Chapter Seven
Furious, Sarah stomped out of the station. She didn’t know which of Peter’s allegations or conclusions was the craziest. The only amusing thing, if one could call it that, was she could tell her sister Peter’s narrow-mindedness had fueled her motivation to help Emily develop a wider suspect base.
Sarah stopped in front of the building that co-housed the fire and police departments. Neither Harlan nor Peter had followed her. She clutched and unclutched her hands, willing herself to calm down.
Hearing the bells of the carillon on the far side of the square ringing, Sarah realized it was noon. Harlan’s office was one street over to the left, diagonally across from the strip center that housed Southwind, while her apartment, which was closer to the Civic Center, was two blocks to the right. Back to work seemed obvious, but the devil on her shoulder hissed it was lunchtime and she needed a few minutes to pull herself together and sort through Jane’s various allegations. The longer she waited to do it, the more Peter might believe them.
Knowing Harlan had Emily there, Sarah didn’t feel pressed to go directly back to work. Instead, she took a deep breath and looked around the bricked city square. The city buildings on the remaining sides of the square were each built from the white crystalline marble Alabama claimed as its own.
If today was Saturday, she’d head straight for the public library. Libraries were her home away from home as long as she could remember. That was where she’d first found an Erle Stanley Gardner book and fallen in love with the idea of becoming a lawyer or private detective. Things changed when she met Bill.
“I don’t want to wait for you. Delaying school a year won’t be a big deal,” he’d said when they were dating.
She’d believed him then and when he’d done things like upending her ironing board with the hot iron sitting on it. “Honey, private eyes and lawyers figure things out. You can’t even iron a shirt without scorching it. Before we waste money on school, why don’t you get my mother to show you how to do a few things around here?”
While Sarah learned plenty from Bill’s mother, it apparently wasn’t enough to keep Bill from wandering elsewhere to find women with more expertise. Considering everything, she couldn’t believe Peter thought Emily or she killed Bill or she took a piece of Mother Blair’s jewelry. It was even harder for her to get her head around what Peter had said about RahRah.
Sarah had read about people making provisions for their pets in their wills, but she thought only movie stars or people with too much money did that. Mother Blair definitely didn’t fit the image of a movie star or a kook. Surely, if Bill’s mother could see things now, she wouldn’t want RahRah taken from his loving home to live out his remaining eight lives with a gold digger.
Thinking of RahRah made the decision to give in to the devil easier. If Harlan was annoyed, she would always argue this lunch hour was business development for him. After all, there could come a day when RahRah, having the run of a better house and a higher income than Sarah’s, might hire Harlan as his kitty lawyer.
Unlocking her door, Sarah surveyed the condition of her apartment. One of the problems with an efficiency unit was that if anything was out of place, it stuck out like a sore finger. She and Emily had been in such a rush to leave this morning that the place looked like it had been hit by a whirlwind. RahRah was nowhere to be seen. She called his name, but he didn’t appear. He probably shared her feelings about the disarray and had gone into hiding until Sarah straightened up a bit.
RahRah didn’t poke his nose out from under the bed until she loaded the dishwasher, made the bed, and sat at the butcher-block kitchen table with a peanut butter and banana sandwich. He strolled right by her to his empty bowl. A low gurgle came from his throat.
“Well, la di dah. You already finished your food. Let me eat my lunch and I’ll get an extra treat for you.”
A few bites into her sandwich, a noise from the closet area made Sarah look in that direction. RahRah was nudging the partially open closet door a little farther each time, until he saw his reflected image. At that point, he jumped away. Laughing, Sarah picked him up. She hugged the squirming cat while kicking the door closed.
“You are one fifteen-pound scaredy-cat and I love you.” Still holding him firmly, she sat at her two-person kitchen table.
RahRah pushed against her, stretching out in her lap to be stroked. Forgetting about her sandwich, she concentrated on meeting his demand until he swatted her hand away with his paw. Before he could escape from her lap, she engulfed him in her arms and buried her face in his fur. This time, Sarah couldn’t stop the tears from flowing and she didn’t try.