How to Paint a Cat (Cats and Curios Mystery)

by Hale, Rebecca M.

The board of supervisors, most with sheepish expressions on their faces, had been relegated to the second row.

  Noted members of the public filled in the rest of the reserved seating, leaving the journalists and media types to edge into the remaining openings. Hoxton Finn and his ever-present notebook had commandeered a foldout chair on the end of the last row.

  And there, a few feet away from the reporter, Monty found his special guests: the niece and her two cats. Isabella, still in her harness, sat politely on the niece’s lap, while Rupert rolled over inside the stroller’s passenger compartment and yawned sleepily.

  Feeling increasingly pleased and confident, Monty gazed up at the balcony overlooking the rotunda. Standing in the shadows, he spied a pair of unlikely janitors, one with thinning white hair and rounded shoulders, the other hulking with a scraggly red beard. Even the Bohemians had sent a delegation, he mused.

  Completing his perusal of the crowd, there was one absence Monty was happy to note. As far as he could see, there was no ghost.

  It was all he could do to suppress a giggle.

  • • •

  ISABELLA SCANNED THE audience, conducting her own surveillance of the inauguration area from her seat on her person’s lap. Methodically, she filtered through the various humans gathered in the crowd, dismissing them, one by one, until her gaze settled on her target.

  The cat’s claws extended, reflexively, drawing a muffled wince from her person.

  Her eyes had just latched onto Spider’s murderer.

  Chapter 56

  THE BASEMENT

  “THAT WAS SOMETHING I never thought I’d see,” the niece said as Monty worked the receiving line snaking through City Hall’s rotunda.

  Isabella murmured in agreement. With the inauguration over, the niece had returned the cat to the stroller’s passenger compartment. In the stroller beside his sister, Rupert yawned sleepily. He had slept through most of the ceremony.

  The niece shook her head at the implausible scene. Even after witnessing the event firsthand, she still found it hard to believe.

  Montgomery Carmichael was now the official mayor of San Francisco.

  The man once mocked by all—by some as recently as the start of the inauguration ceremony—stood at the center of political admiration. By coronation, he had been transformed from an object of derision to the focus of those seeking favor. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to be near him: to shake his hand, to share a joke, anything to demonstrate their friendship with San Francisco’s newfound wunderkind.

  The same supervisors who had whispered disparaging comments as Monty paraded down the central marble staircase now elbowed one another for the chance to pose next to him in photographs. The newspaper columnists who had derided the day’s inauguration as “Mont-apocalypse” each vied for the new mayor’s attention, seeking punchy quotes to use in their next byline.

  Such was the fickle character of human nature, the niece mused.

  She glanced up at the dome, several hundred feet above the rotunda floor, and the arched windows that framed the building’s upper walls.

  If the dark storm swirling overhead offered any prediction of the future, the adulation would be short-lived.

  Monty wrapped an arm around the Lieutenant Governor’s shoulders. With his free hand, he raised a triumphant fist as flashbulbs exploded in the air.

  “At least he’s not letting this go to his head,” the niece said with a sigh.

  From the stroller, Isabella offered up a concurring “Mrao.”

  • • •

  HAVING OBSERVED MORE than enough of Monty’s moment of glory, the niece turned the stroller toward the front lobby and began making her way out of the rotunda.

  She was halfway to the security barriers when the carriage began to shake from a commotion in the passenger compartment. Looking down, she saw that Isabella was stabbing her front paws at the enclosure netting.

  Concerned, the woman circled to the side of the stroller and crouched to the ground.

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Wrao,” Isabella called out, eying the niece with a stern expression.

  “Having issues with Rupert?” she asked, trying to be sympathetic. The orange and white lump curled up beneath the blankets thumped his tail in sleeping rebuke.

  “Wrao,” Isabella repeated, a sense of frustration in her voice.

