How to Paint a Cat (Cats and Curios Mystery) (15 page)

THE ASSAILANTS

MABEL’S KNITTING NEEDLES
clicked a steady cadence in the broom closet–converted office, drowning out the Lieutenant Governor’s whiffling snores.

She gazed at the sleeping figure on the couch and sighed. She had already completed three afghans, two sweaters, and an assortment of baby booties. She was running out of nieces, nephews, and barefooted infants upon which to bestow the blankets and booties. Unfortunately—from a knitting perspective—Sacramento tended to have mild winters.

The Lieutenant Governor’s first week had been slow, to say the least.

He’d had so much potential when they first started out, she reflected, remembering those early heady days.

He’d risen like a rock star through the ranks of San Francisco’s supervisors. His schedule was always full; the city’s heavy hitters had all wanted to clock time with the up-and-coming politician. They had elbowed one another for the chance to stand next to him at public events, and they had vied for his endorsement of their projects and initiatives.

His election to mayor was viewed by most as yet another stepping-stone in his inevitable political ascendency. Many thought he was destined for a seat at the statehouse and, quite possibly, the presidency.

No one had predicted this.

It was the frogs that did him in, Mabel reflected bitterly. They had destroyed his credibility as mayor. She nearly dropped a stitch in anger.

Damn those amphibians.

The Lieutenant Governor’s childhood phobia might never have come to light had it not been for City Hall’s bizarre frog infestation. His was a rare affliction, and in the normal course of business, it wouldn’t have been a hindrance to his career. But the sight of all those slimy green creatures swarming the building had sent the poor man into a full-blown mental breakdown.

Shaking her head, Mabel pinned one of the knitting needles into a stitch and reached into her bag for a new skein of yarn. She selected the next color, tied it to the hanging end, and resumed her work.

As the needles knotted the thread into its patterned design, her thoughts drifted to the other major calamity of the Lieutenant Governor’s mayoral term, the murder of Spider Jones. While far more serious in nature, at least the intern’s death hadn’t caused any further damage to her boss’s tarnished reputation.

• • •

THE TEMPO OF
the knitting needles ticked up a notch as Mabel recalled the troublesome intern. Her lips pursed into a small frown of disapproval.

The epitome of discretion, Mabel would never sink to gossip, but in the days before his death, young Spider had been acting rather suspiciously. For one thing, she’d caught him sneaking around City Hall’s second floor dressed up in a janitor’s uniform and posing with a mop. His rather ineffectual cleaning technique had given him away.

Not wanting to embarrass Spider, Mabel hadn’t let on that she’d recognized her intern beneath the poorly conceived disguise. She’d assumed he’d been co-opted into the ruse by the Previous Mayor. It was just the type of shenanigans the old politician might cook up, and there were rumors the pair had been seen palling around town together.

While concerned, Mabel had seen no reason to call Spider’s bluff. She’d merely filed the information away for possible future use—and vowed to keep a closer eye on the impressionable young man.

But after the murder, she had spent a great deal of time wondering exactly what Spider had been up to.

• • •

TWO MONTHS AFTER
the fact, Mabel was still deeply troubled by Spider’s death. It was more than just the loss of someone she knew—she had been the one to find the slain intern’s body.

The morbid scene was forever burned in her memory.

Mabel remembered telling her story to the police the night of the murder. Like the rest of City Hall’s workforce, she had stayed late in the building awaiting the outcome of the supervisors’ meeting. When at last the board completed a successful vote to select the interim mayor, she’d returned to the mayor’s office to send a few quick e-mails alerting friends of the results.

Once at her desk, Mabel had found herself distracted by the list of items that needed to be taken care of before her pending move to Sacramento. After spending forty-five minutes reviewing Internet sites for prospective apartment listings, she’d finally closed down her computer and prepared to leave.

She was feeling nostalgic, she’d explained to the police detective, so she had taken the long way out of the building, walking around the second-floor hallway overlooking the rotunda to the central marble staircase.

That’s when she’d discovered Spider’s body at the top of the stairs.

The knitting needles clacked with adrenaline as Mabel recalled the horrifying scene. It was such a mess, with blood spattered everywhere . . . so visceral . . . so gory . . . and so disturbingly untidy.

Turning away from the shocking display, she’d immediately run back to the mayor’s office to call for help. The battery had run down on the cell phone she carried in her purse, and she’d feared the perpetrator might still be lurking nearby.

“Maybe if I had stayed to help him . . .” she’d told the investigator as her voice trailed off into a single tear.

