Catnapped! (18 page)

Tuesday

C
ats are magical creatures, Helen thought, as she sipped her coffee on the couch in Phil’s apartment. Her own cat, Thumbs, was curled up next to her, purring. Cats can’t talk or walk through walls, though they seem to have those powers. But they are calming.

Since nine o’clock this morning, I’ve downed four cups of coffee, waiting for the catnapper’s call. Phil’s worked himself into a sweaty, twitching mess of caffeine nerves.

We both know we have to recover that kidnapped kitten. Our reputation—the future of our agency—is wrapped up in Justine’s small gray paws.

I’m scared, too. Phil may be the only man in the world for me, but he can’t help me wait out this crisis. All we can do is worry together. Thumbs and his rumbly purr ward off the gnawing anxiety.

Thumbs weighs only fifteen pounds. He has no pedigree. By any breed standard, his soft, six-toed paws are deformed. Yet he rules our household through the force of his personality. Phil and I run on his schedule: his breakfast is served at seven a.m., his
dinner is at seven p.m., his litter box is cleaned, his ears are scratched and he scores an occasional shrimp treat.

He’s smart enough to be content with that. Thumbs knows the secret of serenity. He gives it, too. He has an uncanny knack for coolly sidestepping mayhem. His first owner was murdered. I swiped him from his second owner and used the cat’s DNA to send that person to prison. Thumbs has stayed with me ever since. He adopted Phil, and now he’s sitting with me during this crisis, watching me with those shrewd golden-green eyes outlined with dark feline mascara. His sturdy body is a patchwork of stripes and pure white fur. He’s a creature of many parts.

Helen was scratching the thick fur along the cat’s shoulders when she heard the special ring tone for the kidnapper’s line. She checked the clock: ten forty-five. Helen jumped.

Phil pounced on the phone and hit the Speaker and Record buttons.

“Mrs. Barrymore.” The voice was cold, mechanical, computer generated.

“This is Mrs. Barrymore’s assistant,” Phil said. He and Helen had rehearsed this opening a dozen times.

“Where. Is. Mrs. Barrymore?” the inhuman voice demanded, flat and uninflected.

“If you really have Justine, you know where Mrs. Barrymore is,” Phil said. Nancie and the BSO had agreed to withhold the news of her release for twenty-four hours, and Valerie was cooperating, with the promise of another hot scoop.

“If. This. Is. A. Trick. Justine. Will. Go. To. A. Kill. Shelter,” the eerie voice said. “We. Know. What. Will. Happen. Next.”

“Mrs. Barrymore wants her cat back,” Phil said. Helen saw sweat beading on his forehead. “I’ll follow your instructions. I have five hundred thousand dollars in twenties in a duffel bag ready for the transfer.” The cash-stuffed bag was waiting by his front door.

Helen held her breath. So far, so good. She reached for her keys and purse, ready to go.

“Do you know the Dive Bar?” the voice asked, each word a separate sentence.

“The one on A1A near Oakland Park Boulevard?” Phil asked.

“That’s the one. On the Northeast Thirty-third Street side of the building there is a mural.”

“The seascape?” Phil said.

“Yes. There’s a planter under the mural. Leave the bag under the naked lady.”

Naked lady? Helen wondered, but Phil simply nodded. “I know the spot,” he said.

“The cat will be returned in the same spot at noon in its carrier. Someone will be watching you. If you try to follow, you’ll never see the cat again.”

Helen’s heart was thumping so loudly, she could hardly track the slow, mechanical voice.

“How about proof of life?” Phil said. “Can you e-mail me a photo of Justine?”

“You want proof of life?” the voice intoned. “How about this?”

Helen heard a small, indignant
“Yerp!”
The cat sounded more annoyed than injured. They’d have to take it on faith that was Justine.

“You think I’m a fool?” the voice said, each word slow and pronounced the same. “E-mails can be traced. For your stupidity, I’ve cut five minutes off your time. Drop off the money at exactly eleven o’clock. And hope the drawbridge doesn’t go up, or the cat goes to the kill shelter.”

The phone disconnected, and Helen and Phil were out the door and running for their cars. He had the duffel bag of marked money in his hand.

“I’ll make the drop-off,” he said. “You go ahead and park in one of the spots across from the mural. Wait for the kidnapper to
pick up the money. I’ll drive away, park in the next block and jog back. We’ll follow the catnapper’s car in your Igloo. Whoever picks up the money will have a hard time making a left onto A1A, so they’ll probably go right. Hurry!”

