Cat's Claw

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Caitlin—the daughter of my half brother, Miles—has just turned twelve. She’s small for her age and slender, with pixie-cut dark hair and dark, waiflike eyes. Sad eyes, with good reason. She’s still waking from a string of horrible nightmares that must have seemed unending in her short life: her mother’s drowning, her father’s murder, her aunt’s death from cancer—more awfulness than any child ought to endure. McQuaid and I have adopted her and are trying to help her build as normal a life as possible. And a few months ago, we were rewarded when she said she wanted to call us Mom and Dad.

  “I’m guess I’m sorta pretending,” she admitted. “I know I’ll never have my own mom and dad back. But I’d like it if you’d be Mom and Dad, if that’s okay with you.”

  It was okay with us, and the three of us shared a hug to seal the bargain. I’m not a sentimental person by nature, but I don’t mind saying that I had tears in my eyes. I had put off marriage because I valued my independence and wanted to be free of binding, entangling commitments. For a time, I’d had a law career, and then I had the shop, and in both circumstances, I cherished my freedom and autonomy. I had never planned to have children, and even after McQuaid and I moved in together and I became Brian’s mom, I didn’t consider myself a genuinely domesticated person.

  Now, a husband, two kids, a dog, a house cat and a shop cat, innumerable lizards, snakes, and spiders (all Brian’s), and six chickens later, I’m still getting used to it. But it’s hard to think back to a time when McQuaid and Brian and I weren’t a family, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle, sharing everything that came along. And now there’s another piece, a sweet and fragile little girl, and much more to share.

  Mom and Dad?

  Yes, it was okay. It was definitely okay.

  “I’ll get my camera,” Caitie said now, and scampered up the stairs. When she first visited our house with her father, she had been enchanted by the round room in the turret—the Magic Tower, she called it. When she disappeared from the family picnic that afternoon, I found her asleep on the window seat there, my tattered childhood copy of The Secret Garden on the floor beside her. So when she came to live with us, the Magic Tower became hers. She chose two shades of pink for the walls and ceiling and she’s hung her drawings of fairies and filled the shelves with the books and stuffed animals she brought from the life she shared with her parents. She spends a lot of time there, playing her violin and reading and looking out the window.

  And one memorable afternoon, she put all six of her girls in a bushel basket and carried them up to her room. Judging from the clucking, I’d say that they enjoyed themselves.

  Chapter Eight

  The Chipotle Chicken was across Blanco Street from Kirk’s Computer Sales and Service, not far from the CTSU campus. From their table at the front window, Sheila and Jack Bartlett could see the shop, which occupied the middle unit in a small strip mall. All three stores in the mall were closed and dark, although the all-night Washateria on the corner of Blanco and Bur Oak was brightly lit and busy—students, mostly.

  Sheila and Bartlett didn’t talk much during the meal, both preoccupied with their thoughts. By the time they finished, the misty rain had turned into a drizzle. They left their cars in the Chipotle Chicken lot and walked across the street, where Bartlett used Larry Kirk’s key to let them in the front door. From his investigation into the earlier break-in, Bartlett knew his way around the shop and swiftly deactivated the alarm unit before it could go off, using the code he’d written in his notebook.

  “Good move, Jack,” Sheila said. Burglar alarms were a big-dollar headache for the department. Ninety-eight percent of the alarm calls that the police had to answer were triggered by accident or operator error, but each one still had to be checked out by patrol officers.

  “Figured that code might come in handy,” Bartlett said with a grin, and flicked on the lights at the front of the store.

  The shop was longer than it was wide, with a glass display window across the front. Along both sides of the room were floor-to-ceiling shelves of computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, modems, carrying cases, and accessories—a large inventory, Sheila thought, representing a sizeable investment. A sales counter with a cash register was located about midway to the back of the shops. Above the counter was a sign:

  COMPUTER SALES AND REPAIR

  HOME AND OFFICE NETWORKING

  SPYWARE REMOVAL/VIRUS PROTECTION

  AUTOMATED REMOTE BACKUPS

  FULL SERVICE TUNE-UPS STARTING AT $99

  Behind the counter was a work area with several file cabinets and two desks, each with a computer and a couple of chairs. Along a partition wall near the back of the area was a workbench, a couple of tall stools, and racks and shelves of computers and parts.

