She said, “What’s going on, Dixie?”
“Do you have a ladder?”
“A ladder?”
“I need to climb up to look in the cats’ hiding places.”
She opened her mouth to ask a question, then closed it and hurried ahead of me to the kitchen where Cupcake and Steven sat drinking coffee.
“Cupcake, Dixie needs a ladder.”
Both men looked up at me as if Jancey had asked for a flying saucer, but Cupcake lumbered to his feet and went through the kitchen door to the garage. Steven stood up and looked a question at me. I waited until Cupcake came back carrying a stepladder so long the ends of it waved out of control. Jancey rushed to support the ends, not because Cupcake couldn’t handle the weight but because she didn’t want her walls scratched.
Without waiting for them, I turned and moved rapidly toward the media room.
Steven said, “What are you doing, Ms. Hemingway?”
“Elvis has stashed a paper in one of the condos on the climbing tree.”
“Excuse me?”
The outraged disdain in his voice was palpable. It said he was an important man with an important case to solve and I was wasting his time looking for a scrap of paper a cat had hidden.
I whirled so fast that Jancey jerked her end of the ladder and bumped it against the wall.
I said, “You know, I’ve had it with you guys! You waltz in here with your leather jacket and your beard thing, and you let me think you’re a homicide detective when you’re really an FBI agent but you’re just on loan as an FBI agent because you’re really with Interpol, and you investigated us and you questioned us and you warned us that we’re in danger, and in the meantime I’m the one who got worked over with a sap and I’m the one who was stalked by Briana, and you and your leather jacket didn’t do a damn thing to protect me. Now I’m here to solve your case for you and you have the unmitigated audacity to question what I’m doing! Talk about a weenie thinking it’s a salami! Please, please, please just shut the hell up and let me get the evidence you need so the rest of us can get on with our lives!”
His green eyes met mine, and a spark of humor took the place of outrage. “I beg your pardon. Please show me the evidence.”
I knew he meant it as an apology, but I didn’t forgive him. I was tired of the whole thing. I wanted to be done with Briana and her sordid enterprise.
In the media room, the humans clustered together and watched me scan the places the cats used for hiding or sleeping. The cat condos were at different levels on the climbing tree, all covered in soft fuzzy fabric, each a different size and color. They looked a bit like a cluster of colorful houses clinging to a Mediterranean hillside.
Without speaking, I motioned to Cupcake to bring the ladder forward. He obeyed as silently as I had flapped my hand. I had become the imperious director of a play, and all the stagehands moved at my command. I pointed to the spot where I wanted the ladder set, and Cupcake carefully spread its legs and made sure it was secure for me to climb.
Figuring I’d begin with the easiest ones, I had chosen a fat turquoise condo on a lower limb of the tree. I could get to it by climbing only four or five rungs of the ladder. When I looked inside, I saw a felt mouse and a single strand of heavy string. I climbed down and motioned Cupcake to move the ladder. The next short tube was ruby red. It must have been a favorite spot of Lucy’s, because it held a nice supply of white cat hair. Otherwise, it was completely empty. I pointed at another wide tube, Cupcake repositioned the ladder, and I climbed up again. This time I found paper, but it was a grocery store receipt, not the paper I wanted.
Jancey and Steven stood silently watching while Cupcake and I went through our routine. I motioned where I wanted the ladder, he moved it, I climbed up and peered inside a condo, then climbed down, and we repeated the whole process with another tube.
Twenty feet above us, Elvis and Lucy watched from their racetrack at the ceiling. The track had padded sides to keep them from accidentally slipping off while they bounded after each other, so we could only see their heads and wide eyes looking down at us. Maybe it was my imagination, but they seemed to be offended that I was snooping into their napping and hiding places. I didn’t blame them.
I prayed that Elvis hadn’t dropped the list on the racetrack. Getting up that high and inspecting every foot of the track would take people with more experience and taller ladders than I had.
I was mentally thumbing through the names of painters and paperhangers I knew when I climbed to the top rung of the ladder and looked into a bright orange tube. A crumpled slip of thin paper lay pushed against one side, as if a cat had napped with the paper against his back. Holding my breath, I reached inside and pulled the paper out. About six inches long and four inches wide, it had been folded and stuffed in a handbag, held between a cat’s teeth, laid upon, and pushed between a cat’s body and the side of the tube. It held the imprint of feline incisors, and the ink was blurred by cat spit, but the names, addresses, and phone numbers were legible. I recognized some of the names of upscale stores where wealthy tourists shop when they come to southwest Florida.
I looked up at Elvis, who was fixing me with the steely-eyed look of a department store detective about to make an arrest.
“Sorry, Elvis.”
Clutching the list with the same determination with which Elvis had held it, I climbed down the ladder. I held the paper out to Steven.
“These are Briana’s local contacts. I’m sure she has a similar list for other cities, but this is the one she and her rivals thought I had. She had it in her handbag when she broke in here to leave the Nikes on the bed. The cat got it and took it up to his hiding place on the climbing tree. Briana’s former boyfriend gave the list to her before he went to prison. His partners saw that as a betrayal, so they had him killed. Their security people knocked me out because they thought I had the list.”
