Introduce a new cat slowly into your household. Start him in a small area, away from any others, then expand his horizons over the next several days. Exchange blankets or towels that each cat has slept on to get them used to each other’s scent.
One thing that must be said for Special Agent Paris—he had the patience of a saint and the optimism of a cat who, upon hearing a can opener, assumes without question that it’s going to mean something good. When I blurted out my blunder, he took it like a man. There was no yelling or reprimands which I knew I badly deserved. He called it an honest mistake and got on with matters.
He had alerted the Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Office by way of the CB radio in his truck, and upon their arrival, he told them matter-of-factly just what had occurred. When the small, mousy detective began to give me grief about it, Denny didn’t actually disagree but he gallantly diverted the attention away from me and toward the other things we’d found. Halle and Connie had done their job well, producing a broken comb, a wad of spent chewing gum, several twist-top bottle caps, which bespoke a beer party more than a shooting, and a few other sundries. Nothing as promising as the lens, but good stuff just the same. Even though the likelihood of these things being missed in the original crime scene search was low, the detective had bagged and tagged everything, including my McDonald’s cup. He was very thorough; so much so that I wondered if it might have been a comment on our amateur sleuthing.
It was a quiet ride home. As the sun set, headlights appeared like pairs of luminescent cat eyes heralding the oncoming night. Denny assured me that all was not lost with the lens; even if there was an extraneous fingerprint or two, forensics might still find something underneath. I had to assume he was being straight with me and not just saying it to make me feel better. It was his case, but it was my life on the line, and I had the most to lose.
By the time we made it to FOF where Denny dropped me so I could pick up both my car and my foster cat, it was nearing ten o’clock. The shelter was only open to the public until nine, but I had called Kerry to let her know that I’d be a little late. She said that was fine; she had paperwork to do.
“The downside of the job,” she commented as I walked in. She tamped a great pile of pages and put them in a basket. Placing a glass paperweight on top with a little flourish, she added. “It’s never done, but I am.” Straightening a few things on her desk and shutting down her computer for the night, she looked up at me.
“Ready for Mike?”
Managing a wan smile, I nodded.
Kerry scrutinized my face. “You don’t have to take him if you don’t want to. He’s fine right here; we just thought it would be nice for him to be somewhere quiet before his surgery.”
“No, I’m sorry. Of course I want him,” I said. “It’s been a really tiring day, but I’ve been looking forward to this. Mike...?”
“Yeah. We’ve been calling him Mikey, as in ‘Mikey likes it!’ from the old cereal commercial. He seems to like everything that can be classified as food.”
I smiled again, this time the real thing. “Well, Mikey and I are going to go home and get a good night’s rest.”
“Sounds perfect. He’s all ready for you. Hold on and I’ll go get him.”
I watched Kerry push through the heavy door to the back area where they kept the cats coming in and out of foster. She was so cute, tall and lithe, in her late twenties as were many of the shelter staff. Her short black hair was always as shiny as a panther; her brown eyes sparkled with possibilities, no matter how overworked she was. Oh, to be young again! I thought to myself. Except that when I was her age, I was squandering my life on the pursuit of higher highs, better sex, and ideals that were never going to happen. This girl, on the other hand, seemed to know where she was going and what she wanted, and was on the fast track to making it happen. Good for her!
The door swung open again and Kerry hauled in a hefty carrier. Tiny mewling objections wafted from inside.
She put the carrier down with a grunt. “Don’t let his cute little meow fool you—he must weigh a good twelve pounds. That’s one of the reasons we have to keep him off his feet for the next few weeks. Just walking on the leg could injure it further.”
“I’ll put him in my kennel. It comes complete with all the amenities including a window that looks out into the trees. He can watch the birds right from his own bed.”
“Sounds lovely. I made up a bag of goodies—some food and treats. His paperwork is in there too so you can check out his history. There isn’t very much because he was brought in as a stray.”
“Frannie said the vets thought he’d been hit by a car.” I peered into the carrier and saw a sweet, furry face with big yellow eyes staring back at me.
