by Clea Simon
“I did it to myself, Theda, in my own way.” She must have seen my confusion. “I made myself vulnerable. I’m the one who did things to be ashamed of.”
“But, but…” I was struggling here. “How can you stand not knowing? I mean, you thought you were hiding out here.” It hit me: “Cool, it has to be somebody here in town. Who else would know?”
“Or someone back in LA. Or on the road.” She was shaking her head slowly, sadly, back and forth. “I was pretty gone for a while.”
I wasn’t giving up. “No, it has to be someone who knew you were here, because they knew where to reach you. And it has to be someone who knew you had pulled yourself together enough to be worried by what you had done. Someone who knew you had a career to lose again.” The possibilities began to assemble in my head. “It could be someone you deal with every day, Cool. Someone you trust. Your personal trainer, maybe?”
“Not likely. I’m too good a customer. And with me as a reference, she’s pretty much got it made.”
“What about your shrink? No, I guess not.” She was laughing at me now, but it was a soft laugh and gentle.
“Okay, then, what about someone from one of your meetings?”
She shook her head firmly, the laughter gone. “That couldn’t be. You know our motto: ‘What you say here, stays here.’ It’s the only way the program works. I believe in that. But, Theda, this is pointless. I know you’re trying to help, but honestly I don’t care if those calls did come from someone I see every day. I’m letting go of the shame and the blame. I am choosing to put all of that behind me.”
I sighed and reached forward to give her a hug, because that seemed to be what she wanted. Maybe I wasn’t as evolved as my friend was, or maybe I was more suspicious. I believed in letting others live in peace when they left you in peace. But when people try to hurt me or try to hurt my friends, at the very least I need to know who they are.
***
When Bill and I hooked up later I was so close to telling him that my jaw ached from clenching it. It wasn’t my secret, though, and so I swallowed the stiffness, along with a large serving of black beans and rice that my beau had whipped up in his Inman Square loft. They tasted of garlic and vinegar, with a bit of red pepper bite, and along with some pan-fried trout and nutty brown rice made up the healthiest meal I’d eaten in recent memory. Would Bill ever cease to surprise me? He mostly talked while I ate, catching me up on some office politics that lost me after a few minutes. I appreciated the effort, though. The man was trying to let me in.
“So, if Tai gets the promotion, what happens to the new position?”
“The promotion is the new position.” He scooped us both out generous seconds and fixed his eyes on me. “I’m boring you, aren’t I?”
“No!” I nearly tossed my spoon in protest. “I mean, well, I’m a little confused, but I really appreciate you telling me what goes on in your day to day. To be honest, it doesn’t sound that different from what went on at the Mail .”
“But you’ve got something else on your mind.” It was a statement, and he looked at me to run with it. “How is that head of yours anyway?”
“It’s fine.” I nodded—no pain. “But it is pretty full of questions.” I sucked the remains of some savory beans from my spoon, trying to figure out just how much I wanted to reveal. “First off, am I a suspect in Rose’s murder?”
“What? No. I mean, I seriously doubt it.” He had his work face on now, his generous mouth set in a grim line, but he seemed to be telling me the truth. “Why would you be?”
“Well, Sunny—the photographer on the story?—said the cops talked to her to find out why she had called Rose before she was killed. I gather her phone number showed up on some records. She said they checked her out pretty thoroughly.”
“Well, you said that she’d been receiving threatening phone calls.”
“I didn’t think they took me seriously.”
Mouth full, he still managed to look up at me with cynicism. It must have been the eyebrows.
“I mean, when I told the cop who took my report that her cats were threatened, he looked like he was going to rip out the page he’d been writing on and throw it away.”
“Theda, Watertown may not be Cambridge, but it does have a good police force. Believe me, someone in Homicide went over everything in those statements.”
“Well, if they’re so good, why are they leaking things to the paper that just couldn’t be true?” I thought of the story I’d read about Rose. “Rose wasn’t part of any crime ring, Bill. I’ve been over and over her financial records—bank statements and everything—and there is just no proof of that.” It hit me then that if someone had illegal profits, that someone might have hidden them. No matter. “Besides, I know Rose. Knew her.”
