The Cat, The Quilt and The Corpse Read online

  “Because Mike Baca, even though we’re friends, doesn’t exactly think I have many skills. He thought all I could do was install cameras. So he was surprised to learn how much I know about computer forensics—but any decent PI has to know that stuff.”

  “Baca asked for your help?” Gosh, I felt like such a fake. And I didn’t like that one bit, so I said, “Actually, let me correct that. I heard he asked you to help. I, too, listen to the Mercy grapevine.”

  Tom laughed. “Did Candace encourage you to accept a date with me to find out what I learned? Because I know that girl, and she is steaming mad that she’s been pushed aside.”

  “She may have encouraged me, but it didn’t take much convincing. I wanted to go out the first time you asked,” I said. “Although maybe I should be worried about Lydia finding us together. You sure she’s not waiting outside?”

  His jaw tightened. “I cannot shake that woman. Did you know she and Mike Baca were involved once? She was on him like a fly on sticky paper the first time they met. He’s since dumped her for Marian Mae Temple, the reigning queen of Mercy. Lydia’s left those two alone, so why won’t she give up on me?”

  “I got nothing for you,” I said with a laugh, “except that she maintains she dumped him. I wish Lydia wanted Baca back rather than focusing on you. The elegant and rich Marian Mae is a much better target of her derision, don’t you think?”

  “Not in my book. If Lydia thinks she can compete with you, she’s completely deluded. But don’t be fooled by Marian Mae. I installed her security system and she’s as fake as that red-colored crabmeat at the supermarket.”

  “You’re kidding. Fake how?”

  “I shouldn’t be saying anything about former clients, but since her check bounced and I never collected near what she owed me—mostly because I can’t seem to escape being Mr. Nice Guy—I don’t feel I need to keep secrets about her.”

  “She’s not rich? She sure dresses and acts like she is,” I said.

  “Rough divorce. Money troubles. I felt sorry for her, I guess. Baca’s taking care of her now, so she’ll be fine.”

  “Okay, enough about the Mercy-ites,” I said. “Can you muster a little Mr. Nice Guy and pacify poor Candace? Is there anything you can tell me about that computer?”

  “Mom told me that you had Ed open the shop after you heard he’d rescued it from the dump.” He rested a hand on mine. “Even if you’re using me to get information, I don’t give a crap. It’s fine with me.”

  “Hey. Don’t think like that. You’re easy to talk to, easy to look at and I’d like to get to know you better,” I said.

  “Good. What do you want to know?” he said.

  “You’re willing to tell me if you found something on that computer?” I said. This was so much easier than I’d thought it would be—and much more fun than I’d had in the last year.

  “Sure, because there isn’t much to tell. Looks like Wilkerson was running his cat business off a MyFriend page. That’s not good news for Baca.”

  “MyFriend?” I said.

  “Sort of a MySpace and Craigslist rolled into one. But though I reconstructed enough of the hard drive and memory to figure that out, it’s too late for a preservation order. The page he was running—called Match-a-Cat, by the way—has been taken down already.”

  “What’s a preservation order?” I asked.

  “An order from a judge not to destroy any account access records to the pages a user has created,” he said. “That computer is a challenge all by itself, but then you add the complication of a business run off MyFriend? Tough stuff. Figuring out where the Internet traffic to that site originated is nearly impossible.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Traveling on the Internet is like traveling on any highway. The more turns you take, the harder it is to follow your trail. You log on through your provider, you go to, say, Yahoo or Google or Hotmail, wherever you pick up your mail, and there are passwords at each stop. Using a server like—”

  “I got it. It’s sort of like peeling back an onion to find out who’s been logging on. Lots of layers.”

  “I’ll quit with the geek speak if you want,” he said.

  “If I wanted that, I’d just say, ‘Shut up, Tom.’ ”

  He laughed. “I like the direct approach.”

  “Can you tell when the page was taken down?” I asked.

