by Nina Post
“The hell?”
“These aren’t your cats?”
Shawn swept his gaze over each of them. They were all large, with feathery tails, a rich sable brown color, mismatched eyes. “Those are not my cats. I’ve never seen them before.”
“They all look exactly the same,” she marveled. “How did they get in?” Sarah turned back to him, brown hair fanning out then settling on her shoulders like a startled bird folding in its wings.
“No clue. There is no place for them to get in. I doubt they all came down the chimney, and if that were the case, they’d be covered in soot.”
Shawn hurried to the kitchen to pour the coffee. He was pressed for time, and just wanted to get a couple of good cups in. He poured them both a mug and handed one to her over the counter. The new cats jumped off the trampoline as Sarah left the living room. They followed her, streaming into the kitchen.
“I’m going to need more food.” Shawn shook his head, dumbfounded. He took down every bowl he had, set them down, then filled them with Comet’s food. They all converged on the first bowl, then some broke away and went to the second bowl, and then the third, and finally a large bowl he used for mixing sauces. He set down two mixing bowls with water then drank most of the coffee in his mug while he watched them.
“This coffee is amazing.” One of the new cats scratched on her jeans and she reached her hand down. The cat licked her hand. “Can I call this one Okeo? After a cat I had when I was little.”
Shawn glanced over. As far as he was concerned, she could do anything she wanted. “Sure. It’ll be hard telling it apart from the other ones, though.”
“Good point. I’ll just call all of them Okeo.”
“Fine by me.”
Something got his attention in the far left corner of the living room. Comet was dragging things over there. He took his coffee and crossed the room to see what was going on.
For years, he and Comet had developed a system. Comet would tell him if Shawn was being distant or idiotic or not feeding him enough or not changing his box enough, or even if he wanted Shawn to turn on a particular TV show. At the moment, Comet had brought over an ad for a TV he had ripped out of a newspaper; two paper Dixie cups from the bathroom, one inside the other; and a tiny plush bird.
Sarah walked up to his side. After a moment, she said, “Cryptic.”
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Shawn asked his cat. He interpreted the noise Comet made in response as, ‘Look closer, you imbecile, it’s obvious.’
“But it’s not obvious.”
“What?” Sarah asked. “Are you talking to me, or — “
He shook his head, still looking down on the objects on the hardwood floor. I’m just a county homicide detective who talks to his cat. Who wouldn’t want that in a potential mate?
“I have to get back to the squad room,” he said absentmindedly, memorizing the arrangement on the floor.
“Me too.”
“So what do you do in your father’s law office?” Shawn asked, feeling a couple of the new cats wind around his ankles. Comet jumped up onto the trampoline and glared, tail swooping back and forth in a semi-circle.
“I’m a clerk. I make some deliveries, as you noticed.”
“Do you want to be an attorney?”
“No.” She drank more of her coffee then set it down on a coaster promoting Holt’s Tanning, Tools & Pastry Shop. “My Dad offered to help pay for law school, but he works too hard. Not only does he work too hard, but almost all of his clients think he charges too much, which he doesn’t. I don’t want to be like that, and I don’t want to deal with the people he deals with, and who bitch about completely reasonable prices for the area. Don’t get me wrong, I admire him, but the law’s not my thing.”
“What is?”
“Documentary filmmaking.”
“I’m impressed.”
“It’s a recent decision. I haven’t actually made anything. And I can’t even tell my Dad about it. Why bother, when I haven’t accomplished anything yet?”
“You should start. But I know what you mean.” He checked his phone after it buzzed.
“Does your family live around here?” she asked.
The tech guy had sent him the web address and password for the video feed from Lyle’s room in the Sylvain mansion.
“I’m afraid so. Keep intending to move to New Zealand and not tell them.” It would take them years to bother asking, ‘Hey, anyone seen Shawn lately?’
“Your parents?”
“My father, he’s laid up in the house. Has a nurse and everything. My mother…” He shrugged, not really knowing what to say about any of them.
“Do you go see him?”
“Nope.” He put the phone away.
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Riiight. Well, I see my dad every day, but it’s like we don’t see each other at all sometimes, if that makes any sense.”
“More than you know.”
She crouched to pet Comet, who was appreciative of the attention and purred like an expensive car engine. He stepped around the kitchen toward the living room and Comet tugged at his pant leg with a single claw. The other, new cats, now sated, fell into heaps around the living room, eyes open just a sliver.
Shawn kneeled down. Comet looked nervous — not looking him in the eye, tail jerking and twitching.
“You want me to take you to work with me?”
Comet’s mouth opened, showing tiny white fangs.
“Okay. But I don’t want you complaining later.”
Shawn got Comet’s carrier and maneuvered the cat inside. It only took eight minutes.
He stuffed one of the tuna cans into his coat pocket and cast a concerned glance at the twelve new cats before he locked the door behind him.
Shawn grabbed his keys and waited for Sarah. He locked up and she headed for her car.
“Thanks for the coffee.” She was already at her door.
“Thanks for the company.” There was still time to lasso her, but there he was without his lasso.