“That’s the assumption, but there are no exterior wounds, just the dislocated hip and cracked pelvis. Otherwise he’s purrfect,” she cooed into the carrier. She looked back at me. “No meds, just keep him quiet and bring him back in two weeks for the surgery.”
I picked up the pink plastic box—Kerry was right, he was no lightweight! “What happens after that?”
“He’ll go back into foster until he heals up a bit and can get around on his own. You can take him again if you like.”
“Sure,” I said with a smile—I loved him already.
“Here,” Kerry said, grabbing the bag of stuff, “I’ll help you out to your car.”
We walked into the summer night in silence. She hadn’t asked me any of the obvious questions—why I was so exhausted; why I looked like crap—and I was thankful.
I unlocked the trunk and she slung in the heavy sack. “Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.”
“I will.” I knew the drill.
The foster team was great. They fielded all sorts of queries from the urgent to the absurd with a smile and a straight answer. To foster moms and dads, the kitties they cared for were as precious as children, and when one spurned his kibbles, drank an inordinate amount of water, or tossed too many hairballs, they immediately sought medical advice. Better safe than sorry.
I put Mikey in the passenger side and scooted up the seat until the carrier was securely wedged between it and the dashboard. I got in the driver’s side and waved goodbye to Kerry. Gazing at the box, I said, “Here we go, Mike. Don’t be scared. We’ll be home in a few minutes.”
As I pulled out of the parking lot onto the deserted avenue, I rolled down my window. Air conditioning was great but I needed the hot, smoggy summer wind on my face. I crooked an elbow outside, leaned back, and drove one-handed, remembering with nostalgia a simpler time: Hot rods, cold malts, poodle skirts, and sock hops—Ah! Those were the days! (In reality, I had been too young to partake of the fifties coolness, but I figured any generation that came before the advent of LSD must have gotten off easy.)
Mikey and I cruised toward home, enjoying the night. Mikey was quiet and so was I until I turned onto my street. Then without warning, a wave of anxiety hit me: What would I find when I got to the house? Burglars? Cops? Kidnapers? I knew the Badass boys were dead but that fact didn’t seem to diminish my paranoia.
For the first time since we left the shelter, Mike meowed. It was almost as if her were telling me not to worry. I looked at the carrier, feeling the strength of personality within.
“You’re right, Mikey. We can handle anything that life throws at us—be it dislocated hip or murder charge.”
That night, after putting him in his plush and well-appointed kennel, I sat down in the rocking chair and watched him settle. We had the jazz station on—I’d learned with my very first foster that cats liked jazz—and they were playing something sweet by Louie Armstrong. Mikey took a few bites of kibbles and a few laps of water; he sniffed his litter box, then went around to every corner of the grid-wire cage. He batted the toys, kneaded the carpet, smoothed against the cardboard scratcher mounted on the side, then climbed into his bed, curled up and closed his eyes. I closed my eyes as well, and that’s the last thing I remember until morning.
* * *
I sat at the computer with Mikey on my lap, working on the Mackey family tree. I hadn’t looked at it for weeks and the stacks of files, lists of websites, and albums of brittle sepia-toned photos called to me. Sometimes I caught myself assuming I had forever to work my project, but that wasn’t true. If I go before it’s finished, how will my decedents know about Grandma Mackey who, during the Great Depression, saved the town of Ridgefield, Washington, by organizing a community garden on the unused cemetery grounds, or Harmon Hall, who was present with Howard Carter during the excavation of King Tut’s tomb? How will they know where Uncle Frank and Aunt Julia are buried? Or how little Jacob drowned in the river when he was only three years old? I find the whole thing fascinating, though as I mentioned, my daughter couldn’t care less. I’m hoping Seleia will pick up the baton. So far so good; she’s actually asked me about some of the more engaging family members, and she even helped me transpose the diary of Fabian Mackey who came west with his family in the late eighteen-hundreds. His tiny faded scrawl was almost impossible to decipher, but she got into it and we had the whole thing done in less than week. Most of the narrative was boring and factual, but there were a few treats among the kibble.