  “Baca sent a request to the MyFriend owners asking about any sites recently dismantled that had to do with cats, pets, cat breeders, any combination that might offer a clue as to what to look for. He could have been running more pages than his Match-a-Cat. Cheesy name, but probably has good search engine productivity. I don’t expect an answer soon. But whoever dismantled the site had the password, and if it went down after the murder, that’s good information.”

  “Meaning the person who shut it down was probably the one who murdered Wilkerson? And perhaps they were in business together?” I said.

  “Seems likely, doesn’t it? And probably that person hoped to obliterate all the evidence by smashing that computer to smithereens.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay to tell me all this?” I said.

  “What am I disclosing? That I did computer forensic work on a battered hard drive and got next to nothing? That’s no state secret. I was glad I got to show the big man I know a few things he doesn’t, though.”

  “It’s a competition, then?” I said.

  “With men, life’s mostly about competition,” he said.

  “And you’re sure the gorgeous Marian Mae Temple has nothing to do with this competition between you two guys?” I said.

  “No way,” he said emphatically.

  Perhaps a little too emphatically, I decided.

  He brought me home not long after, and we spent another couple hours getting to know each other better. Merlot stretched out between Tom and me on the couch. He’d never done that when John and I sat side by side, and I wondered if my big Maine coon was making sure I stayed a respectable distance from this man. But when Merlot turned over for Tom to rub his belly, I figured it was more about getting some affection.

  The conversation finally came back to the murder, and I decided to show Tom what I’d done with the shredded paper from the Wilkerson house. Three cats knew what was up and followed us, hoping to get into that darn closed-up sewing room. But they were shut out again.

  I flipped on the lights and Tom stared at the pinned-up pieces on the design wall. Finally he said, “All the talking in the world couldn’t tell me this much about you.”

  “What does that mean?” I said.

  He waved at the wall. “You are a persistent, precise woman. Actually, you should work in a crime lab. They have to do stuff like this all the time. Put pieces of paper back together, look at bugs and dirt and all sorts of crap people never think is important. You’ve gone above and beyond here, Jillian.”

  “Funny. Ed said how we throw stuff away before we even know how important it might be,” I replied. “I guess this is an example of how what Flake Wilkerson saved might be important.”

  “Good old Ed. He is one cool dude and the best thing that ever happened to my mom—even though he looks like the Unabomber.”

  “I’m fond of Ed myself. But back to this.” I waved at my work. “You’ve been inside plenty of Mercy houses these last few years. Do you recognize this gray cat?” I said.

  He tilted his head one way and another, looking at the half-constructed pictures. “Doesn’t look like any of the cats Wilkerson had. But why are you even doing this?”

  “Because . . . This may sound silly, but I know this is important to finding out what happened last Sunday. And I may not be a policeperson, but I do know how to piece things together. Here, check this out.” I pointed at the photo I’d printed of Sophie that was pinned next to the piecing project.

  He stepped closer to the board, and since they were stuck up there at my eye level, he had to bend to compare them. “Similar,” he said. He rotated a finger
around where I’d pieced the cat’s front left leg together. “This looks different than the printed-out picture, though. Or is there some trivia about cats changing their spots that I’m unaware of?”

  I laughed. “You’re just confirming what I thought. Two different cats.” I pointed at Sophie. “This is the cat Mr. Wilkerson stole from his own daughter. Does it look like any cat you’ve seen, say, in the last year?”

  “Cats hide when I work in someone’s house, so I’m not a source of useful information, I’m sorry to say. I might have seen this cat, but that’s like asking me to pick out a specific banana I saw in a bowl on someone’s counter two weeks ago. No can do.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It was worth a shot.” I glanced at my watch. It was past midnight.

  “Time for me to go?” he said.

  “Yeah. But thanks for being so open with me. And for understanding about, well—”

  “You hoping to get information from me?” he said. “Anytime.”

