Chapter Four
The vision cleared away faster than most of them do. The cabin was gone and O’Ryan, leaving nose prints on the window, his golden eyes focused on my green ones, put one paw up against the window. I took it as a “calm down” gesture from my wise cat. Shaking away the recent image, I stood, took a deep breath, pulled my keys from my purse and opened the door.
“Aunt Ibby. It’s me.” Stepping into the foyer, I gave the usual call. The stairs leading up to my own third-floor apartment were in front of me, the arched doorway to my aunt’s formal living room to my left. O’Ryan did a couple of figure eights around my ankles and headed through the living room toward her kitchen. I followed the cat, the sound of Elvis singing “Blue Hawaii,” and the smell of something wonderful cooking.
“I’m in the kitchen,” she answered. “You’re home early.” She appeared in the doorway, a red-and-white checked bib apron lettered with “Kiss the Cook” in black script protecting her trim-fitting gray denim pant suit. “I’m making a lovely beef burgundy. Can you stay for dinner?”
“Pete’s bringing takeout,” I told her. “He says he picked up the cat.”
“Good thing he did. It wouldn’t have taken me long to fall in love with the dear little thing. Come, sit down and visit with me.” She turned down the radio and pointed to a captain’s chair beside the round oak table. “I expect that Mrs. Duncan was thrilled to have her back.”
“She must have been. She told Scott that her husband really loves the cat and the cat loves him. It follows him everywhere. He named her after those fancy three-layer cupcakes because of her three-colored fur.”
“Did Pete find out what the orange stuff staining her paws is?”
“Orange marmalade. It’s the filling between the cupcake layers. Maybe I’ll find out some more about it tonight,” I said. “I’ve been invited to be on the late news. Buck Covington invited Scott and they want to show some of the footage Jim and I got of Cupcake coming down from the tree.”
“How exciting. It’s been a while since you’ve been on that show.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “I need to get upstairs and figure out what to wear and what to do with my hair.”
“I’m sure you’ll be just fine,” she told me—just as she’d told me so many times since I was five. I told her about Pete’s request that she check the videos from the surveillance cameras for anything unusual going on near the oak tree. She promised to do it as soon as the beef burgundy was done. I kissed her on the cheek and climbed the two flights of stairs to my apartment, O’Ryan tagging along behind me. I turned my kitchen TV on to the WICH-TV evening news. I do that automatically after work, mostly listening rather than watching as the daytime news anchor Phil Archer catches me up on what’s happening in Salem and the world.
I ducked into the bedroom and spread several outfits onto the top of my king-sized bed. After trying out several combinations, decided on my best designer jeans and a tailored pink silk shirt. Aunt Ibby had long ago convinced me that the “old wives’ tale” that redheads should never wear pink was actually a “jealous old wives’” tale and that we look absolutely fine in pink. The jeans would be okay too because my bottom half would be behind the news desk. I dressed, fluffed out my hair, and took my time doing camera-ready makeup.
It was exactly six o’clock when I heard Pete’s key turn in the lock on my back door. I covered my blouse and jeans with one of Aunt Ibby’s long bib aprons, hurried to the kitchen, where we shared the kind of kiss that threatened to delay dinner long enough for the pizza to get cold. Resisting that temptation, Pete opened a cold bottle of Pepsi while I set the table with plates and glasses. I didn’t even attempt to hide my curiosity about Pat Duncan’s disappearance. “So, did your team find anything important in the kitchen at the bakery?”
“You’re not going to be talking about anything except the cat on the news show, are you?” he wanted to know.
“Just about rescuing Cupcake,” I said. “Everybody already knows she’s the Duncans’ cat.”
“I guess it’ll be all right for you to say the cat’s footprints were on the kitchen floor at the bakery.”
“In the orange marmalade,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Nothing that has to do with the cat.” Cop face.
“Off the record then, what about other footprints? Like people, not cats?” Pete knows when I say “off the record” I mean it.
“It’s a busy kitchen, Lee. But there were some other footprints with traces of the orange goo on them. Pat Duncan’s of course, and the guy who came in and turned the oven off and opened the door . . .” He paused. “There’s one more set we haven’t identified. They could be from some kind of rain boots.”