Steven took the paper and gave it a cursory glance. “How do you know this?”
“Briana came in one of the houses where I was pet sitting. She offered to cut me in on her business because she thought I had the list of merchant names. She had the counterfeit merchandise, so she thought we could be partners. I told her I had made multiple copies of the list and that I would make them public if anybody leaned on me.”
He nodded as if he approved. I didn’t care.
I said, “This has to stop, Steven, and it has to stop now. The stalking, the assaults, the home intrusions. You’re the law enforcement officer here, not me. So stop all this.”
Steven opened a small notebook, carefully laid the list of names inside it, and closed it.
“Two details still to be answered, Ms. Hemingway: Why the Nikes on the bed, and who killed the woman?”
“Like I said, Steven, it’s your job to figure those things out, not ours. Briana told me the woman was an FBI agent. I assume that means your people were already watching Briana before the murder.”
Cupcake said, “They must not have been watching very well.”
Steven flushed, and I realized that humiliation was part of the reason the FBI hadn’t released the murdered agent’s name. Cupcake was right. They hadn’t protected one of their own, and she’d been murdered.
Steven said, “Ms. Hemingway, did Briana say anything about the murder?”
“She claims she doesn’t know who did it. I didn’t press her on it.”
“So how did your meeting end?”
“I told her to leave me alone, and to leave Cupcake and Jancey alone.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. She left, and I finished my rounds and came here.”
“How did you know where you’d find the list?”
I shrugged. “I know Elvis. He has a paper fetish.”
He looked as if he doubted that a cat could have a fetish of any kind but wisely kept quiet about it. He thanked me for giving him the list, apologized to Cupcake and Jancey for the inconvenience they’d endured, and went off in his nondescr
ipt brown sedan to do FBI things.
Cupcake and Jancey and I said exhausted good-byes, and I went off in my Bronco to find solace in my apartment. I didn’t see them do it, but I’d bet good money that Elvis and Lucy bounded down to snuggle into their favorite roosts on the climbing tree. Whether you’re a cat or a human, nothing makes you feel as safe as the comfort of a soft enclosure.
22
I should have felt enormous relief, but I didn’t. I was glad I’d found the precious list that Briana had left in Cupcake’s house, and glad I’d given it to an FBI agent. Now he knew which store owners in the area were knowingly selling fraudulent merchandise and charging for the real thing. Of course, targeting retailers and arresting them for selling fake merchandise was only half the solution. The other half was arresting Briana for providing the merchandise, and there was no proof the list had come from Briana.
Except for breaking into Cupcake’s house, there was no absolute proof of any criminal act that involved Briana. She hadn’t been charged with the agent’s murder. She hadn’t even been held in jail as a material witness. Either the homicide officers believed she was completely innocent of any knowledge of the crime or they were waiting for her to lead them to the killer. There was a good likelihood that she would walk away with only a fine for breaking and entering. She would return to Rome or Paris or wherever she lived and continue to run a business that manufactured fake designer merchandise.
Even more depressing was the fact that the person who had killed the FBI agent in Cupcake’s house would probably never be identified or apprehended. I didn’t believe Briana’s claim that she had disengaged one section of the security system for only the time it took her to enter the house. I thought it was more likely that she had left it disengaged the entire time she was inside. The security people wouldn’t have noticed that one small section was switched off, so the security cameras that should have captured photos of Briana, the FBI agent, and the killer entering the house would have been inoperative.
Law enforcement people don’t like to talk about it, but every police department and sheriff’s office has files of homicides in which somebody literally got away with murder. Most homicides are committed by people with whom the victim has some connection. A rejected lover, a disgruntled employee, a jealous husband or wife, people whose emotional barometer went kaflooey one day and sent them into a self-pitying rage that ended with another person’s death. Those killers leave a trail, either a physical trail or a historical one. But when the victim is a law enforcement officer and there are no witnesses or trace evidence left behind, the hunt for the killer becomes highly problematic.
While my mind chased after all the loose ends of the entire Briana situation, a solemn voice in my head asked, What is that to you?
I didn’t have much of an answer. As long as nobody attacked me or stalked me, none of it had anything to do with me. Oh, I could drum up some righteous indignation about people stealing designers’ ideas and selling them as originals instead of the knockoffs they really were, and I deplored slavelike conditions forced on workers in factories churning out fake designer products, but my supply of righteous indignation can only stretch so far, and there were plenty of things closer to home to get riled up about.
Even the FBI agent’s murder was an objective fact to me, not something that engaged my private emotions. I was sorry it had happened, but sorry in the way I was sorry when I read about the murder of any other person I didn’t know. Sorry I belonged to a species that includes beings who have lost their minds and souls to such an extent they can destroy another being. Sorry for the anguish the victims’ deaths caused their families and friends, sorry for the anguish the killer’s family and friends suffered. But the sadness wasn’t personal. It didn’t change my life. No matter how awful I thought the whole thing was, my sadness wouldn’t bring the agent back to life, and my disgust wouldn’t stop some people from cheating other people. Maybe it was pure self-centered selfishness on my part, but my main feeling was that I hoped I never saw Briana again.
