What the Cat Saw (13 page)
Authors: Carolyn Hart
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Women Sleuths, #Mystery & Detective
It was like coming around an outcrop on a mountain trail to find a sheer drop.
Dugan’s stare didn’t waver. “I understand you talked to her Friday night.”
In high school, Nela had once gone to Tijuana with a bunch of kids. She’d not realized they were going to a bullfight. She’d hated watching the bull pricked by tiny barbs. She’d bolted from the stands, waited on a hot dusty street until the others joined her. Now she felt one sharp jab after another and, like the bull, there was no escape for her from the arena. The detective must have quizzed each of the staff members about Chloe and Nela. Louise had been kind and welcoming but it was she who must have told Dugan that Nela had a key and knew there was no burglar alarm. Even though the director of publications had seemed genuinely interested in Chloe, Peter Owens must have revealed that Chloe called Nela Friday evening. Dugan was taking innocent pieces of information and building a case against her and against Chloe.
“You know how I see it, Miss Farley? The necklace was stolen before Miss Grant’s accident. What if Miss Grant knew Chloe took the necklace? What if she had some kind of proof? What if she told Chloe she was keeping that information in a safe place away from
the foundation? But Miss Grant’s unexpected death made things tricky.”
…board rolled on the second step
…
The detective’s accusatory words jabbed at Nela as her thoughts raced. Nela heard them, understood them, but she grappled with a far more deadly understanding. Marian Grant either stole the necklace herself or she knew who took the necklace. It had to be the latter. That’s why Marian Grant died. She must have told the thief that she had the necklace, that she’d put it in a safe place. She had not summoned the police. Perhaps she wanted to avoid more disturbing headlines about the foundation. Perhaps she wanted to use the possession of the necklace to block future attacks against the foundation. Perhaps she saw the necklace as a means of making the thief accede to her demands, whatever they might be. Perhaps she set a deadline for the thief to quit or confess. What if the deadline was Monday morning?
…board rolled on the second step
…
Dugan threw words like rocks. “Maybe Chloe thought the information was in the apartment and that’s why she volunteered to take care of the cat. Maybe she looked and looked with no success. Maybe she worried all the way to Tahiti and called you and said you had to look for her. Once again we get the pattern. You dial nine-one-one and claim a break-in and that sets it up for the office search to look like someone else must have done it.”
Nela wanted to shout that Dugan had everything wrong. She was looking for a vandal and a thief. She should be looking for a murderer.
Marian Grant had been murdered.
Nela opened her lips, closed them. What was she going to tell this hard-faced woman? That she’d looked into a cat’s eyes and seen
his thoughts?…
board rolled on the second step
…She could not claim to have special information. She could imagine Dugan’s response to a claim that a cat had seen a skateboard. Yet now she felt certain that she knew the truth of that early-morning fall.
Nela wasn’t ready to deal with the reality that she knew what was in a cat’s mind, if reality it was. Not now. Maybe never. However the vivid thought had come to her—a psychic intimation, a reporter’s intuition, a funny split instant of a memory of a teenage Bill and his skateboard tangling with her climb up steep steps to a dead woman’s apartment—she couldn’t share that knowledge.
Yet she had to face the truth that a skateboard on the steps, removed after Marian’s fall, inexorably meant that Marian Grant’s death was no accident. But if Nela suggested murder, Dugan would likely add murder to the list of Chloe’s supposed crimes.
Dugan was quick to attack. “You have something to say?”
“Yes, I do.” Nela spoke with determination and confidence. “Chloe is innocent. I am innocent. I don’t know what’s behind the things that have happened at the foundation. Chloe never even mentioned the vandalism except for the girl’s car. She seemed surprised that she quit.”
Dugan raised a skeptical brow. “Your sister never mentioned the vandalism to you?”
Nela wondered how to explain a free spirit to the fact-grounded detective. “She talked about Leland and what they were doing. Chloe never thinks about bad things. She’s always upbeat. You’re right that something bad is going on at the foundation, but it doesn’t have anything to do with Chloe or me. I agree”—her tone was grave—“there’s something very wrong here. I think the theft of the necklace was part of the other things, not because it was worth a lot of money.” And Marian Grant died because she knew the identity
of the thief. But that she couldn’t say, not without admitting she could, at this very minute, lead police to the necklace, which would likely result in her prompt arrest.
Dugan looked sardonic. “Nice try. Turning on a sprinkler system isn’t in the same league as heisting jewelry worth a couple of hundred thou. Besides, if the necklace wasn’t stolen for money, why take it? I’ve been a cop for a long time and, like a good coon dog, I know the real scent when I smell it.”
Nela shook her head. “It isn’t just the necklace. There was too much destruction in Miss Grant’s office.”
Dugan looked puzzled.
“There was fury. It wasn’t just a search.”
Dugan’s smile was bleak. “Camouflage. Just like the baskets and the sprinkler and the fountains.”
8S
teve Flynn’s strong stubby fingers flew over the keypad. He was nudging the deadline, but he still had ten minutes. He’d fallen back into the routine as if he’d never been away, the early pages locked down around two, late-breaking news up to four. His six years on the
LA Times
until he was let go in one of the wholesale newsroom firings seemed like a mirage. Maybe they had been. Most of that life had been a mirage. Especially Gail. He felt the familiar twist, half anger, half disbelief. So much for ’til death us do part. Maybe that phrase ought to be dropped from modern weddings. Maybe the vows should read,
I’ll stay until something better comes along.
