Syrah was on the food so fast, you’d have thought I never fed him in his life. Merlot quieted, waiting for his turn. He might be bigger, but Syrah was first in line when it came to food.

“Did you hear if there are any suspects in the professor’s death?” I asked Shawn. I stood and opened the fridge. Time for sweet tea.

“Suspects? Are you thinking he was murdered?” he said.

“I understand he could have killed himself, or maybe his death was even an accident, but the fact that those cats disappeared says someone wasn’t happy with the professor,” I said, pouring myself a glass.

“His house was salmonella waiting to happen,” Shawn said. “I’m thinking he did himself in. Besides, all I care about are the feline victims. Not sure I care diddly-squat about this professor. And professor of what? Evil?”

“That’s like one of the worst lines ever from a B movie, Shawn. And no one deserves to die such a miserable death,” I said.

“You sticking up for the guy?” he said.

“No. But sometimes you say things I don’t think you mean. You never even met the man.”

A short pause followed, and then he said, “I get hot when people do ugly stuff to animals; that’s all.” He went on to tell me I could visit the gray, Vlad and Trixie at the veterinary hospital. Then he said an abrupt good-bye.

Shawn will be Shawn, and he’d have forgotten about this less-than-pleasant end to our conversation the next time we spoke. But he did have me thinking.

Professor of more than just biology?

Syrah and Merlot gave up on their food when they saw me head for the hallway. They thought I was about to start working on quilt orders, since it was that time of the morning. But rather than enter the sewing room, I went to my office and booted up the computer. They sat next to my desk chair and looked up at me as if to say, “You’re in the wrong room, staff person.” Though the computer was fun because that meant I stayed in one place, the days I spent quilting were heaven for all of us. Yes, they loved fabric almost more than I did. Syrah had even been known to sit on a three-inch square of fabric if that’s all that was available.

But I wanted to learn about the professor, seeing as how I knew next to nothing, except that he liked to dress up like a cat burglar and steal cows. I remembered he’d been on the faculty of Denman College, and I brought up the school’s Web site first. Not much to learn, I soon discovered. They offered degrees in general studies, biomedical engineering, mathematics, nutrition and biology. Not big on the arts, but the school was small. No profile page for him when I clicked on the button for faculty.

Next, I Googled Professor VanKleet, and that yielded better results. I found a ten- year-old photo of him and his wife, Sarah, at a fund- raising event. No long hair, and he seemed genuinely happy, his arm around his wife’s waist. But her expression seemed tense, and her hands gripped a rhinestone bag so tightly that her knuckles were white. I printed out that picture and veered back onto the Internet highway. I learned that the professor had dual PhDs, one in animal nutrition and one in biology. At least he’d told the truth about teaching biology. There was a link to a profile page at Denman College, but all I discovered was a message saying that the page no longer existed. The few abstracts for academic papers I was able to locate indicated that he had researched commercial pet food. This was confirmation of what I’d thought yesterday, so no surprise there.

Science was never my strong point in college-my degree was in fiber art-thus, the few summaries I dug up on his papers made my eyes glaze over. Though I didn’t understand all the talk about amino acids and vitamin content, I at least felt more confident that the man might have been researching cat diets in that grubby farmhouse kitchen.

When I sat back in the chair, processing this information, Syrah jumped up on the desk. He stared intently at me.

“Do you like what I feed you, sweet boy?” I said.

He meowed in response to the distress he must have heard in my voice. If what I’d seen in the professor’s kitchen had anything to do with the breakfast I’d just fed my cats, well… I didn’t want to know that much about cat food.

I was set to resume my quest for more personal information on the professor-including wife Sarah-but I was interrupted by the doorbell.

I checked my watch and discovered it was already noon. That’s what the computer is-a giant time suck. Syrah and Merlot were joined by Chablis by the time we reached the foyer. All three sat several feet from the door as usual, not too close, but they of course wanted to see who might be calling this time.

My eyes widened in disbelief when I looked through the peephole. John’s daughter, Kara, stood on the front stoop. I hadn’t spoken to her in so long, I couldn’t imagine why she was visiting.

“Hey there,” I said, after opening the door. I saw right away that dark circles under her eyes marred her complexion. Her shiny brunette hair drooped over her right shoulder in a braid. Although Kara looked tired, she was still one of the most attractive young women I’d ever met. I opened my arms for a hug.

She embraced me briefly and then rolled her suitcase past me and into the foyer. “Hope you don’t mind, but I need a place to crash.” Her tone was brusque, and her brown eyes avoided mine.

“Um, no problem. Sure,” I said. “Been a long time.” I swallowed hard. Gosh, she looked like her father-that is, when John had been dog tired.

Kara dropped her shoulder bag, released her hold on her suitcase and glanced in the direction of the living room. She put her hands on her slim blue-jeaned hips. “So this is the house that Daddy built.”

The house your daddy and I built, I thought. But this was Kara. I’d so wanted her to warm to me, but that had never happened. She was here now, and no matter what, she was part of John and that made her special.

“Are you thirsty? Hungry?” I said.

“Nope. Why don’t you show me the house? I’ve been driving for hours and would rather walk off the stiffness.” She started down the hall that led to my office, the sewing room and the bedrooms.

I noticed that all three cats were gone. A cold wind will make a cat run for cover. Kara was out of sight now, and I rolled her suitcase behind me down the hallway toward my bedroom. When I caught up, I said, “Let’s drop this off, and then I’ll give you the tour.” We walked on to the last room on the right, and while I put her suitcase in the guest room closet, she stopped at the four-poster bed and rested a hand on the quilt. It was one of my favorites, a monkey-wrench pattern in pinks and browns.

“Nice,” Kara said.

I mumbled a thank-you. Did she realize I’d made the quilt? Surely she must. I pointed out the bathroom before we walked back down the hall. We stopped in my office, and her gaze settled on the bookshelves. I noticed her swallow and close her eyes briefly. She recognized many of those books. They’d belonged to her father.

She blinked several times and said, “What else is in this hall?”

I led her to my sewing room.

Though I went in, Kara stood in the entry. “This is where you run your little business, huh? How’s that going?”

She did remember what I do, and her tone hinted at interest rather than the indifference she’d shown in the past.

I said, “Better than I ever imagined. I can hardly keep up with the orders.”

“I suppose all that publicity after you became the hometown hero didn’t hurt,” she said.

“I wasn’t a hero,” I said quietly. “But I guess that means you read about what happened here.”

“Duh. I worked for a newspaper.”

She’d gone snarky on me, something I was familiar with since the day we’d first met. She’d been a freshman at the University of Texas. Her mother had died of cancer a decade before. At that first meeting, it seemed obvious to me that she still hadn’t gotten over her mother’s death. Sullen didn’t begin to describe her attitude back then. And nothing much changed over the ten years John and I were married.