What the Cat Saw (18 page)

“Let me be sure I get it.” He watched her carefully. “You arrived here Friday afternoon. Everything was fine. You went to bed, somebody got inside, hunted in the desk. You called nine-one-one. When the cops came, you had to unlock the front door. You believe someone entered with a key. That likely comes down to a small list. Marian’s life was centered at Haklo. Either someone knew where she kept an extra key or maybe the intruder entered Haklo first and found a key to the apartment in her office and came here when the necklace didn’t turn up in the office. Saturday morning you checked Marian’s purse and found the necklace. You didn’t do anything about it because you had no business snooping and no reason to think she shouldn’t have a necklace in her purse. You hid the purse to protect the necklace. You went to Haklo Saturday, Louise took you around. Monday you heard about the vandalism, including the obscene letters. But that receded into the background after you found Marian’s office trashed. Then you learned that the necklace was stolen property. Katie Dugan believes your sister heisted the necklace after puffing up a smokescreen with the vandalism and you are covering up for her. Tonight you decided to put the necklace on Blythe’s desk. That’s everything?”

She hesitated, frowning. Her gaze dropped to the cat nestled close to her.

Why wasn’t she looking at him? What else did she know? Steve
came upright, leaned forward, his eyes insistent. “I’ve gone out on a limb for you. I know you went in Haklo after hours. I know where the necklace is. If this all came out, I could be charged as an accessory. I need to know what you know.”

Slowly she looked up.

He stared into dark brilliant eyes that held both uncertainty and knowledge.

“I don’t have proof.” Her gaze was steady.

“Tell me, Nela.” He liked the sound of her name,
Nee-la
. “I’ll help you. All I ask is that you don’t lie to me. I’ve heard too many lies from beautiful women.” He stopped for a long moment, lips pressed together. “Okay. I want honesty. I’ll be honest. I heard too many lies from one particular beautiful woman, my ex-wife. I’m telling you this because I want you to know where I’m coming from. I’ll help you—if you don’t lie to me. You have to make a choice. If you can’t—or won’t—be honest, tell me and I’ll walk out of here and tonight never happened. I never came here, I never went to Haklo, I don’t know anything about a piece of jewelry.”

“I won’t lie to you. I may not be able to tell you everything.” She was solemn. “Whatever I tell you will be the truth. I think I do know something.” She glanced again at the cat, then said, almost defiantly, “I can’t tell you how I know.”

He wanted to believe her, wanted it more than he’d wanted anything in a very long time.
Steve, you damn fool, women lie, don’t let her suck you into something screwy. Why can’t she tell how she knows whatever it is that she knows? Protecting somebody?
He almost pushed up from the chair. He could walk away, avoid entanglement. But he was already speaking. “All right. Keep your source.”

As for how she obtained a piece of knowledge, the possibilities were pretty narrow. Either she or her sister had seen something that
Nela now believed to be important in the saga of Haklo and its troubles. He’d bet the house she was protecting her sister. He was putting himself in a big hole if he didn’t report her entry into Haklo and the necklace on Blythe Webster’s desk. He needed every scrap of information to dig his way out. He would be home free—and so would Nela and Chloe—if the jewel thief was caught. “What do you know?”

“Marian Grant was murdered.”

The words hung between them.

Steve had covered the story. Marian Grant was a prominent citizen of Craddock. Her death was front-page news. Marian’s accident had been a surprise. She had been in her late forties, a runner, a good tennis player. However, accidents happen to the fit as well as the unfit. For an instant, Nela’s claim shocked him into immobility. Then pieces slotted together in his mind—vandalism at Haklo, a missing necklace in Marian’s purse, a thief fearing arrest, Marian’s death—to form an ugly pattern, a quite possible pattern. Still…

“Are you claiming somebody was here and shoved her down the steps?”

“No. I have reason to believe”—she spoke carefully—“that someone put a skateboard on the second step.”

“A skateboard?” He pictured that moment, Marian hurrying out the door for her morning jog, taking quick steps, one foot landing on a skateboard. Hell yes, that could knock her over a railing. “If somebody knows that for a fact, the cops have to be told.”

“They would want to know how I know. I can’t identify the source.”

He liked piecing together facts from a starting point. “You arrived here Friday, right? You can prove you were on a certain flight and that you were in LA until you took that flight?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’ve never been to Craddock before?”

“No.”

