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by John Lutz

  When they’d left the elevator and exited the lobby, both of them did smile.

  “I can still smell the money,” Pearl said, as they walked away from the stone and glass tower where Alexis Hoffermuth lived like Rapunzel with a short and stylish do. She glanced over at Quinn. “You weren’t shy about asking for our share.”

  “Alexis is the type who isn’t shy about giving.”

  “I sensed that about her, too.”

  “I was thinking about her charity events.”

  “Me, too.”

  There was a break in traffic, so they jaywalked.

  “You’ve got Jody pissed off now,” Pearl said, as they gained the curb on the other side of the street. “First you put her on the cat case because it wasn’t important, and now you’ve got her back at the office doing paperwork and missing cat research while we go talk with Alexis Hoffermuth.”

  “The case got more important,” Quinn said. “I know that because Renz is bugging the hell out of me to get it solved.”

  They came to where Quinn’s aging but gleaming Lincoln was parked in a loading zone.

  “Back in the real world,” Pearl said, when they were in the old car’s quiet interior and buckled up.

  “You sure?” Quinn asked.

  “Never.”

  She smiled. She liked it when Quinn got all metaphysical.

  “Seldom,” she amended, hoping to draw him into a complex, philosophical discussion. That was always good for some smiles.

  But he drove in near silence, his usual taciturn self. Complicated yet simple in way and deed. Smart enough to be direct and unerring in his aim.

  She wouldn’t love him nearly so much if she could figure him out.

  PART TWO

  May 7, 5:12 p.m.

  But what was time to a cat?

  It took so little of it to extend a paw and lift the latch on the metal cage wherein Boomerang had been tossed after the ride in the dark car trunk.

  Then, of course, a cat could find a window open a crack, or a door slightly ajar. Easy egress for the sleek and the furred.

  And underlying it all, the mission.

  Boomerang planned to get back home with his find eventually. He was named Boomerang because, when left to roam, he invariably, sooner or later, came back—and with some kind of offering. He seldom left and returned without having accomplished something important. His proffered souvenirs were a point of feline pride. The object clasped in his jaws now was especially prized.

  He peered around a corner with cat elasticity, then detoured into a narrow passageway that was one of his favorite haunts. The dim brick and concrete corridor ran between two apartment and commercial buildings, where trash bags were piled like lumpy pillows.

  This looked interesting.

  Boomerang paused and struck a pose, alert to traffic and voices and the stirring of garbage-sweetened air in the fetid alley. Nothing unusual. Nothing dangerous.

  Temporarily losing interest, he dropped his future offering alongside a dented metal trash can and moved smoothly as a miniature panther to the nearest black plastic bag.

  With the delicacy of a surgeon, he extended a claw and made an incision in the bag. Ah! He withdrew a foam take-out container with leftovers that contained some sort of sea food. A real find!

  He glanced back at his intended offering, to make sure it was safe, then began maneuvering the take-out container so he could lick its interior.

  He was in a secluded place where he wasn’t in any rush to finish his meal. The trophy he was transporting could wait until he was good and ready to continue his journey back to where he’d come from. What was the hurry? It wasn’t as if he had an appointment; and if he had one, he might not bother to keep it. He was, after all, a cat.

  And a handsome one at that.

  May 8, 2:02 p.m.

  Quinn decided that to mollify Jody he’d go with Pearl for an initial interview concerning the missing cat. That they would do this should send the right parental message.

  “You reported your cat missing?” Quinn asked Craig Clairmont. At least he assumed it was Craig Clairmont. The guy fit the description Fedderman had given him, but Quinn was to the point where he was taking nothing for granted. If he were a cat, he’d find something jarringly wrong with Clairmont. As it was, he felt only a vague unease.

  Quinn was standing. Pearl was seated in a stiffly upholstered chair that looked as if it should be behind a desk rather than in a living room. The apartment was furnished that way, mismatched and mostly functional. An interior decorator would puke.

