Nans’s dining room table had seen a lot of afternoons like this one — pastry crumbs, cold coffee, the whiteboard covered in names and question marks — but Lexy thought this particular afternoon had a special flavor of frustration. The kind where you could see the shape of something without being able to grab it.
Nans was redrawing the columns. She’d wipe a section, redraw it slightly differently, stand back, look at it, and then do it again.
Lexy pulled her coffee closer. “Walk us through it again. Who had a connection to the cat?”
Nans settled into her chair. “Kyle. Margo. Beatrice. Tina. Darlene.” She ticked them off without looking at the board. She had it memorized. “Let’s go down the list.”
“Beatrice is out,” Lexy said. “She knew it was the reproduction. Twenty-five dollars, she said it herself. There’s no version of this where Beatrice kills a man over something she correctly identified as worthless.”
“Agreed,” Nans said. Ruth drew a clean line through Beatrice without ceremony.
“Tina,” Ruth said. “Timestamped, continuous footage from ten to ten-thirty. She’s on camera the entire window.” She drew the line herself before anyone asked. “Out.”
“Kyle is the obvious candidate,” Ruth said. “He’s angry, he needs money, he was furious June put things out without consulting him. He even said so directly, standing right there in June’s driveway.” She paused. “But….”
Kyle doesn’t strike me as the type of person that keeps up on his antique values,” Lexy said.
“But he was mad June sold it without passing it by him,” Helen said.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean he knew it was valuable,” Ida said.
“True,” Nans allowed. “But the way he said it — he wasn’t lying about not knowing the cat’s value. He was angry about the principle of the thing. June sold without asking him. He doesn’t know what any of it was worth. He’s furious in the general direction of the whole yard sale.” She folded her hands. “That’s a different anger than someone who saw a specific valuable item walk out the door.”
“Maybe Kyle knew what was inside it,” Helen said.
“He was a member of the family, maybe he knew something about that cat, but didn’t know where it was.” Ida looked at the others. “None of the girls mentioned Kyle being up in the attic. What if he’d been looking for it but never knew it was up there?”
Ruth drew a small question mark next to Kyle’s name.
That left three names on the board.
“Margo and June and Darlene were all up in that attic,” Ida said, pointing her cookie at the board. “They all knew about the cat. If they knew there was something inside it worth having, why wait thirty years? Why not fish it out back then?”
“Because they didn’t know,” Nans said.
Everyone looked at her.
“Think about it. They were teenagers listening to records. They weren’t inventorying the attic. The cat was just there. A thing on a shelf.” She paused. “Which means whatever they knew — or didn’t know — about what was inside it, they only found out recently. Unless…”
Nans studied the board for a few seconds… then she took the red marker and circled the list of items that they found in Everetts bag after he was killed.
“I think I know who did it,” she said. “And why.” A pause. “And it isn’t what we thought.”
“What do you mean it isn’t what we thought?” Ida said.
“No time to explain now. We need to get to the Mercer yard sale. Right away.”
Ruth was already reaching for her keys.
“Someone alert Jack and have him meet us there!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Mercer yard sale had the end-of-day look. The good tables were down to the dregs — a single candlestick, a box of mismatched mugs, three encyclopedias. Browsers drifted between what was left with the unfocused energy of people who hadn’t found what they wanted but hadn’t quite given up yet.
June was at the far end of the driveway, packing unsold items into a cardboard box with efficient resignation. Kyle was nowhere visible, which was consistent with every other time something needed doing.
Margo was folding a tablecloth. She said something that made June laugh.