The Cat, The Quilt And The Corpse

Twenty-Six

The next morning, still in my pajamas, I snapped off several photos of my design wall creation while Merlot, Chablis and Syrah sat in a row staring at my work like patrons at an art gallery show.

“It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” I turned to smile at them and saw that Syrah had disappeared. I get no props around here, I thought. But I saw one of the garbage bags filled with paper move, and then a brown nose appeared at the very opening of the bag. Syrah was probably thinking, Just let those other two try and share my new playground.

I ran down the hall with the camera, ready to print pictures. Chablis thought this was great fun. She raced after me, and when I bent to dock the camera, she jumped on my back.

Even with claws digging into me, I managed to press the right buttons. While the pictures printed, I carefully removed my cat from my skin. Then I lifted Chablis so we were face-to-face and said, “Someone else had a missing cat last year. I need to see about this.”

She began to resist our conversation, so I put her down. She sat by the computer table, watched the pictures appear in the tray and lifted a tentative paw. But I snatched them up before she could further explore the magic of the amazing paper so I could examine my work.

I nodded. “Good job, Jillian.”

An hour later I was in the minivan and off to Marian Mae Temple’s house. I got her name and phone number off the flyer and found her address in the telephone book, but she hadn’t answered her phone. Maybe she was in the shower; maybe she wasn’t even awake yet. Strange, because it was well past nine a.m. and everyone in this town seemed to be early risers, judging by the line to get inside Belle’s Beans when I drove past.

The pictures of the pieced-together shredded flyer lying on the seat next to me told me that Marian Mae had lost a gray long-haired cat last year, if the date at the top of the computer-generated flyer was correct. Since I’d mentioned my plight to her and she probably knew about this whole Wilkerson investigation via her boyfriend, Mike Baca, why hadn’t she said anything?

I had a guess. She’d done business with Flake Wilkerson, maybe paid a pretty penny for Sophie as a replacement for her lost cat, a cat named Diamond, as I’d learned from the once-shredded flyer.

And then, before I made it to Marian Mae’s house, the commonsense button clicked on. Hadn’t I speculated that whoever had Sophie didn’t want to give her up and might have killed Wilkerson? Duh, yeah.

But Marian Mae? She didn’t fit my image of a knife-wielding killer. She struck me as someone who would be annoyed if she got dirt on her shoes. All that blood? Nope. Couldn’t be her. There had to be a different explanation.

Maybe she and her boyfriend were getting coffee together this morning? Her boyfriend. That was who I needed to talk to, not her. But did Baca even work on Saturday? Candace could tell me. Besides, she would want to know what I’d found out.

She sounded tired when she answered her phone. “Carson here.”

“Is Baca at the office today?” I said.

“Huh? Only a few of us work on the Saturday day shift. And one of the ‘us’ would be me. What do you need?”

“I need to show him something. Can you give me his number or tell me where he lives?” I said.

“You can’t go to his house.” She sounded mortified that I would even consider this.

“Maybe you wouldn’t go there, but I’m one of those tax-paying citizens who provides his salary. Tell me where he lives. I can find out myself, but—”

“What’s going on? Maybe I can help,” she said.

“Know who lost a long-haired gray cat last year?” I said.

“What is this about? And talk fast before Morris gets back here with our coffee.”

I explained what I’d learned from Tom and about Marian Mae’s lost cat.

Candace said nothing for several seconds. When she finally spoke, she sounded none too happy. “Wait on this, okay? She and Baca are probably going to get married, and if she needs investigating, then—”

“I only want to call him. What’s wrong with that?” I said.

“This may be nothing. Marian Mae lost a gray cat just like Sophie. Can you spell coincidence? How many gray cats do you think passed through Wilkerson’s slimy hands?”

“Yes, but—”

“This is not how to go about this. What if Marian Mae no longer has a cat? What if it’s permanently lost? What if she’s a victim of Wilkerson just like you and Mr. Green and Daphne and who knows how many more? What if she got so upset about losing—Diamond, is that right?”

