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,