Furbidden Fatality

by Deborah Blake

  “I’ll see you on Monday, then,” Sara said as she got into her shiny silver Prius. “I’ll let you know if I find anything interesting in the files Rachel pulled for us. My guess is it is probably a wild-goose chase.”

  As long as I don’t have to feed any of those, Kari thought. I’ve got enough on my plate without adding waterfowl to it.

  * * *

  * * *

  She had just finishing measuring food into the last of the cat bowls under Queenie’s careful supervision when she heard a car pull into the drive, its wheels crunching on the fresh gravel. The kitchenette, a small room off the main area that held a double sink, a row of cabinets filled with empty stainless steel and porcelain pet bowls, a drying rack full of newly washed ones, stacks of canned and dry food, and two refrigerators—one for animal food and medicines, and one for the use of the people who worked there—hadn’t been updated much. It was too tiny for everything in it and tended to be stuffy, which was why she’d opened the narrow window through which she detected the arrival of a visitor. The limp beige curtains had seen better days, but they were still on the Want list.

  She wasn’t expecting any of the volunteers, but Dr. McCoy had mentioned he might stop by to check on the sick kittens, so she figured it was him. The thought made her unexpectedly cheerful, so she went out to greet him with a smile on her face, still holding a somewhat stinky can of cat food in one hand and a bowl in the other. Queenie traipsed after her, trotting along with her tail held high in the air.

  But her smile died away when she saw Deputy Carter standing by the front desk. He was rifling through the papers Sara had left lying there, squinting at them in a way that made her think he probably needed glasses and was too vain to wear them.

  She cleared her throat loudly and the police officer jumped.

  “Hello, Deputy. Is there something I can help you with?” She gestured with her full hands. “As you can see, I’m just getting ready to feed the animals.” At her feet, Queenie let out a low growl, and Kari nudged her with one foot to get her to stop. Not without a certain sympathy for the sentiment, however.

  Carter thrust his chin out, thick mustache bristling. The smell of his musky aftershave almost knocked her over, easily overwhelming the strong fishy odor rising from the can of cat food she held. “You want to help me, Miz Stuart? How about you start by sticking to your job, and leaving mine to me.”

  Kari almost took an involuntary step back at his vehement tone. “Excuse me?”

  Carter tossed the papers he’d been holding down on the desk, not even pretending he hadn’t been looking at them. “I hear you’ve been poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Asking a bunch of questions that are none of your business. Like I told you that first night, the last thing we need is civilians who watch too many cop shows getting in the way of a real investigation.”

  Well, this is interesting, in an unpleasant kind of way. Kari wondered how he knew she and the others had been asking questions. Diner gossip? Or had one of the people they’d talked to complained? Either way, she didn’t see how they’d done any harm, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said instead. After all, she didn’t know the specific thing he was referencing. “But I hardly see how it is going to help your real investigation to come by here and harass me.”

  The deputy’s face turned scarlet, and for a minute she was worried he was going to have a heart attack in the middle of their newly refinished floor.

  “You think this is harassment, missy?” he sputtered. “Wait until you get a ticket any time you drive two miles an hour over the limit. Or the building inspectors make a surprise visit to check out your permits.”

  “I’ll have you know that all my permits are completely in order,” Kari said, holding on to her temper by a thread. She knew—logically—that it was unwise to provoke any cop, especially one who was probably in charge of the murder investigation in which she was the prime suspect, but men who tried to intimidate or bully her just put her back up. “As you can see from the paperwork you were rooting around in.”

  She took a deep breath and tried a more conciliatory tone. “I’m sorry if my talking to people about Bill Myers has caused you any problems, but I’m just trying to get a better idea of what he might have been doing up here the night I found him.”

  “You mean, the night you found his dead body,” Carter said, his voice full of meaning. “It looks darned suspicious that you are going around asking questions about a case you are the main suspect in. You are going to make things worse for yourself and for this shelter you say is so important to you. I strongly suggest that you would be better off feeding the bunch of mangy cats and dogs you’ve got here, and leaving the detecting to the professionals.”

  My animals are not mangy! Kari bit back about three rude responses in as many seconds.

  “Was there something you needed here?” she said instead. “Because if not, I’d really like to get back to what I was doing.”

  “I’m here to tell you to mind your own business,” Carter said, walking over to her and thrusting his sizable gut into her personal space. “For your own good.”

  “The man died on my property and you seem determined to blame me. That makes it my business,” she said, refusing to back away, although her skin crawled to have him so close.

  A loud cough made them both swivel in the direction of the door. Angus McCoy stood there, his medical kit in one hand and a bag of prescription cat food in the other. One eyebrow was raised quizzically as he gazed at Deputy Carter’s clearly aggressive stance.

  “Do you need some help, Kari?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’ve got the situation under control.” That might have been a small exaggeration, but she was determined to take care of herself without help from any man, no matter how well-intentioned. Or cute. Queenie let out a plaintive yowl, as if to protest. “Shhh,” Kari muttered. “Do not take his side.”

