A Tiger's Tale (A Call of the Wilde Mystery) (10 page)

No way.

“Stefan?”

He turned and met my gaze. Without thinking, I stepped out of the dressing room.

Stefan’s eyes widened and he began to back away.

“No, wait. I just want to talk to you.”

As I moved toward him, he turned and bolted, still clutching a pair of jeans. As soon as he crossed the threshold into the mall, the security alarm began to wail. I chased after him, realizing after only a few steps I was still wearing the sweater . . . and not much else.

“Crap!”

I spun in a circle, simultaneously wanting to go after Stefan and dive for cover. I compromised by grabbing the hem of the sweater and yanking it down. Not the greatest improvement but it was better than subjecting my fellow mall-goers to an unsolicited view of my . . . assets.

Shopping with a Streaker—the new mall experience.

“Grace?” Sonja appeared with an armful of jeggings and looked me over with eyes as wide and bulging as a gecko’s. “Girl, where are your pants?”

“It’s him, Sonja.” I had to shout to be heard over the blaring alarm. “I saw Stefan. Go after him!”

“Do what?”

“Stefan.” I had to let go of the hem to point, and the sweater sprang up.

I grabbed the article of clothing closest to me, which happened to be a pair of men’s jeans, and started to put them on, still trying to keep my eye on Stefan.

By then, people had stopped to watch and I decided it would be better to wrap the jeans around my waist like a sarong rather than bend over to step into them.

“What’s going on?” a male voice asked.

I turned and nearly bumped into the belly of a security guard who was almost as round as he was tall.

“That kid stole my jeans!”

I don’t know what possessed me to say it. The words popped out of my mouth like a startled armadillo.

The security guard turned and we both looked in the direction I’d gestured.

Stefan was nowhere in sight.

• • •

Once the commotion died down, Sonja and I had scoured the mall in search of Stefan. After what seemed like hours, Sonja had given in and wished me luck before heading home.

I decided to do the same.

Moss had a problem with howling anytime I left the condo for an extended period, and our neighbor Mr. Cavanaugh—a circa-1925 fuddy-duddy—let us know by pasting nasty sticky notes on the door.

His running tally of complaints, some warranted, most not, kept the condo association busy.

So far, Moss had been too consumed with his new kitten to lament my absence—but I didn’t want to push it.

“That is just . . . gross,” I heard Emma say as I stepped through the front door.

I walked into the kitchen and saw the cause of her disgust. Moss sat looking up at my sister with a slobber-covered kitten hanging out of his mouth. His tail swished back and forth on the floor when he saw me.

“Your dog is revolt—” Emma paused, narrowing her eyes when she saw the shopping bag in my hand. “You went to the mall without me?”

“It was a reconnaissance mission.” I filled her in on my search and near apprehension of Stefan. Once she was able to breathe again after her fit of hysteria, she asked, “So you chased him with no pants on?” Emma’s expression was a mix of horror and glee.

“I had on underwear.”

“Oh, well, in that case . . .”

“Whatever. He got away.” I decided to change the subject. “What’s for dinner?”

“Your turn to make dinner,” Emma said, still wiping tears from her eyes. “Penance for going shopping without me,” she added before turning and heading toward her bedroom.

I walked to the pantry to peruse the shelves. Moss followed, the kitten dangling from his mouth like an old dog toy.

“Put her down, she can walk.”

Moss plopped the kitten on the tile floor, gave her a lick, and looked up at me with a hopeful wag of his tail.

Treat?

I glanced at his bowl. Full.

“Not till you eat your dinner.”

I opened the fridge and stood staring at the contents. Although I knew the packages and containers held food, for some reason I was unable to come up with a cohesive meal plan.

Cheese,
Moss suggested, helpfully.

I glanced down at him. His nose twitched and he let out a hopeful grunt.

“How about a panini?”

Emma had scored a real sandwich press from a caterer and we’d paninied every possible food item we could layer onto Italian bread.