She looked thoughtful, then took out a piece of paper and a pen from her jeans and wrote something down. She handed it to him over the trunk. “That’s my cell phone. Give me a call sometime. Preferably not for another interview.” She winked and got in her car then drove off, her boxy little orange car ticking faster as she pulled out onto the lane.
Shawn set Comet’s carrier on the floor next to his desk and went to talk with the department’s fearful public information officer about the case. He got restless in the corporate setting of the squad room, the granite floors, the rows of desks, his colleagues’ obligatory sailboat or speedboat screen-savers. He liked to keep moving, be outside, poke things to see what happened.
After their conversation, Shawn grabbed a few things from the vending machines to eat, then stopped at the boards that were marked with color-coded stickers showing the progress of the cases the division was handling. Haviland Sylvain was up there, with a timeline and photos. He knew when three of her employees — Lewis, Peterson, and Skitch — had last seen her. And Haviland Sylvain never left the house.
He found the guy he had asked to run the background checks on Haviland and the employees. Not to his surprise, the paper heiress was clean. And Dr. Evans had been right – Haviland had many millions.
Not for the first time, Shawn wondered if she married her husband for that money. Based on the photos, it didn’t seem like they got along. If relationships came down to being comfortable with someone and being able to laugh with them, it didn’t seem like she and her husband had much of one. He also got the impression that her husband’s family was a source of considerable anxiety, not that he could relate.
Shawn leaned on his desk and did a quick run-through of the heiress’s financials. He would examine them more closely later. For now, he saw that the full extent of her holdings were kept at one brokerage firm in various types of accounts. She had donated more than what many m
ake in their whole lives to animal-focused non-profits.
The mansion cost a small fortune each year in property taxes and maintenance, but Haviland Sylvain herself lived on just a small portion of the interest and dividends that her portfolio generated. She had married young, and shortly after her husband’s death, having married with a GED, she went to school and blazed through her undergraduate degree and then a graduate degree in physics. The money she inherited easily paid for all of it.
The heiress paid her employees a competitive salary, and much more than they would get anywhere else. As in Carolyn Lewis’s case, for working three days a week, or as with Skitch, for being on-call with no set schedule to look into coincidences. She paid for their minor emergencies and gave them bonuses twice a year. What could they have to complain about? They’d probably be working minimum wage jobs or dealing drugs if not for her. Or had they wanted to organize into a union for employer-paid benefits, not just ‘I’ll take care of it?‘ Haviland Sylvain seemed a little like the mob that way.
His phone rang. His sister, Melly, again. She started in on him the second he answered the phone. He told himself to stop answering the damn phone, but he had to weigh the blow-out that would result from ignoring them against the regular crap he had to deal with from them.
“We’re expecting you this weekend. Dad’s birthday. You will be there.”
“I won’t be there.”
She sputtered. “Mom is going to completely – “
He hung up.
She called back.
“Melly, I do not have time for this.” He hung up again. Sure, he was working a homicide case, but he also didn’t want to spend any of his precious life dealing with their bad attitudes.
His phone rang again. Comet meowed. “Aunt Diane this time. It’s escalating. Should I answer it? You know it’s going to be an epic crapstorm if I don’t.”
Comet responded with a doubtful rowr.
His family had a kind of service-level agreement scale of escalation. First siblings, then aunts and uncles, then mother, then grandparents, for the sentimental approach, each trying at least one tactic — insults, unflattering comparisons, bullying, guilt, blatant logical fallacies.
“Aunt Di,” he said, with a tight voice.
“You know that you’re disappointing your mother. She is practically in tears. And your father, who is too weak to handle it.”
“Mm-hmm.” He ran his finger down a list of the heiress’s recent credit card charges. Did they have him confused with someone else? Someone who believed his father gave a crap that he ever showed up?
The charges showed a few clusters of orders for personal care consumables, and they had a gigantic food order delivered every week to the mansion. She must be feeding her employees, too. He noticed a couple of late-night pizza deliveries, as well. He would have to talk with anyone who had delivered to the house. He noted the name and the number.
“Your father was very upset when I told him you may be too busy to make it this weekend,” his aunt said.
What his father had probably said was, ‘Who? Oh, the asshole with the cat. Whatever. Anyone seen the pickles?’ Shawn chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” His aunt said. “Your father is upset —” maybe because no one will bring him the pickles — “and your mother is practically in tears.”
“Mm-hm.” Maybe she’s in tears because she still lets the old man walk all over her. “Listen, Aunt Di, I’m working. I have to go.”
She gave it one more try. “Your father’s nurse was concerned at his numbers. You can’t —”
Shawn hung up. “They could at least manipulate me skillfully, right, Comet?”
Rrrow.
“But they’re so ham-handed with it. Ham-handed. How do you think that originated as a phrase?”
Fricker, a solid, balding, day-trading-obsessed General Investigations Detective, whirled around in his desk chair. “Who’re you talking to?”
“Comet. He’s a whiz at etymology.”
“I didn’t know it was Bring Your Cat To Work Day,” Fricker pasted a dumb grin on his face.
“There was a problem at home. I didn’t think it was safe there,” Shawn rested the financials print-out on his thigh.
