The teacher bustled up to Vanessa and blushed. “I’m sorry about this.”
“It’s wonderful. Let them run,” Vanessa insisted.
“Are you sure it’s okay?” the teacher implored. “I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt, and I wouldn’t want them to scare your cats away.”
“Don’t worry about the cats,” Vanessa told her. “They can take care of themselves. If they don’t like it, they’ll make themselves scarce.”
“You are very understanding. I don’t need to explain that these field trips are stressful,” the teacher emphasized.
Vanessa laughed. “That’s what we're here for. The children need this, and so do the cats.”
The teacher surveyed the surroundings. “You have such a wonderful place. We couldn’t wait to come out and see what you have going on here.”
“We have the first tour of the facilities at ten o’clock,” Vanessa suggested. “Would you like to go on that?”
The teacher glanced around. “I’d love to, but I don’t want to make any promises when it comes to getting the children rounded up.”
Vanessa smiled. “If they come, they come. If they would rather run around and explore, that’s fine too.”
“Thank you,” the teacher exclaimed.
Three boys ran past waving sticks at each other and bellowing at the tops of their lungs. The teacher blushed.
“I’ll get ready for the tour anyway,” Vanessa proposed. “I’m sure some of them will be interested.”
Vanessa swung open the door to the house and discovered Henry tucked under a chair on the porch.
“That looks like a good hiding spot,” Vanessa whispered to Henry as he tucked his front paws under his body.
Vanessa went back to her work, but she couldn’t help but smile every time she saw the children running around with Aurora. This is why Vanessa moved to the country. The other cats just need time to acclimate to all of this attention from visitors.
The sun went down over the western trees and lit up the sky with shades of pink and purple. Detective Wheeler pulled into the driveway of the cat sanctuary. Vanessa waved to him from a chair on the porch as Teddy purred at her side.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“I had my first tour today,” she replied. “The kids were more than I could handle.”
Pete laughed. Flossy followed Pete up the porch steps and jumped into Vanessa’s lap as Pete sat down next to her.
“I’m sure it will get easier.”
“I have no doubt,” Vanessa confirmed. “How is the case developing? I have met all the suspects but I am still unsure of who might have murdered Jerry.”
Pete reassured Vanessa by placing his hand on her arm. “Welcome to the world of criminal investigation. We all have to follow leads, even if they seem to direct us away from the culprit. None of us would solve the simplest case without help. You have the very unique talent of being able to communicate with cats, so they’re the ones who give you the help you need. I’m grateful for the help you get from them.”
“It’s very kind of you to say that,” Vanessa replied.
“It’s true,” he told her. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short.”
A loud, shrill whistle blared from within the house. Vanessa stood up. “Pete, would you like something to drink? I was just boiling water for some tea.”
Pete smiled. “Do you happen to have any coffee? I take it black. It has been a long day at the station.”
“I will make you a fresh pot. Be right back,” Vanessa replied and walked into the kitchen.
Flossy stretched her paws and hopped onto Pete’s armrest. She steadied herself as she made her way along the edge and continued up across the top of the chair. Pete looked to the left as Flossy jumped down to the other armrest and then leapt into his lap. This startled Pete, but he reluctantly stroked Flossy’s back as she curled up.
“Flossy seems pretty comfortable.”
Pete jumped as Vanessa returned with his cup of coffee.
“I wouldn’t call myself a cat person yet,” Pete declared as he rubbed the top of Flossy’s head. “But I won’t say I’m not developing a soft place in my heart for your cats. You have the most exceptional cats in the world, if you ask me. I only wish half the people on the planet were as smart and helpful.”
“And law-abiding?” Vanessa chuckled and sipped her tea.
Pete took a long sip of his coffee. “Oh, yes. You can’t imagine how encouraging it is to know the Cat Protection League is helping me keep the world safe from crime and evil.”
“They also fight your stresses of the day,” Vanessa offered. Flossy closed her eyes as Pete’s hand rested on her back.
“Yes, they do. After the day I had, I needed it. I just spent the day at the station listening to the Federal investigators fill me in on the criminal case against the Frank Morton Foundation.”
“What?” she gasped.
“The Feds built a case around Jerry testifying against the foundation. Jerry was reluctant and held off the Feds for a while, but I guess Jerry delayed one day too many.” Pete pointed out.
“What else did they tell you?” Vanessa asked.
“The foundation had been accepting anonymous donations from wealthy patients in order to move up the donor list. There were patients that had been waiting on that list for months. Steve made Jerry manipulate the order of the list so that the wealthy patients were the first recipients of a transplant. No hospital every doubted Jerry’s integrity and would perform the operations without question.”
“I just ran into Steve at the market. He walked away from me when I started talking about Jerry,” Vanessa offered.
“I guess Steve didn’t tell you about this arrangement he had,” Pete jested.
“No.” Vanessa blurted. “This is the first I am hearing of it. What about the others in the foundation? Did they know about the criminal activity?”
