The Death of Perry Many Paws (4 page)

Abbey had always been a daddy’s girl, and her departure to college had hit Cam hard. Although she had my features, she had Cam’s red hair and freckles and they had always been a striking pair who attracted attention wherever they went. They had bonded the minute Abbey was born and Cam deeply felt her absence. He had left for work this morning in a good mood anticipating the opportunity to have a real conversation with her tonight.

My phone rang and I was disappointed to see that it was my mother-in-law calling. If Claudia wanted to talk to you, she wouldn’t give up until she had accomplished her mission, even if it meant leaving her luxurious senior living apartment, hopping in her Cadillac and driving over here. Then I would have to listen to the list of all the things we hadn’t done with the house that we should have, and all the things we had done to the house that we shouldn’t have. If Dorothy
Parker hadn’t beaten me to it, I would have coined the phrase “what fresh hell is this” whenever I saw Claudia’s caller ID on my phone.

“Tamsen, dear, you answered the phone yourself. How delightful.” The conversation always started this way, as if Cam and I had a house full of servants who took care of these mundane tasks for us.

“Claudia, how are you?” I popped a can of diet soda and settled into the kitchen chair, resigned to get through the conversation as painlessly as possible.

“I’m doing very well, dear. I haven’t heard from you or Christian for a while so I thought I’d better call to make sure you were both all right.” His mother was the only person who called Cam by his given name.

“We’re fine,” I assured her.

“Oh, just too busy to call. I understand.” Her tone made it clear that she didn’t understand at all. Did she think all fifty-year-old men called their mothers every day? Probably.

“I won’t keep you but I wondered if you would mind going to the cottage to check on Franklin. I don’t suppose you’ve talked to him lately?” A couple of generations ago families kept their oddball members hidden away from society in their attics. We kept ours in the gardener’s cottage.

“No, Claudia. The last time I went to the cottage to take him some lasagna he refused to answer the door and just stared at me through the window. We peek in on him frequently but we haven’t actually talked to him or been let into the cottage for months. We do what we can.”

Claudia sighed. “I know he is a bit odd but he answers the phone when I call, at least most of the time. I’ve been calling since yesterday and … I was wondering if you could wander over to the cottage and check on him.”

I reluctantly agreed to check on Franklin and call her back. I also ended up agreeing to bake a pie for her Ladies Guild flower show next
week and to “man” the refreshment table for two hours. It occurred to me that Claudia really didn’t need to get in touch with her brother at all, and it was just a ruse to get me to volunteer my dubious baking skills and precious time.

I didn’t really mind taking the walk to Franklin’s cottage as long as I wasn’t expected to try to converse with him. Cam and I generally took a walk out there most evenings, peeked in his window, waved at him and nodded as he scowled at us and, on occasion, threw a dinner roll, a magazine, or a finger at us.

The four-room gardener’s cottage was at the farthest end of the property from our house, not visible until you were almost at its front door. I meandered through the back garden, which was drooping and looking tired now that it was October. The gold and red leaves would all be down soon and we would move into that ugly stage of naked trees and withered flowers. I loved the fall but hated the post-fall season. From the garden I moved into the woods, watching my footing on the tree roots camouflaged by fallen leaves, looking and listening for the last of the birds. The squirrels chased each other playfully, their claws scratching on the rough bark, the boughs of the trees creaking as they landed and swayed before leaping to the next. They definitely were
not
squeaking.

It would have been a perfect day to have my trusted dog by my side as I swished my way through the leaves and felt the chilly air on my face, but Mycroft was taking one of his series of naps and could not be budged for a walk under any circumstances. We could barely push him out the door to do his business and even then he went as close to the house as we would let him. He was the only housebound bloodhound I’d ever heard of. It suddenly struck me that he was the canine version of Uncle Franklin minus the ability to throw things at us.

All too soon I arrived at the faded, mustard-colored cottage. It was badly in need of a paint job but we were afraid to submit a stranger
to the vagaries of Uncle Franklin. Cam had been planning to paint it himself but it was always at the bottom of his to-do list. We knew the shabbiness of the cottage didn’t bother Franklin because he hadn’t been outside to look at the cottage for years. It probably looked pretty good the last time he’d seen it. We could keep up the pretense a little longer.

As usual, the place looked deserted. There was no sign that anyone lived here. There was no mailbox—what little mail he received came to our house. We had arranged to have the newspaper delivered to him daily but I wasn’t sure he even read it. Cam had picked up the garbage the day before last and Franklin hadn’t put any bags out since then. He rarely turned his lights on until late in the evening and although he never closed his curtains, there was never any movement visible. I had no idea what he did during the day. Probably just sat and stared out the window.

I took my usual route around the cottage looking in the windows, prepared to give my wave and get his hollow-eyed stare in return. I looked in the kitchen window first as that is usually where we find him during the day, sitting at the kitchen table. Franklin wasn’t there and the room was cleaned up, which was odd. I expected to see breakfast dishes piled on the counter next to the sink. Franklin did his dishes once a day, so his breakfast and lunch dishes accumulated in a pile on the counter until after dinner. But the kitchen was clean, like it looked before he went to bed. Franklin was an incredibly odd man but he was also obsessively routinized. The apparently small inconsistency of the clean counter made me uneasy. I hesitated and thought of returning home. I wished Cam were with me.