  Puzzled, the niece glanced around the area where she’d parked the stroller. They were inside the building’s front lobby, near the bank of elevators. She studied the labels on the brass fronting. The cars climbed four floors up, stopping along the way at the mayor’s office suite—and traveled down one level to the basement.

  “Mrao,” Isabella remarked, this time encouragingly.

  “Not the mayor’s office,” the niece murmured. “I can’t imagine you want to spend any more time with Monty. Plus, I don’t need him asking questions about the green takeout box we found at the Rincon Center.”

  A low growl confirmed that assessment.

  “So that leaves the basement,” the niece reasoned. “What’s in the basement?” she asked—and then answered her own question.

  “The office space where the murdered intern used to work,” she said softly. “It’s not part of our mural quest, but that’s where the Previous Mayor found the photo of Oscar standing in front of City Life. Maybe we should take a look around, just in case there’s anything he missed.”

  Standing, she grabbed the stroller’s handle and steered it toward the elevators.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” she muttered to herself.

  A predictable response floated up from the stroller.

  “Mrao.”

  • • •

  MINUTES LATER, THE niece pushed the stroller out of the elevator platform and into City Hall’s much quieter basement level. They were stopped only briefly by a patrolling security guard. A flash of the special visitor passes quashed his objection to their wanderings, if not his curious expression.

  The niece and the cats had visited City Hall’s basement before—although on that occasion, they had been following a trail of frogs. Glancing up and down the empty corridors, the woman couldn’t help thinking that she preferred tracking frogs to sleuthing around the murdered intern’s workspace. She wasn’t ready to admit she’d seen a ghost in the frog fountain or that a spiritual being had left the footprints at Coit Tower and in her kitchen, but she didn’t have a satisfactory alternative explanation for those events either.

  Isabella issued her regular navigational instructions as the niece rolled the stroller down the hallway. They passed a long line of locked office doors before reaching an intersection with a narrower passageway.

  The niece paused, trying to remember the basement’s layout from her previous visit. The walls had been painted since then, and several pieces of new artwork had been hung, making it difficult for her to match the current schematic with the fuzzy one in her memory.

  Even Isabella was feeling a little lost. The feline’s voice warbled with uncertainty as they rounded yet another corner.

  In the end, it was Rupert who alerted them to the unmarked entrance to the area housing the overflow cubicles for the building’s lowest-level staffers and interns. His overactive sense of smell apparently picked up on the residual fumes from the endless takeout lunches that had been eaten in the cubicle area.

  The niece manned the stroller like a Geiger counter, measuring her progress by gauging the intensity of Rupert’s snorkeling sniffs.

  “It’s a shame we can’t patent this technology,” she said as she pushed the stroller through the doorway to the cubicle area.

  • • •

  THEY PASSED SEVERAL empty cubicles before they found the one at the far end of the room that had once belonged to Spider.

  Set up as a shrine to the fallen intern, it was easy to pick out.

  A red bicycle leaned against the cubicle’s prefab wall; a matching helmet dangled by its chinstrap from the handlebars. Meme
ntos of the intern’s life had been pinned to a pegboard or arrayed on a nearby ledge.

  The item that had led Rupert’s homing radar through the basement to this location lay on the center of the desk: another grease-stained paper carton that had once held a generous serving of Lick’s fried chicken.

  Rupert nearly passed out from the rapid intake of air. The niece examined the carton, but found nothing more of note. Its presence was curious, but then, a lot of people had enjoyed the restaurant’s fried chicken.

  Isabella pushed her head against the netting, trying to see out as the niece explored the rest of the cubicle area.

  “I’m sure the police have already been through all this,” she murmured as she sifted through an innocuous-looking pile of papers stacked on a shelving unit. The documents appeared to be photocopies of draft legislation from last fall’s board meetings. “I don’t know what we could possibly find at this point that would be helpful.”

  Just as she reached the bottom of the stack, Isabella chirped out a warning. Looking up, the woman heard a pair of voices at the room’s front entrance.

