Your House or Mine?

She stood up and went to a front window. Beyond the limited sphere of the porch light, the yard and surrounding acreage were fading into the bleakness of a moonless night. The trees already seemed like ghostly specters in the descending darkness. Meg told herself that in time Ashford House would feel like home again.

She started to turn away from the window when she noticed headlights twinkling through the shrubbery lining the driveway. Someone was approaching the house. Moments later, the Mount Esther patrol car pulled in front of the house and Wade Murdock got out. He had a plate in his hand.

Meg’s stomach tightened into a knot as she stared at the litter on the parlor floor. She’d become so involved in the search for the deed that she’d forgotten the deputy had promised to bring her supper. She certainly couldn’t let him see that she’d been rummaging through the house like the desperate woman she was. Absolutely not. She had to show that she had the same strength of conviction as he did. She raced to the front entrance as he rapped lightly. Opening the door just a crack, she said, “Oh, hi.”

He held the plate out to her. “I told you I’d bring some spaghetti.”

She nodded, took the plate, and set it on a foyer table. “Yes, yes, you did.”

“You might want to nuke it a little in the microwave. I think Mrs. Ashford has one.”

“Oh, she has one, all right. The control pad looks like the instrument panel of a 747.”

“I guess that’s one of the things she bought in the last few weeks,” Wade said.

“No doubt. Well, thanks for the spaghetti. I’ll give you the plate back tomorrow.” She started to close the door.

“You’re welcome,” Wade said. Instead of leaving, he raised up on his toes and peered over her shoulder.

“Is something wrong?” Meg asked.

“No. I was just wondering if you’d gone through any of the boxes.”

Meg maintained a narrow opening in the doorway. “Not yet, but I’ve seen evidence of Aunt Amelia’s shopping all over the house. She’s decorated one of the bedrooms upstairs in a jungle motif complete with a fake fur Zebra-striped comforter on the mattress. Somehow it doesn’t seem like her taste, but I suppose there’s a lot about my aunt that I don’t know anymore.”

As if determined to chat, Wade leaned against the jamb preventing Meg from shutting the door. “I suppose you’ve noticed that the house needs a little fixing up,” he said.

Wade Murdock was an expert at understatement.

“I promised to do some of that work for Mrs. Ashford,” he continued. “But lately I’ve been concentrating my efforts on the barn. It needs a lot of attention, too.”

“I haven’t been inside the barn,” Meg admitted. She shifted from one foot to the other. Did Wade intend to chat half the night away? If he did, Meg wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She definitely didn’t want him to see the clutter in the parlor, but it was kind of nice having a lawman on the property to offset some of her fears. Still, Meg couldn’t forget that she and this particular lawman had a huge, three-story Queen Anne obstacle sitting between them.

After a few moments of silence, Wade finally said, “I guess I’ll be going then.”

“Okay. Thanks again.”

He stepped down from the veranda and walked away. Meg was about to close the door at last, but suddenly the subtle creaks of Ashford House were snuffed out by a tremendous crash originating somewhere in an upstairs room.

Meg flung the door wide, ran onto the porch, and screamed, “Deputy Murdock!”

He was already tearing back to the house. He rushed by Meg and burst through the open door. “Stay here,” he ordered as he took the stairs two at a time.

Meg watched him until he disappeared upstairs. Then, her heart pounding, she clutched her arms under her breasts and tried to obey the deputy’s instructions. It was no use. She chose the more appealing protection of Wade’s presence over the blackness of the landscape around the house. She darted inside and followed him up the stairs.

He snapped his attention to her while his back was flattened against the wall outside the bedroom where Meg had slept as a child and where she’d put her suitcase earlier. The room still had a comfortable, cozy appearance, but that was before Wade stood outside the threshold with a weapon in his hand.

Wade waved her back with the barrel of his pistol. She interpreted the look he gave her to mean he wasn’t pleased that she’d ignored his orders. Her breath coming in short gasps, she crouched down in the door frame of an adjoining room and watched as Wade slowly slid along the wall toward the open door. Oddly, a beam of light sliced across the threshold and into the hallway.

Pivoting with one giant step into the open doorway, Wade pointed his weapon with two hands and announced his presence. “Police,” he said with a resounding and authoritative tone. And then he dropped the weapon to his side and expelled a long breath.

