The Persian Always Meows Twice

by Eileen Watkins

  And felt something that I shouldn’t have felt.

  I ran my hands beneath his thick undercoat again, searching the nape of his neck and between his shoulder blades. There it was, all right—like an extra-large grain of rice under the skin. I’d felt microchips in pets before and had even watched vets implant them. They were tiny cylinders and transmitted a registration number to identify an animal, so if lost, it could be returned to its proper owner.

  But Harpo had all that stuff printed on his collar tag.

  From my studio filing cabinet, I pulled the medical records Anita had given me for the Persian and riffled through them. There was no mention anywhere of the cat’s former veterinarian having implanted him with an ID chip. Could it have been done off the record?

  As I smoothed Harpo’s champagne-colored fur back over the raised spot, I remembered Bonelli’s comment about looking for a needle in a haystack. This probably was a much smaller haystack than she’d imagined.

  I thought of calling her, but hesitated. What if this turned out to be another false alarm? Would Harpo be whisked off by the FBI to be scanned? Hadn’t the poor animal gone through enough already?

  I gave him a hug. “I’ll bet you’ve been a pawn in this nasty game all along and never even knew it.” If the chip he carried was the one everyone was hunting for, by now it had become an unhealthy thing, like a tumor, threatening Harpo’s life.

  Time to get it out of him.

  A glance at the wall clock told me it was almost six. Still worth a try, though.

  I parked Harpo in the drying cage, pulled out my phone, and dialed. A female voice on the other end mustered the energy to sound cheerful. “Chadwick Veterinary Clinic.”

  “Hi, is Dr. Coccia still there?”

  She paused. “Yesss, but I think he’s just getting ready to—”

  “Would you please put him on? Tell him it’s Cassie McGlone. . . and it’s an emergency.”

  Chapter 21

  Mark Coccia passed his scanner over the base of Harpo’s neck for a third time. From his frown, I could tell he wasn’t getting the results he’d expected.

  “There’s definitely something under the skin,” he said. “I can feel it too. But I’m not picking up the usual coding, just gibberish.”

  This was, however, the result I’d expected. “Then I’m right—it’s not a normal pet chip. DeLeuw had it made by a cybersecurity company, out on the West Coast, to work with Dion’s encryption system. The company admits that, but said they have no way of knowing what key he would have programmed into it. They also gave George a special scanner to read the chip. The cops found one among his things, and the FBI has it now.”

  Mark stared at me as if I’d told him aliens had landed on Center Street and we needed to make tinfoil hats so they couldn’t read our minds. “For real?”

  “I swear. That’s why so many people are suddenly hell-bent on getting ahold of this cat. Can you take the chip out of him?”

  That question stymied him even further. “I mean . . . I’m sure I could, physically. Some chips in animals can be hard to find, because they’re meant to stay in, but this one seems close to the surface.”

  “Great! Then it should be easy, right?”

  “Trouble is, ethically, it’s more of a problem. He’s not your cat, Cassie. If DeLeuw willed him to somebody, he intended Harpo to go to that person, chip and all. We could get in trouble if we tampered with it.”

  He was probably right, but the legalities didn’t matter to me right now. It made me frantic just to know that Mark and I were the only ones in the clinic right now, standing between this tiny object and the bad guys who wanted it so desperately.

  I reminded him, “People who don’t give a damn about Harpo for any other reason are desperate to get this chip. They want to either decode George’s files or destroy the chip so the files can never be decoded. If they get their hands on this cat, they won’t have your ethics—or your skills—when they try to take the thing out.”

  Mark rested the scanner on the surgical table and studied Harpo as he pondered our dilemma. “Have you told your detective friend about this?”

  “Not yet. I got her all psyched up for nothing about the tags on his collar, so I didn’t want to go to her with this until I was sure.”

  “Well, we know it isn’t a conventional ID chip.” Mark managed a tired smile, having also put in a long day. “I’ll take an X-ray, just to get a better look.”

  “I can help you with that, and hold him still,” I volunteered. “I’ve done it before.”

