Karen was quick to point out that this was her doing. “The man has to have facilities and a place to lay his head when he needs a nap. You two will find later on in life that naps are quite the necessity. Ed does take his meals with me, though. That kitchen here is too much for me to deal with. And that reminds me, I need to get home and fix his supper. Ed’s metabolism keeps him thin as a bed slat. He needs his meals.”
She told us good-bye and left.
We’d reached the end of the hall, and Ed was dragging around an old steamer trunk stacked with file boxes. Candace hurried in to help him, and together they pushed it into the hallway, where there was actually space for us to open it.
“What time period are we looking at with these particular contents?” I asked.
Ed squinted into the room at the file boxes. “Looks like last time I filed was the end of March.”
“Seven months’ worth of paper?” Candace said, sounding overwhelmed already.
“Trees died and men and women labored to make this paper, Candy. Destroying it just don’t seem right.”
An eco-friendly hoarder. In his peculiar and obstinate way, he made sense.
He said, “You two go ahead and look for what you want. Use my bedroom if you’re too cramped. Meanwhile I got all of Helen Harper’s costume jewelry from her daughter. She swapped it out for a new toaster oven. Did you know Helen passed two weeks ago, Candy?”
“I did. Attended the visitation. She was a nice lady.”
“She was indeed. Now, get busy. You don’t want to miss your supper ’cause you’re stuck here.”
He went back to the front and we both sat cross-legged by the trunk. Candace released all three brass latches and lifted the lid. Papers were crammed to the brim and some fell out and scattered around us.
“Guess we should separate any lost-cat flyers from the rest,” I said.
“Exactly.” Candace reached in with two hands and grabbed as much as she could hold, then handed the mass of papers to me. She repeated the process, putting a pile on her lap.
The sorting took almost ninety minutes with neither of us taking time to look closely at what we had. I did notice several of my own flyers, but far fewer than I expected. Perhaps someone else was out collecting paper, too. Finally we had what we needed—information on plenty of lost cats. Candace and I then “refiled” the rest of Ed’s finds, which included not only garage sale signs but Frisbees, tennis balls and even a dog leash.
We decided to take all the cat flyers to my house so we could examine them, take down names and numbers and perhaps get a feel for what had been happening to Mercy cats in the last several months. But first we needed to eat. So after thanking Ed and saying our good-byes, we went back to the car.
Candace said she didn’t want to go to the Little Pig, even though she was craving slaw dogs—a regional favorite I had yet to try. Seemed any cops on duty usually went there on their break.
“Let’s eat at McMurtry’s Pub,” she said, her RAV4 peeling around a corner and onto Main Street.
I held on for dear life and vowed to drive if we ever went out on another search-and-find mission.
She said, “The Pub is a touristy spot with a weird menu, but they have their own special recipe for sweet tea that beats about anything I’ve ever tasted.”
Turned out the weird menu was typical pub fare, bangers and mash, fish and chips, that kind of thing. But there were also the hamburgers typical for the area, “a-plenty burgers,” where the fries and onion rings were mounded so high they fell off the plate. The sweet tea sure did have something extra—but the waitress wasn’t about to give up the secret, even though I asked more than once.
As we shared a trifle for dessert, Candace said, “That cat I took in is so hilarious. Cries like a baby.”
I took out my phone. “That reminds me, I haven’t checked on my crew in hours.” Once I was connected to the cat-cam, I saw I had nothing to worry about. They were all asleep in the living room.
“My mom’s keeping Boy today—that’s what I call him, Boy. Didn’t want to leave him alone on the very first day he’s free from the likes of a mean old man like Flake Wilkerson. Those cats may have something to do with him being murdered, but I can’t help thinking what if it’s something else? I know the chief is looking into other things.”
“What would those other things be?” I said.
“Well, there’s the missing computer. I can tell you about that because you heard it was missing the day we found the body. It’s a safe assumption something on the hard drive connects the killer to Wilkerson, especially since we saw no evidence of robbery. The man had several thousand dollars in a bedroom drawer.”
“Wasn’t the computer keyboard gone, too?” I said. “Why take—oh, I get it. Fingerprints.”
