How to Paint a Cat (Cats and Curios Mystery)

by Hale, Rebecca M.

  There was only one escape left, one sheltered location. Spider smiled as Monty dove beneath the desk’s center console and pulled the chair behind him, an effort to keep the ghost from following.

  The apparition faded as Monty’s muffled voice sounded through the desk’s wood paneling.

  “Hey, what’s this?”

  Monty peered up at the interior facing. A package had been taped to the underside of the desk. With effort, he pried it off. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he studied the package’s outer layer, a plastic shopping bag printed with the label of an unknown grocery store.

  “What’s this doing in here?” he said with disgust.

  For environmental reasons, plastic bags had been banned from the city for several years. Eventually, the associated social stigma had become a more effective deterrent than the prohibiting legislation. No self-respecting San Franciscan would be caught carrying his groceries in a Bay-polluting, sea lion–choking, disposable plastic bag.

  But curiosity soon overwhelmed disdain. Opening the bag, Monty removed an inner package: a cloth-wrapped bundle secured with strapping tape.

  He retrieved a pair of scissors from the middle desk drawer and used them to cut through the tape.

  Setting the scissors on the floor, Monty gingerly lifted the top layer of sheeting—to reveal a sharp bloody object.

  “Jiminy jumping Jehosaphat!”

  Chapter 67

  THE MURDER WEAPON

  IT TOOK THE police detective and her crew less than twenty minutes to arrive at Monty’s office to retrieve the murder weapon.

  “I didn’t touch a thing,” Monty said, his hands shaking as he held out the rewrapped package. “I mean, not after I realized what it was.”

  “Why don’t you just walk me through this,” the detective replied as Monty handed the package to a gloved technician. Another man moved in to take samples from Monty’s hands and fingernails. Several others hovered about the office, clicking photographs and swabbing every available surface. “How did you come to find the item strapped beneath your desk?”

  Monty sucked in a deep breath and slowly blew it out. “I came back up here after the inauguration.”

  “Can anyone verify this?” the woman asked sharply. “Was there anyone else in the room with you?”

  “Well, yes,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation. “The ghost.”

  “The what?”

  “The ghost of the murdered intern. Spider’s ghost. He’s been bugging me for days. Every time I think he’s finally left me alone, bam, there he is again.” He shuddered. “I tell you, it’s made me a nervous wreck.”

  “Why would the intern’s ghost be following you?” she asked suspiciously.

  The technician who had taken the package from Monty called out from the other side of the room. After spreading a plastic sheeting over a side table by the balcony windows, he had carefully removed the package’s outer layers.

  “Ma’am, you ought to see this.”

  The detective crossed to the table. Reaching into her jacket pocket, she pulled out a pair of gloves and slipped them over her hands.

  With her fingertips, she lifted a long curved item and held it up to the light. Bloodstains covered the weapon’s sharp, pronged end.

  “This explains why the forensic team has had such a difficult time giving us an accurate sketch of the knife,” she said as she examined the detailing. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a murder weapon quite like this one.”

  Chapter 68

  RETURN TO LEIDESDORFF ALLEY

  NIGHT WAS FALLING as a taxi van pulled up at a curb near the entrance to Leidesdorff Alley. A dwindling light filtered through the mist, drifting down into the narrow gaps between the high-rise office buildings in San Francisco’s financial district.

  Redwood Park framed the opposite side of the street. Past the park’s iron gates, the ring of brass frogs frolicked in their fountain, their wet bodies shining in the spotlights trained on the surging water.

  The niece pushed open the van’s sliding side door and stepped out onto the shadowed pavement. A moment later, she had removed the cat stroller from the rear seating area and paid the driver.

  “Let’s hope this is the last stop,” she said, ruefully thumbing through the few remaining bills in her wallet. “After all of these taxi rides, we’re about to run out of cash.”

  Isabella warbled a weary concurrence.