  Instinctively, the niece felt the need to hide. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, but the guilt associated with snooping overwhelmed rationality and common sense.

  She shoved the stroller into the next empty cubicle and squatted down behind the partition as two men approached Spider’s cubicle.

  Chapter 57

  A SIREN CALL TO THE STOMACH

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE you didn’t tell the police about this,” Hoxton Finn sputtered as the Previous Mayor led him down the open aisle beside the cubicles. “That’s cheeky, even for you.”

  “You didn’t tell them about the backpack,” the PM retorted smoothly. “I’d say we’re about even when it comes to cheek.”

  The politician beamed an impish smile. “How’s your ex-wife? I hear she’s getting hitched again. Did you get an invite?”

  “No, I didn’t get an invite, but you probably did,” Hox sniped as the PM knelt in front of the ventilation shaft. “You’ll tell me how it goes, I’m sure.”

  Snapping his notepad against his left leg, Hox leaned against the cubicle.

  “And they’re not the same thing—this ventilation closet and the backpack. Not even close. I happened to remember a detail from the night of the murder. You’re . . .” Not wanting to characterize the PM’s actions in a formal accusation, he merely waved his free hand at the vent.

  “Would you like me to call the police right now?” the Previous Mayor asked indignantly. He leaned away from the vent’s grated cover. Sitting on the heels of his wing tips, he reached into his coat pocket for his phone.

  He began to press numbers into the display, but Hox wrapped his hand around the phone, blocking the Send button.

  “Might as well wait a few more minutes.”

  “I thought you’d see it that way,” the PM said smugly. “Now, help me get this cover off the vent.”

  As the two men struggled to remove the protective grating, Rupert resumed his snorkeling sounds. The niece unzipped the stroller’s passenger compartment and reached inside.

  “Shhh,” she whispered, stroking his head in an attempt to distract him from the remnant chicken smell from the carton left on Spider’s desk.

  With a wrenching of metal, the grate fell away from its fittings. The two men looked through the hole at the box of documents in the space beneath the ventilation shaft.

  “You think this is related to whatever Spider was carrying in the backpack?” Hox asked, reaching out a hand to page through the file folder tabs. “I wonder if the person who took the backpack knows about this other stash of documents.”

  The niece thought about the photocopied picture of her uncle she carried in her jacket pocket. If Sam and her uncle had tried to hide something from Spider’s research, they might have missed a potentially damaging source of information.

  “I looked through this box the other day when the janitor showed it to me,” the PM said. “I didn’t see anything of interest.”

  There was a lack of sincerity in the PM’s voice that even the niece picked up on. Hox turned his steely gaze away from the ventilation shaft and toward the politician.

  But as the pair stared tensely at one another, the niece felt a dreaded tingling inside her nose. The tickle of a sneeze had begun to work its way through her sinuses.

  It was a familiar sensation. She experienced regular fits of sneezing, often several times a day—and always, the release came in a high pitched “Ahh-choo!”

  This time was no different.

  Wincing, she shut her eyes, afraid to look up over the cubicle partition. The Previous Mayor cleared his throat, a signal that she’d been spotted.

  “I’m definitely not cut out for undercover work,” she muttered as she stood beside the stroller.

  “Hello, Mayor,” she said sheepishly.

  The reporter scratched his chin, studying her face as if he recognized it. “Aren’t you the cat woman from upstairs?”

  The Previous Mayor nodded toward Hox and said, “She’s Oscar’s niece.”

  The PM froze, realizing his mistake. The words had slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them.

  Brow furrowed, Hox quickly made the connection to the name Mabel had given him at the Lieutenant Governor’s condo. “Oscar?” he demanded. “Oscar from the antique shop?”

  The PM smiled apologetically at the niece.

  “We might as well tell him. He’ll figure it out anyway.”

  Turning to Hox, he replied gravely, “I believe you know him as James Lick.”