At the entrance to my lane, I stopped at the row of mailboxes to pick up mail. I riffled through it and tossed the entire lot into the passenger seat to transfer to the recycle bin under the carport. Most of it was junk mail or ads from posh stores promoting expensive jewelry or designer clothing like outrageously pricey jeans. I made a scornful snort at a photo of a curvy model wearing designer jeans. Even if they were real and not counterfeit, jeans exist to make a woman’s butt look good, and cheap jeans do the trick as well as expensive jeans.
Driving slowly so as not to alarm the parakeets in the trees overlooking my lane, I could see wind surfers on the bay and hear the waves moaning before they slapped the shore. Overhead, a scrawl of white and black gulls wheeled against a clear blue sky. On the beach, little sandpipers scurried back and forth on the sand like kindergartners at recess. Through the open car window I could hear the twittering of songbirds in the trees and the sad lament of a mourning dove somewhere in the distance. I was back in my own world, and for the moment I could forget everything about Briana.
Rounding the curve to the carport, I saw that Michael’s car was gone, and so was Paco’s. A small branch had fallen from one of the oak trees beside the carport and landed on the shell in front of Michael’s parking spot. Old oaks drop branches like that, sort of like a cat shedding hair. I pulled into my own spot and slid out of the Bronco, looking at the branch for the best place to grab it to throw it out of Michael’s way. It was about the thickness of a baseball bat, around five feet long, with a multitude of leafy twigs at its end.
I stooped to grasp it somewhere around its middle. As my fingers closed around it, I heard a scuffling noise in the shell. I turned my head to look toward it and saw a pair of black-clad legs running toward me. Jerking upward, I swiveled toward the running figure, and my move caused the leafy end of the branch to scrape across Lena’s outstretched hand. The twigs caught the hypodermic needle in her fingers and flipped it to the ground.
From the corner of my eye, I caught a spot of red at the edge of my porch. Looking up, I saw a pair of long milky white legs in bright red high-heeled pumps. The legs were sprawled at the top of the stairs.
Lena made a guttural sound and moved away from the branch, but she continued to come toward me, and she held a long knife in her hand. The knife flashed silver in the sunlight, but its cutting edge was stained wine red. She leaped toward me, her teeth glittering like the knife. In seconds, I was in a fight for my life.
Curiously, a red curtain seemed to descend over the world. Through the red haze, I realized that Lena was determined to kill me. The hypodermic needle had been intended to inject something into me to make me immobile while she slit my throat with her knife. Without the needle, she had to overpower me. Lena was hard and wiry and mean, but sheer terror gave me a burst of strength.
I kicked toward the knife and felt a searing pain in my ankle. Blood rushed onto my white Keds, and Lena smiled. Holding the branch with both hands, I swung it at her. I wiped the smile off her face, but she still had the knife, and my ankle was cut badly enough to fill my shoe with blood.
Irrationally, I thought how awful it would be for Michael and Paco to come home and find me dead in the yard.
I swung the branch again, and while Lena was adjusting her stance, I managed to swing it back the opposite direction. The second swing took her by surprise, so I kicked at the knife again. This time I connected. The knife flew out of her hand, and her head raised with a shocked glare. We both dived for the knife. I got to it first, but before I could stand up with it, she fell on me and her arm circled my neck in a steel vise.
Facedown, I clutched the knife under my midriff, but my victory had become a defeat. With her arm so hard against my throat that I feared the hiatal bone would break, I knew there was a good chance that Lena would strangle me to death.
Dimly, I heard the sound of a car racing to a stop nearby, then running footsteps crunching across the shell.
A man’s voice shouted, “It is finished! Let her go!”
Lena screamed, “Fool, she has the list!”
I felt a struggle above me, and then Lena’s arm slipped away from my throat and my face fell forward into the shell. A second later, Lena’s weight left my back, and I scrambled to a sitting position with bits of shell sticking into my flesh. My heart was racing, my ankle was pouring blood, and my nose was leaking.
Lena crouched a few feet away, her face twisted into a grimace of pure hatred. Peter held a gun to Lena’s temple. He looked resolute and devastated.
Peter said, “It’s over, Lena. Too many people have been destroyed.”
Lena said, “You are a fool, Peter. You have always been a fool.”
They both spoke English, as if they were speaking to each other through me.
Through my ruined lips, I said, “I gave the list to the FBI.”
Lena inclined her head toward my stairs. “She said you made copies of it. I want those copies.”
“I lied when I told her that. There are no copies. The FBI agent has the only copy that existed.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Call the FBI and ask. I have the agent’s number on my phone. Would you like to call him?”
Peter made a slashing motion with his hand. “I said it’s over!”
Lena said, “You do not decide what is over and what is not over! That is for me to decide!”
I struggled into a more comfortable position against the carport wall and looked toward Briana’s body. I wondered if the blood came from a vein or an artery.
I said, “Is Briana dead?”
Lena nodded with no more emotion than she would have shown if I’d asked if a plant needed watering.
“You killed her?”
“She ruined my business.”
“The counterfeit business was yours?”
The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas Page 19