Catwalk (21 page)

forty-three

“Are you sure you
heard what you think you heard?” Goldie and I were headed for the feral cat colony managed by Alberta and her friends, and now that she had me captive in the car, Goldie had steered the conversation back to me and Tom.

“I know what I heard,” I said.

“Maybe,” said Goldie I glanced at her, but she had her eyes averted, as if there were anything interesting to see on this familiar stretch of downtown road.

“Look, if you know something I don't but should, just cough it up, would you?”

Goldie shifted toward me as far as her seatbelt allowed and said, “You're under a lot of stress, and it's possible you're overreacting. Things aren't always what they seem.”

“And besides, it's okay to keep big fat secrets from friends who
love you, right?”
Put a sock in it, Janet
, whispered my guardian angel.

But Goldie
had
kept a big fat secret all summer, and although I understood, sort of, why she had chosen to do so, I wasn't entirely over it.

Goldie sighed a little too dramatically and said, “That's not fair. I really don't think this is the same.” She paused before she said, “Besides, Tom isn't Chet.” Meaning my jerk of an ex-husband. “I think you should tell Tom what you overheard and ask him outright what it's all about.”

“He's planning to rent out his house, Goldie. He's obviously going somewhere.”

“Maybe not as far as you think.” I barely heard her.

“What do you mean?”

She didn't answer. I might have pursued it, but my phone rang, so instead I said, “Could you get that? Might be about Mom.”

“Oh, hi,” she said.

“Who is it?” I asked.

Her hand fluttered at me. “Yes, I understand.” Pause. “We're on our way there now
…
Yes, to Alberta's place and then the cat colony
…
Okay, yes, I'll let her know.” She flipped my phone closed.

“What? Who is that?”

“Your policeman friend. Hutcherson, is it?”

“Hutchinson.”

“He said he'll talk to you when you get there.”

“About what?”

“He didn't really say.”

Which I didn't believe for a second. “My friends sure have a lot of secrets,” I said.

I knew as we approached the entrance to Alberta's subdivision that whatever was going on, that was the place.

“Oh, no, this is
déjà vu
all over again.” A police cruiser blocked the road between Alberta's driveway and the bulldozer that was still sitting on a flatbed trailer by the pond. I caught a glimpse of something big and orange in front of the trailer, but lost sight of it when I turned into the driveway.

Hutchinson left Alberta standing on her front porch and came out to meet me. “What now?” I asked.

“Vandalism. Someone spray-painted the rocks,” said Hutchinson.

At first I thought he meant the boulders that Alberta had incorporated into her landscaping, but they looked normal. Then Goldie started to laugh. Her left hand pointed past the flatbed and her right fist was raised in the air. “Don't let them pave paradise!” she shouted.

The pile of bland white rocks that the community association planned to dump along the edge of the pond to “improve it” looked from that distance like coals ready for a giant's cookout. Then I realized what had happened, and smiled. Someone had spray painted the whole lot of them fluorescent orange.

“They have any clues?” I asked, hoping that whoever did it got away.

“Oh, yeah,” said Hutchinson. “Two college kids. Apparently the one they caught has had a couple of run-ins with the police before.”

I couldn't think of any eco-terrorists in my immediate circle of friends, although I was sure Goldie wouldn't mind wearing the label. The young women I had met on campus flashed into my mind. “You get a name?”

“I didn't. Why?” Hutchinson frowned at me. “What do you know
about this?”

“No! Nothing. I mean, I met some kids on campus, that's all.”

Hutchinson gave me an odd look but didn't say anything more. I heard voices and looked toward the far end of the pond, where a group of six or seven people were emerging from the woods. “What's that all about?”

Alberta spoke for the first time. “They're surveying the woods and wetlands.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“A group of university students, a couple of volunteers from my birding group.”

I squinted at the group. “Is that Peg?” Peg was the office manager
for my veterinarian.

“Oh, goodie,” said Goldie, elbowing me. “The gang's all here!” Goldie
and Peg had become friends after I got them together a few months earlier.

Alberta said Peg was a member of her birding group, and then said, “We also have a professor from Purdue.” She laughed. “I believe you know that one, Janet.”