I reluctantly moved to the front of the cottage to peek in the living room window. Nothing. Franklin spent very little time in this room, as far as we knew. I don’t think we had ever seen him in here. When we check on him he is usually in the kitchen or in an incredibly messy
room that we have termed his study. I stepped across the front stoop and peeked in the study window.

Franklin sat in his favorite chair, facing the window, scowling at me. It was exactly what I expected to see. The letter opener plunged into his neck was a surprise.

he next week was a blur. Cam handled all the arrangements. Abbey came home the day of the funeral and then went back to school. I don’t even remember talking to her although Cam assures me I did. Grace and Hugh, Syra, Diane and her husband, Scott, attended the funeral. Bing didn’t, but he supplied us with enough baked goods to open our own bakery. I went through the motions, but didn’t feel like I was really in my body. I’m not sure where I was, but it wasn’t in the present.

I talked to the police numerous times, but I have no idea what I said. I tried to talk to Cam about what it was like finding Franklin, but I didn’t have the words to express what I was feeling. I didn’t attend the weekly meeting of WOACA at Diane’s house, even though I needed their comfort and support more than ever. Oddly, it was my mother-in-law and her friend, Sybil Bright, who eventually got me out of my shocked funk and back into reality. It was the one-week anniversary of Franklin’s death … murder. I was sitting at my kitchen table drinking a diet soda and staring out the window when Claudia and Sybil appeared at my back door. I don’t believe I’d ever seen Claudia at the back door before.

I let them in and Claudia marched into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee left over from Cam’s breakfast, and sat across from
me like she still lived here. I gave Sybil a help-yourself wave and she poured herself a cup and joined us at the table. Claudia sipped and dabbed at her eyes with a delicate embroidered handkerchief. As usual, Sybil took charge.

“Cam is worried about you, Tamsen. You need to pull yourself together and move on,” she announced as she ripped up several pink sugar substitute packets and shook them into her coffee. “I know you were the one to find poor Franklin, and I know that is distressing, but you have to put it behind you and get back to normal life. Claudia’s getting back to her life, and it’s time you did, too.”

My whole body felt like lead, and not only was it hard to raise my head to look at her, it was too much trouble to answer her. Fortunately that didn’t matter. Sybil rambled on.

“The police have no idea what happened in that cottage. There was no sign of a fight or even of another person being there. There certainly was no motive to murder poor Franklin. Although he was a wealthy man on paper, he didn’t have anything of value in the cottage. And he certainly hadn’t made any enemies sitting in that cottage for sixty-plus years. I don’t think anyone outside the family even remembered he existed. You know what I think?”

Claudia clutched her handkerchief to her chest and interrupted.

“It’s difficult to say this about my own brother, but I think it was suicide …”

“What?” I wasn’t even sure it was my voice because I hadn’t heard it for a while so I tried it again. “What? I saw him! There’s no way …”

“Tamsen dear, I know the thought of suicide by a Behrends is difficult to accept but …”

“Claudia, what is difficult to accept is that someone would kill himself by shoving a letter opener into his own throat.”

I had to take several deep breaths after saying it because that image is the brick wall I hadn’t been able to get past—the scowling old
man sitting in a chair staring at me through the window with a blade sticking out of his neck like some horror house prop. Even though I hadn’t gone inside, I could smell the gamey metallic aroma of blood mingled with stale old-man smell.

“There is no way someone could do that to himself.” I started to feel nauseous and wondered what the proper Claudia would think if I threw up diet soda and breakfast M&Ms all over the table while she was drinking her coffee.

“But Franklin wasn’t normal,” Sybil needlessly reminded me. “Who knows what was going on in his head? Claudia and I certainly ceased to understand him ages ago. His actions would not be the same as yours or mine.”

I pressed my thumb against my inner wrist, something that I had read in a magazine to counter nausea. “What do the police think of your suicide idea?”

Claudia would never do anything as uncouth as roll her eyes but she did flick them up and down a little. “They didn’t seem to take the suicide idea very seriously. But then, after not finding a motive or signs of an intruder and no sign of anything missing or disturbed, they may change their minds. It takes them a while to open their minds to other options.”

“It may take them quite a long time to open their minds to
that
idea,” I said. “I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

“I don’t plan to, dear. In my heart I know what happened and that is all that matters. Now, I have something I would like you to do …”

It suddenly occurred to me that I had neither made a pie nor manned the refreshment booth at the flower show last week. I apologized. Claudia nodded, graciously accepting my apology.

“I didn’t go to the flower show this year and no one expected anyone in our family to do anything about it so don’t worry. The Ladies Guild grants some leeway in obligations when there is a death in the
family, especially one as spectacular as ours. What I have in mind is something totally different.”

Sybil got up and poured herself the dregs of the coffee and then got me a diet soda out of the refrigerator, possibly fortifying me for what her friend had to say. Claudia calmly waited until I popped the tab and took a drink.

“Tamsen, dear, I feel you would be the perfect person to go through all the papers and books in Franklin’s cottage. Sybil keeps offering to do it, but I need her by my side.”