2 CATastrophe (3 page)

Detective Green met me in the living room a few seconds later. An orange tabby followed along behind her. I shivered, thinking that this could be coincidence, but would most likely not be just a random thing. The cat was definitely following her, just a few footsteps behind where the detective was walking. I thought back to how I had scoffed at James and his notions, but now I had to concede that he likely had a point. My job, because I wanted to get to the bottom of this death, would be how to determine why the cat followed along behind people.

Green wasted no time in making small talk. “So what does the cat have to say?” She didn’t seem inclined to make any eye contact either. A few weeks ago, she’d flirted with me and now it appeared that she couldn’t even be in the same room as me.

“We haven’t even been properly introduced,” I said, stalling for a few minutes. “Cats need to make a proper acquaintance before they’ll spill their guts. Dogs will tell anything to anyone. Cats are more discriminating.”

She shrugged, still averting her eyes. “Cat, meet Griffin Fitzpatrick. Griff, meet Cat.”

I bent down and rested on my haunches. The cat looked less than enthused about me bothering him. The ears went back, and the tail flicked back and forth quickly. I held out a hand with a small treat, and the smell of food made him less reticent.

Up close, I could tell a lot about the cat. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that it might be the same cat that I’d seen earlier in the day, the cat who had distracted me long enough for Miller to get ahead of me.

In terms of Miller, I wanted to fill in those few hours and see what he’d done and how that perhaps related to his death. His unknown actions in those hours might have something to do with this unexpected death that Green thought was a homicide.

In terms of the cat, he was probably about 5 years old. I could tell that from the cat’s teeth, which had some wear and smoothing on the molars. He was definitely agitated, but I would be too if I’d been locked in a room with a dead guy. The cat’s ears twitched, telling me that he was trying to gather as much information as possible, which was another thing we had in common.

The cat’s fur was clean, not matted. There was no collar, but I know many owners who skip collars now that there are microchips for pets. I took out my phone, clicked on the microchip app and scanned the chip in the cat. Brett Garland, a friend of mine from high school, was developing an app to help locate owners of lost pets who had been micro-chipped. It wasn’t commercially available yet, but I’d bugged him for a beta copy of it, given my profession. In the meantime, I clicked on the camera app and took a couple of photos of the cat which might come in handy for locating the owners.

After that, I noticed a few other factors that told me that this was not a stray. The cat was well-fed, not fat, but definitely not malnourished. The nails had been trimmed, but the cat was not declawed. So it probably had access to the outside and was not a strictly indoor cat. His pads were not damaged or overly worn, which told me that likely he was from this area or close to it. There was no way that this cat had walked from downtown to here. So someone must have been behind the transportation of the cat.

All the time I was watching the cat, Green was watching me. I couldn’t tell if she was watching like an audience watches a magician or if she had a more personal reason for watching me. It was rather unnerving.

Finally, I spoke. “Well, first off, he says that he’s not Miller’s cat. Miller didn’t like cats, and he was very fussy about his home. The cat is very uncomfortable being here. I think that environment is one reason why the cat is feeling anxious.” I had come up with this from the cat’s ears being laid back and the fast motion of the tail. Unlike dogs, cats wag their tails when they’re not happy.

Green snorted. “Is that the best you can do? I could have told you that. The house doesn’t have any cat food or litter box materials. It was either toilet trained, or it didn’t live here.”

“This isn’t a neighborhood cat either. It was driven here by someone before Miller’s death. The cat can’t tell me a name, of course, but it did tell me that it had traveled to get here. From the description the cat gave me, I’m guessing it came by car.”

“And of course, since the doors were locked from the inside, it had to get here before the death or else it broke in by itself. Would that make it a cat burglar?” She laughed at her own joke, but I didn’t let my face show any expression.

“It tells you that someone was here shortly before Miller’s death. It tells you that that the driver was here before the death. If they come forward, then you might be able to find out more about what happened.”

“Man or woman?” she asked barely letting me finish.

“The cat?” I was still focused on what I could learn from this animal and thinking of little else. She flustered me with her question.

“The person who drove the cat here. Man or woman?”

