The Persian Always Meows Twice

by Eileen Watkins

  “That can’t be true. You’re making it up!” He was red in the face by now, and I suspected not just from frustration. His eyes looked puffy too. Obviously, his antihistamine was not up to spending time in close quarters with half a dozen cats.

  When he let out another violent sneeze, I sprinted through the playroom. Maybe I could make it to the front door . . . or at least the sales counter, and my pepper spray.

  A bullet ricocheted off the counter ahead of me—Jerry wasn’t a bad shot. The silencer made a strange ptew sound that probably couldn’t be heard outside.

  Cut off, I dodged behind one of our tallest cat trees, about six feet tall with lots of perches. But even though I’m slim, it still left plenty of me exposed.

  A strangled yowl spiraled down from above our heads. Stormy still crouched on the highest wall shelf. All the commotion below had him switching his tail and growling.

  Jerry stalked me for real now. “If Harpo was with the police, you’d have told me in the beginning and saved yourself a lot of trouble. If he’s not in any of the cages, I bet he’s upstairs in your apartment. Let’s go up together and have a look, eh?”

  No! When he found no Harpo up there, either, he might start shooting my own cats! Call me crazy, but I’d defend them the same as I would my children . . . if I had any.

  Jerry had planted himself directly across from where I still crouched behind the cat tree. Whether I ran for the front door or the back, he could fire to stop me.

  Why the hell hasn’t Officer Jacoby dropped by to ask why I’m working so late? Or why hasn’t somebody responded to my damn 9-1-1 call?

  But I was punching my phone buttons blind. Maybe I touched something else instead of Send?

  “How do you get to the second floor? Through that door?” Jerry demanded now. “Let’s go!”

  When I didn’t move, he lunged forward to grab my arm. Convulsed in another sneeze.

  With a shove that took all my strength, I toppled the cat tower onto him.

  I figured the piece weighed about sixty pounds. It might not hurt him badly, but it ought to slow him up. I dashed for the front door.

  Though the weight of the tower knocked him to his knees, Jerry got off another wild shot. It went through the front window.

  Mid-escape, I screeched to a halt.

  He let out a burst of X-rated language as he struggled out from under the cat tree. Seeing him hampered for a second, I backed toward the rear doorway. . . .

  And found myself caught in arms like bands of cold steel.

  Chapter 22

  I tried to scream. With the squeeze on my diaphragm, though, it came out like one of Tigger’s mewling sounds.

  My terrified mind ticked off the possibilities. Mark? No, he wouldn’t scare me like this.

  Andy?

  A deep voice dripped with scorn. “For God’s sake, Ross, get up. Can’t you do anything right?”

  Schroeder. I should have guessed he wouldn’t leave his reluctant hit man unsupervised.

  Jerry staggered to his feet, sniffling, eyes almost swollen shut. But he still held the gun.

  “You’ve made a mess of this job, just like you did that last one,” Schroeder told him with an icy calm. “Now that you’ve spilled your guts to this girl, you’ll have to shoot her. Can you at least handle that?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Jerry stammered. “I can hardly see—”

  “You can see well enough, idiot.” Holding me by the back of the neck with one hand, Schroeder snatched up a fishing-pole toy from the top of a cat tree. He tried to force my wrists together, but I realized what he was up to. Not so worried about Jerry anymore, I tried to twist free, even brought my sneakered foot down hard on Schroeder’s instep.

  Without a word, he slapped me hard across the face.

  I felt shock even more than pain. Andy had shoved me against the bookcase in the heat of anger. This blow was emotionless. It let me know I mattered to Schroeder as little as one of those cats in the condos.

  Stunned, tasting blood in my mouth, I finally stood still. He forced my hands behind my back and wound the long, thin cord of the fishing pole tightly around my wrists. Holding the wand of the cat toy to keep the string taut, he stepped to one side of me.

  “There,” he said to Jerry, in a patronizing tone. “Does that make it easier?”

  The assistant threw his shoulders back and set his jaw, pulling himself together physically if not mentally. He lifted the gun again.