As Alberta spoke, the group skirted the pond and emerged from the shadow of the woods, making my heart beat a little faster. I did indeed know the professor. I knew the light in his graying hair and beard, I knew his jacket, I knew the angle of his shoulders and the way he moved easily across open ground. I also knew the way he made me weak in the knees, and none of my feelings of the past twenty-four hours muffled that response.

Goldie gestured toward Tom with her head, as if I should go talk to him right then and there. I stepped away from her and turned toward Hutchinson.

“Were the women with that group? The one you've arrested and the other one ?”

“I didn't arrest anyone. I'm off-duty today,” he said. “ But no, from what I gather the girls …” He looked at me and said, “Women?”

I suppressed a smile and nodded. Apparently my efforts at consciousness raising were having an effect.

“The young women came later. The neighbor called it in.” He looked away from the pond and pointed with his chin, and for the first time I noticed an elderly man standing on a porch, leaning into a walker. “He says he saw them pull up and start monkeying around near the trailer. He thought they were trying to sabotage the bulldozer. Says he had just come out for some air and didn't even know the other group was here, so they don't seem to be connected. At least not at first glance.”

That was a relief. Tom was possibly a murder suspect as it was. He
didn't need to be implicated in vandalism, too.

A uniformed officer appeared from the other side of Alberta's house, a handcuffed figure walking a few steps ahead of him. It was Robin Byrde's friend from the college cafeteria, and she and the officer were on a collision course with the group that Tom was with.

“What are you guys doing here ?” asked the woman. If her surprise was an act, she was very good.

“What are
you
doing?” asked a tall, intense young man with streaks of shocking blue in his spiked-up carrot-top hair. He looked at the flat bed and bulldozer, and his voice pitched an octave higher when he said, “What have you done?” Then the painted rocks
seemed to register. He leaped into the air, let out a whoop, and yelled, “Totally!” I had no idea what it meant in that context, but the
gist was clear.

Tom laid a hand on the young man's shoulder and looked at the handcuffed woman, who was grinning back at the group even as the police urged her toward the cruiser. Tom called after her, “Don't say anything until you have an attorney present. Do you need us to find you one?”

She shook her head and shouted from the cruiser, “Already called my dad. He's meeting me at the lock up.” She was still grinning when the officer guided her into the back seat and shut the door.

Most of the group was now scattered across Alberta's driveway
and yard, except for one of carrot top's friends, who was taking photos of the glowing rocks with his cell phone, and a straggler who was still back by the pond. Tom met my eyes but kept his distance
. He said, “How's your mom?”

“She's doing okay. Going back to Shadetree.”

He nodded at me, and for the first time since I'd known him I couldn't read his expression. It wasn't exactly blank, and it wasn't cold, but the heat and humor I had come to expect didn't dance in his eyes or the curve of his lips. I thought I saw something like pain, but then he looked away and I couldn't be sure that it wasn't my own.

Alberta's voice broke through the quiet that had descended on the group. “Did you find anything interesting out there?”

“Who else was in that car?” asked carrot top. He was looking at me.

“I don't know. Tinted window …” I was about to ask whether it might be my new friend Robin, but then I saw her waving at me as she ran up the slope from the pond.

“Hi! Did you guys see the nests hanging in the cattails down there?” She was grinning and bouncing. “Anybody know what kind of birds …?”

“Red-winged blackbirds,” said Peg. “You need to come out in the spring and watch them, and hear them trill. It's magic.” She pointed at the flatbed and bulldozer and added, “And those are the tools of the evil giant who would take the magic from us.”

forty-four

All eyes in the
group seemed focused on what Peg called “the tools of the evil giant.”

Finally Alberta broke the silence. “Well, we're all giant killers.”
She put a hand on Tom's sleeve and asked. “So what about the woods
and wetlands? What did you find?”

“Did they do any other damage?” Peg still had her binoculars aimed at the construction equipment. “I don't see anything from this side.”

Tom looked at Alberta and said, “Hold that thought.” Then he turned to Hutchinson. “That's a good question. Did they do anything to the equipment?”

Hutchinson nodded. “Just paint. No real damage.”

Tom seemed to breathe a little easier. I didn't think he would encourage vandalism, but he obviously liked these kids and their cause. He glanced at me but didn't linger before turning to Alberta's question. “It's not the best time of year to assess the wetlands. A lot of plants have died back and aren't immediately apparent, and the amphibians and reptiles, and some of the mammals, are holed up. And of course a lot of the birds that are here in summer are migratory. But Jordan,” he indicated the redhead, “is doing a count of migratory fowl.”

