Cat on My Shoulder: A Small-Town Murder—Times Two

By B.J. Chatfield

Shes not writing true crimeshe just isnt. She just happens to love a good murder mystery. So, as she pens her most recent crime thriller, shes a bit more than shocked to find out a murder has taken place right down the street. It takes all her intellect to convince her cousin, Marta, that no, she is not trying to solve the case. Shes only writing.

The novel is about the character Helen and her police officer nephew who strive to solve a murder in a small town. In the novel, Helen goes for the Miss Marple routine, but she receives less respect than she expected. The killer is possibly someone Helen has known her whole life; how will she spot the fiend among her group of friends?

Off the page, in the midst of real murder, the author has a right to be worried. The killer is concerned that this real-life sleuth might crack the case. What began as merely a flight of fiction has mimicked true life. The author fears for her safety, so of course, the only person she can turn to for advice is her cat Winston.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491742068

B.J. Chatfield

B.J. Chatfield works as an English teacher in the far reaches of Northern Saskatchewan on a First Nations reserve. She divides her time between the frozen north and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where she shares an apartment with a clever cat who was the inspiration for her first novel.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

I was prone to writing my stories with an eye to the absurdities of life. I made sense that at some point I would write a murder mystery, because what was more absurd than taking a human life? People had motivations, but none of them made sense to me. So, as a lover of absurdity, I decided to plunge into the horrible deep end of murder.

We have all thought about it, though; we have all met someone we would like dead. That bitch who picked on you in school because it made her feel better about her own stupidity, that insecure little whistle-blower at work who blamed you for his failures—these are the people we have secretly murdered in our brains. Over lunch we have devised hideous plots so ghoulish that even the most hard-core science-fiction fan would turn and run in terror. Or maybe that was just me.

Murder mysteries are not really tales of truth, though; in fact, their intertwining roads laced with clues and scandal could never happen because no one actually plans murder with that much detail except a writer. The classic Agatha Christie tales of murder could never happen because murder is not that dispassionate an undertaking. If you really hate someone so much or have a reason so intense that you are willing to risk it all by taking the person’s life, that is a feeling born of passion. Murder is not planned; it happens. And then the fun is hatched in trying to cover up the act of passion.

So I placed my hands on my computer keys and wondered about the classic tale of murder and deception. Should I go for the truth or the planned road of Miss Marple? I asked these questions as my cat, Winston, landed on the keyboard and in some ways answered them for me. He always found the most ridiculous moments to want me to hold him. He did not fit into the mold of tabby cats. Whenever I told people I owned a ten-year-old tabby, they immediately thought of a fat, lazy, big, rude feline. Actually, the image they conceived was Garfield. But my Winston could not have been further from that image if he’d tried. He was very small—weighing about five pounds—and quite playful, was a keen mouser, and loved to cuddle.

He took his usual seat on my shoulder and stared at the cursor on the screen, waiting for me to tell him what story I was devising this morning. He always wanted to be in the way and in my life, so today I decided to make him a part of the tale—a murder mystery of the old school, an old lady with dozens of relatives vying for her money and trying to make certain that when she changes her will in their favor, she does them a favor and dies quickly. It sounded like something right out of Hercule Poirot. The cat purred, and I knew that I was on the right track once more. I could always tell when he thought it was going well; the sounds from his belly were pleasant against my neck.

Mrs. Helen Patterson lay on her bed waiting for the alarm clock to start the day. She never was actually awakened by the shrill bell; she was always awake, waiting for it to go off. She had trained her body that way, and at the ripe old age of eighty-eight, why change that pattern now? Her niece Claire had, at one point, asked her, Why do you bother setting that clock so early? You really have nothing to get up for.

It was a point well taken, even though it had been a rather mean thing to say, but after so long these patterns of life were hard to change. My dear, she had replied, I will be setting that clock when I am one hundred.

It was exactly 6:45 a.m. when the bell sounded and she reached over to turn it off. She turned the knob to the radio dial and lay there for another fifteen minutes, waiting for the news. She listened to the news every morning, which was odd because, truth be told, she had given up on the world years ago. There was so much death, so much pain, and so many lies being told that she could barely stand to listen to it. Still, it was the pattern of life she was used to, so each morning she listened to the news. Besides, after the news and the sports, which she hated more than she did the news, they did give the daily weather report, and that was actually something she could use.

Sunny with a 20 percent chance of rain later in the afternoon. Well, that was not too bad, she thought; she might actually be able to get some gardening in before the heat of the day and the rainy afternoon. She didn’t have a large garden, just some roses and a flower bed that she hated royally. But the flowers did give her something to do with her days. Otherwise, she would have pulled them all up fourteen years ago when her beloved Charlie had passed away. Roses were his thing, not hers.