  As they went through the darkened work area, Sheila said, “Tell me about Timms’ break-in.”

  “He came in the back way,” Bartlett said, and opened the door next to the workbench. It led into a storage area that was stacked with empty boxes and assorted computer equipment. In the concrete block wall at the back was another door. Bartlett turned on a light, disarmed the alarm, and pushed the door open. Outside was an empty, asphalted parking area, rain puddles glittering in the blue glare of a mercury vapor lamp at the far end of the strip mall, near the Washateria.

  “Timms didn’t set off the alarm back here?” Sheila asked, looking at the keypad beside the back door.

  “Beginner’s luck,” Bartlett said. “Apparently, the last guy out that night—the assistant manager, a kid named Palmer—failed to set the alarm. This door is pretty flimsy, and Timms came equipped with a crowbar. Probably took him all of three minutes to pop that lock. If the alarm had been on, our guys would’ve caught him in the building.” He grinned wryly. “If they got here quick enough, that is.”

  The door repair was an amateur job, Sheila saw. The lock plate had been replaced but not the splintered section of the jamb.

  Bartlett gestured around the storage room. “We don’t know how long he was in this area or how much searching he did back here. The video camera picked him up near the register, where there was enough light from the street to capture an image of him pushing a few things around, scattering papers, and so on, to make it look like vandals had broken into the place. When Kirk came in the next morning and saw what had happened, he reported it and began an inventory. Nothing turned up missing—not even Timms’ computer. It’s the shop’s practice to put the smaller units that come in for repair into one of the file cabinets, out of sight. This one was a notebook computer.”

  “Did Kirk recognize Timms from the surveillance camera?” Sheila asked, as they walked back into the work area.

  “It was the assistant manager who tagged Timms. That was the next afternoon, after he looked at the video. He told Matheson—he was the one who handled the initial investigation—and Mattie bumped it up to me.” He grinned slightly. “Seein’ as how it was George Timms on that tape, Mattie knew right away that he didn’t want any part of it.”

  Sheila chuckled, imagining how Detective Matheson must have felt when he understood that what he was investigating as a minor break-in by a couple of teenagers was the work of a major player in the Pecan Springs business community.

  “I let Captain Hardin know what was going down,” Bartlett went on. “We immediately seized Timms’ computer and the surveillance tape and moved to charge him. His lawyer came forward with the surrender offer and mentioned extortion—nothing specific, just the mention. Said we’d get the full story later.”

  “You didn’t look at the computer yourself, to see what might be on it?”

  Bartlett shook his head. “Didn’t seem important—not then, anyway. The only thing big about the deal was Timms. Anyway, I figured we’d have a look at the computer when it became clear what kind of blackmail charge Timms was going to make.”

  Sheila folded her arms and propped one hip against a desk. The lights at the front of the shop dimly lit the area behind the counter. “Who
worked on that computer here in the shop?”

  “That’s the interesting thing. Nobody worked on it—at least, that’s what they all claimed. Palmer checked it in just before five on Thursday and left it for the next available tech. The guys who work here sometimes come in after the shop is closed to catch up on a job. But none of them—that would be Henry, Dennis, Richie, and Kirk himself—would admit to coming in on Thursday night, or taking it out of the file cabinet on Friday.”

  “What about Jason?” Sheila asked.

  “Jason?” Bartlett asked, frowning. He reached into his pocket and took out his notebook. “I only know about three guys. Richie Potts, Dennis Martin, Henry Palmer. Four, counting Kirk. I spoke to all of them. None of them owned up to having a look at Timms’ computer.”

  “Dana Kirk mentioned a contract employee named Jason. She didn’t know his last name. Maybe he’s not working here any longer. But we might want to check him out, see if he’s still got a key.”