  “We only rent here,” Clairmont said, as if reading Quinn’s mind.

  Quinn found that disconcerting. “Your cat,” he reminded Ida French.

  “Boomerang,” she said.

  Pearl smiled. “Because he always comes back?”

  “Yeah. Only this time he didn’t,” Ida French said. She was a sleek dishwater blonde, almost beautiful. But there was something about her blue eyes, an intensity that was unbecoming.

  Clairmont seemed embarrassed. “I guess you think it’s foolish, contacting a private investigation agency to search for a missing cat.”

  “They can be like part of the family,” Pearl said.

  As if on cue, a small child with hair exactly the color of her mother’s sidled into the room. She was wearing blue shorts and a color-keyed blue and white blouse. Blue socks and jogging shoes. About nine years old, Pearl estimated. Cute, cute, cute.

  “This is Eloise,” Ida French said. “My daughter.” The girl went to her and clung. She completely ignored Clairmont.

  “About nine?” Pearl asked.

  “Eight.”

  Pearl smiled at Eloise. “A big girl for eight. And so pretty!”

  Eloise smiled back.

  “Now I understand the urgency about getting Boomerang back,” Quinn said. But he wondered. How many kids must there be in this city with missing cats, and nobody was phoning detective agencies about them?

  Pearl must have been thinking the same thing. “If you give us a better description,” she said, “we can put out an ACB.”

  The Clairmont-French family appeared puzzled.

  “All Cat Bulletin,” Pearl explained, with not a trace of a smile.

  Quinn felt like twisting her nose. Maybe he would, in the elevator.

  Nobody else seemed to think Pearl was less than serious.

  “He’s black with three white boots,” Ida French said to Pearl. “A good-sized cat. Likes to roam, but always returns. Only not this time. And, oh, yeah, he’s wearing a cheap kind of bangle collar. Looks like jewels.”

  Pearl thought, Huh?

  “You like to dress up your cat?” she asked Eloise.

  “Not much,” Eloise said.

  “The collar was a gift,” Ida French explained.

  Craig Clairmont spread his hands hopelessly. “That’s about all we can give you by way of description.”

  “He’s a handsome cat,” Eloise said defensively.

  Ida French patted her daughter’s head. “No one says otherwise, dear.”

  Quinn pretended to write it down in his notebook. “Handsome cat ...” Then he looked more seriously at Clairmont and Ida French. “We’ll do what we can, send some people around the neighborhood to talk with folks, keep an eye out for Boomerang.”

  “Cats don’t usually go far from home,” Pearl said.

  Quinn wondered how she could know. Or if she really did know. He wanted to get out of there before she mouthed off.

  “We’ll be getting busy,” he said, and moved toward the door.

  Pearl stood up and moved with him.

  The Clairmont French family stirred. Craig Clairmont and Ida French thanked them. Eloise said good-bye.

  In the elevator Pearl said, “Jesus H. Christ!”

  Quinn reached for her nose, but the elevator stopped its descent on the second floor and a woman walking with a metal cane entered.

  Pearl started to say something else, but Quinn raised a finger to
his lips, cautioning her.

  “Renz must have his reasons,” he said.

  Pearl said, softly, “And Clairmont must have his reasons for wanting Boomerang back.”

  “Jeweled collar,” Quinn said. Or maybe a bracelet.

  “See it all the time in New York,” Pearl said. “Cats decked out like fashion plates. Accessories aren’t just for people.”

  The elevator lurched and continued its controlled fall.

  “World like a puzzle,” Quinn said.

  The woman with the cane ignored them.

  When they got back to the office, Quinn phoned Renz to try to find out more about who and what they were investigating. What was the motivation for this concern about a missing cat?

  “I’ve got my reasons,” Commissioner Harley Renz said, when Quinn had finally gotten through on the phone. He recognized Renz’s clipped, official voice.

  “I need to know those reasons,” Quinn said, “if I’m going to waste valuable hours and shoe leather because of a missing cat. Even if he is handsome.”

