Catwalk (12 page)

twenty-four

Felicity Feline Rescue, Inc.,
looks more like a fairytale cottage than a shelter for cats. The outside of the house is painted a warm
periwinkle blue, and, in summer, pink climbing roses flank the front door. Now, in chilly mid-November, the stoop was decorated with pumpkins and bittersweet, and a parade of wooden cat silhouettes in all colors of the feline rainbow marched along the sidewalk to the front door. Front doors, really. The entrance was designed to prevent escapes by landing you in a foyer that leads to a second door int
o the former living room, now lobby.

Felicity, the permanent greeter cat who inspired Angela Fong to start the shelter, yowled hello when I walked in. At least I hoped it was hello. Felicity is not particularly well-named, and she may well
have been yelling “Get out!” She has good reasons not to like people,
other than her own rescuer. Angela had found Felicity a dozen years
earlier scrounging from garbage cans behind the Fong family's Asian grocery. The little cat had been starving and sick, the whole left side of her face ballooned from an infected wound and her tail rubbed raw by a string knotted around its base. The vet who treated her figured someone had tied something to her to frighten or hurt her. Angela said that finding Felicity was an epiphany, as she suddenly saw how many cats were scrounging for a living in that alley and beyond. She decided to do something about it.

Felicity hopped onto the desk and craned her neck at me, yowling every few seconds. Her face had once been round, but the infection had left one side of her jaw a little off kilter, and the outer corner of the accompanying eye drooped. Her body was stocky and her legs relatively short. Her coat was an odd mix, with tortoiseshell coloring in patches on her body and gray tabby stripes on her face. She had lost her left eye to the infection, but the remaining one was still bright, glimmering green. I was scratching her chin when I heard a door open and close and footsteps on the wooden floor.

“Janet! So good to see you!” Angela Fong wore a soft pink tailored jacket, black wool slacks, and a huge smile.

“Angela! I didn't expect to see you. Kim said …”

“Oh, I'm not staying. Meeting a client this morning,” she glanced
at her watch. “Wish I could stay for the shoot, but no can do. Actually, I'm running late. So …” She leaned in and kissed my cheek, ran a
hand down Felicity's back, and turned to go. As she stepped through
the inner door, she called, “Thanks so much, Janet! See you this weekend at the cat show!”

I found Kim Bryant, the shelter's day-to-day manager, in one of the group cat rooms. Two of the three bedrooms and the dining room housed cats who had been deemed healthy and social. The rooms were impeccably clean, and were furnished with shelves and cat trees for climbing, several types of scratching posts, and several self-scooping litter boxes. The other bedroom was set up with large enclosures arranged to give the residents maximum privacy, and this is where they housed queens with kittens and other cats who had passed the health clearances but were not so keen on feline companionship. The original garage had been converted into Angela's law office. The house was on a corner, and the garage faced the side street, so the shelter and her office had separate addresses, which I'm sure prevented a lot of confusion.

Kim chattered to me and to the cats as he waved feather teaser wands to help set up photos. “Angela wanted to be here for this,” he said, setting a big tuxedo cat on a chair in front of me.

I kept shooting, but answered, “Right, I know she enjoys these photo shoots.” I lay down on my belly to get a good angle on a pair of wrestling kittens. “It's okay, things come up.” I resisted my nosy impulse to ask what had come up, figuring that if anyone wanted me to know, they'd tell me. Angela did a lot of
pro bono
work for low-
income victims of domestic abuse, and more than once I had seen her leave an event early because someone needed legal help
now.

Kim seemed to be bursting to tell someone what was going on, and said, “Yeah, some bigwig in town apparently pushed his long-suffering wife over the edge by threatening to move her father from a nursing home he likes.” He paused, then said, “More to the point, apparently, he likes someone at the nursing home, if you get my drift. The old guy's daughter called …”

“What?” I lowered my camera and sat up to look at Kim.

“Yeah, right? What a jerk. Who cares if a couple of old people are gettin' it on?”

My cheeks flashed hot.
What are the chances?
I thought, and asked, “You happen to hear a name? Was it Marconi? Or Rasmussen?”

