Gone, Kitty, Gone

by Eileen Watkins

  “Her . . . boyfriend’s cat came in third for Best in Show.” It was the first time I’d actually used that term to refer to Harry Bock. I tried to describe Looli to Jaki, but she apparently had never seen a Sphynx and couldn’t picture one. I went into my phone and pulled up the last, clearest shot I’d taken of Mom and Harry posing with the cat.

  “Oooh, that is weird-looking,” said Jaki. “’Course, I should talk—my cat’s got folded-down ears.”

  I laughed. “It’s personality that counts, isn’t it? Looli’s very sweet, which also helps in a show.”

  “Your mom’s pretty. She looks like you, but I guess her hair’s wavier and redder, huh?” Jaki handed back my phone. “My mom’s been wanting to come here and help with all that’s going on. But Dad thinks she’s better off staying home to keep an eye on Carmel.”

  “There’s a patrol car watching their house,” Mira told us, “so the two of them might be safer there, anyway.”

  Jaki’s mention of her mother and sister reminded me of something. “When we got interrupted earlier, you were telling me about people you might have had problems with when you were a kid. You said your family might remember better than you did. Were they able to think of any more?” I directed the last question to Mira, also.

  Jaki thought. “Maybe just one other . . . a guy Carmel reminded me about. Reminded isn’t even the right word, because he was hardly on my radar at all. Stefan Dumas.”

  “Another jerk?”

  “No, at least not like Larry. Just a very shy, nerdy guy who kind of dogged after me in high school. I never exchanged more than a few words with him.”

  Mira chimed in. “I remember him, too, but not well. Carmel said your brother might know more.”

  “Teo works for a travel agency in Jersey City,” Jaki said, “but by now he should be done for the day. Maybe I should call him.”

  She dialed and caught her older brother relaxing in his apartment. After she’d explained the reason for her call and he agreed to help, she asked, “Can I Skype you in?”

  Soon the image of Teo Natal, as good-looking in his own way as Jaki, filled the small screen of her phone. “Stefan Dumas? Man, I haven’t thought of him in years. Whad’ya want to know?”

  “Carmel said he had kind of a thing for me,” Jaki told him.

  “Oh, God, did he ever! Poor schlub. He kept begging me to fix the two of you up because he was too shy to ask you himself. But I knew you wouldn’t be interested, and anyhow, you were dating Larry. He would’ve pulverized Dum-ass.”

  Mira winced. “That’s right, everybody called him that, didn’t they? But he wasn’t really dumb.”

  “Naw, he got terrific grades. In math and science, anyway. Only made the jocks hate him more. Boy, he used to get the tar beaten out of him after school.”

  “Teo!” Jaki scolded. “I certainly hope you never did any of that.”

  “No, I didn’t, but I heard about it. His mother even came to talk with the principal once. But I guess she was such a b—. . . such a nasty person that she didn’t do Stefan any favors. Anyhow, the school never made much effort to track down the bullies or discipline them.”

  “And this went on all through high school?” I asked.

  “Almost. Until senior year.” A dry chuckle from Teo. “Then Dum-ass finally turned the tables.”

  “How?”

  “Again, I just heard this secondhand. One of the regular bullies, a guy from the football team, jumped him after school. Huge guy, but he ended up with a broken collarbone. Turned out that Stefan had taken up a new hobby, mixed martial arts.”

  I held my tongue, but Mira said it for me. “Oh. My. God.”

  “Yeah, right? Couldn’t blame him—he needed to defend himself. But I’ll bet that big kid never saw it coming.”

  “Teo, did you ever hear what happened to Stefan?” I asked. “Does he still live around here?”

  “Don’t know. He did mention, junior year, that he was applying to colleges. Wanted to study electrical engineering. So he might have gone out of state and stayed away.”

  Did we have time, I wondered, to do an Internet search for Stefan Dumas?

  “Is that it?” Teo asked us.

  “Yes.” Jaki sounded distracted as she signed off. “Thanks, bro. Love you.”

  Afterward, I commented to her, “An awful lot of coincidences.”

