Cats on the Prowl (A Cat Detective cozy mystery series Book 1) (3 page)

Josephine smacked her lips. “Don’t you
people realize the position this puts me in? I have to plan Roy’s funeral,
settle all his bank accounts, and lodge his death certificate with the county
in order to get his will released. I can’t do any of that until you cops
declare the cause of death. Every hour of every day that passes costs me
money.”

“I understand this is hard on you,”
Naya replied. “You’ve suffered a terrible loss, and you want to put it behind
you as quickly as possible. But the fire only happened this morning. You can’t
expect us to wrap up our investigation in one day.”

“But it was an accident,” Josephine
insisted. “Can’t you see that?”

Naya shook her head. “Even if we knew
for certain that the fire was an accident, or the result of negligence on Roy’s
part, we would still have to follow our procedures and question everyone who
knew anything about it.”

Josephine crossed her arms over her
chest. “Fine. Go ahead. What do you want to ask me?”

Naya smiled. “You weren’t anywhere near
the bakery this morning, were you?”

Josephine sat up so fast she almost
shot out of her chair. “What are you trying to say? You’re not accusing me of
killing Roy, are you?”

“I never said anything of the kind,”
Naya replied. “I just asked a simple question. Where were you this morning?”

Josephine kept her eyes averted, but
there wasn’t anything to look at in that room except the investigating officer
across the table. “I was at home. I never went near the bakery.”

Naya shuffled a few documents back and
forth. “Do you know Jason Dempsey?”

“Of course, I know him,” Jo shot back.
“He’s shift leader at the bakery.”

“You mean, he
was
shift leader
at the bakery,” Naya corrected her. “He isn’t anymore.”

“What’s that got to do with the price
of eggs?” Josephine snapped.

“Jason is out of a job,” Naya pointed
out. “So is everyone else at the bakery, but Jason was there when the fire
started.”

“Are you looking at him as your prime
suspect?” Josephine asked.

Naya shrugged. “Maybe. A lot of people
are suspects in Roy’s death, but Jason is the one with the most opportunity to
start the fire.”

“Then why isn’t he locked up?” Josephine
asked.

Naya set her papers aside and sighed. “It’s
like this. We have the same problem with Jason that we have with you. You’re
Roy’s wife, so you could have all kinds of motives to get rid of him that we
don’t know about?”

“Like what?” Jo demanded. “What motive
could I possibly have to kill my husband?”

“I don’t know,” Naya replied. “Maybe
you couldn’t wait to get your hands on the money in those bank accounts you
want released. Like I said, you could have lots of motives.”

“I didn’t kill him,” She maintained.

Naya got up and started pacing around
the room. Josephine followed her with her eyes. “You could have a motive, but
you had no opportunity. With Jason, we have the opposite problem. He had
opportunity, but he has no motive—none that we know of, anyway.”

“Well, there you go,” Josephine
remarked. “He had opportunity. You just have to figure out what his motive was,
and you’ve got your killer.”

“I’m afraid it’s not as simple as
that,” Naya replied.

“What could be simpler?” Josephine
asked.

“We have to prove that he killed Roy,”
Naya explained. “For that, we need evidence. We need evidence to substantiate
his motive, and we need evidence to prove the method he used to start the fire
without Roy’s knowledge. It must have been hard for him to light it with Roy
standing right there in the bakery with him.”

Josephine turned away. “Not so hard.”

Naya picked up a piece of paper. “The
bakery schedule says they worked side by side on weekday mornings before the
other employees came in. Roy would have met him at the door when he clocked in,
and he would have had Jason in sight through his whole shift. How do you say
Jason could go off into a corner and sabotage a gas line or tamper with
chemicals?”

“I don’t say anything,” Josephine
muttered.

“Did you have any dealings with Jason
outside of the bakery?” Naya asked.

“I never had any dealings with him
in
the bakery,” Josephine shot back. “I never had any dealings with him one way or
the other. He was my husband’s employee. I never said a word to him the entire
time he worked for my husband.”

Naya nodded. “Okay. I think we can wrap
it up for today. We’ll be in touch again when we get a little further along in
our investigation.”

“How long will that take?” Josephine
asked.

Naya stood up and waved toward the
door. “I really don’t know. These cases can take a while to figure out. We’ll
let you know if we find out anything.”

Josephine huffed and walked away. Carl
met Naya at the door and they watched Josephine disappear up the stairs.

“Is Jason here?” Naya asked.

“He’s waiting upstairs,” Carl replied.
“How’s the grieving widow?”

“She wants us to hurry up our
investigation,” Naya told him, “and she doesn’t believe it was murder. She says
Roy neglected his safety obligations and the bakery burned down on its own.”

“If it did,” Carl shot back, “I’ll eat
my hat.”

Naya snorted. “I’d like to see you
try.”

“What did she say about Jason?” Carl
asked.

“She says she doesn’t know him,” Naya
replied. “She says she never had anything to do with him.”

“She probably didn’t,” Carl observed.
“He worked for Roy, not her.”

Naya gazed toward the empty stairs. “I
don’t know. Her husband hasn’t even been dead twenty-four hours, and she’s
awfully anxious to get her hands on his bank accounts. She doesn’t even want to
wait until we determine the cause of death before she gets the death
certificate filed and the will released.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Carl asked.

“Doesn’t that make you suspicious?”
Naya asked. “She and Jason could have something going on. They could have
conspired to kill Roy to get his money.”

Carl shrugged. “When my mother died two
years ago, my father couldn’t get all that paperwork sorted out fast enough. He
wanted to get it done and put it behind him. Some people just deal with their
grief that way.

