by Ali Brandon
“Wow,” she softly exclaimed when she’d finished reading. She stuck the article into her tote bag. Given the uproar about Billy Pope and the missing condo money, she’d have to tell Jake about this.
A knock sounded from the hallway, making her jump. No doubt it was Jake—maybe her keycard didn’t work, either. But when she peered through the peephole in the door just to be sure, she was surprised to find instead a pale-faced woman staring back.
“Alicia?” Darla exclaimed as she unlatched the door. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
Two stupid questions, given the circumstances.
But Alicia merely asked, “May I come in?”
“Of course,” Darla told her, opening the door wider, and adding, “But we need to be quiet. Nattie is sleeping in the other room.”
A sudden, loud snore from that vicinity underscored her words.
Alicia nodded. “This will only take a minute,” the woman assured her as she stepped into the suite’s foyer area. “I simply wanted to urge you all to stay for the second day of our little show.”
“Stay? But—”
“I realize that having Hamlet go missing, if only for a few hours, was a traumatic experience,” Alicia rushed on before Darla could finish asking why she thought they were packing up. “And certainly what happened in my father’s room tonight was upsetting, to say the least. But let me reassure you that we are redoubling our security efforts for tomorrow. You, Hamlet, and Ms. Martelli will be perfectly safe with us.”
Alicia paused expectantly, and Darla nodded. Might as well play along. “I appreciate your saying that, Alicia. All right. We’ll all be there tomorrow.”
“Thank you. Now, I’d better go help my father. The police are allowing him back into his room long enough to retrieve his things.” Alicia gave her a cool nod and turned to go.
Impulsively, Darla put out a hand. “Wait,” she said. “I didn’t get to say it before, but I’m sorry for your loss. It’s always hard losing a friend.”
“Oh.” Alicia paused, her expression even blanker than before. “That’s very kind of you, Darla, but Ted was my father’s friend . . . at least, he was once. I have to say, I didn’t really know the man, at all.”
* * *
“ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE OKAY? YOU LOOK WORSE THAN WHEN WE LEFT the room. How’s your head?” Darla asked the next morning with a concerned look at Jake, who sat in the folding chair beside her.
The PI winced a little and put a hand to the back of her skull. “I really shouldn’t’ve had those beers with Sam Martinez last night. And all this meowing isn’t helping any, either.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not supposed to drink with a head injury. That one’s on you, so you’re not getting any sympathy out of me.”
“Ma? Ma, is that you?” Jake asked with a snort, pretending to look around the exhibition hall for her mother, who once again was manning the information table.
Darla grinned. They were back at the cat show, and the place was already humming with the sounds of exhibitors and spectators rushing about, along with the now-familiar chorus from a few hundred cats randomly mewing.
Hamlet, of course, was above it all . . . both figuratively and literally. Ignoring the hubbub, he once again was lounging in his guest-of-honor quarters, atop one of the bookshelves. To Darla’s relief, he seemed none the worse for wear after his abduction.
That was, assuming he’d actually been catnapped.
Darla’s smile faded. It was possible that he’d somehow simply escaped from Jake . . . and, in fact, she suspected this was the police’s theory. But no way would her friend have lied about that, or about being hit over the head. And there was no mistaking the fact that, when they’d found Hamlet again, he’d been minus the leash that had been attached to his harness right before his disappearance. A human had definitely been somehow involved.
“Burmese numbers fifteen through twenty-eight to Ring Three,” came the announcement over the PA, bringing her back to the moment. “Tonkinese numbers one through sixteen to Ring One.”
“I’m glad for all the exhibitors’ sakes that things are going on as planned,” Darla observed in a low voice while turning a friendly smile on two preteen boys who’d stopped to meet Hamlet. “I was hoping we could go under the radar today, but I’ve already had a couple of the show people ask me about Ted Stein. I guess it’s hard to keep something like this under wraps.”