  “You need to take this seriously, Quinn. I certainly do.”

  “I need to have a reason. Probably it would be the same as yours.”

  “No, no ...”

  “Try me, Harley. I do understand that you place some importance in this. It would make it seem more worthwhile if you’d condescend to share.” Quinn also understood that Harley Renz valued information as the currency that bought power. Not to mention more actual currency. “I don’t need to know it all, Harley. Just some of it.”

  There was a long silence on the phone. Quinn thought at first that the call had been dropped. Then Renz said, “Craig Clairmont has a sheet. He’s a jewel thief.”

  Big surprise.

  “And Ida French?”

  “Nothing on her. But that just means she hasn’t been caught yet.”

  “Eloise?”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “Their eight-year-old daughter.”

  “Oh, yeah. Ida’s kid.”

  “Is Clairmont the father?”

  “It’s possible,” Renz said. “Conjugal visits and such.”

  “Jewels ...” Quinn said thoughtfully.

  “And we both know some jewels have been stolen,” Renz said.

  “Belonging to Alexis Hoffermuth. The Alexis Hoffermuth.”

  “What are you getting at, Quinn?”

  “The missing cat, Boomerang, was wearing a cheap jeweled collar when he disappeared.”

  There was silence except for the gears in Renz’s brain meshing.

  “You’re shittin’ me!” he said.

  “No,” Quinn said, “and a cat might slip a loose collar off, even back on again. Over and over. They like to play around with things.”

  “Like certain people. Mostly of the female persuasion.”

  “We got some kinda connection,” Quinn asked, “between Alexis Hoffermuth and Clairmont-French?”

  “It looks like we do,” Renz said. “A half-million-dollar jeweled bracelet. And of course, little old me. It’s a connection, but it isn’t proof. You receiving the message?”

  “Received,” Quinn said, and hung up the phone.

  He wondered if Renz had already known about the cat wearing the bracelet around its neck. Maybe even Alexis Hoffermuth had known. Maybe she’d pressured Renz into using NYPD resources to search for a missing cat, even while she wanted him to pull out all the stops trying to recover a bracelet. Money could addle people’s thinking.

  Half a million dollars ...

  Pearl was at her desk, staring at him. She knew he’d been talking to Renz.

  Quinn looked back at her. Said, “We gotta find that cat.”

  May 8, 3:32 p.m.

  The cat, the bracelet, Alexis Hoffermuth.

  Only one of them could talk.

  Quinn and Pearl returned to the palatial penthouse where, with Alexis Hoffermuth, they discussed again the day of the theft.

  “I only glimpsed the man,” Alexis Hoffermuth said. “And it all happened so fast, I’m not sure I could identify the woman.”

  “You have some sense of their respective sizes?” Quinn asked.

  “Average. Both of them.”

  “Hair or eye color?”

  “The woman had blond hair streaked with dark. Blue eyes. The man’s hair was dark. I think very dark. I seem to recall that he had blue eyes, too.”

  “Any distinguishing marks? Tattoos, scars, moles ...”

  “Not that I noticed.” Alexis Hoffermuth shook her head in frustration. “It all went down so fast.”

  “Went down?”

  “You know—happened. Like on TV cop shows.”

  “Ah.” Quinn shifted position in his chair. Leather creaked. “What about another vehicle? What were they driving?”

  “If the perps had a car, it was parked out of sight. And to tell you the truth ...”

  “What?”

  “It all went down so fast, I’m not even sure if the man was with the woman. At the time I thought she was this ditsy tourist or something who thought the limo might be for hire. I didn’t expect jewel thieves.”

  “Or thief, singular.”

  “No, wait! On second thought, I’m certain the man was with her. They hurried from the scene together.”

  “What about the cat?”

  “I saw no cat.” She arched an eyebrow. “Police Commissioner Renz told me a couple called to report that their cat had run away. I thought that odd. Isn’t that what cats do? Run away?”