“The Feds didn’t have any emails or phone calls that would indicate that they knew anything, but certainly all of them must have known,” Pete explained. “The foundation barely broke even at the beginning but now they are flush with cash. They all receive high salaries as part of the operating cost of the foundation.”
“Frank probably knew the Feds would be snooping around their office. A picnic in the middle of a cat sanctuary? No one would expect them here and they could talk without worrying about someone overhearing.” Vanessa implied.
“Frank had a lot to lose if they stopped the criminal operations. They needed to sneak around to keep moving the people up the list and to bring in those large donations,” Pete asserted.
“Perhaps the secrecy is what finally upset Jerry. Andrea told me he valued the service he was providing to patients,” Vanessa remarked. “He must have vowed to do the right thing at the picnic and probably was headed back to the investigators. What he didn’t know was that someone already wanted him dead.”
“You could only hope that was his intention walking back to their minivan,” Pete commented.
Flossy jumped out of Pete’s lap and leapt from the porch into the thick grass lawn. Only her tail could be seen sticking above the tall grass as she made her way to the driveway. Flossy jumped onto the hood of the Volvo station wagon.
“I guess Flossy had enough of hearing about the case,” Pete joked.
“Are they ready to make arrests?” Vanessa inquired.
“It seems without Jerry and his testimony, they are not able to charge anyone yet,” Pete explained. “Because the donations were anonymous, Steve could cover up the connection between the money coming in and the names of the wealthy patients.”
“Frank was so angry the night he was looking for Andrea. He must have suspected that there were probably more people in the foundation willing to talk to the investigators. He must have worried that Andrea was one of them,” Vanessa recalled.
“Frank is my main suspect right now,” Pete informed Vanessa. “He had access to Andrea’s Prohiborol, but he wasn�
�t able to poison the sandwiches. He must have conspired with Sabrina or Steve when they were taking them out of the picnic hamper.”
“I am not a fan of Frank, but at the picnic he was trying to calm Jerry down. Why would Frank be so relaxed if he had poisoned Jerry’s sandwich? He would have known the drug interaction would happen at any moment,” Vanessa insisted.
Pete’s phone vibrated and rung in his pocket. Pete took out his phone and gave it a cold look.
“It’s the Federal Investigators. I should take this,” Pete stressed. “This is Detective Wheeler. Yes, I can be back at the station in thirty minutes.”
“Duty calls,” Vanessa joked.
“Thanks for the coffee. The Feds are going to grill me on this case all night,” Pete sighed. “Anyway, you should get some rest with the day you just had.”
“You should too. Don’t let them keep you too late,” Vanessa grinned.
Chapter 10
Vanessa chuckled to herself when she spotted Aurora sound asleep on a chair in the kitchen. “The children certainly got excited about the sanctuary, didn’t they? And you got excited, too. I know they wore you out, but it’s the best thing for you.”
Aurora didn’t stir, and Vanessa left the tiny kitten to sleep. She continued making dinner and tossed some freshly cut vegetables into her soup that was simmering in the stew pot.
She reached for the cans of cat food from the open cabinet under the kitchen sink. Amber slipped through the cat door and looked around.
“I know it’s early,” Vanessa told her. “But we’ve all had a big day and we won’t have Pete or anyone else over tonight. Why don’t we have an early dinner and go to bed? We can all catch up on some much-needed sleep.”
Amber sat in the middle of the kitchen floor with her eyes fixed on the cans of cat food. At the sound of the can opener whirling, Foxle and Teddy bolted through the doorway. Henry followed behind at his own pace. Vanessa knelt down with the bowls of food and placed them one by one around the table.
“People cheating the healthcare system. Patients buying their way to the top,” Vanessa remarked. “Those poor people who couldn’t afford to jump ahead. I really hope those left to wait were able to receive a transplant in time. Maybe I should convince Andrea how wrong it is that the foundation is cheating people?”
Teddy licked his lips after his meal and jumped up onto the same chair with Aurora. He sniffed her, but she didn’t wake up. He coiled himself around her, but he kept his clear eyes fixed on Vanessa’s face. She stirred the vegetables in the soup with a wooden spoon.
“If we could connect the foundation with the murder, Andrea would be convinced to testify,” Vanessa remarked.
Teddy meowed, and Aurora stirred. Teddy stretched his legs and almost knocked Aurora off the chair.
“What do you mean, ask Flossy?” Vanessa spun around and stared at him. “What does she know about this?”
Teddy meowed again, but he didn’t move from the chair.
Vanessa dropped the wooden spoon with a clatter onto the counter and darted out of the kitchen. She rushed down the porch steps and started to look for Flossy. She found her stretched out on the Volvo station wagon. “What are you still doing out here, Flossy? Have you been lying out here since Pete left?”
Flossy didn’t lift her head from her paws. Her eyebrows twitched, but she pretended to be asleep.
Vanessa set her hands on her hips. “Teddy told me you might have evidence to solve this case.”
