Cats on the Prowl (A Cat Detective cozy mystery series Book 1) (9 page)

Nat didn’t stick around to find out
what would happen next. He tore sideways into another bedroom, skated across
the hardwood floor, and flew into the open window. He landed on the windowsill
and looked back to wait for Willow.

Even when she heard the footsteps
coming toward her, she couldn’t make herself run until the last possible
moment. There was still one element missing to this mystery, and what struck
her as so familiar?

Annika shoved the door open and burst
out of the room. She stood all of six foot three inches, and her lithe body
stretched almost up to the ceiling. Her curly blonde hair hung almost to her
waist. She strode down the hall heading for the kitchen or the bathroom.

Willow froze with every muscle taut to
spring, but when her eye fell on Annika’s face, the puzzle pieces settled into
place. She no longer thought about running away. She no longer thought about
being a police cat. She no longer thought about anything at all. Her mind went
blank.

Annika’s mouth fell open. “There’s a
cat in here. It looks like my old cat.” She put out her hand. “Here, Snowy.
Come here, pretty girl.”

Willow stared at her. Then, out of the
depths of her soul, she meowed.

Nat called to her from the window in
that intense whisper that forced her to look in his direction. “Are you coming,
Willow?”

As soon as she looked away from
Annika’s face, the spell shattered. She ran for all she was worth, down the
hall, past the pictures and the medals hanging in frames, past the gilded
citations and the smelly bathroom. She didn’t bother to stop on the windowsill.
In one flying leap, she cleared the window ledge and landed on the concrete
outside.

Every fiber knew what to do when she
hit the ground. She rocketed forward and dove under the hedge. She didn’t stop
running until the prickly darkness closed around her and blocked out the memory
of everything she just saw.

As soon as the dark hedge enfolded her,
she paused to catch her breath, but she didn’t stay there. She waited until Nat
joined her. Then she tunneled her way back to the sidewalk and set of at a
brisk gallop down the street.

Nat ran to keep up with her. “Willow,
wait.”

She didn’t even turn around. “We don’t
have time. We have to get back to the station and find Carl and Naya. I believe
Jason is going to try something next, and we have to alert them.”

“But Jason didn’t kill Roy,” Nat
pointed out. “You just heard Annika admit to putting the fuel cartridge in the
bakery. Annika, Josephine and Marlena all planned to kill Roy together.”

Willow shook her head, but her thoughts
were never more crystal clear. “Annika planted the fuel cartridge in the
bakery, but she didn’t start the fire.”

“What makes you say that?” Nat asked.

“Don’t you remember what Chester said?”
Willow asked. “He said a regular flame wouldn’t cause that cartridge to explode
and set the bakery on fire. Whoever set that fire used military grade blasting
caps to ignite the fuel.”

“But we still don’t know who that was,”
Nat pointed out. “Any one of those three women could have a military
background.”

Willow stopped and faced Nat. “Don’t
tell me the world-famous police cat didn’t notice what was right there in front
of his eyes in that house. Don’t tell me little old Willow the house cat
noticed something you didn’t.”

Nat frowned. “What are you talking
about?”

“Didn’t you bother to look around the
house?” Willow asked. “Didn’t you look to see what sort of people lived there?”

Nat’s whiskers twitched. “I don’t know
what you’re talking about.”

Willow started walking again. She
answered Nat over her shoulder. “I was right about this neighborhood being
familiar. I’ve been here before. In fact, I used to live here. Annika Neilsson
was my old owner.”

Nat stopped in his tracks. “What?”

Willow nodded, but she didn’t stop
walking. Every minute before they found Carl and Naya was a minute wasted. “I
lived in that house. I know more about Jason Dempsey than anybody except maybe
Annika herself. He was in the Marine Corps before he moved here. He was
honorably discharged after serving five tours in Iraq, and he earned a whole
pile of medals. He had them mounted in frames in the hall of that house, right
in front of you, Nat.”

Nat looked away. “That’s impossible.”

“It’s the facts, Willow exclaimed. This
was one big plot to kill Roy for his money and distribute it between the four
of them. They were all in it together.”

Nat surveyed the surroundings. “How are
we going to break the news to Carl and Naya?”

Willow surveyed the neighborhood from
the movie theater roof. “I don’t know, but we have to find a way to lead them
in the right direction. How we will accomplish that, I have no clue.”

“We’ve been standing here for fifteen
minutes with no ideas,” Nat pointed out. “Let’s go back to the station.
Something might turn up.”

Willow sighed and started to turn away.
All of a sudden, she stopped. “Nat, look.”

In the distance, an unmarked cruiser
turned into the street and stopped in front of the Nickel Alley Cafe. “They’re
here.”

Nat looked around. “They must be coming
to check on Jason’s alibi. If Chester and Bella saw Josephine and Jason in the
alley, maybe someone else did, too.”

Willow sucked in her breath. When she
spoke, she barely made any sound. “Nat.”

He followed her gaze. “Well, what do
you know about that?”

“What’s he doing here?” Willow tiptoed
to the roof edge and peered down at Jason from above.

He parked his car across the street and
sat in the driver’s seat for a moment. He scanned the alley, but he didn’t see
anything but a couple of cats hanging around the dumpster. He got out, looked
both ways, and strode across the street.

“Let’s get down there,” Nat suggested.
“Something tells me this is our chance.”

They trotted down the stairs and paused
at the top of the alley. Chester stuck his head out from under a pile of oily
newspaper when Jason approached. Bella yowled and jumped up onto the window
ledge. She perched between two clay flower pots and just managed to avoid
knocking them off.

“Quick, Nat!” Willow whispered. “Run
around to the cafe and find a way to bring Carl and Naya out here.”