Kim shook his head. “Doesn't ring a bell. Not sure I ever heard a name, actually. Why?”

“No, nothing.” But it had to be. I sat up and the big black-and-white cat oozed off the chair where Kim had put him and walked straight to me, sat down, looked into my eyes, and opened his mouth. “
Meeeeyowwwww!
”

Angela walked back in. She was very pale and she didn't smile or speak until she had a hot cup of tea in her hands. I kept taking photos, but glanced at Angela every couple of minutes until finally I couldn't stand it. “You okay?”

She seemed to come out of a trance. “What? Oh, yeah, fine. It's just
…
My client called. Her husband
…
We were about to file against him, but he was murdered Saturday night.”

Kim said, “Whoa!” and I said, “Wow.” I decided to keep my mouth shut for once and leave it at that for now. Ten minutes later I left with several hundred images to sort through, at least half of them in my mind.

twenty-five

By the time I
got to the Firefly Coffee House, Giselle was ensconced at a table in the back corner, sipping green tea, nibbling an almond biscotti, and reading an e-book. I grabbed a cup of coffee and joined her.

“Oh, I didn't see you come in,” she said, pressing a hand to her chest.

“Whatcha reading? Something fun?”

“Not really.” She shut down her e-reader and tucked it into a big orange tote bag. “Elder abuse. Sociology.”

Neither of us mentioned Rasmussen's murder. I had already decided to let Giselle be the one to bring it up. She had been badly traumatized twice in the past year, and I thought she should handle t
his new shock at her own speed. Besides, I'm no therapist, and I was
never sure what to say that would help and not hurt Giselle. After we laughed a bit about the Johnny-Come-Early incident, Giselle said, “Janet, is your mom okay?”

That stopped me mid-sip. “What do you mean?”
And how the heck do you know anything is up with my mother?

“Oh, yeah, you didn't know?” Back to Giselle's habitual interrogative inflection. She does that when she's nervous. “I've been working, you know, volunteering, I don't get paid, at Shadetree?”

“Ah.” I had heard that Giselle was making regular visits with Precious, who was certified as a therapy dog.

“Your mom talks about you all the time.”

“She does?”
What, she remembers me better when I'm not there?

“Yes.” Giselle smiled sadly. “I've heard about the wildflower hike with your Brownie troop, your piano recital when you wore a taffeta dress and slid off the piano bench, your
…
”

I couldn't help smiling at the memories, but I made a stop sign of my hand and said, “She has good days and bad. A lot of good ones lately, it seems. I think she's really happy again …”

“That man is just awful.” Giselle was practically snarling. For a second I thought she meant Marconi, but the next sentence set me straight. “He brings his wife there and he pushes her around and he's rude to her father, Mr. Marconi, and
he's
such a nice old man, and now Rasmussen wants to make him move …”

I thought about what Kim had said, that Louise planned to take legal action to stop her husband, but it was all moot now and I kept it to myself. “Well, it was certainly mean-spirited to interfere with two people who have found a little happiness late in life.”

“He's
…
he was wicked. He said such mean things, dirty things
…
He called them ‘sinners,' for goodness sake!”

“You were there when he found out about their, uh …” I couldn't
find a word that worked.
How about “love,”
whispered the little voices.
Yes, love.

“They love each other, Janet,” said Giselle. “You can see it, you can feel it.” She paused for a moment, then said, “They're like you and Tom. Everybody can see it.”

It had never occurred to me that anyone was talking about me and Tom. My cheeks went hot, and I shifted in my seat.

Giselle's face warmed into a grin. “It's good, Janet. You and Tom are perfect.” The mood didn't last, though, and she went quiet.

“He—Marconi—was back at Shadetree last night,” I said, “so all is well on that front, I think.” At least I hoped so for both their sakes.

“I try not to wish bad things, especially after, well, you know,” said Giselle, breaking off little bits of biscotti and dropping them into her plate. I did know what she meant. Giselle had found a murder victim six months earlier, someone she cared for, and she was still recovering from the shock. She put the biscotti down and wiped her hands, then looked me in the eye and said, “I shouldn't wish bad things, but I do sometimes. I wished that evil man all kinds of bad things.”

