Gone, Kitty, Gone

by Eileen Watkins

  Mom whispered to me, “You could do that stuff for Nancy’s cats the same as she does, couldn’t you, Cassie?”

  “Thank God, most of my customers don’t ask for all that. They just want their pets clean, neat, and free of any mats or tangles. I only helped someone prep a cat for a show one time, and like you say, it was much more work.”

  “I’ll bet they paid you more, though,” Harry put in, with a shrewd smile. “You could probably hire yourself out at a show like this and name your own price.”

  Mom apparently had grown bored with the cat chat, because she asked me, in a quiet tone, “Cassie, maybe you can tell us—is there something strange going on? An official came through here a few minutes ago and said all people leaving today with their cats—not staying over at the hotel—would have to be cleared by a security guard at the exit. I can understand why they’d inspect us when we come into a big event, but when we’re leaving?”

  I felt Harry’s eyes on me, too, as they both waited for my answer.

  “I did hear they were going to be checking people, but I don’t really know what’s up,” I fibbed, as I’d been told to. “Could be that a cat’s gone missing, and they want to be sure no one is leaving with more than they came with.”

  Mom glanced at Harry. “Does that happen often?”

  “Never heard of such a thing before,” he said. “These cats all have microchips and paperwork. Be crazy to steal one—you couldn’t breed or show it. Not legitimately.”

  “Guess there are some crazy people out there.” Fondly, I handed Looli back to him. “Well, I’m meeting Mark, Becky, and Chris back at the food court to grab a quick dinner. Can I bring you two anything?”

  Mom shook her head. “We’ll probably stop somewhere in town after we wrap up here.”

  “Providing we pass the security check,” Harry added, with a frown.

  * * *

  I met up with my friends at a concession stand that sold light food, and we got wrap sandwiches and soft drinks. Chris arrived last, explaining that he had to wait for Glenda to come back to watch the FOCA table.

  “She keeps making excuses to leave for, like, fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch,” he complained. “I don’t get that lady. If she’s so darned devoted to her job, why doesn’t she spend more time doing it?”

  “You should ask her that,” Becky said.

  “I did, tactfully, but she just makes one lame excuse after another. I don’t want to give her too hard a time, because I don’t want to get slugged.” He chuckled darkly. “That chick must have a good twenty pounds on me, and it’s all muscle.”

  Mark, not having met Glenda, just raised an eyebrow, but Becky and I laughed.

  The four of us pulled up chairs around one of the metal café tables provided. While we ate, we tried, in hushed tones, to make sense of what had happened with the death of the security guard and the theft of Jaki’s cat.

  I told them I’d done some sleuthing around at the cat show, but it was impossible for me to tell if the missing Gordie might be stashed anywhere among the entries.

  Mark played the skeptic. “Jaki seemed convinced that something bad was going to happen even before she came here today, and I’m sure the blackout and fire alarm fed right into those fears. She probably freaked out over nothing. I’ll bet her cat was already in her room by the time she went back up there.”

  Chris nodded. “I’d be a lot more worried about whether somebody actually offed that security guard.”

  “But what if the two incidents are connected?” I chewed a mouthful of my turkey wrap, thoughtfully, before telling the others what Perry had confided to me. “Jaki’s been getting threats. That was the reason for all of the extra security this weekend. She seemed to feel that she had at least one serious stalker. Now she probably thinks that person has taken her cat to gain leverage over her. And she could be right.”

  “Or somebody might be planning to hold Gordie for ransom,” Becky suggested. “Everyone who follows Jaki on social media knows how attached she is to him.”

  “Alec gave her the cat,” I recalled. “Now that they’ve split and Jaki wrote that snarky song about him, maybe he’s taking Gordie back to punish her.”

  Chris scoffed. “Alec MacMasters is in California, probably busy shooting another season of Galaxy Wars.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t do it himself, of course. He’d hire somebody.”

  Still, Mark sounded doubtful. “Somebody hard-core enough to kill a guard who got in the way?”

