The Cat Collector Read online

  The phone rang and Destiny hurried back to her desk.

  “Can I ask you something?” Claudia said. “Verna put the Trialogue on the calendar months ago. But now it shows the Silent Auction on that night.”

  “Really.” His tone sounded like puzzled interest. “Well, Verna is getting on in years.” His brows drew together in a concerned expression. “She’s been fuzzy-headed, getting things mixed up. It doesn’t surprise me that she changed something in her confusion.”

  Claudia stared at him. “Verna, fuzzy-headed?” Verna was white-haired and past seventy, but she seemed as sharp as she ever was.

  “Oh, yes,” McGrath said with a sharp exhale. “I’m having a difficult time with her. Sad, but I think it’s time she retired. My wife would be a great secretary. I’m going to talk to the Personnel Committee about it.”

  Claudia merely nodded as she stifled her anger. “So . . . what about the Trialogue? Do I call the pastor who runs it and say we have to change the date?”

  McGrath’s expression grew opaque again. “Tell him we’ve decided our church is not a suitable venue for that kind of event.”

  “How is it not suitable?”

  “We’re all about leading people to know and follow our Lord Jesus Christ. A Jew and a Muslim wouldn’t feel comfortable here. They have their places of worship.”

  “But it’s meant to be a friendly discussion so we can learn more about each other.”

  “We have the Lord,” he said sternly, chin in the air as if he towered over her, though he didn’t. “We don’t need to hear ideas that might lead us astray.”

  Claudia lowered her eyes and took a step back. “I see.” Her voice tightened. “But our church already approved it.”

  “I’m sure your Interim Pastor tried to keep everyone happy during the transition from the long years under your former minister. But I intend to make First Presbyterian a strictly faith-based church.”

  McGrath walked past her and left. Claudia took a deep breath, infuriated and disconcerted. The door to McGrath’s office was left open and she still smelled coffee. Claudia stepped to the door and noticed a side table on which stood a fancy, shiny coffee maker. Not the usual Keurig, but one that made gourmet coffee drinks. Beside it was a box of pods for the machine. She also saw the plush Aubusson throw rug on the floor, just as Amy had said.

  She went out to the reception desk. Destiny was no longer on the phone.

  “I see he has an espresso machine.”

  Destiny nodded with a huffy sigh. “He loves his lattes. I have to keep it filled with water and buy the right flavor of little pods. Has to be Amaretto Ambrosia or he’s in a snit. If the store’s out of it, he blames me for not stocking up.”

  “Sounds like he’s not much fun to work with,” Claudia said.

  “I loved my job when Pastor Collins was here. He always told us to call him John. McGrath insists we call him Reverend McGrath. Makes snide jokes about the streak in my hair and how I dress. Oh and he said I should change my name. He goes, ‘Destiny sounds like a singer in a sleazy rock band.’ I just snapped. I go, ‘Cool! I’m wild about rock bands!’ Boy did he give me an ugly look. Said any more back talk and he can have me fired.”

  “How awful,” Claudia said in disbelief.

  “I think he’s hoping I’ll quit so he can replace me. Maybe with Sue Ember, who’s here an awful lot lately. Sue’s taking over for Mattie while she’s recovering from heart surgery. But Mattie only needed to come in once a week to do the bookkeeping. Sometimes I wonder if Sue is cooking the church books, she’s here so much.”

  “I hope McGrath doesn’t harass you into quitting,” Claudia said, deeply troubled by what she was hearing.

  “With my brother in rehab and my mom needing hip replacement, I have enough stress without worrying if I have to find a new job.”

  “How is your brother?”

  Destiny made a tentative smile. “He’s off drugs for three weeks now, so Mom and I are hopeful. But Mom’s worn to the bone worrying.”

  “McGrath should be supporting you, not threatening you. Hang in there,” Claudia said in a reassuring way. “We’re all praying for your family.” She turned to leave, but was happy to see Verna walk in, her thin figure neatly dressed in pants and a flowered jacket.

  “Just the person I wanted to see,” Claudia said to the frail lady with curly white hair and blue-framed bifocals that matched her pale blue eyes. “I’m wondering why the Trialogue was removed from the calendar.”