“That’s odd. It hasn’t rained here in over a week.” I took a big bite of my pizza. My favorite—with sausage, mushrooms, green pepper and extra cheese—waiting to see if he’d continue and offer something else new. Nothing. I took a sip of Pepsi and pushed my luck. “I was at the Friendly Tavern today and there was some talk about Pat being quite a gambler. They thought at first he might be off on a junket to Atlantic City or Biloxi. Did you hear anything like that?”
“Good observation, Lee. I’ll make a cop out of you yet.” Big smile. “Nobody actually said anything about it, but the kitchen wastebasket gave up quite a lot of information about our friendly neighborhood cupcake baker.”
“For instance?” I prompted.
“In among some eggshells and empty cardboard coffee cups we turned up a handful of torn-in-half Keno cards, about a hundred used lottery scratch-off cards, another fifty Lotto and Powerball tickets and yesterday’s copy of Vegas Insider.” He shook his head. “Yes, m’am. I’d say old Pat has a gambling problem. That was just yesterday’s trash. He must place bets on anything and everything everywhere he goes during the day.”
“Didn’t Mrs. Duncan—Dolores say anything about it?” I wondered aloud. “The guys at the Friendly say she goes with him on the out-of-town casino trips.”
“She didn’t comment about it one way or the other,” he said. “She was mostly concerned about getting the kitchen back in order so they can start pumping out those cupcakes again. She seemed confident that her husband is okay—wherever he is—and he’ll want her to keep the place operational.”
“And is the kitchen back to normal?” I asked. “I have to pick up a birthday cake there tomorrow.”
“They’ll have to clean the oven, scrub the place down, but yes, it’s useable.” He refilled his glass. “We still need to talk to a few people. Somebody must have an idea of where he is. And naturally, we’re requesting home surveillance tapes from all of the surrounding area. Did you ask your aunt to check hers?”
“I sure did. She said she’d do it as soon as the beef burgundy was done.”
He put another slice of pizza onto his plate. “Beef burgundy? Maybe we should have invited ourselves downstairs for dinner.”
“I’m sure there’ll be leftovers. Maybe when we get back from the station if she’s still up we can grab a bowlful while you take a look at her videos,” I suggested. “Is the department still calling his disappearance ‘under unusual circumstances’ or does it rate ‘suspicious’ by now?”
“It rates suspicious,” he said. “That’s partly because his wallet and phone are still in his room at home, but mostly because of the burned cakes. Everybody agrees that he would never let that happen if he could help it.”
From the TV I heard Howard Templeton’s voice. He was using what I call his big network voice—deeper than normal and sort of excited sounding. “Oh, there’s Howie. This must be his report on what’s hot and what’s not in this year’s Halloween costumes. Want to watch?”
“Sure. Why not?” he said. And we each turned in our chairs to face the set. Howie stood in the foreground of the shot, facing Chris Rich, the owner of Christopher’s Castle. Behind the two, an enormous revolving clothes rack turned slowly, displaying what must have been many hundreds of colorful costumes. One at a time, Chris removed a garment from the display and described it for the audience, while Howie asked a few—probably rehearsed—questions. The display began with the always popular Marvel superheroes, with Chris confiding that Batman is still the most popular superhero of all. A muscular male model displayed a Spiderman outfit, accompanied by a glamorous Black Widow. Chris Rich is good at getting all the free advertising he can and he made the most of Howie’s field report. Costumes from Marvel’s Wolverine to Disney’s Mickey Mouse flashed by with rapid-fire commentary.
“Chris, what costume do you expect to sell the most of this Halloween?” Howie asked breathlessly.
Chris laughed. “Truthfully, I believe it will be an inexpensive astronaut costume.”
Howie made a surprised face. “An astronaut? I thought for sure you’d say Spiderman.”
Chris tried to look sad. ‘Here is the year’s biggest bargain—just twenty dollars in men’s sizes and ten dollars in boys’ sizes.” A model appeared in full silver-colored space gear, from face-covering bubble helmet to silver boots.
“Looks good,” Howie said. “That’s a huge bargain this close to Halloween.”
“Don’t I know it.” Chris spoke directly to the audience. “Here’s how it happened. I ordered a gross of men’s and boys’ assorted costumes. Somehow my abbreviation for ‘assorted’ got read as ‘astronaut.’ I wound up with twelve dozen of these. That’s one hundred and forty-four. They’re from China. Too late to send them back. My mistake. You get the bargain! I’ve already sold over a dozen, so hurry in to Christopher’s Castle today to get yours!”
“Wow,” Howie marveled. “I guess we’ll be seeing lots of people in space suits this year then.”