That last bit wouldn’t hold much water in terms of evidence, but it was true—and it was why I was so convinced. Bill opened his mouth to speak, closed it, then tried again.
“You’ve been over her records?” His voice caught a bit on that.
“Yeah, the cops returned her papers to Ivy, Rose’s sister. I was hoping I’d find something, I don’t know, evidence of a threat. The police’s log of her incoming calls. What I found were meticulous, detailed notes on every single financial or feline interaction she had. And all of it, all of it, looked perfectly normal. I know this stuff.”
“Better than a forensic accountant?” At least he looked amused.
“Maybe in this case. But you’re not answering my question. How could such a nasty rumor be leaked to the press?”
“Spoken like a true journalist.” He ate some more while I waited. Then he looked up. “Theda, do you believe everything you read?”
“You mean it’s not true?”
“This isn’t my investigation, Theda. You know that. But let me say it wouldn’t be the first time that incorrect information was leaked in order to tease someone out of hiding.”
“So you do think that Rose was killed by the cattery thieves! Or, the Watertown cops do.”
He sighed. “I really can’t get too involved in this, Theda. But let’s just say that I would still be looking at all angles.”
“Such as?”
He shook his head. “Theda, I love you. But someone out there isn’t afraid to be violent. Please, leave it to the professionals.” For the sake of peace, I didn’t answer. He was being as good as he could be, and I wanted to meet him halfway. Besides, it would be so incredibly satisfying if I could surprise him. Over dessert, we talked about a present for Bunny and Cal, and decided to skip coffee in favor of bed.
Chapter Seventeen
“I’m home, kitty. I’m home!” The biggest problem with staying at Bill’s was the guilt I felt at leaving Musetta alone. She had probably been fine before I got home around noon, after a detour for a long-overdue grocery trip. But my voice, as I worked my way down the three locks on my front door, had agitated her until her pitiful mewing nearly broke my heart.
“I’m here, kitty girl. Come to momma!” But as I put down the bags and reached for my black-and-white furball, she turned on her heels and dashed down the hall. It wasn’t company she wanted. It was play. And I still owed her.
“Okay, kitty, let me get my coat off.” I dumped my jacket and bag and looked around for anything that would roll or bounce. Musetta beat me to it, however, dribbling a crumpled-up piece of paper like a soccer star.
“Mia Hamm doesn’t have anything on you, kitty.” As I reached for it, she sent it flying underneath my CD case and looked up at me in anticipation.
“Uh, goal? Hang in there, kitty.” Grabbing a coat hanger and poking under the shelf I was able to retrieve the paper ball, which came out trailing a dust bunny that was nearly rabbit-sized. “Hold on, Musetta. Let me clean this off.” Pulling the dust off the impromptu cat toy made me glad that Bill hadn’t stayed here last night. Though, truth was, if he was going to love me, he’d love me, housekeeping deficits and all.
I threw the makeshift ball agai
n and Musetta winged it into the back room. I followed, and that’s when I realized that I hadn’t locked the window overlooking the fire escape since opening it the earlier in the week. Was it Monday, the last fine warm morning?
“Oh, good move, Theda.” I thought of the three locks carefully attended to up front. “But no harm done. What?” Musetta had knocked the wadded-up paper back to me. “We’ve found a good one, haven’t we girl?” She looked up at me expectantly. “What is this anyway?”
I’d become too oblivious to my surroundings and decided to uncrumple the paper we’d been kicking about. There was type on it, and I flattened it out to see what it said. “Kittens for sale,” I read, and recognized Musetta’s toy as the flier that Violet and I had first seen, almost two weeks ago, posted by the Pet Set store. I also remembered what Sally and Violet had been telling me, about kitten mills and home breeders. Was this sign for one of their unhappy litters?