The detective had nodded sympathetically. She’d reached out and patted Mabel’s hand, offering condolence.

Then Mabel delivered the most important piece of information.

Hurrying back along the second-floor walkway, she’d noticed a movement on the rotunda below. Looking over the railing, she’d seen two shadowed figures scurrying across the marble floor toward the exit.

“Did you get a good look at either of them?” the investigator had asked urgently. “Can you describe them in any way?”

Mabel closed her eyes, as if trying to focus. “It was dark,” she replied tearfully. “But they both struck me as familiar . . .”

She proceeded to give the details of the two suspects.

The first she identified as Sam Eckles, a husky red-haired janitor who had worked at City Hall until the frog infestation a few years back. He’d been fired for his involvement in the caper—or so she’d heard from reliable sources.

Afterward, Sam had taken up a position as an amphibian consultant, securing jobs with a team of UC Davis wildlife biologists as well as the California Academy of Sciences.

Sam seemed an unlikely candidate for the carnage Mabel had witnessed at the top of the staircase. Despite his penchant for mischief, she had never seen any indication that he was prone to violence. But perhaps, she mused to the investigator, he’d fallen into bad company.

She had fewer reservations, however, about the second shadowed figure.

The elderly round-shouldered gentleman had also done a tour as a City Hall janitor, several decades ago, before opening up an antique shop in Jackson Square.

Mabel had never liked the man, even when he was masquerading as a lowly janitor. Oscar was always meddling in something, he and his group of friends. The Bohemians, the Vigilance Committee—they’d operated under a number of different names. They were a scheming bunch, constantly interfering, causing chaos, upending the regular order of business. The frog escapade, she felt certain, had originated with Oscar and his crew.

Recent rumors had confirmed what Mabel had long suspected: that Oscar hadn’t died two years ago of a sudden heart attack inside the entrance to his store.

But she knew she’d have a tough time convincing the detective that Oscar had faked his death, so instead of identifying him as the former owner of the Green Vase antique shop, she provided the name of his most recent alias, fried chicken restaurateur James Lick.

“I wish I could be more helpful,” Mabel had concluded with a weak smile.

“There, there, miss,” the detective had replied. “You’ve given us a great lead.” She flipped shut her notepad and handed Mabel her business card.

“If you think of anything else, please give me a call.”

• • •

MABEL SET DOWN
her knitting. Her hands had begun to sweat from the frantic pace of the needles, and she had started to lose her grip. She glanced at the scarf’s top rows. The last several stitches had been strung too tight. She would have to pull them out.

It had been a frustrating couple of months, Mabel thought wearily. Oscar and Sam had gone into hiding the night of Spider’s murder, and so far, the police had been unable to locate them.

How could she feel safe with two dangerous criminals on the loose? What if they found out she was the witness who had seen them fleeing City Hall? It had been a relief, in a way, to move out of San Francisco. She’d taken extra precautions when renting her Sacramento apartment, picking a building with state-of-the-art security, ensuring that her address and phone number were unlisted.

Mabel wrung her hands for several minutes before reaching for her purse. She took out the business card given to her by the detective.

Perhaps she should call and ask if the police had made any progress.

Maybe it was time she gave them another clue to Oscar’s real identity.

After checking that the Lieutenant Governor was still fast asleep, she picked up the phone and began to dial.

CLEAN CATS

OSCAR’S NIECE LOCKED
the front door to the Green Vase as she watched the Previous Mayor depart down Jackson Street. He had left behind the photocopied picture of Coit Tower’s
City Life
mural—the image that included her uncle and his friend Harold standing in the mural hallway.

Thoughtfully tapping the tulip-shaped doorknob, she stared out at the rain.

She couldn’t imagine why Spider Jones had stored this picture in his hidden research files, but she could no longer ignore the link between the young man’s death and her uncle’s and Sam’s disappearances.

Holding up the picture, she studied Oscar’s face, the paint brush he held in his hand, and the equipment on the floor at his feet. She could discern nothing unusual about the layout.

Glancing up at the ceiling, she remembered the painted message she’d found on the kitchen floor. Then she returned her gaze to the photocopied picture.

She had better learn everything she could about that mural.

Turning away from the windows, the niece folded the paper and slid it into the cash register’s bottom drawer. She looked at the red footprints that tracked across the storeroom floor, quickly focusing her attention on Rupert and Isabella, both of whom were still covered in red paint.