“Woman,” I said instinctively. I had no idea, but I did know that the cat had been hanging out with two women when I last saw him, and statistically cats tend to be associated with women owners. So I was taking a shot in the dark, thinking that I could always say the cat made a mistake if it came down to it.

“He’s an inside cat, though he’s been outside some lately. He’s well-treated and is someone’s house pet, not a killer or a thief.” I took a deep breath as I finished. If I’d had a tail, it would have been wagging too as I was feeling anxious too. I’d taken some digital clues from the site as well as swagged my way to a best guess on the cat. The police weren’t fond of guessing.

She flipped open a notepad and scribbled some notes. “I really don’t have any idea why I’m doing this, but you’re saying that a woman drove this cat to the house and dropped it off. The cat doesn’t live around here, and it doesn’t like being here.”

I nodded. “That’s about it in a nutshell.”

“People pay you for this?” she asked, still focused on the pad. “Anyone with half decent observation skills could have told you that.

“People don’t pay attention to the things around them. Most are oblivious to what is happening right under their noses.” I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of questioning my profession. She might not like it, but I give comfort and assistance to lots of happy pet owners. I’m certainly no worse in my mind than a pet psychologist.

There was a long pause. I chose not to fill the gap for two reasons. First, I was still pissed about her last comments. I didn’t see a reason to help her out in any way regarding Miller’s death. Secondly, I wanted to get out of this house as soon as I could. I had the information on my phone about the cat, and I wanted to leave to investigate. I could come up with more information on the cat and perhaps show up Detective Green and the Toledo Police.

She finally cleared her throat and said, “What did you think of that folder I gave you?”

That was what she’d had so much trouble asking me, a question about my sister. I looked right into those beautiful silver eyes and said, “I haven’t opened it. I’m not sure if I ever will.”

She sighed. “I don’t get you. You’ll run around here all day, asking questions and sticking your nose into official police business, but I get you a cold case file, and you won’t even crack the spine on it. What is up with you?”

I clenched and unclenched my fists. It was a trick I’d learned when I was younger for when people got too much into my business about the disappearance. If you’ve never lost someone you’ve loved quickly and brutally, then it’s impossible to understand how painful it is. Picking at the scab by rereading all the details of that case was not something I wanted to spend time doing. I wished she could see that, but apparently she felt that all cases were created equally.

“It’s a painful part of my life, and I’d rather not relive it through the official record. I have my memories of those events, and I don’t want to see what a bunch of strangers felt about the matter.”

She looked startled. Her eyes grew large, and her mouth formed a perfect circle. I hoped that she didn’t use this face with suspects, because she’d be a dead giveaway with them. “I didn’t realize that it was still such a sore subject. I thought it was all in the past.”

I shook my head. “Not even close. It’s one of those events that shapes the rest of your life as well as those of everyone you love. It’s not something that’s gotten over. It’s something that is tolerated on good days.”

She nodded. “I see that when parents lose kids. I honestly feel sometimes like we should charge the killer for the death of the parents too.”

I nodded. “That’s why I don’t want to look at the record of her disappearance. We all lost a little bit of ourselves.”

She looked a bit sheepish, and finally I started moving toward the door. “What are you doing with the cat? Does it have a home?”

“The PD is boarding it this time around. No civilians coming in and taking the animals from under our nose.” She gave me a small smile, trying to make me remember the case with the Scotties where I’d boarded the dogs until the killer was found.

“There’s only room for one cat in my life. I can’t imagine what would happen if I brought another cat home to spend time with The Countess. Bruno would be fine, but the cat would go crazy.” With those words I left the house. I knew that I’d be seeing her again, but that was enough for this encounter. I was still smarting from the last time, and I saw no reason to prolong it.

Once I was out in the car, I clicked on my friend’s app and hit the submit button. Within seconds I had a name and address: Marsha Miller who lived in Ottawa Hills. I smelled money here. Ottawa Hills was one of the pricier areas of Toledo, way too rich for my blood. I had heard that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had looked at the area back when there was a TomKat to buy houses. The homes were older, since the area was surrounded by other Toledo neighborhoods, but the area felt like a separate town within the city.

