw a lot of paper that night.” Luke gave them a sheepish look. “Playing guitar and singing with the residents is the fun part of the job. But I also work with a lot of people, getting them to play simple instruments. We have a bell chorus, and other musical programs, and I’m supposed to write reports on all of it.”

He shrugged, patting his guitar case. “I’m a music maker, not a report writer, so I’m usually pretty far behind. But this new administrator is very results oriented. A little bird told me that if I didn’t get up to date, there’d be trouble. So when I finished the day’s work, I holed up in an office and ground out the paperwork to make Dr. Reese happy.” Luke grimaced. “I put in, like, a whole extra shift on that nonsense. Didn’t get done until sometime after midnight. I was glad to get home—my neck was hurting from bending over the computer keyboard.” He sighed. “And then I heard about Gardner.”

“Did you do a report about him?” Sunny asked.

Luke’s reply was a sad laugh. “No. Gardner was a freebie. I’m supposed to work with the permanent residents, keep their spirits up over the long haul. Gardner wasn’t a client.” Luke paused for a long moment. “He was a friend.”

“Gardner will be
missed,” Ollie said as Luke hefted his guitar case.

Luke smiled and patted Ollie on the shoulder with his free hand. “I know, Mr. Barnstable. Just hang in there. Try and sing a little more.”

“Thanks, Luke,” Ollie said. “I’ll look forward to it.”

“I hope I’ll see you, too,” Sunny said, earning herself a look from Will.

Luke headed off with his guitar, and Will went to take the handles of Ollie’s wheelchair. But Ollie waved him off. “What the hell were you doing?” he demanded in a low, venomous voice. “Why were you giving that kid the third degree?”

“For one thing, that was hardly the third degree,” Will replied. “I just asked him a couple of questions. We know he was here late, after lights-out, which is when you told us Gardner had his mystery visitor.”

Ollie looked as though he wanted to argue but was aware that he was awfully short of ammunition.

“Second, at this point our strongest suspect is Alfred Scatterwell. So I wanted to see how Luke felt about Alfred, how he’d react when I talked about him, especially the cremation. I’ll admit I hit him a little hard, but I hoped to shock a reaction out of him.”

“And did you get what you needed?” Ollie asked.

Will’s expression changed a little. “I’m not sure. He was a tad off, not forthcoming. I think Luke was going to say something, but changed his mind.”

“Maybe he was going to curse out Alfred,” Ollie suggested, “but didn’t because Sunny was here.”

“I can’t say—but he did censor himself about something,” Will said.

No one had anything else to add, so they just talked around the subject, making mundane conversation as they rolled along to Room 114. Once they were inside, Ollie said, “Sunny, could you call for an aide? I’ll need some help getting back into bed.”

She did as Ollie asked, and moments later, Camille the aide came in.

“Why don’t you give us a couple of minutes while I get Mr. Barnstable straightened away here,” she suggested.

Sunny and Will stepped out into the hallway, where Will proceeded to give her the fish eye. “What’s the idea of you telling that Daconto guy you hoped to see him again?”

For a guy who’d rather spend a weekend getting sunburned than going out with me, he’s pretty quick on the jealousy trigger,
she thought, but decided it wasn’t worth going into that. Instead, she said, “Luke’s one of the nicer people in this place. I’d definitely rather see him again than, say, Dr. Reese.” She shuddered. “Or Dr. Gavrik. She can really be nasty.”

“I’ve been thinking of the good doctor,” Will said. “Specifically, what Rafe the guard had to say about the way she turned up on the night Gardner died.”

“That’s right—he thought she’d been flying. She didn’t change her clothes, which is weird because any flight into Pease would have gotten her home hours before she was paged.” Using her tourist-information knowledge, Sunny considered other nearby airports. “Portland doesn’t have any red-eye flights. The latest arrival there is before midnight. Maybe Boston?” Sunny frowned. “Of course, maybe she flew in a lot earlier and was hanging around someplace. Otherwise, Logan Airport would have the latest flights in the area. Wherever she came from, Gavrik rode in a town car. Maybe that could tell us something.”

He nodded. “I’ve got an old buddy from my state trooper days who moved over to the Boston Police. Suppose I ask him to check the car services down there and see if any of them made a run from, say, Logan to Bridgewater? It’s almost a hundred-mile trip, so that should make it a fare to remember.”

“That’s a good idea,” Sunny replied. “No way am I confronting that woman without something I can hit her over the head with. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“On the other hand, Rafe might have a reason to try and distract us with the doctor,” Will said. “We’re getting to the end of our first full day here; that means only six to go. Time keeps ticking away.”