They started their cars and raced through midmorning traffic, recklessly passing slower cars. Helen prayed they didn’t hit any pedestrians crossing at the lights. They both shot through yellow lights and crossed their fingers they weren’t caught by the dreaded traffic cameras. The Dive Bar was on A1A near the edge of the concrete condo canyon known as Galt Ocean Mile.

At precisely ten fifty-nine, tense and breathless, Helen turned left into Northeast Thirty-third Street and slid into an angled spot with a clear view of the Dive Bar’s seascape mural.

Phil’s Jeep slammed onto the side street shortly after her. He drove past the Igloo, while Helen watched the area. Northeast Thirty-third was a sliver of Old Florida, a stretch of sidewalk cafés, wine bars and upscale shops shaded by spreading trees and manicured hedges.

The Dive Bar was no dive, but a sea-themed saloon with sidewalk tables. Chalk signs advertised local bands and daily specials. Helen’s stomach growled when she caught the perfume of broiling burgers. The outside mural was a bold blue design with swirling waves, colorful fish and bright coral, but she didn’t see any naked woman on the wall.

Phil parked the Jeep next to the mural, jumped out with the bag and left it in the planter. Now she saw the lady—what looked like waves were actually the discreet outlines of a nude woman. Phil drove away.

Helen held her breath. Once Phil’s Jeep was gone, she waited, hoping no casual pedestrian noticed the dark nylon bag in the planter. How could she tell a passing shopper from the real catnapper? Would the kidnapper’s bag person be a man or a woman? She didn’t know.

Two women, chatting and carrying shopping bags, passed the spot, oblivious. Helen relaxed a little, until she saw a sixtyish woman with spiky black hair, gold lamé shorts and matching tennis shoes walking a Chihuahua with a gold bow. The little dog stopped at every bush and tree, each time inching closer to the money bag.

The spindly four-pound dog must be all kidneys, Helen thought. She held her breath as they neared the planter.

Would this woman pick up the kidnapper’s money? Was she the catnapper?

The pair trotted past the planter without a second glance.

Eleven-oh-four. Where is the kidnapper? Helen was uneasy. A half-million dollars was sitting in a planter. Shoppers, diners and tourists were strolling along the crowded sidewalk. Someone could spot the bulging bag at any moment. The wrong person could walk off with Justine’s ransom money. They’d lose that poor cat and their agency.

Where was Phil? If the kidnapper grabbed the money, Helen would have to take off and follow the car. She glanced in the rearview mirror and thought she might have seen her PI partner loping along the sidewalk across the way, but she didn’t dare turn around and lose sight of the money bag.

A man in brown work khakis stopped beside the planter, directly in front of the spot where the bag nestled, and lit a cigarette. He blew out long dragon streams of smoke and surveyed the busy street scene.

Come on, Helen thought. Pick up the bag and go. Let’s get this over.

Then Khaki Man made his move. He stubbed out his cigarette and sauntered into the bar.

That’s when a slender brunette in a red Dodge Charger squealed up in front of the planter, hopped out, grabbed the bag, tossed it in the front seat and jumped in after it. A Toyota behind
her beeped its horn. The Charger was blocking traffic. The brunette hit the gas, roared out of Thirty-third Street and turned right on A1A, going much too fast.

Helen saw Phil jogging toward her. She opened the Igloo’s door and said, “Hurry! The catnapper just grabbed the bag. It’s a woman, a fit-looking brunette, heading south on A1A. We caught a break. She’s driving a bright red Charger, so she’ll be easier to track. Buckle up and let’s go.”

Phil had barely snapped on his seat belt when Helen swung out of the space and turned onto A1A.

“There it is,” she said. “The red car waiting at the stoplight.”

“Middle lane,” Phil said. “She’s not turning onto Oakland Park. We’re about six cars behind. Let’s try to keep it that way.”

Highway A1A runs along the ocean, but this morning they weren’t there to look at the water. Helen followed the red Charger for about a mile, until they came to a section with impressive towers on the west side and about four blocks of small apartments on the beach side.

“Her signal’s on,” Phil said. “She’s turning left at the next street.”

“Good,” Helen said. “The security won’t be as good in these small buildings.”

They followed the Charger for a block, then it turned left again onto a street lined with midcentury-modern apartments painted white, pink and turquoise.

“Funky little area close to the beach,” Phil said. “We’ll have to explore it sometime.”

“Later,” Helen said, then realized she sounded abrupt. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“Keep driving,” Phil said, his voice soft. “Don’t slow down and don’t stop. She’s turning into that pink apartment lot. Keep on going.”