  Verna’s head went back. “It was?” She headed for the conference room, followed by Claudia and Destiny.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Verna shook her head as she looked at the evidence. “I didn’t change it.” She glanced at Destiny. “I’m sure you didn’t either.”

  Destiny also shook her head. “That leaves two possibilities. McGrath or Sue Ember.”

  “Sue would do something like that?” Claudia said with surprise.

  “Oh, she covers up for him a lot,” Destiny replied. “The other day I happened to catch her when she was marking his receipts from The Old Mill. He takes his wife there, but I peeked over Sue’s shoulder and could see she was noting each one as a church expense, like he was counselling people over dinner.”

  “Isn’t he supposed to do that in his office?” Claudia said.

  “Of course,” Verna agreed. “But this way he can sneak his wife to a fancy restaurant at the church’s expense.” Verna’s gaze intensified as she looked at Claudia. “He wants her to take over my job. When I told him I need to work three more years to have enough money to retire on, he said, ‘You’re a tool of the devil!’”

  “What?!” Claudia exclaimed.

  “I heard him say that to her,” Destiny affirmed.

  “I’m in his way, you see,” Verna said, “so I’m from the devil. With me gone, his wife could earn my salary. He claims that’s God’s plan.”

  “He knows Verna and I are on to him,” Destiny said. “So he hassles us, hoping we’ll quit.”

  Verna turned to Destiny. “If you leave, what would I do? I don’t know if I can cope here on my own. But I need to work, and who else would hire a seventy-two year old woman?” Tears filled her eyes.

  Destiny slipped her arm around Verna’s shoulders. “Don’t you worry. We’ll tough it out together.” She looked at Claudia. “Unless he can find some legal way to fire us, we’re staying.”

  “Good for you.” Claudia blinked back tears for their plight. “You should talk to the Personnel Committee. This sort of harassment ought to be reported to the Chicago Presbytery,” she said, referring to the ruling body of the local Presbyterian churches.

  “Oh, I’d be afraid to,” Verna said, wiping her eyes. “I don’t know what he’d do if he found out. Come to my house and murder me!”

  “Is he violent?” Claudia asked with alarm.

  “He has a bad temper,” Destiny said. “Last week he threw a book at the wall when I’d run out of his stupid Amaretto Ambrosia.”

  Burdened by all she’d heard, Claudia expressed her support and said goodbye. She had to get back to work.

  At the Briarwood Cat Clinic a few hours later, she learned Sue had brought in her Maine Coon cat.

  Mary Anne Portnoy, the clinic’s young, ponytailed receptionist had taken Sue and her pet into one of the two examination rooms, painted in soft tones of beige and green. A poster of three cats in the Coliseum in Rome hung on one wall.

  Claudia put on a smile as she entered. “So you decided to bring Knickerbocker in?”

  “He’s still peeing too much,” Sue said, petting the cat’s thick grey-brown fur. Knickerbocker nestled against her as she worked to keep the cat on the stainless steel exam table.

  “Well, it could be a UTI. But he’s an older cat, so his kidneys may be showing his age,” Claudia said as she took the cat’s temperature, inserting a thermometer under his tail while Sue helped to keep him still.

  Claudia checked the thermometer. “He has a bit of a fever,
” she said, making a note for the veterinarian. After also taking notes on Knickerbocker’s pulse and respiration, she said, “Dr. Chandler will be in to examine him. I’m anticipating he’ll want me to take a urine sample.”

  “Does that hurt?” Sue’s eyes sharpened with concern.

  “Not usually. The cat doesn’t know it’s going to be stuck with a needle.” Claudia swallowed and decided to ask the question on her mind. “By the way, I stopped at church, and you were right about the Silent Auction. Do you have any idea who erased the Trialogue off the calendar?”

  Sue shrugged. “I didn’t. Maybe it was Verna. Glen says she’s getting senile.”

  Glen? Claudia hid her surprise at Sue’s first name basis with the pastor. “I don’t think Verna is one bit senile. I suspect Reverend McGrath made the change.”

  “Well, if he did,” Sue said in a regal manner, “he had a good reason.”

