The Diva Digs up the Dirt (15 page)

“I had a bigger problem—you!”

“At least no one ever accused me of murder,” he muttered and walked on to his car.

It was a teasing exchange, yet it brought me right back to the uppermost issue on my mind—Wolf. During the short drive home, I thought about him and the things Cricket had told me. As usual, there were no empty parking spots near my house, but as I drove by, I saw my car neatly parked in front of it.

I slammed the brakes. Was Wolf at my house?

I tore around the corner, parked, and walked back to my house as fast as I could in the heat and sandals.

Nina dashed across the street looking totally cool and
rather chic in a broad-brimmed straw sunhat. I recognized her white sandals as the type that supposedly tighten one’s thighs without special exercise. “I’ve been waiting for you to come home. Do you think Wolf is here? That the whole thing was just subterfuge for the press, and he’s holing up at your place?”

I hoped so. I stabbed the key into the lock of my front door and rushed inside. Daisy danced happily in circles, and Mochie strolled in to investigate the excitement. I picked him up and petted Daisy. “Wolf?”

Nina and I checked the kitchen.

“There’s not even a note,” she said.

I set Mochie on a chair and raced back to the foyer. He hadn’t left my keys on the console, either. “Wolf?” I shouted up the stairwell.

I returned to the kitchen. “I don’t think he’s here.”

The kitchen door opened, and Natasha waltzed in, all smiles. “I’m so glad you’re finally home. I’m supposed to take you shopping for repurp items.”

“Repurp?”

“Repurpose! Learn the lingo, Sophie. They’re things that were used for something else and have been discarded. We’re supposed to come up with brilliant new garden uses for them. Put on some decent shoes and let’s go.”

I smelled Troy trying to get rid of Natasha for the rest of the day.

“Gee, I’m really sorry,” said Nina, “but Sophie promised to help me set up a trap for a cat.”

I tried to disguise my surprise. Roscoe must have phoned Nina the second we left.

“I’m sure that can wait. Troy is on a tight schedule. It’s not as though we can repurp next week.”

“Someone is trying to poison the cat, and the trap won’t fit in my car, so Sophie is my only hope.”

When did Nina learn to fib so well?

Natasha threw her hands in the air in dramatic dismay. Her sunrise-red nails were far too well manicured to repurp
anything. I had a bad feeling I knew who would be doing the repurping.

Happily, Nina’s potential poisoning won the my-need-is-more-pressing-than-yours contest. In truth, all I wanted was to find Wolf and talk to Kenner to find out what had happened since morning. Kenner probably wouldn’t talk to me, though. He’d never been a chatty sort of guy, and he certainly wouldn’t bend the rules and tell me the real scoop.

“Sophie!” Nina snapped her fingers at me. “We’d better go before it’s too late for that poor kitty.”

I crumbled leftover turkey burger into Mochie’s bowl and gave a bite to Daisy as a treat. “We should be back soon,” I assured them.

I brought Wolf’s car around to Nina’s house so she could load the Havahart trap. When we were on our way, I asked, “What are you using for bait?”

“Canned people tuna.”

I chuckled. That didn’t sound right, but I knew what she meant. Minutes later, I walked up to the front porch of Roscoe’s house again and rang the bell. No one answered this time. I hoped Violet wasn’t out back poisoning the cat.

“Roscoe asked me to come over as soon as possible,” said Nina. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if we set the trap.”

I agreed and picked up the trap. “It’s not like we need access to the house anyway.” Nina and I crept around the side of the house to the backyard.

“Wow. It’s even more beautiful when it’s not full of children trying to push each other into cow pies. No wonder a cat wants to live here.”

“Where’s the best spot for it?” I asked.

“Too bad Mrs. Danvers isn’t around to tell us where she sees the cat.”

“You’re so bad,” I scolded. “Stop calling her that or you’ll have me doing it, too. Violet, her name is Violet.”

“I see the cat. She’s huge!”

“Where? And how do you know it’s a she?