“Hold on, kitty.” Reaching into a kitchen drawer, I ripped off a length of aluminum foil and balled that up for her. One toss—a ricochet against my right speaker—had her after it. I heard the skittering as she knocked it down the hall. She’d run herself tired and sleep half the afternoon.
I, meanwhile, had other things to do. Without any real plan in mind I reached for the phone.
“Hello? I saw your flier about the Ragdoll kittens?” I should have done this when I first saw the flier.
“They’re all gone,” said a gruff male voice. His gender—and his answer—threw me. But maybe that was for the best.
“Oh, um, do you expect any more?” If this was a kitten mill, wouldn’t they say yes?
“No, no more. We’re out of business. Who’s this calling anyway?”
“Never mind.” I hung up and tried to puzzle it out. I wondered if that harsh voice could belong to an innocent home breeder. Or, I hoped for the cats’ sake, the breeder’s alienated teenage son. It hadn’t been a pleasant voice. But that reference to “business” didn’t sound good, certainly didn’t sound pet friendly. Could the kittens have gotten sick? A kitten mill would be especially vulnerable to an outbreak of distemper. The thought made my breath catch. Dozens, even hundreds, of kittens could die.
Was there any way to report a suspected kitten mill? A suspected former kitten mill—in a neighboring state? It seemed unlikely, and I knew my local animal control officer was busy enough with her own Cambridge turf. I should let it go. If it had been a mill, and it had been wiped out by distemper or something like it, I was too late. I should have called last week.
Besides, I was due to pick up Violet and meet Monica at Lynn’s trunk show. I balled the paper up again and tossed it for Musetta to find in case the foil ball grew tiresome. But as I went to change out of last night’s clothes, one question kept dogging me: if the advertised sellers were operating a kitten mill and it was truly out of business, whether from money or disease, what had happened to the mothers of those kittens?
***
“So tell me again what this is?” Violet smelled of cigarettes, but she wasn’t smoking when I picked her up so I didn’t say anything as she hopped into my Toyota.
“Lynn is having a trunk show,” I explained. “It’s kind of like an open studios for clothing design.”
“Does she make anything in black?”
“Not much. But she does do purple,” I replied. “Actually, she does a ton of stuff with beads and spangles and feathers. I thought maybe we could chip in and get something for Bunny.”
I heard a grunt of assent. “Oh yeah. No feathers, though. I’m not spending cash on a sweater that turns into a glorified cat toy as soon as it gets home.” Bunny’s two cats were rarely disciplined.
I agreed, and as we headed over to the South End, told her about the flier and the phone call—and about all the kittens being gone. Just as I had, she found the whole exchange ominous.
“You sure you heard him right? He said ‘the business was closed’?”
“Yeah, that was pretty much it, anyway. He definitely used the word business. But even if it is, or was, a kitten mill, what can we do?”
“If we knew for sure, we could call the local animal control. It’s illegal to keep animals in unsafe conditions, you know. Even in New Hampshire.”
“But we don’t. And we don’t know where they are. But here we are.” As I’d feared, even this corner of the onetime industrial area was busy on a Friday afternoon, and between the traffic and the lack of parking, it looked like we were going to have to circle.
“There’s a…no it’s a hydrant.”
“I’m going to try the dead-end up ahead.” We waited at a light.
“I’ve been thinking.” Violet broke the silence.
“Well, that’s good.”
“No, seriously. What if we’re looking at this the wrong way. Maybe the kittens didn’t all get sick and die. I mean, that wouldn’t necessarily put a kitten mill out of business—they’d have another litter on the way, sooner even because the mothers wouldn’t be nursing. What if they’d sold all the cats, not just those kittens, but sold the whole shebang?”
I shot my friend a look and almost missed a pickup truck pulling away from the curb. “Huh?” Braking, I grabbed the space, much to the annoyance of an SUV driver behind me.
“Well, you remember what that breeder lady, Sally, was saying. There’s big money in cats. Maybe the entire outfit was bought out by someone who wanted a ready-made business, a bulk of cats.”
“But if someone wanted to sell their whole enterprise, why would they advertise on a telephone pole in New Hampshire?”