  Dr. August Chandler, a grandfatherly, white-haired veterinarian, came in then and Claudia left. As she’d predicted, about ten minutes later, Dr. Chandler brought Knickerbocker into the treatment room and Claudia used a syringe to withdraw some of the cat’s urine to be analyzed. She managed to keep the beautiful, emerald-eyed Maine Coon calm. He seemed to trust her and barely noticed when she inserted the syringe. Claudia carried the big feline back to Sue, who was waiting in the exam room.

  “He was a good kitty. Got an adequate sample,” she told Sue, who looked relieved. “If there is bacteria, then we’ll need to send it out to be cultured, so Dr. Chandler can prescribe the appropriate antibiotic.”

  “I’ll have to give him a medication?” Sue’s expression grew apprehensive. “Hope it’s a liquid,” she said, cuddling the fluffy cat purring in her arms. “I’ve never been able to get a pill down his throat.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” Claudia said.

  As she drove home from work that evening, Claudia mulled over what she’d learned from Verna, Destiny, and also Sue. When she got home, she phoned Amy and asked if they could meet for lunch the next day.

  CHAPTER three

  Holy Hell

  “Working at the church must be holy hell,” Claudia quipped after filling Amy in on her visit the day before. They were sitting in a corner booth at a modern, colorfully painted café called Super Soups, located within walking distance of the cat clinic.

  “Sounds horrible,” Amy agreed. “Glad I can be a stay-at-home mom.”

  Claudia stirred her still steaming bowl of chicken and rice soup. “I wonder how Sue has so much time to volunteer at the church? Doesn’t she work as a bookkeeper at an electronics factory?”

  Amy’s green eyes brightened. “Larry and I happened to sit in front of Sue on Sunday. I overheard her telling the lady next to her that she’s gone to part time at her job because, as she put it, ‘the church needs me.’ She said she inherited money from an aunt, so she’s okay financially to stay in the bungalow she rents for the next few years.”

  “Hmm.” Claudia squinted at her friend. “And you just ‘happened’ to sit in the pew in front of her?”

  “Okay, so I’m nosey. That pew was half empty, so I told Larry let’s sit there. Sue’s kind of an oddball. I’m still curious if she’s in a mid-life crisis or if she’s got a man in her life. Which reminds me, are you dating anyone yet?”

  Claudia sighed with a smile. “No. I’m in no hurry.”

  “You’ll get nowhere with that attitude.”

  “Amy, if God wants me to meet someone, the right guy will cross my path. Meanwhile, I enjoy my job, I’m used to living alone, and I’m happy as is.”

  “If you say so.” Amy swallowed a spoonful of her kale and bean soup. “So what are you going to do about the Trialogue?”

  Claudia shook her head, keeping a lid on her anger so as not to raise her voice in the restaurant. “It makes me so mad whenever I think about McGrath’s underhandedness. I’m going to ask him point blank if he’s the one who erased it. Shouldn’t people confront him when he lies?”

  “I think so. Otherwise he’ll keep getting away with it.” Amy grinned. “You go girl!”

  ◆◆◆

  The next morning, after spending the prior evening practicing what she’d say to McGrath, Claudia left the cat clinic at nine a.m. and drove to the church office. It was Wednesday, the day the clinic opened up at seven a.m. to accommodate clients whose schedules required them to bring in their pet early. After working two hours, Claudia had asked for time off to run a personal errand.

  She noticed McGrath’s red Cadillac Escalade in the church parking lot as she got out of her Prius. When she entered the office she saw Destiny and Verna at their desks.

  “Is he in?” she asked Destiny.

  “Must be. Haven’t seen him. Probably working on his sermon.”

  Claudia walked to the pastor’s door and knocked. There was no answer, but the door came open a bit. She smelled a faint whiff of coffee and knocked again. When there was still no answer, she slowly pushed on the door. “Hello?”

  She peeked in and saw McGrath in a striped shirt and pants lying face down on the Aubusson carpet. A spilled mug of dark liquid lay on its side next to his hand, the wet stain soaking into the thick aqua and ivory fibers.

  Claudia gasped and walked up to him, bending to tap his shoulder. She noticed a peculiar odor. “Are you okay?” He did not move. “Destiny! Verna! Call 911!”