Meg scurried up behind him and tried to see over his shoulder. “What is it?”

“The lamp fell from the nightstand,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s shattered.”

That explained the strange spear of light. “It must have been the wind,” Meg said, remembering that she’d opened the window a few hours ago.

Wade secured his weapon in his holster as he moved into the room. “Maybe. But unfortunately the lamp isn’t the only casualty.”

Meg understood what he meant as she followed him inside. She covered her mouth with her hand and whispered, “Oh, no.”

Wade scooped up a lifeless bird from the floor. And then he poked his fist through the corner of the window screen revealing how the bird had gotten inside.

“The poor thing,” Meg said. “I didn’t notice that tear earlier when I opened the window.”

Wade looked around the room and then down at the bird. “Just as I thought,” he said. “This is definitely the work of Mr. Cuddles.”

Meg gaped at him. “The bird has…had…a name?”

“Not the bird. The cat.”

“Cat? What cat?”

Wade pointed over Meg’s bed to the floor on the other side of the room. There, peering up at both of them with piercing golden eyes was a long-haired champagne-colored feline, whose insolent expression clearly indicated that he was not happy about two humans invading his space.

“My aunt never had a cat,” Meg said.

“She does now. I forgot to tell you. She bought Mr. Cuddles from a private breeder over in Lake City a few weeks ago.”

Meg closed her eyes and counted to ten. “Don’t tell me…with your money?”

“I suppose so. He’s a purebred Persian. Anyway, either the maid or I have been feeding Cuddles since Mrs. Ashford’s accident, but with all the commotion earlier, I forgot, so the ingenious fellow went into the trees to do a little grocery shopping.” He regarded the casualty of Mr. Cuddles’s appetite still in his hand. “This poor bird was intended as supper. I guess Cuddles misjudged his entrance into the bedroom and knocked the lamp over which in turn scared the sparrow right out of his jaws.”

Meg had never been a cat lover and was even less so now that she realized she would have Killer Cuddles to take care of until arrangements could be made for his adoption. Her sympathy definitely lay with the poor mangled sparrow. She glared at the cat. “I hope you’ll eat spaghetti, Cuddles, because you’re not getting so much as one bite of this poor bird.”

She caught Wade’s smile out of the corner of her eye. He folded his long fingers over the bird and headed for the door. “I’ll show you where the cat food is,” he said, “and then I’ll do something with the victim.”

“Thanks.” Meg started to follow him out the door but Cuddles strutted in front of her, his head high and the end of his tail twitching with an arrogant indifference to her presence. She trailed the cat down the rear staircase and into the kitchen.

Meg didn’t know what Wade would do with the dead bird once he went out the back door. But she was glad she had the job of feeding Mr. Cuddles to occupy her mind. The cat attacked his bowl of food with relish, including the special cat treats she spread on the floor next to his bowl. If she had to endure days in the house with only this sullen cat for company, she was determined to do her best to make friends with him.

After a few minutes Wade returned. He pulled out a chair for Meg and said, “Now you. Sit. I’ll go get the spaghetti.”

He came back with the plate, set it in the microwave, and deftly pressed a few buttons on the control pad. When he set the food in front of her, Meg realized her mouth was watering. She twirled a few strands around her fork and took a healthy bite. “This is good.”

“I’ll tell Pop you said so.” Wade stood watching her for a few moments as if he was uncertain if he should stay or go. Finally he opened a drawer, withdrew some masking tape and said, “I’ll fix that screen upstairs tomorrow. For tonight you might want to patch up the hole with this.”

She took the roll of tape. “Okay, thanks. But, under the circumstances, if you don’t want to fix the screen, I’ll understand.”

His mouth twitched upward in a strange sort of grin. “What circumstances are you talking about?”

Was he pretending ignorance of their obvious dilemma? She felt her face flush. “Well, I’m sure you’ve been repairing things around here because you thought the house was yours…”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I still do believe it. I bought this house.”

A spark of anger flared inside her. “Look, Deputy Murdock…”

“Wade.”

“Fine, Wade. I told you. My aunt gave the house to me. I plan to live here someday, and any repairs that need to be done are my responsibility. I don’t want you to put any more effort into a property that will one day be mine.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he said. “Besides, fixing this old place has sort of become a hobby. A labor of love you might say.”

