by Clea Simon
“Did you tell Bruce where you’d taken them?”
There was silence from the back seat, but finally I saw her nod. “Uh huh. I had to.” Seeing the bruises on her face, I didn’t doubt that Sandy had been forced.
“And then Bruce broke in to take the kittens back?” And walloped me in the bargain, I realized. I was getting happier and happier about that call to the Feds.
“Yeah, the boss said we had to, especially once I told them about the carrier.”
Violet and I both turned to look at her. “You know, the zip-up basket-thing I left them in? They were so sick, I wanted them to be warm for the trip. I wanted you to see that, you know, someone had cared, so I took one of the new ones.”
Violet looked up at me. “The carrier. It was a classy, fleece-lined carrier.”
I filled in the obvious: “And it came from Pet Set.” Everything was making sense. Sandy nodded, biting her lip. “It isn’t even for sale yet. She was really furious. When you started calling she, like, lost it.”
“She?” Violet and I spoke at once.
“Bruce’s boss. She’s the one who said that the kittens could be identified and that with the carrier people could figure it all out. She thought maybe you knew something. She sent him to get the kittens back.”
“But there was one more kitten,” Violet said. “The littlest one.” I didn’t say anything. A horrible idea was growing in my mind.
“Oh yeah, the last one. Miss Denise was positively frantic.”
“Denise?” Violet sounded shocked. My thoughts were spinning in a different direction.
“She told Bruce he had to find that last kitten, right?” He’d followed me, I realized. He must’ve gotten the truth out of Sandy soon after she brought the kittens down that Friday. If he’d been watching the shelter, he’d have seen that Violet had been in virtually all weekend—except, of course, for that suspect trip back to New Hampshire, up to Pet Set, and who knows what motives he attributed to that? But if he’d been keeping watch, he’d have known that I made that trip with Violet, and that I was in and out of the shelter. And that I’d rushed over to Rose’s the day after driving to New Hampshire with Violet. I’d raced over to Rose’s and snuck in the back. That night, when Bruce had broken into the shelter and hadn’t found the third kitten, he must have thought I’d taken it and hidden it somewhere. Had he searched my place? I remembered the open window. I’d been in the hospital for hours, and the next morning my apartment had seemed even more of a mess than usual. It was possible. And if he hadn’t found the third kitten in my apartment, he might have thought I’d brought the kitten over to Rose’s cattery.
I’d led a killer to Rose.
“It was Bruce.” I had to say it out loud. “Bruce was looking for the third kitten. He’s the one who broke into Rose’s.” Violet turned to look at me, realization and shock growing in her face.
“She must have been there.” Of course. She would not have left the house with a cat due to deliver, or not for long. She must have surprised him. I filled in the blanks. “Rose must have thought he was going to hurt her cats. Like the phone call threatened to.”
“Like Sunny threatened to.” But Sunny had been all talk. I believed her now, in retrospect. She’d been out for a buck, but not to hurt anybody. No wonder she stopped calling Cool, stopped her game. Sunny must have been terrified after one of her victims ended up dead.
“What’s with these kittens anyway?” Violet turned back to Sandy, fixing the girl with a stare.
“I don’t know. He just brought them in, with their momma.”
“They weren’t born in the warehouse?” Sandy shook her head.
“Wait a minute.” Bending over the kitten in her lap, Violet slowly worked her thumbs up its back. When she got to the loose skin between its little shoulders she stopped. “I feel something. This kitten has been microchipped. I bet all three were.” She looked at me. “That’s why he didn’t want them going to a regular animal hospital.”
Just then I saw our turn and pulled off, parking the car on what used to be a paved lot. “Those are pedigreed kittens, aren’t they?” I had to ask. Violet nodded. “Bruce and Denise, they’re the cattery thieves.”
