Catnapped

by Gabriella Herkert

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? About what? Lying to me? Manipulating me? The whole dog-and-pony show you arranged? No wonder you weren’t worried about getting caught. There was no chance of that, was there? Of course not. What was I thinking?” I stepped around him and he reached out and grabbed me. I stared at his hand on my shoulder, then squinted up at him. He released me.

  “Last night, the call from the hospital. You scared me, Sara. And nothing scares me. I had to at least try to keep you safe.” He tucked my hair behind my ears. “I had to try.”

  My eyes stung.

  “I’m sorry. I should have been straight with you.”

  “Yes, you should have.” I cleared my throat. “Maybe, after the whole disaster at the hospital . . . Well, you might have had a legitimate reason. This time.”

  “So I’m out of the doghouse?”

  “I guess.”

  “Partners?” He held out his hand.

  “Partners.” We shook.

  “There’s only one real way to seal a deal like this.”

  “Really?” His eyebrows were raised, a half smile playing around his lips.

  “Food.” I led the way to the kitchen, stopping to take the disk out of my jeans which lay abandoned on the living room floor.

  I loaded the kitchen table with all the junk food I could find and poured lemonade while Connor booted up the laptop. He pushed the two chairs close on one side of the table and we peered at the screen together. We started with Masterson’s wills. I munched while Connor read.

  “Tell me about the players, Sara. You talked to them yesterday. What was your read?”

  Talk, I would admit to. Visit, not so much. There was such a thing as too much detail.

  “Just what I told you—the partner, Jepsen, was like a get-rich-quick infomercial without the class. He and Masterson went their own ways about a year ago. Henry didn’t take it well. He’s suing.”

  “The American way,” Connor said, turning another page.

  “Exactly. As for the kids, they both have records, although neither’s done any real time.”

  Connor peered at me over the paper, eyebrows arched. “Protected by Masterson senior?”

  “Maybe, but protection doesn’t stretch to financial independence. Both are in debt up to their armpits.”

  “What are the criminal records about?” Connor went back to reading.

  “Drugs. Brawls. Bad checks and DUI.” I shrugged. “A cornucopia of criminal activity.”

  “Something for everyone,” Connor agreed. Connor set the papers down and picked up his glass. “From what you told me the kids are no prize, so I get why the old man would disinherit them. But why leave everything to a guy who’s suing him?”

  “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Or in this case, a couple million. Do you think the kids know Dad is getting ready to end their lotto dreams? Maybe Masterson’s dead, not missing. If they knew he was getting ready to make a new will, they’d have plenty of reasons to get rid of him on a more permanent basis.”

  “I’d buy that if Masterson washed up on the tide. Dead works great. Missing doesn’t work at all. They can’t get the money and they can’t mend fences. If Masterson were dead, and the kids knew about the change in the will, the body would have turned up by now.”

  I sighed. He was right, much as I hated to admit it. Did I think the Masterson sons were capable of murdering their own father? In a New York minute. But without a body, they had nothing. Given the level at which they were living, I just couldn’t see them calmly waiting for Dad’s body to be found. If they had offed him, they would have called the cops anonymously to tell them where to find the body. It was a dead end.

  “Do you think Jepsen knows?” I asked. “Maybe Masterson did steal the company from the guy and wants to make it up?” The lemonade was a good match for the pretzels.

  “If he wanted to make it right, why wait for the will? It doesn’t get read until the guy dies. And it was never executed. It’s not a done deal.”

  “They started out together. Maybe the business dispute didn’t taint the friendship? Of course, Jepsen wasn’t exactly gushing with affection when I talked to him. Oh, God, I almost forgot.” I got up and went to find my jacket, returning to the kitchen to hand Connor Jepsen’s phone bill.

  “I picked this up when I was there.”

  “There?”

  Busted.

  “Office visit.”

  “An office visit where you happened to steal Jepsen’s mail?”

  “I prefer to think of it as reallocating the informational resource.”

  “You have had a busy day.” His eyebrows were raised. “What do you expect to find?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking about the call to Jeff Randall to get him to that alley. I knew the numbers would be older than that, but . . . well, it was there, and so I just thought . . .”

  “What the heck, he doesn’t really need his phone bill,” Connor suggested.

  “Something like that. I’d still like to know who he was calling. Maybe there’s a hit man on the list. Or a famous catnapper.”

  “Maybe.” Connor grinned, putting his arm along the back of my chair. I turned back to the computer and pulled up a directory of the disk’s files.

  Nothing jumped out at me. I started opening files. After five minutes we’d scanned all the files on the disk without learning a thing.

  “So, no trust document.” I was disappointed. “Think it’s a public record?”

  “Not if she did it during her life. It doesn’t have to be recorded.”

  “How do you know that? You a trust-fund baby, Connor?” Lemonade and chocolate brownies weren’t nearly as bad a combination as I’d feared. I took another bite.

  “You mean you didn’t marry me for my money?”

  I laughed. “I married you for your body.”

  “It’s hard being a sex object.” He sounded so oppressed I nearly choked.

