I pulled the covers up, hoping I’d be able to sleep. I was dead tired, but thoughts of that kiss with Javier along with images of Angie kept flashing through my mind. Javier was in the past, and my heart hurt too much to allow the last vision of Angie, on the floor with her eyes open, to run through my head, but unfortunately those two were the only things my brain would allow me to focus on.
As though the animals sensed my mood, they were unusually quiet, and I was surprised as Stormy curled up at my head. Mr. Tuttles took his usual spot at my feet, and they seemed to have found a sort of detente. We finally all fell into a deep sleep.
Until 4 am.
I woke up to what I thought were the sounds of a baby wailing, but as I came out of my dream state, I realized it was Stormy, crying at the top of her lungs. “Mowwweoww!” Over and over.
I turned over and put my pillow over my head, but it didn’t help. “Meowwwowwoww!” Her wails were like a needle straight through my eardrums.
Stormy was running all over the house, zooming from room to room, occasionally letting out another ear-piercing howl. It was as though she was purposely making her feet stomp on the wood floors, as I would have bet money it was a herd of elephants running through the house instead of just a single cat.
How on earth can one little cat make that much noise?
She jumped on my nightstand, rubbing her back against the lamp, causing it to rock a little. I held my breath as I peeked through my eyelashes, not wanting to let her know I was watching. The crazed cat took several slurps out of the cup of water I always kept on the nightstand, and then turned her attention to my earrings. She batted them several times with her paw, finally sending them to the floor. Another round of zoomies, and she was back up on the nightstand, rubbing against the water glass, spilling it all over the floor as well.
I sat up. “You did that on purpose!”
“Meowoww!” She skitted away from me, heading for the kitchen.
Mr. Tuttles and I tried to go back to sleep, but I tossed and turned until I finally gave up and rolled out of bed. Fog invaded my brain from lack of sleep, and I sipped my coffee slowly, the day’s Wordle holding no interest for me.
Even Mr. Tuttles seemed off, turning his nose up at his breakfast of part canned food, part kibble. I sighed and gave him the rest of my cereal to lap up, making him very happy.
“I’m spoiling you, you know.” Tuttles wagged.
Stormy glided into the kitchen, her sleek coat shining in the morning sunlight. She sat and considered us, then gave a loud, plaintive, “Meow!”
Poor baby. I bet she feels lost and misses her mom.
I offered her some of the cat food I bought for her, but she ignored it completely. Mr. Tuttles went wild, barking at her, and she arched her back and hissed, skittering away from the food. He gulped it down as fast as he could.
I sighed. “You’re going to get fat if we keep this up.”
#
Deep in thought, I jumped when the doorbell rang. I pulled up my video cam app on my phone and saw Cynthia standing there. I knew Cynthia from my strolls around the neighborhood. She had a little Chihuahua that she liked to dress up to match her own clothes. Cynthia’s dog was very shy and shook all the time, probably because it was always dressed in ridiculous outfits. I would never put people clothes on a dog.
“Cynthia! Hello!” I greeted as I opened the door.
“I didn’t kill her!”
“You’d better come in.”
The bleached blonde woman bit her lip as she entered. Cynthia was one of those people who always seemed put together, with neon walking shoes that matched her neon jogging shirt, although I had never seen her jog, and when I bumped into her in the grocery store, she always had earrings and a necklace that matched the colors in her shirts, and her makeup was always ever so slightly overdone. Even though she was generously proportioned, she dressed in a way that flattered her figure, except this morning, when she had hurried over. A bead of sweat had formed on her make-up free face, her hair was up in a ponytail with strands running loose all over, and she had clearly thrown on a large black t-shirt over sweatpants.
“I didn’t kill her!” she repeated. “You have to believe me! I tossed and turned all night after I saw it on the news last night. They’re going to think I did it!”
“Cyn! What are you talking about? Why would anybody think you killed Angie?”
Cynthia’s breathing was shallow and fast, and her face was pale. I worried she was having a panic attack.
“Why don’t you sit down, Sweetie.”
I set her on the couch, shooing Stormy away, and went to make her some tea, pouring myself another cup of coffee. I already knew it was going to be a long day.
“You still have connections with the Palm Hills PD, don’t you? You have to talk to them!”
