Everybody blames Dorothy for everything.
You don’t? I typed. And then, Just tell me who you think murdered Kim Baker/Cappie Strongbow. Just one word is all I need. One name.
Someone knocked on my door, and I scrambled up. Koa hoisted the IV stand and a fresh bag of chelation cocktail in greeting. His face was a careful blank.
“Come in,” I said, annoyed.
I left the door open and while he was setting things up, I shut my computer, slid it under my pillow, and settled back.
“Writing?” he asked.
“Research.” I offered my arm and our eyes met.
He went about his work, and then, after he checked to see the solution was dripping down the tubing, he put his hands on his hips.
“See you in two hours?”
“I’ll be here.” I held up my pierced, taped-up arm.
After he left, I pulled out my computer and pried it open, my whole body pulsing like one giant nerve ending. The screen blinked and flashed a notification: Susan Doucette is offline.
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 13
Fay could barely think. “You pushed out the panel.”
“I didn’t,” Kitten said. “I woke up and it was gone.” She leaned out the open window.
“Kitten, come away from there!”
“Come, look. There’s something here.”
Fay moved closer and leaned over. And then she saw scratches cut into the wood sill. She ran her fingers over the markings, letters that spelled out the word Cappie, and then, welcome. Over and over again the words, Cappie welcome. Cappie welcome. She snatched her hand back like she’d touched a flame.
“You called her and she came,” Kitten whispered.
“No.” Fay’s voice quavered.
“She spoke to me.”
“No, Kitten—”
“You pushed out the panel! You carved her name on my window! And Cappie’s ghost came to haunt us!”
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The next morning, I found Laila darting around the kitchen, frantically flinging open cupboard doors.
“She says her food has to be gluten-free,” she puffed. “And all I have is canned peaches.”
“Okay,” I said, not really understanding.
“Gluten can really mess with a person’s system.”
“Laila, stop. I know this is hard to believe, but I’ve actually seen my mother eat an entire loaf of French bread and wash it down with a beer. Not kidding. She’s not gluten sensitive. She’s just regular sensitive.”
The cabinets continued to fly open and shut at a dizzying rate. “I want to make her something she likes. She offered to sign a copy of Kitten for me. Told me all about the television show and all the famous people she’s met. She’s very down to earth.”
My mother was the opposite of down to earth, but whatever.
“Okay, well, knock yourself out. Just know that she’s fine eating the same food we all eat.”
She planted her hands on her hips and regarded me. “Look. Before she passed, my grandmother used to make me rub her hammer toe. So what if your mother’s a little high maintenance? You should consider yourself lucky you have family and she’s here.”
She directed me to a pot of oatmeal on the stove. I doctored up a bowl with brown sugar and milk, then poured myself a cup of coffee and mounted the stairs.
I settled at the desk and, between spoonfuls of oatmeal, got started on my research. Thirty minutes in, I hit on something promising. Susan Doucette was originally from Savannah, and her parents still lived there. Don Doucette worked at an HVAC company and Millie, his wife, ran a housecleaning service called Millie Mops. I dialed the number I found on the Yelp page, gulping the last of my coffee. A chirpy female voice answered.
“Millie Doucette?” I said.
“No, but I can help you schedule your cleaning, if you like.”
“Actually, I need to talk to Millie. Is she there?”
“Hold on, sugar.”
The line clicked over to music, and I was treated to a couple of bars of vintage nineties George Michael.
“Millie Doucette.” The voice came across the line, deep and smoke-rasped.
I straightened. “Hi, Mrs. Doucette. You don’t know me, but my name is Megan Ashley and my mother, Frances Ashley, wrote a book called—”
“I know you,” she said in a flat voice. “And I know your mother.”
I swallowed. “Oh. Good. I was hoping—”
“What do you want?”
“I’m not sure exactly how to explain all this, but yesterday I spoke to your daughter Susan—”
“That’s impossible. She wouldn’t talk to you.”
“I reached out to her on Facebook, and she responded.”
There was silence on the other end.
“Mrs. Doucette?”
“She knows not to say nothing about all that. We haven’t ever gone back on our word, not once.”
“I’m not saying she did anything wrong. I was badgering her, Mrs. Doucette, trying to get her to talk to me. She told me about the nondisclosure or gag order or whatever it was she signed.”
“We all signed it. And we’ve honored it, every day since.”
“Are you aware that you were asked to sign that under false pretenses? That there was a crime committed, or there was knowledge of a crime, and that’s why Rankin Lewis Literary and my mother wanted to keep Susan and the rest of you quiet?”
I was spitballing now, quite frankly, but it sounded reasonable. And maybe it would convince Millie Doucette that I actually knew something. After a moment or two, she spoke.
“Susie was one of those Kitty Cultists,” she began. “She used to hang out in the forums, talking to people. She had Kitten parties with her friends. She even wrote a paper for English class about the book. She read that book about a hundred times, marked up passages. She thought she was gonna solve the mystery, if Kitten really killed that girl.”
“You mean Kim Baker?”
“You know they put her mama in jail, just like in the book, but all the Kitty Cult people thought maybe Kitten did it. The real Kitten, Dorothy Kitchens. Susie was really into the subject, so she started a blog with all her theories.”
“A blog?” I felt a thrill run up my spine.
“Stuff she’d figured out from clues in the book. Her father and I thought it was harmless, just something to do for fun. Then we got a letter from the agency. Frances Ashley’s fancy-pants literary agency in New York”—here she laughed—“saying Susan’s blog was invading Ms. Ashley’s privacy and, if she kept it up, we would all be sued for libel.”
“Did Susan shut down the blog?”
“My husband and I made her. The very same day. We didn’t want to start no fight with people like that.”
So Edgar had known all about Susan Doucette and her theories. He hadn’t hesitated—not from what Millie was saying—to shut her down. Naturally, he’d never mentioned the situation to me. He wouldn’t have wanted me worrying over something like this. He was a protector.