How to Paint a Cat (Cats and Curios Mystery) (23 page)

FRISKED

“WE’RE ONLY HERE
for a few hours,” Sam said as he drove the white cargo van through San Francisco’s waterlogged streets. Rain drumrolled against the van’s metal roof and streamed down the front windshield.

“What’s going on?” the niece demanded. “Is Oscar in trouble? The police are looking for both of you.”

Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat before providing an evasive response. “We had to come back to fetch something.”

The niece frowned, perplexed by all of the secrecy. “I ran into Dilla at Coit Tower. She seemed to be giving me some sort of clue about Arnautoff’s
City Life
painting. When I got home, there was paint all over the kitchen and a message to ‘Follow the Murals.’ Since then, I’ve been running all over town looking at New Deal–era murals, trying to find a connection . . .”

Sam tapped the steering wheel, as if endorsing her efforts.

“Sounds like you’re on the right track,” he said encouragingly.

“For what?” she demanded. “What am I searching for?”

A gap-toothed grin spread across his freckled face.

“You’ll know when you find it.”

• • •

A FEW MINUTES
later, Sam pulled to the curb on Van Ness, around the corner from City Hall, and flicked on his hazard lights. Given the inauguration traffic and the blocking local media trucks, this was as close as he could get to drop off the niece and the cats.

Sam was planning to sneak into City Hall on his own after he found a place to park. He still had his security pass from his ten years working as a janitor. He would observe the ceremony from a discreet location—then attend to the item that needed to be retrieved.

“That task should be taken care of by the end of today,” he said as the wipers swung back and forth across the windshield. “Then we’ll be on our way again.”

The niece zipped up her raincoat and glanced outside. The sky was still dumping buckets of rain on the city. The cats would stay mostly dry in their protected stroller, but she was going to get soaked.

“What do I do when I reach the end of this mural trail?” she asked, still frustrated by Sam’s response. “How is it going to help you and Oscar? Or are you going to keep running from the police?”

Sam gave her an assuring smile. “Trust me,” he said. “You’ll know.” Then he nodded toward the passenger door. “You’d better get going.”

With a quick wave good-bye, the niece jumped out and ran around to the side cargo door. She had no idea when she would see him—or her uncle—again.

She tried to put on a confident front, but internally, she echoed the concerned “
Mrao
” from Rupert as she pulled the hood of her rain jacket up over her head and soldiered off through the downpour.

• • •

CITY HALL’S PARTY
planners had done their best to festoon the building with inauguration day splendor, but the storm had quickly ravaged the decorations. The wind had ripped the silk streamers from the arches over the front entranceways, and the sparkly bunting that had been strung across the lower eaves hung in sodden rags.

The building looked like a party girl after a wild night on the town, with snagged stockings and mascara running down her cheeks.

At least the interior had retained its dignity, the niece thought as she squeezed the stroller through one of the front doors and stepped out of the rain. Velvet trimming of navy blue and gold adorned the brass fixtures and wrapped around marble columns.

The niece steered the stroller toward the security line for VIPs and registered guests, queuing up behind a number of well-dressed politicians and socialites, all clad in formal attire.

As she stepped up to the scanner, the monitoring guard looked quizzically at her soggy tennis shoes and sopping wet hair. Then he directed his gaze to the two cats sitting in the stroller.

“Ma’am,” he said sternly, “we can’t let those cats in here.”

“Okay,” the niece said with a shrug, not the least bit disappointed. She could honestly tell Monty that they had tried to attend.

But as she swung the stroller toward the exit, a voice spoke up from the other side of the security tables.

“Wait a minute,” a supervising guard called out. “Are you the cat lady?”

Meekly, the niece nodded as everyone else in the crowded lobby stopped talking and turned to stare.

Her face turned red. She noticed reporter Hoxton Finn standing at the edge of the security area. With her luck, this little episode would make the humor segment on the evening news.

“I have a note on that,” the man continued loudly, as if he were enjoying the audience. “Do you have your passes?”

Reluctantly, the niece pulled the packet out of her jacket pocket and handed it to the guard. He made a show of reviewing the paperwork.

“You’re a friend of the interim mayor?” he asked, raising an inquiring eyebrow. He waved his pen at the stroller. “
All
of you are friends of Mayor Carmichael?”

The niece pushed her wet hair from her face and nodded. Over the surrounding whispers and giggles, she heard Hoxton Finn scribbling furiously in his notebook.

“And, uh, this is Rupert
the cat
and Isabella
the cat
?” he asked officiously, emphasizing their species identification.

Deciding to accept her fate, the niece took in a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. Looking the man in the eye, she replied with a terse affirmative.

“Yes, yes, they are,” she said forcefully. “Can we just move through the line here?” She paused, pursing her lips, before uttering a phrase she’d never fathomed she would use to her advantage. “Mayor Carmichael is expecting us.”