  Is this how I’m going to die? Tied up and shot point-blank, execution style? In the playroom of my shop, designed to be such a happy place?

  “Don’t worry, Ross,” Schroeder encouraged him. “No one will know it was you. They’ll figure it was a robber, or maybe some ex-boyfriend she ticked off.”

  That random comment made my already racing heart stutter. Did this guy somehow know about Andy? Even if he’d just taken a lucky guess, he was right. If I was found in my shop shot dead and with a bruised face, everyone would think my ex had done it. They might never suspect either of these guys.

  Ross seemed like the weak link here, though. If Schroeder could use psychology on him, so could I.

  “Sure, Jerry, shoot me,” I told him. “Then he’ll have you killed! And in your obituary, he’ll say what a loyal employee you always were. Like he said DeLeuw had ‘high standards.’ ”

  I heard Schroeder catch his breath, and braced for him to hit me again, but he resisted. In my side vision, I finally could see the taller man clearly. Even for this job, he wore a pale blue button-down shirt and dark slacks, as if he’d come from the office. Disposing of me was just another inconvenient wrinkle in his overall agenda.

  Meanwhile, Ross appeared to consider my words. He held out the gun toward his boss, handle first. “You want her dead so much, you shoot her.”

  Would Schroeder do it? He’d gone to West Point, so he probably could handle a gun.

  He gave his head, with its silver sideburns, a weary shake. “See, Ross, that’s why you’ll always be an assistant, never a leader. You can’t handle the responsibility. Can’t make the tough decisions.” Still holding me by the makeshift leash, Schroeder reached for the pistol.

  Jerry had changed his mind, though, and held it back. He looked his boss hard in the eye and nodded. “Y’know, Chuck, you’re right. It’s time I took charge.”

  He raised the gun and aimed . . . about a foot to my left.

  With a gasp, Schroeder dropped the wand of the fishing pole and ducked. Jerry’s shot just missed him and ricocheted toward the wall shelves.

  I heard a high shriek from Stormy. Was he hit?

  No, just outraged. But even an alpha cat like him knew it was time to bail. He leaped sideways from his shelf, trying to reach the floor . . .

  Just as Schroeder backed underneath.

  Stormy landed on his head, a one-cat SWAT team.

  They went down together as Schroeder flailed with both hands, trying to fend off a demonic assault of teeth and claws. Growls and hisses mixed with his screams of pain.

  Tough guy. Completely undone by a pussycat.

  With the fishing pole’s string gone slack, I worked my hands free. Meanwhile, Stormy split for the grooming studio. Schroeder—still reeling from the cat’s attack, blood from his scalp dripping into his eyes—groped his way toward the back door.

  I rolled one of the smaller cat trees into his path, and he went sprawling.

  Jerry laughed until he bent double. He didn’t even notice the whirling red and blue lights that suddenly filled my front window.

  At last, the cavalry to the rescue! Officer Jacoby burst through the door, gun drawn. Guess the shot fired through the window had finally gotten his attention.

  His command, “Drop your weapon!” wiped the smile from Jerry’s face, but the assistant readily obeyed.

  Back on his feet, Schroeder tried again to sneak out the back way, but a second officer met him there.

  Jacoby took one look at the three of us and called for an am
bulance. While we waited, he took my statement. It hurt to talk, but I managed to give him the whole story. He shook his head in wonder at some points and chuckled at others. Then he read Ross and Schroeder their rights and cuffed them.

  The EMTs arrived. One checked me over and decided that, aside from a couple of loose teeth and a swelling jaw, I seemed to be all right. Chuck and Jerry got a ride to the hospital, though, under police guard.

  Leaving my shop, they made a pathetic pair. One short, one tall. One bruised, puffy-eyed, and sneezing, the other half-scalped and bleeding.

  I almost felt sorry for them. But they really should have known better than to threaten a cat lady on her own turf.

  Chapter 23

  My mother stood on the sidewalk to admire my shop’s new front window. “Very nice. Not to hurt your feelings, Cassie, but the professional lettering looks better than when you stenciled it yourself.”

