What the Cat Saw

by Carolyn Hart

  Dugan looked puzzled.

  “There was fury. It wasn’t just a search.”

  Dugan’s smile was bleak. “Camouflage. Just like the baskets and the sprinkler and the fountains.”

  8

  Steve Flynn’s strong stubby fingers flew over the keypad. He was nudging the deadline, but he still had ten minutes. He’d fallen back into the routine as if he’d never been away, the early pages locked down around two, late-breaking news up to four. His six years on the LA Times until he was let go in one of the wholesale newsroom firings seemed like a mirage. Maybe they had been. Most of that life had been a mirage. Especially Gail. He felt the familiar twist, half anger, half disbelief. So much for ’til death us do part. Maybe that phrase ought to be dropped from modern weddings. Maybe the vows should read, I’ll stay until something better comes along. Or, been good to know you, but my way isn’t your way. When the call came about his dad’s stroke, he had told her he needed to go back to Craddock to run the Clarion. Somebody had to do it unless they sold the newspaper that had been founded by his great-grandfather. His brother Sean was a surgeon in Dallas. Sean had never been drawn to the business while Steve had grown up nosing around the newsroom. He tried to explain to Gail about the paper and family and keeping a flame alight in the little town they loved. Gail stood there within his reach, close enough to touch, but she receded like the tide going out. Oh, she’d been kind. Or thought she had, her words smooth…felt us growing apart for a while now…have such a great future here…got a callback today…The producer wants to see more of me…wish you the best of luck…

  He’d been back a little over a year and the divorce had been final for six months.

  He returned to the screen, his fingers thumping a little too hard on the keyboard. He finished the story, glanced at the time. Four more minutes. He scrolled up.

  A gold and diamond necklace valued at approximately $250,000 was stolen from the desk of Haklo Foundation Trustee Blythe Webster sometime between Jan. 4 and 5, according to Craddock Police Detective K. T. Dugan.

  Detective Dugan said the necklace was an original work of art created by Tiffany & Co. for Miss Webster’s father, Harris Webster, who established the foundation.

  The theft was revealed Monday when police were called to the foundation to investigate a possible break-in. Detective Dugan said the foundation had been entered, apparently over the weekend, and the office of late employee Marian Grant vandalized.

  Detective Dugan said Miss Webster had not previously reported the theft of the necklace because she wished to avoid further negative publicity for the foundation, which has been attacked by vandals several times, beginning in September. Incidents include a car set afire in the foundation employees’ parking lot; destruction of valuable Indian baskets; activated fire sprinklers in an office resulting in property damage; and water turned on, then off in an outdoor fountain, causing frozen pipes. The car fire occurred Sept. 19 during office hours. Other incidents occurred after hours.

  According to the police report, the office vandalized this weekend had been occupied by Grant, who was chief operating officer at the time of her death, Jan. 9. Miss Grant, a jogger, was found dead at the foot of her apartment stairs, apparently the victim of a fall. Police said the fall may have been caused by new running shoes. Police said Miss Grant customarily jogged early every morning.

  Police received a 911 call at 11:40 a.m. Monday from Rosalind McNeill, Haklo Foundation receptionist. In the call, Mrs. McNeill reported that an office was trashed, papers thrown everywhere, file cabinets emptied, the computer monitor cracked, and furniture overturned.

  According to police, Mrs. McNeill said the office had not been emptied of Miss Grant’s belongings and there was no way to determine if anything was missing.

  Detective Dugan declined to suggest a motive for the invasion of the office.

  The detective also declined to speculate on whether the damage to Miss Grant’s office was connected to a reported break-in early Saturday morning at the dead woman’s apartment at 1 Willow Lane. A 911 call was received at 1:35 a.m. According to the police report, the call was placed by Cornelia Farley, a temporary employee of the foundation who was staying at the apartment to care for the late resident’s cat. Miss Farley told police she awoke to hear sounds of a search in the apartment living room. She called 911. When police arrived, no trace of an intruder was found, but Detective Dugan said a desk had been searched and the living room was in disarray. Detective Dugan said it was unknown if anything had been removed from the apartment.

