A Whisker of a Doubt Read online

  The Barneses’ giant mansion, on the other hand, had the most decorations and lights out of the entire street. All white (“neighborhood-issued,” as Katrina and I joked). They also had a giant handmade wooden Christmas sleigh with poinsettias and piles of fake wrapped gifts smack in the middle of the lawn. There were many days I’d seen Trey Barnes, one of the younger residents, out there perfecting things while his much-older wife, Edie, supervised. Apparently, it took quite a bit of time to get this light show to her liking. Trey hadn’t appeared to be as interested in the job, but clearly had no choice. I’d wondered if there was some kind of competition between the Barneses and the Prousts.

  Directly across from the Prousts, Whitney Piasecki’s lights also blazed, though her selection was much smaller. She’d only managed to get lights on her trees in the front yard and around her porch before her leg injury made it impossible to do anything else. There might not have been many, but they were turned on.

  So with the entire neighborhood competing in some kind of silent best-of-Christmas challenge, the Prousts’ dark home stuck out like a sore thumb.

  “Maddie. Seriously,” I muttered to myself. “They probably went out and forgot to set the timer.” Which I also knew was a thing, because all the lights turning on at once had nearly given me a heart attack one night as I was heading through the Hacketts’ yard next door. “Or blew a fuse. Anyway, what do you care? Let’s get this done.”

  I hadn’t always been The Girl Who Talked to Herself. Just lately. And usually in private. But tonight here I was creeping through a stranger’s yard in a snowstorm, about to sneak through a snow-covered hedge to get into the woods while dragging a forty-pound bag of cat food. All while talking to myself. I really had become the crazy cat lady.

  Gritting my teeth, I kept moving, staying close to the Hacketts’ side of the shrubs. They had already given me permission to be in their yard anytime. The Prousts were less understanding about our volunteer contingency coming through to feed the cats.

  Not that I was too worried. Even for those who weren’t cool, they weren’t likely to call the cops on me since I was not only former Daybreak Harbor police chief Leopold Mancini’s granddaughter, but the daughter of Brian James, CEO of Daybreak Hospital. And all of these people knew my parents pretty well. Plus, given the ages of some of them, no one wanted to feel like they could be denied a stay in the hospital if they needed it. Not that my dad could actually do that, but the irrational fear was apparently enough to keep them from giving me any grief.

  I kept my flashlight pointed at the ground to attract less attention as I moved into the woods. Katrina had given me my own Maglite for the night runs—good not only for its light output, she said, but also a good weapon in case anyone messed with me. She’d said it jokingly at the time, before we knew what we were getting into.

  It wasn’t that I was naive. It wasn’t uncommon for feral cat feeders to get hassled. We’d all heard stories of people getting threatened, and in extreme cases, there had been attacks. But that was usually somewhere in a city, likely a low-income area where crime also ran rampant. Not in rich, fancy neighborhoods like this one. I truly didn’t worry coming out here. Except I didn’t love prowling around in the dark alone. Especially in the woods. I was definitely more of a city girl.

  I was almost at the end of the fence. I paused and turned the flashlight beam ahead of me. I could see the first little makeshift cat shelter not far away, just past the edge of the tree line. And a couple of pairs of eyes, illuminated under my beam. They were waiting. That made it all worth it. I hoped Gus was out here. I hadn’t seen my favorite tiger cat in a few days, and I was worried about him. The winter was so hard on these guys.

  I shifted my flashlight to my other hand so I could adjust the bag of food. As I did so, it cast a wide beam over the Prousts’ yard on my left. There was a gap in the shrubs here, and out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a dark splotch on the snow. I turned to look, curious, then flicked my flashlight to a brighter setting.

  It was a big spot, I could see now. I stepped forward to take a cautious look, hoping with all my heart it wasn’t one of the cats, frozen or hurt in some other awful way. It was always a concern about the ferals in the winter. New England winters weren’t kind to beings that lived outside. And even when they had caretakers like me and the other volunteers, we couldn’t always keep them safe from the elements.

  But when I inched closer, I realized with some relief that it was too big to be one of our cats, even the chunky black cat we’d named Toby. Upon closer perusal, it looked like a jacket. Or a duffel bag. Weird. Maybe one of the Hackett kids had been playing in the Prousts’ yard, which they’d been known to do much to June Proust’s displeasure, and left his jacket outside. Which seemed odd to do in the middle of winter, but those boys were a little nuts so who knew. I’d been witness to a scene when the younger Hackett kid had tried to light a bonfire in the Prousts’ backyard, allegedly to practice for his Boy Scout trip, and June had marched over and let Monica have it. Monica, in turn, had grounded the poor kid on the spot, likely so she wouldn’t have to listen to the wicked witch of the west side of the street anymore.

  Maybe I should grab the jacket and leave it on their front porch. It seemed like the right thing to do. Then maybe the kid wouldn’t get in trouble again. And Monica Hackett wouldn’t have to listen to June blather on about how she needed to discipline her kids better. Plus, the Prousts clearly weren’t home, so I didn’t need to worry about getting caught trespassing myself.