“We all do that, Giselle.”

“He called your mother some vile names, and he yelled at Ms. Templeton and the other staff, called them,” she lowered her voice
to a whisper, “whoremongers.” Giselle rolled her eyes. “He even yelled at me and said Precious was a filthy cur!” Giselle's hand crushed
her napkin in a white-knuckle fist. “That made me so mad!”

Filthy,
I thought, remembering how Rasmussen had ranted about
Gypsy and her newborn kittens as filthy carriers of disease and parasites.
The man has a filthy mind
, whispered a voice in my head.

“You know Candace? Candace Sweetwater?” Giselle sniffed. “He's
the reason she lost her store.”

“What store?”

“She had a little gift shop. It was all, you know, hand-crafted things
by local artists?” Giselle was slipping back into her habit of turning every sentence into a question. “In that little shopping center where the Doggie Dog grooming shop used to be?”

“I remember that place. The front, anyway. It looked like a ginger
bread
house,” I said. “I was never in it. Wasn't it called ‘The Handmade's Tale'?”

Giselle nodded.

“So what did Rasmussen have to do with that?”

“He wanted them to get out,” she said. “I think he, his group, I think they built that office building that's there now. But Tory from Doggie Dog told me Candace didn't want to move and her lease had another year to go, so Rasmussen paid the owner of the shopping center to dig up the parking lot, and that was that.”

“And that meant no customers,” I said.

“When I heard him yelling at the trial on Saturday, I just snapped.
I wished he would just fall down dead.” Giselle's face was pale but for a couple of bright pink points on her cheeks. “I was cleaning up after Precious and watching Rasmussen yell. He grabbed Mrs. Rasmussen and I got madder and madder. Then later I saw him throw a rock at that kitty that Jorge feeds, and Jorge yelled at him, and he called Jorge all kinds of names, you know, bad hateful names.”

Giselle was on a tear, speaking faster and faster, and I tuned her out for a moment, my thoughts bouncing through an array of faces in my
mind. So many faces, all attached to people who hated Rasmussen, people
he had assaulted one way or another. Giselle. Jorge. Alberta. Hutch
inson. His wife, Louise, had plenty of reason to clobber him. I remembered him yelling at Marietta. My mom and Anthony Marconi, although Mom had neither the opportunity nor, probably, the strength to kill
him. I didn't think Marconi did either. I could certainly picture Tom hitting the man again in self-defense, but he would never leave someone to die like that. I was beginning to wonder whether anyone who had ever met Rasmussen had
not
wanted to kill him. Surely he was a different man when Louise married him. What happened to make him so angry, so belligerent? And then Giselle's voice recaptur
ed my attention.

“
…
and it was like a red veil fell over me and …” Something in her tone seized me by the throat and I didn't think I wanted to hear the rest of this, but Giselle kept going. “I sort of blanked. I had the pooper scooper in both hands, and I was just swinging and pounding, you know?” Giselle's face was very pale and glistened with perspiration. “It was weird, Janet, because even when I realized what I was doing, hitting and hitting and hitting, I couldn't stop.”

twenty-six

Alberta laid her finger
against her lips and moved in exagger
ated tippy-toe posture. Goldie and I followed her down the hall, both careful to be quiet. That was no problem for Goldie in her soft-soled ankle-mocs, but I had to work to keep my boot heels from clacking on the hardwood floor. Alberta stopped and gestured into a bedroom, and we both peeked around the door frame.

Hutchinson sat on the floor beside a medium-sized plastic pet carrier. We must not have pulled off the stealth approach, because he turned and looked at us. When I saw the expression on his face, the word that came to mind was
ecstatic
. He looked as if he'd had an epiphany.

We all murmured our hellos, and I knelt on the carpet beside him. Goldie joined us and whispered, “Oh, aren't they beautiful.”