  “Maybe even more than you think. Can I see that picture you showed me on your phone, again?”

  “The one of the Jak-ettes?”

  She shook her dark head. “Of your mom and Looli.”

  I pulled it up again, and Jaki peered closely. Then used the zoom feature to isolate a background figure. “Damn, I think that’s him.”

  My heart gave a thud. “No, can’t be.... Really?”

  “Mira, whad’ya think?”

  Jaki’s cousin studied the image, and her sharp chin dropped. “Yeah, could be!”

  “I thought he looked kind of familiar, but I never would have made the connection,” Jaki said. “Of course, I can’t be sure after so many years. I’d need to see him walk and talk.... But this guy is wearing a tag. He’s Bradburne staff?”

  I nodded. “Though maybe his ID is as fake as his name. If it is your old admirer, he’s not Stefan ‘Dum-ass’ anymore. He’s calling himself Steve Rickert.”

  Chapter 18

  Jaki spread the word of our discovery to Detective Bonelli. Meanwhile, I called my mother. She wasn’t picking up, which concerned me a little. I left her a message.

  “Mom, please don’t hang around the hotel tonight. Go straight home with Harry and Looli, right now. And on your way out, if you see that hotel staffer, Steve? Don’t talk to him. Avoid him completely if you can. As they say on the cop shows, he’s a ‘person of interest’ in this whole mess. Call me when you’re on your way home, okay?”

  Bonelli showed up at my elbow. “You talked to this guy, Cassie. He was dressed like Bradburne staff? With an ID tag?”

  “I noticed today that the security guard at the theater door had a laminated tag. Steve’s is in one of these plastic sleeves on a lanyard”—I held up my own volunteer tag—“which you can get in any office supply store. It looked like the others, though, and even had his photo. . . .”

  “The Bradburne hired a bunch of extra guys a couple of weeks before the expo. Who knows how well they vetted them.... He’s going by the name Steve Rickert? We’ll see if he’s actually on their roster.”

  I had a troubling thought. “This might explain how the stalker knew I had a parent involved in the expo. I wonder, though, how he found out I was helping Jaki. Unless Mom or Harry let it slip, or he overheard them talking about it.”

  Bonelli nodded. “Or there’s another possibility. If he’s been able to switch off some of the security cameras, maybe he also can hack into some of them. He might be able to monitor the hall outside Jaki’s suite to see who’s coming and going.”

  I hoped in vain that she might be kidding, but her troubled expression told me she was dead serious. No wonder this guy always seemed to keep one step ahead of us!

  Jaki started her rehearsal then, a bit later than scheduled. Accompanied by just a keyboard player, a guitarist, and a drummer, she launched into another of her hits, “Shady Lady.” I’d heard the sassy pop-rock number before, on the radio. By comparison, Jaki’s performance tonight sounded a little anemic, and not just because of the spare accompaniment. Big surprise, though. I couldn’t imagine how she would keep it together during a ballad, much less a high-energy dance number, with all she had hanging over her head. If there was even the slightest chance that crazy Stefan might be somewhere out there in the audience, waiting to take a shot at her . . .

  Time for me to quit the edge of the stage for a more appropriate seat in the mostly vacant front row. The things I’d learned that afternoon left my mind spinning. I couldn’t believe that the seemingly nice, helpful, self-effacing guy who’d called Harry “sir” could possibly be the monster behind this scheme. Bu
t no one else fit the profile so well.

  Unless . . . could both Jaki and Mira possibly have misidentified him as Dumas?

  With a start, I remembered that we’d first run in to Steve when we were scoping out the convention center in advance. And so was he! He’d been wandering in and out of doors, some of which probably led to stairwells, and making notes on his iPad. He could have been planning how to hack the computer that afternoon, right in front of us, and we’d never have suspected.

  As far as I could remember, he’d been dressed like a worker but not wearing an ID tag that day. Other staffers already were wearing them, though. How hard would it have been for him to notice how they were designed and what information they included, then print a facsimile for himself? Who was likely to examine it really closely unless they had reason to suspect a problem?