“How am I going to do that?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” she replied. “I’m
sure you'll think of something.”

Nat ran back the other way and
disappeared. Willow ventured into the alley. Chester threw off his paper
covering, and Bella smiled down at her. Jason paid the cats no attention. He
hurried down the alley to another window near the ground level of a nearby
building and started digging through the dirt. He brushed the soil off a stainless
steel cylinder and shoved it into his pocket.

“Can I do anything for you, my dear?”
Chester asked.

Willow kept her eyes on Jason. “I need
your help, Chester. Carl and Naya are inside the cafe right now. We have to
find a way to tip them off that Jason is right outside.”

“How do you plan to do that?” Chester
asked.

Willow hesitated just long enough to
take her eyes off Jason. “I don’t know. I was hoping you and Bella could help
us.”

“I’m not a police cat,” Chester
growled.

“What can we do to help?” Bella asked.

At that moment, a shout went up inside
the cafe. The back door flew open, and voices echoed down the alley. “Get that
cat out of here!”

Chester and Willow turned around to see
Nat streaking through the cafe. He dodged between customers’ legs and toppled
chairs in his wake. Women screamed and startled patrons dropped they coffee
cups. Broken crockery and steaming coffee covered the floor.

Carl and Naya looked up from their
conversation with the clerk at the cash register. Carl stared at the unfolding
pandemonium, but Naya gasped out loud. “That’s Nat! What's he doing here?”

Nat never stopped running. Willow’s
heart soared at the sight of him. She would have called out encouragement to
him, but she didn't want to distract him. He raced through the cafe with
employees and the manager in hot pursuit.

Nat made a bee line for the back door
and doubled his speed. He put the puddles of coffee and whipped cream behind
him and dashed headlong through the door. The manager waved his arms one last
time and shouted after him. The next minute, the door slammed shut and Nat
vanished into thin air.

Carl bent over his wallet, but Naya
stared at the closed door with a curious look on her face. Carl paid the tab,
but when he looked up, he found Naya moving toward the back door in a stupefied
trance.

“What are you doing?” Carl asked.

Naya didn’t turn around. “That was
Nat.”

“So what?” Carl asked. “He probably
gets up to all kinds of mischief when he leaves the station. He’ll find his way
back later.”

Naya didn’t turn around. The manager
gave her a strange look of his own, but he wasn’t going to stand in the way of
a police investigation.

Naya pushed the door open, and her eyes
popped. “Oh, hello, Jason. What are you doing here?”

Jason glanced around and attempted a feeble
smile. “Hello, Detective. I dropped my keys here yesterday when I was here with
Josephine. I came back to find them.”

Carl stuck his head through the door.
“What’s going on?”

Willow watched the unfolding scene. Nat
did his job to bring Carl and Naya out into the alley. Now she had to find a
way to show them the cylinder in Jason’s pocket.

Willow glanced up at Bella. She didn’t
have a moment to lose. She coiled every fiber in her body and launched herself
up toward the ledge where the tiny cat sat. Time stood still, and no one on the
ground even saw her jump.

She left the ground and sailed through
the air in one perfect arc. She never understood before or since how she did
it, but she touched down on the ledge next to Bella. She didn’t bother to stay away
from the flower pots, and there wasn't enough room on the ledge for them and
her.

She found her footing on the window
ledge and slithered behind the flower pots. She pushed them off the ledge, and
they crashed to the ground in a spray of clay and dirt. Carl and Naya drew back
to escape the rain of debris, but Jason saw his chance to make a clean
get-away. He whirled away and set off for a run for his car.

He had a bad habit, though, of not
noticing alley cats in inconvenient places. Chester only had to take one step
to position his body in Jason’s way, and the young man tripped over him and
fell flat on his face at Carl and Naya's feet.

The detectives stared down at him.
“Where are you going, Jason?” Naya asked.

Jason groaned and rolled over onto his
back. Chester made a pretense of running away in fright.

Naya’s eyes widened. “What’s that in
your pocket, Jason?”

He didn’t answer, and he didn’t bother
to try to get away. He closed his eyes while Naya pulled the cylinder out of
his pocket. She dumped the contents into her palm.

“Blasting caps,” Carl exclaimed.
“What’s he doing with those?”

“Don’t you remember?” Naya asked. “The
crime lab turned up traces of these next to the fuel that started the fire. He
must have used them to bypass the fuel cartridge safety device. It was in the
lab report.”

Carl pulled his head down between his
shoulders. “Oh yeah. I remember.”

In the next few moments, the detectives
listened as Jason confessed to the killing of Roy with the help of Annika,
Marlena
and
Josephine
. He told them how the four of them had conspired
to kill Roy and split his estate. Naya and Carl took out their hand cuffs and
placed them around Jason’s wrists
.
They
immediately contacted police headquarters to have the other three conspirators
arrested.

Willow watched Carl shove Jason into
the back of a squad car. Then she looked around the alley and found Nat
sticking his nose out from behind the dumpster. “It’s safe to come out now.”

Nat sighed and stepped out into the
alley. “Thank goodness that’s over. I don't want to do that again in a hurry.”

Willow laughed. “You sure got their
attention. I’ve never seen a cat run so fast.” She laughed at the memory of his
wild race through the cafe.”

He sat down and licked his shoulder.
“You’re the one who did all the hard work. You put all of the pieces of the
puzzle together and sensed were Jason would be next. You made him trip over
Chester so Naya would see the cylinder in his pocket. The other three women
will serve their time as well. None of that would have happened if it wasn't
for you. How does it feel to solve your first case?”

Willow swelled with pride. “It feels
pretty good. So does this make me an official police cat?”

Nat fell in at her side on the way back
to the station. “It’s official. Now all you need is a badge.”