Maybe he was the real reason she tended those damn weeds. Maybe being out there with those red blooms was a way to be close to him again. She stepped into the shower, and as the water cascaded over her wrinkled body, she wondered why God was so lousy with the numbers. Fourteen years as a widow was just too damn lonely for anyone. She still missed the old bastard, and on sunny, warm afternoons when it should have been him tending those stupid flowers, she missed him even more.

She made some coffee, took her three pills, and then headed outside, wondering whether there was anything out there to do. She knew there might not be, and that bothered her. Life was getting to that point and she hated it, not having anything to do. When Charlie was alive, she would make him the cakes and cookies that he loved so much, but after his funeral she had put all her baking pans in a box and donated them to the church. She could have joined the other little old ladies down at the church playing bingo and boxing up little sweaters for the overseas orphans, but the gossip made her head ache, so she never went down there.

She stood in the sunshine, blinking at the morning rays. It was a lovely day, and although it was nice to see the sun winking on the leaves of the maple tree, all she could think was that it was about time. It had rained for four straight days, which had made her sick inside. Helen hated the rain and always had. No matter how often Charlie had asked her to go for a walk in some lovely spring shower, she had always refused. He had loved that sound, and often he would go out by himself, walking and listening to the rain slap the sidewalk and bounce off the grass. She preferred to sit in the house watching television and waiting for the sun to come out. Considering how different they were, it was a wonder that they had remained husband and wife for fifty-three years, but he had become her old shoes, comfortable and well-worn in. She hadn’t wanted to give them up, but death had had other ideas.

She had cursed her husband when he died. She had cursed God and death too, which was another reason she never went to the church to play bingo with the other old hens. She and God were not exactly on speaking terms. The minister had given her the usual ramble about God’s infinite plan, and she had cursed that too. If her being lonely was a part of his infinite plan, then he needed to find a new one because it was not one that she was enjoying.

Morning, Helen! a voice called out from the sidewalk.

Morning, McCrea, she called back to the spindly gray-haired old man. All those years she had known him, she had never called him Thomas or Mr. McCrea; it was just McCrea. You heading to the Legion Hall? It was a stupid question since that was where McCrea was always heading.

The boys got a crib game on the go, and I got to teach them how to play. He laughed at his own joke. The boys he referred to were all over sixty-five, but at ninety he looked at them all as boys.

As if you know anything about the game yourself. She got to her feet and headed for the sidewalk where he stood.

I know more than Jim Flattery.

She rubbed her hand across her neck and stretched her back. My cat knows more than that old fool about damn near everything.

And yet there he sits on the town council. McCrea leaned against the fence.

Who is more the fool, the man on the council or the people who voted for him?

Now, Helen, be nice! he said, winking knowingly. It is not like old Jim can do any real damage on the council. They don’t do anything but complain about the snow and rain anyway.

She smiled and rubbed her dirty hands on her old slacks. Now don’t tell me that you voted for that crazy bunch?

I ain’t voted since 1961.

What was so damn special about 1961?

Well! He chuckled under his breath. Old Tubby Clintok was mayor, and he was a barrel of laughs.

According to my dear Charlie, those laughs included messing around with every woman in town, not to mention messing around with the town’s books.

Like I said, a barrel of laughs.

You have a very odd sense of humor there, McCrea.

He straightened up and began to walk away from her. Always have, old girl. Always have, he called back to her as he neared the end of her street and the turn toward the town center.

She watched him slowly meander toward the legion and another gossip-filled afternoon with the boys. Those old men are worse than a bunch of old hens. She shook her head and headed back to the garden. She did like McCrea, but there was something odd about the old man who still lived in the house his wife’s mother had left him in 1968. His wife had died in 1965, never having given him a child, and yet he had continued to live with his mother-in-law until she passed in 1978. And for the life of her, Helen had no idea what he did for a living, if anything. The gossip was that he’d lived off his mother-in-law’s pension his entire life, but that was just gossip.

Helen went back to the garden and finished the morning’s pruning and digging. She then turned to a rather worrisome tomato plant that had yet to produce one single eatable fruit. She loved tomatoes, and it was the only vegetable she had bothered to plant this year, so why was it being so stubborn about feeding her? Charlie would have known what to do with it, but all she could do was keep watering it, stake the spindle vines, and hope for the best. Mrs. Vesper had told her to try some fertilizer and a little prayer. She had thought about the fertilizer but had decided against the prayer. After all, she did not want God to think that she had forgiven him about Charlie, not yet anyway.