  Decision made, I stepped through the shrubs and strode toward the jacket. But when I leaned over to grab it, I gasped and stumbled back.

  It was a jacket. But not just a jacket. It was also a pair of pants. And shoes. With a body inside them.

  A body facedown in the snow. And it wasn’t moving. And a few feet away from the body, right near my foot, was one of those scary-looking Christmas gnomes, also lying in the snow.

  Trying to process what I was looking at, I crept closer despite everything in my body screaming at me not to. I was my Grandpa Leo’s granddaughter, after all, and I couldn’t curb my quest for information. The flashlight fell out of my shaking hand, disappearing into the snow, and I had to root around for it, which got me a snowy hand and a wet glove. Cursing, I grabbed it, then shined it on the gnome. I toed it out of its icy coffin, rolling it over and lifting it to an angle with my foot. His red, pointy hat was broken off at the tip.

  I let it fall back into the snow, then refocused on the still form, kneeling so I could see better. The snow immediately soaked into my jeans, making my knees freeze, but I didn’t even notice. My entire body had gone numb, and it wasn’t from the weather. It was a man, and he was completely still. The snow falling down around him painted a macabre picture of a perfect winter scene gone awry.

  But even worse, I recognized the long ponytail crusted with snow and the small diamond earring in his right ear, which was visible with the way his head was angled. There was also a different color to his hair—a reddish tint that I realized with horror was blood.

  It was Virgil Proust, the man of the house. No doubt about it.

  And it didn’t look like he would be turning his Christmas lights on anytime soon.

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday, December 8: two weeks before the murder

  2 p.m.

  “Maddie, when can we order the new stove?” Ethan asked. He looked like a little kid asking when Santa was coming. A really tall little kid with a beard.

  We stood in the doorway of Grandpa’s formerly unattached garage watching the contractor crew measure the walls and examine the current flooring, which was basically a concrete slab that Grandpa had painted bright red—his favorite color—a few years ago. To give it its own personality, he’d said.

  Ethan had successfully talked us all into transforming the garage into the new and expanded café portion of our cat café, JJ’s House of Purrs. We had been operating the café out of Grandpa’s kitchen sin
ce we opened last May, which obviously hadn’t been ideal but was the best we could do at the time. We’d begun the renovation process shortly after the summer season had shut down, and it had been quite the endeavor. But along with a headache that lasted four months, we’d also gotten a much better floor plan for the first floor, one that allowed the cats to have their own wing and us to have an actual living room again. We’d given up our dining room for the cats and opened up the space by taking down the walls between Grandma’s former sewing room and another small room that had gone through many different uses, and created one big open space. The café now had its own entrance—formerly our mud room—and our customers weren’t traipsing through our actual living space, which admittedly had been kind of weird. But I was never one to turn down a good tourist season, so I’d opened as soon as I had cats and worked with what I had. While it was a lot slower in the winter months, we still had visitors every week—many were locals and friends—and I’d been using their feedback to tweak the design of the place this whole time.

  It was working out well for all of us. And once the garage-turned-café was done, we’d have our kitchen back as well.

  I’d always wondered what my grandma thought about this odd turn of events as she watched us from her new all-seeing seat above us. Her beloved house was now home to at least eleven cats at any given time—ten shelter cats plus JJ—although lately that number had been creeping up since we’d seemed to have a record number of strays this year for a fairly small island. Either that or word had gotten around the cat world about the café, and every feline wanted to live here.

  Her house was also home to me, which would’ve surprised her—she’d long ago abandoned any hope that I’d move back to Daybreak Island, especially once I’d moved out West—as well as Ethan, Val, and of course Grandpa, who was in his glory at having such a full house.

  I guessed Grandma would find the whole thing delightful. She was the catalyst for all of this, really. I’d met JJ at her gravestone after her funeral. He’d followed me home, and had really begun this whole chain of events that led to the café opening last spring.

  But the kitchen. That had been her special place, the center of the house and despite the large dining room, the place where we all congregated most to eat. These days, if it wasn’t for Ethan baking yummy muffins and brewing amazing coffee, it was really a place to store our takeout boxes. But now, Ethan’s vision was coming to life and we were moving the café operations to a separate area. Once we got a stove. And that meant we might actually all think about cooking for ourselves again. Well, everyone but me. Cooking wasn’t really my thing.

  “Did you pick it out yet?” I tried to stall him, because I’d been slacking on getting the new budget reconciled. The renovations had been covered by our “anonymous” donor who had saved the house for Grandpa last summer, but retrofitting the new digs was still costing me more money than I’d planned at this point. The cat café hadn’t been open long, and although we’d had a successful first season I wanted to be careful we weren’t operating completely in the red from the get-go. But I understood this new space would have a lot of business benefits. It would offer us more seating areas, for one, which meant that any drop-ins could hang in the café while they waited for a slot to open up. I didn’t like too many people to be in the cats’ space at once. Some of the cats got overwhelmed easily. Without the separate seating in the café, I’d have to turn away anyone who hadn’t scheduled their visit online, unless it was a slow day.