If this cat lived in Ottawa Hills, it was definitely an upscale housecat. The cat was in custody, but I had photos of the cat and an address. By my estimates, I probably had several hours before the police got around to remembering that you could scan the cat for an address. They weren’t used to dealing with crimes that involved pets, like I was. I knew all the ins and outs of microchipping.  I had a leg up on them.

I made the trip in silence, thinking about what she’d said. Did I really want to be another casualty of my sister’s disappearance? In some ways, I felt that I had no choice in that matter. The die had been cast a long time ago, and I’d gone so far down a path that I wasn’t sure I could double back in this lifetime. Even though my life would be considered eccentric by most, I was comfortable in my own skin, and I’d come to accept the behaviors of my family. The only one who was irredeemable was my father, who had died of cirrhosis of the liver about ten years ago.

I wondered if knowledge about my sister’s disappearance could bring my mother out of her self-appointed seclusion or if it would bring my brother and his family back to Toledo. I wasn’t sure that either of them would change, even if the facts were known. Solving that case might make it easier to sleep at nights, but I doubted that it would change the coping mechanisms brought on by years of suffering. They were too ingrained. I had about talked myself out of ever opening the files, when I remembered Sheila Green’s words. Was I anxious to solve other crimes because I couldn’t solve the crime in my life? I wondered about it as I sat at a traffic light.

Opening that file would be like Pandora’s Box. Once opened, I could not shut the lid on what I’d read. If there were affidavits of Susan’s behaviors or if there was confirmation of other boys or men in her life, would I be able to forget that or would I want to find out more about them?

I arrived at the house, not surprised by what I found. The home was large by any standard. I figured that my house would easily fit into their garage. I pulled up the driveway, parked and rang the bell. A maid answered the door, and I asked to speak to the woman whose named appeared on the microchip file.

A beautiful redhead came to the door, almost reluctantly. She stood a few feet back from the door as if I was going to touch her or contaminate her with the germs of the poor.

“Yes, you asked for me?” she said impatiently. She looked me over from head to toe. “We’re not donating to the homeless again. They were here last month for a donation.”

“I’m not homeless. I’ve come to see you about a cat.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and scrolled through the camera feed until I found the photo I wanted. I held the screen so she could see the feline.

“That’s my cat, Morris. Why do you have a photo of him on your phone?” She stepped back from the phone and me.

“Morris was found at a possible crime scene. We’re trying to determine how the cat got there.”

She furrowed her brow. “When did you say that this happened?”

“Just now. I left the crime scene to come here.” I wondered where she was going with this. Had she not even noticed that her pet was missing? I couldn’t imagine not knowing where my pets were at any given moment. It made me momentarily angry at the rich that they didn’t treat their pets as family.

She turned around and shouted, “Rosa, will you bring Morris here? Thank you.”

With seconds, the maid had brought a large orange tabby to the door. It was incredibly similar to the cat that I’d seen earlier today, but there were slight differences that I could discern. The right ear had a small v in it, and the tail was longer in proportion to the cat’s body than the other cat, but they could easily have been cousins.

I pulled my trick with the app, pretending to fumble with the camera until I’d received a confirmation that the microchip had been read. I wanted to see the differences, if any, between the two microchips. I’d never known microchipping to be wrong, and I wanted to ensure that my friend’s app was not the cause of the issue.

“Any other questions?” she said, hand on the door ready to close it in my face. I couldn’t blame her since I’d totally botched this up.

“Are you any relation to James Miller?” I blurted out, wanting to redeem myself and get more information on Morris. I wanted to outdo Detective Green and the Toledo Police, given their attitude towards me.

“He’s my husband. Are you going to ask me to bring him out as well?” she smirked at me.

I offered her a description of the man who had been my client and was now lying dead on the floor of what I thought was his home. I left out the part where she was now a widow.

“That sounds like Jimmy. Why do you ask?” Her eyes showed a hint of panic, even though I’d botched my last line of inquiry.

I explained in a few short sentences what I do for a living and what James Miller had asked me to do for him.

“He was worried that a cat was following him? That sounds like Jimmy. The whole world revolves around the great James Miller and his life. Lord, a cat following him. It wasn’t even black.”

