Alibis and Amethysts (12 page)

Chapter 16

Jaye and Sierra had spent the better part of an evening debating what time to schedule
their undercover mission. The first thing they��d had to establish was whether or
not Peggy’s electricity had been shut off and along with it any security system she
might have had. They certainly didn’t have the expertise to disarm a system themselves.
When Jaye had called the power company to inquire about the electricity at Peggy’s
address, she’d been told that privacy regulations prevented them from discussing the
account with anyone other than the individual listed in their records. The one recourse
left to them had been to sneak over to Peggy’s house at night and look for the electric
meter. Fortunately, the streetlamps had provided them with enough light to locate
the meter on the left side of the house. But they’d needed to turn on their flashlight
in order to determine whether it was working. Jaye had cupped her hand around the
flashlight in case any neighbors happened to be looking out their windows and then
flicked it on. They’d only needed two seconds to see that the meter was stopped dead.
The electricity was off. They could move ahead with their plan once they selected
a time.

Although waiting for the cover that darkness could provide had initially been appealing,
they’d quickly realized that the extended use of a flashlight inside the house was
likely to catch a neighbor’s eye and trigger a call to 911. And without light they
couldn’t possibly navigate the unfamiliar house, let alone hunt for evidence in it.
Of course, the daylight hours had some obvious drawbacks of their own. The houses
in that neighborhood were set close to one another, and after the recent death in
their midst, the homeowners were sure to be more vigilant than they’d been in the
past. By default, early morning seemed like the best solution.

The morning of the mission, Jaye escorted Raffles outside during the last hour of
darkness to minimize her need to run off when they reached their destination. The
not-a-cat, who’d been sleeping soundly tucked into the crook of Jaye’s knees, wasn’t
at all happy about being awakened, carried downstairs and unceremoniously plunked
outside in the early-morning chill. She looked up at Jaye, her dark, luminous eyes
clearly asking her roomie, “What are we doing out here at this ungodly hour?”

“Trying to keep your meal ticket from being shipped off to prison,” Jaye told her.
Raffles still looked perplexed, but she yawned widely and gave her whole body a good
shake before finally trotting off into the darkness. Jaye waited inside the shop for
her return. If she came back too late, they’d have to scrub the mission and try again
another day. But the animal, perhaps sensing something different was in the offing,
came back in record time, after which she followed Jaye around the apartment as if
afraid of being left behind.

“No worries. You’re coming too,” Jaye promised after twice turning and slamming into
Raffles, who’d been tailgating. After that the not-a-cat backed off and followed at
a safer distance. Jaye supposed she’d used the words “you’re coming” often enough
in their brief relationship that the animal might have learned what they meant. But
it was equally possible that she was just tired of having her toes stepped on.

Jaye gave her breakfast before they left. There was no point in bringing tuna along.
They couldn’t very well tempt her to break into the house by waiting inside with the
fish. Jaye refused to dwell on the possibility that Raffles might not be interested
in finding a way inside without such an incentive. She was determined to go into the
mission with as much optimism as she could muster, along with a truckload of fervent
prayers that they wouldn’t get caught.

Sierra met them at Dee’s, where she left both Frosty and her car. When she climbed
in beside Jaye, Raffles welcomed her with a high-pitched trill of delight and snuggled
her almost-a-cat head under Sierra’s arm. In return, Sierra provided some enthusiastic
petting. But as they drove to Peggy’s house, she fell silent.

“Having second thoughts?” Jaye asked, worried that her own resolve might falter if
her friend had changed her mind.

“No,” Sierra replied with a sigh. “We need to find some clue the cops missed. But
sometimes the reality of what we’re up against just smacks me in the face.”

“We’re going to find what we need in that house,” Jaye said firmly, to bolster Sierra’s
spirits as well as her own. “Don’t forget, we have a not-a-cat-burglar on our team.”
She glanced at Sierra and was rewarded by the smile brightening her face.

“Hey, you’re playing my role,” she said with a laugh.

“No problem,” Jaye smiled back. “I’m happy to be your understudy.”