  • • •

  AS RUPERT WATCHED the interaction between his person, the reporter, and the Previous Mayor, a new smell wafted into the cubicle room, one that instantly triggered his fried chicken sonar.

  It was the same scent he’d detected earlier, but from a dish with a far fresher preparation date.

  Three days into his involuntary diet, his hunger had grown to ravenous proportions—even after the chicken dish they’d picked up at the Rincon Center.

  Rupert knew he shouldn’t leave the safety of the stroller’s passenger compartment, but the siren call to his stomach was too strong. Without a second thought, he scrambled out of the hole his person had left open in the net cover and scooted at top speed down the hallway toward the door.

  Isabella poked her head through the stroller’s passenger compartment and considered issuing a warning. Then she spied two familiar figures standing just outside the entrance to the cubicle room.

  Silently, she leaped from the stroller and chased after her brother.

  Chapter 58

  AN AFFINITY FOR CATS

  “RUPERT! ISSY!” THE niece exclaimed as soon as she noticed the feline void inside the stroller.

  She looked up at Hox and the Previous Mayor.

  “Where did they go? Do you see them? They were right here.”

  The reporter stepped back, seeking to distance himself from the emerging cat crisis. He was allergic to cats—and any form of female panic.

  “Hey, don’t look at me.”

  Dropping to her knees, the niece started crawling along the floor, looking inside cubicles and underneath desks and chairs.

  The PM watched her for a moment and then began striding up and down the aisle, assisting in the search. Hox stood next to the ventilation shaft, pensively observing.

  The PM turned, hands on his hips, and motioned for Hox to help.

  “But . . .” the reporter sputtered, visibly uncomfortable. He lowered his voice to ensure the niece wouldn’t hear, “I don’t even like cats.”

  • • •

  AFTER HURRIEDLY SEARCHING the cubicle area, the niece rushed out into the hallway. She scanned the empty corridor, trying to keep calm.

  “Rupert! Issy!” she hollered as loud as she could. City Hall was a large building in which to lose two cats.

  The PM tugged Hox into the hallway.

  “Maybe we should split up,” he sug
gested. “They can’t have gone far.”

  Hox looked over the niece’s shoulder and pointed.

  “What’s that over there?”

  The niece spun around in time to see Isabella’s pink nose peek around the far corner—and then disappear.

  She set off at a full sprint down the hallway. The Previous Mayor followed at a quick trot. Hox reluctantly brought up the rear, shaking his head as if he’d rather not be involved in any cat-chasing caper.

  The niece reached the end of the corridor, scrambled through the turn, and anxiously peered into the space beyond. Another hallway stretched out before her.

  It was empty, save for the same pink nose and orange-tipped ears once more poking around the edge of a distant corner.

  “Issy, wait!” the niece called out, to no avail. The cat was gone by the time she reached the second intersection.

  The niece was beginning to fear she might never corral her wayward cats, but as she cleared the second corner, she was greeted by a welcome sight. Isabella sat in the middle of the hallway, about twenty yards beyond the turn, placidly tapping the tip of her tail.

  This time Isabella waited for her person to catch up. As the niece skidded to a stop beside her, Isabella stood and issued her instructions.

  “Mrao,” she said, rotating her head toward the opening of a smaller side corridor.

  Isabella trotted alongside her person as she hurried the short distance to where Rupert sat in front of a now-empty paper takeout box. Given the container’s strong smell and the fresh smear of grease on the interior walls, the box had, until a few seconds earlier, held a cat-sized serving of fried chicken.

  The niece flipped the lid of the green carton over so that she could read the gold text printed on the top.

  It was a large looping O.

  • • •

  RUPERT BURPED CONTENTEDLY as the niece scooped him up. She returned to the main corridor, kicking the green takeout container to one side before Hox or the Previous Mayor could see it.

  “We’re over here,” she shouted, trying to corral Isabella as she carried Rupert. The cats were too big for her to pick up both of them at the same time.