The tiny calico who had so enchanted Hutchinson the night of the kittens' birth was snuggled against the man's chest. One hand cradled the kitten's body, and the other rested with fingertips under her chin. Hutchinson smiled at me.

“Looks like someone is content.”

I meant the kitten, but Alberta grinned as she settled into a chair
across from us and said, “That kitten is pretty happy, too.”

Goldie leaned toward the carrier and asked, “Is it okay to hold them?”

“Best thing in the world for them,” said Alberta. She reached both
hands into the carrier and lifted the sleeping kittens, then handed the black one to Goldie and the gray tabby to me.

Goldie held the kitten against her lips and whispered, “Lovely, lovely, lovely.” The little tabby nestled into the crook of my arm and went back to sleep, and all the craziness of the past few days faded, if only for the moment. “Boy or girl?”

“Yours,” said Alberta, pointing at Goldie, “is male, and yours,” she pointed at the tabby in my arms, “is female.” Her use of the possessive pronouns was not lost on me.
Sneaky
, I thought. She finished up with, “And of course Homer's calico is female.” I didn't think I'd ever heard anyone call Hutchinson by his first name.

“Ah, lovely,” said Goldie, looking around the room. “And where's
…
what's her name? The mother?”

“Gypsy,” said Alberta. “She's taking a little breather. I cooked her some chicken and veggies and gave it to her just before you got here.”

“So, Hutchinson, any news from your world?” I meant the police
investigation, and assumed that even if he wasn't on Rasmussen's case, he would hear things. I was a bit confused when he responded by grinning at Alberta. I said, “What's going on? You look like the cat who ate the canary,” I said, and then added for Alberta, “pardon the expression.” Alberta had a big flight cage full of finches in her family room.

“Yeah,” Hutchinson said, looking from me to the kitten on his
chest. “This is my new roommate. You know, when she's big enough.”

I laughed, a warm tickle running through me. “That's great, Hutch.” I had resisted calling the man by his chosen nickname since I met him, but the better I liked him, the more inclined I was to use the name he liked. He grinned and nodded, and I said, “In fact, that's perfect.”

Goldie, who now had the black kitten snugged up under her jaw, murmured, “Mmm hmmm.” I wasn't sure whether she was agreeing with Hutchinson, me, or the little creature in her hands.

“But you meant the murder,” said Hutchinson.

And
voila!
The world was back. The tabby kitten pushed her head deeper into my elbow as if trying not to hear what Hutchinson had to say. I laid my free hand over her back and her breathing steadied
.

“Too soon, of course, to have much. But I heard from …” He stopped himself, and I assumed that he wasn't really supposed to know what was happening since he was potentially a suspect. But the guy had friends, at least on the force. “Well, I heard that someone clocked him pretty good.”

“Right. I knew that.” The memory of Rasmussen's bloodied and misshapen head sent a shudder through my shoulders.

Hutchinson gave me a blank look, and the shudder repeated itself.

“I saw him in the tunnel, remember?” No response. “On Sunday morning. I crawled in to see, you know, to check for a pulse.” Hutchinson nodded. “His head was, I don't know, misshapen?”

“How awful,” said Goldie, but her tone didn't fit her content. She sort of crooned the words to “her” kitten.

“It
was
awful,” I said.

Alberta snorted.

“I know he was an ass, but still,” I said. “I mean, I'd have been happy never to see him again, but I didn't wish him dead.”

“Well, I suspect a lot of people did,” said Alberta.

“From what I saw, he gave lots of people lots of reasons. I …” I glanced at Goldie and she stared into my eyes, flicked her gaze toward Hutchinson and back to me, and gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
She's right
, whispered my inner guardian angel.
He may be a friend of sorts, but he's still a cop.
Logic argued that it made no difference since I had done nothing wrong, but I decided that Goldie was right, I should for once try not to blurt out too much. “Never mind.”

Hutchinson's lip twisted and he said, “So here's the odd thing. This came from the EMT at the scene.” He paused to reposition his kitten. “He told me, you know, before I knew who the victim was, he said there was something mixed in with the blood on the guy's head. You know, on the wound, where he got whacked.” Hutchinson repositioned his kitten. “So the guy, I mean the EMT, not Rasmussen, wondered what it was, so he touched it and smelled it, and he was pretty sure it was feces.”

