“No. It has to do with a cat.” I explained what had happened. As I talked, Winston Purrchill sauntered around the perimeter of my condo like he was inspecting it, his gait unconcerned. Then he hopped up to my kitchen table and sat, placing himself directly on top of the file I’d made of the Lady Killer case, where it rested in its permanent place on the table. From there, he regarded me silently, his tail wrapped just so around his feet.
“Hold on. I’m getting a beer from the fridge,” Michael said. I heard the sound of a fridge door opening, and the hiss of a beer cap being removed. The sound made me think he was wearing flannel. Plaid flannel. And the thought came into my head, as clear as if someone had spoken it: I really need to meet this guy in person, because I think I like him.
Michael came back on the line while I was still thinking that over. “Are you going to take this cat to a shelter?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” I looked into Winston’s unblinking eyes, lined precisely with black. He seemed to be waiting for an answer, like Michael was. “No,” I said. “It’s too cruel. I’ll keep him for a while.”
“Maybe it’ll be good for you,” Michael said. “I’d like a pet, but I’m away from the house too much.”
“It’s just for a while,” I told Winston, so we were both clear. “If I had a pet, I’d rather have a dog. A dog can ward off intruders.”
Winston blinked at me in disbelief.
“It’s easy, Shea,” Michael said. “Just feed him and give him somewhere to sleep. A window to look out of. Cats don’t ask for much.”
“Okay.” I reached a hand out. Winston sniffed it, running his nose along my skin. I relaxed my fingers and tried stroking his cheek, then the top of his head. He didn’t object, so I kept going, curling my fingers into a scratching position. Winston tilted his head so my fingers were behind his ear, so I obediently moved them. He closed his eyes. “You’re sitting on my file,” I told him.
“Me, or the cat?” Michael said.
“The cat. He’s parked himself on my Greer file, and now I don’t want to shoo him off.”
“Welcome to pet ownership. And I don’t think you need to go through it again anyway. You know it by heart.”
I did. Since my interview with Detective Black, I’d gone over my Greer papers again and again. The last time through, I’d read over the newspaper clippings that were the only public record of Beth Greer’s young life: her parents’ wedding announcement, her own birth announcement, and the brief and respectful notices of her parents’ deaths. Based on the wedding photo, Julian Greer had been tall and handsome, while Mariana was petite and blond, her face much like Beth’s except for a devastating sweetness in her features.
They both looked so formal in their wedding photo, and neither of them looked happy. It was unsettling to look at their faces and think of the fact that their marriage would be unhappy and then their lives would end, the groom killed in a home invasion, the bride dead in a car accident two years later.
“Have you talked to Beth again?” Michael asked me.
“No.” The interview with Detective Black had left my head spinning, and I wasn’t in a hurry to go back to the Greer mansion after what I’d seen—or what I thought I’d seen there. Aside from that, I wasn’t ready to be in Beth’s orbit again. When I saw her next, I wanted to be ready. “I think I want to find Sylvia Bledsoe first.”
“You mean Sylvia O’Hare, or Sylvia Simpson.”
“Right.” Sylvia Bledsoe, the weeping secretary Detective Black had interviewed about Beth’s father, had been married three times. Mr. Bledsoe, her husband when Julian died, was only husband number one. It had taken Michael and me a bit of digging to track her last names through husbands number two and number three. We’d found several Sylvia Simpsons, and I’d either phoned them—when I could find a number—or messaged them through Facebook, hoping to get an interview with the right one.