  “That would be pretty extreme,” I admitted. “But maybe something went wrong. Apparently the ME couldn’t tell exactly how the guard died. Maybe somebody shoved him aside and he fell down some stairs . . . and landed the wrong way.”

  Becky lifted her eyes to gaze over my shoulder. “Well, if there’s anybody who’s got better information, Cassie, she’s standing right over there.”

  I looked around to see Detective Angela Bonelli, of the Chadwick PD, about twenty feet from us and conferring with one of her officers. I hesitated and asked Mark, “Should I?”

  He knew my track record of sticking my nose into Chadwick police business and that I was almost pals with Bonelli. “Might as well. If she doesn’t want you involved, I’m sure she’ll tell you flat out.”

  I stood up near my chair, far enough away not to eavesdrop on Bonelli’s conversation with the balding, uniformed cop whom I recognized as Officer Mel Jacoby of the Chadwick force. The fortyish detective looked a bit preppier than usual today, in chinos, loafers, and a teal-striped blouse along with her regulation navy blazer. But her dark, bobbed hair and strong-featured profile communicated all business, as usual.

  After Officer Jacoby gave a brisk nod and strode purposefully away, Bonelli paused to jot a note in the small vinyl-covered pad that she seemed to carry everywhere. I approached, but before I could speak, she glanced up and favored me with a crooked smile. “Ah, Cassie. I’ve been looking for you.”

  “You have?” I couldn’t possibly be a suspect, could I?

  “We’ve been trying to talk to people who were in the conference room audience today when the excitement occurred. Perry Newton, the promoter of this extravaganza, said you and your friends were present, too.”

  “Yes, we were.” I glanced toward the small table where my group still sat. “Though we were standing all the way in the back.”

  “Might’ve been a good place to observe things. Did you notice anyone in the crowd behaving suspiciously?”

  Tough question. “Not really, under the circumstances. There were a lot of Jaki fans whispering to each other, taking pictures with their phones, and probably sending them to friends. Nobody skulking around like a terrorist. Perry told me they found a security guard dead. Do they know yet how he died?”

  “It’s still under investigation. The full autopsy might take a couple of days. Meanwhile, we’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread that information around.”

  “We won’t, but . . . Do you think it had anything to do with the blackout and the fire alarm?”

  “As I said, we’re still looking into it.”

  “Someone said he was found in a stairwell. Do those areas have security cameras?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Most hotels put them in the elevators, but there are so many stairwells that they usually don’t think it’s cost-effective. Would be helpful to us if they did.”

  Bonelli always played it close to the vest, even with me, this early in an investigation. Still, I felt sure the incidents must be connected, if only because the cat had been whisked away. “Did Gordie turn up?”

  The detective looked blank. “Who?”

  “Jaki’s cat. She said that, during all the chaos in the dark, he vanished along with his carrier. Mom told me hotel security plans to check everybody leaving the show today.”

  “Riiight, Newton did mention that someone took off with the cat—I guess he also told the hotel to keep an eye out for it. Probably was just a hotel staffer, trying to be helpful. Jaki may ev
en have the cat back by now.”

  I could see that, sharp as Bonelli usually was, she had not connected the disruption of the interview with the cat’s disappearance. “Jaki really loves Gordie, and she was extremely upset when we saw her in the parking garage. It’s possible the whole thing was staged so somebody could steal him. Somebody who knew it would send her into a tailspin.”

  Bonelli’s features went through a sequence of expressions I had seen in the past—she wanted to dismiss my theory, then realized it had some merit. She tapped a series of numbers on her cell phone and waited. “This is Detective Angela Bonelli. I’m downstairs on the concourse, and someone just reminded me that Jaki’s cat went missing during the blackout. Has it been located yet?”

  I glanced again toward the table where my friends sat, and Mark caught my eye. He must have overheard, because he gave me a half smile and a thumbs-up.