  “Yeah.” Bartlett took out a pen, clicked it, and made a note. “Anyway, Timms brought his computer in late Thursday afternoon. The break-in happened on Friday night. He was identified on Saturday. The surrender deal was made on Sunday, for today.”

  “So if there was a blackmail threat, presumably Timms received it sometime on Friday. Which is why he came back for his computer on Friday night.”

  Bartlett shrugged. “Possible. Or it’s possible that he’s blowing smoke with the blackmail allegation, which we haven’t nailed down yet. Maybe he simply thought of something naughty that he left on the machine and wanted to get it back before anybody saw it.”

  “If that’s the case, why didn’t he just walk into the shop and ask for it?” Sheila asked. “I’ll have a talk with Charlie Lipman,” she added. “Maybe he knows more than he’s telling us right now.” She pushed out her lips. “Prints on Timms’ machine?”

  Bartlett frowned. “Not sure it was printed when we took it in. And I don’t think Mattie printed the guys who work here, either.” He shook his head ruefully. “I’ll get Butch to dust and print the computer. Didn’t seem important at the time. But now—” He pocketed his notebook.

  “Yeah. Now is a different story,” Sheila said, straightening. “Kirk’s dead and Timms has disappeared.”

  Bartlett cocked his head. “Got a theory or three?”

  Sheila smiled. It was a question Orlando had taught her to ask. How many theories can you spin, kid? The trick was to sketch all the possible explanations that might fit the facts, one, two, three, however many she could think of, no matter how far-out they seemed. Then leave every one of them on the table until more pieces of evidence became available, eliminating some, making others seem more plausible.

  “A few,” Sheila replied. “The most obvious one is suicide—why, we don’t know. Money, maybe, or the divorce, or his wife sleeping around. There’s the suicide note. But we’d have to understand why he’d write back-to-back emails, one all business and future-oriented, the other announcing that he was ending it. And one way or another, the suicide email rules out accident.” She paused. “A second theory. A robbery gone bad. But there was money in the wallet on the table—and the suicide email, both of which cancel that one out.”

  Bartlett nodded. “Agree. Okay, here’s a third. Kirk himself finds something juicy on Timms’ computer and demands money to keep his mouth shut. Timms kills Kirk to keep him quiet and then gets the hell out of Dodge. Seems the likeliest, to me—at least so far. It explains Timms’ absence.”

  “Or one of Kirk’s employees was blackmailing Timms,” Sheila said thoughtfully. “And maybe putting the bite on other customers as well. It might’ve been some kind of long-term racket, small scale, so people paid up and kept their mouths shut. Maybe Kirk found out what was going on and confronted the employee.”

  “Makes sense.” Bartlett pointed a finger and pulled an imaginary trigger. “Bang. Employee shoots the boss and attempts to make it look like a suicide. The employee is likely to know the wife’s name, and where to find her in Kirk’s email address book, which would account for the fake suicide note. And in this scenario,” he added, “Timms isn’t involved in the shooting. He decided to blow off the surrender for his own reasons.”

  “Yeah,” Sheila said quietly. “And then there’s the wife and her boyfriend, Glen Vance. She says that she was back at the library by one forty-five—which we can check out—but that he had errands to run. She doesn’t know what time he got back. Vance could have dropped her off, then driven over to Kirk’s and shot him.”

  Bartlett nodded. “Vance could easily have written the email, both to reinforce the appearance of suicide and to exonerate his girlfriend. Classic piece of misdirection.”

  “And that stalker that Kirk emailed China Bayles about,” Sheila said. “Did you happen to notice the five yellow sticky notes on the calendar? Saw JH? I wonder if the notes refer to the stalker.”

  “Yeah, I saw them,” Bartlett replied. “It’s certainly possible.” He began ticking off the possibilities on his fingers. “So far, what we’ve got is shot by robber, which we don’t like, and shot by self, which we doubt but it’s still a maybe. Shot by Timms, which seems likely. Then, shot by blackmailing employee, shot by wife’s boyfriend, and shot by stalker with or without the initials JH. That’s six—five if you count out robbery. Anything else off the top of your head?”