Currently I was trying to verify on the internet a tale about a pit stop Fabian and his family had made in the Shenandoah Valley, carefully searching for clues without hitting a porn site or a lethal virus by mistake. You could never tell by the search words anymore. I was staring at a perfect example: though thankfully nothing offensive or threatening, the keywords Shenandoah Mackey had taken me, not to early American history as I had expected, but to the site of an international gem wholesaler where close-up scans of loose-cut stones mingled with flashing Viagra ads.
I was just about to return to the search page when something caught my eye, a small photo of an irregular dusky brown stone with an insert of a lovely marquis-cut brown diamond at the top right corner. A long string of blue letters and numbers ran across the bottom, beckoning me.
Chocolate diamonds, the latest diamond fad. I had held two of the most unique specimens on earth in my hot little hands, yet I had never known their worth. How much did an egg-sized chocolate diamond go for? With a little thrill, I clicked the link.
Curiosity and a computer own a symbiotic relationship: you have a question, you look it up on the internet. Maybe you find your answer, maybe not, but it’s a cinch you’ll come up with another question and probably two. The link gave me an enlarged version of the photo, a list of details and an email for more information. No prices. But now that I had asked the question, I wasn’t about to give up.
Next I tried chocolate+diamond+price and then chocolate+diamond+cost and then brown+diamond+cost, brown diamond being what the previous site had told me was the old name for the newly popular stone. Buy Chocolate Diamond on eBay had pulled up a few unimpressive examples of pre-set stones that ranged from ninety-nine cents to forty-seven thousand dollars, depending on the settings, makers, quality, and the whim of the buyers who happened to be watching when the auction ended, but that wasn’t much help.
Back on the search page, I scrolled down in hopes of something more promising, but all I found was junk. I was about ready to get back to my ancestry when a caption at the bottom of the page caught my eye. It had nothing to do with the value of the diamond market and everything to do with another question altogether, a question I hadn’t asked myself until that very moment.
* * *
Two valuable diamonds turn up on my property, one in the house and the other in my garden pool mixed in with twenty years’ worth of Pacific Ocean beach agates. Where had they come from? How had they gotten there? Why?
I suppose I’d wondered about it at some point, but something more pressing always got in the way: my house was ravaged; I was grabbed and hurt; I got nabbed by the police for the murders of the men who turned out to be the thieves themselves. I knew from the start that the stones were the center of the whole deal. Two peerless brown diamonds, so valuable that they had their own names. Worth millions, Badass had said. Stolen from a rich eccentric with brown-eyed cats, according to the brief synopsis Detective Marsha had given me in the hospital. That was all I knew and suddenly I realized it wasn’t enough.
Somewhere along the line I’d given up on the whys and wherefores, but that was silly. There had to be some record of a heist that big out there on the worldwide web. The answers were right at my fingertips and had been all the time, if I’d just bothered to look.
With a whole new fervor and a fearlessness I hadn’t felt for a long time, I peered at the link. Decisively, I clicked.
I surveyed the caption: Cats’ Eyes Theft Leaves Police and Owner Baffled. It was a web news article dated four months previous. I peered closer, my mind full of wonder and expectation at finally solving the mystery.
I had just begun to sift through the page of tiny print when my phone rang. Mikey launched from my lap but with cat’s paw swiftness, I caught him mid-air, saving his bum leg from a nasty surprise. It was hard to explain to a cat that he must take it easy; he just stares at you with a look that clearly says you’re not the boss of me.
I gently conveyed Mikey to the floor and picked up the phone.
“Lyn? It’s Halle,” came the familiar voice of my friend, attorney, and clan-mate.
I tensed. Which hat was she wearing tonight? I hadn’t heard from her for a week which I took as a sign that things were going smoothly with my case. “I hope it’s not bad news. Because I’m not sure I could deal with another setback,” I said, my previous self-assurance beginning to scatter like catnip in the wind.
“It’s not. In fact it’s all good. You’ve been cleared of any suspicion in the Sinclairii murders case.”
“Wow!” I stammered, then I paused waiting for her to give me the punch line.
“Well, you don’t sound very happy for someone who just got her life back.”
“Oh, I am. Very happy.” I sank back into my chair, leaned over and hugged my knees like you’re supposed to do when you’re dizzy. Call it a preemptive strike. “That’s great news. So what happened? What made them change their minds?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there, I mean if it’s okay to drop by. I’m just down the street.”