The supervisor backed off his mocking stance.

“I’m sorry. We’re just struggling to find the right protocol here, ma’am. We’re not used to screening, uh, felines.”

He stepped to the side of the stroller and motioned for the junior agent to move in.

“Do you mind if we do a quick search of each cat?” he asked smoothly.

Begrudgingly, the niece hooked a leash into Isabella’s harness and helped her out of the stroller’s mesh-covered compartment.

The first guard knelt beside the cat, unsure of how to proceed. Isabella growled, ever so slightly, a low menacing warning. The man angled his head, inspecting her from either side, and then held his hands up, capitulating.

“All good on this one,” he reported, standing and quickly backing away.

A second guard had scooped up Rupert from the stroller.

“Wow, this one’s got a lot of hair!” he said, gently pressing his fingers against Rupert’s round stomach. Fluffy white clumps floated up into the room. The supervisor, standing nearby, reached for his handkerchief to smother a sneeze.

Rupert looked up at his person as the guard handed him back to her. His blue eyes crossed in confusion.

What just happened
?
he thought, shaking his head.
I’ve been frisked!

AN INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING

A TRIO OF
trumpets trilled a salute as the city’s new mayor pivoted at the top of the central marble staircase and began a regal descent.

The landing at the foot of the stairs had been set up to serve as the stage for the inauguration ceremonies. Temporary seating spread across the floor of the rotunda for the standing-room-only crowd.

Monty paused as he reached the bottom steps, beaming at the assembled audience.

The first row was taken up by the most important dignitaries, starting with the newly elected Lieutenant Governor, who was accompanied by the obligatory guests of his wife, baby, and administrative assistant. Alongside the Lieutenant Governor’s entourage sat the Previous Mayor, his bald head shining in the floodlights. Several government officials, US senators, and representatives filled in the rest of the premium space.

The board of supervisors, most with sheepish expressions on their faces, had been relegated to the second row.

Noted members of the public filled in the rest of the reserved seating, leaving the journalists and media types to edge into the remaining openings. Hoxton Finn and his ever-present notebook had commandeered a foldout chair on the end of the last row.

And there, a few feet away from the reporter, Monty found his special guests: the niece and her two cats. Isabella, still in her harness, sat politely on the niece’s lap, while Rupert rolled over inside the stroller’s passenger compartment and yawned sleepily.

Feeling increasingly pleased and confident, Monty gazed up at the balcony overlooking the rotunda. Standing in the shadows, he spied a pair of unlikely janitors, one with thinning white hair and rounded shoulders, the other hulking with a scraggly red beard. Even the Bohemians had sent a delegation, he mused.

Completing his perusal of the crowd, there was one absence Monty was happy to note. As far as he could see, there was no ghost.

It was all he could do to suppress a giggle.

• • •

ISABELLA SCANNED THE
audience, conducting her own surveillance of the inauguration area from her seat on her person’s lap. Methodically, she filtered through the various humans gathered in the crowd, dismissing them, one by one, until her gaze settled on her target.

The cat’s claws extended, reflexively, drawing a muffled wince from her person.

Her eyes had just latched onto Spider’s murderer.

THE BASEMENT

“THAT WAS SOMETHING
I never thought I’d see,” the niece said as Monty worked the receiving line snaking through City Hall’s rotunda.

Isabella murmured in agreement. With the inauguration over, the niece had returned the cat to the stroller’s passenger compartment. In the stroller beside his sister, Rupert yawned sleepily. He had slept through most of the ceremony.

The niece shook her head at the implausible scene. Even after witnessing the event firsthand, she still found it hard to believe.

Montgomery Carmichael was now the official mayor of San Francisco.

The man once mocked by all—by some as recently as the start of the inauguration ceremony—stood at the center of political admiration. By coronation, he had been transformed from an object of derision to the focus of those seeking favor. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to be near him: to shake his hand, to share a joke, anything to demonstrate their friendship with San Francisco’s newfound wunderkind.

The same supervisors who had whispered disparaging comments as Monty paraded down the central marble staircase now elbowed one another for the chance to pose next to him in photographs. The newspaper columnists who had derided the day’s inauguration as “Mont-apocalypse” each vied for the new mayor’s attention, seeking punchy quotes to use in their next byline.

Such was the fickle character of human nature, the niece mused.

She glanced up at the dome, several hundred feet above the rotunda floor, and the arched windows that framed the building’s upper walls.

If the dark storm swirling overhead offered any prediction of the future, the adulation would be short-lived.

Monty wrapped an arm around the Lieutenant Governor’s shoulders. With his free hand, he raised a triumphant fist as flashbulbs exploded in the air.

“At least he’s not letting this go to his head,” the niece said with a sigh.

From the stroller, Isabella offered up a concurring
“Mrao.”