Or,
been good to know you, but my way isn’t your way
. When the call came about his dad’s stroke, he had told her he needed to go back to Craddock to run the
Clarion
. Somebody had to do it unless they sold the newspaper that had been founded by his great-grandfather. His brother Sean was a surgeon in Dallas. Sean had
never been drawn to the business while Steve had grown up nosing around the newsroom. He tried to explain to Gail about the paper and family and keeping a flame alight in the little town they loved. Gail stood there within his reach, close enough to touch, but she receded like the tide going out. Oh, she’d been kind. Or thought she had, her words smooth…
felt us growing apart for a while
now…have such a great future here…got a callback today…The producer wants to see more of me…wish you the best of luck
…
He’d been back a little over a year and the divorce had been final for six months.
He returned to the screen, his fingers thumping a little too hard on the keyboard. He finished the story, glanced at the time. Four more minutes. He scrolled up.
A gold and diamond necklace valued at approximately $250,000 was stolen from the desk of Haklo Foundation Trustee Blythe Webster sometime between Jan. 4 and 5, according to Craddock Police Detective K. T. Dugan.
Detective Dugan said the necklace was an original work of art created by Tiffany & Co. for Miss Webster’s father, Harris Webster, who established the foundation.
The theft was revealed Monday when police were called to the foundation to investigate a possible break-in. Detective Dugan said the foundation had been entered, apparently over the weekend, and the office of late employee Marian Grant vandalized.
Detective Dugan said Miss Webster had not previously reported the theft of the necklace because she wished to avoid further negative publicity for the foundation, which has been attacked by vandals several times, beginning in September. Incidents
include a car set afire in the foundation employees’ parking lot; destruction of valuable Indian baskets; activated fire sprinklers in an office resulting in property damage; and water turned on, then off in an outdoor fountain, causing frozen pipes. The car fire occurred Sept. 19 during office hours. Other incidents occurred after hours.
According to the police report, the office vandalized this weekend had been occupied by Grant, who was chief operating officer at the time of her death, Jan. 9. Miss Grant, a jogger, was found dead at the foot of her apartment stairs, apparently the victim of a fall. Police said the fall may have been caused by new running shoes. Police said Miss Grant customarily jogged early every morning.
Police received a 911 call at 11:40 a.m. Monday from Rosalind McNeill, Haklo Foundation receptionist. In the call, Mrs. McNeill reported that an office was trashed, papers thrown everywhere, file cabinets emptied, the computer monitor cracked, and furniture overturned.
According to police, Mrs. McNeill said the office had not been emptied of Miss Grant’s belongings and there was no way to determine if anything was missing.
Detective Dugan declined to suggest a motive for the invasion of the office.
The detective also declined to speculate on whether the damage to Miss Grant’s office was connected to a reported break-in early Saturday morning at the dead woman’s apartment at 1 Willow Lane. A 911 call was received at 1:35 a.m. According to the police report, the call was placed by Cornelia Farley, a temporary employee of the foundation who was staying at the apartment to care for the late resident’s cat. Miss Farley told police she awoke
to hear sounds of a search in the apartment living room. She called 911. When police arrived, no trace of an intruder was found, but Detective Dugan said a desk had been searched and the living room was in disarray. Detective Dugan said it was unknown if anything had been removed from the apartment.
The Haklo Foundation issued a statement: “Operations at the Haklo Foundation remain unaffected by the series of unexplained incidents, which apparently are the work of vandals. Blythe Webster, foundation trustee, announced today a reward of $100,000 for information leading to the apprehension and conviction of the vandals. Miss Webster will personally fund the reward. No foundation monies will be used. Miss Webster emphasized that she and all the employees will not be deterred from the execution of their duties by this apparent vendetta against the foundation.”
Detective Dugan said the investigation is continuing.
W
hen he came home to the
Clarion
, Steve had insisted he was a reporter. There were five of them in the newsroom. He glanced around the room, gray metal desks, serviceable swivel chairs, maps of the county on one wall, a montage of early-day black-and-white photographs of Craddock on another.
At the far desk, Ace Busey looked older than Methuselah, with a lined face and drooping iron gray mustache. Ace still smoked, but he covered city and county politics like a burr on a horse’s back, darting out of meetings long enough to catch a drag when he was certain nothing was going to pop. He’d never been wrong yet.
Freddi Frank nibbled on a cinnamon bun as she made notes. Freddi ran the Life section: houses, gardens, recipes, and women’s
groups, any spare inches allotted to wire coverage of the glitterati currently atop the celebrity leaderboard. Freddi was unabashedly plump and amiable, and her Aunt Bill’s candy was the centerpiece of the staff Christmas party.
The sports desk was unoccupied. Joe Guyer could be anywhere: at a wrestling match, covering a high school basketball game, adding clips to his old-fashioned notebook. Joe worked on a laptop but he continued to distrust the electronic world. Balding, weedy, and always in a slouch, he had an encyclopedic memory of sports trivia, including facts large and small about the Sooners football team. He could at any time drop interesting tidbits: the first OU football game in September 1895 was played on a field of low prairie grass near what is now Holmberg Hall; the Sooners beat the Aggies seventy-five to zero on November 6, 1904 in their first contest; 1940 quarterback Jack Jacobs was known as Indian in a tribute to his Creek heritage; in 1952 halfback Billy Vessels was the first OU player to win the Heisman Trophy.