Carl pulled out Jason Dempsey’s chair
for him. Then he and Naya sat down opposite him. Willow crouched under the
table. She didn’t try to jump up into Jason’s lap. This questioning of suspects
was serious business, and she had to pay attention. She couldn’t see Nat
anywhere. He must be hiding somewhere in the shadows.

Carl pulled down the cuffs of his
jacket sleeves. “So, Jason, we’ll just go over a couple of the details we
talked about this morning at the scene. Then you’ll be free to go.”

Jason shifted in his chair and looked
around. “I’m free to go now. You can’t intimidate me. If I’m not under arrest,
I can walk out of here at any time.”

Naya looked up. “That’s right, Jason.
No one ever said otherwise. We’re just here to ask a few questions about the
fire.”

“You can’t fool me,” Jason shot back.
“I know the drill. I wouldn’t be here right now if you didn’t suspect me of
starting the fire.”

Carl cocked his head to one side. “If
you know the drill, you must have a criminal record.”

“Of course I have a criminal record,”
Jason snapped. “That was before I went to Boot Camp. Don’t tell me you didn’t
look up my wrap sheet before you brought me in here. You wouldn’t be much of a
cop if you didn’t.”

Naya slid a manila folder across the
table to Carl. Carl huffed and bent over it, but he didn’t read it.

“Anyway, Jason,” Naya went on, “let’s
go back to this morning when you were scheduled to work at the bakery.”

“I already told you,” Jason exclaimed.
“I was nowhere near that bakery when it burned down. You have to believe me.”

Naya held up the schedule. “You don’t
have to lie about it, Jason. You were scheduled to work this morning. Your
girlfriend saw you leave home, and we have a witness who saw you park in the
employee parking lot behind the bakery. We found the remains of the time clock
with your imprint still on the tape. You clocked in right before the fire
started.”

“I clocked in,” Jason told her, “but I
wasn’t in the bakery. I can prove it.”

“How could you be anywhere else?” Carl
asked. “If you clocked in, you were there.”

“I clocked in,” Jason explained, “but
then I left. I was three blocks down the street when the building went up.”

“What were you doing there?” Naya
asked. “You were on the clock.”

Jason fidgeted. “I’m telling you this
in the strictest confidence, you understand. If I thought for a minute this
information would get out, I would take it to my grave.”

Carl stiffened. “If you have an alibi
for the time of Roy Avino’s death, you better tell us now. You wouldn’t want us
to think you had anything to do with it.”

“You already think I had something to
do with it,” Jason returned. “I wouldn’t be here now if you didn’t think so.
You think I started that fire, and that makes me a murderer.”

“That’s all the more reason to tell us
your alibi,” Naya pointed out. “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell us in
the first place, unless you have something to hide.”

“When I tell you the alibi,” Jason
replied, “you’ll understand why I have something to hide. I was down the street
behind the Nickel Alley Cafe with Josephine.”

A tense silence fell over the room.

Jason nodded in answer to the
detective’s astonished stares. “Now do you understand? She made me swear on my
mother’s grave I wouldn’t tell anyone, and I wouldn’t if I wasn’t facing a
murder wrap for killing Roy.”

Carl and Naya exchanged glances. “I
just interviewed Josephine Avino in this same room,” Naya told him. “She says
she doesn’t know you and never had anything to do with you.”

“That’s what she told everyone,” Jason
replied. “She never wanted anyone to find out about us.”

Naya nodded. “I guess she didn’t want
Roy to find out.”

Jason waved his hand. “She never cared
about him. She originally started coming on to me to pay him back for fooling
around on her.”

Naya frowned. “She came onto you?”

Jason nodded. “I wouldn’t make the
moves on the boss’s wife. I wouldn’t give her the time of day, but she wouldn’t
let up until I gave in. I’ve got a girlfriend to think about, you know.”

Naya sighed, and Carl scratched his
head. “I don’t even want to know how you explain that one. So you were down
behind the Nickel Alley Cafe with Josephine when the bakery went up in flames.
How did you get out of your shift? Roy would have been standing right there.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Jason countered.
“After I clocked in, I searched the whole building for him, but he wasn’t
there. So I started making the dough for the cinnamon raisin bread. Then Josephine
showed up at the back door and told me to come with her. I still had dough all
over my hands.”

“So off you went to the Nickel Alley
Cafe,” Carl added.

“Not to the Cafe,” Jason corrected. “We
were
behind
the Cafe.”

“Of course you were,” Naya replied. “We
don’t have to talk about what you two were doing there. But I think we can all
agree your alibi is no good, Jason. Josephine says she never knew you. She says
she never had anything to do with you in the bakery or out of it. She won’t
corroborate your story. You’re right back where you started.”

Jason stared at her. Then he slapped
his thigh and let out a string of curses. “That little witch! Just wait until I
get my hands on her.”

Carl held up his hand. “You’re not
going anywhere near her.”

“But she’s leaving me in the lurch,”
Jason exclaimed. “She must have planned this whole thing. She must have knocked
Roy out somewhere in the bakery and started the fire. Then she called me out to
go with her while the place went up in flames. She must have planned to pin the
murder on me all along.”

“That’s exactly why you’re not going
anywhere near her,” Carl replied. “If she did plan it, then we all need to keep
up the appearance of blaming you. You need to make yourself look as suspicious
as possible so she won’t know we’re really moving in on her. She’ll let her
defenses down, and that’s when we’ll catch her.”

Jason hesitated. Then he started
laughing. “All right. I’ll go along with it for now. Just as long as you both
understand I didn’t kill Roy.”

Naya put out her hand to him, but she
didn’t touch him. “We both know that.”

Jason leaned back in his chair with a
sigh of relief. “Good.”

“Now, then,” Naya went on. “Just a
couple more questions. You say Roy cheated on Josephine. Do you happen to know
who he cheated with?”