  “Could be none of the above,” Sheila said, liking Bartlett’s succinct summing up. “Something else, maybe. Something we haven’t picked up on yet.” Orlando had always reminded her of the importance of keeping an open mind. The evidence might seem to point them in one direction when the truth lay somewhere else entirely, somewhere they hadn’t looked yet. She turned at the sound of the front door opening and closing and a high-pitched male voice.

  “Who’s there?” the voice called. “Hey, Larry, is that you? Who’s back there?”

  “Police,” Bartlett stepped around the cash register counter as the rest of the store lights came on. “Hello, Henry,” he said. “Chief Dawson, this is the shop’s assistant manager. Henry Palmer. Henry, Chief Dawson.”

  The young man was tall and gangly, with narrow plastic-rimmed glasses and dark hair parted on one side and plastered to his head like shiny patent-leather. He wore a neon-striped bicycler’s vest, wet from the drizzle, and had a white helmet under one arm. He had pushed a bicycle through the front door and leaned it against one of the displays.

  “Have we had another break-in, Detective?” He blinked at Sheila. “The chief of police? Why are you—”

  “We have a warrant,” Bartlett said, and took it out for Palmer to see.

  Sheila spoke. “What are you doing here after hours, Mr. Palmer?”

  Palmer put the helmet down. “Well, Larry and me, we really don’t keep hours. We just come in whenever—” The young man swallowed, his Adam’s apple jumping in his skinny neck. “You know, like whenever there’s work.” Shrugging out of his bicycling vest, he pointed toward the bench at the back of the work area. “I started a job this afternoon. Pulling data off a hard drive that was in a house fire. Thought I’d come in for a couple of hours tonight and see if I could get it done.” His glance darted between Sheila and Bartlett. “Don’t tell me there was another break-in? I made sure to set the alarm this time.”

  Bartlett glanced at Sheila and she gave him an imperceptible nod. “No break-in.” His voice was gruff, his expression grave. “We’re very sorry to be the bearers of bad news, Mr. Palmer. Lawrence Kirk is dead.”

  “Dead?” Palmer put out a hand as if to steady himself, hit a monitor on the desk beside him, and had to grab it to keep it from tumbling onto the floor. “Omigod! Dead? Oh, no! What was it? A bike accident? I keep telling Larry that he needs to wear some sort of reflective gear when he’s riding that bicycle after dark, especially when it’s rainy. Leg bands, a jacket, something. But does he listen?” His voice rose. “No, of course he doesn’t. He never listens! Larry always knows better than anybody else.�
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  “It wasn’t a bicycle accident,” Bartlett said. “He was shot.”

  “Shot?” Palmer gasped. “You’re— No!”

  Sheila watched the young man closely. His eyes were round, huge, and he was suddenly pale, struggling to make sense of what he had just heard. Some people are good actors. They can mime shock, surprise, astonishment. But not this guy. Clearly, the news was a stunning blow.

  She waited a moment to let him catch his breath, then asked quietly, “You and Mr. Kirk were close?”

  “He’s my cousin,” Palmer said in a weak voice. He sank down in the nearest desk chair and put his head in his hands. “We grew up together.” He pulled in his breath, despairing. “What am I going to tell Aunt Jenny?”

  Bartlett lifted an eyebrow, letting Sheila know that this relationship was news to him.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Palmer,” she said quietly. “I’m sure this must be a shock to you. Did you see your cousin today? Did he come to work?”

  “I saw him this morning.” Palmer’s voice was muffled. “He was here until just before noon, then he went home. He usually works there after lunch, and comes back here before closing time. When he didn’t show up, I figured—” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I just figured that he’d gotten involved with what he was doing and wasn’t watching the clock. That’s Larry. I mean, he’s like that. He… he gets involved and loses track of time.”

  “Were you here in the shop by yourself this afternoon?” Bartlett asked.

  “No. Richie was here for a couple of hours. Then Dennis came in. And some guy looking for work.” He frowned. “I called Larry to ask whether he wanted the guy to fill out an application, but he didn’t pick up. Didn’t call back, either.”

  “You were never alone here?” Bartlett pressed.