Flossy opened her eyes and regarded Vanessa with that feline superiority Vanessa knew so well.
“Flossy, I didn’t know you wanted me to come with you to the car earlier. I thought you were bored with our conversation and ran off,” Vanessa told her. “We can’t let a killer run free around town. Show me what you found, I am here now.”
Flossy let out a heavy sigh and got up. She made an elaborate show of stretching every inch of her body. Then she tiptoed down around the side of the station wagon. She looked up at Vanessa, and then rubbed her body against the passenger side door.
Vanessa stood over Flossy. “Is this what you want to show me? Is there something under the car?”
Vanessa stooped down and felt around beneath the car with her hands. “Is the evidence under here?” Vanessa asked. “I don’t see or feel anything. What am I supposed to be looking for?”
Flossy placed her paw on the car door. Then she meowed at Vanessa.
Vanessa swung open the door and peered inside. “How embarrassing. I still have all this stuff from the move in the backseat.”
Flossy meowed even louder. Vanessa crawled inside and rummaged through the blankets and boxes of files. “I might as well start unpacking the car while I look.”
Vanessa began placing the boxes on the outside and organized the backseat.
“I still don’t see anything new here,” Vanessa told Flossy.
Flossy sneezed, and then she meowed again. Vanessa stared at her. Flossy jumped into the backseat and laid down flat on her stomach on the floor of the car. She extended her paw behind the driver’s seat. Something rolled into sight, a small orange plastic bottle. Vanessa picked it up and examined the white label.
“Prohiborol,” she read. “Andrea Morton, prescription medicine, 300mg to be taken once a day. You are a remarkable cat, Flossy. I just thought you were having fun knocking the pile of receipts out of my hands earlier.”
Flossy walked away and then sat perched on the edge of the porch.
“I was so embarrassed and apologizing to Sabrina, I didn’t even notice you grab this bottle,” Vanessa told her. “The entire contents of the bottle have been used. I guess Sabrina didn’t want to take a chance with the dosage when she put the Prohiborol in the sandwiches.”
Flossy licked one of her paws.
“You are so helpful, Flossy,” Vanessa exclaimed. “Now, what is Sabrina’s motive to poison Jerry? Sabrina is the secretary. Her salary couldn’t be as large as the others in the foundation? If the foundation was shut down, she could easily find another job making the same amount.”
Vanessa slipped the bottle in her pocket and walked back to the porch. “I’ll call Pete and tell him what you found.”
Flossy continued to clean herself on the porch.
“I did see Foxle sniffing your bowl of food in the kitchen,” Vanessa teased.
Flossy bolted for the open door and disappeared into the house.
Chapter 11
Teddy and Aurora snoozed on the chairs in the kitchen. Vanessa finished making dinner and ate by herself at the table. Foxle sat on her lap the way he always did, and Vanessa gazed across the table to the empty chair where Pete Wheeler sat a few nights before. To think she used to eat this way every night, and she never noticed the loneliness before. Pete had come by to pick up the bottle of Prohiborol but he left just as quickly in order to arrest Sabrina.
She took out her phone and dialed Pete’s mobile number. “No answer. He must be still questioning Sabrina.”
Vanessa typed a text message to Pete asking him how Sabrina was holding up during the interrogation. She wished she knew why Sabrina would be so heartless as to poison Jerry. Pete would have to fill her in tomorrow. The chair shook, and she looked under the table. Tapioca and Ambrosia lay on the chair seat in a bundle of cream-colored fur. Vanessa smiled, but her long-time companions couldn’t distract her from reflecting on the murder case.
She checked her phone to see if Pete had answered her text. All the excitement of discovering the final clue to this case had kept her up. She couldn’t wait to hear from Pete. Vanessa rubbed Foxle’s head and gently cradled him as she stood up.
Vanessa sighed and cleaned her bowl in the sink. There was still no answer from Pete. The silence in the house without the presence of another person made Vanessa reflect on how the school children infused the sanctuary with a vital surge of energy. All the cats had sensed it, even the ones who ran and hid. Aurora wasn’t the only cat who thrived on youthful energy and the disruptive nois
e of childish activity.
Now that the children were gone, Vanessa reminisced about the long-gone days of her son Tom’s childhood. School lunches, birthday parties and sleepovers with his friends, came back to Vanessa. No wonder aging parents dreamed of grandchildren to bring their later years alive once again.
Vanessa yawned and realized how exhausted she was. It was time to curl up in bed with her cats and go to sleep. Vanessa looked at her phone one last time but was disappointed at the lack of a reply.
Vanessa changed into her nightdress and pushed her way into her bed. Her cats crowded around her body and sealed her into her place. She turned off the light and lay back on the pillow. Foxle squirmed between her feet, and Porcupine took his place in the center of Vanessa’s chest. She closed her eyes and relaxed into sleep.
Un-Fur-tunate Events (Vanessa Abbot Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 4) Page 5
