“These guys are mostly amateurs,” Max was saying, “yet look at the number of cars they’ve stolen. Looks like three or four have the devices or phone apps, and the know-how to use them on the newer cars. Who knows how many others there are, just to do break-ins or hot-wire older cars. We’ve got twelve older Jeeps reported missing, those are easy pickings—a few professionals and maybe a dozen or more to do break-ins, and to drive the stolen cars out of the village. Question is, to where?”
Dallas looked over at Max. “An antiques dealer called in half an hour ago about a missing white BMW. Robert Teague?”
Several officers, who knew Teague, nodded.
Brennan said, “Teague was dating Barbara Conley.”
A few officers laughed. Dallas said, “Half the town was dating her.” He gave them the description and license of the BMW. “I went on over, talked with Teague, he was pretty upset. He lives in the area the thieves were working, said he left a valuable tea set, some kind of very old antique porcelain, in the back of the car.”
“Parked outside overnight?” Crowley said. “That was smart.”
“No. It was in the garage,” Dallas said. “He told me he drove up to the city yesterday to sell a few pieces of china for a friend. He spotted this tea set at the dealer’s, which Teague appraised at about thirty thousand but that he picked up for much less. Said he got home late, he was tired. Instead of carrying the box in the house he locked it in the car, locked the car in the garage. He thought it would be as safe there as in the house.
“He gets up in the morning, the car’s gone and the box with it. And no sign of a break-in.” No one had to say the thief, maybe at some earlier time, had used an electronic device to record the opening mechanism for the garage door.
“Apparently,” Dallas said, “the thief opened the car door all right, but his device wouldn’t start the car.” Dallas shook his head. “Teague, in a hurry last night, forgot about the concierge key he kept hidden on a wire under the seat.”
The concierge key, Joe thought, the key with no electronic signals. So when he pulls into a fancy restaurant he can give the attendant that key without electronic features that can be copied. He must have thought no one ever thinks to look for that. Last night, he goes on to bed, the key right there in his car. Human inventions are a wonder—until something goes wrong. Look at the world of computers . . . is nothing safe anymore?
But worst of all was the fact that Joe Grey knew where the BMW was and that information needed to reach the department. He still didn’t know how to report it without putting the sleuth within seconds of Joe’s own house at three in the morning on a stormy night when no human would be out on the streets except the thieves, or some nearby neighbor, like Clyde.
“So far,” Max said, “we’ve picked up three perps. And we have Ryan’s rough description of the guy driving the wrecked car. Some departments think there are more than a dozen members; but if they’re stashing the cars somewhere close, then moving them later, even three or four men could take down a dozen cars or more in one night. How many home garages have these people rented or made deals for? Given two or three days, as they’re doing up the coast, that many cars each night, that’s three dozen cars, some broken into and left, maybe a dozen stolen. Those are the numbers we’re getting from Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Sonoma.”
Max wrapped it up quickly. When Joe heard feet shuffling and chairs pushed back, he beat it down the hall and into Max’s office. Leaping to the desk, he didn’t see two pale shadows race soundlessly in behind him and under the credenza where Joe had often hidden, long ago, when he was still wary of being seen.
Under the credenza, Buffin and Striker smiled. So far, so good.
They hadn’t been able to hear much from the conference room. Leaving the holding cell, they had crouched below Mable’s counter where she wouldn’t see them without leaning over and looking straight down. They had waited nervously until Joe Grey pulled back from the crack beneath the door and fled down the hall. Like shadows they had followed him.
All in the timing, Striker thought boldly as they slid through Max’s door behind Joe and into the shadows. All with the grace of the great cat god, thought Buffin with more humility as he crowded close to his brother.
They knew the office layout from listening to Joe’s tales; they had only prayed that Joe wouldn’t slip under the credenza with them. But he wouldn’t; they knew their pa made himself at home in Max’s office. Peering out, they watched Joe leap to the bookcase and settle in among stacks of files and manuals behind the chief’s desk. When Max Harper and Dallas came in, the kittens pressed deeper still into the shadows.
