Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Nans’s dining room table was command central. The whiteboard had been wheeled out from the spare bedroom when Lexy arrived. She’d brought pastries and arranged them on the table and the coffee was just percolating.
Ida was already eating.
Nans uncapped the marker. “All right. What do we know?”
What they knew, laid out in Nans’s clean block letters, was this:
Everett bought the cat at the Mercer yard sale — two dollars, possibly less.
Ruth had confirmed that comparable pieces, right base, right hardware, right period, could fetch anywhere from eight to twenty thousand at auction.
Everett wound up dead in the alley behind The Cup and Cake not three hours later.
The cat was gone. His bag, with everything else in it, was not.
“So whoever took it knew what it was worth,” Lexy said. “They didn’t grab the cocktail shaker or the fish ashtray. Just the cat.”
“Which means our pool of suspects walked right through your front door this morning,” Nans said.
Ruth looked up from her iPad. “Not necessarily.”
Everyone looked at her.
“The neighborhood app. Someone posted photos of all the sales, including the sale. Lamps, furniture, boxes of kitchen things.” She turned the screen around. “Third photo. Right there on the folding table. A porcelain cat on a bronze base.”
A beat.
“So anyone could have seen it,” Lexy said.
“Anyone with the app,” Ruth said.
“How would they know Everett had it though?” Ida asked.
Nans almost smiled. “How does anyone know anything in Brooke Ridge Falls?”
“Gossip,” everyone said, more or less simultaneously.
“What about Beatrice?” Lexy said. “She was right there in the Cup and Cake. She looked at that cat and told him it wasn’t worth very much.”
“She also looked like she’d swallowed something unpleasant the entire time,” Nans said. “Beatrice and Everett have been circling each other for years. Same estate sales, same auctions, same suppliers. She finds something good, he shows up. He finds something good—”
“She shows up,” Helen finished gently.
“She told him it was worthless,” Nans said. “But she’s the most qualified person in this town to know it wasn’t. Maybe she was just trying to burst his bubble or maybe she wanted him to think it was worth less so she could buy it from him.”
“And maybe he refused and she killed him and took it.” Ida sounded downright cheerful.
They sat with that for a moment.
“There’s still a problem with Beatrice as the answer,” Ruth said. “If the motive was money, how does she sell it now? The cat was in Everett’s hands in a bakery full of people. It’s on the neighborhood app. You can’t walk that into an auction house without someone recognizing it.”
“Not locally,” Nans agreed. “But there are ways. Private sale. She sits on it, waits until the investigation cools.” She wrote Beatrice on the board, followed by a question mark. Then: motive: money?
“Who else saw the cat this morning?” she said.
Lexy had been waiting for this. “Everyone in the bakery. What about Margo Haskell.”
Ida’s hand stopped halfway to her mouth. “Margo the cat lady?”
“She has a collection,” Lexy said. “Three real ones and approximately forty ceramic ones in her garden. She came in just as Everett was leaving. She hesitated when she saw it.”
“Case closed,” Ida said. “Margo wanted it for the garden.”
“Ida,” Helen said.
“I’m just saying. Have you seen that garden?”
“That’s hardly motive for murder, but Margo might have another reason to care about that cat that has nothing to do with money,” Helen said quietly.
“She and June Mercer are thick as thieves. Have been for forty years. If Margo found out Everett paid two dollars for something out of June’s yard sale that was worth twenty thousand—“
“She’d be furious on June’s behalf,” Lexy said.
“Furious enough to kill?” Ida asked.
“Margo has always been fiercely protective of June,” Helen said. “Ever since that whole business with Daniel Shaw.”
Lexy looked up. “What business? Who is Daniel Shaw?”
“Before your time,” Nans said. “High school sweethearts. Everyone thought they’d end up married. There was even talk of a ring.” She picked up her coffee. “He left. Packed up for Nashville without so much as a goodbye. June was devastated for years.”
“Margo picked up the pieces,” Helen added. “Every committee, every church supper, every library fundraiser — she dragged June along until June had a life again. If not for Margo, who knows.” She paused. “She’s always been protective of June. That’s all I’m saying.”
A small silence settled over the table. The kind where something had been said and everyone was quietly filing it away without knowing quite why yet.
Nans wrote Margo on the board without comment.
Ruth looked up. “We need a timeline. Every person who could have seen that app post, every person in the bakery, and where everyone was between ten and noon.”
“We’re gonna need sustenance for that,” Ida grabbed two cookies from the plate.
Lexy reached over and took a cinnamon bun. Ruth, without looking up, took a lemon bar. Helen selected a scone with the careful attention she gave most decisions.
Nans poured herself a second coffee and looked at the board.
Beatrice. Margo. The cat.
“We’ll start at the Mercer yard sale,” she said. “Find out what they knew about the cat, where it came from, how long it was in the attic.” She paused.
Ida was already reaching for her purse. “Should I bring pastries?”
“You just ate half the plate,” Ruth said.
“For them,” Ida said. “You bring pastries when you visit someone. It’s called being a good guest.”
“We’re not guests,” Ruth said. “We’re going to a yard sale.”
Outside, Brooke Ridge Falls was going about its afternoon, the yard sale winding down, the crowds thinning, the town settling back into itself.
Somewhere out there was a porcelain cat on an ornate bronze base, and a person who had decided it was worth killing for.
“Let’s go,” Nans said.