At noon she went back into the house, washed up, and made herself a grilled cheese sandwich. It was not much, but at her age it was all she needed. She did manage a glass of milk to finish off another three pills, and then she turned on the TV. She knew that across the street Mrs. Vesper was watching some soap opera, but Helen could not stand those things. They were just something else to gossip about, so she turned to the BBC and an old Miss Marple mystery. Murder and mayhem were so much more fun than the sex and gossip of the daytime dramas; at least she thought so.

At three o’clock the old biddies would gather in the town’s coffee shop to discuss Days of Our Lives and the ramblings of their own lives. McCrea had told her that they did love to discuss her life or lack thereof, and that made her quite angry. They talked about how she had stuck herself inside her own house after Charlie died and said that she was dying slowly by inches. They thought she should get out more and be a part of the community again. She knew that what they really meant was that they wanted her in their hen sessions. What business of it was theirs that she did not want to partake of their gossiping? Still, there was a part of her that had to wonder whether McCrea had told her those things just to get a rise out of her.

She lay on the sofa with a cat on her lap, watching an old woman solve a murder in a small British town. She liked the idea that some old biddy could figure out some mayhem without the need of forensics or science. All you need is some brain cells, she had told her nephew’s son one day when he tried to get her into one of the new cop shows. They rely far too much on the science for my taste.

Philip was a good kid who was really into science, and he’d wanted to show her the job he wanted when he graduated college. He had studied that forensic stuff, and although she would be reluctant to say it to him, she was very proud of him. He was a smart young man who knew exactly what he wanted out of life and how to get it. That was more than could be said for a lot of people twice his age. There were people in town his father’s age who still were struggling with the idea of having a real job and a real life.

Not a bad beginning, I thought. But it did not seem to be going the tack of an old lady with money hidden under the mattress or worth so much that the relatives would want her dead for the will. That happened sometimes when I began a story. I’d get a glimmer, and when I put down the first pages, the story would go onto a completely different track. I didn’t really plan these things; they just happened. I knew some writers laid out a rough draft of the crime, and some even worked backward from the who to the done it. I could never write that way; I was more organic. I allowed the story to talk to my cat and me.

Winston was still purring and making it more difficult for the words to flow from my hands to the screen. There was nothing more annoying than hatching a plot with a cat demanding attention, leaving me with only one hand with which to type.

I did like the idea of a Miss Marple type who hated the other old biddies in town. Actually, I could sort of see myself being like that in a few years, so perhaps I was concocting a tale of my own future. I also liked that bit about the forensic science shows being a little too much about science and not enough about intuition. If I was going to write a tale of murder, it would have to be without the forensic, basically because I didn’t understand a lot about that sort of stuff, an admission that I suspected would surprise many people. I knew that once in a while I got on people’s nerves by acting like a know-it-all, but the truth was that I barely knew anything about anything. I did have to be honest with myself if not with them.

There it was again—the doorbell, another break in the day’s writing. The cat jumped off my shoulder and ran to the door. He liked visitors even if I didn’t. At the door, I found my cousin Marta. I hated it when she just dropped by. It disrupted my work and my rhythm. I had tried so often to explain to her the nature of a writer’s rhythm, but she always just got that glazed-over look in her brown muddy eyes.

Lacy is collecting money for the orphan league again! She didn’t even bother to say hello. She simply launched into her latest endeavor without asking if I was busy. I promised her that I would help, and you know how she is. She promised them much more than she could ever deliver on her own.

She flopped her tall skinny frame onto a chair at my kitchen table and waited for me to offer her a cup of coffee, which itself was stupid. I hated coffee and she knew it, so why would I ever bother making that brown swill for people I didn’t want dropping by? I sat across the table from her and stared blankly at her shallow face. I often wondered why she continued to come see me when I had made it very clear that I didn’t appreciate the visits.

Well, I am certain that you heard about old man Charles?

I had not, and I could not have cared less about that old fart who had once tried to accost me at a fall dance when I was only fifteen. He had pinned me in the cloakroom, where Mom had sent me to get her comb out of her coat pocket. I had managed to beat my way out of there, and when I returned without the comb, my dear sweet mother had screamed at me. After all, how could she make herself beautiful for the dancing without her comb? Honestly, I didn’t know whom I hated more that night, her or that dirty old man.

He fell down the stairs at the school. Marta had continued her story, unaware that I was not the least bit interested in anything she had to say. Yet there was something in her statement that did intrigue me.

What was he doing at the school? He doesn’t have any relatives working there or attending classes, does he?

Marta’s muddy eyes lit up at my question. Suddenly, she had information that I might want, or so she thought. Well, no, I guess he doesn’t.

I leaned forward across the table. So what was he doing at the school?