  His smile was so infectious, so honest, I grinned back. But the major blush burning my cheeks? I had no control over that.

  I’d been energized by our evening together, and after he left I returned to finish the gray-cat puzzle. This may not be Sophie, but my gut told me it was important.

  Obviously Wilkerson was using every available resource—newspapers, the Internet, postings of lost animals, shelter visits. And no doubt he bought cats at shows if someone had sent him a picture looking for a cat to replace one they’d lost or that had died. This gray cat could belong to someone way under anyone’s radar. Finding a name or phone number connected to this particular cat, or one I hadn’t pieced together yet, could provide an important lead.

  Returning to the project at hand, I clicked my gooseneck quilting lamp on so I’d have plenty of light and began the search for the right puzzle pieces to finish this picture.

  Two hours later I’d put together enough to know it was definitely not Sophie—even though there were even more similarities than I had seen initially.

  Not about to let a little fatigue keep me from smiling, I stood back and admired my work. This was indeed a flyer for a lost cat. And I’d put together every shred. I had the name and phone number I’d been hoping to find.

  This lovely, long-haired gray cat was a Mercy-ite—a cat that had once, or perhaps still, belonged to one of the few people in town I knew.

  Twenty-six

  The next morning, still in my pajamas, I snapped off several photos of my design wall creation while Merlot, Chablis and Syrah sat in a row staring at my work like patrons at an art gallery show.

  “It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” I turned to smile at them and saw that Syrah had disappeared. I get no props around here, I thought. But I saw one of the garbage bags filled with paper move, and then a brown nose appeared at the very opening of the bag. Syrah was probably thinking, Just let those other two try and share my new playground.

  I ran down the hall with the camera, ready to print pictures. Chablis thought this was great fun. She raced after me, and when I bent to dock the camera, she jumped on my back.

  Even with claws digging into me, I managed to press the right buttons. While the pictures printed, I carefully removed my cat from my skin. Then I lifted Chablis so we were face-to-face and said, “Someone else had a missing cat last year. I need to see about this.”

  She began to resist our conversation, so I put her down. She sat by the computer table, watched the pictures appear in the tray and lifted a tentative paw. But I snatched them up before she could further explore the magic of the amazing paper so I could examine my work.

  I nodded. “Good job, Jillian.”

  An hour later I was in the minivan and off to Marian Mae Temple’s house. I got her name and phone number off the flyer and found her address in the telephone book, but she hadn’t answered her phone. Maybe she was in the shower; maybe she wasn’t even awake yet. Strange, because it was well past nine a.m. and everyone in this town seemed to be early risers, judging by the line to get inside Belle’s Beans when I drove past.

  The pictures of the pieced-together shredded flyer lying on the seat next to me told me that Marian Mae had lost a gray long-haired cat last year, if the date at the top of the computer-generated flyer was correct. Since I’d mentioned my plight to her and she probably knew about this whole Wilkerson investigation via her boyfriend, Mike Baca, why hadn’t she said anything?

  I had a guess. She’d done business with Flake Wilkerson, maybe paid a pretty penny for Sophie as a replacement for her lost cat, a cat named Diamond, as I’d learned from the once-shredded flyer.

  And then, before I made it to Marian Mae’s house, the commonsense button clicked on. Hadn’t I speculated that whoever had Sophie didn’t want to give her up and might have killed Wilkerson? Duh, yeah.

  But Marian Mae? She didn’t fit my image of a knife-wielding killer. She struck me as someone who would be annoyed if she got dirt on her shoes. All that blood? Nope. Couldn’t be her. There had to be a different explanation.

  Maybe she and her boyfriend were getting coffee together this morning? Her boyfriend. That was who I needed to talk to, not her. But did Baca even work on Saturday? Candace could tell me. Besides, she would want to know what I’d found out.

  She sounded tired when she answered her phone. “Carson here.”

  “Is Baca at the office today?” I said.

  “Huh? Only a few of us work on the Saturday day shift. And one of the ‘us’ would be me. What do you need?”