“She’s fishing at the pond. Most calicos are female. It’s
a genetic thing. Look at the size of that girl. She must be a Maine coon with all that long fur.”

How could I have missed her? Nina was right, the cat was easily twice the size of my Mochie. The long fur only served to make her appear even larger.

“I’m glad to see she likes fish,” whispered Nina.

We inched toward her. The cat continued to focus on the fish, but as we drew near, one ear rotated in our direction, proving that she was aware of our presence.

Like a flash, her paw swooped through the water and a red and white koi flipped onto a rock. She seized it in her mouth and scampered for the woods.

Nina blew air into her cheeks and released it. “This one might be hard to catch. She’s obviously smart.”

“Now we know why she’s hanging around here. I hope Violet doesn’t have the same attachment to koi that she has to birds.”

“I’m trying to figure out where to put the trap. If she’s hungry for fish, maybe she’ll go for the easy tuna.”

“She knows the fish are in the pond, so maybe you should place it on the other side of the pond, close to the woods.”

Nina carried the trap around the pond and set it on the grass, near the site where the calico had been fishing. She adjusted the door to swing shut when the cat stepped on the trip plate that would hold food. Easing her arm inside, she positioned tuna on the trip plate and dropped tiny bits of it in a trail to lure the calico all the way in. “And for good measure,” she said, “I’ll leave a few teeny tuna chunks right here on the outside so she’ll realize how yummy it is.”

She paused before laying a burlap type cloth over the trap. “Just in case she knows about traps, we’ll cover it up.”

“Like that’s enough to change her mind about it?”

Nina tsked at me. “Haven’t you ever heard that curiosity killed the cat? They love to butt in where they don’t belong, and they like confined spaces, too.”

“You’re the expert.” Two birds landed on a flat stone the perfect depth for bird bathing. They fluttered their wings, splashing water like crazy. Without party noise, Roscoe’s
garden was a beautiful, if odiferous, refuge. Birds twittered happily in the trees, and butterflies chased around bushes and flowers. A little hummingbird zoomed by us on its way to a vivid pink foxglove plant. The trumpet-shaped flowers seemed custom made for the hummingbird’s long beak. The garden reminded me of a nature preserve. “This is a huge property. I can’t even see neighboring houses. Who takes care of it now that Olive has moved out?”

“Audie said it’s a couple of acres, but Olive left a lot of it natural. She cut paths through the trees for walking, but liked the forest effect. They hired a yard company to keep it up when she left, though Cricket told me at the party that Audie likes to putter around in it. Apparently, it’s his way of relaxing.”

“Olive must have been sick to leave this place after the enormous effort she put into creating this garden.”

“According to Francie, Olive and Roscoe’s divorce was all-out war. Very ugly. Olive says it was partly her fault because she never wanted to get involved with the catalog business.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Mindy was Roscoe’s assistant. Olive said if she had realized what was going on, she would have insisted he hire Violet as his assistant. There wouldn’t have been any hanky panky with her.

“What else did Olive say?” I asked.

“That Mindy married Roscoe for his money.”

“She said as much to me. Think she’s right?”

“I think Mrs. Danvers is watching us.”

I twisted around and scanned the house. Sure enough, Mrs. Danvers… Violet… observed us through a window on the second floor.

“Man, but she’s spooky.” Nina shuddered. “We’d better get out of here.”

We walked through the lush grass, but Nina kept her eyes on Violet. “You don’t think she’ll put poison in the trap, do you?”

“That beautiful cat! I can’t bear the thought of it.”

“Maybe Roscoe knows what kind of poison she uses. He could hide it,” said Nina.

“Hello? She doesn’t even have to go to the store for poison. Look around this yard. It’s like a pharmacy. Foxglove, hydrangea, yew, delphinium, holly, cardinal flowers—there’s poison everywhere!”

“I have some of those plants in my backyard, but I don’t have the first notion how to make them into a poisonous stew.”