“But you’re wasting your time…and money.”

“I don’t see it that way.” He leaned back against the counter and appraised her with cool, confident eyes. “And if you don’t mind an honest observation, I don’t think you’re that sure of your claim.”

She dropped her spaghetti-laden fork. “What? I’ve been sure of my claim to Ashford House for years, Deputy.”

“Wade.”

“Whatever. Why would you think such a thing?”

“Because I just went through the parlor to pick up the plate of spaghetti.”

“And?”

“And I saw that mess on the floor. You’ve been looking for something, Meg. Rather frantically, it seems to me.”

“What I’ve been doing is none of your business.”

“You didn’t find it, did you?”

“Find what?”

“The deed.”

She picked up her fork and began twirling spaghetti as if her life depended on curling the strands into a concise, compact roll. “I don’t want to talk about this with you. I don’t think we should talk about it.”

“That’s funny. When I’ve got twenty thousand dollars invested in something, I don’t consider it a taboo subject.”

She raised the fork and peered at him over the top of the pasta that had immediately begun to unravel. “Don’t you have some crimes to solve? Aren’t there cats to get out of trees?”

“That’s the fire department. Besides, I’ve already had one cat caper tonight. But, yeah, I’ve got to go.” He crossed the kitchen and pressed one hand on the swinging door to the dining room. “Just one more thing…”

She whirled around in her chair. “What now?”

“When I went through the parlor, I noticed you did find the contract of sale.”

Right. The contract had been in the lap drawer of Amelia’s desk. “You’re quite a snoop, aren’t you?”

“Training. When you’re part of a two-man law enforcement team in a hotbed of crime like Mount Esther, you don’t leave any stone unturned.” He smiled as he pushed the door as far as it would go. “And it helped that you left the contract on top of everything else on the desk…like maybe you’d been reading it.”

She crossed her legs and began pumping the right one up and down. “Okay, I may have looked it over, and I’m glad I did…”

“Me, too.”

“…because it’s only a lease-option agreement. You haven’t actually bought the house.”

He took a step back into the kitchen and let the door close. “It’s a binding contract, Meg. I’ve paid Mrs. Ashford a down payment and I’ve been giving her rent on the barn. It’s a done deal.”

Meg didn’t know enough about real estate contracts to rebut his argument, but she did know that four years ago, Amelia had prepared a clear deed with her name on it—if only she could find it. “I wouldn’t be so sure, Deputy,” she blustered.

“We’ll see,” he said. “Anyway, you’ve seen mine. Now it’s time for me to see yours. Then maybe we’ll figure out what to do about this mess.”

She listened to his footsteps recede through the house. “I’ll find the deed, Deputy,” she called out. “And I’ll be only too happy to show it to you.”

His voice carried from the parlor. “It’s Wade, Meg, for the third time. And you know where to find me.”

CHAPTER FIVE

A RINGING TELEPHONE jolted Wade from a dream of an auburn-haired woman, her full lips tugging down into a frown, sitting in Mrs. Ashford’s parlor in the middle of a pile of papers. He turned over in bed and opened one eye to see the digital clock on his nightstand. 6:36. Great. He’d had a whopping five hours sleep and lost the end to a fantasy whose possibilities were far more exciting than his reality.

In the darkness, he fumbled for the portable, grabbed it off its cradle, and croaked, “Deputy Murdock. If this is anything short of murder, call back in two hours.”

The voice that answered was familiar, and irritating. “Wade, this is Harvey Crockett at the Quick Mart. You’d better get over here right away. Newton Bonner just ran out on his gas bill and left me holding a twenty-dollar tab.”

“Oh, geez, Harvey,” Wade grumbled. “Can’t it wait till the sun’s up? Newton isn’t going anywhere.”

“How do you know that? He peeled away from the pump like a bat outta hell. He could be halfway to the county line by now—on my tank of gas.”

Wade pictured eighty-eight-year-old Newton Bonner and doubted the man could peel a banana, but it didn’t pay to argue with a citizen he was hired to protect. He swung his feet to the floor and arched his back to stretch his muscles into service. “I’ll drive on over to Newton’s place and check it out, Harvey. Call you when I know something.”