By way of illustration, the stocky woman Darla had commiserated with over the supposed murder of Cozy Kitty the day before came trotting over. Today, her ample bosom sported the words “Really Crazy Cat Lady” on a tentlike pullover.
“Oh, honey,” she gushed, plump hand over heart, “I heard all about that breeder . . . what was his name, Stern?”
“Stein,” Darla corrected, bracing for the barrage of questions sure to come. To her relief, however, the woman didn’t sink to the expected level of nosiness, saying only, “Such a terrible thing. But don’t worry. I’m sure this had nothing to do with Hamlet or our nice little show.”
“Maine Coon numbers three through eighteen to Ring Six,” came another announcement over the loudspeaker, drawing the woman’s swift attention.
“That’s me. Gotta go,” she proclaimed. “Wish me and my big boy good luck!”
Darla waited until Ms. Really Crazy had rushed off again and then sighed. “I hope everyone else is too busy worrying about their cats to connect Ted’s accident with the show.”
“Accident?”
Jake’s tone indicated that an accident it was not. Darla shot her friend a surprised look. “Wait. I thought yesterday you said he probably tripped and hit his head on the coffee table, then bled to death.”
“Sure, but that’s when we thought the dead guy was Billy Pope. Since it’s Ted Stein, that puts a whole other spin on things. Let’s just say I don’t think there’s anything accidental about how he was killed.”
“What did Martinez tell you last night?”
Jake hesitated long enough that Darla figured she was going to invoke some kind of cop confidentiality, but then she said, “I heard the media already know this, so I guess it won’t hurt to tell you, too. You know that big glass seashell sculpture on the shelf in our bathroom?”
Darla nodded. “You mean the one the size of a salad plate and looks like it could be from that Botticelli painting of Venus? It’s kind of cute. They sell them in the hotel gift shop if you want one to take home with you.”
“They’ll be selling like hotcakes once word gets out that a guest at the Waterview was murdered with one of them.”
As Darla stared at her wide-eyed, Jake said, “According to Sam, they found one of those shells with significant blood spatter on it under the pillows on the floor next to Stein’s body. With luck, they’ll pull some prints off it, too. Chances are pretty darned good the ME is going to find that to be the cause of death.”
Darla winced a little as she pictured the whimsical glass souvenir being used in so brutal a fashion. Then she suppressed a shiver. If Ted’s death had indeed been murder rather than a simple accident, did that mean he’d been deliberately targeted? Or had Billy been the intended victim?
But when she asked Jake as much, the PI shrugged.
“Out of my jurisdiction, kid. And now that Hamlet’s back safe and sound, it’s not our problem. Sam and her people have everything under control. Our only job here is to get through the rest of the cat show and then squeeze in a little beach time before we have to head home again.”
Darla was about to press her for more, when she abruptly recalled the magazine article. Digging into her tote bag, Darla pulled out the torn pages from last night.
“Hold that last thought, and check this out first,” Darla told her friend as she handed over the article. “Last night while you were gone, Hamlet decided to do a little light reading. He ripped this out of the hotel magazi
ne.”
Jake pulled her reading glasses from her jacket pocket and scanned the pages.
“What do you think? Could this put our friend Billy Pope on the suspect list in Ted Stein’s murder?” Darla asked when her friend finally looked up from the tattered article.
The PI promptly shook her head.
“For my sake, I hope he’s not. If Sam so much as Mirandizes the man, Ma won’t let me hear the end of it unless I try to prove him innocent.”
Which Darla knew that Jake couldn’t technically do without being a licensed PI in Florida. She considered this a moment, and then replied, “You know what you said a minute ago about none of this being our concern? Well, I think you’re right. Let’s get through today in one piece and then do some sightseeing. We’re supposed to be on vacation. If Detective Martinez needs anything more from us, she knows where to find us.”
“Sounds good to me, kid.”