  “I need to show him something. Can you give me his number or tell me where he lives?” I said.

  “You can’t go to his house.” She sounded mortified that I would even consider this.

  “Maybe you wouldn’t go there, but I’m one of those tax-paying citizens who provides his salary. Tell me where he lives. I can find out myself, but—”

  “What’s going on? Maybe I can help,” she said.

  “Know who lost a long-haired gray cat last year?” I said.

  “What is this about? And talk fast before Morris gets back here with our coffee.”

  I explained what I’d learned from Tom and about Marian Mae’s lost cat.

  Candace said nothing for several seconds. When she finally spoke, she sounded none too happy. “Wait on this, okay? She and Baca are probably going to get married, and if she needs investigating, then—”

  “I only want to call him. What’s wrong with that?” I said.

  “This may be nothing. Marian Mae lost a gray cat just like Sophie. Can you spell coincidence? How many gray cats do you think passed through Wilkerson’s slimy hands?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “This is not how to go about this. What if Marian Mae no longer has a cat? What if it’s permanently lost? What if she’s a victim of Wilkerson just like you and Mr. Green and Daphne and who knows how many more? What if she got so upset about losing—Diamond, is that right?”

  “That’s right,” I said morosely.

  “What if she was so devastated by losing her cat that she decided to never talk about Diamond again. Hurtful chapter closed. We know Sophie’s female, but what do you know about Diamond? If someone like Marian Mae used Wilkerson’s Match-a-Cat service or whatever he called it, she was paying big bucks. She’d want a close match. And you told me there were plenty of differences.”

  “Not that many, but I get what you’re saying.” I felt completely deflated. Here I thought I might have found Sophie right here in town.

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong,” she said. But her tone more than implied that I was. “I’m only saying that you can’t bring my boss’s girlfriend into the picture based on theory and coincidence.”

  Candace was putting me down and I felt awful. No one likes to be wrong, much less have someone hammer home just how wrong she might be. I couldn’t think of anything to say that might convince her this was important.

  After a strained silence she said, “Jillian, I’m sorry, but—”

 
; “I’ll talk to you later.” I closed the phone and tossed it on the seat next to me. Was I really as stupid as she made me sound? Maybe. But here was a lead, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I’d spent two nights piecing together what I thought was an important clue, only to be shot down by one of the few friends I had in this town.

  I’m overtired, I thought. Not thinking straight. But no matter what Candace said, no matter how many hours of sleep I’d lost, I had to tell Baca about this. He would know about Diamond and if the cat had ever been found. Of course, he might not be happy to have me asking questions about Marian Mae, but a lead is a lead. Now all I had to do was find out where he lived. No phone book to offer an address this time.

  I stopped at the grocery store, hoping that David the bagger could help me. I was completely surprised when he blurted out, “Michael Baca, phone number unlisted,” followed by his address. It was as if he’d memorized every name and address in Mercy.

  Baca’s house wasn’t far from downtown, in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood. He answered the door so quickly after I knocked that my heart skipped. It was like he was waiting for me to show up or something.

  Oh boy. Had Candace called him?

  If so, he wasn’t giving anything away. He said, “What are you doing here?”

  He was wearing blue jeans and a Carolina Panthers T-shirt. Seemed fitting he’d be wearing a shirt bearing a cat—albeit a very big, snarling cat—this morning. His sandy hair wasn’t combed and he hadn’t shaved yet. This casual look made me hope he’d be less uptight—like the Mike Baca who’d talked to me at the Finest Catch.

  “Can I come in?” I said. “I have a few things to run by you.”

  He glanced back over his shoulder and showed no sign he was ready to invite me in. “Can’t this wait until I’m at the station on Monday?” he said.

  “I don’t think so. Candace says police officers are never off duty. Is that true?”

  He opened the door wider and stepped aside. “Did she send you here? Because if she did, this better be important.”