“Sure, come on over. I think I’ve got some interesting news for you as well.”
* * *
I put Mikey in the kennel, filled his food bowl and promised I’d be back later. Leaving John Coltrane blues-ing away on the radio, I got to the front door just about the same time as Halle. I could tell she was excited: her face was flushed to a color that rivaled her hair and she was smiling. Not that generic grin she used in her practice, but the real, genuine thing.
She came in and dropped onto the couch in a move befitting a trucker. I sat down at the other end and tucked my legs underneath me. Little was up in no time, balancing on my thigh; she didn’t need a whole lap, any body part would do, Zen cat that she was.
“So what’s up?” we both said simultaneously, then we both laughed.
“You first,” we said to each other, again in perfect harmony.
Again we laughed. We laughed and laughed. It wasn’t that funny but who cares? I was letting go of that two-ton weight that had been hanging over my head. Relief can be more passionate than sex.
“You’re off the hook, hon,” she beamed, unbuttoning her dark business jacket and loosening her tie. “Of course, you can’t be one hundred percent sure with these things until someone’s actually tried and convicted, but all the evidence—good evidence this time, not that circumstantial crap they tried to pull on you—points to a brand new suspect.”
“Did they get something from the stuff we gave them?”
“They did indeed. It was that darned lens. After they stripped off your fingerprints—I have no idea how they do that, some very complex chemical process I suppose—they found another set underneath. The spatter was blood—Sinclairii blood, no doubt about it. It was both over and under the prints which pretty much puts the note in the milk bottle.”
“Do they know whose they are?
“Not yet. The prints aren’t on record.”
“Denny said they might be able to find him through his optometrist.”
Halle shrugged. “Not our problem, hon. Tentatively speaking, we can put this whole thing behind us and get on with our lives.”
Get on with our lives, I mused. It sounded so simple. And maybe it was. The brothers were dead; I was free; any further interest I took in chocolate diamonds or million dollar heists was of my own choosing.
Suddenly the information that had seemed so important to me an hour ago meant absolutely nothing. I didn’t care a hoot how much those flipping rocks were worth or where they had come from. Or where they were now, for that matter—well, maybe that, just as a point of curiosity.
“Do you know if the police ever recovered the diamonds?” I asked.
“They didn’t. Not a sign.”
“Hum.”
“Hum, what?”
“Hum nothing at all.” I scooped Little off my leg which was beginning to fall asleep and placed her gently on the couch. I rose. “I don’t give a flying you-know-what about you-know-what. I’m done with drama. I’m done with intrigue. I’m just plain done!”
“Good for you! Now I think we deserve a well-earned drink. You want to walk up to the Pub and Pony? I’ll buy.”
“Why not?” I replied. Halle was well aware that for me, a drink meant ginger ale. She liked her beer with Jack back and we often did cocktails together. We were just like anyone else, except I could drive home afterwards.
I got my purse, Halle grabbed her man-bag, and we headed for the door.
“You wanted to tell me something.”
“Huh?” I mumbled as I searched for my keys to lock up.
“You said you had something to tell me. Some ‘interesting news’.”
“Oh, that.” I paused, then said quietly. “Never mind, it’s not important anymore.”
“Then let’s get on with it!” she giggled.
Walking out that door, I felt free as a wild cat and just as smart. I’d made it through what may have been the most difficult time of my life and come out relatively unscathed. What a relief knowing odds were I’d never have to go through anything like that for the rest of my days.
The alarm set, I pulled the door shut and locked it blithely as if I had not a care in the world. I gazed around me, drinking it all in. I saw the azure blue of the sky; I saw the verdant green of the trees; I saw the blazing orange-yellow of the setting sun and it was beautiful.
What I didn’t see was Fraulein Fluffs sitting on the bookshelf watching me go. Maybe if I’d caught her worried look and the sense of foreboding she projected toward me, I wouldn’t have been quite so quick to let down my guard. As it happened, my sense of serenity was only illusion; the eye of the hurricane with thunderclouds still gathering and more storms to come.