  And low-key, boring Steve Rickert didn’t look like a guy who’d be a problem.

  My stomach rumbled, and I checked my watch. Five of six. Ages ago, it seemed, I’d promised to meet Mark at the restaurant at six for dinner. Before the rest of us knew . . . what we at least thought we knew now.

  No reason I shouldn’t go meet him. Bonelli and her cops are on the case. Jaki’s got protection around her, and nothing dangerous should happen until after she performs.

  Besides, it worried me that Mom hadn’t returned my last call. On the way to the restaurant, I’d stop by the cat show, which ought to be breaking up by now. Look in on her and Harry and make sure they were planning to head home, as I’d told them to.

  Would Steve be there? If he was the stalker, probably not. He had a big reunion planned with Jaki later on, and was probably off somewhere getting ready for it.

  I saw no sign of Mom or Harry on the cat show floor, and many of the competitors and their animals already had cleared out. On a hunch, I moved on to The Grove and found the two of them seated at a table, sharing a plate of hors d’oeuvres.

  When I asked Mom why she hadn’t answered her phone, she apologized. “It’s so noisy in here, I guess I didn’t hear the ringer.”

  “Where’s our prizewinning ‘pearl’?” I asked Harry.

  “I couldn’t bring her in here, of course,” he said, but with a proud smile. “She’s tucked away safely in a friend’s hotel room, having her own supper.”

  That put me on alert. “What friend?”

  “Nancy, the woman down our row who had the Maine Coons. She’s staying over another night, and said she’d be glad to keep an eye on Looli until Barbara and I had some dinner.”

  Mom must have noticed me eyeing the hors d’oeuvres they were sharing, stuffed mushroom caps the size of cupcakes. “Won’t you join us, Cassie? Pull up another chair—there’s an extra at that table.”

  I glanced around the crowded restaurant. “I’ll probably get flack if I do that. Actually, I was supposed to meet Mark here. . . .”

  “Oh, yes, he stopped by a few minutes ago. Said to tell you there was a problem at the clinic, some dog had a setback.” Mom’s temporarily unfocused gaze told me she was trying to remember his message exactly. “He hopes to make it back later for Jaki’s show, though, and he’ll call you.”

  By now I was starving, so I meekly asked the party of three at the next table if I could grab their extra chair. They gestured for me to take it, and I joined Mom and Harry.

  Half of the mushroom caps were stuffed with Parmesan cheese, the others with sausage. Combined with the hearty Italian bread in the basket, I hardly needed anything more. Which was just as well, I thought, because I might need to stay on my toes tonight.

  Mom told me, “I did listen to that very agitated message you left on my phone about half an hour ago. What was all that, about Steve—?”

  I cut her off with a wave of my hand. This noisy environment, where we had to raise our voices just to be heard by each other, was no place to discuss police business. “Not here, Mom. I’ll explain later. But do me a favor, both of you. As soon as you finish dinner, get Looli from Nancy, head for your car, and get out of here.”

  “Yes, you said that, but why—”

  I needed a creative fib. “There have been some more security issues because of that actor showing up, and they might affect the concert tonight. If there’s another blackout or alarm malfunction while Jaki’s performing, things could get dicey. Detective Bonelli herself told me that you two would be better off away from the hotel.”

  “And what about you?” Harry asked.

  I appreciated his concern; he wasn’t so bad, after all. “I’m going to stick close to Bonelli and her people, who are prepared to deal with whatever happens. Anyhow, I don’t have a prizewinning cat to worry about, and you do! If there is trouble, I may call Mark and also warn him off.”

  Harry sipped his white wine, then shook his head. “I don’t understand how this place could still be having so many electronic and security problems. The hotel has been in business for a year, so any bugs should have been worked out by now. Unless the new convention center has put more stress on the system. That did add another hundred thousand square feet . . . if you count the catering kitchen, though that isn’t even functional yet.”

  The catering kitchen, right!

  Did the cops think to search there? Did they even know about it?

  Trying to sound casual, I asked Harry, “Where’s that supposed to be located, anyway?”