I grabbed a tomato, some nifty basil spread Emma had concocted, and cheese.

Moss sat and watched, rapt, as I constructed the sandwich. If the smallest crumb hit the floor, he’d take care of it.

Voodoo mewed and pawed at Moss’s tail.

I looked at the kitten and worried, like I always did, about raising a kitten with a large canine. Not that Moss would hurt Voodoo, but if the kitten encountered other dogs, she might be conditioned to think they were all like Moss—safe.

I cut a few slices of mozzarella and laid them on the tomato and bread and closed the lid to the press.

I turned back to Voodoo, who had flattened herself on the tile. Ears pricked, she watched, body twitching, waiting to pounce if Moss’s tail moved.

“He could eat you in one bite, you know,” I told the kitten as I opened the cabinet and set plates on the counter.

“Basically, he’s the Grim Reaper. You’re stalking the Grim Reaper’s tail.”

Voodoo ignored me completely.

A minute later I lifted a perfect panini onto each plate.

“We’re going to have to get one of these presses for the new house.”

Moss wagged his tail in agreement.

Ha!
Voodoo’s excitement had reached overload and seeing Moss’s tail move sent her over the edge. She leapt forward onto the tip of his tail.

Bite! Bite!
She attacked then hopped up, sat on her back legs, swiped at a long strand of his tail fur, lost her balance, toppled over, and simultaneously tried to snag more tail as she squirmed to her feet.

Voodoo was in full manic-kitten mode. Eyes wide, pupils dilated, brain a tangle of impulse and reaction.

A psychotic ninja on speed. Or acid. Or speed and acid.

She was oblivious to the fact that the tail she was gnawing on was attached to a predator a hundred times her size.

“You’re courting death,” I told her. “Or worse. This is Beelzebub, get it?”

Be-el-ze-bub.
I mentally sounded it out.

The kitten reflected the word back to me but it came out garbled.

Bubba!

I froze mid-chew.

“What?” my sister asked as she entered the kitchen. “Grace, you look like you’re choking on your panini.”

When I still didn’t respond, my sister placed her hands around her own neck.

“Use the international sign for choking if you need help.”

I swallowed. “I just . . .”

“What?”

“Voodoo just called Moss ‘Bubba.’”

Bubba!
Voodoo punctuated the word with a meow.

“Bubba?”

“I was trying to explain that Moss was Beelzebub but she didn’t get it. Oh my God!”

“Come on, there are worse nicknames.” Emma grabbed a napkin. “I had a crush on Bubba Jenkins in junior high.”

“No. It’s Boris. He said the word
hide
today when I went to check on him. Clear as a bell. Everything was—it’s hard to explain.”

“Good, because my eyes are starting to glaze over.”

I waved off her comment.

“I thought he meant Brooke had needed to hide. But what if he shortened a longer or different word and came up with something else, like Voodoo did?”

Emma set down her panini, grabbed a pen and paper, and wrote
HIDE
in all caps.
Both of us stared at the paper as we ate, trying to come up with alternatives.

“Maybe he meant outside? She was standing outside the fence, right?” Emma asked.

“Yes. But I don’t know how that helps. I already know where she was when she was taken.”

“What about hide, like animal hide?”

“Meaning what? The person who took her was dressed up in a gorilla costume?”

“I don’t know. I’m just tossing out ideas.”

“Let’s stick to something reasonable.”

“Yes, because your life is so often burdened with reason. Hang on.” Emma brushed panini crumbs off her fingers and went to grab her laptop out of her bag. We did a search of words containing H-I-D-E, writing down everything remotely plausible.

I read through the list but nothing clicked.

“Well, it was worth a shot,” Emma said.

I blew out a sigh.

“This is making me crazy, Em.”

“Is that what’s doing it?” she teased.

“I’ve got nothing.”

“Not true,” Emma said. “You know about Stefan. About Brooke’s fight with her mother and her argument with Ozeal. More importantly, you know she was crying while talking on the phone the day she went missing.”