“Good.” Setting down her empty grande-sized paper cup, Darla stood. “You know, we did promise the show folks that we’d take Hamlet through the hall a few times each day so everyone can see him. Why don’t we take him on a quick stroll past the vendor tables before it gets too crowded? Besides,” she wheedled, “we need to visit with Trixie again so you can make up your mind whether or not you want to adopt her.”
The mention of the three-legged recue cat was apparently sufficient for Jake. The trio made their way through the slowly growing crowd, dodging the exhibitors who were rushing their furry charges from cage to ring and back again. Darla noticed as they passed him that Billy Pope was back in his usual judging spot in Ring One, looking dapper. He glanced up as they strolled past, giving no indication his room had been the site of a grisly murder scene the evening before, with the victim a known colleague of his. But either he didn’t see them—though a redhead and a six-foot-tall brunette walking a cat were hard to miss—or else he thought it best not to engage, for his gaze swept quickly past them with no sign of recognition.
Aloud, Darla wondered, “Shouldn’t he be lying low for a few days? I mean, if whoever killed Ted Stein meant to kill him instead, do you think it’s safe for him to be out in public?”
“Since whoever it was got up close and personal with Ted, I’d lay odds the killer knew who he was whacking over the head. Right now, my big question is: What was Stein doing in Pope’s hotel room?”
“Maybe he saw Hamlet on the balcony before we did and let himself into the room to rescue him?”
“Maybe,” Jake replied, “though from what I saw, Ted wasn’t really the rescuing type.” She gave a quick look around, just in case they could be heard over the bustle of the cat-show crowd, and then went on, “Unless he’s as good at climbing railings as Hamlet, someone had to have let Ted inside the room. And those wingtips he was wearing? They were Billy’s. I’ve seen a lot of strange things in my day, but that one is at the top of the list for weirdness.”
“It’s not at the top; it’s on a whole different crazy chart,” Darla replied. Pausing to look at an orange tabby Cornish Rex, she added, “I wonder if the police returned them to Billy. Though all I can say is that if those were my wingtips, they’d be in a trash bin somewhere right now. You think Ted had some kind of shoe fetish?”
“Beats me. I can’t come up with any good reason for a grown man to be wearing another man’s shoes like that.”
Darla thought a moment, and then snapped her fingers.
“Wait—I’ve got it. I know how this whole thing went down. Ted snuck into Billy’s room because he wanted those wingtips. Billy caught him wearing his precious shoes, freaked out, and killed him, then went down to the restaurant to create an alibi. He planned to go back up to the room and ‘find’ Ted dead, not expecting us to have found him first. Billy is the killer. Slam-dunk case.”
“Interesting motive,” Jake replied with a grin, “but slow down, Nancy Drew. Taking the wingtips out of the mix, if Pope had killed Stein and was trying to create an alibi for himself, he sure blew it, coming back up to the room alone like that. He had no way of knowing that Stein’s body had already been found, and half the Fort Lauderdale PD was already there to witness him walking up after the fact. If he was the killer, he would have made sure that Alicia or someone from the show was with him when he came back to the room. That way, he’d have an eyewitness who could testify to his shock at discovering the body.”
“Oh, right.”
Feeling deflated that Jake had so readily punched holes in her theory, Darla decided to give crime fighting a rest for a minute. Instead, she encouraged a toddler who’d given a happy little shriek at the sight of Hamlet to come closer. After the boy’s parents had snapped the obligatory camera photo of the little boy flashing a gummy grin at the oversized feline, Darla tried again.
“So does Detective Martinez have any idea of a motive, or a suspect?”
“If she does, she’s not sharing. Though, from what everyone says, Stein was a class-A jack wagon who ticked people off right and left, so any number of folks might have wanted him dead. I know I wanted to strangle him while I was sitting in at that board meeting the other night at Ma’s condo.”