In the bookcase Joe Grey, licking icing from one white paw, watched the officers casually. He hadn’t a clue that the kittens were in the room, all he could smell was cinnamon, and the clean, horsey scent of Harper’s boots. Detective Davis came in behind Dallas; she was, as usual, the only one in uniform. She and Dallas sat at either end of the couch, their papers, laptops, and two clipboards spread out between them.
Davis looked at Max. “Who was the friend that Robert Teague sold the china for, when he made that run up to the city?”
“Barbara, the hairstylist he was dating,” Max said. “Why, what do you have?”
“Nothing. Just curious. She gets around, doesn’t she?”
Max smiled. “Teague said this was china Barbara’s mother had left her, said the pieces were rare and expensive, two hundred years old. Said she’d never liked them. He said the market was good now, and she’d rather have the money.”
They had pretty well covered, in roll call, the locations and number of cars broken into and robbed, or stolen. That information would now, thanks to Officer Bonner, be on all the officers’ computers. They were discussing the gang’s mode of operation and waiting for more reports from men still on the street, new reports on other cars vandalized or missing, property damage from the storm itself, and reports on anyone injured. They had Scotty’s report on Voletta Nestor, the old woman living below the Pamillon estate.
“He took her to the hospital,” Max said, “brought her home and got her settled. He was . . . up at Kate’s. When the wind got bad he went up to check on the cat shelter, he knew she was alone up there.”
Dallas smiled. “About time he found someone. Ryan should be pleased.” Ryan was always matchmaking for her uncle, but so far no one had come up to Scotty’s standards. If more officers had been present, they wouldn’t have discussed private matters.
“Voletta Nestor shouldn’t be living alone up there, either,” Davis said. “She can hardly get around. She’s a Pamillon, part of that big family. Even if they are all at odds, have all moved away, you’d think someone would help her.”
“None of the Pamillons want anything to do with her,” Max said. “You hear a lot of rumors. I don’t know what the real story is.”
For years the Pamillon estate had stood partially in ruins while heirs squabbled over selling it. None of them, nor even their attorneys, could sort out the tangle of various trusts and wills to a point where the property could legally be sold. It was Kate Osborne’s attorney who finally made sense of the bequests, distributions, land descriptions, and overlapping amendments to make a sale possible.
Kate had the money, the Pamillon family was tired of bickering, and she bought at once. The day she signed the final papers, she signed a trust donating ten acres to CatFriends for their new shelter—to care for starving cats, cats that had been abandoned when the economy took a sharp downturn, when so many folks lost their homes and, too often, simply left their pets behind. Joe Grey couldn’t understand people who would abandon a pet. The tomcat might not be much for religion but he knew there was a hell, all fire and brimstone. And that there was a special place in it for people who threw away a member of their family. He was licking the last fleck of cinnamon from his paw when, over that sweet scent, he caught the faintest aroma of cats. Young, male cats. At the same moment, Max’s private line rang.
&nbs
p; Max picked up, listened, then, “You’re sure they’re dead? Get out of there, Charlie. Get out now!” At this point, he switched on the phone’s speaker. “Are you carrying?”
“I’m out, I’m nearly to my car. Yes, I’m carrying.”
“Get in the car, lock yourself in. If you see anyone, take off fast.”
She didn’t need to be told those things. But she wasn’t going to go anywhere and miss seeing the killer; she didn’t tell Max that. She said, “I’m parked three blocks north,” and she clicked off.
Immediately Max put out the alarm and barked out half a dozen names. Joe heard officers racing down the hall for their squad cars, heard the shriek of the ambulance from the fire department only blocks away; Joe was headed for the door behind Max and the two officers when he skidded to a halt.
The shadows beneath the credenza smelled of young tomcats, his young tomcats. Four blue eyes peered out at him, frightened but defiant. Joe sat down. He looked at the kittens.