  Her brother, on the other hand, popped his head up from the blankets, perking with more enthusiasm than he’d shown in hours. Loud snorkeling noises immediately began emanating from the carriage.

  More fried chicken, Rupert thought with hungry elation—just in time for dinner!

  As the taxi drove off, the niece steered the stroller into the alley. The unlit passageway blackened as it ran between the buildings, escaping the meager reach of the street lamps, but the lights were still on inside the sandwich shop about a block away.

  Gripping the stroller’s rear handle, the niece approached the shop’s exterior. A row of metal posts marked the edge of the sidewalk. Each one was topped with an iron-forged horse head. She leaned in for a closer inspection, running her hand over the nearest nose. It was exactly the same as the posts she’d seen in the Gold Rush display at Lick’s conservatory, replicated right down to the horses’ flat nose and the metal ring threaded through the teeth like a bridle.

  Then she angled her head to look up at the sign posted above the shop’s front entrance, positioned to face the intersecting cross street. She’d missed it when she’d passed by during the daylight hours. The sign’s lighting was far more visible in the dusk. The lettering read:

  Welcome to O’s

  “Good grief,” the woman muttered. “I must be blind.”

  “Wrao,” Isabella agreed. The cat hadn’t forgotten how her person had rudely ignored her alley instructions three days earlier.

  For Rupert, however, all was forgiven. He sucked in a deep breath, detecting the faint but unmistakable aroma of his favorite dish. His anticipation growing, he made an optimistic smacking sound with his mouth.

  • • •

  A CUSTOMER WALKED out of the sandwich shop and held the door open for the niece to enter with the stroller. She took a few steps inside and stopped to look around.

  A few people ate at the inside tables, but no one manned the front counter. The shop would be closing soon. She suspected the staff members were in the kitchen, cleaning their stations in preparation for the end of day shutdown.

  The menu boards mounted to the wall behind the register listed an array of healthy sandwich combinations. It was a complicated ordering process. Each meal was prepared to the customer’s exact specifications.

  First, patrons chose the bread layer. The shop offered homemade loaves in a range of fiber concentrations. There was the regular array of sourdough, potato, whole wheat, and rye, as well as more esoteric artisan formulations with pumpkin puree, pistachios, and bulgur wheat.

  After clearing the bread hurdle, the hungry diner faced an even more daunting selection. The extensive listing of vegetarian and meat fillers dwarfed the number of bread options.

  The niece glanced down from the menu board to the stroller. Isabella was trying, without much success, to avoid her brother’s frantic movements inside the passenger compartment. Even her offended hiss, which had been used to cow dogs three times her size, had no effect.

  “Rupert,” the niece said, puzzled as she bent to the stroller. “I don’t know what you’re going on about. There’s no fried chicken in here.”

  But as she tried to calm Rupert’s fried chicken frenzy, an image on the far wall at the rear of the dining area caught her attention. She almost fell over when she saw the portrait hanging there.

  Standing, she grabbed the stroller’s handle and rolled it toward the picture. Rupert’s snorkeling gyrations reached near volcanic proportions as she approached.

  It was the painting, she realized, that contained the fried chicken scent
that had set off Rupert’s bloodhound nose.

  The familiar scene was a two-by-six replica of Arnautoff’s City Life mural.

  The niece dropped her gaze to the artist’s signature, scrawled in the bottom corner. The writing was obscured, save for the start of the first name.

  It was a large looping letter O.

  Stepping back, she scanned the crowded images painted across the canvas. She recognized the street characters she’d studied while standing in the mural room at Coit Tower, a wide range of busy San Franciscans going about their daily life. She found the street sign marking the intersection of Washington and Montgomery and located the fire truck for squadron number five. Across the upper horizon stretched the mismatched landmarks, the clue that had started her mural-themed odyssey—and originally led her to Leidesdorff Alley.

  And suddenly it hit her.

  “It’s a map,” she said excitedly. “It’s a map to the location of the tunnel.”