***
The building in front of us looked deserted, its windows painted over and crusted in dirt. But Sandy showed us to a door around back, nearly hidden by some dense, prickly shrubs, and it let us into a cavernous space. Far from empty, in the supposedly deserted space we passed a tower of folded cartons, clean and stacked as if they’d just been emptied. A few steps in, shelves rose high above our heads, stacked with more boxes, mostly unlabelled. Some seemed to hold machine parts, others pet goods. We ran down one aisle, and then another, turned a corner and saw more boxes.
“What is this place?” Violet’s voice echoed in the dust.
“Some place Bruce found. I don’t know who else uses it.”
“Talk about a thieves’ den,” I read one label: Ink Jets, Two Gross. “They were into everything. So where are the cats?”
“There’s a hidden door someplace.” She disappeared down an aisle and we followed. “I was only here a few times.”
“Are there any lights?”
“Not in most of the building. Bruce always said it would attract too much attention. He’d bring a flashlight when we came by.”
“Great.” Then I thought about the cats. “Is there any heat here either?”
“I don’t think so. It was pretty cold in here last week.”
No wonder those kittens were getting sick. I’d be happy when we found the remaining queens and got out of here.
“Theda? Sandy? Where are you?” Violet’s voice came from behind a corrugated metal wall. I tried to find my way around it.
“Violet? How did you get in there?”
“I ducked under something that looked like a tractor. I thought I heard something.”
“Hold on.” Following her voice I crawled under a Harvester that was taking up the space between two stock shelves, and found myself in a small, cleared-out room with one bookshelf and a desk. A high window let in a little light. “Now maybe we’re getting somewhere.” A moment later, Sandy joined us.
“Yeah, I remember this. This is Denise’s office. Where she made the deals. But her laptop is gone.”
“Guess they really were going out of business,” said Violet. “Maybe we did scare them off.”
“More likely, they figured the cats wouldn’t survive the winter.” My earlier euphoria had disappeared with the realization that I’d led a killer to Rose’s door.
“Well, they will now, honey. We just have to find them.” Violet was running her hands along the fake wood panelling. “There’s got to be a real door here, maybe more than one. I can’t see that woman crawling on her knees. And I swear I heard something move or click just a minute ago.”
“You know, it’s not too bad in here.” Sandy had stopped rubbing her arms. She was right, maybe it was because three of us were together in the little office, but it definitely seemed warmer than it had a few moments ago.
“So they were just going to abandon the mother cats?” I asked, as I examined a wall of bookshelves, hoping for a hidden catch or a switch. Sandy was poking at the panelling. I kneeled to look under the desk and then sat up.
“Does anyone else smell smoke?”
***
Violet looked at me. We both turned to Sandy.
“Sandy.” I grabbed her arms. “What were they going to do with the mother cats?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, tears springing into her eyes. “They were going to get rid of them. They just said they were going to clean everything up!”
“And they’re out of town. Both of them. The perfect alibi.” I turned toward the exit. Violet was ahead of me, halfway under the farm machinery that had blocked off the office alcove.
“No good.” She squirmed back to us. “The smell is stronger out there, and it’s hotter too. I think the fire must have started ove
r in those boxes.” I remembered the stack of cartons next to the door. All that cardboard, piled high over our heads.
“But how?” Sandy’s voice was rising into hysteria. “I don’t understand!”
“A timer, something like that?”
“That must’ve been what I heard. Damn.” Violet kicked the wall.
“Call for help!” Sandy was yelling now. “Call for help!” Even Violet looked at me expectantly.
“No cell phone,” I responded, coughing. “I gave it up. Vi?” She shook her head. Sandy wailed.
“There’s got to be another way out.” I looked around. “Sandy’s seen a door, and this was Denise’s office so there has to be one. There’s got to be another way out of the building, too. This was a real warehouse, once. Warehouses have loading docks, right?”
“There is another door. Out where the cats are!” Sandy was crying now. “I remember! That’s how I took the kittens out!”
“But where are those cats?” Violet started pulling books from the bookshelves and I went back to the panelled wall. This couldn’t be too solid. It looked too cheap. But could I break through—and what was beyond it? Smoke was beginning to fill the air. Sandy’s sobs turned to coughs.