“Oh yeah, right.”
We trotted up the stairs and into the Ngaio atelier. Over in the corner, Monica was chatting with the designer.
“Hey, Theda! Glad you could come!” Lynn looked surprisingly elegant for a woman wearing what seemed to be a feather duster on her elbow.
“Wow, Sibley would love that,” said Violet, almost under her breath.
“Who’s Sibley?”
“No, he’s not getting it.” I interrupted, before Violet could explain. “Actually, we’re thinking of a wedding gift for a friend. She loves fun clothes.”
“Oh, that’s great.” Lynn was in her element. “What else does she like?”
“Cats.” Violet was not going to be suppressed. “Cats, cat toys, and computers.”
“And shiny stuff,” I jumped in. “Because of the cats, maybe we should stay away from the feather trim.”
“How about these beaded pieces?” Lynn led us over toward the large window. There, a dozen long, tunic-like jackets sported enough sparkle even for Bunny. Monica pulled a turquoise and black patchwork piece over her sweatshirt. Even Violet was intrigued.
“One problem solved.” She pulled one jacket off its hanger and headed for another.
“Any of these come in size sixteen?” I asked.
“No problem,” Lynn jumped in. “All my clothes come in real-world sizes.”
The petite Violet looked up at the tall, lean designer, but she was smiling with approval.
“Good for you, girl. Good for you. Now if only you could help us with our other problem.”
“Maybe I can.” Lynn was smiling.
“I doubt it.” I had to be the voice of reason. “It’s probably impossible and has nothing to do with clothing. And, well, it’s not really based on anything much.”
Violet interrupted me: “We’re trying to figure out why a kitten mill would close suddenly. Like, with a going out of business sale.” The term “kitten mill” didn’t seem to be registering, but before I could explain, Violet broke it down: “Where would anyone unload a whole bunch of cats?”
“Like, a foreign country?” Violet looked up expectantly, but Lynn continued. “Well, in China they eat cats.”
Monica gasped, and Violet dropped the jacket she was holding. I quickly grabbed it and brushed off the nonexistent dust.
“Hey, don’t look at me. I’m from Lowell,” said Lynn. Violet was still starin
g. “And my family is Vietnamese, not Chinese.”
“It was just the idea,” I interrupted, not wanting to have to stop a fight.
“No, no, maybe she’s onto something,” said Violet, stepping away from the rack. “Remember what that breeder said about the Asian market?”
“She was talking about the Japanese. They eat sushi, not cats.”
“I know, I know.” Something was coming together under Violet’s purple mop. “But they’re wild about collecting. They go crazy over certain breeds. What if those kittens are going to Japan?”
“Without papers?”
“They’re a fad, there, right? The buyers don’t care about breeding. They love the looks!”
She could be right. Maybe.
“This could be crazy,” I thought out loud, but Monica was already turning toward Lynn. “Do you have a T-1 line?”
She looked a little worried. “My web guy might. But he’s in Hawaii right now.”
“Show me your computer.”
Lynn led the four of us off to a corner, where a shoji screen hid a high-powered home office. Propped up on four filing cabinets, a large tabletop held a flat-screen computer, a fax-printer, and a scanner. Monica pulled up a chair and began to type.
“Password?”
“Clotheshorse.”
“How do you spell? Forget it. I’m in. Okay, what are we looking for? Fads for cats?”
“Try pet-store owners or articles. Anything on Ragdoll cats.”
A flurry of rapid typing pulled up a few notations, all in Japanese. “Hang on.” A few more keystrokes and Monica had the documents translated. “Ragdoll beauties” exclaimed one headline. “Dolls of your heart,” another.
“We already know they’re popular.” I had to state the obvious. “That doesn’t mean anyone is smuggling cats into Japan.”
“They don’t have to be smuggling them.” Monica typed a few more lines of commands and the screen went blank. The machine whirred. “What we’re looking for are announcements of cats for sale.”
“There are always cats for sale. Breeders take orders years in advance.”