thirty-one

The fragrance of warm yeast enveloped me when Goldie opened her door, and I thought I might swoon. Goldie had taken Leo to her house the night before, as she often did if I stayed at Tom’s after doggy school, and I was there to pick him up. I had thought I’d just pop in, grab my cat, and go right home, but who can resist fresh, homemade sweet rolls? So at nine thirty Tuesday morning, I was sitting in my best friend’s kitchen sipping a breakfast blend from Charleston Tea Plantation and nibbling my second sweet roll. Leo purred like thunder on the chair beside me, and Goldie told me about her newest project.

“I think I’ll give it a try,” she said. “I need a new project for the winter, and I do have a lot of odd recipes.”

“Creative, not odd,” I said, although she was right, some of her concoctions were nothing short of odd. White chocolate and lavender cookies. Chicken licorice soup. Pasta with pine nuts and violas. “If you need photos, let me know. I’ve always wanted to take photos for a cookbook.”

“So did you ask him?” Goldie has been my biggest cheerleader in the game of love ever since I met Tom, even when I’m not sure what a “win” might look like.

I shook my head, and Goldie’s shoulders sagged. I said, “I was just about to, but Hutchinson showed up, and then I called Alberta to see if she was okay. Tom made me a second Irish coffee, and by the time I finished that, I couldn’t keep my eyes open.”

Goldie rolled her eyes and got up from the table, our mugs in her hands.

“I’m going to talk to him today. It’s better, really, in the cold light of day.” I wasn’t sure whether I was talking to Goldie or myself. “Not so hormonal, you know?”

Goldie peered out the window as she poured more tea. “Looks cold out there.”

“Miserable. The radio said it’s thirty-eight degrees, and it’s trying to rain. But it is November.” I closed my eyes as another bite of sweet roll worked its magic on my taste buds, then said, “We lucked out for the agility trial.”

“Not everyone,” said Goldie.

“No, not everyone,” I said. “I meant the weather. And I’m not sure luck had anything to do with Rasmussen’s demise.”

“And the police questioned you?”

I thought about the two humorless cops who had come to my house the previous day. “I spent about ninety minutes with them. I’d forgotten how terrifying that is,” I said. “I guess Jo Stevens and Hutchinson scared me like that at first.” Stevens had been Hutchinson’s partner when a series of murders rocked the obedience community earlier in the year. We had ended up becoming friends, but I had definitely been on her person-of-interest radar at first.

“Oh, yes, my dear. You were a mess,” said Goldie, stirring a spoonful of honey into her tea. “So what did they ask?”

“A lot of questions about where I was all day, and what I was doing. They knew that Rasmussen’s father-in-law was my mother’s, umm, friend. They knew Rasmussen had threatened to have me arrested for trespassing last week.” I felt a little woozy and stopped to take a couple of deep breaths. “I think I’m basically off the hook. I mean, Tom vouched for my whereabouts,” I giggled at the sound of that, “and I vouched for his. I’m quite sure our stories matched up, since we both told the truth.”

“Almost always a good idea,” said Goldie.

“So then they asked what I knew about other people’s feelings about Rasmussen. I hated that,” I said. “And besides, I have no idea where anyone else was when Rasmussen was killed. Tom and I left long before that.”

“But you have your suspicions. Who do you think it was?” Goldie’s eyes sparkled.

“You have a very nosy streak, you know that?” I said.

“Like you don’t.”

“No idea. Alberta hated his guts, of course.” Goldie already knew about Rasmussen’s attempts to develop the wetlands and woods next to Alberta’s house, but she didn’t know about their conflict over the cats. I told her about his campaign against Alberta’s trap-neuter-release efforts in their neighborhood. “He wasn’t alone, of course, but I guess he was the most vocal and the most threatening.” I pictured him bullying his wife in her studio and at the agility trial. “And he had a violent streak.”

“But why did he care if she fed a bunch of poor, homeless cats?” asked Goldie. “Why would anyone object to kindness?”

“Some people say that feral cats kill too many birds and other animals,” I said. “And that is a problem in some places. It has been in some environments, like islands, where any kind of predator can be a problem for ground-nesting birds, or any endangered species.”

Goldie snorted. “I think there are a lot of bigger dangers to creatures of all kinds in that neighborhood. Like the chemicals they use on the golf course and on their perfect lawns and manicured gardens.” Goldie has a stunning organic backyard filled with flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruit three seasons of the year. Four, really, since she plants shrubs that have winter berries for the birds.

I put down the sweet roll I was nibbling. Talk about ecological violence always hits me with a cocktail of fury, sorrow, and despair. “I know. Every time I see ducks and geese on the pond by the entrance, I think about the chemicals swimming there with them.”

“So Alberta has been angry at Rasmussen for a long time, right? Why would she kill him now, and why do it at the trial?”

“Well, she was pretty angry about what how he treated his wife, and she probably knew that he tried to move his father-in-law out of Shadetree because his so-called morals were offended,” I said, thinking I’d better go check on my mother when I finished with Goldie.

“Did something push her over the edge, you think?”

Rasmussen’s face as he spewed venom at Alberta came back to me. “He said he had ‘taken care of’ the cats and rats. We all assumed he had set poison out. Alberta was in a complete panic, of course.”

“That’s terrible!” Goldie chopped her sweet roll in half with the butter knife. “He killed the cats?”

“No, Louise made a call and people went out looking for any sign of poison, and they picked up the food that was out, but there was no sign that he had actually done anything.”

Goldie clucked and shook her head. “Emotional violence.”

“And of course his wife … widow … Louise. Her anger had been building for years, but apparently the way Rasmussen treated he father put her over the edge.” I knew that Goldie’s next question would be ‘why Saturday, why there,’ so I said, “He yelled at her father, Anthony Marconi, in front of everyone, and shoved him.”

“So Marconi had motive, too, then.”

“Yes. But I just don’t think he could have done it.”

“Maybe Rasmussen didn’t see it coming,” said Goldie. “Marconi could have clocked him from behind, right?”

I nodded, and went on with my list. “Remember Giselle Swann? She hated Rasmussen, too. And she told me she had sort of blown a gasket at the trial, she was so angry.”

“What did she do?”

I didn’t feel comfortable repeating Giselle’s story about swinging the pooper-scooper, so I ignored the question. “And Jorge, the handyman at Dog Dayz, hated Rasmussen, too. But I don’t know, Jorge is small, shorter than I am and skinny. And that kid, Rudy Sweetwater. But I saw him leave with his mother and he’s only fifteen, so he couldn’t have driven back.”

“Maybe it’s like Murder on the Orient Express,” said Goldie.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe they all did it.”