“That’s right,” I said morosely.

“What if she was so devastated by losing her cat that she decided to never talk about Diamond again. Hurtful chapter closed. We know Sophie’s female, but what do you know about Diamond? If someone like Marian Mae used Wilkerson’s Match-a-Cat service or whatever he called it, she was paying big bucks. She’d want a close match. And you told me there were plenty of differences.”

“Not that many, but I get what you’re saying.” I felt completely deflated. Here I thought I might have found Sophie right here in town.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” she said. But her tone more than implied that I was. “I’m only saying that you can’t bring my boss’s girlfriend into the picture based on theory and coincidence.”

Candace was putting me down and I felt awful. No one likes to be wrong, much less have someone hammer home just how wrong she might be. I couldn’t think of anything to say that might convince her this was important.

After a strained silence she said, “Jillian, I’m sorry, but—”

“I’ll talk to you later.” I closed the phone and tossed it on the seat next to me. Was I really as stupid as she made me sound? Maybe. But here was a lead, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I’d spent two nights piecing together what I thought was an important clue, only to be shot down by one of the few friends I had in this town.

I’m overtired, I thought. Not thinking straight. But no matter what Candace said, no matter how many hours of sleep I’d lost, I had to tell Baca about this. He would know about Diamond and if the cat had ever been found. Of course, he might not be happy to have me asking questions about Marian Mae, but a lead is a lead. Now all I had to do was find out where he lived. No phone book to offer an address this time.

I stopped at the grocery store, hoping that David the bagger could help me. I was completely surprised when he blurted out, “Michael Baca, phone number unlisted,” followed by his address. It was as if he’d memorized every name and address in Mercy.

Baca’s house wasn’t far from downtown, in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood. He answered the door so quickly after I knocked that my heart skipped. It was like he was waiting for me to show up or something.

Oh boy. Had Candace called him? If so, he wasn’t giving anything away. He said, “What are you doing here?”

He was wearing blue jeans and a Carolina Panthers T-shirt. Seemed fitting he’d be wearing a shirt bearing a cat—albeit a very big, snarling cat—this morning. His sandy hair wasn’t combed and he hadn’t shaved yet. This casual look made me hope he’d be less uptight—like the Mike Baca who’d talked to me at the Finest Catch.

“Can I come in?” I said. “I have a few things to run by you.”

He glanced back over his shoulder and showed no sign he was ready to invite me in. “Can’t this wait until I’m at the station on Monday?” he said.

“I don’t think so. Candace says police officers are never off duty. Is that true?”

He opened the door wider and stepped aside. “Did she send you here? Because if she did, this better be important.”

“She didn’t. I promise,” I said.

“Let’s go into my office.” He led me through a small foyer, past the living room and down a hall.

As he opened his office door, Marian Mae appeared at the end of the hall wearing a terry-cloth robe and with a towel wrapped around her head.

She said, “Honey, who are you talking—Oh. Hello, Jillian.”

“Work, Mae. Sorry,” he said.

“No problem,” she said cheerfully.

Baca practically pushed me into an office that revealed a new side of the man. What a mess. Books piled waist high, folders covering a love seat against one wall and a computer desk buried under a mass of papers with Post-it notes stuck everywhere. And here I’d taken him for a neat freak, the way his office at the police station looked.

He removed a stack of files from a padded chair so I could sit and took his desk chair, swiveling to look at me. “What’s so important?”

“Did Candace show you the photos of my cat and the poor deceased cat that belonged to Mr. Green—that man I went to see?”

“She dropped them off here last night. As I said yesterday, I’m willing to concede that the cat business the victim was running is more important than I previously believed and could have played a part in Mr. Wilkerson’s murder. I’ve received confirmation of this through a second independent source.”

He was talking about Tom’s forensic work on that hard drive, but I wasn’t about to let him know I was aware of that. I’d gotten Candace in trouble with this guy, and I didn’t want to add Tom to the list.

