Cat Nap

5

“We’d better get going.” Will finally tore himself loose from Jane. “The snow is really coming down, and it’s starting to stick on the roads.”

He led them off the porch and into the open air, where fat, feathery flakes drifted down. They’d already spread a white carpet a couple of inches thick on the concrete of the parking lot and the grassy verges. There was even an inch of accumulation on the windshield of Will’s pickup, even though he’d parked just a few minutes before.

They crowded into the cab, Jane cutting Sunny off so that she sat next to Will.

“I figured you’d want to be close to the door, since you’ll be getting out first.” Jane’s voice sounded reasonable enough as she talked over the rumble of the starting engine—or it would have, except for the smug undertone that Sunny picked up.

Just as well Jane isn’t by the door, because I’d be kicking her to the curb right about now. For a second, Sunny enjoyed the mental image of Jane skidding along the snowy shoulder of the road.

Will nervously filled the chilly silence with cop stories about Mark Trumbull. “About five years ago, a house burned down, killing the man and woman who lived there. The fire department considered it an accident. There were no accelerants; it appeared to be an electrical fire. But Trumbull suspected arson—and proved it. Turns out the guy’s ex-wife had a sideline making rustic lamps—wood base, very nice. She gave one to her husband, wired for low wattage, knowing the guy liked bright lights. Of course, he put in a heavier bulb, and sooner or later the damned thing went up in flames.”

In spite of herself, Sunny spoke. “How could Trumbull know that was intentional? More importantly, how could he prove it?”

Will shrugged from behind the wheel. “He kept at it. Figured out the starting point for the fire and traced the lamps. Apparently, it was the only low-wattage one the woman had ever made. She could probably have still claimed it was accidental, but when she saw the case he’d assembled, she confessed. Wound up getting life.”

Jane stirred from where she sat cuddled up against Will.

Not the best choice for a bedtime story, Sunny thought, talking about a vengeful ex-wife to a woman whose former spouse just turned up dead.

“Look, the guy could have been a regular Inspector Javert five years ago,” Jane said. “But when he was with me, he just looked like a sad old man barely asking any questions at all.”

“All I’m saying is, don’t be so quick to dismiss him,” Will warned. “Trumbull is very, very good. And if he has any reason to suspect you, look forward to being investigated within an inch of your life.”

After that, the only conversation was directions from Jane. She was efficient, if short. They soon arrived back at Martin’s office, where Sunny had left her Jeep.

“Should we stay?” Will began, but Sunny shook her head.

“Get Jane home,” she told him. “Whether she wants to admit it or not, she’s had a shock.”

Jane opened her mouth to protest and then stopped. “You’re probably right.” She sighed. “I came here tonight thinking I was prepared for anything Martin could throw at me. Finding him that way was the last thing I’d ever have expected.”

Will started up the pickup again, and they drove off. Sunny pulled up the hood of her parka. She still had to clear snow off the Wrangler before she could head home. Digging out the long-handled brush from under the front seat, she set to work on the windshield.

It’s not so bad, she thought as she worked. The shrubs blocked a lot of the snow from coming down here. She stepped back against the piney brush. Huh! No snow at all.

Another step, and she found herself in a little clear area. Sunny looked up to see darkness—or rather, interlocked evergreen branches above her head, holding off the snow. Back in the day, these bushes had probably been a lot shorter, maybe even trimmed into some sort of topiary shapes. But like the old house, they had been neglected, left to grow as they would, both upward and outward.

Then Sunny noticed a break in the evergreen wall around her, a fuzzy white patch located a bit above her eye level. On tiptoe, Sunny peered out into the snowstorm, the flakes illuminated by the lights of Martin Rigsdale’s house. She wobbled for a second, clutching at the branches in front of her—and realized that several of them were broken.

It looked like someone had created a peephole to keep an eye on Martin’s office.

I suppose this would be a perfect observation post, provided you could get in here unnoticed, she thought.

Yanking off her gloves, Sunny dropped to one knee, feeling around on the damp, freezing ground in the darkness. Her fingers encountered what felt like a small battered cardboard tube. Peering at it in the dark was just hopeless. But as she brought the thing up, she got a pungent odor of tobacco smoke.

