Six Cats A Slayin'

I took a moment to think about how to express what I meant. “I don’t completely understand what brings a person to the realization that she or he was born in the wrong body, so to speak. I haven’t experienced it myself, and no one that I’m really close to has, either. But I think to act on that realization, especially to face the necessary surgeries and other treatments, takes a lot of courage. If Gerry faced all that successfully, I don’t think she’d balk at much else, do you?”

“No, I think you’re right,” Kanesha said. “I hadn’t thought about it that way, frankly.”

“I have a question for you now,” I said.

“Go ahead,” Kanesha replied.

“Why did you share this particular bit of information with me?” I said. “You’re not always forthcoming on the details of the cases you’re working on when I’m around.”

“No, I’m not,” Kanesha said. “This case is so different from any other I’ve worked. I’m great at solving problems and pulling together and interpreting evidence. Intricate police work is what I’m really good at, but sometimes you make these imaginative leaps that pull things together into a picture I hadn’t quite grasped yet. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I do, and I’m extremely flattered,” I said. “I’ll be honest with you: Everything seems jumbled most of the time, but then suddenly the pieces shift, and I can see everything in a different way. It’s hard to explain, but it just happens.”

Kanesha smiled tiredly. “I wish I could get it to happen. The thing is, I’m hoping you’ll be able to do that in this case. I need every bit of help I can get if I’m to have any hope of solving it.”

“All I can say is, I’ll do my best,” I replied. “Whatever information you do have about her life, I’ll need to see, however.”

“I believe you now know pretty much everything I know at this point,” Kanesha said, “but I’ll put together a summary for you and e-mail it later. How’s that?”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Are you still working on the assumption that she was killed by poison put into her snifter of brandy?”

“Yes,” Kanesha said. “I have a deputy working on compiling statements from witnesses. I want to be able to track her movements and those of the snifter during the party, but that’s going to take some time. Before I forget, I want to thank you for encouraging Mr. Harville to bring his wife in. That was an interesting story they told.”

“I’m relieved that Milton realized how important it was to tell you, and that Tammy agreed to come with him. Is Tammy still a suspect?” I asked.

“She claims to have an alibi for the time she was absent from her home—an alibi that also allegedly explains her use of a disguise. I’m considering her a suspect until her alibi can be corroborated. Plus, we’re going through statements from witnesses at the party to see if anyone mentions seeing her or a woman fitting the description of the disguise she was wearing. All this is going to take some time, given some of the details I’m not at liberty to share.”

“What about Tammy’s expertise in chemistry?” I asked, not quite ready to move on. “According to Milton, she knows how to make her own cyanide for use in gardening.”

“They told me that as well,” Kanesha replied. “It is an extremely important point, but if her alibi pans out, well, it becomes moot.”

I figured I wouldn’t get any more out of her about Tammy, at least for now. I wondered whether Tammy’s alibi had anything to do with her procuring more pills. Unless Milton or Tammy herself enlightened me, I probably wasn’t destined to know.

“I presume you’ve been through Gerry’s papers,” I said. “Did you find anything that could shed light on this?”

“We’re still going through all her effects, including her papers,” Kanesha said. “We haven’t found a will. We don’t know yet who her lawyer was. She had to have one for the real estate deals, but the odd thing is, in searching her home, we haven’t found any contracts, deeds, mortgage documents, leases, or anything else that relates to real estate.”

“That is very strange. I’ve been curious about the source of the money she used to buy four houses,” I said. “The three in my neighborhood, for example. None of them is a mansion, but they’re all on decent-sized lots and two of them are three stories. According to the values I found on the county property tax website, those three are worth, collectively, over six hundred thousand dollars. The other house isn’t in as good a neighborhood, as far as real estate values go. I think it is valued at about a hundred and five thousand.”

“Close to three-quarters of a million total,” Kanesha said. “If she bought them outright, without mortgages, that’s a lot of money to throw down in a short space of time.” She shrugged. “But she might have made down payments and planned to pay the mortgages every month until they sold.”

“The fact that you haven’t found any kind of paper trail for her real estate deals has given me an idea, and it has probably already occurred to you,” I said.