  “My cats always do,” Pearl said. She was seated on the sofa, facing Quinn and taking notes. They were both taking notes, making a bit of a show of it.

  “Boomerang,” Quinn said. “That’s what they call this cat, because he roams but he always comes back.”

  “A tomcat,” Alexis Hoffermuth said. “Just like the male human species.”

  Amen, Pearl thought.

  “There’s something else interesting about Boomerang,” Quinn said. “He’s wearing a jeweled collar that might be a bracelet. And he belongs to a professional jewel thief.”

  “The man and the woman?”

  “Just the man is a pro, as far as we know.”

  Alexis Hoffermuth shook her head again. “Men get women to do things ...”

  Quinn nodded. “Keeps us busy.”

  May 8, 8:12 p.m.

  Otto Berger and Arthur Shoulders, sitting across a table from their boss Willard Ord, listened to Willard sum up what he’d told them: They were in Ord’s garden-level apartment in the Village. The rest of the brick building, upstairs, was vacant except for storage and also owned by Ord.

  “So it could be the fake bracelets,” Ord said. “The nonsense with the cat, all or most of it, was to help mislead and convince the insurance company the real bracelet was stolen. It looks like an insurance scam to me, with Alexis Hoffermuth using the Clairmont brother and Craig’s wife. Hoffermuth has probably already filed for a big settlement.”

  “The cat didn’t have no bracelet around its neck when we snatched him,” Otto pointed out.

  “I take your point,” Arthur said.

  Willard stared at him, disgusted. “There is definitely the possibility that no bracelet was ever stolen, and Alexis Hoffermuth still has it.”

  “Insurance fraud,” Otto said. “Makes a lotta sense.”

  “We need to find out for sure,” Willard said.

  “The easiest thing might be to make her talk,” Otto said.

  Willard smiled. “Easier than chasing a cat.”

  “More fun, too,” Arthur said.

  May 9, 10:17 p.m.

  “What on earth is the emergency?” Alexis Hoffermuth asked, when her private elevator door slid open and two huge men in cheap suits stepped out. She was wearing blue silk lounging pajamas and a matching top with decorative string ties and a low neckline. Her slippers were fur-lined and matched her outfit. “The doorman phoned up that I should admit you. That it was important.”

  “Melman,” one of
the men said. “He sent us up here.”

  “Yes,” she said, puzzled. But she trusted Melman completely. “Why did he let you in? Are you acquaintances of his? Family?” She found both possibilities highly unlikely.

  They said nothing. One of them smiled, displaying horrendous teeth. The other blatantly observed the unfastened top buttons on her pajama top.

  Alexis didn’t like this at all. Tomorrow she’d have a serious talk with Melman.

  Fearless as ever, she crossed her arms and stared unblinkingly at both men. If it was a fight they wanted, she didn’t mind stepping up out of her weight class. “Well?”

  “You actually sleep in that outfit?” asked the slightly smaller man, with good teeth.

  “That would be beside the point,” Alexis said.

  She’d had enough of this. Her evening had been disturbed, and that made her grumpy. She stalked toward the nearby phone to call the doorman’s desk and set things straight with Melman.

  Alexis was amazed that the two men had entered farther into her domain. They’d even moved apart somewhat as if to block her access to her elevator.

  She held the receiver down near her waist and could hear the phone down in the lobby ringing.

  Then it stopped ringing, but no one spoke.

  Alexis pressed the receiver to her ear. “Melman? Melman?”

  The man with the horrible teeth grinned and said, “Get her.”

  Alexis actually advanced on the man, raising her hand to slap him.

  But before she could bring the flat of her hand forward, he punched her hard in the stomach. She made a whooshing sound, then panicked and thrashed around when she couldn’t inhale. Her mind was functioning, but not well.

  She began a harsh rasping that caught in her throat. The pristine white ceiling with its skylight was in front of her.

  How did I get on the floor?

  “When she catches her breath, she’s gonna wail like a train whistle,” one of the large men said.