“Therefore, you couldn’t know about a skateboard on the steps from your own knowledge. Who told you?” The list had to be short. Her sister, Chloe, had to be the only person Nela knew before she arrived.

Nela brushed back a tangle of dark hair. “I promised the truth. I’m telling you the truth. No one told me.”

“If”—he tried to be patient—“no one told you and you weren’t here, how do you know?”

“All I can say is that no one told me.” She spoke with finality, looked at him with a faint half smile.

He understood. She wasn’t going to budge. There had to be a strong reason for her silence. But she had nothing to gain from making a claim that Marian Grant had been murdered. If anything, turning the search for the necklace into a murder investigation might place her and Chloe in more peril. Once again Nela was making a moral choice: Return a quarter-million-dollar necklace. Expose murder.

“Steve—”

It was the first time she’d ever said his name. Someday would she speak to him, call him by name, and be thinking of him and not stolen jewels or murder?

“—you said I could keep my source. But we need to tell the police. Sometimes I got anonymous tips on stories. Will you tell the police you got a tip, an anonymous tip? Can’t you say that somebody said”—she paused, then began again, this time in a scarcely audible wisp of sound—“Marian Grant was murdered. She knew who took the necklace. Someone put a skateboard on the second step of the garage apartment stairs…”

C
raddock had few public pay phones left. In the parking lot of a Valero filling station, Steve stood with his back to the street, his shoulders hunched against the cold. He not only didn’t have his jacket, he didn’t have gloves. In fact, he didn’t own a pair of gloves. He’d found a shammy crammed in the glove compartment. He dropped in the coins, pushed the buttons. The phone was answered after five rings. He listened to the entire message, waited for his extension number, pushed the buttons. He heard his own voice, waited again, finally whispered, repeating Nela’s words. He hung up and used the shammy to clean the receiver.

N
ela looked down at the muscular cat stretched out with his front paws flat on the surface of the kitchen table. “You look like one of those stone lions that guard the New York Public Library.”

Jugs regarded her equably.
“…You’re happier today…”

Yes, she was happier today. Removing the necklace from the apartment was like kicking free of tangled seaweed just before a big wave hit. “That’s just between you and me, buddy. Thank God cops don’t read cat minds. I’d be in big trouble.”

Jugs continued to stare at her.
“…You’re worried…She was worried…”

As she sipped her morning coffee, a faint frown drew her eyebrows down. Although she felt almost giddy with relief every time she thought about the necklace now in Blythe’s office, the removal of the jewelry didn’t solve the main problem. Maybe that’s why her subconscious, aka Jugs, was warning her.

She pushed away the quicksilver thought that her subconscious could not possibly have known if someone had rigged the step to make Marian Grant fall. But something had to account for that searing moment when she’d looked at Jugs and imagined his thoughts….
board rolled on the second step
…When she thought of a rolling board, the image had come swiftly, a skateboard. Saturday morning when she’d looked at the banister, a streak of paint was just where a skateboard might have struck if tipped up. That was confirmation, wasn’t it? Something had hit that banister. They said violence leaves a psychic mark. Who said? Her inner voice was quick with the challenge. All right. She’d read somewhere that there was some kind of lasting emanation after trauma. If Marian had been murdered, if someone left a skateboard on her steps, that certainly qualified as a violent act. When Marian plunged over the railing, did she have time to realize what had happened?

Nela shook her head. She might as well believe in voodoo. But some people did. Maybe she’d had a moment of ESP. But she’d never had any use for so-called psychics. The explanation had to be simple. There was that gash in the stair rail. Maybe subconsciously she’d noticed the scrape when she first arrived and the shock of confronting Jugs stirred some long-ago memory of a skateboard.

She looked at Jugs, but his eyes had closed. When he’d looked at her Friday night, other thoughts had come to her mind….
She was worried…She didn’t know what to do
…

About a stolen necklace?

Nela thought about the last few days in the life of a woman she’d never known, a smart, intense, hardworking woman who had devoted her life to Haklo.

A vandal struck Haklo again and again.

Blythe’s necklace was stolen.

The necklace was in Marian Grant’s purse that she placed atop the bookcase the last night of her life.

Did Marian steal the quarter-million-dollar adornment?