No one said anything for a moment, and then Alberta spoke.

“Always said he had shit for brains.” Alberta looked at each of us in turn. “What?” No one said anything, and I confess that, although I felt guilty since a man was dead, I did have to agree with her. I didn't dare look at Goldie. I could
feel
her trying not to laugh.

When Hutchinson finally broke the silence, he just made it worse. “Isn't that bizarre? How in the heck would he get poop in his hair?”

I bit my lip and managed not to say what I was thinking about where Rasmussen seemed to have his head when I met him. I was afraid to look at any of the others, and then a strangled squeal snuck out of Goldie's mouth, and Alberta started to titter, and Hutchinson laughed, and then we were all laughing. Finally Goldie said, “Oh, my. I am
not
laughing because a man is dead, but …”

I laid a hand on her knee and said, “We all know that. We all know.”

When we were calm again, Hutchinson spoke. “I didn't see any dog poop, er, feces in there, you know, around the jumps and the tunnel and stuff, so I don't think he could have fallen in it.”

“No, I've almost never seen a dog poop in an agility ring, and if they did, the ring crew would clean it right up,” I said.

Alberta added, “Marietta keeps that whole place very clean. Well, Jorge does.”

“Yeah, they do.” I had been training at Dog Dayz for years, and she was right, the place was kept immaculate, other than the occasional gift from an antisocial dog owner. Even those got picked up quickly.

“So any ideas?” asked Hutchinson.

At first my mind was devoid of non-snarky ideas. Then, with the bite of ice water, a memory. Giselle. I had just left her a couple of hours earlier, and although I couldn't recall exactly what she had said, the fragments that came to mind scared the bejeepers out of me.
Pooper scooper
…
swinging and pounding
…
hitting and hitting
…
couldn't stop.

She couldn't stop, but I had to. I pushed the half-formed accusation away and forced myself into the present. “I thought you were off this case?” I said.

Before Hutchinson could answer, Alberta said, “Hello, sweetheart,” and I followed her gaze. Gypsy stood in the doorway, eyes wide and tail straight up and fluffed in alarm. Within seconds, though, she relaxed and strolled into the room, glancing from one kitten to another. I was closest to the door, so first on her list. She stepped delicately onto my thigh and leaned up and in toward her tabby daughter, saw that she was safe, and moved on to Goldie and then Hutchinson. When she was satisfied, she got into the carrier and began to wash her paws.

“Ooh wook jus wike your mama, don't ooh,” Hutchinson said. Then he seemed to remember that he wasn't alone with his kitten. He pulled his shoulders back, cleared his throat, and said, “Yeah, the case.”

“You're off it?”

“Yeah, for now. But my buddies tell me a little.” He looked me in the eye. “You have any ideas?”

“How would I know?” It came out a little more high-pitched and whiney than I would have liked, but I wrestled my voice into submission and pressed on. “Everybody seemed to hate the guy. But not enough to kill him.” I hoped I sounded more convinced than I felt.

“I did,” said Alberta. “I mean, I hated him enough to kill him.” She stared at Hutchinson over the top of her glasses. “But I didn't.”

“Be careful who you say that to,” said Hutchinson, and Alberta snorted.

“Maybe it was an accident,” said Goldie. “I mean, what was he doing out there in the dark anyway? Maybe he tripped and fell.”

“So what happens now?” I asked. “I mean, do they have a list of suspects or something?”

“They're waiting for forensics, I think, although I guess the lab guys are having a little trouble, considering how many dogs ran through that tunnel.”

Goldie's black kitten began to mewl and wriggle, and as if that flipped a switch, the other two did the same. Gypsy meowed back, and Hutchinson said, “Okay, wittle girl, time for your snack.” He placed her gently against her mother and stroked the older cat's cheek with one finger. Goldie and I put our kittens beside the calico. All four humans in the room watched in contented silence. We may even have been purring.