  The orientation of the landmarks had been intentionally skewed, she realized, to create a map to Leidesdorff Alley—or, more specifically, to the secret tunnel that ran beneath.

  As a Bohemian, Arnautoff must have known about the underground passageway that followed the city’s original shoreline. The clandestine group had likely used the tunnel to sneak around downtown San Francisco. The road map had been hidden in plain sight, the path revealed as soon as one shifted the street corner’s orientation to match that of the landmarks.

  The niece paused, reflecting. Who knew how many artistic geniuses had passed through the tunnel entrance in the basement beneath the Green Vase over the years?

  Her thoughts turned to the murdered intern. Had Spider realized the painting’s significance and its connection to the Green Vase? Had he found the tunnel? Is that why he had collected the picture of her uncle in front of the Coit Tower mural?

  Most important, she pondered, how had all of this led to his murder?

  She pulled out the photocopy of the original City Life mural that the Previous Mayor had given her at the start of her three-day journey. Holding the paper up to the wall, she stared at her uncle’s wizened face, and then shifted her attention back to the painting.

  It was a near-exact replica—but for two distinct discrepancies.

  The first difference was a white blob, tucked amid the pack of pedestrians standing by the newspaper stand and the caricature of Victor Arnautoff.

  The blob belonged to an albino alligator, who grinned toothily while being walked on a leash. A collar around the gator’s neck gave his name as “Clive.”

  Clive’s white nose pointed toward the painting’s second discrepancy, located on the opposite side of the newsstand.

  Where the original painting had shown an armed robber holding up a suited businessman, the copy depicted a different crime.

  The thief had been replaced by a female figure—a middle-aged woman in a demure blue cardigan, charcoal gray skirt, and sensible-heeled dress shoes.

  “She looks familiar,” the niece murmured down to Isabella. “Where have I seen her before?”

  Just then, Hoxton Finn staggered through the shop’s front door. He had left Humphrey the task of finding a parking space for the van and chased the niece down the alley on foot.

  He was rumpled from the run, dampened with a mixture of sweat and rain. His left foot throbbed with pain, but he ignored it, pushing through to the far wall, where the niece stood looking up at the painting.

  He followed her gaze—and nearly choked at the image.

  “It’s Mabel,” he gasped. “The Lieutenant Governor’s assistant.”

  Together the niece and the reporter stared up at the painting and its visual indictment.

  Mabel had reached around her victim, a young dark-skinned intern, to stab him in the chest.

  Instead of the robber’s gun, she held a blood-soaked knitting needle.

  Before either one of them could say another word, Hox’s cell phone began to ring.

  The news from City Hall was about to break.

  • • •

  A GHOSTLY FIGURE stood at the entrance to the sandwich shop, surveying the scene with satisfaction. With a last glance at the looping O on the painting’s bottom corner, Spider returned to the alley.

  From the stroller, Isabella watched as his spirit slowly faded, leaving just a whisper in the mist.

  Chapter 69

  THE NIGHT OF THE MURDER

  ABOUT A HUNDRED miles to the east, the State Capitol building was shutting down for the day. Government employees, lobbyists, and politicians packed up their briefcases, readying for their return home.

  In the modified closet that served as the Lieutenant Governor’s office, a lone figure sat at her desk, tidying a small stack of paperwork.

  After the interim mayor’s inauguration ceremony earlier that day, the Lieutenant Governor had waved a cheerful good-bye to his trusty assistant. Mabel had returned to Sacramento to squeeze in a few hours of work—and to type out her resignation letter.

  She glanced around the tiny bare office, scanning the worn carpeting and the ragged couch pushed against the far wall, giving the room a silent farewell.

  The time had come for her departure. A source at City Hall had phoned minutes earlier, relaying the news that the police had swarmed the mayor’s office suite. Rumors were circulating throughout the building that there’d been a case-breaking development in the Spider Jones murder.

  Mabel reached for her purse and carefully tucked her knitting inside. She knew what the police had found in the office.

