Six Cats A Slayin'

“I looked up snifter online this morning before I came to work,” Melba said. “I only had a vague idea what one looked like. They’re really different from the flutes, so there’s no mistaking one for the other.”

“If Gerry did leave the snifter unattended at some point, or at more than one point, anyone there last night could have added poison to the brandy,” I said.

“That means the person brought the poison to the party.” Melba shivered. “Talk about cold-blooded.”

“Yes,” I said. “Makes you a little sick to the stomach to think someone was roaming around last night with poison.”

“How could the killer be sure that only Gerry would get poisoned?” Melba asked suddenly. “Did he know that she wouldn’t drink champagne last night? Did she only ever have brandy?”

“Excellent point,” I said. “I hadn’t gotten that far yet, but you’re right. In a way it was lucky for the killer, if he didn’t know about it beforehand.”

“Otherwise he’d have had to take a chance on putting the poison in the right champagne glass,” Melba said. “I don’t like that. I’d prefer to think he knew about the brandy snifter.”

“I agree,” I said. “Simply goes to show you, though, how vulnerable you are in a crowd like that. He could easily have killed someone else by mistake.”

“Thinking about that is enough to give me nightmares,” Melba said. Diesel chirped and Melba stroked his head fondly. “Sweet boy.”

“This was premeditated,” I said, thinking about the implications. “The poisoner must have felt he—or she—had a problem to solve, and killing Gerry was the best, or only, solution to it.”

“Who was Gerry?” Melba said. “That’s what gets me. Who knew her before she moved in to your neighborhood? Seems to me she popped up out of nowhere, but she had a past. Somewhere.”

“Neither of us can say for absolute certain that she hadn’t always lived in Athena,” I said. “The fact that you didn’t know her is strange, I’ll admit, but even you don’t know everybody.”

Melba shrugged. “No, I know that, but given her age, you’d have thought we might have known her from school. She couldn’t have been that much older than us.”

I remembered what Betty Camden said last night and repeated it to Melba.

“She could be right,” Melba said. “I did think that, when I saw her up close last night and the other day, she’d had some work done on her face.”

“Really?” I said. “How could you tell?”

Melba rolled her eyes at me. “At your age, surely you’ve seen other women, and even men, who’ve had plastic surgery.”

“I probably have,” I said, “but it’s not something I give a lot of thought to. You really think Gerry’d had work done?”

“Yes, I do,” Melba replied. “The skin on her face looked pretty tight to me, and that’s not natural in a woman her age. She’s not like some women I’ve seen, who’ve had their faces lifted so many times they can barely open their mouths wide enough to eat.” She shook her head. “At that point it’s so obvious, and to me that would kind of defeat the purpose.”

“Gerry didn’t look like that,” I said.

“No, she didn’t,” Melba said. “But she’d had plastic surgery at some point, I’ll bet you. That nose of hers was a little too perfect, if you ask me.”

“People don’t have plastic surgery just to improve their appearance,” I said slowly, as a new thought struck me. “They also have it to alter their appearance and change their identity.”

EIGHTEEN

Throughout the day, I returned to that particular idea—that Gerry Albritton might have had plastic surgery at some point in order to change the way she looked, perhaps significantly. That might be why Melba didn’t recognize her yet thought there was something about her that seemed familiar.

What about the name, though? If she’d changed her appearance to look a lot different, would she also have changed her name, taken on a fresh identity?

I kept telling myself that Gerry’s true identity was not my problem. Kanesha was the one who would have to figure it out. I needed to mind my own business this time and not get involved.

The puzzle intrigued me, though, the same way it did in the mysteries I read. I always tried to figure them out before the author revealed everything at the end of the book. That was why I enjoyed classic detective-story writers like Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham so much. I wanted to be able to analyze the clues for myself, put all the evidence together, and come up with the answer. In this case, however, I would not be privy to enough of the evidence to be able to figure it out myself. Kanesha would be perfectly happy, I was certain, not to have the benefit of my amateur sleuthing.

Despite not being able to banish thoughts about Gerry’s death for very long periods of time, I managed to get my work done. Having Diesel as company during the morning improved my mood. We went home for lunch, and he wanted to stay there to watch the kittens when I was ready to come back to the office. I let him into the cage with them and reminded Azalea to let him out at some point before I got home.