“But that still leaves Hamlet’s kidnapping. The fact that Hamlet was in Billy Pope’s room has to mean something.” Darla halted long enough to scoop up Hamlet and snuggle him protectively in her arms . . . only to set him right back down again when he gave a little rumble that definitely was not a purr.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jake replied. “Hamlet could have escaped from whoever took him and just happened to be on Billy’s balcony when we found him. Those balconies are close enough that you could hold hands with the person on the one next to you. He could have hopscotched around out there for a while until we noticed him.”
Darla considered that a moment. “That could explain why I never got a ransom note or call. The person who took Hamlet didn’t have him as a hostage long enough to do anything.”
“Maybe. But now that Hamlet is safe and sound with us, all that is Sam’s problem.”
By unspoken agreement, they dropped the subject of Ted Stein’s death as they browsed the vendor tables, the occasional ring announcement the only interruption to the murmur of voices—human and feline—that was the soundtrack of the show. Darla finally broke down and bought the cat-shaped pillows she’d been lusting after. And then it was off to pay another visit to the Tropical Adoptables rescue booth.
Trixie was still there, the little Siamese bounding about the pen on her three legs with her fellow kittens. Darla noticed that all ten of the tiny cats now wore bright paper collars, eight of them blue, and Trixie’s and a little black female’s both yellow.
“The ones in blue are spoken for,” the middle-aged blond rescue woman, who had introduced herself as Marie, explained. “Their prospective new owners have filled out their paperwork and put down a deposit, and once we do the background checks, they can pick up their new kitties from our shelter and take them to their forever homes. The other two are still waiting for someone to adopt them.”
“I can’t believe no one wants that little black one,” Darla exclaimed. “Look how sweet she is. She looks like a miniature Hamlet.”
The rescue woman shook her head. “Special needs cats like Trixie, and black cats like Nera, are our hardest placements. Most people don’t want to take a chance on a cat that has issues, even if that cat can live a perfectly long and healthy life. And in the case of Nera, you won’t believe how many folks still think black cats are unlucky and refuse to own one.”
“Ridiculous,” Darla muttered. It was hard to fathom that some people still clung to such medieval beliefs, though she’d seen for herself the occasional bookstore customer steering clear of Hamlet simply because of his fur color. Although to be fair, in Hamlet’s case, there might have been a number of other possible reasons to stay out of the feline’s way.
Jake, meanwhile, pulled a pen out of her ja
cket. “Hand over the clipboard, Marie,” she addressed the rescue worker. “I’m going to adopt Trixie.”
“Fantastic! You won’t regret it, believe me.”
Digging out a clipboard with a long form attached, a smiling Marie gave Jake the paperwork. Then, while the PI began filling in the blanks, the woman shot Darla a hopeful look. “That just leaves Nera. You sure that handsome fellow of yours doesn’t need a little sister? I’ve got another clipboard.”
By way of answer, Hamlet leaned closer to the cage and hissed at the would-be sibling. Darla winced and pulled him back from the pen.
“Sorry, I think that’s a no. Hamlet is pretty much an only cat. But if you give me your contact information, I’d be happy to post something on my website for any of our mail-order customers in this area.”
By the time Jake finished her paperwork, Darla and Marie had exchanged cards and were swapping cat stories like old friends. Jake set the clipboard down and leaned into the pen, scooping the tiny Siamese into her arms.
“How’s tricks, Trix?” she asked in a high-pitched voice that an amused Darla had never before heard out of her friend. “Does hers want to come home with me?”
Trixie seemed on board with that suggestion, for she promptly snuggled against Jake’s shoulder, leaving a new sprinkling of silver cat hair on the black fabric.
Darla smiled. “You don’t have to worry about contacting Jake’s landlady,” she told Marie. “That’s me, and I officially give her permission to keep a cat in her apartment.”
She signed the approval block on the form that Marie indicated and then turned her attention to Hamlet. “Looks like you’re getting a new neighbor,” she informed the cat. “I hope you like her better than Nera.”