  He nodded. “We’ll show the pictures to Bonelli. If she thinks the chip might be evidence in a criminal investigation and wants me to remove it, I will. Then she can take it with her.”

  I grinned, glad to have someone so levelheaded on my side. “Sounds like a plan.”

  * * *

  Half an hour later Bonelli and I sat together in the clinic’s waiting room while Mark wrapped up the minor surgery. The square-jawed young officer who had accompanied her stood casually on guard by the front door, just in case.

  “I feel like an idiot,” the detective admitted. “My dog, Sarge, has one of those chips, but it still never occurred to me that DeLeuw might have hidden the electronic key in his cat.”

  “I should have guessed too. I was fooled by the fact that Harpo had a license on his collar—I don’t know of many pets that have both. If I thought about it at all, I figured for some reason George just didn’t want to chip him.” I noticed that Bonelli looked as exhausted as the rest of us, having fit the Secret of the Cat’s Collar into whatever else her busy schedule entailed that day. “I sure hope this doesn’t turn out to be another false alarm. You’ll never forgive me!”

  “I don’t see it that way,” she insisted. “There’s a good chance you’re right, Cassie, and even if you’re not, I give you points for thinking of it. At this stage we’ll take any lead we can get.”

  Mark finally came out of the surgical suite carrying a small stoppered vial. Using a magnifying glass, he showed us the contents—a tiny, clear cylinder rounded at each end, with mysterious electronic bits stuffed inside it.

  “Looks like a regulation pet implant,” I said.

  “Yeah, DeLeuw must have gone to a lot of trouble. Maybe he got the California company to make the chip, program it, and put it in this casing. Then he must’ve had a vet—or someone with similar skills—insert it into the cat.” He handed the artifact to Bonelli. “Since this may have been the cause of one murder and one arson fire so far, I’m turning it over to the person with the gun.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Coccia.” With a smile, she tucked it into the breast pocket of her button-down shirt. “I appreciate your help . . . both of you. Officer Jacoby will be cruising the neighborhood periodically tonight, just to make sure there are no more problems.”

  After she and the young officer left, and the burden of our discovery had passed into their hands, I became more aware than before of being alone in the clinic after hours with Mark. He cleared his throat as if also self-conscious.

  “I just sedated Harpo, but he’s still groggy,” he said. “I should keep him here overnight to sleep it off.”

  “Good idea.” I shouldered the strap of my purse. “I’ll come pick him up tomorrow?”

  “Please do.” He regarded me with a worried frown. “Are you going to be all right over there by yourself? There might still be people out there who think you have the cat, and the chip.”

  Tempted as I was to suggest he keep me company, it felt too soon to take that step. “I should be fine, as long as that squad car is on patrol,” I told him. “But thanks, Mark. For the concern, for believing me, and for going to all of this trouble.”

  “No problem—it livened up a dull evening.” His hair mussed and his scrubs wrinkled from his long day, he still managed a crooked, flirtatious smile. “Is it always like this around you, Cassie? Nonstop excitement?”

  I knew a good exit line when I heard one, and winked on my way
out the door. “Guess you’ll just have to stick around and find out!”

  * * *

  Because I’d been in a hurry and toting Harpo, I’d driven the three and a half blocks to the veterinary clinic. It was past eight now, Halloweenish clouds hid the moon, and the air carried a scent of rain.

  I badly wanted to indulge in some optimism again and believe that this time we’d finally found the key to DeLeuw’s files. But I’d been wrong before, so maybe I shouldn’t have been getting my hopes up. Plus, I’d had so many nasty surprises at my place on recent evenings that I stayed alert as I turned onto my block.

  A new-looking dark sedan sat across the street in the same spot as on Sunday evening, though this time it was unoccupied. Probably a coincidence, though. Andy wouldn’t dare show up here again, would he?

  Plenty of guys driving around with revoked licenses, Nick had said.

  Or it could be an entirely different car. Not as if I’d been able to tell either the make or the license plate the first time.