“First things first,” she said briskly. “You two are getting a bath.”

Suddenly awaking from his nap on the seat of the leather recliner, Rupert’s head jerked up with alarm.

In his vocabulary, the word
bath
was second only to
diet
in terms of its visceral offense.

His eyes opened wide as his person crept slowly toward the recliner. His fluffy tail thumped against the seat cushion.

Isabella called out a warning.

“Mrao!”

The niece made a lunge for the aquaphobic feline, but he eluded her grasp, leaping from the recliner, scrambling across the showroom floor, and sprinting up the stairs.

• • •

SEVERAL HOURS LATER,
the niece settled into the living room couch. Two damp and almost-paint-free cats rested peacefully on either side. It had taken a great deal of shampoo and much vigorous scrubbing to remove the paint from their coats. A few tiny flecks still remained on the pink padding of their paws, but given the paint-spattered starting point, the woman deemed the bathing operation a success.

Of course, the niece had incurred the regular round of gouges, scrapes, and scratches. She held out her hands, surveying the damage. She’d smeared antibiotic cream over all of her wounds; the worst of them had received a bandage covering. Considering the amount of cat-cleaning done during the baths, she mused, her injuries could have been far worse.

Closing her eyes, the niece leaned back into the couch cushions. Every muscle ached from exhaustion.

Once the bathing operation was concluded, she had started to work on the showroom and kitchen. After a couple of hours spent crawling around on her hands and knees, she had managed to wipe up the bulk of the spilled paint. A solvent had facilitated the paint removal, but even so, the process had required a great deal of elbow grease.

“The house has never been cleaner.” She sighed wearily and then looked sideways at Rupert. “That’ll last about twenty-four hours.”

Stretching his front legs across the couch, Rupert breathed out an agreeing snore.

From the niece’s opposite side, Isabella tapped a front paw against her person’s knee, as if reminding her to get back to the business of the mural.

“Mrao.”

• • •

UNDER ISABELLA’S CLOSE
supervision, the niece pulled out the reference book she’d retrieved during the Previous Mayor’s visit. Flipping through the pages, she found an overview on the city’s Depression-era artists and began to read.

Examples of New Deal art, like the murals in Coit Tower, were scattered across San Francisco. The initial public works program had been so successful, additional murals were commissioned in other public spaces, such as the Rincon Post Office and the Beach Chalet at Golden Gate Park.

Many of the artists were inspired by renowned Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who made several visits to San Francisco, often with his wife, Freida. Rivera himself created three murals for the Bay Area, including one located inside the Pacific Stock Exchange building.

Rotund and charismatic, Rivera dominated the world art scene of the early 1900s, leading an artistic movement called “social realism” that strove to capture the often dismal lives of the working poor. His controversial paintings were infused with left-leaning political themes, an element that frequently caused friction with the benefactors who commissioned his works. Nelson Rockefeller famously destroyed a Rivera mural in New York’s Rockefeller Center when the artist refused to remove an image of Vladimir Lenin from its center.

The Coit Tower muralists took up an active defense of their mentor. In retribution for the destruction of Rivera’s Rockefeller mural, a Communist sickle and hammer symbol appeared over one of the windows in the tower’s circular hallway. It was the only item in the finished project to face censorship and removal.

As the niece reached the end of the article, she honed in on its concluding paragraph with interest.

Given the public scrutiny the artists received for their government-funded works, the New Deal murals were riddled with symbols and secret meanings, some only discernible by a close study of the time frame represented in any particular piece—and some known only to the artists themselves.

• • •

CLOSING THE BOOK,
the niece pondered the article as she recapped her day.

A flood of images swept through her brain: Monty and his morbid sketch, Dilla winking as she nodded toward the
City Life
mural, the wet footprints appearing in Coit Tower’s hallway, the Previous Mayor and his photocopied photo, and, finally, the red painted message on her kitchen floor—accompanied by the same sneakered footprints.

She rubbed her eyes, trying to make sense of it all.

Was the mural another of her uncle’s treasure hunt quests? How did the murdered intern fit into the picture? Had Spider uncovered something about Oscar’s past? Is that what got him killed? Was her uncle a conspirator in the murder or had he disappeared to escape a similar fate?

Most important, who had left the message painted on her kitchen floor?

There was only one way to find out.

She gently stroked Isabella’s head, and the cat pushed against her human’s hand, enjoying the massage.

Thinking of the cryptic message, the niece said sleepily, “Tomorrow, we’re going to follow the murals.”