They crept partway out from under the credenza, their heads down, ears and tails down, looking more browbeaten than he’d ever hoped to see.
He had fully intended to scold them, to give them all kinds of hell. But what good would it do? And after that, what? What was he going to do with them? Take them home, and miss the first part of what appeared to be a murder investigation? He wanted to know if Charlie was all right. He wanted to see the victims before the coroner got busy on them.
He could send the kittens home. He doubted they’d ever get there, he knew they’d follow him. Neither Buffin nor Striker said a word. Neither kitten would look at him.
“Come on out of there.”
The kittens crept out and sat guiltily before their father, their ears still down, their tails tucked under, waiting for their scolding. Joe’s heart pounded with anger—while at the same time he tried hard not to laugh.
How could he be mad? Maybe he had fathered a couple of bold little cop cats; he’d been wondering how soon they’d take matters into their own paws.
“You will follow me,” he said sternly. “You will stick to me like syrup to whiskers.” He had to get them out of the station without being seen passing the front desk, prompting Mabel to make a fuss over them. He wanted to get to the crime scene, and these two would sure slow him down.
“Oh, what the hell!” Joe said. “Come on.”
Peering out into the hall, he found it empty. He cocked an ear and the kittens drew close to him. He sped out and to the counter, both kittens crowding him, the three hugging the wall of the counter. They could hear Mabel on the phone. “No, sir, Captain Harper is not available. Would you like his voice mail?” They could see, through the glass entry, a civilian woman approaching, wheeling a baby in a stroller. The instant she entered, backing against the door to push the stroller through, the three cats fled past them. Joe still wanted to scold the kittens, but he couldn’t, they were already suffering from their own guilty consciences. And he had to admit he was proud of them. They had gone off on their first adventure, they’d had the chutzpah to come right on into the station. He knew he’d regret this, but what else could he do? Buffin and Striker had wanted adventure. Well, they were going to get their first taste.
8
It was earlier that morning when Charlie Harper pulled her Blazer into a tight parking place a block from the beauty salon, a lucky find where a car had just pulled out. The time was eight-thirty, folks coming into the village to go to work or heading for the several popular breakfast restaurants. Areas of the village had their lights back, the windows bright, other shops flat and dim among fallen trees and work crews. She was still trying to decide whether to have her long, red, kinky hair shaped and trimmed as usual, or to get it cut really short, just feathered around her face. That would be easier to take care of, but would Max like it?
The salon was closed on Mondays, though sometimes Barbara took a few early-morning clients. It was a small shop, just the two hairstylists and the owner-beautician, Langston Prince. She’d always been amused at Langston’s fancy name, and by the austere and impeccable manners of the tall, thin, bespectacled gentleman.
Leaving her car on a residential block, she walked along the edge of the street over pine needles and well-packed earth to where lighted shops began. Max hadn’t come home this morning after departing the house in the small, dark hours. He had called later from the Damens’ to fill her in on the fallen tree and the wrecked car. Would the thieves spend two or three days in Molena Point as they had before, then move on to any number of towns up and down the coast—their agenda as neatly laid out as a preplanned summer vacation? She wondered if they sold the newer cars in the States or overseas. She supposed the older ones were dismantled and sold for parts. Turning into the courtyard that led to the salon, she headed past potted geraniums and flowering bushes to the open stairway, past a little charity shop, a camera shop, a small but exclusive cashmere shop—and two empty stores with For Rent signs in the windows, thanks to the downturn in the economy.
The stairs were tiled in a pale blue glaze, and with an intricate wrought-iron rail leading to the second-floor salon that rose above the two, single-storied wings that enclosed the patio. She could hear music from above, an old Glenn Miller instrumental. Her hairdresser, blond, buxom Barbara Conley, liked the forties bands of the last century, and that suited Charlie fine. As she stepped in, the recording began to play a Frank Sinatra number. The soft ceiling lights were on, and in the back, brighter lights shone over Barbara’s station.