She nodded. “Much as I’d like to concentrate on Obnoxious Alfred—or the nasty doctor—we still have other people to question. I’m going to tackle Elsa Hogue tomorrow. And I think
I
should do it. Sounds like she had a hard enough time with Gardner. I think she’d react better to a sympathetic female ear.”

“Fine with me,” Will said. “I’ll spend the night going over those attendance lists that Rafe copied up.” He smiled, but with a little malice. “You can play with your cat.”

They went to sign out. Rafe nodded his good-bye, but Portia was more demonstrative, jumping onto the top of the desk and rubbing her face against Sunny’s shoulders.

When Will and Sunny stepped out of the rest home, they discovered that the weather had changed. A dome of dead air, hot and soggy, had settled over the area. Merely getting from the grand doors of Bridgewater Hall to Will’s pickup left Sunny’s suit wilted and sticking to her. Will yanked off his coat and opened the top two buttons of his shirt.

“Now I remember why I didn’t wear this outfit later than the end of May.” Sunny caught the front of her knit top between her thumb and forefinger and tried to pull it away. It still felt plastered to her. Will moved on ahead, climbing into the cab of the pickup, starting up the engine, and closing the windows. Sunny joined him to find the air-conditioning on, but not making much headway against the warm air trapped inside. They didn’t do well against traffic, either.

When they got onto the interstate, the usually brief ride seemed to drag on forever.

At last they turned onto Wild Goose Drive and followed the gently curving road to Sunny’s house. She thanked Will for the ride, and mentioned she’d take her Wrangler tomorrow. “Maybe we’ll be able to cover a little more territory.”

Will nodded. “You want to talk to the Hogue woman. I’ll see if I can get in touch with my friend in Boston tonight.”

“I’ll also talk to Mrs. Martinson again and see if she can come up with any dirt on Alfred Scatterwell . . . and Henry Reese.” Sunny paused for a moment. “Are any of your police friends veterans? Recent veterans, I mean? Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a picture of what Rafe Warner is like when he’s not behind the security desk at Bridgewater Hall.”

Will slowly nodded. “That’s probably something we should follow up. I’ll try to talk to some of the guys tomorrow. And you were right—we should have hit Ollie for expense money. Coffee and doughnuts don’t come cheap.”

They waved good-bye, and Sunny made her way through the thick air into the house. She could feel the air-conditioning on in the living room. When she looked in, she found Mike half-lying on the couch, his eyes closed, looking like a wrung-out washrag.

“I got caught in this lousy weather and got home as fast as I could,” he complained. “For a while there I wasn’t sure if I was breathing or sipping water through a straw.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Sunny asked worriedly.

“Yeah, I just feel tired,” Mike told her. “Give me a little more time here in the cold air to revive.”

Sunny went up to her room to peel off her suit. She left it on the bed and quickly changed into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

When she returned downstairs, she found Mike watching the end of the weather report on television news. “It’s going to be miserable like this tomorrow,” he reported. “Maybe I’ll try to get in an early walk, or go up and do it in one of the malls. Otherwise, I think I’m going to stick close to home.”

“I wish I could do that, too,” Sunny said. One thing was certain—no dressing up tomorrow. A nice tee and a pair of light cotton pants would have to do.

She looked around the room. “Where’s Shadow?”

“He got out of here when it started getting cool. Maybe he decided it was unnatural to have that kind of indoor weather in summertime.” Mike shrugged. “You’d think he’d be happy for a chance to enjoy some cool air, stuck in a fur coat the way he is.” He gestured vaguely toward the rear of the house. “Try the kitchen.”

But when Sunny arrived there, she didn’t see Shadow, not even on top of the refrigerator, where she’d expected to discover the cat hiding out.

Looking in the fridge, Sunny shook her head. They were running low on supplies. But even her brief exposure to the weather had killed her appetite, and she was willing to bet her dad felt the same way, too. She gathered a large can of tuna from the bottom shelf, a Vidalia onion, and an avocado that had been taking its sweet time getting ripe. She chopped up some of the onion and mashed the other ingredients together with some lemon juice, a hint of oil, and a shake of pepper. After washing some romaine leaves, she arranged them on two plates and then scooped a healthy dollop of the tuna-avocado mixture in the middle.

Although Mike praised the salad—after first asking, “What is that?”—he just nibbled, making the most of the saltless saltines Sunny had added to the table, and drinking a couple of glasses of seltzer. To be honest, Sunny didn’t do too much better.