“So she was upset,” I added without much enthusiasm. “Teenage girls tend to be on the dramatic side.”

“Yes, but she was so upset that the owner of the store, a man busy with new customers, noticed. Given the circumstances, that’s more than a girl having a bad day.”

“It’s a clue,” I said, feeling a spark of interest at the thought.

Emma nodded. “The question is—who was she talking to?”

The next morning, Emma dragged me into the dojo at an unholy hour with the promise that training would help clear my head, or at the very least, take my mind off Brooke for a while.

We worked on a technique called
hamni-handachi.
Which, after a few minutes, I decided probably meant
impossibly painful and difficult
in Japanese.

Basically, I was supposed to stay on my knees while my sister attacked from a standing position. The idea was to use the aikido moves I’d learned to toss her around. The problem was, I’d learned those techniques while
on my feet
.

“Keep the center of your body over your ankles,” Emma instructed when I tottered off-balance . . . again.

“I’m not sure I understand the point here. Why would I fight someone on my knees?”

“You never know when you might get knocked down. If you are, it’s better to be comfortable moving on your knees. Plus,
hamni-handachi
is a good way to learn how to take advantage of your size.”

“Em, I’m on the ground. I’m not seeing much of an advantage.” Even if I’d been standing, my sister was a good four inches taller than me.

“That’s my point. Being shorter can be an advantage. It means a bigger person has to lean over to get to you—”

“Which puts them off-balance.” I finished her thought. “Cool concept, but I’m kinda sucking at putting theory into practice.”

“Here.” She pulled up the voluminous legs of her black
hakama
and knelt. “Watch how my feet stay under my center. I can go forward, back, and pivot.”

I watched her glide over the mat like she was doing the waltz and shook my head. Only my sister could make martial arts look like ballroom dancing.

She sailed back to me and started her step-by-step instructions. I’d almost managed to pull off a pivot when the door opened and Takeda Sensei walked in.

Emma and I stood, bowed, and said, “Good morning, Sensei.”

Takeda Sensei inclined his head in greeting then focused on me.

“Today, you test. Okay?”

He turned and went into the dressing room without waiting for my answer.

“Test? What test?” I asked my sister, alarmed.

“It must be time for your
rokyu
test,” she said, clearly as surprised as I was.

I didn’t even know what a
rokyu
was—except that I wasn’t ready to become one. “But I’m not really a student. Takeda Sensei knows that, right?”

Most of the time he and Emma trained alone or with one or two of Emma’s high-ranking martial arts buddies. Sometimes, I trained with them—usually fumbling through class like a drunken water buffalo.

“I don’t think I’m ready,” I whispered to Emma when Takeda Sensei emerged from the dressing area.

“You can tell Sensei that. Just remember he’s very traditional. He might think you’re being disrespectful by questioning his judgment.”

“Crap.”

I wanted to avoid offending Takeda Sensei. Not that I was afraid of him—well, actually, I was. Kind of. He looked like a sweet little Japanese grandfather, but there was something about him that intimidated the hell out of me. Maybe it was the memory of the time I’d seen him slam a much larger opponent face-first into the mat. Yeah, that was probably it.

Crap!

“Okay, give me a quick refresher—what am I supposed to know?”

Emma whispered a review as we stretched and, unbelievably, I kicked major ass on my test.

Okay, so having my sister as my partner helped. Especially when I blanked out a few times when Sensei asked me to demonstrate a technique. But still, I was pretty amazing.

Grinning at my success, I turned to my sister to give her a hug when the door to the dojo opened and three men walked in. I only recognized one of them.

Kevin was at least six-two and one of Emma’s favorite aikido boys. I thought there might be some chemistry between them, but being such a crappy judge of romancey-type stuff, I wasn’t sure. After all, just about everyone had chemistry with Emma.

Usually my sister would have been happy to see them. Today, though, I couldn’t tell what she was feeling, because the second they walked in, her face had become a mask of complete calm.