***

Jaye parked down the street from Peggy’s house on a block of modest, older homes with
stucco facades and Spanish tile roofs. No one was out and about yet, since the sun
had only recently scaled the horizon, a tougher job in Sedona, where the horizon involved
monoliths and mountains.

Jaye had Raffles mostly hidden under her jacket, with only the animal’s golden head
poking out. After the incident when she’d jumped out of Jaye’s grasp and run through
the crowded crystal shop, and the more recent paper bag fiasco, Jaye had learned her
lesson. Raffles would tolerate being held or carried as long as she could see where
she was going. From a distance her face looked enough like a cat’s that she wasn’t
likely to raise any eyebrows. It was the best compromise Jaye could come up with.

In daylight, Peggy’s house looked forlorn and abandoned. As if in mourning, the ornamental
bushes and trees drooped from dehydration now that the drip system was off-line. Several
of the free local newspapers littered the driveway, and a hearty crop of weeds had
pushed up between the pink marble pebbles that substituted for a lawn.

Without hesitating, Jaye and her little band of would-be thieves hurried through the
gate in the adobe wall that enclosed the sides and back of the property. After shutting
it behind them, Jaye set Raffles down. Then Jaye and Sierra pulled on latex gloves.
Jaye took a cloth out of her pocket to wipe off any fingerprints they might have left
on the gate and latch. Stage one of the plan was completed without a hitch. Jaye was
fairly confident no one had seen them so far. Now Raffles just had to find a way to
get inside the house.

It was immediately apparent that the only opening on this side of the house was a
small louvered vent several feet beneath the eaves. Since there were no trees or trellis
to make it accessible to the not-a-cat, they moved on to the backyard.

“It seems Peggy was into flowers,” Sierra said, pointing to the garden adjacent to
the brick patio. Jaye walked over to have a better look at it. Small, carefully manicured
bushes were interspersed with lavender, lilies and some other perennials Jaye didn’t
recognize. Half the garden had also been planted with impatiens, petunias and snapdragons,
but the remainder of the new annuals were still in their original containers from
the nursery. With no watering system or human hand to keep them alive, all the flowers
were withering or already dead. But it was the decorative rocks in the garden that
captured Jaye’s attention. The medical examiner had found particles from rocks like
these imbedded in Peggy’s skull. There were no such rocks in Sierra’s yard. On closer
inspection, Jaye spotted the place where one of the rocks should have been, it’s imprint
in the flower bed as obvious as a footprint left by a person. Either the police had
taken the rock as evidence, or the killer had taken it when cleaning up the crime
scene. From the state of the garden, it certainly seemed as if Peggy had been planting
her flowers when she was attacked. The only problem with that scenario was that, according
to Dr. Gatwick, she’d died at Sierra’s house.

“Jaye,” Sierra said, trotting up to her, “from the back wall I could see the whole
roof. There’s no metal cap on the chimney, but there are no trees close enough to
the house for Raffles to climb.”

Jaye hunkered down beside the not-a-cat, and when she was sure she had her full attention,
she instructed her to “be a good girl and go inside.” The animal looked at her and
Sierra, then at the house and then back at her. “Go inside,” Jaye repeated, firmly
but gently. She’d learned that Raffles didn’t respond well to being ordered around.
Couching the same request in a less authoritarian manner produced much better results.
As Sierra had noted early on in the process, it was hard to tell exactly who was training
whom.

On Jaye’s third request, Raffles finally seemed to understand. She went to the back
door and turned the knob. When that proved to be locked, she scampered off toward
the gate and presumably the front of the house. Blasting herself for not having taken
that possibility into consideration, Jaye was about to run after her when Sierra grabbed
her arm.

“If someone sees Raffles, they’ll probably just think she’s a cat. If they see us
prowling around, the jig is up.”

Jaye couldn’t argue with that logic, but she also knew that if Raffles became annoyed,
she might bid the house a fond farewell and set out to explore the neighborhood. And
with every passing second the risk of their being caught increased. If they had to
start searching for the not-a-cat, they might as well pack it in and go home. “I have
to be close enough for her to see me and hear me,” Jaye said, pulling away. “I have
to keep her focused.”