  Ethan gave me a look that said he knew exactly what I was doing. “I had it picked out before we opened in May,” he said.

  I sighed. “Okay, fine. Order the stove. I’m adding new items to the store anyway. And my project this week is to get all the items online in Shopify.” Since we now had space, I had brought my idea of a little gift shop featuring—but not limited to—JJ-branded items to fruition. I’d been having a blast getting all kinds of stuff made with JJ’s adorable face on it, from tote bags to shirts to journals to stuffed toys in his likeness. Also I’d been picking out other items I wanted to stock, all animal related, most of which supported animal charities.

  My phone started to ring in my pocket. I pulled it out and glanced at the number. I didn’t recognize it, but answered it anyway.

  The voice on the other end was vaguely familiar and largely hysterical. “Maddie! They’re arresting me and I can’t get hold of Katrina and I need someone to come help me now!” The last word ended on a shriek.

  I frantically racked my brain for the caller’s name. I knew it had to be one of our volunteers—dropping Katrina’s name had been a dead giveaway—but for a second I blanked on whose shift it was to feed the Turtle Point cats. “Avery?” I asked, crossing my fingers that I had it right.

  “Of course it’s Avery! Who else would it be? Can you help me or not? Hold on.” I heard a man’s voice in the background, then Avery’s high-pitched squeal. “Hey, back off!”

  “Avery.” I stepped out of the garage, holding up a finger to Ethan. “What on earth is going on? Where are you? Who is arresting you?”

  “I’m feeding the cats and they called the cops on me.” Her voice shook. “Katrina said if there were ever any problems and I couldn’t get her I should call you. So I did.”

  Shoot. “Who called the police? Never mind, I’m on my way. Don’t do anything until I get there.” I disconnected and raced inside, grabbed my bag and Grandpa’s car keys from the hook next to the door, and headed to the car, dialing Katrina as I slid behind the wheel. Her phone went straight to voice mail. I gritted my teeth. These were the days I didn’t love being her backup.

  Katrina was my former babysitter. Once I’d gotten over that, she’d become a friend. We hadn’t stayed in touch much in the ten years I’d been off-island, but when I came home last spring—and ended up staying—we’d picked up right where we’d left off. It helped that we were both animal freaks and worked in rescue. Katrina had been a huge influence on me when I was deciding to stay and open the cat café with Grandpa Leo. Since the only other nonprofit rescue group on the island had closed its operations last year, she had been overwhelmed with too many animals, especially cats, when I showed up. Having the cat café as a safe place for some of the island strays was a godsend for her operations, especially since she was one of the few animal control officers—ACOs for short—I knew who actually cared enough to go the extra mile for the animals. It also meant she had a partner in crime for other animal-related adventures, like caring for this colony.

  So much for our educate/inform/engage campaign. Apparently we hadn’t been as successful as we’d hoped, if one of our feeding volunteers was about to get arrested.

  I wondered if Katrina was purposely avoiding this phone call. “Call me,” I barked into the phone, then disconnected and tossed it into the center console. I made it to Sea Spray Lane in fifteen minutes. As soon as I pulled onto the street I saw the police cruiser parked outside the Prousts’ giant house. And a pair of feet clad in fuzzy boots sticking out of the open back door. As I rolled up, I could see Avery slumped against the front seat fiddling with her long nails.

  Well, at least she wasn’t handcuffed.

  I wasn’t quite sure where Katrina had found Avery Evans, although my guess is she was someone’s kid home from college for winter break who had gotten tapped with doing some kind of good deed, whether to keep her out of trouble or add to her résumé. And since we were so low on volunteers, as the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers. She was a nice enough kid, but the couple of times I’d met her I’d gotten the sense that she was a drama queen, which made me wonder how much of whatever had happened today was totally innocent on her part.

  Then again, she was at the Proust residence, and June Proust was not a fan of the cats—or any of us.

  I pulled up behind the police car and got out. The cop standing next to the car looked bored to death. I pegged him as younger than me and wondered how much of a rookie he was. Virgil Proust stood in h
is yard, slightly away from the cop and his car. His hands were jammed deep into his pockets and he wore a miserable look on his face. When he saw me, he stood up straighter and did his best to put on a blank expression.

  Virgil was an interesting character. I’d had the chance to meet a lot of these neighbors over the past couple of months, and he definitely stood out to me as not the typical Turtle-Pointer. He looked like an aging rock star with his long gray ponytail, diamond earring, and five-o’clock shadow. I’d heard he was a retired Harvard professor. I wondered what he’d taught. And while his wife was very vocal about everything (translation: a real pain in the butt), Virgil didn’t say much at all. I had assumed he had the same outlook on life as his wife, though, which made me steer clear of him—and it appeared I was right.

  “Hi there. What’s going on?” I asked, walking over to the young, disinterested-looking cop, offering him my best slightly-puzzled-but-still-so-friendly smile.

  Avery saw me and vaulted out of the car, like a spring that had just been uncoiled. “What took you so long?” she exclaimed, tossing her waist-length black hair—extensions, for sure—over her shoulder.