Twenty-One

“That’s awful,” I said. “What are you going to do?”

“Zelda very kindly cashed a check for me. Just enough for dinner tonight and gas for the drive home. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure it’s covered. Unlike my husband, I don’t leave people in the lurch. And then I’ll have to patch things up the best I can. I don’t know if anyone will give me a loan to keep the business afloat. I’ll probably have to let employees go. That worm! What he did to me is awful, but didn’t he realize that he was impacting other people’s lives, too?” She held up her palm. “Don’t answer that. He never gave them a single thought.”

She picked up a sandwich and looked at it. “It’s like being a child again and dealing with my father. I didn’t grow up wealthy like Addi and Brenda. There were no trust funds or ponies. Louisa and Oriana came from middle-class families. But I was dirt poor. I didn’t have a single birthday party when I was a child. My father couldn’t hold a job, so we moved constantly, but it was always the same thing. Another dingy little hovel in a succession of forgotten towns. I was determined to claw my way to a better life. And now the one person I trusted has turned on me and taken everything. Wiped me out.”

“You still have the business, though. So you’ll probably have some money coming in,” I said hopefully.

“Between rent and employees, the overhead is staggering. But maybe the worst thing of all is that I feel like such a fool. I married someone worse than my father! He had plenty of problems, but he wasn’t a thief. I can’t begin to tell you how many paychecks he squandered at the bar while there wasn’t a morsel of food in the house. Some days all I had to eat were those little boxes of raisins. I can’t stand raisins now. The sight of one sends me back to my childhood, and I can feel the hunger in the pit of my stomach. You’ve heard of children who don’t have any food if they don’t get it at school? That was me. I was the only kid I knew who cried when school ended for a vacation. I begged to go to summer school, and they all thought I was so smart and such a dedicated student.” She leaned toward me. “I was hungry, and not for knowledge.”

“That’s terrible! What an awful childhood.”

“I don’t know whether to cry or be angry,” said Joanne. “The first time I called my husband, I thought I could hear a woman in the background. I tried to brush it off as the TV. The second time, I didn’t understand why he wasn’t answering the phone. It wasn’t until the credit cards were all closed that I started to worry. I checked our personal bank account and couldn’t understand why it was empty. But when I looked at the business bank account, I realized what he had done. And now I don’t want to go home and face it.” She looked down at her manicure.

“I’m so sorry, Joanne.”

“I have every reason to be furious with my husband. But you know who I’m most angry with? Myself. How could I have been so thoroughly deceived? How did I allow myself to trust another human being?”

“I understand why you feel that way. But we all have to trust other people at some point. None of us go through life all by ourselves.”

“I have. No one was ever there for me, except for my husband. And look how that turned out. All I have is Hershey. And now he has left me, too.”

“Why is he named after chocolate when he has that beautiful reddish fur?” I asked.

“He’s named after Milton Hershey, the founder of the chocolate company. Milton failed miserably at two businesses before he came up with a recipe for chocolate that was a success. I admire people like that. They keep trying and don’t let their failures stop them.”

“You’re like that.”

She looked at me in surprise. “Yes, I guess I am. I’ll pull through this. There are always blue skies after a storm. Unfortunately, in my life, it has only begun to thunder. It will be a long time before I see the sun again.”

“I have every confidence in you. If there’s anything Oma or I can do to help, please let me know. Now let’s have a good look around the inn. Hershey might be contentedly sleeping in a nook somewhere.”

I sent Joanne to check the main floor, especially the library, which was often quiet enough for a good cat snooze. Meanwhile, I took the tray of dirty cups and plates to the commercial kitchen. That done, Trixie and I walked up the grand staircase to our quarters. Twinkletoes appeared annoyed when we entered and disturbed her afternoon catnap. She curled herself tighter and placed one paw over her face, the cat equivalent of a Do Not Disturb sign. The pet door was open, but a quick sweep of the apartment didn’t turn up any sign of Hershey’s presence.

I locked up. Trixie and I strolled the entire length of the second floor quietly, in case Hershey had been accidentally locked into a guest room. If he had been, he wasn’t yowling or scratching to get out. We ended our tour on the first floor of the cat wing, where Joanne spoke with our housekeeper, Marina.

Marina shook her head when she saw me. “Hershey has always been very friendly to me. He is a very curious cat, watching everything I do. I am sorry that he is missing, but I haven’t seen him anywhere.”

“Thank you, Marina.” I said. She opened the door to Pounce, and an object flew into the hallway, followed by Inky, who moved so fast all I saw was a black streak.

Marina was on the ball. She quickly swatted the cylindrical toy inside the room, and Inky followed at lightning speed.

Marina, Joanne, and I entered the room and shut the door before Inky could slam her toy into the hallway again.

Marina laughed. “You are a silly kitty.” She leaned over and picked up the toy, quickly replacing it with a fuzzy catnip-filled ball.

Holding the toy out to me, she scanned the floor. “It’s a medicine bottle. Is the cap secure? I don’t see any pills.”

I didn’t either. But my heart fell. The medicine had been prescribed to Addi Lieras. It contained levothyroxine, the thyroid medicine that had nearly killed Louisa.