She kept checking for Shadow, looking toward the entrance to the kitchen, down the hallway and the foot of the stairs, even out the screen door, which she began to suspect Shadow had learned somehow to manipulate. If so, he’d be in trouble now. They’d shut the storm door to keep the air-conditioning in. Finally, Sunny tried the ultimate Shadow lure, getting up and rattling some cans of cat food together. But the cat declined to appear.

“Do we want to save this?” Mike’s words jangled through her distracted thoughts. She turned to find him frowning at their plates, still generously piled with the salad. Obviously his traditionally thrifty Maine upbringing was at war with the world of unknown food.

“We’ll put it in one of the bowls with the lids that seal tightly,” Sunny said. “Hopefully, it will keep till tomorrow. I guess we should also make a list and do some shopping.” She grinned at her dad. “In case it doesn’t keep.”

They did the dishes, and Mike got a pencil and paper, heading to peruse the refrigerator and make a shopping list. Sunny trudged upstairs, the air feeling warmer with every step.
I really ought to get
my suit brushed and hung up
, she thought, stepping into her room. Then she froze at the foot of the bed.

Shadow lay sprawled facedown across her suit jacket and pants, all four legs spread wide, his eyes shut, his whole body inflating with deep inhalations.

“What are you
doing
?” Sunny demanded, trying to yank the clothes from under him. “I’ll end up with three times as much cat fur—”

She broke off with a cry of pain as Shadow leaped up, hissing and lashing out with his claws.

Sunny stared at the three furrows torn through the skin on the back of her hand, at the dark red blood welling up, a drop falling down on the dusky blue suit below.

Belatedly, she brought the wounded hand up to her mouth and then ran for the bathroom.

*

Shadow lay in
a stupor of pleasure, breathing in the two most wondrous scents in the world. Every time he filled his lungs, he tasted the fragrance of Sunny . . . and also the aroma of the mysterious She that permeated the soft cloth. He exhaled and drew the scents in again until he thought his lungs might explode.

It was bliss. He didn’t know how long he’d lain here, luxuriating, indulging his nose. He’d been fast asleep, lying in the shadowy coolness under Sunny’s bed when she first returned home earlier, and he’d slowly awakened when she came into the room and moved around for a bit. By the time he emerged, she was gone, but on the bed he’d discovered this wonderful source of aromas that made his senses swim. He was vaguely aware that he was hungry, but what was hunger compared with the chance to wallow in these sensations?

Oh, he’d encountered the herb that drove other cats crazy, the sharp-smelling stuff put inside toys that caused cats to meow, or run around chasing invisible prey, or roll and sniff.

But this was different.

Maybe the closest sensation to what he presently enjoyed would be the times a cat would lie, belly exposed, gazing foolishly up at the ceiling.

But he wanted to warm this soft cloth, make the scents within the fibers rise to fill his nose and mouth, to cling to it and keep it forever . . .

And then, the jarring shout, the sensation of this wonderful cloth being jerked out from under him, it had shattered his nerves like an unprovoked attack. And when he was attacked, he responded in kind. He hissed, lashed out with his claws. Yes! They struck and tore. That would teach the interloper!

But now he came out of his daze, his overpowered olfactory senses bringing information to his brain.

The One who had interrupted his bliss, the One he’d attacked . . . it was Sunny! And worse, he could smell blood, her blood! How could he have done this?

Shadow stood rooted on the bed, his spirit falling into desolation as Sunny recoiled from him, blood on her paw. She brought it to her mouth to lick, then turned and ran away. The cloth that had entranced him lay wadded and disregarded at his feet. The stink of blood overcame the alluring scents that clouded his senses.

Leaping to the floor, he raced to the doorway and stood staring out into the hallway. The door to the room of tiles was closed, and Shadow could hear the sounds of rushing water.

He couldn’t get to Sunny, and even if he were able to, what could he do? Lick away her hurt? By now he’d known her long enough—well enough—to remember that she hadn’t liked it when he tried to help with other hurts. And those weren’t his fault! This time . . .

Shadow crouched till his head was barely above the floor, a low moan coming up from inside him as painful as when he retched up bad food. He’d seen cats lose homes for scratches like that.

How could this have happened? Didn’t Sunny realize the torment she put him through, bringing those strange, disturbing . . . intoxicating scents home with her?

Couldn’t she smell?

*

When Sunny returned
to her bedroom, Shadow had disappeared again. She spread the suit jacket on the bed and got the handy-dandy lint remover that Mike had or-dered from the ad on TV. After a couple of runs over the bloody area, the plastic roller was covered in cat fur. Sunny ran it under water, dried it, and went to work again. When the fur was gone from the area, she took the jacket into the bathroom.