“Hey, partner.”
I smiled. He must be having a good evening if he was being so friendly.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Nice night for a walk.”
“I just wanted to give you a heads-up. I’m going to start interviewing the people on my list. I don’t anticipate any trouble, but…”
“Better safe than sorry, right?”
“That’s what I always say,” said Mrs. Parnell.
Carmedy must have put me on speaker.
“You never told me your partner was so good looking, Detective.”
“I didn’t want to make your husband jealous.”
There was a deep chuckle I assumed was Carmedy.
“Ping my eCom with your location so I can find you if you shout,” he said, then disconnected.
I uploaded the addresses I would be visiting and established a quick link to his eCom in case I needed to “shout” for help. Soon after, the taxi stopped. I filed the electronic receipt to recoverable expenses and wished the cabby a safe evening.
I planned to start with Mr. Crabbe. Since he wasn’t home, my first interview was Irene Cole, formerly Collins.
No Christmas decorations adorned her property, but a tidy mulch covered path lined with solar lights led the way to the porch. Beside the door was a hand-painted sign advertising peach preserves for sale, by appointment only. The logo was very familiar.
I almost laughed when I connected the dots. Irene Koehne/Collins/Cole produced that delicious peach compote that Carmedy I had been enjoying for the last couple of days. Here was a potential answer to Mr. Parnell’s question of how Irene wound up with Blake Collins. He was a friend of her brother’s.
I rang the bell.
No answer.
I rang again then knocked loudly on a panel of one-way glass set that decorated the heavy wood door.
“Who’s there?” The voice came through the speaker by the door.
Knowing I was in full view of the unseen woman, I adopted an open stance and a friendly, but not too friendly, smile.
“I’m Kate Garrett, one of the detectives hired by your community to find the cat-killer.”
“I don’t belong to the neighbourhood watch.”
“Understood, Ms. Collins, but you do like to walk at night. It is possible you’ve seen something without realizing it, and I am sure you would want to help keep your neighbourhood safe. After all, people who hurt animals are just as likely to hurt humans.”
There was a pause long enough to make me wonder if I should knock again.
“That doesn’t follow,” said Irene. “Being a butcher doesn’t make you a suspect for cutting up human bodies. Exterminators don’t become killers just because they destroy vermin.”
Actually, a butcher might become a suspect if the cadaver was cut up like a side of beef, and an exterminator would be questioned if their poisons matched the cause of death. I didn’t argue the point.
“Your neighbours’ pets are being targeted, not vermin or meat.”
Another long pause.
“I never saw anything,” she said finally. “Now please go.”
I changed tack.
“You make that wonderful peach jam, don’t you?”
“What does that have to do with cats?”
“Nothing, I just noticed your sign. Your brother rents an office suite from me. My partner and I bought some jars from him. It’s delicious!”
“Are you going to evict my brother if I don’t talk to you?”
“Uh, no,” I said, momentarily derailed. “I would appreciate talking to you about your usual route when you walk, Ms. Collins. You might have noticed something without realizing it. While I’m here, I’d also like to pick up some of your peach chutney. However,” now I laid on a tone of shocked affront, “I would never consider letting your lack of cooperation impact on a business relationship.”
“You can’t come in.”
“I understand. We can talk like this.”
She didn’t say anything. I took her silence as consent.
“Graydon Parnell told me that your cat went missing a few years ago.”
“Ten years ago. My husband killed her before he left.” Her tone was flat, almost distant, as if she was speaking from far away and long ago.
“Was your husband often a violent man?”
“No,” was her knee jerk reply. “Not physically,” she said after a brief hesitation. “Not most of the time. He threatened violence to the things I loved, like Susie, my cat.”
“Did he threaten your family?”
“My brother sometimes,” she said, and I could hear anger touch her carefully regulated tone.
“But your brother and he were friends.”
“So? He said he loved me.”
The anger was bubbling up. I waited, letting her fill the silence.
“He never threatened Mike when he was around. I don’t know if he really would have hurt him, but he said he would if I didn’t behave. I couldn’t take the chance.”
On top of physical and emotional abuse, Collins effectively held Irene’s loved ones hostages. No wonder she resisted leaving him.
“Do you know where your husband went after he shot Detective Garrett?”
“Your name is Garrett,” she said, sounding thoughtful. I hoped she wasn’t thinking of telling me to go away.
“Joe Garrett was my father.”
“He was very good to me. I felt safer when he was alive.”
She gave a shaky sigh.
“To answer your question, I hope Blake went to Hell and never comes back.”
I gave her a moment before asking the next question.
“Do you think it’s possible that he might have returned?”
This produced a pause so long, I wondered if she was still there. Then I heard her sigh again.
“I don’t think my husband will return. I hope not. However, sometimes I fear he never left.”
I turned the topic back to the present and what Irene’s nightly routine was before I was hired. Twenty minutes later, I walked away with a little more information, four jars of chutney and a bottle of syrup. The jars were delivered via a delivery door near the side entrance. It revealed a compartment with a closed door to the inside of the house. The jars were set out for me. She wouldn’t take money for them—they were her gift for my father’s sake—but I left my card with a note to call me if she thought of anything new.
Paulo Crabbe still wasn’t home so I went across the street to visit Theo Konstantin.