“Tea. You steep them like tea.”

“Then we’re in luck. Cats are carnivorous. I don’t think they drink much tea.”

“She could mix the tea with tuna.”

We scooted around the side of the house and out to the front.

“Are you going to call Roscoe about the poison?” I asked.

“Absolutely. What are we going to do about Wolf?”

“Good question. I have this nagging feeling that something happened when Anne left that we don’t know about. Wolf won’t talk.”

“Maybe
I
should talk to Wolf.”

“Good luck finding him.”

“Are you worried about another woman?”

“No. Wolf must have tons of friends. Cop friends whom we probably don’t even know. Or maybe he went to a hotel.”

“Maybe he did kill her.”

“Nina!”

“Right, act appalled as though that thought hasn’t crossed your mind. He’s so private. He could keep murder a secret.”

“I wish we knew who Anne’s friends were. Think we could ask Cricket? She must have known Anne’s other friends.”

Nina squealed.

I slammed the brakes, and we lurched forward. “What is it?” I looked frantically for an animal in the road.

“We’re doing exactly what Mona wanted us to do.”

“Don’t do that! I thought I hit something.” Nina had a point, though. “We’re not doing it
because
of Mona.”

“Really? What if Mona planted the purse there to revive interest in Anne’s disappearance?”

“There’s no way she could have known I planned to dig in his garden.”

“She could have planted the handbag and the knife there years ago.”

“Why would she have Anne’s wallet?” I pulled Wolf’s car into a parking space in front of Francie’s house.

Nina gulped. “You don’t think Mona could have had anything to do with Anne’s death?”

“I
sooo
do not want to think that. Her own mother? No! Besides, if that were the case, why would she have come around to stir things up? She would have let Anne’s mysterious disappearance quietly slip away. I think we can safely eliminate her as a suspect.”

My own words clarified my thoughts. I’d known it all along, but somehow, everything had happened so fast that I hadn’t honed in on it until now. I stepped out of the car and locked it. When Nina and I were on the sidewalk, I said, “If we believe that Wolf didn’t kill Anne, then we need to find the person who did.”

Nina followed me into the house. Daisy ran to us but didn’t wait to be petted. She turned and loped to the kitchen door. Troy’s voice blared. It was so loud that I suspected he was making a call from the service alley that ran along my side doors. Evidently he didn’t realize how well we could hear him. He must have thought it a private place for making calls.

“Heath! This is your last warning. If you don’t call me in five minutes, you’re toast. Don’t bother coming to my hotel room tonight with your tail between your legs to tell me how much you need this job. I’m done with you.”

A few seconds of silence followed.

I pulled walnut pesto and prosciutto out of the refrigerator to make crostini appetizers.

“Harry! Drive over to the hotel and get Heath. I don’t have time to mess with him. Tell him if he doesn’t show up in the next half hour, he’s out. I can’t deal with people who don’t come to work. He knows better than to do this.”

Nina and I rushed to the sunroom.

Troy strode into our view, shaking his head. Within seconds, the cameras were on him.

“Good grief, he’s even sexy when he’s mad.” Nina leaned forward for a better look. “I hope Heath isn’t getting the boot. He looked like he rode in from wrangling cattle. Had that steamy rough-and-tumble bad-boy appearance.”

“Think they arranged his ‘absence’ to add spice to the show?” I couldn’t take my eyes off the garage, which had magically been framed during the day. “They work fast.”

“Told you so. What’s the rest of that concrete for?”

The pad of concrete extended beyond the back of the garage toward my house. “I have no idea. It’s too big for a walkway.”

We retreated to my kitchen, frazzled from the heat and the drama with Wolf.

Nina mixed cosmopolitans and poured them into martini glasses that were hand-painted with colorful flowers. The pink drinks were just what we needed.

We settled in the kitchen, our shoes off and feet propped up on chairs, munching on savory goat cheese, prosciutto, and walnut-pesto crostinis topped with halved cherry tomatoes.