I wasn’t sure what to respond to that comment, so I let the sentence linger in the air. Silence will usually get a further response from the other person.

It did in this case. “So did you find this cat? It looks a little like our cat, but James is not big into pets at all. I can’t see him taking one in.”

“I thought it was the same cat, Morris. Does your husband live here at this address? I visited him at another home. I thought that was where he lived.” I tried not to get involved in messy divorce cases, like when one party asked me to tell the other who the pets would like to live with. There were no good answers for me to fake there.

“He lives here sometimes. He’s an inventor – but you knew that. When he’s working on a new project, he has another home that he stays at. He works all hours, and being constrained to the schedule of everyone else makes him crazy. So it’s easier for him to stay there and work.”

I had to wonder what he invented. With a home like this and another home elsewhere in Toledo, he had to be raking in some serious cash. Maybe I was in the wrong field. “Okay, is it the house off Laurel Valley in Southwyck?” I didn’t want any other mistakes during this conversation.

“That’s our place, yes. What aren’t you telling me? Why are you here?” Her eyes squinted at me, and that act showed the tiny crows’ feet around her eyes. I increased my estimate of her age. I wondered if perhaps Miller had been getting ready to trade in this wife for a new one.

I stumbled across a few trite words to explain why I was here, but I opted not to tell her that her husband was dead. Granted, it let me off the hook for telling her bad news, but it also left the task to the police who might gain something from seeing her reaction to the announcement. If I didn’t give her any information, then I couldn’t be accused of tampering with evidence or obstructing justice.

I thanked her again and got back in my car. I checked the chip information that I’d gotten from Morris. It was exactly the same as the cat’s data from the house. I closed the app and dialed my friend Brett who had created the app.

“How’s my latest invention?” he asked without preamble. Over the years I’d known him, I’d tried to work with Brett to improve his social graces. Coming from me, that says a lot. Even so, he still skipped small talk to get to the relevant data from any conversation.

“It’s got a bug in it,” I replied just as bluntly. No use wasting time on polite talk for a beta product. I’d tested a few apps and pieces of software over the years, but I’d never formally beta tested a product.

“Like hell. What did you find?”

I explained the situation quickly. Brett asked for the two microchip numbers and the associated information on the company that had issued the chips. I waited while he did something on his end of the phone. I knew he’d quickly get to the bottom of the issue, because he was a stickler for details. Everything had to be just so for him. It was an attribute that I admired, but had no wish to live up to. I lived by the 80-20 rule.

“Huh,” he said when he came back to the phone. “This is just weird.”

“What’s up? What’s wrong with the app?”

He cleared his throat. “Nothing is wrong with the app. It’s the data. I show two different cats being chipped the same day at the same shelterand registered to the same owner. Are you sure she said that they only had one cat?”

I repeated the story to him. “I don’t know what to make of this. It could be that the record merely got repeated in the system. I’ve seen that happen before. Someone gets impatient and starts clicking the enter key repeatedly, and you end up with 20 of the same records in your database. I guess that’s what happened here.”

“But there were two cats. I saw them, separately at different homes. And two different chip numbers. It wasn’t the same data repeated.”

“Then someone, presumably this Marsha Miller, adopted two cats at the same time and chipped them. Or someone else did and put her name on the records. Those companies aren’t all that careful about their records. They figure that most people want their pets back, so they employ an honesty system. There’s no outside verification of the records as long as the microchip firm gets paid.”

“When did this company get paid?” I thought to ask. I wanted to know how long the cats had been around.

“It looks like they did this in March, so three months ago. Tell you what. Let me call the chip company and see if they can tell me anything more. I’ll go about it from a data accuracy standpoint.”

“That would be fantastic. I’d appreciate it.” I hung up, unsure of how exactly I’d be able to use this information to convince the Toledo Police that I could talk to animals or what it could tell me about cats following Miller, but at this juncture, I thought that I needed to know as much as I could about these cats and the chips.

At some point, the police would think to check the ownership records of the cat at the scene of James Miller’s death. They were more used to two-legged witnesses, but someone with a pet would suggest a way to check ownership. Then they’d be following the same trail I was.