It was the drama club’s yearly dinner theater. Didn’t you hear about it? Marta liked to feel important by announcing these things to me. However, our local school’s drama club featured more comedy than drama and not the type of comedy you did on purpose. One year they had tried to do Romeo and Juliet, only to find out that their own little Romeo was going through some changes, and his voice cracked so many times during the performance that people could not stop laughing. It must have been so embarrassing to have people laughing through that death scene.

That does not explain why Charles was at the school. He wouldn’t know any of the kids in that club. I had my suspicions about why that old man had been at the school that evening and how he’d fallen. Who found him on the stairs anyway?

Chelsea Bellows!

I knew that girl; she was tall, blonde, and fully formed. She was just the type of girl who would get old man Charles’s juices flowing. I would have laid bets that she had gotten ahead of him, and when he tried something, she pushed him down those stairs. The next time I saw the lovely young Chelsea I would have to congratulate her on such a fine job of maneuvers. I wished I had been the one to catch that pervert on the stairs, but sometimes there was just no justice in this world. I also would have bet money that Chelsea had told someone what really had happened, but no one had believed her, just like they had not believed me all those years ago. In a small town, perversion was accepted as a fact of life, and when the elderly man was a rich bastard who could contribute money to the church fund, the park board, and the school band, those things were overlooked. Young girls like Chelsea and me could scream rape all we wanted, but nothing would ever be done about it.

Marta stared at me for a long time, probably wondering what was going through my mind. I had never told her about the old pervert, mainly because I did not want everyone in town gossiping about me. Marta was one of the main sources of information in town, and so she knew that I did not trust her with anything that might be happening in my life. Hell, my first book had been damn near in the bookstores before anyone in this town even knew that I was writing. I knew that it bothered her to no end that I had not told her that I had gotten a publishing deal, but considering how much I openly disliked her, it really should not have surprised her.

Mary Joe Rollins is visiting her aunt in Chicago, she stated flatly.

I wanted to ask her who the fuck Mary Joe Rollins was and why I should care that she was in Chicago, but I simply stared back at her.

I would never go to such a big city, she muttered. There is nothing but murderers and muggers on the streets.

Wasn’t there a murder here last month? I tried not to smile; after all, murder was nothing to smile about. But my cousin’s ramblings were just so stupid, they always made me want to laugh, no matter how gory the subject happened to be.

I would like to forget about that, she said, cringing. I just can’t believe that someone in this town was actually murdered.

Happens in the best of places! I grinned sheepishly. And from what I have heard, the police don’t have a lead.

Marta’s eyes were suddenly the size of saucers. It is just so scary. Mrs. Phelps told me that the police are not even working the case anymore. Can you imagine?

I laughed at her and watched as her face turned red. Hell, cousin! I laughed harder. I am writing a murder mystery, so imagining it is exactly what I do.

Her eyes were huge now, and her red face nearly matched the dye job that I knew she’d done herself. How can you write stuff like that?

It’s fun! I laughed again and leaned back in my chair.

You are twisted! She got up and headed for the door. And I can’t believe that you would write about poor Mrs. Pettigrew. Her son is still mourning her, you know.

I said I was writing a murder mystery. I did not say I was writing about the murder of Mrs. Pettigrew. I rose slowly to my feet and followed her to the door. Since I don’t know who killed her, I couldn’t write about it anyway. I am writing about a made-up murder in a made-up town.

She turned at the door to face me. Well, I still think it is twisted.

She left in a huff, which was about par for the course with us; she usually left mad about something I said. I again wondered why she continued to come see me. But I also now had to wonder whether my story was indeed in some way related to the sordid tale of poor Mrs. Claire Pettigrew, who had been found beaten and bloodied over three weeks ago. It was too much of a coincidence that I was suddenly writing a murder mystery when our little fair town had one of its own to solve, with no Miss Marple in sight to make the connections. I hated that idea, and it made me a little uneasy, but I had gone too far to back away from it now. I liked Helen Patterson, and I wanted to write more about her and her life.

Helen watched the BBC for over two hours, immersed in the story of deceit and murder in a small British town. When it was over and the who was solved, she turned off the TV and began preparing for the once-a-week meander to the only store in town. She had put it off for too long and she was now out of milk; she had used the last of it to take her midafternoon pills. She would soon be out of toilet paper too, and that was something she couldn’t live without; no one really could, she thought. She also needed bread, butter, eggs, and sugar. She made a short list in her head. She never wrote one out since she prided herself on her crackerjack memory. After washing, changing, and putting on her best walking shoes, Helen Patterson started the twenty-minute walk through the streets of the town to what passed laughingly as Main Street.

She waved to Mrs. Vesper across the street as the neighbor watered her flowers. Helen had timed it perfectly—the brats were still in school since it was just going on two forty-five, and the old biddies and fuzzy old bastards would still be in the café having their afternoon coffee and bitch sessions. If she timed it right, she could be home just as