  The Haklo Foundation issued a statement: “Operations at the Haklo Foundation remain unaffected by the series of unexplained incidents, which apparently are the work of vandals. Blythe Webster, foundation trustee, announced today a reward of $100,000 for information leading to the apprehension and conviction of the vandals. Miss Webster will personally fund the reward. No foundation monies will be used. Miss Webster emphasized that she and all the employees will not be deterred from the execution of their duties by this apparent vendetta against the foundation.”

  Detective Dugan said the investigation is continuing.

  When he came home to the Clarion, Steve had insisted he was a reporter. There were five of them in the newsroom. He glanced around the room, gray metal desks, serviceable swivel chairs, maps of the county on one wall, a montage of early-day black-and-white photographs of Craddock on another.

  At the far desk, Ace Busey looked older than Methuselah, with a lined face and drooping iron gray mustache. Ace still smoked, but he covered city and county politics like a burr on a horse’s back, darting out of meetings long enough to catch a drag when he was certain nothing was going to pop. He’d never been wrong yet.

  Freddi Frank nibbled on a cinnamon bun as she made notes. Freddi ran the Life section: houses, gardens, recipes, and women’s groups, any spare inches allotted to wire coverage of the glitterati currently atop the celebrity leaderboard. Freddi was unabashedly plump and amiable, and her Aunt Bill’s candy was the centerpiece of the staff Christmas party.

  The sports desk was unoccupied. Joe Guyer could be anywhere: at a wrestling match, covering a high school basketball game, adding clips to his old-fashioned notebook. Joe worked on a laptop but he continued to distrust the electronic world. Balding, weedy, and always in a slouch, he had an encyclopedic memory of sports trivia, including facts large and small about the Sooners football team. He could at any time drop interesting tidbits: the first OU football game in September 1895 was played on a field of low prairie grass near what is now Holmberg Hall; the Sooners beat the Aggies seventy-five to zero on November 6, 1904 in their first contest; 1940 quarterback Jack Jacobs was known as Indian in a tribute to his Creek heritage; in 1952 halfback Billy Vessels was the first OU player to win the Heisman Trophy.

  Jade Marlow rounded out the lot. Steve didn’t glance toward her desk. He was aware of her. Very aware. The new features reporter, Jade was a recent J-school grad, good, quick, smart, glossily lovely, a tall slender blonde, curvy in all the right places, sure she was going big places. She’d been inviting, but he had simply given her a cool blue look and walked away and now she avoided him. That was good. He looked at her and he saw Gail—beautiful, confident, blond, smart, and a producer wanted to see more of her. How much more? Did she get the role? Or was she playing a different kind of role? He didn’t give a damn. Not anymore. He wrenched his mind back to the newsroom.

  Around the corner from the sports desk was the lair of the Clarion photographer, Alex Hill. Pudgy and always disheveled, Alex handled a Nikon D3S as delicately as a surgeon with a scalpel.

  Steve felt pumped. It wasn’t the LA Times newsroom, but, in its own way, it was better. That’s why he didn’t mind spending part of every day in the publisher’s office. Maybe Dad would come back. Right now he still had only a trace of movement on his right side and his speech was jerky and sometimes unintelligible. It was up to Steve to make sure the Clarion kept on keeping on. Ads were the paper’s lif
eblood. He went to all the service clubs meetings. He renewed old friendships, made new ones. He rode herd on ads and circulation and the aged heating system and the printing press that might need to be replaced. A memo from the business office recommended switching paper purchase to a mill in India. He’d worry about that tomorrow. Right now he was pleased with his afternoon. A good story, would probably run above the fold.

  Steve clicked send and looked across the room at a trim, white-haired woman. As the file arrived, she half turned from her computer screen to give him a thumbs-up. Mim Barlow, the city editor, had worked at the Clarion since Steve was a little boy. She knew everyone in town, insisted on accuracy, and sensed news like a hawk spotting a rabbit. She was blunt, brusque, stone-faced, and scared the bejesus out of kid reporters. She was tough, but her toughness masked a crusader’s heart. She’d helped break a story about abuse at a local nursing home that resulted in two criminal convictions and the closure of the home. The night Mim received the Oklahoma Press Association’s Beachy Musselman Award for superior journalism, she’d walked back to the table carrying the plaque and taken her seat to thunderous applause. She’d bent closer to him. “If I’d sent the reporter out a month sooner—I’d heard some stuff at the beauty shop—maybe that frail little woman wouldn’t have died. Good, Steve, but not good enough. I was busy with that series on the county commissioners and that road by the Hassenfelt farm. I let little get in the way of big.”