Tuesday

H
elen ditched the car in a parking spot around the corner and tossed a couple of quarters into the meter. She and Phil ran the half block to the street with the pink apartment. Once they were in sight of the building, they strolled along, hand in hand, another couple going for a walk near the sea.

“What department’s jurisdiction is this?” Helen asked.

“Ireland Beach PD,” Phil said.

“Look,” Helen said. “She’s lugging the money bag inside the pink apartment.”

The midcentury-modern building, pale pink with black accents, was starkly framed by straight, tall palms. The deceptively simple building had been beautiful once, but after sixty-some years of storms and salty ocean air, the paint was faded and peeling, the gutters were rusted, and the aluminum window frames were pitted and tarnished.

A thirtysomething brunette in black booty shorts, ankle-strap heels and a turquoise tank top teetered along the building’s cracked sidewalk. Helen saw the ropy muscles bulging in her right
arm as she hung on to the duffel bag. She seemed strong, but hauling that bulging bag of marked money slowed her down.

“Does she look familiar to you?” Helen asked.

Phil shook his head no.

“I think I’ve seen her before,” Helen said. But the only brunettes she could remember from this case were Jan Kurtz and Gabby Garcia, Dee’s maid. Both would be working now.

The private eyes slowed their walk as the brunette opened the outer glass door. They hustled up the walkway as she elbowed her way through the inner door.

“No doorman and no security,” Helen said. “Bless these old buildings with cheap landlords.”

By the time they were inside, the steel elevator doors had swallowed the mystery woman. The lobby, a dirty pale pink, was littered with take-out menus and free newspapers. A dusty silk ficus molted in the corner.

They watched the fourth-floor number light up over the elevator. “She’s on the top floor,” Phil said. “You take the stairs on the right and I’ll take the fire stairs on this side. Meet you at the top.”

Helen ran up the grimy black-painted stairs splotched with old chewing gum and sticky with spilled drinks. The pink walls were decorated with a haphazard collage of handprints and missing patches of plaster.

When she finally reached the fourth floor, Helen was puffing slightly. She paused to catch her breath and read the hall sign. Apartments 40 through 44 were on the left, 45 through 49 on the right.

Helen heard the rattle of a door handle around the corner to her left and sprinted toward it. The industrial gray carpet was stained and dirty, but it silenced her footsteps. She hoped Phil was doing the same thing on the other side.

The mystery woman was unlocking the apartment at the end
of the hall—number 44. Helen saw the fire-stairs door was open about an inch on the other side. Phil.

The catnapper had the bag of cash tucked between her feet as she twisted the doorknob. It didn’t open. Stuck. She slammed her shoulder against the door. Helen saw the fire-stairs door slowly open, and she raced down toward the woman.

As the mystery woman grabbed the money bag, Phil and Helen shoved her through her own door. The three of them tumbled inside the apartment and Phil shut the door.

The woman’s brown wig slid loose. Helen pulled it off and recognized the flattened honey blond locks of Amber Waves, Mort’s pole-dancing girlfriend.

“Amber!” she said. “You’re the catnapper!”

Amber gave a little scream and tried to escape, but Phil blocked the door and shot the bolt.

“Mrs. Raines is right next door,” Amber said, her voice shaking with fear. “When she hears me shout, she’ll call the police.”

“Good,” Phil said. “We’re calling the police anyway.”

“Why?” Amber said, looking at Phil with wide, not-so-innocent brown eyes.

“You stole Mort’s cat, Justine, and held her for ransom,” Phil said.

“What cat?” Amber said. “I don’t see any cat.”

Helen saw a dingy living room with a sagging, yellow-flowered couch, a floral riot gone wrong. One lampshade was dented, and the oak coffee table was scratched.

“Mew!”
A tiny noise. A smoky blue-gray fur ball slid out from under the couch and patted Phil’s shoe with one dainty paw.
“Mew!”

Helen was transfixed. The gray kitten seemed to dominate the grungy room. Helen had seen enough champions to recognize the proud chest, haughty carriage and glossy fur of a natural winner.

“Well, hello, Justine,” Phil said, scooping up the fluffy kitten.
She was so small, she nearly fit in the palm of his hand. Her copper eyes glowed like new pennies.

“That’s my kitten,” Amber said.

“Really?” Phil said. “You can afford a pedigreed Chartreux? Amazing. A kitten like this must cost a month’s rent at this dump.”

“I got her at the pound,” Amber said.

“Well, that’s easy to prove,” Phil said. “Justine was microchipped. We’ll have a vet scan her.”