  “I’m sure I can’t imagine how difficult it’s been for you, Connor. So what do you think happens to Millicent’s money if Flash doesn’t turn up?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it goes back where it came from originally. How did she end up with so much?”

  I nibbled a pretzel as I thought it over.

  “I guess I assumed she got it from Masterson, but maybe it was hers before. She could have come from money or hit it big in Vegas or something. You know, Connor, we could be completely off base here. Ever since that guy showed up dead, I’ve been all over the place with this case. Who is he? How does he connect to Flash? Is Masterson involved? Maybe we’re missing the point. Maybe we should follow the money.”

  “Makes sense. Flash is worth a bundle. So is Masterson. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. People have been killed for less than a million bucks.”

  “Right. So let’s assume for the moment that Millicent got her money from Masterson. Stock options, sexual favors, whatever.” I moved my chair so I could look at him without craning my neck.

  “I’m with you.” He rocked onto the back legs of the chair.

  “Where does the money flow from there? Jepsen and this other guy, Burke. But not his kids. Or at least, that’s the way the new will reads. Maybe Masterson was going to execute this will. Maybe he was going to change it. Lots of motive there.”

  “So we know who does and doesn’t benefit from Masterson’s money, but we should probably look at all the options,” Connor suggested.

  “Like?”

  “If Millicent had millions, why was she still working as a personal assistant?”

  I thought about that. If I hit the lotto, I’d give Morris my letter of resignation in bold print. Then again, what would I do after that?

  “Maybe Millicent was bored,” I said. “Maybe she liked working.”

  “Is Flash’s trust all the money she had? Her room . . . it didn’t look like she was on a spending spree.”

  The polyester suits, the crossword-puzzle books. He was right
. If Millicent had millions, she wasn’t spending like she did.

  “We need to know more about that trust.”

  “Ideas?”

  “The bank will know.”

  “They won’t tell us,” Connor said.

  “Don’t be too sure. Tomorrow I’ll make some more calls before I talk to the Masterson brothers.” I actually meant to see them again, but I didn’t want to put too fine a point on that. “If someone took Flash deliberately, it’s got to be about the money. If that’s true, why haven’t they called?”

  “Maybe they did,” Connor suggested.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Randall told us he doesn’t handle the money. If someone snatched the cat for cash, they’d call the checkbook.”

  I nodded. “We’re back to the bank.”

  “Roger that.”

  “I also want to go talk to this Burke guy, and I’ll need to run more comprehensive background checks on Stuart Masterson, his two kids, and Jepsen. Then I’ll check with Joe, an attorney in my office. Maybe he’s got an idea about how to find the terms of the trust.”

  “That’s a plan. I’ll do the interviews with you.”

  “No need. You’re going to be busy checking out these phone numbers.” I pointed at Jepsen’s bill. “I’d also like you to go see Sergeant Wesley, since you and he are such good buddies. We need to know if they’ve identified the alley guy.”

  “I can do that and still go with you to the interviews. You don’t know what these people are like. There’s a killer running around out there.”

  To say nothing of the weed-smoking thug or the lecherous alcoholic. I hadn’t told Connor about the Mastersons because I didn’t want him all wrapped around the axle, but I wasn’t in a big hurry to go bond with them again.

  “Okay, you take the Mastersons and I’ll take Burke. I couldn’t get much fairer than that, could I?”

  Connor laced his fingers behind his head and looked up at the ceiling as if considering. If he was suspicious of my sudden acquiescence, he didn’t say so. He dropped his chair back to the floor with a thud.

  “That still leaves Randall.”

  “I don’t think he knows anything about the corpse. Besides, it could have easily been him in that alley instead of me. For all we know, he was the target.”

  I drained the last of my lemonade before rising and putting my glass in the sink. Connor got up and started putting the food away.

  “We only have his word that there ever was a call.” Connor voiced the idea even as it occurred to me.

  “I know, but it doesn’t make any sense. If he were really up to something, why send me to that alley? And what does he have to gain? Nothing.”

  “There is another possibility.” Connor leaned against the counter, his expression grim.

  “I walked into a drug deal gone bad?”

  “Okay, so there are two more possibilities. Bad neighborhood, bad timing. Or, somebody wants this investigation over.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe they were afraid you’d come across something else, something completely unrelated to Flash’s disappearance. Or it could be that the cat’s up to his collar in something dangerous.” Connor smiled. “If you got arrested or hurt, what would happen to Flash’s case?”

  “Morris would reassign it.” I tipped my head back against the refrigerator, fighting a yawn.

  “To someone more likely to take the boss seriously when he says it’s a nothing case?”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “So the case would be over. The kids could go on stealing silver and Jepsen could go on trespassing and whoever could continue doing whatever.”

  “All of which works better if it’s Jeff Randall in that alley instead of me. Without somebody with a connection to the great and powerful Masterson pushing, there’s no way Morris would leave me on this case.” I closed my eyes, the intricacies of the case adding their weight to my fatigue.

  “Maybe things will look clearer in the morning.” Connor glanced toward the clock on the stove. “Which, by my calculation, will be here in exactly two hours and twenty-seven minutes.”

  “I probably only need an hour and twenty-seven minutes of actual sleep. You?”