“Here.” I ripped off my scarf. “Hold this up to your face. Breathe through it.” Violet pulled off her sweatshirt and tied it around her mouth. I lifted my own sweater’s neckline up, to cover my own nose and mouth, and as I did, a rumbling came from the space behind us, the space we’d crawled through. Then a crash. My knees went weak and I leaned against the wall.
“Mrow!” Faint but unmistakeable, the sound came through the panelling. “Mrow!”
“The cats! The cats are on the other side of this wall! But how?”
The three of us threw ourselves against the fake pine, punching it and pulling at its edges with our fingernails.
“It’s no good.” Tears were running down Violet’s face now. My own eyes were streaming. The smoke was getting thicker. “They must have put this up before they left. I bet they sealed them off. And us, too!”
She leaned against the wall and sank to the floor. Sandy stumbled into the desk chair.
“Mrow!”
“Wait a minute! Get up!” I grabbed the chair. “Violet, stand back.” I swung it. Nothing. I swung again and Violet grabbed one of the metal supports from the bookshelf and began stabbing at the cheap panelling. Little by little, sure enough, it began to crack, to give way.
“Mrow!”
“We’re getting through!” Holding the chair legs outward I started stabbing at the wall and soon we had a hole to see through.
“Give it to me!” Violet grabbed the chair as I collapsed, coughing. Years of hauling amps had made her wiry arms strong: four more blows and there was room enough to squeeze through. Sandy, Violet, and then myself. We were in a big room, on what must have been a loading dock, complete with metal dolly and some wooden flats. A wall of grime-encrusted windows let in enough light to show us two large metal doors, but they were hung with chains and padlocked.
“Those are the only doors!” Sandy was near hysteria, her round face bright red with panic.
“Step back!” Violet grabbed the dolly and swung. The old metal must have weighed as much as she did, but my fierce friend let it fly and the windows burst, letting in sweet clean air and the afternoon light.
“Mrow!” Behind us now we could see sat dozens of cages, empty except for eight big, fat, fluffy cats, one of whom looked exactly like her newspaper portrait.
“Quickly!” I took off my sneaker and knocked out the remaining shards of glass, while Violet started dragging wooden flats over to the window and piling them up. “What about the cats?” Sandy was staring at the cages. The animals had started pacing, the smell of smoke breaking through their customary languor. Violet and I ran to join her and quickly formed a plan. Boosting Sandy through the window first, Violet and I started unlatching the cages. One by one, we handed each cat through to Sandy in relay, before climbing out ourselves. Smoke was pouring through the windows behind us, oily and black in the slanting light, and the cats were clearly spooked. Huddled together, they watched us as we stumbled, coughing, onto the cracked pavement, only mewing softly as we grabbed them two at a time under our arms and ran them over to the car. All, that is, except for the Ragdoll queen. Docile, now, and silent once again, she sat up proudly while she waited her turn, her back to the burning building, as if to let us know that she’d been in control all along.
Chapter Twenty-One
I like to think the fire trucks would have gotten there in time. That the smoke would have risen above the woods and alerted somebody somewhere in civilization before the old warehouse—and those of us trapped in it—had succumbed to the heat, the flames, or that oily, insidious smoke. That’s what I kept telling myself once we got to the nearest strip mall and talked a kindly bookstore owner into letting us call 911, the Customs hotline, and Bill, in that order. I like to think we would have been rescued. But even that fantasy couldn’t keep me from shaking like a leaf once the New Hampshire state troopers got around to taking our statements, my teeth chattering so fiercely that I could barely speak. Which may be why the emergency medical technicians insisted on wrapping me in a blanket and strapping an oxygen mask over my face.