“I’m glad to hear that straight from you. I know you’ve been thinking I was a pain in the butt, and now I hope you realize I’ve been trying to help. I also wanted to make sure you got those pictures of my cat and Mr. Green’s. Those two Abyssinians could have been twins.”

“You came here for that? I’m not buying it, Jillian. What’s really going on?”

I felt nervous. And dumb again. He and Candace were right. This could have waited. But I was here and I might as well say what I came to tell him.

I pulled the computer-generated photos of the gray cats from my pocket. “Were you aware your friend lost a cat last year?” I handed over the picture of Marian Mae’s lost-cat flyer.

He looked at it, held it closer, then turned on a light above his computer. “What is this? Some kind of screwed-up attempt with Photoshop?”

I explained about the shredded paper from the Pink House.

He said, “How long did it take you to put this back together?”

“A long time. Do you know anything about her cat?”

He smiled, and I could tell he thought I was being ridiculous. “You think Diamond was stolen by Wilkerson?”

“It’s possible.” I handed him the other picture—of Daphne’s cat. “You recognize this cat?”

“That’s Diamond, too. I still don’t—”

“Look closer. You really think I’m showing you pictures of the same cat?” I said.

He squinted, looking back and forth between the two photos. “There’s hardly any difference. Why don’t we ask the expert?”

Before I could speak, he got up and hollered out the door. “Mae, can you come here for a sec?”

Marian Mae was dressed now, her blue jeans creased, the buttons on her turquoise sweater revealing a hint of cleavage. “What do you need, Mike?” she asked, ignoring me.

“Look what our concerned citizen Ms. Hart brought to show me.” He handed her the pictures.

She glanced back and forth between them. Her eyes rested on the flyer. “Where did you get this, and why does it look all fuzzy and wavy?”

“Doesn’t matter where she got it,” Baca said. “Tell her about Diamond, because I think she’ll listen better to you than to me.”

Marian Mae cocked her head at Baca as if to say, “What does this have to do with anything?” but then she looked at me. “I lost Diamond last year, put up a few flyers. That’s what people do when something they love disappears.”

It sure seemed like plenty of cats had disappeared around here—and Shawn was probably the only one who’d cared. “And what happened? Did you get Diamond—is it a him or a her?—back?”

“Diamond is a beautiful little girl. But she did get herself lost for a day. She came home right away, though,” she said.

“Good news,” I said. “So this is her, too?” I held out the picture of Sophie.

Marian Mae looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “No. That’s not Diamond. Can’t you tell the difference?”

“I can,” I said. “But Chief Baca didn’t seem to have the same keen eye as the two of us. Of course, I have the advantage of knowing these two are not the same cat.”

“Is this some kind of game?” Marian Mae said, her sky blue eyes darkening. “Mike tells me you keep sticking your nose in police business, but that’s for him to handle. Just don’t bring me and my cat into this.”

I plucked the pictures away from her, not sure if I was irritated with her because of her attitude or upset with myself.

Baca put a hand on her shoulder and massaged the muscles. “It’s okay, hon.” He turned to me. “When Diamond disappeared, Mae was beside herself. I guess I should have been more sympathetic to your own situation with your cat, should have recalled how Mae reacted last year. So, please, take this as an apology.”

“Apology accepted,” I said. “Thanks for your time.”

Baca walked me to the door, but before he opened it, I said, “Know who that unidentified cat belongs to?” I said.

“As Mae pointed out, this isn’t a game. Just tell me,” he said. I’d bothered him on a weekend and upset his girlfriend. He was probably past exasperation by now.

I handed him the pictures. “These are for you to keep. See, that other cat, the one that looks so much like Diamond? She belonged to Daphne—before her father stole her. This has something to do with her cat, Sophie. I’m sure of it.”

I opened the door and walked out, but as I headed to my car I heard Baca call, “Stay away from the Pink House, Jillian. That woman could be dangerous.”