Helen pointed to the bejeweled bus-shaped carrier. “And that’s Justine’s Baby Coach sitting near the TV,” she said. “She never travels in anything else.”

“That’s right,” Amber said, quickly changing her story. “I’m cat-sitting for Mort, and you can’t prove otherwise.” She shifted effortlessly from fear to defiance.

“You’re an extremely well-paid cat sitter,” Phil said. “That’s half a million dollars in that bag.”

“So?” Amber said, her voice insolent. “It’s mine.”

“Can you prove it?” Phil said. “Because we can prove it doesn’t belong to you. Where did you get it?”

Helen stepped in front of Amber and grabbed the bag. Amber lunged for her, slashing at Helen with her pink-painted claws. “I said it’s mine!”

Phil caught her arm and twisted it behind her back, still cupping the kitten in one hand. “Easy, there. That’s a question for the police,” he said. “You’ve kidnapped this cat and tried to get half a million for her from Mort’s wife, Trish.”

“Prove it!” Amber was brazen, but then, she’d had time to master that skill pole dancing in the clubs.

“We recorded you,” Phil said. He held up his cell phone. “Right here.”

“Play it,” Amber challenged him.

“Mrs. Barrymore,”
the computer-generated voice said.

“Sounds just like me,” she said with a sneer.

Helen saw a black speaker box, a snake coil of cords and a headset piled on the coffee table. “And what’s this?” she said, picking it up. “Looks like a voice changer to me.” She examined the connectors. “For an iPhone. Amber, Amber, you used your own cell phone to make the catnapping calls. Very foolish and very traceable.”

Helen unzipped the Baby Coach and gently lifted the little cat into her traveling home. Justine gave a loud, contented purr as she settled in.

“Kitchen,” Phil mouthed, and Helen and the cat retreated around the corner into that dreary, cluttered room.

Phil kneeled in front of Amber, took her long, smooth hands in his, and looked into her eyes. Helen knew how persuasive he could be when he talked to someone that way. She couldn’t help admiring his chiseled jaw, strong shoulders and silky silver-white hair.

Neither could Amber.

“Amber,” he said, his voice soft and sympathetic. Helen almost expected him to put his collar on backward to hear her confession. His absolute attention and intensity made susceptible people want to unload ugly truths. “You’re in a lot of trouble. Mort’s dead, his cat is missing and your DNA was found at the murder scene.” That last part wasn’t true, but Amber didn’t know that.

“We know the time of the murder, because Mort put up his arm to defend himself when he was beaten, and his watch stopped at exactly six o’clock Sunday night. The Peerless Point police have a camera system that tracks license plates along the main road where Mort’s house is, and your car was videoed going to the house. There’s about a ten-minute break, and then your car leaves his home. Don’t you see, Amber? You’re at the scene at the time of his death. You have a motive. You thought Mort would marry you, and he chose another woman. You’re on the hook for his murder.”

“I didn’t do it,” Amber wailed. “I didn’t kill him. I went to his house because he promised to give me a parting gift—a check for six months’ rent on my pole-specialist studio. When I got there,
his front door was open and there was blood on the doorstep. I knew something was wrong, so I used my scarf to open the door and stepped around the blood. I didn’t want to leave prints.”

“Clever,” Phil said.

Conniving, Helen thought.

“Mort was lying on the floor”—she paused dramatically—“dead. There was no doubt. I looked everywhere for my check, but I didn’t see it.

“Instead, I saw Justine, hiding in the bottom of her cat tower. So I packed her in her carrier and took her.”

Helen was shocked and disgusted. Amber had left Mort, the man she wanted to marry, dead on the floor while she looked for her money, then stole his cat.

“You didn’t call the police?” Phil asked gently.

“I was too upset,” Amber said. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”

But you weren’t too upset to run off with the one valuable you could turn into quick cash, Helen thought.

“Mort’s death was the end of my dreams,” Amber said. “I didn’t think his relationship with that Jan Kurtz would last.” She said Kurtz like “curse.”

“I thought he’d come to his senses and marry me. But when I saw him lying there, I knew that would never happen. He owed me! He promised me money to start my own studio.

“I was only trying to get what was rightfully mine,” she said, “but I didn’t kill him. You understand, don’t you, Phil?”

Amber smiled at him and fluttered her eyelashes.

“Perfectly,” he said.

“And you won’t call the police?”

“Absolutely not.”

She smiled wider. The sun was coming out after her tears.

“Helen will make the call,” Phil said. “We’re only witnesses. Our client Trish Barrymore will decide if she wants to press charges for theft and extortion.”