Sierra let go of her arm, and the two of them ran to the side gate, which was now
wide open, with Raffles nowhere in sight. Jaye pulled it shut. Then, crouching behind
it to shield herself from view, she opened it several inches and peered left toward
the front door. The angle was too oblique for her to see anything, and she was forced
to open it more. Okay, now she could see the door and Raffles. Fortunately, she hadn’t
taken off to see the world. Unfortunately, she was standing on her hind legs trying
to turn the knob. After a few unsuccessful attempts, she started kicking the door,
first with one hind leg, then with the other. Apparently giving up on the door, she
turned away from the house in what appeared like a huff and looked across the street
at a small dog who’d started yapping from behind a chain-link fence. With every passing
second the risk increased.

“Raffles,” Jaye called out as loudly as she dared. She knew from experience that the
not-a-cat’s hearing was impressive. She was ignoring Jaye on purpose. “Raffles,” she
rasped again. The not-a-cat was now sitting upright on her hind legs in a very un-catlike
posture. The woman who lived with the yapping dog started calling for him to come
inside. From what Jaye could tell, the dog obeyed about as well as Raffles did.

Hunkered down in the corner of the adobe wall, where a mulberry tree provided some
additional cover, Sierra was keeping watch down the street in the opposite direction.
“Jaye,” she whispered urgently, “someone’s coming with another dog. They’re only a
couple of blocks away.” She didn’t need to point out the danger. To the best of their
knowledge, the not-a-cat had managed to stay below the town’s radar until now, but
that could change in a heartbeat.

“Candy,” Jaye called to Raffles, wishing she had taken the tuna along after all. For
that matter, she wasn’t even sure she had a hard candy in the small, cross-body bag
slung over her shoulder. Not that it mattered. At this point a lie was preferable
to an arrest. She’d make it up to the animal later.

“They’re still coming,” Sierra said, anxiety raising the pitch of her voice as if
her vocal cords were straining from the tension. “They’ll be on this street in thirty
seconds, tops.”

“Candy, Raffles, candy,” Jaye shouted, no longer concerned if anyone heard her. Even
if the cops were called, the most she and Sierra could be charged with at this point
was trespassing in Peggy’s yard. They’d apologize and say the stress of being under
investigation had pushed them over the edge.

Sierra was counting it down like a pro from NASA. “Ten, nine, eight—”

Raffles finally noticed the man and dog half a block away. She turned and raced for
the gate. As soon as she cleared it, Jaye pulled it closed. Before she could exhale
with relief, Raffles had her hand out for the promised treat.

“That was close,” Sierra said. “So what now? Do we forge ahead or tuck our tails and
go home?”

“You know I don’t like giving up,” Jaye replied, rummaging in her handbag for a candy.
She snagged one and handed it to the not-a-cat, glad that she didn’t have to go back
on her word.

“Okay, then it’s full steam ahead,” Sierra said. “But in the interest of saving time,
what if we try the back– and side-facing windows ourselves? With all the police activity
that was going on here, maybe they left one unlocked.”

“Could we be that lucky?” Jaye asked as they split up to give it a try. She and Raffles
headed for the far side of the house while Sierra started with the windows on the
gate side. Less than two minutes later, they met up in the backyard.

Jaye’s face was bright with a smile. “Raffles is inside.”

“Through a window?”

“No, they were all locked. But she went nosing behind some bushes that were up against
the house, and she found a vent maybe a foot off the ground. I think it might be attached
to the clothes dryer. Now we just have to hope she understood the words ‘open back
door.’”

Before they had a chance to worry about it, the back door swung open and Raffles stood
framed in the doorway looking mighty pleased with herself.

“Okay, our luck is definitely changing,” Jaye said as they hurried inside and closed
the door behind them. They made a big but brief fuss over Raffles’s accomplishment
before even taking a look around. The back door had led them directly into the kitchen,
but from there they could see into the L-shaped dining and living rooms. It seemed
as if the house was still fully furnished, presumably just as Peggy had left it on
her last day as a resident of planet Earth. The decor was a hodgepodge of mismatched
items with little thought to color or pattern, size or proportion.