“Emma?” I wasn’t sure what was going on, but if something weird was about to happen I wanted to be ready.

“Looks like you’re not the only one being tested today,” she said, one corner of her mouth lifting as she locked her gaze on Kevin.

Emma had earned her black belt a couple of years ago. She trained relentlessly. Kevin and the boys were in for a treat, and by the looks on their faces they knew it.

I watched my sister’s second-degree black belt test with a mixture of awe and excitement.

She was spectacular.

Even when faced with simultaneous attacks from multiple opponents, she didn’t crack. Graceful, calm, and absolutely merciless.

I started clapping when she finished, which earned a stern look from Sensei.

“Sorry.”

He pointed to the mat, and I scurried to take the place next to my sister.

Takeda Sensei studied our faces for a moment.

“To learn, you must challenge yourself. Always.
Ne?
”

We nodded.

“You are beginner,” he said looking at me. Then to Emma, he continued, “You are now
nidan
. Both are the same. Important to have new mind.
Shoshin.
Very important.
Ne?
”

We nodded.

I tried to pay attention as Takeda Sensei continued his lecture, certain that a large amount of wisdom was being imparted to us. But within the first few minutes the combination of his accent and the Japanese phrases threw me, and I glazed over.

My mind wandered to thoughts of Brooke. My sister had told me numerous times that the majority of attacks on women come from behind. In the snippet Boris had shown me, Brooke had been turning. I couldn’t help but wonder if knowing a martial art would have changed things—given her time to call out for help or scream.

As if reading my mind, Takeda Sensei said, “Aikido is not here.” He tapped his biceps. “It is here.” He placed his index finger at his temple.

“Strong body—good. Strong mind—essential.”

Something in his words sparked a vague idea, but it was too fleeting for me to grasp.

When he finally dismissed us, I gave my sister a congratulatory hug and hurried up to the condo to grab a shower, hoping I wouldn’t be late for my first appointment.

Just as I was rushing past the kitchen, my phone belted out the “Hot Blooded” chorus. I did an about-face, unhooked it from the charger, and answered.

“Kai, what’s up?” I asked, a bit breathless.

“Hey. Moss taking you for a run again?”

“That only happened once when he thought I needed motivation.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Actually, I’ll have you know I just passed my—” What was it called? Q-something . . . I decided not to bore him with the specifics. “My first official aikido test.”

“Really?”

“Yep, I kicked butt.”

“I’m sure you did.” Was that sarcasm I heard in his tone? “I talked to Doc at Billy’s Feed and Seed. The guy who followed Brooke paid with cash, so we don’t have a name, but I found out what he bought. Do you have a pen?”

I snagged one off the counter and grabbed the notepad Emma kept in the kitchen.

“Go ahead.”

He rattled off a list, which consisted of a canister of bug powder, three bags of garden soil, and a bag of cat litter.

“Does that tell you anything?” he asked.

“That we’re looking for a gardener with a cat?”

“Yeah, me either.”

Damn, I was so sure it would be a good lead. “Maybe I’ll go back to Billy’s and talk to the goat. I saw some bunnies, too. They didn’t have a great view of the store, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t see something.”

There was a long pause.

“Kai?”

“Sorry.” I could almost hear him grinning. “I’m still not used to hearing someone say they’re going to talk to bunnies.”

“You’d be surprised. Some bunnies can be very loquacious.”

He chuckled. The sound warmed me to my toes. “I’ll bet. Have you worked any more on the timeline?”

“A little. I have to talk to one more person who was working at Happy Asses the day Brooke disappeared. And I really want to track down her boyfriend, Stefan. I think he might have been the one on the phone with her when she was crying.”

“Good luck with Bugs Bunny. And don’t go poking around the wrong side of Cesery without the wolf-mutt.”

• • •

Thankfully, my first appointment was with Mrs. Keane. As a septuagenarian with a philosophical view of time, she didn’t grumble and grouse when I arrived at her home almost thirty minutes late.

I apologized anyway as I followed her into her foyer then stopped, surprised to see a lean, elderly man standing there.