“I’m gonna have to make folks pay before they pump from now on, Wade. I don’t give credit here, and I can’t cover the cash drawer myself…”

Wade held the phone away from his ear and stood up. “Harvey, do you want to keep me on the phone listening to you, or do you want me to go after Newton?”

“You get that old buzzard, Wade. He can’t get away with this.”

Wade pressed the disconnect button and returned the phone to his nightstand. He was thankful tomorrow was Sheriff Hollinger’s day to answer the calls.

A DOZEN PEACOCKS and three times that many chickens scattered in advance of the patrol car as Wade pulled onto Newton Bonner’s property. Wade didn’t know much about peacocks, but he’d heard that old Newton had made a living for more than fifty years selling their colorful quills to novelty shops and the birds to petting zoos. Now that he was retired, Newton still kept a few birds around his place because he claimed they were good company. Since the old guy had never married, Wade supposed that a family of fowl would be preferable at this point in the man’s life to living, breathing, arguing people. The birds appeared content as well, Wade observed. The property wasn’t even fenced, and Wade had never been called out on a rampaging peacock emergency.

Newton emerged from a shed and began scattering pellets of feed on the ground. The birds forgot about Wade and, with their colorful tail feathers spread, beat an awkward path to the goodies. When he saw Wade, Newton and his entourage crossed the yard to meet him.

“Morning, Deputy,” Newton said. “What brings you out here?”

Mindful of his clean uniform, Wade swatted a couple of curious hens away from his pants leg. “You know why I’m here, Newton,” he said. “You’re not so old that you forgot what you did not more than half an hour ago.”

Newton ground the stub of an unfiltered cigarette into the dirt. “That damn Harvey Crockett. Did he call you out this early in the morning to run me down?”

“Yes, he did, and he had a right to. You stole twenty dollars’ worth of gasoline.”

Newton removed a wide-brimmed felt hat and ran long, gnarled fingers through white hair that hadn’t seen a barber in quite a long time. “I woulda’ gone back there in a day or two to pay up,” he said.

“That’s not the way it works, Newton, and you know it.”

“I left my wallet at home. I remembered it when I was already halfway to the feed store. What was I supposed to do? If I’d a’ passed on by the Quick Mart, I’d a’ run out of gas before I hit the county road.”

“You forgot your wallet?” Wade repeated.

Obviously thinking he’d brought Wade over to his way of thinking, Newton nodded his head vigorously. “That’s right. Left it on the kitchen table.”

Wade scowled at the old man. “Then you were driving without your license, too?”

A spiderweb of veins turned pink under Newton’s thin skin. “Hell, no, Wade,” the man lied. He patted his shirt pocket. “I always put my license right here, and I had it with me.”

“So where do you keep your twenty-dollar bills?” Wade asked him. “You bring me one now and maybe I’ll overlook a charge of petty larceny this time.”

Newton grinned with the half dozen teeth still in his mouth and trotted off to his house. He returned a minute later with a crisp twenty-dollar bill, one of the newly minted ones. Wade bet that the sly old fella had a trunk full of them hidden away somewhere.

“You’re a fair man, Deputy,” Newton said.

Wade tucked the bill into his pocket. “Maybe, but I’m also a man who’s running out of patience. The next time you do this, I’m writing you up.”

Newton bent over and scooped a fat hen from the ground at his feet. “Here, take this home for dinner. It’s my treat.”

Imagining Jenny’s reaction at witnessing the decapitation of what would later appear on her plate, Wade politely refused. “Some other time, Newton.”

The old man walked Wade back to his patrol car. “So how’s everything going with the Ashford place?” he asked. “Are you thinking that you bit off more than you can chew?”

Wade shook his head. “Nope. Not yet. I’m pleased as I can be with that house. Working on it has brought me and my dad closer than we’ve been in years.” He scanned the clear blue sky above him. “And this climate has done wonders for his pleurisy. I think another winter in New York might have killed him. Now I believe he’ll go on forever.”

“You started working up in the attic yet?”

“No. That’ll be the last job I tackle,” Wade said.

“You been up there, though, haven’t you?”

“Sure. When I bought the place from Mrs. Ashford I took a quick look around the third floor. All I saw was some worn-out furniture, a mess of cobwebs and a couple of critters. It’s a small space, so…”

Newton cackled. “A small space, you say?”