Sunny held her prize carefully in her palm as she pushed out of the open spot, hurriedly climbing into her Wrangler. Turning on the dome light, she examined the item she’d found. It was a light cardboard tube, maybe two inches in length, crushed flat. One end held what looked like the burnt-out stub of a cigarette, the source of the sharp tobacco smell.

An image swam up in her brain, memories from a couple of years before, when she’d worked on the Standard’s New York City edition. Vanya, one of her fellow reporters, hailed from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, a neighborhood known as “Little Odessa” because of all the Russian immigrants.

Vanya had taken a group of reporters to a club, a place with crowded tables, loud patrons, and a cloud of cigarette smoke up by the ceiling.

Sunny had remarked on a couple of silver-haired, red-faced men flaunting the municipal smoking ban by puffing away on cigarettes like these, the tubing pinched into a sort of cigarette holder.

Her friend had laughed. “Those guys have to be real old-school—probably mafia. You can only get cigarettes like that from Mother Russia.”

Sunny hadn’t wanted to know from Russian mafia back then. Now, however, she turned the crumpled cardboard tube over and over in her hands. Wait a second! There was something printed on one side.

She held the lettering up to her light—not that she could figure out what the word was.

“I’d say it was Greek to me,” she muttered, carefully straightening out the cardboard, “but I suspect it’s Russian.”

*

Sunny finished cleaning off her SUV and then called home. Mike sounded as if he’d just woken up, but was jovial enough. “I thought maybe the silver-tongued Martin had persuaded you and Jane to go off with him for dinner and dancing, so I ate a while ago,” Mike said.

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Sunny told her dad. “He’s—oh, I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. I hope there are still some leftovers from that stew. I haven’t had anything to eat.”

She took the bridge back across the Piscataqua, staying on the interstate till she was past the built-up section of Kittery Harbor. Then she took more winding country roads until she came to Wild Goose Drive and home. Traffic wasn’t a problem—there were fewer cars than usual on the road. Which was just as well, given the snow that kept coming down heavily all through her drive.

Sunny left four-inch-deep tire tracks when she pulled into her driveway. The door opened before she was halfway there, Mike standing outlined in the light from the hall.

“I spread some newspapers down for you to put your boots on,” he said. “And the stew is in the microwave, ready to be nuked.”

Catching her looking around as she removed her wet boots, Mike added, “Your friend is up on top of the refrigerator again.”

Shadow came down when he saw Sunny, sniffing around her vigorously but avoiding her hands when she reached for him.

“What’s going on in that head of yours, cat?” Sunny asked.

But he just stayed at her feet, his odd, gold-flecked eyes giving her an inscrutable look.

“Suit yourself.” Sunny heated up the stew and brought it to the kitchen table. Mike had already set out the utensils and left her a bottle of horseradish to season the stew. Sunny smiled, remembering how Shadow had investigated that horseradish bottle—once. He’d made it abundantly clear that he hadn’t liked the contents one little bit.

Mike came in to take the chair opposite hers at the table. “I put on the Weather Chanel to see what they had to say about this snow. As usual, they’re talking out of both sides of their mouths,” he said sourly, then gave her a sly look. “I’m betting that whatever you have to say about your visit will be more interesting.”

“You could say that,” Sunny told him. “We got there, Jane bombed past the bimbo receptionist, and then she found Martin lying dead on his examination table.”

That got Mike sitting up straight. “Dead?” he echoed.

Sunny nodded and gave him all the details, including Will’s story about the relentless Mark Trumbull.

“I know Jane’s been giving you a lot of competition for Will’s attention.” Mike gave her a grin. “Maybe this Trumbull guy will go after her and remove her from the game.”

His grin wavered a little. “You were supposed to laugh there, Sunny.”

Remembering her view of Jane snuggled next to Will as his pickup pulled away, Sunny didn’t feel like laughing. She took a big mouthful of stew—mainly horseradish, unfortunately—and went into a coughing fit.

Mike hastily got her a glass of water. “Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m still half asleep.” He tried to stifle a yawn and failed. “Might as well go upstairs and back to bed. Good night—or should I say ‘good morning’?” He gave Sunny a kiss on the forehead and headed out of the kitchen.

“How about ‘sleep well’ instead?” Sunny called after him. “I’ll be up in a little while.” She used her fork and smooshed down the last potato to absorb the stew juices. A few more bites, and the stew was history.