Jordan's head bobbed wildly and he said, “I'll be back at dawn. Best time to spot them.”

Tom went on. “We'll check the survey maps. If the wetlands are being used by rare migratory birds, we may have a case. So, we have more work to do, but this is a good start. Let's pull what we have together.” He hesitated. “And although I don't encourage anyone to commit acts of vandalism, that,” he pointed at the fluorescent rock pile, “at least delays the planned destruction of the pond's perimeter. We have an attorney working on a temporary restraining order against the so-called improvements.”

“Speaking of vandalism,” I said, “is there any news about the damage to Alberta's house?”

“It was a golf ball that broke the window,” said Hutchinson. “They found it wedged into a bookcase. A Callaway. Top of their line.”

“My dad used to use those,” I said. I only knew that because I made doll furniture out of the empty boxes.

Several of the group members walked toward a beat-up car parked on the street. Tom and Jordan, the red-headed kid, were talking about whatever was in Jordan's notebook. I wanted to ask Tom if we could meet later to talk, but I didn't want to interrupt. Alberta tugged on my jacket and I turned toward her.

“Can we go take the cat photos now? I think it would be a good time to get pictures of most of them,” she said. She went into a convoluted explanation of the kinds of photos she wanted, as if I wouldn't know how to get good pictures of felines, and finally wrapped up by saying, “Sally usually feeds them about now, so they come in for that.”

“Sure. Let me grab my camera, and give me a second.” I turned around, intending to ask Tom if we could grab a minute, but all I saw was the back end of his van as it accelerated away from me.

Focus on your work
, whispered the voice that had helped me get past tough times before. I wasn't sure it would get me through this, but having a job to do did keep me from dropping into a whimpering mess on the cold, wet grass. I got my camera from my own van, returned to Alberta, and said, “Okay, let's do it.”

I could have walked to the cat feeding station in five minutes, but Alberta slowed me down. She had moved a lot faster with the adrenaline pumping through her when we were searching for Gypsy, but now she went at something between a toddle and a stroll. She was telling me about the current feeding and shelter situation for the cats, and what her little group of volunteers had in mind for the future.

“Right now we just have a few medium-size crates out there with the doors off and some straw inside. We've wedged them between bales of straw for the winter, for insulation.” She stopped and put her hand on her chest for a couple of breaths, then walked on. “If we get the permit, we're going to put up a more permanent, insulated facility with access points so they can come and go as they please.”

“It sounds great,” I said. We were walking along the back of the clubhouse, and if I remembered correctly, the cat station was just a few yards farther past the corner of the building. “How will you keep wildlife out? I mean, it sounds like the perfect place for raccoons and possums and things, and they could cause a lot of problems, I would think.”

We rounded the corner and stopped short. Alberta let out a long moan, and I felt as if cold claws had sunk into my belly. Clearly wildlife were not the biggest danger for feral cats at The Rapids of Aspen Grove.

Alberta stopped moaning and began to swear. She was very good at it, and she had reason. The last time I had seen the shelter and feeding stations set up by Alberta and her network of volunteers, the place had been tidy and clean. It couldn't be called an eye-sore because it lay in the right angle where a storage building met a row of juniper bushes and was invisible from the club house and road. For a stop-gap pending a better arrangement, it had looked pretty impressive.

Volunteers had built a frame of two-by-fours into which they had placed straw bales with plastic cat carriers tucked between them at staggered heights. At each end of the structure were feeding stations well-stocked with dry food and clean water, all checked and replenished at least twice a day. The top and three sides of the affair had been covered with heavy plastic sheeting, stretched and stapled, to fend off wind and rain.

Now it looked as if a tornado had hit the place. The wooden frame had been pulled over, and many of the boards broken. The binders had been ripped from the straw bales, and the November wind had scattered straw far out into the golf course. Someone had taken something heavy, perhaps a sledgehammer, to some of the plastic crates, smashing and cracking them to uselessness. Food and water bowls had been tossed here and there, and the padlock had been broken off the food-storage bin and cat food lay everywhere. There was no sign of a cat anywhere.