Alice’s expression suggested that she found the question just about as ridiculous as Sherry did. “Like what?”
Sherry was blushing. She improvised. “Like—did she sound worried? Annoyed? Did she sound young or old?”
“Oh,” Alice said. “No. I mean, she didn’t sound upset. She just sounded normal. Not like a kid. Maybe middle-aged? I dunno. She didn’t have, like, that old-lady voice?”
Sherry decided against asking whether or notshehad that old-lady voice. She didn’t think she did. She wondered whether most women noticed when they started developing it, or if they sounded to themselves exactly like they always had. She decided to drop the subject of the phone call for now. She had an idea of who it might be, anyway.Call Susan.She cleared her throat. “What happened next?”
“Nothing,” Alice said. “Alan sold that lamp. A few more customers came in.”
“Anyone who stood out?”
“No. Mostly browsers. That’s most people who come in, usually. One guy spent a lot of money, but we know him. He owns a shop in New York City and comes up every couple of months to look for stuff he can resell. I already told the cops about him.”
“I’m sorry to make you repeat yourself,” Sherry said, though she wasn’t allthatsorry. “Do you have his name? Phone number?”
“His name’s Mike Kaminski,” Alice said. “I don’t have his number, but he always leaves his business cards in the shop. I could get you one if you want. I don’t think he did anything, though. He’s just a normal guy. Sometimes we get resellerswho want to rip Alan off, but Mike isn’t like that. The worst thing he’s ever done is get kind of annoyed that Alan took one of the pictures in this set of framed prints he wanted to buy, but that was pretty normal. Rich people and collectors like to buy complete sets of things. He was nice to me about it, though.”
“I’d like to get his number, anyway, if you don’t mind,” Sherry said, and took note of the man’s name, withremind Alice need number. Alan’s ex-wife, his only employee, a rival antiques dealer. So far her list of suspects wasn’t particularly impressive. No one stood out as having a strong motive. Still, she had to follow up on every possible lead. “What happened after he left?”
“Nothing,” Alice said. “Reallynothing. We closed for an hour for lunch. I ate a sandwich in the back and Alan went out. To the diner, I think. Then it got slow, so Alan said I could go home early and he would close up on his own. So I went home and watched TV, and then you came and gave me that food, and a while after that my power went out. That’s it.” She swallowed audibly. “Sherry, my rent’s due in a week.”
Sherry made a note to ask at the diner whether or not anyone remembered if Alan had come in for lunch on that day, and, if he had, whether he’d eaten alone. Then she took a beat to consider what Alice had told her. She’d noticed that Alice hadn’t mentioned that Alan had had to talk to her about her performance at work that day. Not that Sherry would have mentioned it, either: it didn’t seem like the sort of thing that any normal person would bring up when their employer suddenly turned up dead, and from how Alan had phrased it, it might have been a minor enough conversation that it could have slipped Alice’s mind after all the chaos.
“Did Alan owe you a paycheck?” she asked, switching over from investigating detective to helpful-friend mode. She’d always liked being the friend that people came to when they were in trouble. It had led to what might have been the biggest mistake of her life. She stomped down that thought. That was back then, and in an extremely unusual circumstance; this was now, and nothing but helping out a young lady in dire financial straits.
“Yeah,” Alice said. “I mean—normally I get paid every other Monday, because he did the paperwork on Sunday afternoons. So that’s two weeks of work.”
Sherry grimaced in sympathy. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “You might want to speak to his lawyer.” She wrote down the name and number for her. “There has to be some sort of procedure for when this sort of thing happens. And I can always lend you the money for your rent.” She drank some more terrible coffee as a bid to avoid eye contact and immediately regretted it.Hazelnut.
“You don’t have to do that, Sherry,” Alice said. That meant that she definitely wanted Sherry to do it.
“It’s fine,” Sherry said firmly. “I have the money. How much are you short? I’ll write a check.”
Alice was blushing, a blotchy flush that stretched down her neck. Sherry immediately felt bad for her. It must be frustrating to have a body that included a built-in billboard for displaying your emotions.
“Five hundred?” Alice asked, in practically a whisper.
“That’s fine,” Sherry said, very briskly. She didn’t want any pity to leak out into her voice. “I’ll bring it by tomorrow. And I’ll ask around town about a job for you.” She braced herself,took a big swallow of the awful coffee, and set the mug down. “Thank you for the coffee.”
Alice’s eyes had gone shiny. “Thank you,” she said. “Youreallydon’t need to.”
“I’m going to, anyway,” Sherry said, slightly too loudly. It probably wasn’t the right thing to say. She hated this kind of conversation. She stood up in order to escape it more quickly. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she added, and then picked up her bag and bolted toward the door. On the way down the driveway she noticed those bushes again, their red berries gleaming against the dark green. Somewhere in the back of her mind there was a very soft hum.
Sherry’s little house felt even quieter than it usually did when she got home. She put the radio on immediately, then stood in the middle of her living room for a moment. Her heart was still beating fast. From the shock of that horrible photo in Alan’s house, she thought, until it occurred to her that she’d been drinking coffee all morning and only eaten part of a chocolate doughnut. Now it was almost lunchtime, and she wasn’t hungry, just nervous and miserable. “This is stupid,” she said aloud, and marched herself to the kitchen, where she set out to assemble a tuna salad sandwich.
The sound of the can opener, as always, summoned Lord Thomas, who came trotting up on his cotton-ball feet and gave a decorous little “Prrrow?”
Sherry smiled at him instinctively, then remembered that he wasn’t to be trusted and frowned. “Are you really my cat,” she asked aloud, “or are you an evil spirit or the ghost of an extremely unpleasant historical figure? Because I’m only going to give you the can to lick if you’re my cat.”
“Mow!” said Lord Thomas, in a way that she interpreted to meanStop being difficult and give me the tuna, woman!She eyed him for a moment. “The problem with you is that it’s hard to tell if you’re a rude person or an ordinary cat,” she said. Then she gave up and gave him the empty tuna can. The two of them spent a pleasant minute or so together, her assembling her sandwich—the secret was dried dill and celery salt—and him licking out the can so vigorously that he bumped it with his little nose all the way to the other side of the room. Then he sat down to polish his whiskers while she sat down to enjoy her lunch. This peaceful interlude lasted until Lord Thomas hopped up onto the chair next to Sherry’s and said, loudly, “And how are those investigations going, woman?”
“Ngah!” said Sherry, who had been lulled into a false sense of security by his extremely un-demonic tuna-can licking. She pressed a hand to her chest in a way that she was conscious of being a bit dramatic even as she was doing it. “Youstartledme!”
“I do apologize,” Lord Thomas said, unconvincingly. “And what of the investigation?”
She glowered at him. “After I’ve finished my lunch,” she told him, and made an extremely elaborate and protracted meal out of her final bites of whole wheat crust. After the last few crumbs were gone, she risked a glance at Lord Thomas. He was staring at her. She sighed. “I have a short list of suspects. None of them are all that impressive, but more interesting stuff usually comes up after I’ve been digging for a while. And now that I’ve given you that, you owe me some information, too, don’t you? Isn’t that how the deal is supposed to work?”
“Indeed,” said the cat, and stretched one of his front legsforward and pointed his nose toward the ground as if he was maybe planning on grooming his belly. It took her a moment to realize that he was trying to bow. “I am at your service, Mistress Pinkwhistle.”