“Breathe, Cynthia. Deep breath in!” It wouldn’t do for Cynthia to have a heart attack before I could find out what she felt so guilty about.
“No! They’re going to think it’s me! I was the last one to see her. I was at her house on Saturday. I probably left fingerprints and DNA and stuff all over that place!”
“Okay, take a sip of your tea. Maybe start from the beginning.”
“There’s really not much to tell. I had a meeting on Saturday with Angela to go over the finances. You know I’m the HOA Treasurer, right?”
I nodded.
“So that was it. We had a nice meeting, talked about the finances, she signed some work orders, and I left.”
“What time did you see her?”
“I was supposed to be there by 9:00, but I think I was running a little late. No more than ten minutes or so, though.”
“Did you eat or drink anything?”
“She was having coffee and offered me some, but that was it.”
“This all sounds very normal.” I leaned in. “Why do you think the police will think it’s you?”
“It was! It was completely normal! But, Kate, I was there the day she died. And since she wasn’t found until Sunday morning, they don’t know what time she was killed! I was probably the last one to see her! And I cried while I was there, Kate! I cried and now Angie’s kitchen is probably coated in my DNA!” Cynthia was becoming hysterical again. “Can you help? Can you tell them it wasn’t me? Please! I’m begging you!”
“Why on earth do you think I can help.?” I already knew the answer, but I wanted her to say it. Javier.
“We all know you and that Police Chief were hot and heavy!”
“We were not hot and heavy! We went out on a few dates. That was it!” That wasn’t it, but there was no way I was talking about my love life with Cynthia.
“Yeah, well, that’s not what I heard. I heard he’s still in love with you!”
“Oh, for Chrisakes!” Honestly, sometimes I needed to count to ten to deal with any of these people.
Then it occurred to me. Cynthia clearly knew something about Angie’s death, or at the least she was acting very suspicious, and she was here trying to tell me something important. Leveraging my relationship with Javi might not be such a bad idea.
I took a slow sip of my coffee. “I’m sorry, Cyn. I think we’re all just overwhelmed right now. I didn’t sleep well either. I can absolutely help.”
Cynthia leaned back on the sofa and sniffled, clearly relieved, her eyes still red. “I appreciate that, Kate.” She took a sip of her Earl Grey. “You know I never said a bad word about Angie, even when Beatrice was spreading all those nasty rumors. Beatrice is my neighbor, so I have to keep the peace.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize-”
“She’s the one who asked me to run for the board. I never had any desire to be on an HOA board, but Beatrice told me I’d hardly have to do anything since she basically ran it herself. Well, her and Felyne, I mean. And I have all that experience doing books for my husband’s business.”
“Felyne, our HOA manager?”
“Do you know any others?”
I ignored the sharp tone in her voice. “You know, Cyn, the police will have to bring you in for an interview.”
“I know.” Her shoulders slumped, and she played with the hem of her shirt, twiddling it between her forefinger and thumb.
“Tell me what you know, and I’ll see if I can grease the wheels, so to speak.”
Cynthia took a big breath in. “I went to her place to go over the budget. It’s May, and we’ve been upgrading all of our irrigation controllers to smart controllers, you know, the kind that don’t run if it’s raining or cloudy, but that’s not cheap. Angie kept saying that she wanted to keep dues down, but she also wanted to spend money on these new controllers, and she’s adding in rock in places, and replacing shrubs and flowers. I had to tell her it just doesn’t add up. We can’t do it all. So we sat and looked at different areas of the budget that we might be able to cut. She kept saying that with the smart controllers, the sprinklers wouldn’t be watering as often, so we’d have water savings that we could put right back into more water-saving measures. I mean, it did kind of sound like it might work. I just wasn’t sure.”
“I see. Did she say anything else?”
“I don’t know. Not really? She was just all, ‘Let’s take this one step at a time. If we have water savings early this summer, then we can buy more things that in turn will save more money. If not, we’ll wait.’”
“That sounds very practical.”
“It was! We found some areas we could cut, too. They didn’t add up to much, but every hundred here and there counts.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, just some stuff leftover from Bea. She had little things, like meeting expenses that seemed kind of high.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Any idea why the meeting expenses seemed high?”
“I guess, uh…I don’t really know.”
“Cynthia. If you know something, you should tell me. Don’t worry. I can explain it to Javier so you won’t get into trouble.”