“You working the Sylvain case?” Fricker tried to sound casual.
“Yeah.”
“Got a partner on that?”
“No.”
Fricker nodded. “Media gets all up in you, you may want a buffer. Hey, did I show you a picture of my boat? It’s a beauty, thirty-six feet.” He tapped on his spacebar so his monitor came back to life.
All Fricker did lately was show people a picture of his boat, which he had as his desktop background, like everyone else who worked there. He wanted to work this case. Understandable. But Shawn didn’t like partners, and he didn’t care about Fricker’s boat. He worked alone, period. They didn’t like it, he’d take his high solve rate to a different county, a different department.
But a case like this, they’d funnel some of the tasks like background checks to other detectives, even if they weren’t homicide. So he could give Fricker something to work on. He still had to interview a couple of employees and some vendors, so he threw the detective a bone. “I hope you can work in some time in the box later.”
Fricker brightened a little. “Sure thing.”
Shawn’s phone rang again. “Aaagh.” He picked it up. “How you doing, Grampa.”
Fricker put a hand up in a half-wave and walked off to the kitchen.
His grandfather cleared out his throat, which sounded like a flooded engine. “Shawn?”
Shawn pressed a finger on his forehead.
“Yes.” He raised his voice.
“Your Dad’s birthday party is coming up on Saturday. We’re ordering Texas Hots.” Someone whispered in the background. “And cake. We’re getting a cake. Your mother – ” Shawn pictured his grandfather impatiently waving at his children to shut up and let him talk, for chrissake — “your mother wanted me to remind you.” He lowered his voice. “Now, this isn’t my side of the family, so, far as I’m concerned, you do what the hell you want.”
“Thanks, Grampa. She wanted to remind me, huh?”
“Shirley will be there, of course.”
Shawn almost laughed again. Like that was incentive. Shirley, his grandfather’s new wife, reeked of gin by nine in the morning and liked to lean in about an inch away from your face to talk to you. One time she had grabbed his ass. Another, she had almost accidentally choked him to death.
“I’m sorry, Grampa, but I doubt I can make it. I’m working on a case.”
“A case?”
Shawn ran his hands through his hair. “I’m working on a case. I can’t just freeze time.”
“You know, Lincoln freed the slaves.”
He always said that. What the hell did that even mean?
“Mm-hm.”
“When are you going to settle down, start a family?”
“Gotta go, Grampa.”
“Yeah, okay. Well, maybe we’ll….” His grandfather kept talking as he walked away and someone took the phone from him.
But Shawn hung up.
“I need a new number.” Comet meowed silently.
He also needed to interview two more house employees: Vincent Shuttle and Robert Westrom. One of the guys at the desks was trying to get a hold of Westrom by phone throughout the day, but hadn’t had any luck. Shawn had put an APB out on Westrom hours ago, so if any patrol officers saw his license plate or a car matching his car’s description, or a man matching the guy’s description, they would report back to Shawn, or at least his department, right away.
Vincent Shuttle was reportedly living only a few blocks from the mansion, but apparently didn’t own a damn phone. Shawn figured he would try an impromptu visit, and grabbed the keys off his desk.
“Any of the media bug me,” Shawn told Comet, “I’ll refer them to my media relations correspondent.” He jerked his thumb at Fricker, who had
half a cruller stuck in his mouth like a seagull.
“What about your cat?” Fricker called out.
“He’ll be fine. There’s a can of tuna on the desk. And give him water.”
“I’m a homicide detective, not a cat sitter!” Fricker called out.
“Me too!” Shawn yelled over his shoulder just before he went out the door.
Shawn knocked on the front door of a fairly large white house with green shutters and more landscaping than Shawn would ever want to maintain.
There was no way Vincent Shuttle owned this place.
An old lady answered the door.
“Yes?” She was in her late seventies, maybe early eighties, and wearing a blue housecoat over what she undoubtedly called slacks, and a collared print shirt.
“Good afternoon, Ma’am. Detective Shawn Danger. I’m looking for Vincent Shuttle. Does he live here?”
She blinked at him. “Vincent? Oh, yes! He lives above my garage.”
“He rents that space from you, ma’am?”
“He does, and he’s a wonderful tenant. Would you like some pumpkin bread?”
“No, thank you. In a bit of a rush.” He smiled. “Is Vincent home right now?”
She shuffled forward and pointed a pale arm with loose skin toward the garage. “You just go around the side there.”
“Thank you. Have a good day, now.”
“Is Vincent in trouble?” She widened blue eyes behind large glasses.
“I just want to talk to him.” He smiled — reassuringly, he hoped.
She smiled back and closed the door as he turned away. Shawn crossed the front yard to the far side of the garage. He took rickety stairs up to a peeling side door and knocked, then looked in the window through a crack between thin curtains. He could see a kitchen and the edge of a sofa.
“Vincent Shuttle? Open up, please.”
There was no activity for a moment, then a man in his thirties, dressed in chinos, socks, and a long-sleeve polo shirt unlocked the door. His figure was slight — his driver’s license had him at five-foot-eleven and one-forty-five. Tall enough, Shawn noted.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Vincent Shuttle?”