  “You just mind what I said, Miz Stuart,” the deputy said. “Stay out of this investigation and out of my way.” He turned to leave and tripped over his shoelaces, which had somehow mysteriously come untied. “What the heck? How did that happen?” He bent down and hurriedly retied them, then stalked out with as much of his dignity intact as possible.

  Kari had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud, nearly dropping the bowl she held in the process. Angus gazed at Queenie with amazement.

  “Did that kitten just undo his laces on purpose?” He set the sack of food down on the desk and pulled a treat out of his pocket. The little black kitten jumped up adroitly and plucked it from his fingers, purring loudly.

  She hadn’t, had she? Surely that was giving even the clever Queenie too much credit. Or was it? “I’m sure it was just an accident,” Kari said. “She’s a kitten. She plays with everything.”

  “Uh-huh.” Angus looked out the window at the sound of squealing tires as the deputy peeled out of the parking lot. “It looked like that officer was giving you a hard time. Is everything okay?”

  “Okay is sort of a sliding scale around here at the moment, but yes, more or less,” Kari said. “Although I have to admit your timing was pretty good.”

  She deliberately changed the subject. “Did you come to look at the kittens? Their eyes are still awfully goopy, even though I’ve been putting the ointment in them twice a day as directed.” She waved the bowl and the can of food in the direction of the kitchenette. “If you can wait a couple of minutes for me to feed everyone, I will be right with you.”

  “No hurry,” Angus said, his attention already on his patients, who were peering at him through the bars of their cage across the room from the front desk. The poor kittens, a brother and sister that a Good Samaritan had rescued from a local trailer park, had been battling some kind of upper respiratory illness for ove
r a month, which was why they hadn’t been adopted or moved to one of the other shelters. The little girl gave a snuffly meow, her stuffed-up nose giving her a plaintive sound.

  “I’ve got a new antibiotic to try on them, now that they’re a little bit older,” the vet said. “We don’t like to give it to younger kittens, because it can affect the development of their teeth later in life, but they’re old enough that I’m willing to risk it now, and this has hung on too long already. I’m also going to give them each a B-12 shot. Sometimes that helps to boost their systems.” He cooed at the kittens, an endearing sight that made Kari smile despite everything.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be right back if you want me to hold them while you give them the shots.” She took a deep breath. “And thank you for being willing to step in, even though I didn’t need it.” Taking on a belligerent cop wasn’t something everyone would do.

  “You’re very welcome,” he said with a grin. “Even though you didn’t need it.”

  Smarty pants.

  Nine

  Kari awoke to the sound of barking dogs and some other noise that her subconscious said meant trouble. She had been up late working on paperwork and had barely fallen asleep when the noise started, so she hadn’t even needed the kitten to alert her.

  “Darn it, not again,” she muttered as she threw on her jeans and tee shirt. As she ran out the door, she could hear the phone begin to ring behind her. “On it, Mr. Lee. I’m on it.”

  The sandals she’d shoved her feet into flapped on the rough path as she hurried toward the shelter. The moon was nearly full overhead, shining so brightly that she hardly needed the flashlight. This was starting to feel like one of those nightmares that repeated itself over and over.

  “Not the new paint job,” she said to herself, or maybe the universe. “Please let it just be a bear.” At her feet, the black kitten kept pace easily, having somehow made it out the door while Kari was distracted.

  “If it’s a bear, save yourself,” Kari said, panting as she drew up in front of the building. She really needed to get a gym membership, now that she could afford one. Not that she had the time to use it, but still.

  The moonlight glinted off something clear and glittery lying on the ground. “CRAP,” Kari said with feeling, scooping up the kitten so she wouldn’t cut her paws on the broken glass. “No bear did that, Queenie.”

  All the windows at the front of the shelter were broken. Not just broken, but smashed to smithereens, even the wooden framing hanging crooked in places. The sound of the breaking glass must have been what woke her up. Inside the shelter, the dogs were howling, and faint frantic meows could be heard from the direction of the feline room.

  The animals! Kari had a sudden panicked vision of the cats being sprayed by sharp-edged glass. The dog kennels didn’t have windows, but the big feline space did. If the vandal had broken those . . .

  She ran around the left side of the building, trying to hold on to the kitten and use her cell phone at the same time. Despite the late hour, it only rang a couple of times on the other end before the person she was calling picked up.

  “What’s wrong?” Suz said, sounding ridiculously calm and alert.

  “Someone broke a bunch of windows at the shelter,” Kari said, coming to a screeching halt as she faced the rest of the disaster. “Maybe all the windows, darn it. There’s broken glass in the cat room. Can you come help?”

  “On my way,” Suz said. “What about the cops?”

  “That’s my next call, but I don’t expect a lot of sympathy,” Kari said. “Deputy Carter was here today, well yesterday now, reading me the riot act for interfering in the investigation.”

  “Call them anyway,” Suz said. In the background, Kari could hear noises that were presumably her friend getting dressed in as big a hurry as she had.

  “Wear boots,” Kari warned. “There’s glass everywhere. I’m going to have to go back to the house to change out of my sandals and lock up the kitten. And I guess I’d better call Mr. Lee to explain what’s going on before he calls the police.”