  Playing it safe, I parked in front of the shop instead of in my rear lot and got out the keys to the front door. I opened it quietly—no string of bells, like at Dawn’s store—and looked around for signs of anything amiss.

  I also sniffed the air. No smoke, that was good!

  I postponed turning on the overheard lights as a precaution. A streetlamp that shone through my display window gave me enough light to creep back toward the boarders’ area. But by the time I reached the playroom, with its many wall shelves and cat trees, I had just about decided all was well and I had nothing to fear.

  Then I heard a series of sounds that stopped my heart.

  The squeak of a condo door opening. The hiss of a cat—probably Stormy.

  Sounds of a tussle. A man’s muffled curses.

  The little gray lion streaked out of the boarding area and past me. He paused for a split second in the playroom to get his bearings. In a quicksilver movement, he leaped to the top of a carpeted tower and then to one of the high wall shelves. From there, he glowered down at me and hissed again.

  Startled, I lost a second before pulling out my cell phone. I had just dialed 9-1-1 when a man in burglar clothes—black sweater and jeans—came lurching around the corner and stopped dead.

  He also looked surprised to see me. At least, as far as I could tell.

  The lower half of his face was covered with a mask. Not the bandana type that bank robbers wear in old movies, though. This was a specialized, honeycombed design that hooked over his ears. The kind you might see on a doctor, or a worker handling toxic materials.

  I’d guessed wrong, at least this evening. I could recognize from his hair and build that the intruder was not Andy. But he might prove to be even more dangerous.

  Maybe I was just fed up. Or maybe I fell back on what I’d been taught about facing down a threatening animal. Whatever the reason, I went on the offense.

  “Jerry, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Unfortunately, he’d come prepared to be even more offensive. He pulled out a gun with an unusually long barrel. From watching TV crime shows, I knew a silencer when I saw one.

  Jerry had come prepared tonight to shoot somebody, if necessary.

  And the face mask wasn’t a disguise, I realized, but a barrier against his cat allergy. Since I’d already recognized him, he tugged it down to enhance the impact of his threat.

  My cocky attitude dissolved, along with the cartilage in my knees. I’d survived getting pushed around by Andy, but I’d never faced down a firearm before. Now my brain found it hard to focus on anything else. It was just a small pistol, probably, but with that long black tube attached it loomed like a cannon.

  Then I noticed the gun was quivering a little, because the hand that held it was shaking. Jerry looked almost as scared as I felt.

  Maybe he doesn’t have the nerve to shoot me. Maybe it’s all a bluff.

  His first words bolstered that slim hope. “Cassie, I just want that cat. Help me catch him and I won’t hurt you.”

  “That cat? Why would you want Stormy?”

  Jerry blinked. I guessed that, hunting through the boarding cages in dim lighting, he’d seized upon the only pale-colored longhair. After all, Jerry had never handled Harpo or even gotten very close to him.

  “Don’t screw around!” he warned me now. “You thought you’d disguise him, I guess, by shaving off his fur. But I know that’s George’s cat! You’re the expert, so you’re gonna get him down from that shelf and put him in a carrier.”

  For a second I thought about actually doing that. But as mean as Stormy was, I still couldn’t put him in danger, and I certainly couldn’t betray a customer that way. “Jerry, that’s not Harpo. This cat is gray, not cream. Let me turn on the lights.”

  Taking a risk, I slid my hand along the wall toward the light switch and flipped it. My intruder flinched at the sudden glare, but at least he didn’t fire. I realized that Stormy’s lion cut left him with long fur only around his face, his paws, and the tip of his tail. Maybe that wasn’t enough for Jerry to be able to tell the difference.

  “And Harpo has copper eyes,” I added. “This cat’s eyes are greenish-gold.”

  Like Ross would be able to see that from where he stood. But when he glanced up at the animal, I reached into my pocket and pressed Send on my phone.

  Or hoped I did.

  Jerry’s eyes flashed back to me. “Damn it. If that’s not Harpo, where is he?”

  “He’s not here. He’s somewhere safe.”

  “Where?” He leveled the gun at me again.

