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

  “It sounds to me like it could only be an inside job,” Vanessa suggested. “Who would have that kind of time and opportunity, if not someone who belonged in the foundry in the first place?”

  He grinned and pointed at her. “Now you’re thinking. There’s one more thing I thought you ought to know about.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Do you remember Douglas Middleton, the plant manager you thought was trying to stop us from investigating?” he asked.

  “How could I forget?” she replied.

  “Well, it turns out he has a history of criminal activity,” Pete told her. “He was involved in a bank heist gone wrong when he was a young man. After he served five years in the slammer, he went back to school and got his engineering degree. That’s when he came to work as manager of the aluminum plant.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Vanessa countered. “Lots of people get into trouble when they’re young and then clean up their lives later.”

  “That’s not all, though,” he went on. “The mastermind behind the bank heist was an old friend of ours. Douglas Middleton was working for Walter Connelly.”

  Vanessa almost choked on her tea. “Walter?”

  Pete nodded. “I don’t think it’s very likely that Middleton was able to walk away from his connection with Walter. Once a person gets mixed up in an operation as big as Walter’s, they stay in it for life. Middleton would have to go into the witness protection program to get out of Walter’s criminal empire. If I had to guess, I would say Walter put Middleton through engineering school as a reward for keeping his mouth shut in jail. Middleton might have kept his hands clean all these years, but when the hammer came down, Walter called on him to do a job and he did it.”

  Vanessa shuddered. “Are you telling me Walter ordered a hit on Eastman? Why would he do that? Was Eastman involved in Walter’s empire, too?”

  “We don’t know that,” Pete replied. “We don’t even know if the hit was for Eastman at all.”

  “I find this hard to believe,” Vanessa remarked. “Walter controls a vast criminal enterprise. If he wanted to kill someone, he only had to snap his fingers and the person is dead. Why would he go to all the trouble of sabotaging an aluminum plant?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t more trouble,” he suggested. “Maybe it was much easier to order Middleton to create an accident at the plant than to do anything else. Think about it. Here’s Douglas Middleton, living his life with no criminal activity in fifteen years. No one suspects him of anything. He’s manager of the plant. He can order everyone around as he pleases. Maybe he ordered a fire drill to get everyone out of the foundry. He could easily arrange that to happen when the scaffolding was in a convenient place. Then all he had to do was climb up, drill the hole, come down, and order everyone back to work. Job done and no one’s the wiser.”

  Vanessa blinked. “That’s a pretty amazing tale. What else have you got in that box to back it up?”

  Pete’s shoulders sagged. “Nothing.”

  “There must be something in that pile of documents that gives you some clue to this case,” she exclaimed.

  “There’s nothing,” he told her. “There’s nothing in the employment records about any disgruntled employee, or ex-employee, who might want to damage the plant. There’s nothing in Eastman’s record about him having any enemies. There’s not even any evidence that Eastman or any of his fellow employees had anything to do with Walter or his criminal dealings. There’s no connection between this explosion and anyone involved.”

  “We should still keep Walter on our radar,” Vanessa replied. “He’s sent someone to Caspar Crossing before to threaten and kill us. I wouldn’t be surprised if he rigged this explosion to pay us back for sending him to prison.”

  “How could he do that?” Pete asked. “None of the people involved in putting him away had anything to do with the aluminum plant.”

  Vanessa thought it over. “Let’s see. We can rule out Penny Cartwright. She’s a wedding planner and has probably never set foot in that plant. I know I never have. If you hadn’t invited me to view the scene, I never would have gone there.”

  “Ollie Fleetwood is out, too,” Pete added. “He hasn’t been back to town since his arrest, and he won’t be coming back again.”

  “That leaves you and me,” Vanessa concluded. “So why would Walter, or anyone else, blow up an aluminum foundry to harm us?”

  “They wouldn’t,” he replied. “It makes no sense at all.”

  Just then, Henry strolled into the kitchen and meowed up at Vanessa. “Hello there,” she called down to him. “What are you up to?” She picked him up and settled him on her lap. “Take a look at the evidence, Henry. Maybe you can make sense of it.”

  Pete Wheeler laughed, but at that moment, Henry jumped up onto the table and knocked the box of documents to the floor. The papers, photographs and tables scattered. “Henry!” Vanessa gasped.

  Pete gazed down at the mess and sighed. “Oh, well. I guess that’s the end of our brain-storming session for tonight.”

  He bent down and gathered up the papers. Vanessa put Henry back on the floor and helped him collect the evidence. All at once, she gave a cry. “Oh, Henry. Why did I ever doubt you?”

  “What is it?” Pete asked. “What did he find this time?”

  “We should have brought him in here the minute you opened the box,” she told him. “Take a look at this.”

  She handed him a piece of paper. “This is just the list of former employees from the plant, and its dated more than ten years ago. This can’t help us at all. None of these people have been at the plant recently enough to be involved in this murder.”

  Vanessa grinned and pointed at the bottom of the page. “Look.”

  He looked, and then he gasped. “Alan Braithwaite. That’s Penny’s Brother.”

  “And look what it says right there,” Vanessa told him. “Look what it says right next to his name. Pipe fitter. Don’t you remember? Alan got busted for stealing a car when he was working for Ollie Fleetwood in his plumbing business. Alan is a pipe fitter. He worked in that plant a long time ago. What do you want to bet there’s a connection between Alan coming to work there and Douglas Middleton coming to work there?”

  “But what connection could there be?” he asked.

  “Come on, Pete,” she told him. “Put all the puzzle pieces together. Alan was mixed up with Walter’s criminal activities. He got on the wrong side of Walter, and it was because of Alan’s experience that we were able to pin Alfred Botchweather’s murder on him. Alan was going to testify against Walter. Walter wanted to get rid of him the same way he was going to get rid of you, me and Penny.”

  “But he couldn’t have done that by blowing up the aluminum plant,” Pete countered. “Alan hasn’t worked in that plant for years.”

  “We don’t know that,” she explained. “We have to go back through the records and find out if Alan was ever in that plant, even on a casual basis. If he was, Middleton would have known about it. He would have known if Alan was scheduled to come in there anytime in the next few days, and he could have sabotaged that gas line to kill him when he did come in.”

  Pete closed his eyes and shook his head. “This makes no sense at all. How could Middleton have known when the gas line would blow? He would have been taking a terrible chance that it would blow at the wrong time and kill the wrong person.”

  Vanessa nodded. “Maybe he knew exactly when it would blow and something happened so Eastman was there instead of Alan. Maybe Alan got sick, so Eastman had to take his place. Who knows?”

  “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.”

  Chapter 3

  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 de
ath 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.”