• • •

HAVING OBSERVED MORE
than enough of Monty’s moment of glory, the niece turned the stroller toward the front lobby and began making her way out of the rotunda.

She was halfway to the security barriers when the carriage began to shake from a commotion in the passenger compartment. Looking down, she saw that Isabella was stabbing her front paws at the enclosure netting.

Concerned, the woman circled to the side of the stroller and crouched to the ground.

“What seems to be the problem?”

“Wrao,”
Isabella called out, eying the niece with a stern expression.

“Having issues with Rupert?” she asked, trying to be sympathetic. The orange and white lump curled up beneath the blankets thumped his tail in sleeping rebuke.

“Wrao,”
Isabella repeated, a sense of frustration in her voice.

Puzzled, the niece glanced around the area where she’d parked the stroller. They were inside the building’s front lobby, near the bank of elevators. She studied the labels on the brass fronting. The cars climbed four floors up, stopping along the way at the mayor’s office suite—and traveled down one level to the basement.

“Mrao,”
Isabella remarked, this time encouragingly.

“Not the mayor’s office,” the niece murmured. “I can’t imagine you want to spend any more time with Monty. Plus, I don’t need him asking questions about the green takeout box we found at the Rincon Center.”

A low growl confirmed that assessment.

“So that leaves the basement,” the niece reasoned. “What’s in the basement?” she asked—and then answered her own question.

“The office space where the murdered intern used to work,” she said softly. “It’s not part of our mural quest, but that’s where the Previous Mayor found the photo of Oscar standing in front of
City Life
. Maybe we should take a look around, just in case there’s anything he missed.”

Standing, she grabbed the stroller’s handle and steered it toward the elevators.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” she muttered to herself.

A predictable response floated up from the stroller.

“Mrao.”

• • •

MINUTES LATER, THE
niece pushed the stroller out of the elevator platform and into City Hall’s much quieter basement level. They were stopped only briefly by a patrolling security guard. A flash of the special visitor passes quashed his objection to their wanderings, if not his curious expression.

The niece and the cats had visited City Hall’s basement before—although on that occasion, they had been following a trail of frogs. Glancing up and down the empty corridors, the woman couldn’t help thinking that she preferred tracking frogs to sleuthing around the murdered intern’s workspace. She wasn’t ready to admit she’d seen a ghost in the frog fountain or that a spiritual being had left the footprints at Coit Tower and in her kitchen, but she didn’t have a satisfactory alternative explanation for those events either.

Isabella issued her regular navigational instructions as the niece rolled the stroller down the hallway. They passed a long line of locked office doors before reaching an intersection with a narrower passageway.

The niece paused, trying to remember the basement’s layout from her previous visit. The walls had been painted since then, and several pieces of new artwork had been hung, making it difficult for her to match the current schematic with the fuzzy one in her memory.

Even Isabella was feeling a little lost. The feline’s voice warbled with uncertainty as they rounded yet another corner.

In the end, it was Rupert who alerted them to the unmarked entrance to the area housing the overflow cubicles for the building’s lowest-level staffers and interns. His overactive sense of smell apparently picked up on the residual fumes from the endless takeout lunches that had been eaten in the cubicle area.

The niece manned the stroller like a Geiger counter, measuring her progress by gauging the intensity of Rupert’s snorkeling sniffs.

“It’s a shame we can’t patent this technology,” she said as she pushed the stroller through the doorway to the cubicle area.

• • •

THEY PASSED SEVERAL
empty cubicles before they found the one at the far end of the room that had once belonged to Spider.

Set up as a shrine to the fallen intern, it was easy to pick out.

A red bicycle leaned against the cubicle’s prefab wall; a matching helmet dangled by its chinstrap from the handlebars. Mementos of the intern’s life had been pinned to a pegboard or arrayed on a nearby ledge.

The item that had led Rupert’s homing radar through the basement to this location lay on the center of the desk: another grease-stained paper carton that had once held a generous serving of Lick’s fried chicken.

Rupert nearly passed out from the rapid intake of air. The niece examined the carton, but found nothing more of note. Its presence was curious, but then, a lot of people had enjoyed the restaurant’s fried chicken.

Isabella pushed her head against the netting, trying to see out as the niece explored the rest of the cubicle area.

“I’m sure the police have already been through all this,” she murmured as she sifted through an innocuous-looking pile of papers stacked on a shelving unit. The documents appeared to be photocopies of draft legislation from last fall’s board meetings. “I don’t know what we could possibly find at this point that would be helpful.”

Just as she reached the bottom of the stack, Isabella chirped out a warning. Looking up, the woman heard a pair of voices at the room’s front entrance.

Instinctively, the niece felt the need to hide. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, but the guilt associated with snooping overwhelmed rationality and common sense.

She shoved the stroller into the next empty cubicle and squatted down behind the partition as two men approached Spider’s cubicle.