The Purrfect Murder

of Rose Hill. She liked picking up the mail, delivered in the afternoon, and sorting it. Aunt Tally, awash in magazines, would read them quickly and pass them on to Little Mim and Blair. They need never fill out a subscription form again.

    She lifted the rubber-band-bound bundle and tossed it in the car. Then she pulled out that day’s magazine haul, which totaled six, not including one from the National Rifle Association. Although the magazine was improving, it was so thin she thought of it as a colorful pamphlet.
    She drove to the main house, put Aunt Tally’s magazines on the table in the front main hall, then started sorting the mail.
    A blue airmail envelope with her name on it caught her eye. She slit it open with her fingernail and read. Her face turned white, her hands shook, and she stuffed the letter in her pocket.

21
    A long the southeastern side of her house, Big Mim had planted hundreds of hydrangeas of all manner in the gardens. Even though they had been long out of fashion, Big Mim loved them, so she planted them. Now that hydrangeas had come back in a big way, people cooed over the massive white, blue, pink, and purple heads.
    One of the secrets to her success was that fifteen years ago she’d supervised the digging of narrow trenches, a foot and three-quarters deep. She had placed leaky pipe—piping with tiny holes—there.
    Although despite her best efforts it took years for the lawn and the garden to recover from this scarring, the leaky pipe proved a godsend in the long run. Watering was no longer a chore.
    She’d dutifully go out and give everything a little spray so the leaves could drink, too, but the leaky pipe was the key.
    Standing in the afternoon sun as it washed over her gardens this Monday, she heard a car coming down the drive.
    Pressman, her young springer spaniel, heard it first and bounded to the front to greet Little Mim.
    Absentmindedly, Little Mim bent down to pet the exuberant dog, who was a beauty.
    Little Mim figured her mother, a creature of order, would be in the gardens, since she usually did her weeding, planting, and thinking then. She walked around to the back of the house.
    “Aren’t they stupendous?” Big Mim swept her arm toward the hydrangeas.
    “They are.” Little Mim watched a black swallowtail flutter to the massing of butterfly bushes. “Mother, I have to talk to you.”
    Noting her daughter’s grim visage, Big Mim removed her floppy straw hat and said, “Would you like to sit on the bench under the weeping willow? It’s so refreshing out this afternoon.”
    “Yes, fine.” Little Mim, glad to be in comfortable espadrilles, took long strides toward the long bench, a copy of an eighteenth-century English one.
    “Fight with Blair?”
    “No, no, he’s an angel.” She reached into her skirt pocket, pulling out the blue envelope. “I received this in the mail.”
    Big Mim used her clear-coated fingernail to tease out the thin paper, same blue as the envelope. She read the two lines:

    Put $100,000 in the
    Love of Life Fund by this Friday.
    If you don’t, I’ll talk.
    Jonathan Bechtal

    She dropped her hand, the letter still in her fingers, to her lap. “Have you paid him before?”
    The speed of her mother’s mind always surprised Little Mim. Her own mind, which was good, very good, couldn’t work as quickly as her mother’s.
    “Yes.”
    “Before Will Wylde’s murder.” Big Mim again studied the letter.
    “Yes.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have helped you.”
    “Mother, it’s not about the money.”
    “Blackmail is always about money—and shame.” Her light-brown eyes flickered, a flash of sympathy, for she knew she wasn’t a warm person.
    She wasn’t the easiest person to confide in. She would have kept Little Mim’s secret, but her daughter did not feel especially close to her mother emotionally and hadn’t opened her heart to her.
    Miranda would throw her arms around Little Mim, would comfort her and pray with her, if necessary. Big Mim thought first.
    “Well…” Little Mim took a deep breath, her bosom heaving upward under her pale-yellow camp shirt. “I had an abortion my sophomore year in college. I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t.”
    Big Mim’s voice was soft. “Honey, I was one of those women who fought for reproductive control.”
    “Mother, somehow I don’t think it’s the same when it’s your own daughter.”
    “I’m sorry.” Big Mim meant it. “I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t come to