Since I knew I was only a few hours in front of the police at best, I decided to go to Miller’s place of business next. Marsha Miller had told me that he was an inventor, but I hadn’t pried much into his personal life when I took him on as a client. Now I wanted to know all I could about him. If this might be murder and the odd curiosity of the cat made it appear like something was up, then I needed to find out where there might be friction in Miller’s life. I’d already met the wife, and goodness only knew how many spouses have bumped off their significant others over the centuries. I figured that workplace differences would rank a close second to marriage in terms of homicide.

I googled Miller’s name along with the inventor and a few other keywords. I found the address for a start-up company not too far from the other home where Miller had been found dead. I liked the proximity thinking how easy it would be to bump off a boss at lunch and then go back to the afternoon’s meeting.

I pulled into the parking lot. There were only two other cars in front of the building, so I figured that I wouldn’t have too many suspects here. I strode into the office, which went by the name of Advent. A young man sat in the back of the room, visible from what appeared to be a lobby, although it held no chairs, lamps or magazines. This place was definitely run on a shoestring budget. I wondered if Miller was having money troubles that he invested so little cash into making this look like a real office. It would not impress an investor in his firm.

I cleared my throat, and the man looked up from his computer. He was younger than me with buzz cut brown hair and a broad grin. He stumbled as he got out of the chair and made his way to where I stood.

“Can I help you? We don’t get many visitors around here.”

I explained who I was and what Miller had wanted me to do. “Miller told me about you,” I lied, “but I don’t remember your name. Sorry.”

“It’s Adam, Adam Nelson. I’m Mr. Miller’s assistant here at Advent.” He held out a hand, and I shook it.

“Do you have any pets here at the office?” I looked around, miming a search for stray pets.

Adam shook his head and then bit his lip. “I don’t think we’ve ever had an animal of any kind in the office. Mr. Miller was pretty much a stickler for keeping things professional. No photos of the family. No posters on our walls. That type of thing. I can’t see him allowing pets into the office.”

I looked around. The entire “office” consisted of two desks, an unoccupied secretary’s station near what could euphemistically be called a lobby. It wasn’t my idea of professional, but then again I worked out of my house. Who was I to say something was professional when I worked wearing a t-shirt and jeans?

“What exactly do you do here?” I asked, not knowing how to take this interview. He was obviously glad to see someone here, but at the same time, I wondered how far I could get with him before he’d wonder what I was doing here and why. I didn’t want to be the one to tell anyone that Miller was dead. Detective Green had warned me about interfering in police business, and I saw that announcement as changing the status quo with the suspects.

The young man stood up straighter as if he was now in charge. “We’re an app development firm. Mr. Miller worked with his father-in-law on a few apps about ten years ago. They’ve all been very successful, and so he started his own firm to create more apps.”

“I met his daughter a while ago,” I added to the conversation, trying to make me sound like I belonged here and that my questions had relevance.

“You did?” The young man looked surprised. He chewed on a nail as he spoke.

“Yes, red hair, very attractive. I met her at the house.”

He nodded. “You met the second Mrs. Miller. Dr. Vires was the father of the first Mrs. Miller. They divorced not long after Vires passed away.”

I hadn’t heard anything about Miller having multiple marriages, but then again, it hadn’t been relevant to the task at hand. “When did Dr. Vires pass away?”

The young man rolled his eyes up to the ceiling as he seemed to give the question some thought. “It was well before my time, but given what James has said, it was probably about eight years ago. He’s been remarried for five years, so it had to be before that obviously.”

“I suppose it’s too much to ask that you might have the first wife’s contact information, would you?”

He shook his head. “No. He didn’t even like to mention her name around here, much less contact her. From what I gathered, the divorce was very acrimonious. She accused him of stealing some of her father’s work and keeping it for himself.”

“But the father was already dead, so there was no way to prove that, right?” I began to see some motives lurking around the edges. Two wives and corporate theft made perfectly good reasons to kill someone if you were so inclined. Even if I had motive and opportunity, the big question of how someone managed to kill a man alone in a locked room was still daunting to me.

“Right. She filed a court case, but later dropped it. Like I said, I got more of this from other people second-hand, because James didn’t like to talk about the subject at all. He was all work when he was here.”