  In about five minutes sirens blared outside the church as the three women waited in a quiet panic. Claudia hurried to direct the ambulance crew to the office. She and Destiny waited outside McGrath’s partly open door as the paramedics tried to revive him. Verna sat at her desk in white-faced shock.

  Soon more sirens blared outside, startling the women. Three policemen and a policewoman dressed in blue uniforms walked in. The church office began to feel crowded.

  “Who found the body?” one of them asked.

  “I did,” Claudia said with a gulp. The body? Was he dead?

  “Work here?” he asked.

  “No, just a church member.” She introduced him to Destiny and Verna.

  The stout young cop instructed them to stay nearby. “Detective O’Rourke is on his way. He’ll want to ask some questions.”

  Claudia looked at the other two women, their faces reflecting the same apprehension she was feeling. “What’s going on?” she mouthed to them. Then she realized she needed to alert the clinic that she’d be delayed.

  She was on her cell phone with Trudy, the clinic’s manager, when a tall man with graying brown hair, looking fit and forty-five or so, walked in wearing a dark blue suit and striped tie. Figuring this was the detective, she ended the call.

  Claudia saw his sharp gaze shift from her and Destiny to Verna, still looking pale at her desk. He pulled out his badge. “Detective Steve O’Rourke. Briarwood Police.” His brown eyes settled on Claudia. “Were you here when the body was discovered?”

  “I opened the door to talk to him and there he was on the floor,” Claudia told him, her voice sounding breathless.

  “Please wait outside.” After glancing at Verna, he asked one of the paramedics who was packing up his equipment to check on her. He walked into McGrath’s office and closed the door. One of the uniformed policemen escorted Claudia and Destiny into the courtyard, where the women sat down on one of the benches while the police officer stood nearby. Soon a photographer arrived. Another uniformed officer began placing yellow crime scene tape across the church office’s entrance.

  Taking all this in, Claudia asked the stoic-faced young policeman standing near them, “Was McGrath murdered?” She remembered the odor she’d noticed when she found him. It might have been bitter almond which, according to murder mysteries she’d read, was what cyanide smelled like.

  “They’re investigating his death,” was all the officer would say.

  In a while, O’Rourke lithely ducked under the yellow tape stretched across the door and approached Claudia and Destiny.

  “Th
e paramedics are giving the lady inside oxygen. Is there someplace I can interview you?” he asked.

  “Fellowship Hall,” Destiny said.

  He followed them the twenty yards to the double doors of a rectangular brick building. Destiny found her keys and unlocked it.

  Claudia assumed they all would go in, but he surprised her by asking Destiny to wait on the bench again under the uniformed officer’s watchful eye.

  “Come with me, please,” he said to Claudia, who wondered if she was a suspect because she’d found McGrath.

  A long table and folding chairs had been set up for a committee meeting in one corner of the large, linoleum-tiled hall. He asked her to sit down and he took a seat across from her. He pulled out a notepad and then a digital recorder and set them on the table between them, causing Claudia to draw in a deep, uneasy breath. She’d never been under the scrutiny of a police detective before. Or been part of a crime scene.

  “Just routine.” He asked for her full name and wrote it down. He turned on the recorder and stated the time and place, and who was present. Then he looked up at her. “You said you came to talk to the pastor? What time did you get here?”

  “About nine-fifteen,” she replied, being as accurate as she could. “The church office opens at nine. I saw his red car.”

  O’Rourke nodded. “What did you want to talk to him about?”

  She had to pull her thoughts together, rubbing her forehead with a shaking hand. “I knew he’d erased a program on the church calendar without telling anyone, blaming it on his secretary. He’s been threatening her job, and Destiny’s, too. Verna said she didn’t erase it, and I believed her. I wanted to confront him about his lie.”

  “Is Verna the woman getting oxygen?”

  “Yes. And Destiny’s the receptionist waiting outside.”

  O’Rourke made a note. “Who else works in the church office, or has access?”

  “Mattie’s the bookkeeper, but she’s recovering from heart surgery. Sue Ember, a church member, has been filling in for her.”

  The detective wrote on his pad, asking Claudia to spell everyone’s full name. He looked up and raised one eyebrow. “Did you like McGrath?”