“Yeah. Besides the turret which opens onto all three floors, the actual attic can’t be more than twelve feet square.”

They’d reached the patrol car, but Newton was obviously not done talking. “Guess you didn’t see the mural then.”

Wade thought back to that day several weeks ago. He’d seen some ratty old picture frames leaning against a wall, but nothing the size of a mural. “I didn’t see anything as big as that.”

“You missed the best part then. I remember when Stewie Ashford built that place and hired a guy to paint a picture the size of a church door in the attic. There were some high times up there once that mural was finished. Why, a fella could stand in the turret and see a car pull into the drive all the way from the county road. I was there once when I was just a youngster, not more than seventeen, I’d say. Stewie let me come up there anyways. He didn’t pay any mind to county laws.”

Wade crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the hood of his car. “What are you talking about, Newton?”

A wide grin creased the old man’s face. “Guess I’ve said too much already. You go on back up there, Wade, and look for the mural. That’s all I’m saying. I won’t be the one to blacken a dead man’s memory, or for that matter, start up rumors that’d vex his sweet widow.”

Wade had heard other such vague references to Stewart Ashford’s reputation, all from the few old-timers who still remembered the town’s most famous patriarch. He didn’t know exactly what shenanigans Stewart participated in way back when, but he’d surmised that maybe the guy stood a little to the left of the law. Well, more power to him. The old days were long gone. The house would soon belong to Wade, if Meg Hamilton didn’t pose a stumbling block. What did Wade care if Stewart Ashford operated a shell game more than half a century ago.

He walked around to the driver’s side door and raised a finger at Newton before getting inside the car. “You pay your bills from now on, Newton. I mean it.”

The old fella stroked the back of the hen whose life had been spared. “You betcha’, Deputy.”

Wade headed back toward the Quick Mart to pay Newton’s debt. But he wasn’t thinking a whole lot about what he would say to appease Harvey Crockett. Mostly he was thinking about the idea of a mural existing in that tiny little attic room of Ashford House.

AT EIGHT O’CLOCK Saturday morning, Meg was already on her way to Shady Grove. She was determined to meet with her aunt when Amelia might be most alert. Besides, the antics of Mr. Cuddles and the heart-thumping police work of Wade Murdock had kept her tossing and turning most of the night. She wasn’t sorry to be leaving last night’s escapades behind her to deal with today’s problems.

Giving herself time for a second cup of coffee, Meg pulled into the parking lot of the Quick Mart and headed straight for the brewing machine. She’d just stirred sugar and cream into her cup when the door to the convenience store opened. “Oh, great,” she said under her breath when she realized who had entered. “Just who I need to see this morning.”

Wade stopped at the counter and slid a sum of money toward the clerk. The two men maintained an animated conversation until Wade finally threw his hands in the air and accused the clerk of being unreasonable. “He’s an old man, Harvey,” Wade said.

“He’s slippery as an eel,” the clerk responded, “and I’m holding you responsible if there’s any more trouble.”

Wade strode away from the counter. “Fine. How’s the coffee this morning? Still taste like motor oil?” When he saw Meg, he tossed a final comment over his shoulder. “Don’t answer that, Harvey. There’s someone here who’ll give me an honest opinion.” He set a paper cup under the dispenser. “So, Miss Meg Hamilton, what do you think?”

She leaned against the condiment counter and nodded toward a case with clear plastic doors. “The coffee’s fine, but since you’re a policeman, I figure you won’t be satisfied until you grab one of those donuts.”

“Ah…another misconception that you civilians have about us cops.” He dumped three envelopes of sugar into his coffee and stirred vigorously. Then, despite his statement, he opened a door, took out a chocolate-covered Bavarian Cream and took a huge bite which he followed with a smug grin. “But, heck, who am I to destroy a legend?”

Meg shook her head.

“So how’s Mr. Cuddles this morning?” Wade asked after sucking a dab of filling from his index finger. It was a gesture Meg found oddly disturbing.

“He’s like all males, I guess,” she said. “He left the house early to find a poor creature in the yard that he could lord his authority over.”

Wade raised that finger to make a point. “Yeah, but he made you notice him, and that’s what counts.” He wiped his hands with a napkin and tossed the paper into the trash bin. “By the way, I’ll be at the house later after I do rounds. I’ll fix the window screen before I get started in the barn.”