The trooper, a very nice woman named Grace, also called animal control while Violet, Sandy, and I were being bundled and monitored and, in Sandy’s case, sedated. Which was just as well. Botty and her sisters—along with one tired-looking tom—may be impeccably behaved under most circumstances, but it had been a trying time for the eight liberated cats, not to mention the five kittens. Being stuffed into a Toyota as sirens and lights swirled around can upset anyone’s aplomb. When the animal control officer showed up, with a van full of carriers, Violet and I ran through our theory again: These lovely cats, all long-furred and portly, were the missing pedigree dfelines. Animal control would be scanning for microchips and checking DNA, but it seemed clear to us that these cats—Ragdolls, Maine coons, and a sleek gray beauty who resembled Sally’s Norwegian forest cats—had been stolen for their ability to produce beautiful kittens. Back at home, with their papers in place, their offspring would bring close to a thousand dollars a kitten. But even on the black market—and it seemed certain now that the ring had a connection with Asian dealers—their fat, fluffy kittens would fetch at least a hundred a pop.
Why they were closing up such a profitable scam remained the only outstanding mystery. By the time we’d been checked out by the EMT crew, Grace was able to tell us that a rental truck had, in fact, been stopped at Logan airport; six dozen cats, including several litters still nursing, had been taken into custody. The officers, acting as agents of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, looked at the tiny cages and the animals’ matted fur and charged Bruce and Denise, who’d been driving, with animal cruelty. Neither had been able to produce a commercial breeder’s license, either, which added another charge, and grand theft would probably follow. Cats and kittens alike had been rushed to an animal hospital, though it seemed like dehydration and hunger were the worst of their ills, and already, Grace said, the nursing queens were being matched up with reports of stolen cats. But why those fertile queens were being sold, rather than giving the kittens a few more weeks and shipping them weaned, and why the remaining cats had been left to die, nobody understood.
“It’s a lot of risk for one short-term score,” noted Grace amiably. “Something must have spooked them.”
She and Violet and I were sitting in the back of an ambulance, the other having already taken Sandy off to the closest hospital. Between smoke and shock and what the EMT thought might be a fractured occipital lobe, the battered teen had been fairly incoherent when Grace had showed up.
“They must have known we didn’t have a microchip scanner,” said Violet. She and I had already filled Grace in on the identifying chips inserted in the loose skin at the back of the
cats’ necks. “Even Sandy must have known that.”
What the teen knew or didn’t would be for the courts to figure out, as would her degree of complicity. We believed, and had told Grace, that the young woman had risked serious harm in her attempt to rescue the kittens. The bruises and possible broken bones of her face proved that. Whether she’d been aware of why her brute of a boyfriend hadn’t wanted the sick animals to go to a bigger animal hospital, where they might have been scanned, was another question.
“So why end it all?” I was thinking aloud. The bigger question—why kill Rose?—echoed in my head, but I didn’t know if that would ever come out.
“Maybe it wasn’t anything you folks did.” Grace was trying to be helpful. “Maybe trying to sell them here, one by one, wasn’t working out.”
“But they didn’t have to.” This wasn’t making sense. “It seems like they were only selling the rejects, the sick ones. The rest they had a good market for overseas.”
“Maybe someone else was honing in on their business?”
“Or they thought someone was. Violet.” I turned to my friend. “When did you start calling the store?”
“Sunday, almost as soon as you dropped me off. Why?”
“I bet they thought we were onto them. Somewhere in there they found out that Sandy had brought the kittens to you and they must have thought you were trying to get in on it, or that you were doing your own little bit of blackmail.”
“But I don’t know anything about pedigreed cats.”
“Denise didn’t know that. Bruce certainly didn’t. And your name is on the license for the shelter.” Another memory came back to me. “She saw us at the cat show last Saturday, too, and we were talking about selling kittens.”
“The pet store woman was at a cat show?” Grace was intrigued now.
“Yeah, as a vendor for the store. And they bring cats for adoption.”
“Well, that explains how she knew about the judges and the breeders. She probably found out in advance who would be showing, and whose place would be vulnerable.”
