The Cat Caper

Chapter Sixteen

Back at my house, Nan and Cal were waiting for Charles’s and my return with every light on the main floor at full blast.

Cal popped to his feet when we entered. “Did you find him?”

“No,” I said, accepting a fresh mug of cocoa from Nan, who was clearly enjoying her role as stakeout hostess.

“Did you find who was leaving the notes?” she asked with large eyes.

“Yeah, we did.” I bit my lip, not wanting to be the one to break this news to Breanne’s twin brother, especially since she’d used his unfairly earned bad reputation as an excuse for getting involved in her shady dealings.

“It was Breanne,” Charles answered for me. His voice brooked no arguments. I’d never seen him so livid about anything in all the months I’d known him.

“You mean, your girlfriend?” Nan looked from one man to the other and frowned. “And your sister?”

“She’s my ex now,” Charles said with a sigh.

Nan didn’t even try to hide her happiness at this news. She even wrapped an arm around me and squeezed me to her side. “Good. She wasn’t right for you anyway.”

I about died when she shot me what she must have assumed was a surreptitious wink.

Charles saw it plain as day, but at least it made him smile.

Cal, however, seemed to be the most upset of everyone. “Why would she do something like that?” He sank down onto the couch and dragged both hands through his hair. “Oh, wait. It’s because of me. Isn’t it?”

“It’s not your fault you got framed for murder,” I pointed out gently.

“It sure feels like it, though.”

“Charles is blaming himself, too,” I said. “But, believe me, this is nobody’s fault except Breanne’s.”

“Okay,” Nan shouted, drawing everyone’s attention to her. “Enough with the pity party. We have work to do.”

“What work? We reached a dead end with Breanne. She says she doesn’t know who was paying her to drop off the letters.” Charles paced around the living room like a caged lion ready to pounce.

“I’m going to go talk to her.” Cal rose to his feet and marched toward the front door. “Call me if you need me.”

The door slammed shut, and we all took a collective breath in.

“Charles, look at me.” Nan walked right up to him and stood on her tiptoes in an effort to bring her face closer to his.

He stopped pacing, the pent-up energy visible in the bulging veins that had risen to the surface of his neck and forearms. This was killing him.

“I know you’re feeling down in the dumps right about now, but you and that woman were never right for each other anyway,” Nan said firmly. “So, stop mulligrubbing, and fire up that big, beautiful brain of yours again. We’re going to need it to bring our kitty boy home safely.”

“Maybe we didn’t get anywhere with Bree,” I told Charles much gentler than Nan had just spoken to him. “But that doesn’t mean we’re at a dead end, either. We still have the list of beneficiaries from Ethel’s will, and you only checked out the local ones, right?”

He nodded but said nothing. I briefly wondered whether he was holding back tears or shouts. Maybe both.

After grabbing his hand in mine, I gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Then I say it’s time we take a little road trip. If someone needed to pay Breanne to drop off those letters, chances are they don’t live close enough to do it themselves.”

“I’ll stay here with the animals in case anything else goes down at mission central,” Nan volunteered.

“Charles?” I asked. “I know you’re having a really hard time with all of this right now, but I could really use a friend by my side. Are you in?”

He dropped his gaze toward the floor and nodded as if a hundred-pound weight was pushing down on his neck. “I’m in,” he groaned.

I wrapped my arms around Charles and gave him a tight hug. “Thank you,” I murmured. “But first before we go, we need to make a quick stop off at the twenty-four-hour market and swing back by Bree’s real quick, too.”

He studied me in horror. It seemed our opinions about Breanne finally matched, although I hated the circumstances. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much of a choice as to whether or not to return to her house that night.

“I’m pretty sure we forgot Maple there,” I admitted with a flippant shrug, even though I was beating myself up about having left a man—er, a squirrel—behind on our mission. “I figure we should come prepared with an apology and peanut butter, thus our other stop. C’mon, let’s go.”

Given that our stakeout party had started at ten that night, neither Charles nor I had slept recently. Still, I doubted either of us could have grabbed even a few winks if we’d tried—not with all that was weighing on our minds. Instead, we grabbed a case of the cold espresso drinks—the ones Nan always said tasted like chalk—from my fridge and set off on our next great fact-finding adventure.

“Who should we pay a visit to first?” Charles asked once we’d made it to the main road that ran through our tiny town of Glendale.

“Ethel’s niece, Anne,” I said definitively, pointing to her name on the printout Charles had given me. “She gave off definite creepy vibes when last we met.”

“Creepy as in catnapper creepy?” Charles asked with a lopsided grin. He adjusted his hands on the wheel and settled back in his seat. Now that we’d rescued Maple from Breanne’s house and moved past that portion of our night, he seemed to be returning to his normal relaxed self.

“Creepy as in she was on my short list of murder suspects creepy.” I then filled him in on my various run-ins with the eerie older woman.

“Definitely creepy,” Charles agreed. “So she really broke into Ethel’s house?”

“Yup, but seeing as I’d also broken in, I decided to let that one pass.” I began to fiddle with a hangnail absentmindedly. Even though Charles and I were back to our usual easy banter, something important had changed. Now I was wondering what every glance, touch, and word meant, whether it might imply that he felt how I did.

I pinched the skin on my wrist to force myself to focus on finding Octo-Cat rather than finding out what Charles may or may not feel for me.

Luckily, he had to keep his focus on driving, which meant he missed all the weirdness I was serving up in the passenger seat beside him. “But you said she was there to scout out antiques and other valuables she wanted to keep for herself, right?”

“Yeah, and if Octo-Cat and I hadn’t showed up to stop her, I’m pretty sure she would have taken it all.”

“That’s what she said.” Charles suppressed a boyish chuckle, and I gave him a playful slap over the center console.

“C’mon. We’re both grown-ups here.”

Charles broke out laughing again.

“I’m going to let that go, since it’s already been a long night and we’re just getting started,” I said graciously. “Anyway, yeah, my gut says it’s Anne. Nobody else really left much of an impression, to be honest.”

“Well, then I guess we’re headed into Boston. At least we’ll beat the morning rush.”

We both surveyed the darkness ahead as I plugged Anne’s address into the GPS on my phone. “It’s almost a four-hour drive,” I whined.

“It could have been worse,” Charles said with a shrug. “Ethel had family as far away as Oregon. Now there’s a drive.”

“What do we do if it’s not Anne?” I wondered aloud. “Where do we go next?”

He reached for my hand and held it in his. “We’re not going to think like that. Just focus on finding Octo-Cat and bringing him home. The in-between details aren’t important. And if your gut is saying Anne did it, then that’s what I believe, too.” He raised my hand to his lips and gave my knuckles a quick kiss before letting go.

Despite the fact that this small gesture of kindness sent my heart cartwheeling and my stomach loop-de-looping, the feel of his lips on my skin did more than any anti-anxiety pill ever could. Charles believed in this, believed we could do it.

And now so did I.