The violent searches of her office and apartment after her death appeared almost certainly to be a hunt for the necklace. Dumped drawers indicated a search for some physical object, not incriminating papers suggested by Detective Dugan. The destruction in her office reflected a wild and dangerous anger on the part of the searcher when the effort to find the necklace failed. From everything Nela had been told about Marian, there was nothing to support the idea that Marian could have been a thief. Instead, it was much more likely that Marian had discovered the identity of the thief and obtained the necklace. However, she didn’t contact the police. She kept the necklace in her purse.

Why hadn’t she called the police?

As Steve had made clear, Marian always protected the foundation. Her decision to handle the theft by herself meant that a public revelation would create a scandal. She was a confident, strong woman. Perhaps she insisted the thief had to confess or resign or make restitution. Perhaps she said, “I’ve put the necklace in a safe place and unless you do as I say, I will contact the police.” Perhaps she set a deadline.

Had the thief killed her to keep her quiet?

She died early Monday morning. The funeral was Thursday. Chloe had stayed in the apartment since Monday night to take care of Jugs. Whether Marian’s death was accident or murder, the presence of the necklace in her purse was fact. The thief’s first opportunity to search the apartment had been Friday night after Chloe had left town.

Nela welcomed the hot, strong coffee but it didn’t lessen the chill of another pointer to someone on the Haklo staff. All of them knew about Chloe’s trip to Tahiti. Chloe hadn’t mentioned that Nela would stay in the apartment until Chloe’s return. As for access to Marian’s apartment, perhaps a key was, as Steve suggested, secreted in some simple place known to the searcher. Or perhaps the office was searched before the apartment and a key found in that desk.

Whatever the order, the searches were fruitless because the necklace was in Marian’s purse. The treasure wasn’t hidden. The necklace had simply been dropped to the bottom of a Coach bag, a safe place in the eyes of its owner. A killer scrabbled through drawers, dumped files, and all the while the necklace was within reach.

Detective Dugan’s instinct was good. The necklace was the crux of everything. But Dugan was convinced that Chloe was the clever thief who’d created the vandalism as a diversion and that Nela was covering up for her. When Steve reported a tip about murder, Dugan might tab Chloe as a murderer as well as a thief.

Nela put down her mug. She couldn’t count on the police investigation. But she wasn’t blinded by hometown loyalties. If Dugan wasn’t willing to look at the Haklo staff members as suspects, Nela was.

D
etective Dugan stood with arms folded. “All right.”

Steve flicked on the speakerphone, punched for messages. He listened with a sense of relief. His whisper had been very well done, the faintly heard words sexless, unaccented wraiths that couldn’t be grasped. “Message received at eleven forty-two p.m. Monday:…Marian Grant was murdered…A skateboard on the
second step…threw her over the railing…She knew who took the necklace…”

Detective Dugan touched a number in her cell phone directory. “Mokie, get a trace on a call received at the
Clarion
last night at eleven forty-two. Send out a lab tech to One Willow Lane. Marian Grant died in a fall down the garage apartment stairs. Check for possible damage to the railing. Look for scratches, paint traces. If there is damage, get forensic evidence. Also measurements and photos. Thanks.”

She turned to Steve. “Play the message again.” She listened with eyes half closed. At its end, she shook her head. “Can’t tell whether the caller was a man or a woman. Could have been anybody. No discernible accent.” Her eyes opened, settled on Steve. “Why you?”

Steve was unruffled. “Goes with the territory. If you have a tip, call a reporter.”

“Why last night?”

Steve kept his expression faintly quizzical. “A big story in yesterday afternoon’s
Clarion
. It probably caught someone’s attention.”

Katie’s face wrinkled in concentration. “I want to talk to that caller. Murder.” Her tone was considering. She squeezed her eyes in thought. “I figured all along that the necklace was the key and that Grant knew who took it. That explains the search of her office. The searcher messed everything up to try and make it look like more vandalism. The point has to be the necklace. A quarter of a million dollars is serious money. Let’s say Grant threatened to name the thief. People around her knew she jogged every morning. A skateboard on the steps couldn’t guarantee she’d be killed but the probability was good. Okay, the thief puts a skateboard on the steps then shows up around six fifteen, taking care not to be seen. If she was still alive, pressure on the carotid would dispatch her pronto. If she’s already dead, pick up the skateboard and melt away. Now,
how could anyone except the murderer know about a skateboard on the steps? If someone did know, why keep quiet until now? Scared? Not sure? Maybe saw a skateboard in a weird place and decided Marian was too athletic to fall accidentally?” Her chin jutted. “I’ve got to find who made that call.”