  Maybe it was being around Mim that made him look at people’s faces and sometimes see more than anyone realized. He’d looked at a lot of faces today. One stood out, a face he wouldn’t forget. He’d seen her last night at Hamburger Heaven. He’d watched her leave with regret, wishing that someday, somehow he would see her again, damning himself as a fool to be enchanted simply because a beautiful, remote woman sat at a nearby table and her loneliness spoke to his.

  Today he had seen her again.

  He reached for his laptop, checked his notes. Cornelia Farley, called Nela. Pronounced Nee-la. Pretty name. Glossy black hair that looked as if it would be soft to the touch, curl around his fingers. He’d known last night that he wouldn’t forget her face and bewitching eyes that held depths of feeling.

  She’d been the last to be interviewed by Dugan. As staff members exited the police interview, Steve queried them. All had “no comment” except Robbie Powell, who promised to provide an official statement. Powell refused to confirm or deny that Blythe Webster had declared a news blackout. Steve remained in the hall asking questions, though now he knew there would be no answers.

  When Nela came out of the room, she’d walked fast, never noticed him standing nearby. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. She moved like a woman in a hurry.

  Last night she’d been ice. This afternoon she was fire.

  He wanted to know why.

  She’d moved past him. He would have followed but he had a job to do. Brisk steps sounded and he’d turned to Dugan.

  “Hey, Katie.” He’d known Katie Dugan since he was a high school kid nosing after the city hall reporter and she was a new patrol officer. “Let’s run through the various incidents here at the foundation.”

  The blockbuster was the revelation of the theft of Blythe Webster’s two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar necklace. Katie had been grim about the fact that no report had been made at the time. She’d related the disparate incidents, including a somewhat vague reference to misuse of foundation stationery. She’d balked at explaining how the stationery had been used, but she’d provided a detailed description of the necklace: diamonds set in eighteen-karat gold acanthus leaves connected by gold links. He’d come back to the office knowing he had a front-page story.

  Now he’d finished his story but he couldn’t forget Nela Farley. He had seen her in profile as he left Haklo, sitting at her desk, working on a computer, but her face spoke of thoughts far afield. There was a determined set to her jaw. Now he looked across the room at the city desk, gave an abrupt nod, and came to his feet. As he passed Mim’s desk, he jerked a thumb in the general direction of Main Street. “Think I’ll drop by the cop shop.”

  Mim’s sharp gray eyes brightened. “You got a hunch?”

  “Maybe.” Maybe he felt the tug of a story behind a story. Nela Farley’s interview with Katie Dugan had transformed her. As a newcomer to town, her involvement at Haklo should have been peripheral. But he knew he cared about more than the story. He wanted to know Nela Farley. Maybe he was not going to let the little get in the way of the big.

  At four thirty, Louise stepped through the connecting door. Her frizzy hair needed a comb. She’d not bothered to refresh her lipstick. Her eyes were dark with worry.

  Nela watched her carefully. Had the detective told Louise that Nela and Chloe were her number-one suspects? Since the brutal interview with Dugan, Nela had made progress on the stack of grant applications while she considered how to combat the accusations against her and Chloe. It was essential that she continue to work at the foundation. It came down to a very clear imperative. She had to find out who was behind the vandalism, including the theft and likely the murder of Marian Grant, to save herself and Chloe. But first she had to get rid of the necklace.

  Since Dugan hadn’t returned with a warrant for her arrest, Nela felt sure that the purse still remained hidden behind the stacked cans of cat food. Would it occur to the detective that the search of the apartment and the office might be a search for the necklace? Right now, Dugan was convinced of Chloe’s guilt and believed the necklace had already been sold and the proceeds pocketed. That’s why Dugan questioned the expensive trip to Tahiti. An investigation would prove that there had been a contest and that Leland won. No doubt inquiries were being made into Chloe and Nela’s finances as well. If poor equaled honest, she and Chloe had no worries. Unfortunately, the fact that Chloe’s bank account and Nela’s had lean balances didn’t prove their innocence.