  “I’d be the first to admit that. Guess the chamber of commerce spared no expense.” I held the door open for her. “Come inside and meet everyone.”

  It was a Friday, exactly two weeks after the cops had arrested Ross and Schroeder in my shop. The chamber guys had installed my new window that afternoon, to replace the one with the bullet hole. It was my thank-you gift for having caught DeLeuw’s killer and suffered so much damage to my humble establishment in the process. More practical, I supposed, than a medal or even an honorary detective’s badge.

  Tonight, in addition to Mom, I’d invited friends who’d helped me survive the DeLeuw drama for a belated “window-raising.” Making do with the resources at hand, I was serving cold cuts and side dishes off the sales counter and beverages from my coffee bar. Everyone congregated mainly in the playroom. Sarah and I had vacuumed everything in there, so our guests could rest their plates and glasses on the perches and shelves and could sit on some of the lower cubes and cylinders.

  My mother had come right from work, and so looked a little overdressed in her khaki slacks and pastel tweed blazer. But they give her an air of authority, which I supposed she needed among all of those lawyers, since she was only five foot three. Her hair was wavier than mine, but there was enough of a facial resemblance that everyone guessed our relationship immediately.

  Mom had set foot in the shop only once before, when I’d first opened. I introduced her to the early birds who had arrived promptly at five. Louis couldn’t make it, but Nick, Dion, Anita, and Hector were all on hand.

  “Dawn you already know,” I added.

  “Hi, Barbara!” With a plastic cup of iced tea in one hand, Dawn caught her in a brief hug.

  In the weeks since Jerry’s arrest, the full story behind DeLeuw’s murder had gradually come to light in our regional and local news. It received lots of coverage, as one of the more colorful crimes Chadwick had seen in a long while.

  Just for the offenses they committed at my place that night, Jerry Ross faced charges of breaking and entering (my old back door with the single lock had been pushed in), attempted theft (of Harpo), and aggravated assault for pulling a gun on me. That was even before they nailed him for killing George and then trying to frame Nick Janos.

  Schroeder also got charged with assault for hitting me, and with unlawful restraint. But those accusations might soon be the least of his problems.

  Once decrypted, DeLeuw’s secret files turned out to be as incriminating as everyone had feared—or hoped, depending on your point of view. They documented how the drug money had been filtered through a series of complex transactions to conceal its true source. George had even included an addendum to explain the convoluted process. It seemed clear that he expected, at some point, to expose R&F’s involvement to the authorities.

  So far, that background information had only been hinted at in the newspapers. I knew about it from Bonelli, but I imagined more details would come out as various people were questioned and maybe prosecuted. Right now I was just happy that the right suspects had been fingered and the wrong ones cleared of all suspicion.

  I led a quick tour of the cat condos, now fully occupied with a dozen boarders. Ironically, my decision to face down a gunman rather that put the cats’ lives in jeopardy had boosted my credibility and attracted more customers. When my guests remarked on the layout of the playroom and construction of the condos, I quickly passed the praise along to Nick. I also credited his sprinkler system with saving my shop during the arson incident.

  In return, he ragged me about putting off installing the rear dead bolt until after Jerry had broken in. “Isn’t there some expression,” he teased, “about locking the barn door after the horse has run away?”

  A few guests were disappointed that Stormy, now known as the cat who nearly scalped Charles Schroeder, had already been collected by his owner.

  “Why does anyone keep a vicious animal like that?” my mother asked, with a shudder.

  “Home security?” Nick wisecracked.

  “His owners swear he’s a total ‘mush’ with them,” I said. “Go figure.”

  Peering into the screened enclosures, Mom asked, “Which cat is DeLeuw’s, the one everyone was after?”

  “He’s not here anymore,” Dawn told her.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Quite a story behind that.”

  One of the biggest surprises was a letter George had left with his trust company for Marjorie. He’d requested that it be passed along to her in the event of his “death or mental incapacitation.”