  “I believe it’s somewhere at the south end of the convention center.” He chuckled. “I studied the layout of this whole place before we came, but since then I’ve spent most of my time at the cat show. You’ve probably seen more of the convention center and the concourse than I ever have.”

  It wasn’t possible, was it, that Bonelli’s crew had missed the unfinished area? If the complex was completely wired, wouldn’t some blip in the network let guards know if anyone unauthorized was going in and out of a space?

  Unless “Steve” figured out how to bypass those security cameras, too.

  Trying to be subtle, I glanced at my phone. No new messages, but it was nearly six-thirty. Just half an hour until Jaki would go onstage. I patted my lips with the sage green cloth napkin and pushed back my chair.

  “Thanks so much for sharing your appetizers with me, folks,” I said. “I need to get back and see if everything’s still on for tonight. Please do as I said, okay, and leave soon? I’ll explain everything tomorrow.”

  “You be careful, too, Cassie,” my mother called after me. “Don’t take any of your crazy chances!”

  I waved my hand as if this were nonsense, but had to admit that she knew me too well.

  Starting to feel a bit footsore in my dress shoes, even though they were flats, I crossed the hotel lobby, passed through the tall, automatic glass doors, and hoofed it back down the long concourse. Aside from the fund-raising concert, the cat expo had pretty much ended and most of the concessioners had cleared out. They and their customers had left behind just enough debris to make work for the maintenance staff, who efficiently pushed brooms and emptied trash cans. I thought it seemed a little early, but they probably had orders to make the concourse look clean and welcoming for the concert crowd.

  At a brisk pace, I passed the closed doors of the theater and kept going. Harry said the catering kitchen was to the south. How the heck can anyone figure out south when they’re inside a complex this big? But he did make it sound like it was away from the busier areas.

  I headed for the most remote corner, where it seemed no one would have any good reason to go.

  There, I passed one solid single door marked UTILITY CLOSET , then another labeled STORAGE, each with keypads below their latches. This looked like some type of service corridor, which might make a sensible location for the kitchen.

  At the very end stood a double-door entrance with no identification. The passage looked wide enough to roll out, say, a large rack or serving cart. Each door had a square window near the top, but both were covered from the inside with what looked like cardboard. The entrance had been blocked o
ff by a sawhorse that bore a sign lettered in bold black on orange:

  WARNING

  CONSTRUCTION SITE

  NO ADMITTANCE

  Bingo.

  The tiled floor just in front of the door wore a fine covering of dust, as if the cleaning crew didn’t bother to sweep behind the sawhorse. This let me know a couple of things:

  There probably hadn’t been a lot of construction workers tromping through there in a few days. But someone had come through, more stealthily, because the sawhorse had been shifted and replaced.

  A keypad on the wall to the right of the double doors nearly discouraged me. If it took a numerical code to enter, I wouldn’t know it, and I didn’t dare spend too much time trying various combinations. As I got closer, though, I saw that luck was still in my favor. Someone had stuck a rubber wedge in between the two doors to defeat the security system.

  I hesitated, knowing I might blunder into a dangerous situation. The covered windows prevented me from seeing if anyone was inside the space, and through the slim gap between the doors I glimpsed a dull glow. On the other hand, if the killer cat thief were already inside, he wouldn’t have had to prop the doors open. He would probably only do that if he’d stepped out and wanted get back in quickly. . . .

  Or if he’s expecting someone else who doesn’t know the combination. Someone like Jaki.

  I pulled out my phone but didn’t want to make a call that might be overheard. Instead I texted Bonelli; I told her I’d been passing by the kitchen-under-construction and wondered if her guys had checked it, because the door was jammed open. I waited a minute but got no response. She probably was busy tracking down some other lead.

  Maybe she’d already caught up with Steven/Stefan and was questioning him. That idea boosted my nerve.

  Holding my breath, I pushed one door inward just a little. The space that yawned beyond it was faintly lit by ceiling panels—probably some type of energy-saving, off-hours lighting. In its unfinished state, the area resembled a state-of-the-art hospital emergency room as much as a kitchen.