  “I’m a Navy SEAL. I’ve been trained to forgo sleep in the name of duty.”

  “Hurray for duty.” I took his hand and led him into the bedroom.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The next morning the phone rang just as I was coming back from updating Morris. It had been a repeat of the previous day’s tongue-lashing without the limiting witness. Fun, fun, fun. I snatched up the phone, dropping into my office desk chair.

  “This is Sara Townley.”

  “The plot thickens.”

  “Con?” His voice played deliciously down my spine despite my no-sleep headache.

  “One of the numbers on Jepsen’s phone bill was a private investigator named Cort. He worked out of San Francisco.”

  “Worked?”

  “He doesn’t do anything anymore. Turns out he had a little trouble on his last business trip. Died in an alley.”

  “He’s the guy.”

  I slumped back in my chair. The dead man was now a person with a real name. I shivered.

  “Yep.”

  I picked up a pencil and started tapping it against the ceramic mug on my desk, trying to chime Cort’s image out of my mind.

  “So our dead guy, Cort, ties to Jepsen. What’s the date on that call, Connor?”

  “A week before you tripped over him.”

  “Any chance we can find out what he was working on when he died?” My pencil drumstick moved to the side of the phone, where it elicited a hollow click, click.

  “You think it’s something other than Flash?”

  “Jepsen looking for the cat doesn’t make any sense, Connor. Why would he care?”

  “Maybe Cort’s wife will know. I’ll try calling. The woman in his office wasn’t the chatty type. Anything more on who would care if Flash didn’t come back?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” I opened my top drawer, pulling a rubber band out and loading my pencil catapult for an assault over the cubicle wall on Joe, whose indistinct voice indicated that he was on the phone. “There’s a bank account. It’s in New York. I couldn’t verify the balance but it’s definitely there.” A return volley came over the cubicle wall, tinging against my abandoned teacup.

  “How did you get that?”

  “Billing records.”

  “So the trust exists.”

  “Yeah. There is something funny, though.”

  “Funny ha-ha or funny strange?”

  “The latter.” A rubber band pinged off my computer screen. I picked it up and zipped it back over the cubicle wall.

  “Well?”

  “There’s a newspaper article talking about the trust. It even mentions the two million.”

  Ping. Ping. Two more rubber bands whizzed into my cube, one missing my head by inches.

  “I called the paper. The guy who wrote the article is a freelancer and out of town, but I talked to a friend of mine over there. She checked their system. The fact-checker is an editor known as a tight-ass. If he approved the story, he knew it was true. Only one way I think he could know the facts were accurate.”

  “He saw the trust document.”

  “I think he must have.”

  “Will he share?”

  “Not with me, but my friend is going to see what she can find out. It still begs the question of who would give the trust document to the newspaper. Someone had to. I can’t imagine it was anyone here. Forget the secret lawyer code for a second. What would be the point?”

  “Meaning there’s at least one more copy floating around somewhere,” Connor added. “Here’s another one for you, Sara. How come Flash gets to stay in Masterson’s house?”

  “I thought of that, too. As near as I can tell, he gets to stay because no one ever objected.”

  “No one meaning Masterson.”

  �
�Right. The same Stuart Masterson who cannot be reached by phone, fax, or smoke signal. I spent an hour on the phone to his office today. Maybe I’m just not important enough, but no one claims to have seen him lately. I asked my reporter friend when I talked to her. It’s apparently a case of when you’re poor you’re weird, but when you’re rich, you’re merely eccentric.”

  A heavy sigh came through the line. I could picture Connor sitting on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table, head tipped to one side as he used his shoulder to cradle the phone. It would be nice to be there instead of chasing useless leads. I dug in my drawer for aspirin as Joe’s counterattack flicked off my hand with a sting.

  “What next?” he asked.

  “Talk to that private detective’s wife. Find out what Cort was doing in Seattle and why he was talking to Jepsen. It might also be interesting to see who else Jepsen was talking to in the last few days. Maybe find out if Cort’s appearance sent Jepsen scurrying.”

  “I could call the phone company. Pretend I’m Jepsen. Tell them I am having a problem with the bill.”

  “Good idea. You have a way with subterfuge. I like that in a guy.”

  He smiled. “It’s nice to be loved for my mind.”

  I smothered a laugh. “That, too.”

  “And what are you going to be doing, Mrs. McNamara, while I am getting cauliflower ear?” Mrs. McNamara. Weird. I switched the phone to my other ear, rubbing at the exposed one.

  “Well, Commander Townley, I plan to spend my time trying to track the source of the Flash trust story. I’d like to lay my hands on a copy of that trust document. It would be interesting to find out who inherits after Flash.”

  “Motive.”

  “Exactly. That detective ended up dead. It can’t be a coincidence.” Dropping the pencil, I pulled my laptop closer and clicked away from the spreadsheet I had left up to fool visitors; the report I had put together on the Flash case appeared before me.

  “You’re assuming the detective was killed because he was investigating Flash.”

  “Not really. There are hair balls aplenty around this case, and I’m not talking about Flash. There could easily be another reason Cort ended up dead, but it sure feels connected somehow. I don’t think waiting to be surprised is such a good idea.”