Moving on back, Charlie stopped abruptly. Her hand slid beneath her open vest to her handgun. She could smell the residue of gunpowder.
The client’s big, adjustable chair was empty. Barbara lay sprawled on the floor beside it, her male customer fallen across her, their smocks and clothes soaked with blood, his glasses lying broken, his unfinished haircut shorter on one side. Shop owner Langston Prince, getting a quick haircut before Barbara’s appointments arrived.
Had someone already been in here when they opened the salon? Or had the killer slipped in behind them? A chill shivered through her as she eased against the nearest wall, looking around her.
There were two bullet wounds in Barbara’s chest, oozing blood. The shot that had killed Langston had torn through his throat. The blood and ripped flesh sickened her. Backing along the wall, she scanned the shop. The doors to the inner office and two storerooms were closed. No footprints marring the freshly waxed floor, no smears of blood. Drawing her Glock, she eased toward the front door, her heart pounding until she was through it again and outside. Her back to the building, she scanned the patio below then headed down the stairs, her gun still drawn.
She fled across the patio into the recessed doorway of the camera shop, stood watching the courtyard and stairs, watching the street as she slipped her phone from her pocket and hit the single digit for Max’s private line.
At MPPD, as Max and his officers raced for their cars, Joe Grey slipped out behind them, the kittens pressing against him. Moving south along the sidewalk close to the walls of the small shops, hunching down whenever they passed a low window, Striker and Buffin were his shadows. They’re good kittens, Joe thought, still half amused and half angry.
At the new little tearoom, he paused.
A line of tan clay pots planted with red geraniums stood against the low window. “In there,” Joe said softly, “in the shadow.” The two young cats slipped in between the tall containers and the display window, crouching down, their tan color matching the pots so well that they were almost invisible. They watched Joe rear up, push open the door of the tearoom and slip inside. The door had flowered curtains, tied back with bows, and flowery curtains hung at the windows. An elderly brown cat lay curled on a window seat, sleeping so deeply that he didn’t even open his eyes when Joe entered.
There were no customers, the shop had just opened. He could hear voices at the back, beyond the counter and kitchen, an echo as if through an open back door, could hear thumps as if box
es were being unloaded. Leaping onto the front counter, he silently slipped the headset from the phone.
The kittens watched Joe Grey punch in a number, but through the glass they could hear only a few words—enough, though, to tell he was talking about them as he kept an eye on the back for anyone approaching.
“He’s talking to Mom,” Buffin said.
“Maybe not. Maybe she’s already looking for us,” Striker said. “Maybe he’s talking with Wilma.” Whatever the case, they were still in trouble, and their mother would be far angrier than their dad.
“I don’t care,” Striker said. “This is better than staying in the yard, with Mama watching us like leashed puppies.” They had seen the neighbors’ dogs pulling at their tethers, longing to be free.
The talking at the back of the shop ceased suddenly. Joe pushed the headset back into place and dropped softly to the floor. Racing for the door he pulled it open with raking claws and slid through. Slipping along the wall, he crouched between the pots beside Striker. The kittens were afraid to ask who he had called.
Dulcie had been searching, she had covered the neighborhood and the hill behind her house. Angry and worried, she was pushing in through her cat door to tell Wilma she was going to look farther away, was going to look for the kittens in the village, when the phone rang. She slid quickly into the kitchen, her coat covered with grass and the seeds of a dozen weeds. Usually she cleaned herself off rolling on the back-door mat before she entered. Now she just bolted through as she heard her housemate cross to the phone. On the second ring, Wilma answered.
Dulcie already knew where Joe would be. Twenty minutes ago she had heard sirens moving through the village, police cars and a medics’ van. By now Joe would be at the scene, whatever had happened. Were the kittens there, too? Wandering the roofs alone, had they heard the emergency vehicles and gone bolting off after them?
Cat Shining Bright Page 6