“This is Rick. He came to help, but you know how clever Dew can be.”

“He is that.” Dewberry, or Dew, was her standard poodle and was smart as a whip. I looked at Rick and said, “Nice to meet you.”

Rick gave me a nod and a critical once-over. I recognized the signs of someone who didn’t believe I’d be able to solve the problem. I’d seen the look plenty of times. It didn’t bother me anymore.

“So,” he said in a pleasant baritone, “what’s your plan?”

“Oh, I have my ways,” I said as I moved past him into the living room, where I sensed the canine. I’d worked with Mrs. Keane and Dewberry on several occasions, and as soon as the dog saw me, his head drooped.

Dewberry sorry.

Not enough to stop,
I scolded. Mentally expressing as much ire as I could.

The poodle flicked his woeful gaze up at me then collapsed and rolled onto his back—tail tucked, belly exposed.

Utterly pitiful.

“Don’t apologize to me, Dew. You know better.”

“Do you think you can find them this time?” Mrs. Keane asked.

I nodded. Dewberry was already projecting the location of his stolen prize.

“Let’s head to the backyard. I’m going to need a small garden shovel, if you have one handy.”

Mrs. Keane retrieved one from a potting bench and we began our search.

Plenty of dogs ran off with something belonging to their owners—usually a sock or the occasional shoe. Dewberry, on the other hand, had an obsession with Mrs. Keane’s dentures. Thankfully, I was only summoned to hunt for her dental appliances once every few months.

Rick followed close behind me as I walked across the yard, as if looking for the bait and switch.

I stopped near a large oakleaf hydrangea, spread the thick branches of the bush, and found what I was looking for. I knelt and gently worked the shovel through the newly turned earth.

“Here we go,” I said as I lifted the small shovel, shaking it to make the dirt settle around the dentures.

I wasn’t terribly squeamish—I had gone through veterinary school, after all. Once you’ve done a necropsy on a horse you’ve met the quota on ick. But there was something about dentures that completely grossed me out.

I swallowed hard and plastered a smile on my face before turning to hold out the shovel to Mrs. Keane.

She plucked the dentures out of the soil and held them up to Rick. “I told you she could find them.”

Despite what I’d told Kai about how seldom I was asked to explain my methods, I had a feeling Rick was going to ask me how I managed to zero in on the location of Mrs. Keane’s dentures.

I gave him an expectant look and he surprised me by grinning wide enough to see he, too, had dental augmentation.

“Well, doesn’t that just beat all?”

Mrs. Keane looked at me with a wink and said, “He didn’t believe me.”

Rick draped his arm around Mrs. Keane’s shoulder and said, “I guess seeing is believing.”

As soon as he said the words, an idea popped into my head.

A few minutes later, I was on my way to the Ligners’ house. My search for Stefan would have to wait, because I had a theory I wanted to try. It was midday and I assumed the Ligners would both be at work. Which was fine—I didn’t want to talk to Brooke’s parents this time.

Rick’s comment about seeing and believing made me realize I would be far more successful with Brooke’s cat using a mental picture of her rather than just her name. Thanks to Boris, I now had a vivid image to call upon.

The cat would not ignore me today.

I managed to abstain as I passed the Krispy Kreme, although my mouth watered in a Pavlovian response when I spotted the flashing, neon
HOT DOUGHNUTS NOW
sign.

I parked across the street from the Ligners’ and strolled up the walkway ready to repeat the routine from the day before. This time I didn’t have to cast out my mental net to get a bead on the cat’s location. I felt the hum of the animal’s mind just as something brushed against my leg. I glanced down.

“Really?”

“Meow.” Brooke’s cat rubbed the length of his body against my shin, then sidled up to a pot of chrysanthemums to give the terra-cotta the same treatment.

“Cats.” I shook my head and bent to stroke my clearly bipolar new friend.

You going to talk to me today?

Talk.
“Meow,” he added, in case I was on the slow side.