  Louise gave a huge sigh. “What a dreadful day. That horrible letter…At least it wasn’t sent to anyone other than members of the grants committee. That’s a huge relief. But I don’t know what to think about Marian’s office. There doesn’t seem to be any point other than making a mess. Of course there wasn’t any point to any of the other vandalism. And you must have been very upset when someone broke into the apartment.” Her glance at Nela was apologetic. “I’m afraid I’ve been so busy thinking about the foundation, I didn’t even stop to think how you must be feeling.” Louise came around the desk, gently patted Nela’s shoulder. “A young girl like you isn’t used to these sorts of incidents.” Louise was earnest. “I don’t want you to think things like this happen much in Craddock. I’ve been at the foundation for twenty-three years and we never had any vandalism before September. Poor Hollis. The car was set on fire only a month after he came. What a way to begin your first big job. He’d only been an assistant director at a foundation up in Kansas for two years, and it was quite a plum for him to become head of the Haklo Foundation. Of course, it was real hard on Erik, our former director. But anyone who works for a family foundation has to remember that the family runs everything. Blythe’s the sole trustee and she has complete power over the staff.”

  “Why did she want a new director?” Nela knew the question might be awkward, but she was going to ask a lot of awkward questions.

  “Oh.” It was as if a curtain dropped over Louise’s face. “She met Hollis at a big philanthropy meeting in St. Louis. We attend every year. Hollis made a good impression. Fresh blood. That kind of thing.” She was suddenly brisk. “Here I am chattering away. You go home early and get some rest.”

  As Nela left, Louise was sitting at her desk, her face once again drawn with worry. Nela forced herself to walk to Leland’s VW even though she felt like running. The sooner she reached the apartment, the sooner she could decide what to do about the damnable necklace.

  Steve Flynn ignored his shabby leather jacket hanging on the newsroom coat tree. He rarely bothered with a coat. Oklahomans weren’t mu
ch for coats even on bitter winter days. Hey, maybe it was in the twenties today. By the end of the week, it would be forty and that would seem balmy. He always moved too fast to feel the cold, thoughts churning, writing leads in his head, thinking of sources to tap, wondering what lay behind facades.

  He took the stairs down two at a time to a small lobby with a reception counter. A gust of wind caught his breath as he stepped onto Main Street. Craddock’s downtown was typical small-town Oklahoma. Main Street ran east and west. Traffic was picking up as five o’clock neared. Most buildings were two stories, with shops on the street and offices above. Craddock had shared in the prosperity fueling the southwest with the boom in natural gas production, especially locally from the Woodford Shale. New facades had replaced boarded-up windows. Some of the businesses had been there since he was a kid: Carson’s Drugs at the corner of Main and Maple, Walker’s Jewelry, Indian Nation Bank, Hamburger Heaven, and Beeson’s Best Bargains. There were plenty of new businesses: Jill’s Cupcakes, Happy Days Quilting Shop, Carole’s Fashions, and Mexicali Rose Restaurant.

  It was two blocks to city hall. He walked fast, hoping he’d catch Katie before she went off duty. Again he didn’t use an elevator. The stairwells were dingy and had a musty smell. He came out in a back hallway and went through an unmarked frosted door to the detectives’ room.

  Mokie Morrison looked up from his desk. “Jesus, man, it’s twenty-two degrees out there. That red thatch keep you warm?” Mokie wore a sweater thick enough for Nome.

  Steve grinned at Mokie, who had three carefully arranged long black strands draped over an ever-expanding round bald spot. “Eat your heart out, baldie.” He jerked his head. “Dugan still here?”

  “She’s got a hot date with her ex. Better hustle to catch her.”

  At Katie’s office door, he hesitated before he knocked. Katie and Mark Dugan’s on-off relationship evoked plenty of good-natured advice from her fellow officers. Katie blew off comments from soulful to ribald with a shrug. Steve was pretty sure Katie would never get over her ex. Mark was handsome, charming, lazy, always a day late and a dollar short. Like Mokie had told her one night as he and Steve and Katie shared beers, “Katie, he’s not worth your time.” Good advice but cold comfort in a lonely bed on a winter night. Just like he told himself that he was better off without Gail and then he’d remember her standing naked in their dusky bedroom, blond hair falling loose around her face, ivory white skin, perfect breasts, long slender legs.