  “Turned out the FBI knew about the letter but had never opened it,” I explained. “They figured it was just about some personal matter between George and his ex-wife. If they’d been a bit snoopier, they could have saved themselves a lot of time and trouble.”

  In the letter, George left Harpo to Marjorie and explained the cat’s connection to the secret files. He provided for her to continue receiving alimony payments from his estate, on the condition that she either give Harpo the best of care or find him a good home with someone else. George added that he was entrusting Marjorie with this responsibility because he knew that, like him, she wanted justice for Renée.

  As our group drifted back out to the playroom, my mother remembered my concerns about DeLeuw’s ex-wife. “So the woman who put his first cat to sleep has the other one now?”

  I shook my head. “She didn’t really want the responsibility and left it up to me to give him a good home. Unfortunately, my apartment’s already at full cat capacity.” I glanced over my shoulder at my assistant, who was chatting with Anita and Hector. “Sarah adores playing with Harpo, though, and she’s got the grooming skills to keep him in good shape. So I officially signed him over to her.”

  “Sounds like a happy ending,” Mom concluded.

  Dawn laughed. “Your daughter keeps converting more people every day to the joys of cat ownership!” She launched into an explanation of the clicker-training method I’d taught her and how well it had worked with Tigger. I let her keep my mother occupied while I brought more snacks and bottles of wine and soda down from my apartment.

  To my surprise, though, on my second trip down, Mom met me at the bottom of the stairs. She took me aside and pulled a long envelope out of her purse. “I don’t want to upset you, Cassie, but I promised to give you this. I haven’t looked at it and I don’t know what it says. But I figure if it’s anything . . . bad. . . you can always hand it over to the police.”

  I recognized the official Morris Plaza return address in the corner and my name in Andy’s rather childish scrawl. Since my mother no longer expected me to reconcile with him, and was now thinking in terms of collecting evidence against him, I just nodded.

  Returning to the front of the store, I tucked the envelope out of sight beneath the sales counter. Then I finished replenishing the snacks and drinks.

  Dion approached me, dressed up for the party in faded but nontattered jeans and a gray T-shirt that read, in digitized letters, LET ME DROP EVERYTHING AND WORK ON YOUR PROBLEM. From his plate, I noticed he’d been one of the few people, besides m
e, brave enough to sample Dawn’s excellent quinoa casserole.

  In his oddly formal way, he told me the Encyte people had reached out to him directly about developing his system. “After what happened with DeLeuw,” he said, “I guess I should find a lawyer this time, to protect my interests. I asked my cousin, but he says that’s outside his area. He told me I needed to find someone who deals with intellectual property.”

  “I know just the person to help you with that!” I steered Dion toward my mother, who seemed happy to talk shop with someone.

  Mark arrived a little late, having had to close up the clinic. His business had gotten a publicity boost too because of his role in finding and removing the implanted chip. As he headed in our direction, I remembered the unopened envelope. I intercepted Dawn and asked her not to mention Andy in front of Mark.

  After the three of us made small talk about Tigger’s latest checkup, Mark told me, “I still feel terrible that I didn’t know that Ross guy was holding you at gunpoint that night, just a few blocks away! I might’ve been able to help you somehow.”

  “I said the same thing,” Dawn told him. “Sounds like Cassie did okay on her own, though.”

  While building himself a sandwich with sliced turkey and cheese, Mark asked me, “I guess you never really suspected Ross?”

  “Not at first. When he came to the house after the murder, he acted genuinely surprised and upset. Only after I did a little research on him, and his history with Redmond & Fowler, did I start to wonder if Jerry could have had a motive.”

  With our plastic plates and cups, we settled on various pieces of low cat furniture. I explained to them what I’d pieced together, with input from Bonelli and Marjorie. “When Jerry first joined R&F as an executive assistant, about twelve years ago, he hoped to eventually become an associate and then maybe a vice president. But apparently, that’s a tricky move to pull off at an investment-banking firm. The higher-ups were more impressed with his skills at organization and problem-solving than at finances. So even though he made good money, and worked with the top managing directors, he never could break out of the ‘assistant’ category. That drove him a little nuts.”