Meow or Never (Vanessa Abbot Cat Protection League Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) (3 page)

“This is all wild speculation,” Pete
told her.

“I know,” she replied. “But we should
take Henry’s word for it that this has something to do with our murder case. He
wouldn’t steer us wrong. We should know that by now.”

Pete laughed again. “All right. I’m
willing to go along with it in the absence of anything better. Besides, it
gives us another lead to follow. You, Penny and I may not have ever set foot in
that plant, but Alan did. That gives us a place to start.”

Vanessa stood on the sidewalk outside
the Opportunity Shop with Detective Wheeler at her side. He squeezed her hand.
“So I’ll see you for dinner tonight?”

She nodded and smiled at him. “I’ll
meet you at Juliani’s after I make the deposit at the bank.”

He raised her hand to his lips and
kissed the back of her knuckles. “Until we meet again.”

She laughed and blushed. “Stop
stalling. You’ll be late.”

He smiled and let go of her hand. He
took a step backwards toward his car, but almost tripped over a cat on the
sidewalk. He looked down and found AngelPie leaning against his shins. “Hello,
Gorgeous. What are you doing off your shelf?”

She meowed up at him, and he bent down
to give her a stroke. “Come on, AngelPie,” Vanessa told her. “You shouldn’t be
outside the shop, and Pete has to leave now. Come on.”

She tried to gather the cat into her
arms, but AngelPie moved out of her reach and rubbed harder against Pete’s
legs. He scratched her and praised her. He tried to take another step toward
his car, but she kept getting in his way and even sat on his feet. He tried to
ease her off, but she kept moving into his path.

Pete exchanged glances with Vanessa.
Vanessa grabbed AngelPie by the scruff of the neck to hold her still, and Pete
stepped around her to the car door. Vanessa lifted AngelPie into her arms and
held her close. “I know you love Detective Wheeler, but you’ll see him later.
Now say good-bye.”

Pete opened the door and smiled at her
over his shoulder. “See you later. Good-bye, AngelPie. I love you.”

Vanessa laughed. He slid into the
driver’s seat, and she waved with her free hand. AngelPie meowed down at his
image in the driver’s side window. He waved back at them and started the
ignition. He popped the emergency brake, shifted into gear, and drove off down
the street. Vanessa watched him go, and AngelPie watched, too, meowing loudly.

Vanessa rubbed her head. “What’s got
into you?” She started back toward the shop.

A strange sound brought Vanessa’s
attention back toward the street. She turned and noticed Pete’s car rolling
down the hill. She expected that he would stop at the stop sign and turn off
toward the police station. She waited for his brake lights to come on.

The red lights blinked on, but the car
didn’t slow down for the stop sign. It rolled faster and faster down the hill.
The front wheels jerked first one way and then the other, but the car sped on.
Pete Wheeler jumped around in the driver’s seat, but he couldn’t do anything to
stop the car from speeding out of control.

Vanessa called out, “Hey!” but she
couldn’t do anything to stop it either. AngelPie meowed at the car in a louder
and more plaintive voice than ever. They watched in frozen horror as his car
raced past the stop sign and plunged into the intersection.

Oncoming cars on the side street screeched
to a stop and one swerved into the oncoming lane, running head first into
another car. The two cars bounced off each other and came to rest at odd angles
to their respective lanes.

Pete’s car plowed through the
intersection and jumped up onto the sidewalk on the other side. Women on foot
screamed and leapt out of the way. Then, with a terrible crunch of collapsing
metal and the shattering of broken glass, the car smashed head-on into the
corner of the nearest building. Vanessa stared at the scene in shock, but
AngelPie wriggling in her arms brought her out of her trance. She set the cat
on the ground and raced down the hill toward Pete’s car.

Steam billowed out from under the hood,
and radiator fluid dripped from underneath the car. Vanessa grabbed the
driver’s door and yanked on it, but she couldn’t get it open. She gasped for
breath, but she couldn’t see through the steam to make out if Pete was alive or
dead in the driver’s compartment. A sob choked her throat, and she tore at the
door even harder than before.

Then, ever so slowly, the driver’s
window slid down. The steam cleared, and Vanessa found herself gazing at his
face. He gave her a feeble grin and dabbed a gash above his eyebrow with the
corner of his sleeve.

“Are you all right?” she cried.

He nodded. “I’m okay. That was a close
call.”

He tried the door a few more times from
the inside, but it stuck fast. He climbed through the passenger door and
surveyed the intersection. All the drivers and passengers from the other cars
stood around talking and describing the accident.

“What happened?” Vanessa asked.

“Did you see?” he asked. “My brakes
failed.”

“How is that possible?” she asked. “You
never had any trouble with this car before.”

“No, I didn’t,” he replied. “If I had
to guess, I’d say it wasn’t an accident.”

Vanessa’s mouth fell open. “You can’t
be serious!”

He put his head to one side and studied
her. “We were just talking about Walter going after the people who put him in
jail, and now this. What other explanation is there?”

“I don’t know.” Vanessa waved her hand
toward the car. “Maybe you should get it checked by a mechanic every now and
then instead of doing all the work yourself.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he shot
back.

“I’m just saying maybe you don’t know
everything there is to know about cars,” she explained.

His scowl made her squirm. “Is that so?
Well, look at this.” He bent down next to the rear wheel and put his arm up
under the car. He groped around and brought out the frayed end of a steel
cable. “Do you see that? That’s my brake line. It’s been cut.”

Vanessa peered down at the disheveled
bundle of wires. “Are you sure? How can you tell it didn’t just break?”

He flung the cable to the ground and
jumped to his feet with an exasperated gasp. He grabbed Vanessa by the hand and
dragged her around the car to the other rear wheel. “Look.” He brought out the
other severed brake cable. “Now do you believe me?”

