Hoppy Holiday Homicide

Chapter Fifteen

Dad returned with his car first, and Charles arrived shortly thereafter.

“Okay,” I told everyone before departing, though Mr. Milton had still not returned. “We’re looking for a white cargo van. The license plate may be too muddy to read or maybe they’ve given the car a wash since then. The truth is we don’t have anything more than that. It’s a definite long shot, but right now it’s all we have to go on.”

“Right-o,” Dad said, touching his index finger and thumb together to make the okay signal. “Let’s go get our girl.”

I opened the passenger side door to Charles’s sedan, and Paisley hopped right in. He picked her up and placed her on the backseat while I sat down carefully and arranged Octo-Cat on my lap.

Although my cat was much better about riding in the car now, sometimes his claws would still dig into my thighs if the driver took turns too hard or went too fast.

As soon as I had my seatbelt pulled securely over my lap, Charles gunned it. “Which way do you want to turn?” he asked me, moving us along quickly toward the main road.

All I had now was intuition and what I hoped might turn out as lucky guesses. For whatever reason, something tugged me toward the left.

We drove slowly through the well-trafficked areas while scanning every parking lot for a sign of our white van.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said after a ten-minute period that seemed to drag on for an eternity. “If they were smart enough to orchestrate a kidnapping, then they’re smart enough to get the heck out of Dodge.”

“Maybe,” Charles agreed, continuing to maneuver the streets of Glendale unperturbed, “but we still have to try.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” I said, continuing to search in silence.

Octo-Cat surprised me by pressing his two front paws to the base of the window and joining our search. His fuzzy little head whipped back and forth with determination. Would he be the one to find her?

If we were still searching after dark, he likely would. After all, he was the only one of us who could see well in the dark.

Oh, how I hoped it wouldn’t come to that!

The longer it took, the higher the risk to Mags. We should have had her by now. She shouldn’t have ever been taken.

“Mommy,” Paisley yipped from the backseat. “I can’t see. I can’t see, and I want to help.”

“Has she spotted something?” Charles asked, answering her bark.

“No,” I translated without pulling my eyes away from the street. “She can’t see anything back there and wants to help.”

Charles patted his lap with one hand. “Oh, well then come here, girl. C’mon.”

Paisley didn’t need to be told twice. She vaulted from the backseat into Charles’s lap where she now stood with her paws against the door in the same position as Octo-Cat.

“There are so many cars!” she remarked. “But only one of them took Mags.”

“Obviously,” my cat droned, but Paisley ignored him.

Charles kept driving straight. If we didn’t turn off, we would eventually wind up in Cooper’s Cove. Might the kidnappers have taken Mags there?

My eyes strained and the left one began to twitch as I felt my pulse boom beneath it. My brain stayed equally busy. So much was going on, it had become difficult to keep my head straight.

Two people had been killed, but the murderer may have only meant to take a single victim. Mags was kidnapped shortly thereafter, but the kidnappers may have meant to take me instead. We didn’t know if the same person—or persons—had committed both crimes or whether it was just a big ol’ coincidence they occurred so close together. I had no idea who would want to take me, who would want to hurt the judges, or where Mags could be.

It all felt like far too much.

And while investigating murders was often harrowing, we weren’t usually racing against a clock. The dead would stay that way, no matter how long it took us to solve the murders, but Mags could still be saved.

“I don’t like it when you do that,” Octo-Cat said, turning to look back at me, a sneer on his little kitty face.

“Do what?” I said innocently.

“When you get all panicky. I can smell it, and it’s not a good smell.”

“You mean my stress hormones?”

“Whatever you want to call them. They’re pretty disgusting, and anyway, you always do so much better when you’re able to look at a situation logically. The moment you start freaking out is the moment you’re working with a disadvantage.”

Well…

I was dumbfounded by the insight of his observation and needed a moment to decide how to respond.

Octo-Cat, however, kept going. “We’ve solved how many cases together now? This has got to be number ten or something near that, and each of those times no matter what happened, you figured it out. Well, usually it was me who played the most instrumental role, but you were there, and you helped, just like good assistants do. You’d be of a lot more assistance to me now if you just took a moment to get a grip already. You can treat it like an episode of Law & Order. First, we need to solve the crime, and then we can worry about getting justice for the victims.”

He hummed a melodic beat that I believed was meant to be the Law & Order sound—dun dun—and although I didn’t think everything in our lives could be likened to an episode of his favorite show, this time my cat was absolutely right.

I’d let myself become too fixated on what could happen next. I needed to shift my focus to what we already knew, what had already happened, and then go forward from there.

Taking his advice, I took several deep, steadying breaths as I reviewed the facts of both cases in my mind.

“What are you thinking about?” Charles asked from beside me, chancing a quick glance in my direction while we continued on the road to Cooper’s Cove.

“I’m going over everything we know and trying to look at things logically rather than letting my worry for Mags cloud everything.”

“So you’re relaxing a little?” he asked with a slight grin.

“I’m still crazy worried,” I admitted with a sigh, “but I need to put that aside for everyone’s benefit. Octo-Cat reminded me of that.”

Charles reached over and patted Octo-Cat’s head while moving his other hand to the top of the steering wheel. “He’s a good cat when he wants to be.”

“Yes he is,” I agreed, smiling over at the tabby. “Yes he is…”

“So tell me what you’re thinking,” Charles continued. “Any fresh insights?”

I stayed silent for a minute as I gathered all my thoughts. “I just don’t see a way that the murders and kidnapping can be linked other than the location, which I believe is a coincidence.”

“Makes sense,” he said. “Go on.”

“I don’t even think that both of the murders were planned, so it would be a stretch to add the kidnapping on top of that.”

“And you’ve made a lot of enemies over the last year and a half,” Octo-Cat reminded me with a quick flick of his tail.

I told Charles what the cat had said, and my boyfriend chuckled. “That’s what happens when you’re the good guy. You always ruffle some of the bad guy’s feathers”

Octo-Cat perked up at this analogy, but I focused on asking the next logical question. “But whose feathers would be ruffled enough to try to abduct me?”

“Hmm. Let’s review. First, there were the folks involved with Ethel Fulton’s demise and inheritance dispute.”

Octo-Cat winced. Even though I knew he was happy living with me now, he still missed his original owner every day.

Charles continued to discuss the murderers and other criminals we’d played a role in apprehending, coming up with a list of more than a dozen potential suspects.

“Looks like the cat’s right,” he quipped. “A lot of people have cause to be very angry with you. But who would it benefit to take you now? They’ve already been caught. No changing that now.”

“Most recently, Octo-Cat and I solved the murder on the train and the one in the pet store.”

“The folks from the train were apprehended, correct?” Charles asked, raising an eyebrow in my direction.

“Yes, they’re in jail and some of the others we’ve caught are, too.”

Charles nodded thoughtfully. “In jail doesn’t mean not capable. They could have lackies working for them for all we know.”

“So, what you’re saying is we can’t rule anybody out?”

He shook his head sadly. “Nope. Not a single person.”

My phone buzzed from the place where I’d dropped it in Charles’s cup holder after getting in the car.

“It’s Nan,” I cried, quickly answering the call and putting it on speaker.

“Angie, dear!” she shouted into the phone. “It's Mags! They’ve found her! She's safe!”

Tears welled in my eyes. “Oh thank goodness… Thank goodness.” We hadn’t been too late after all.

“We’re on our way," I promised Nan.

“So are we. We’re all going back to the Glendale police station. See you there.”