“I sincerely hope so,” Chris agreed, with a big wink. With that, Howie signed off.
Pete and I both laughed. “That’s funny,” Pete said. “Imagine getting stuck with all those identical costumes. Poor Chris.”
“The price is right though,” I said. “I’ll bet he sells every single one of them.”
“Really? You know more about that stuff than I do. We have plenty of time to go downstairs now. Let’s see if your aunt has had a chance to check her cameras.”
I removed the apron, put the two remaining slices of pizza into the refrigerator, put our plates into the dishwasher, dumped the paper containers and the empty Pepsi bottle into recycling bags, turned off the TV and headed downstairs, with O’Ryan following us once again.
Aunt Ibby indeed had plenty of her sumptuous stew left over and Pete enjoyed a bowlful while we watched the small surveillance screen on her home office desk. “The nighttime film is sort of dark, but by early morning everything is nice and clear.” She pointed to the screen. “See? There’s the lady next door walking her poodles. Look. One of them lifted his leg at the base of the oak tree. The time stamp says it was shortly after midnight last night. Then here comes the girl from the other side of this house just getting home from a date in that nice white car.” After the white car pulled away from the curb, we saw several other vehicles go by—no foot traffic except for one more dog walker, who did not clean up after his fox terrier. All three of us commented on his bad behavior, then remained silently focused on the screen.
“Here we go,” Aunt Ibby announced. “The only interesting part will come up in a minute. Watch for it.”
A man walked into the frame, leaned against the oak tree, and every few seconds, moved to the curb and appeared to be looking for something. It was hard to tell exactly which way he was looking because of the bubble helmet obscuring his face. “Astronauts,” Pete declared.
“A hundred and forty-four of them,” I agreed.
Aunt Ibby looked from one of us to the other, clearly confused. “See? It’s a person in a spaceman Halloween costume waiting for a taxi. There he goes, climbing into the cab. A hundred and forty-four of what?”
Pete and I both started to explain at once the costume kerfuffle at Chris Rich’s store. She held up both of her hands. “One at a time, please!” Laughing at the confusion, I stopped speaking, listening while Pete told her what we’d heard on the news, and watched O’Ryan as he stretched, then stood up in the chair where he’d been quietly observing the small screen. He surprised me when he hopped up onto the desk, getting as close to the picture as he could. “Mrrup,” he said, touching the screen with a soft paw. “Mrrup!”
He was clearly trying to show me something. I leaned in, watching that paw as it traced the edges of the brick sidewalk as the cab pulled away onto Winter Street. At first I thought what he was watching so intently was a cluster of leaves, tumbling in the morning breeze. Then headlights caught two bright spots at the foot of the oak tree. A small cat’s eyes.
“Cupcake!” I yelled. “Look!” Pete and my aunt returned their attention to the screen just as that fox terrier reappeared and the cat named Cupcake scooted up into the tree.
“Can you rewind that please, Ibby?” Pete’s cop voice was back. “Back to where the costumed man appeared.”
We three, along with O’Ryan, watched as the figure looked up and down the street and finally climbed into a cab. I saw Pete scribble the cab’s license plate number onto the edge of a handy desk calendar. My aunt slowed the video down and we saw the now easily identifiable calico cat running along the brick sidewalk, only reaching the base of the tree as the cab pulled away.
“Cupcake was chasing that man,” I declared. “No doubt about it.”
“It appears that way,” my aunt agreed. “Doesn’t it, Pete?”
“Maybe.” The reply was hesitant. “Do cats do that?”
“I’ve read about cats finding their way home from many miles away,” Aunt Ibby declared firmly.
“That’s different,” Pete said. “That’s homing instinct. Cupcake never lived on Winter Street that we know of.”
“O’Ryan could do it if he wanted to. If somebody hurt me he’d chase them.” I was sure of it.
“Maybe,” Pete said again. “I’m going to phone that cab number in to the chief, then let’s take another look at that astronaut.” He stepped out of the office while my aunt rewound the tape and then slowed it where the costumed man leaned against the oak tree. In what seemed like seconds, Pete was back.
“Like this?” Aunt Ibby asked him.
“Perfect.” He moved closer to the screen. “Lee, would you say those spaceman boots look a little bit like fancy rain boots?”
I knew he was right. “You’re thinking of the other footprints in the kitchen. The ones in the orange marmalade.”