  “Well, that’s one approach to getting them out there,” Suz said, practical as usual. “I’m on my way. Ten minutes, tops.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It was actually more like eight, but felt like forever. By the time Suz got there, Kari had called the police; her part-time worker Jim, who she knew only lived a few miles away; and after some hesitation, Bryn. She had a feeling the girl would never have forgiven Kari if she hadn’t. The sheriff’s department said they’d send someone, but they hadn’t sounded as though they felt any sense of urgency about it, since she told them there was no sign of the intruder still being in the area.

  Luckily, Jim and Bryn took the situation more seriously and drove into the lot soon after Suz did. Their tires grinding on the gravel were like music to her ears.

  Kari had already unlocked the side door and gone into the back to try to calm the agitated dogs, but when the others got there, she returned to see them pulling various objects out of their vehicles. Jim had some large pieces of plywood and a tool box in the bed of his pickup truck, Suz had the small emergency kit she used if a dog she was grooming got nicked, and Bryn had brought extra brooms and dustpans.

  “Did you take pictures?” Suz said in lieu of hello, nodding at everyone else and going over to give Kari a rare hug.

  Kari shook her head. “I was mostly just thinking about the animals. We need to get into the feline room to make sure no one is hurt.”

  “I’ll take the photos,” Bryn said, pulling out her phone. “And then I’ll start sweeping up the glass by the door, so we can at least get in and out without dragging more of it into the shelter and ruining the new floor.”

  Kari shot her a grateful glance. “Thanks. I went in through the side door, which doesn’t have a window right next to it, so there is a clearer path. Suz and Jim, do you want to come with me to check on the cats?”

  “Do you have any idea who did this?” Jim asked, grabbing one of the brooms as he followed her inside.

  “Somebody who really doesn’t like me or the shelter?” Kari guessed. “Other than that, I have no idea. I mean, presumably whoever vandalized the place the last time, unless we have two people who hate us.”

  “Hate is a pretty strong word,” Jim said as they went in the side door. Lights blazed into the night, highlighting the extent of the damage. Luckily the window smasher hadn’t made it inside—probably didn’t want to stick around that long—but there was glass sprayed everywhere there had been a window. Glass crunched under their feet, even when Jim tried to sweep a clear path in front of them.

  “Well, this isn’t exactly a love letter. We clearly touched a nerve somewhere with our poking around,” Kari said.

  “The question is where,” Suz said. “But for now let’s figure out the best way to deal with this. We don’t want to let the cats out, since there is as much glass out here as there is in there. Are they likely to make a run at the door when we open it?”

  They were standing in front of an interior door newly painted a cheerful turquoise and neatly lettered with Feline Shared Space in cursive script. Unfortunately, the door was one solid piece, so there was no way to look inside.

  “I doubt it,” Kari said. “If they’re really freaked out”—and from the sound of the yowling cries inside, they certainly were—“they’re probably trying to hide. But why don’t you and I go in first, and Jim can stand by the door until we’re inside and catch anyone who bolts.”

  “Good idea,” Suz said. “Hang on.” She ran back to the main room and grabbed a couple of large cat carriers. The shelter had plenty of the hard-sided plastic carriers in various sizes, since any resident who was in the cages in the main room had to be put in one while their cage was being cleaned, and animals were often transported to the vet, spay/neuter clinics, or foster homes in them. “We can put
the cats in these until we can get the room cleaned up and safe.”

  “Hopefully no one has escaped through the broken windows,” Jim said. “We’ll have a heck of a time rounding them up if they have.”

  Kari groaned. She hadn’t even though about that possibility.

  She and Suz hurried into the room, wincing at the sight of broken glass at the base of the two windows. Fortunately, the vandal seemed to have expended most of his energy on the front of the shelter, or else he was rushing by the time he made it this far, so while the windows were cracked and splintered, they weren’t as badly smashed as the ones out front.

  Tripod meowed at them from his favorite bed near the door, clearly unhurt, and Kari passed him back out to Jim to put into another carrier.

  One by one they plucked terrified cats from the tops of the cat trees, underneath the tables, and in Tabitha’s case, out of the litter box she used more as a safe space than as a bathroom. Kari did a quick head count and breathed a sigh of relief—everyone was present and accounted for.

  It appeared they’d gotten lucky with injuries too. Only two of the cats seemed to have gotten cut, probably because the first strike against the window would have scared them enough to make them move as far away as possible from the noisy threat to their usually tranquil sanctuary.

  Felix, a large black-and-white male cat who was missing half of one ear and a piece of his tail from his days running wild, had a couple of minor cuts on his paws. Fortunately, he was much mellower than his battered appearance would lead one to believe, and he allowed Suz to take him into the small room that doubled as a surgery and exam room so she could clean the wounds and make sure there was no glass still in them.

  Tinkerbell, unfortunately, hadn’t been so lucky. A tiny once-feral cat who had been turned over to the shelter along with her newborn kittens, the calico had never mellowed enough to be adopted. She spat at Bryn when the girl tried to get close enough to figure out where the blood in Tinkerbell’s fur was coming from.