  No way was I going to tell him the cat was at the veterinary clinic. If he happened to know that was only a few blocks away, he’d probably break in there next. Mark might still be closing up, and I didn’t want Jerry turning that gun on him.

  Forcing down my fear, I shook my head and played dumb. “I swear, I have no idea why all of you people are so hell-bent on stealing him. Danielle, Marjorie, and now you? How much do you think he’s worth? He can’t be shown and he can’t be bred. You’d go through all this for a few hundreds dollars?”

  “Of course not,” Jerry spat the words.

  “You figure George might’ve left a pile of money to whoever gives him a home? Marjorie and Danielle seemed to think so.” I turned up my palms in surrender. “Hey, I’m not looking to keep him. If the will says he goes to somebody else, I’ll gladly hand him over. . . .”

  “At this point, he’s worth my life! And . . . my family—”

  That got my attention. “What do you mean?”

  Before he could answer, Jerry sneezed, hard. If I’d been a trained CIA agent, I might have darted forward and grabbed his gun. But I didn’t have that kind of skill . . . or nerve.

  I just froze, heart thudding. Hoped one of those sneezes didn’t make him accidentally pull the trigger.

  If Officer Jacoby is still cruising the neighborhood, please, please let him wonder why my store lights are still on!

  Unfortunately, Jerry noticed my sidelong glance toward the front window. He gestured with the gun for me to move farther back, into the boarding area. Meanwhile, he used his free hand to pull a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his nose.

  A big, expensive-looking handkerchief. I couldn’t see a monogram, but I still bet it would match the one found in Nick’s truck. Jerry saw me checking it out and stuffed it back into his pants pocket.

  “You should have taken an antihistamine,” I told him.

  He responded with a glare. “I did.”

  And, of course, he’d taken the extra precaution of wearing the mask. But then he’d pulled that down, the better to snarl at me.

  In the boarding area, I stopped in front of the empty condo that had held Stormy. “You said Harpo was worth your life. Why?”

  “There are people who will kill me if I don’t get him back. If you’re hiding him, they’ll be after you, too. So one way or the other, you’d better tell me where he is.”

  Maybe if I
pretended to see things Jerry’s way, I could reason with him. “You killed George, didn’t you? Probably over the hidden files. But that wasn’t exactly cold-blooded, was it? You didn’t bring a gun that time.”

  A series of emotions flickered across the assistant’s face. “I didn’t plan to. I was told to make sure he’d destroyed those files, but he told me he’d encrypted them instead. That was crazy! It was like he was blackmailing the company . . . but even beyond R&F, blackmailing some very dangerous people.” Jerry bottled up another powerful sneeze, and I thought brain matter might shoot out of his ears. In a stuffy, de-nasalized voice, he went on. “I asked him, what if somebody breaks the code? George said they’d need his personal key, and he’d put that in a very safe place.” Jerry swallowed hard, Adam’s apple flexing, in what might have been sadness or anger. “Then he bent down to pet the cat. Damn, I should’ve guessed then!”

  “And while he was bent over, you grabbed the stone sculpture and hit him.”

  “They made me do it. They said to destroy the file, and if I couldn’t do that . . .”

  Sharply, he pulled himself together. “We’re wasting time! If this cat isn’t Harpo, where is he? In one of these other cages?”

  “No. And you’ll never find out if you shoot me.”

  “That’s probably true.” He glanced around, and a sick smile spread across his face. “But I can start shooting cats. How many do I have to kill before you tell me what I want to know?”

  Call me crazy, but this upset me even more than Jerry’s threat against my life. It was something I could easily picture him doing—in graphic images that horrified me.

  “Harpo’s not here at all!” I blurted out. “He’s with the police.”

  “I don’t believe you. Why would they take him?”

  “They know about the chip, and they took him away to remove it. The FBI has George’s scanner, so they’ll be able to read the key and open the files. By tomorrow they’ll probably know everything.” I edged back toward the playroom to lead Jerry away from the condos. “So you see? It’s no use! Even if you shoot me, you’ll only make things worse for yourself.”