  “Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . .” said Bonelli. “Yes, I’m sure she is. Yes, we definitely will. I’ll be in touch.” She ended the call. “Still no sign of the cat.”

  “That’s it,” I said, aware that I might irritate her if I sounded too cocky. “That’s got to be the motive. Find Gordie, and you’ll have the person who blacked out the ballroom and triggered the false alarm. And maybe killed the security guard.”

  Bonelli hesitated. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but if it’ll help to squelch any rumors . . . There’s no indication that it was murder. We didn’t find any weapon, just a bruise on the guy’s throat. He could have been walking down the stairs when the lights went out, took a tumble, and fell against something. . . maybe the handrail.”

  I considered this. “But why would he be in the stairwell in the first place? Maybe he saw someone acting suspicious who ran in there, and he was chasing them. Even if the guard did fall, maybe he had some help.”

  “That’s always possible, which is why we’re still investigating. At any rate, we can’t be sure yet that his death had anything to do with the disappearance of the cat. This case seems to have a lot of moving parts—I’m not expecting any simple answers.”

  “You can start by checking out the cat show entries,” I suggested. “I was down there a little while ago, looking in cages, but I had to be discreet. The cops could—”

  “Yes, we can, though I don’t know how much good it will do.” Bonelli frowned. “If this person is as smart as you seem to think—figured out how to hack into the hotel’s lighting and alarm systems, and how to kill a man with no evidence of a struggle—they won’t be sitting around the ballroom with the cat in a carrier. They’d have left the hotel before we even had a chance to put out the alert. Which means they could be anywhere. . . and anyone.”

  Chapter 8

  Becky and Chris headed back to FOCA to return Ray, my afternoon demo cat, and Mark and Dave took Ginger back to the veterinary clinic. Before splitting up, we all speculated as to whether we’d be expected to do our demos again tomorrow. We decided we’d stick to the agreed schedule unless someone called and told us the programs were canceled.

  On my way out of the hotel, I observed a long line of people with pet carriers at the main exit. It reminded me of an airport security checkpoint, as a Bradburne staffer in the standard gray polo and black pants peered closely at each feline and perused its papers before letting it leave the building. I wondered how long my mother and Harry would get hung up by this inspection, yet outside on the plaza, before I’d even reached my van, I saw Harry’s BMW glide out of the parking garage.

  I waved him over to the curb, and my mother rolled down the passenger side window. “You two must have been the first ones out of there,” I teased.

  “We bent the rules a little,” Mom said with a wink. “One of the hotel staffers showed us a back way out to the garage.”

  “Really? Should he have done that?” I worried that someone less honorable than Mom and Harry might get the same idea.

  “Oh, he knew we were just leaving with the same cat we came in with. Maybe he felt sorry for us because we’re old codgers.”

  “Barbara!” said Harry, sounding shocked.

  I laughed. “You’re hardly that. Anyway, as long as you got a break, I won’t hold you up. Have a good evening.”

  “You, too, honey,” Mom said, before they cruised away.

  I pondered the idea that even the hotel guys on the floor at the cat show didn’t seem to know any type of serious crime had been committed. Maybe that was intentional on the part of the cops. I was glad I hadn’t told my mother and Harry the whole story.

  Before I could drive off the property, I had to let a female guard check the inside of my van, including all the built-in compartments. She was vague about the reason for the search. I could have gotten huffy and told her to call Perry Newton, who I’m sure would have let me off the hook, but I really didn’t mind. I was glad to see them making some effort to find Gordie.

  When I reached my shop, I was way more tired than I should have been at seven p.m. At least the road crew seemed to have quit on time and even made an effort to leave the driveway clear for me to get into my rear parking lot. They must have assumed I’d only be driving the tidy little CR-V parked back there. They either didn’t notice, or forgot, that I’d left that morning in the monster van.

  I pulled the van’s nose right up to the available opening, parked there, and got out to assess my chances. A hair too far left or right and I’d scrape either the shovel of their massive backhoe or the equally massive elm tree at the edge of my neighbor’s property.