She washed her dish and put it in the drainer, along with her knife and fork. At the kitchen doorway she paused for a second, checking that everything had been put away. A small head butted against her ankle. Sunny glanced down to see Shadow looking up at her.

“How’s that paw doing?” she asked, returning to the sink to warm up some oil by running the bottle under hot water. After making sure it wasn’t too hot, she poured herself a handful and knelt on the floor. Shadow came to her immediately, dabbing his paw into her palm. “Does it still hurt?” Sunny asked, massaging the oil around his pads. “You seem to be walking all right.”

Shadow just looked up at her and purred.

That must be the thing that drives vets crazy, Sunny thought. Your patients can’t tell you how they’re really feeling—unless you count them trying to bite you if they really don’t like what you’re doing to them.

She got a paper towel to blot away any excess oil on Shadow’s paw and then nodded at the doorway. “Come along, little guy,” Sunny said. “Keep me company while I try to chill out a little.” They headed down the hallway to the living room, where the TV was still on.

Picking up the remote, Sunny abandoned the bad-news weather forecast. But the later late-night talk shows weren’t very funny. She clicked along, through the middles of several movies she didn’t want to see, reruns of once-successful shows exiled to the wee hours . . . In the end, she found one of those true crime shows where newscasters gave all the facts and plot twists but never really solved anything. On the screen, a local cop gave an impassioned tirade about why the suspect in this case must have committed the crime. Sunny was pretty sure some defense witness would be on with a rebuttal after a couple of commercials.

Like I really need to hear this after being with real cops this evening, she thought.

Sunny turned off the TV, getting down on the floor to play with Shadow. She dug a piece of string out of her pocket and led him a merry chase, the cat clambering all over her as he pounced on his make-believe prey.

As she drew the string across her leg, he climbed across her shins. Suddenly he stopped, audibly sniffing. He remained frozen, poised on three paws (he still favored the injured paw, holding it slightly aloft), and then turned his eyes to hers in an odd stare.

“What are you smelling, Shadow?” Sunny asked. Maybe Shadow had detected the scent of Martin’s vet office, or of Martin himself. Who knew? Perhaps he’d caught a whiff of Jane. Or maybe Sunny had brought home a trace of the interrogation room. Sunny was pretty sure that Detective Fitch probably smelled like something a cat would like to kill.

What did it matter? She flipped up the end of the string so it appeared just past her knee, and Shadow dove for it, the smell apparently forgotten.

They played for a little while longer, until Sonny was hit by a yawn that threatened to dislocate her jawbone. Running a hand over Shadow’s furry back, she said, “Sorry, cat, I’m turning into a pumpkin.”

Sunny headed upstairs, took a quick shower, and changed into a warm pair of pajamas. As she pulled down the comforter and bedding, the door to her room swung open slightly, and Shadow came padding in. He went from a trot to a run to a spring, landing on the mattress and heading for the pillows.

Sunny laughed. “Wait for me!”

She climbed into the bed and pulled up the covers. It was a good night to be under a heavy blanket and an old-fashioned wool comforter. The weather outside had kicked things up a notch or two. The falling snowflakes had gone from large and fluffy to the small, icy variety. They pattered determinedly against her window, driven by a howling wind.

Sunny scrunched herself into a small ball, the covers tight, her body heat creating a comfortable nest quickly invaded by a cat who nuzzled against her.

“Just you and me, Shadow,” Sunny murmured fondly. All of a sudden, the image of a black pickup pulling away, Jane’s head on Will’s shoulder, popped through her head again. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I just have to get a shawl, and then I’ll have everything I need to be an old maid.”

*

Shadow lay quietly in the circle of Sunny’s arms, sharing warmth with her. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but he knew she needed him close tonight. He’d felt an odd tension in her ever since she’d come home, and even playing with her hadn’t made it go away. So he kept cuddled against Sunny until her regular breathing told him she was well and truly asleep. Then he gently squirmed his way free of her clasp and the enveloping covers.

Dropping silently to the floor, Shadow padded to the door, easing out into the gloom of the hallway beyond. He’d be back before Sunny woke up and started the day. Until then, there was a big, dark house to patrol.