  As she zipped the bag closed, she recalled the night she discovered Spider Jones slain at the top of the central marble staircase—or rather, she recalled the night she murdered him.

  • • •

  AS SHE’D TOLD the police, Mabel had stopped by her office after the board of supervisors meeting and logged on to her computer. She’d sent a few e-mails about the interim mayor results and had checked on a couple of apartment websites for her upcoming move to Sacramento.

  But there were a few details about that evening that she had withheld from the investigators.

  She was about to close up for the night when she’d noticed one of her file drawers slightly ajar. Puzzled, she’d pulled it open and scanned the contents. Several personnel files were missing. She quickly compiled a list—each missing file belonged to one of the mayor’s previous interns.

  Spider, she’d thought suspiciously, what have you gotten into?

  Leaving her computer turned on and logged in to the Internet, she’d taken the elevator downstairs to the basement.

  Quietly entering the cubicle room, she’d crept toward Spider’s desk. As expected, she found him bent over yet another secretive pile of documents. It was an activity that had been troubling her for the past few weeks.

  The intern’s preoccupation with the Coit Tower mural and its road map to the Leidesdorff tunnel had been a relatively harmless pursuit—although she imagined Oscar would have preferred not to have that secret revealed to the general public.

  But recently, she’d sensed Spider had switched his investigative efforts to a different topic. He’d started to look at her a little differently. There was a wary caution in his eyes. The missing files from her desk had confirmed her hunch.

  Hiding behind the row of cubicles, Mabel heard Spider’s cell phone ring. She eavesdropped on his conversation with the Previous Mayor, listening with increasing panic as he promised to share the results of his latest research with the seasoned politician.

  She believed Spider’s new project, the one he was about to divulge to his mentor, concerned a rash of disappearances among the outgoing mayor’s former interns.

  That was when she knew he would become her next victim.

  • • •

  HURRYING BACK TO the main hallway, Mabel found a janitor and asked him to deliver a note to the young man in the basement cubicle. Hastily scrawled but designed to read as if it were from the Previous Mayor, the message su
mmoned Spider to a meeting in the ceremonial rotunda at the top of the central marble staircase.

  Mabel then raced back to the mayor’s office suite and grabbed her knitting needles from her purse.

  She’d found the unique weaponry in an antique shop in Jackson Square. Fashioned during the Gold Rush days, the hidden knifepoint was concealed within the needle’s rounded tip. Meant to provide its owner with a sense of security on the rough-and-rowdy streets of the Barbary Coast, the knifed needle had become her instrument of choice, and she’d purchased several pair. The rounded metal rods were easy to hold and provided the perfect leverage for reaching around a victim and stabbing him in the chest—that is, if you were into that sort of thing.

  Needles in hand, Mabel strode silently to the ceremonial rotunda. She knelt behind the Harvey Milk bust and hid just before Hoxton Finn strode past.

  Then she waited for the intern.

  She heard Spider’s rubber-soled tennis shoes squeak against the marble steps, watched as his tall shadow summited the stairs, and prepared to make her move.

  Perhaps sensing the danger, Spider glanced apprehensively around the ceremonial rotunda, but he was no match for the stealth attack of the skilled assassin.

  With a few jabs of her blade, Mabel silenced the inquisitive intern forever.

  Chapter 70

  A PECULIAR HOBBY

  IT WAS A new experience for Mabel, killing out in the open in such a public space. There was an operatic quality to the act, a drama that she hadn’t expected.

  Over the years, she had disposed of many an intern, but never in so brazen a manner. She typically chose quiet, out-of-the-way locations, places where the bodies could discreetly decay without discovery. No one had ever questioned the disappearance of her victims. The interns were a disposable lot, their sudden absence readily explained away.

  It was a hobby of sorts, like knitting.

  But this time was different. Killing out of necessity, spontaneously and without her regular meticulous planning, had been both terrifying and invigorating.