  I gritted my teeth. So far I’d been able to avoid leaving the flashy vehicle parked on the street overnight. I don’t know what I was afraid of—it had a secure lock and an alarm, and there wasn’t really anything of value inside it to steal, but maybe someone would think there was. A greater threat might be a driver who’d been drinking or dozing behind the wheel, who might slam into it and then drive away. After all the money I’d spent customizing the thing, I dreaded not only paying for the repair but patching up the fancy paint job.

  On the other hand, a thief or a drunk driver was a remote danger. Scraping the paint by trying to get in the driveway, under the present circumstances, was almost inevitable. If I didn’t do it on the way in tonight, I surely would when I drove out tomorrow. And even if I made it into the lot now, the road crew could start work before I left tomorrow and block me in.

  That decided it. My flashy vehicle with its prancing Persian on the side would have to spend tonight parked in front of the house two doors down . . . which had been spared any construction activity so far. The resident was an older guy who mostly kept to himself and didn’t seem to go out much; I doubted that he would complain. At any rate, I made sure not to encroach at all on his driveway.

  Sarah had left by now. She had her own set of keys, so she’d been able to let herself into the shop at nine and lock up when she left at five. I hadn’t scheduled any customers for grooming over this weekend, because I didn’t want Sarah to have to handle those jobs alone. Most cats fussed at least a little and needed two sets of hands to manage them.

  In the early days, when I’d been grooming solo, I’d had to use a harness much more often. I’d tried out several other assistants—some younger and supposedly with training and experience—before Sarah had come along. Her unflappable temperament, from decades of teaching math at an inner-city high school, qualified her more than anything else to work at Cassie’s Comfy Cats. Our typical customer came with four sets of claws, sharp teeth, and lightning reflexes, and could twist himself around in your hands like a Slinky. Sarah had needed those steely nerves of hers, especially while she was still learning the job.

  At this stage, she probably could deal with a more compliant feline on her own, but if anything did go wrong, a cranky owner might take issue with the fact that Sarah wasn’t certified as a groomer, which I am. No sense setting her up for any type of trouble—she’d have plenty to keep her busy, dealing with the boarders and any drop-in customers. Though we�
�d been having fewer of those, too, since the road work had started.

  Once inside the shop, I found a message on my front counter phone from my neighbor Mrs. Kryznansky. That didn’t surprise me much, since Sarah had prepared me for the woman’s complaints.

  “Ms. McGlone, I know you have contacts with the local police. Can you get them to stop this awful noise and disruption on our street? I actually had a picture fall off my wall the other day from that terrible drilling! I asked the head man how long it’s supposed to go on, and he said they’ll be working on our street all month. How is that allowed? I’m hoping there’s something you can do.... Thanks!”

  I shook my head over the message. The jackhammers were done, anyway, so her pictures should stay in place from now on. And annoyed as Adele Kryznansky might have been, at least she didn’t have cats from four paying customers staying on her ground floor and getting agitated by the din. Plus, I knew all too well that the Chadwick police had more urgent problems to deal with right now. I didn’t look forward to the road work stretching out all month, either, but removing and replacing a mile or so of deteriorated sewer line was a big job. Afterward, I supposed they’d also be rebuilding the curbs and the sidewalks, though at least that should be less noisy.

  On the sales counter next to the phone, I found a handwritten note from Sarah—her graceful, legible schoolteacher penmanship put mine to shame. She told me everything had gone smoothly that day, and a repeat customer wanted to bring his cat in the following Monday to board. She also hoped I’d had a fun, “star-studded” experience at the expo.

  Poor Sarah’s doing her usual half shift for me tomorrow, with all the disruption outside and the complaints from Mrs. K. I’ll make it up to her and pay her for a whole day. And just maybe, if I can talk to Bonelli at a less-than-frantic moment, I’ll ask if anything at all can be done about the road work noise.

  Perry nailed it, didn’t he? I always end up being the problem solver.