This occasion warranted parking in the short-term lot at the airport and walking in to meet her at the baggage claim rather than just picking her up at the door, and I was glad I had when Harmony ran over and embraced me in a huge bear hug.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to her.
She finally let me go, her thin face taught with grief. “Kate, please tell me they know what happened.”
“They don’t now, but they will, Sweetie, they will.”
“I just don’t understand…”
“Nobody does, but the Palm Hills PD is putting everything they have into finding out who killed your mom.”
We picked up her luggage and made our way to the car. “I assumed you wouldn’t want to sleep in your mom’s house…”
“Definitely not!”
“So I made up my extra room for you. I’ve also got Stormy, by the way, but of course she’s yours if you want to take her home. I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you.”
We bustled into the house with Harmony leading, and Mr. Tuttles went nuts, barking and circling and then barking again, running laps around the family room with his ears flying. Three more spins, and then he presented himself to Harmony for petting.
Stormy looked up from the sofa and fixed wide eyes on Harmony without moving.
After properly giving Mr. Tuttles scritches on his head and telling him what a good boy he was, Harmony reached for Stormy, petting the cat just the way she liked, under the chin and around the ears. Stormy stood, arching her back and rubbing her face against Harmony’s hand, demanding more ear rubs, her loud purrs filling the room. It felt so good to see them together, but it also made my heart ache, thinking about what they had both lost. My eyes threatened to tear up as I turned away, placing Harmony’s luggage at the foot of the stairs.
“Thank you so much for taking Stormy in. I know sometimes she can be a handful.”
“Oh, no, not at all. She’s a dear.” I looked over at the devil cat, who seemed quite pleased with herself.
“You know I would do anything for you and your mom, but I have to say I do hope Stormy sleeps in your room tonight!”
“Ha! Has she been doing the ‘midnight howl?’”
“More like 4 am!”
“That’s just cats being cats.” She turned to Stormy. “Who’s a good girl? Who’s the best kitty ever in the whole wide world?” Stormy arched into Harmony’s hand and purred some more. “Has she rolled out all of the toilet paper yet?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Nothing. I’m sure that was a kitten thing. Probably not a bad idea to keep the door to your bathroom closed, though, just in case.”
I studied Harmony’s face to see if she was joking with me, but she had already turned her attention back to giving Stormy all the love. She picked her up and held the mini Satan on her back in her arms, like a baby, and Stormy purred even louder, if that was possible.
Once Harmony had unpacked and washed up, she joined me in the kitchen, where I had her favorite Thai food warming up. “Oh, Kate, this is perfect, thank you!” She sniffed the lemongrass soup with shrimp, lime juice, peppers, and mushrooms.
“It’s always been your comfort food.” I passed her the bowls of soup and then put the steaming bowls of Mussuman Curry and Basil Fried Rice out for us to share.
“I’m so glad you remembered.” She sighed as she helped herself to the tangy curry. She looked thin. Poor thing probably hadn’t eaten since she heard the news. “The police want to interview me tomorrow.”
“I know. They want me to come in tomorrow as well. They’re just getting as much information as they can about your mom’s last days.”
“Did she say anything to you that sounded strange? I know you two walked several mornings a week.”
“Not a thing. As far as I knew, everything was perfectly normal. She mentioned that she had a lot more HOA meetings than normal, but that was about it. Of course, since she was a lawyer, she took confidentiality very seriously.”
“She did. Growing up, she often warned me about not gossiping. She once said that you should never say or write anything that you’re not comfortable having posted all over the neighborhood as signs.”
I smiled fondly. I’d heard Angie say that many times as well.
“What about you? Did your mom give you any indication that something was off?”
“Not really. She told me about the books you both were reading, and she occasionally had some funny HOA stories, about how Beatrice came to the meetings but sat in back with a hoodie, as though she thought nobody could see her, or how Felyne would tell people to sit down and shut up, and she’d have to correct Felyne and tell her that the homeowners all had a right to be heard because it was their meeting. That kind of thing. Certainly nothing that could even remotely lead to murder.” Harmony yawned. It was getting late and we both needed to go to bed.
“Can you think of anything else?” I wanted to get as much as I could out of her before we both turned in for the night. I was getting quite tired as well, and it was still a real possibility that Stormy could wake us all up at 4 in the morning again.
Harmony shrugged. “Emails, I guess. She said she gets a lot of whacky emails. Maybe that’s worth looking into. Did the police pick up her computer? They’ve probably already gone through it all.”
“I’m sorry, Sweetie, whoever killed your mom took her computer, too.”
“Oh, that’s too bad! Thank goodness you can access email from anywhere, though, right?”
“If we had the password, we could.” I narrowed my eyes as Harmony grinned at me.
“You wouldn’t by any chance know any of your mom’s passwords, would you?”
“Actually, mom had a different password for every single account.”
“Let me guess. You have them written down somewhere.” A surge of hope rushed through me.
“Nope, but I know all of them. She had a system, so all of her passwords were completely unique but also easy for her to remember. She used the same beginning for each password, which was “Stormy.Badkitty.” Then she added in the first four letters of the website’s name in all caps, and then finally a number that related to the letters of the alphabet for the first letter of the website. So for Amazon, for instance, it would be “Stormy.Badkitty.AMAZ1. For Gmail, which is what her board email was on, it would be “Stormy.Badkitty.GMAI….” Harmony counted on her fingers to G, “7.”
I blinked. “That’s both ingenious and terrifying at the same time. It doesn’t seem that easy to remember, though.”
“It is. You’d be surprised how quick you catch on to it. She started doing it that way when I was in my 20’s, and she’s very proud of the fact that she’s never been hacked, except for me, of course. I’ve used it to hack into her Netflix account on occasion. I use a similar technique now. It’s way better than having some dumb password generator.”
“Thank you, Sweetie. You are a wealth of information.”