“It’s not really something I’d get into trouble over, and it’s not like this had anything to do with Angie. I don’t think she even knew.”
“Knew what?” I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice.
“It’s just, I was going back over receipts. Whenever there was a monthly board meeting, it appeared that quite a bit of money was going towards food and drink. I know that sometimes we do order a bit of pizza and some water or even sodas, if we’re feeling flush that month, but this was on another level, so I looked into it. I saw that after the meeting was over, several glasses of wine and a full meal were being delivered from the restaurant next door.”
“Liberty Bites? They were having food delivered from Liberty Bites?”
“Yeah, I asked Beatrice about it, and she said it was all fine, it was just what they were owed for having to put up with the homeowners’ anger and stuff during the meeting. She said it’s all aboveboard and legal. Felyne agreed.”
“Did you ever tell Angie about this?”
“Well, it was in the past at that point. Look, I’m a volunteer. I shouldn’t have to look up laws when it comes to keeping books for an HOA. That’s the manager’s job. When Felyne said it was legal, I didn’t question her. But I never felt good about it, so when Angie asked where we could cut, I suggested that meetings could be made to be a little cheaper. She agreed, and she never asked why those meetings were so expensive.”
Hmmm…that didn’t seem like Angie. I wondered if she already knew there were shenanigans going on with expensive food after the meetings. While probably perfectly legal, the homeowners wouldn’t be too happy if they found out their dues were going towards their HOA President and Manager having meals on their dime.
Cynthia’s eyes filled with tears again. “Do you think I’ll have to tell the police about this? I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“You need to tell the police everything, Cynthia. And you’re right; you didn’t do anything wrong here. You’ll be fine.” I handed her a tissue. She blew her nose loudly into it.
“You mentioned you were crying. Was that what you were crying about?”
“Oh, yeah, no. That had nothing to do with HOA business That was purely personal.”
“You also discussed personal stuff with Angie?”
“It was no big deal.”
“It must have been important to you, since you were crying.”
Cynthia’s eyes filled with tears. “It was just…I mean…” she covered her eyes with her hands and let out an exasperated sob.
“It’s okay. You can tell me.” Sometimes, when I absolutely wanted to, I could bring a comforting note to my voice, and right now, I was hoping to portray caring rather than annoyance. It didn’t always come naturally for me, but I’d found it a useful tool to get the best work out of my employees.
“I was having doubts about my marriage, you know? Tony, well, I do the books for his business, and one day I was looking for some receipts, and since I couldn’t find them on the work computer, I went to his laptop to look. And guess what I found?”
Another wife? Porn? He’s been going to furry conventions?
“I couldn’t even hazard a guess.”
“Another account!”
Yeah, I wouldn’t have guessed that.
“We have a prenup, so if we were to get divorced, I wouldn’t get any part of the business, since he owned that before he married me. But we have a joint account that money gets transferred into from the business every month. It’s got…well, let’s just say it’s got quite a bit of money in it, BUT NOT AS MUCH AS IT SHOULD!” she wailed. “He’s been funneling money that should have gone into our joint account and into this other account for several years!”
She was sobbing now, huge round tears dripping from her chin while she made long, heaving, hiccup sounds. Mucus ran from her nose, and I reached for the tissues once again.
“Breathe, Cynthia!” I commanded. The theatrics were getting to me.
She gratefully accepted the box of tissues I offered and blew her nose loudly into one.
“See? This is what I was doing at Angie’s on Saturday morning! I’m sure my snot is all over that place!”
I touched her arm. “Here’s what you’re going to do. Are you listening to me?” I snapped my fingers twice in front of her face, and she lifted her eyes to meet mine. “You’re going to go home, get dressed, and have a bite to eat. I’ll talk to the police, and they’re going to call you in. When you talk to them, you tell them everything. Every. Little. Bit. Don’t leave anything out. You tell the truth, and you will be fine. Do you understand?”
She nodded, dabbing at her eyes with her tissue.
Once Cynthia was gone, I turned to my favorite judge of character: Mr. Tuttles.
“What do you think, Big T? What was she hiding?”
He looked at me with those deep, intelligent eyes, and I reflected, not for the first time, that he had a lot more going on in his little pea brain than most of my neighbors did.
“I think you’re right, Little Man. As my daddy used to say, ‘She’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic.’”