Vanessa stared at it. “But....that’s
impossible.”

Pete dropped the cable and stood up.
“It’s possible, all right. And here’s the evidence right in front of your eyes.
You might be right about one brake cable failing by itself, but not two. They
couldn’t both fail at the same time on the same day, just when I was getting
ready to drive down that hill. It couldn’t happen.”

“Are you telling me that someone cut
those cables to try to kill you?” she murmured.

“Someone did it,” he replied, “but I
think we can assume it wasn’t Walter. Walter is under lock and key on the other
side of the country. He must have hired someone to do it.”

“Who could have done it?” she asked.
“It couldn’t have been Douglas Middleton. It’s the middle of a workday. He’ll
be working at the plant right now.”

“Walter must have agents all over this
town,” Pete replied. “He used to have his headquarters here. He must have
dozens of people he can call on to cut the odd brake cable here and there for
him.”

Vanessa shook her head. “I still can’t
believe it.”

“Believe it.” AngelPie jumped out of
Vanessa’s arms and rubbed her side and tail against Detective Wheeler’s legs
again. She nuzzled his shins with her cheek and purred. He gazed down at her.
“I guess that’s what AngelPie was trying to tell me. She didn’t want me to get
into that car.”

“We should listen to the cats when they
try to tell us something,” Vanessa agreed.

“The question is how we’re going to
protect ourselves from now on,” he told her. “I think I better take you down to
the police station until we can find somewhere safer for you to stay.”

“I can’t do that,” she told him. “I’ve
got an appointment this afternoon. And what about my cats? I can’t go into any
kind of protective custody situation without them. They have no one else in the
world to take care of them.”

“I’ll go by your apartment and feed
them for you,” he replied. “You don’t have to worry about them, not when you’re
in a life and death situation yourself.”

Vanessa shook her head and squared her
shoulders. “No, I won’t go into hiding. If Walter is after us, we should stay
out in the open. That will make him have to come out into the open, too.”

“You don’t have to choose the most
dangerous moment of our lives to prove how independent and stubborn you are,”
he shot back. “Someone just tried to kill me. You could be next. You’re coming
with me to the police station right now. That’s an order.”

“What about Penny and Alan?” she asked.
“Are you going to order them to drop everything and rush to the police station,
too?”

“They’re different,” he told her.

“Yeah,” Vanessa replied. “You’re not in
a relationship with them. If it isn’t important enough for you to protect them,
then it isn’t important enough for me to turn my back on everything and run and
hide.”

“What have you got going on that’s so
important?” he asked.

“I’m meeting a real estate agent,” she
told him. “I’m going to look at a piece of property outside of town. I’m
thinking about buying it.”

“What are you doing that for?” he
asked. “You’ve got your shop, and you’ve got your apartment. Why do you want to
buy a piece of property?”

“I want to set up a sanctuary for
homeless and mistreated cats,” she told him. “I talked it over with the state
representative for the Cat Protection League yesterday. I have enough money in
the bank to make the down payment, and if I become the official area
representative for the organization, I can get government funding to cover the
mortgage payment.”

“I thought you were the President of
the Cat Protection League,” he remarked.

“I’m the President of this chapter,”
she explained. “There’s a nationwide governing body above me. All management
decisions like that have to be decided by the executive board.”

“So you’re meeting a real estate
agent,” he went on. “How long will that take? You could come down to the police
station afterwards.”

Vanessa shook her head. “I’m not going
to bury my head in the sand. If there’s a killer running around Caspar
Crossing, I want to help catch him.”

He peered at her out of the corner of
his eye. “You’re not going to do anything dangerous, are you?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” she replied. “But
if Walter or some other person is after us in this town, the best thing we can
do is stay visible. That’s the best way we can find out who it is and what
they’re planning next.”

He turned away. “All right. I can see
that you’re not going to listen to me. You go with your real estate agent.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m going to track down Penny
Cartwright and Alan Braithwaite,” he told her. “They should know the danger
they’re in. I wasn’t going to say anything yet, but if we’re right and the
explosion at the aluminum plant was intended to kill Alan, then I should offer
them protection, too, at least until we find out who’s doing this.”

A green SUV pulled up to the curb
outside the Opportunity Shop, and the window glided down. A perky young lady in
a black suit and fresh make-up smiled through it at Vanessa. “Are you Vanessa
Abbot?”

Vanessa nodded. “You must be Julie
McLeod.”

“Hop in,” Julie called. “We’ll head
out, if you’re ready.”

Vanessa picked up the crate at her feet
and grabbed the door handle. When she settled herself in the seat, she arranged
the crate on the floor between her knees. Julie eyed it. “What’s in the box?”

Vanessa blushed. “It’s one of my cats.”

Julie’s eyes widened. “One of.....?”

Vanessa nodded. “I have twelve of
them—I mean thirteen. I told you on the phone I’m the President of the Cat
Protection League. I’m looking at this property to start a cat sanctuary for
neglected and abandoned cats. That’s what I do.”

“You told me on the phone,” Julie
replied, “but you didn’t say anything about bringing one of them with you.”

“I have to make sure the place is
suitable,” Vanessa explained. “How could I know that if I didn’t see one of my
most trusted cats there, in that environment? I would always be wondering until
the day I moved in if it was right for them. If I moved in and it wasn’t right
for them, it would be a disaster.”

Julie shook her head and turned out
into traffic. “Suit yourself. I have to tell you, though, this will be the
first time I’ve ever shown a property to a cat.”

Vanessa laughed. “I’m sure it will be
the last time, too. If this property works out for us, it could be wonderful.”