Leann Sweeney - The Cat, the Wife and the Weapon

“My mom didn’t always make good choices, but she and I were always close,” he said. “She’s settled in for the long haul with Ed and I am so glad she found another decent man. Guess I’m talking about her past because I don’t want to talk about Hilary. I better share what happened in the past few days, though. Maybe then I’ll have the wits to solve a few pressing problems.”

“Start with when you met Hilary or I might get confused. You said this was in North Carolina?” I prompted.

“Yes. In court. I was testifying on a case,” he said with disgust. “That should have been a red flag. She was a witness against her former boss. His business was more than a little illegal since money was being laundered every other hour. I told myself she’d been a pawn, had no idea what her boss was doing until he started asking her to shred anything shredable. Thinking she was innocent was my first mistake. She had these eyes, this way about her. I was toast the minute I saw her.”

“How long before you two married?” I asked. Something in my voice must have bothered Syrah because he reached a paw out and rested it on my shoulder. Syrah was right. Hearing about Tom’s marriage bothered me. No, the fact that he hadn’t told me before today is what bothered me.

“Three months after we met, we tied the knot. Three short months. Same pattern my mother followed. But the love affair wasn’t simply with her. She had a twelve-year-old kid. I cared about Finn—short for Finnian—and missed another red flag. If his mother was as fantastic as I thought she was, why was Finn the most melancholy kid on the planet?”

Not only an ex-wife, but a boy he loved. Wow . “Bet you made Finn less sad. You do that for me all the time.”

For the first time since we sat on the sofa, I felt Tom relax. He even smiled. Chablis wasn’t fooled by the smile because she crawled off my lap, over a disgruntled Merlot and onto Tom’s. She sensed he needed comfort. He stroked her champagne-colored fur with his free hand. “Finn and I bonded. Did all the father-son stuff. Baseball, Nintendo, hiking, camping. Looking back, meeting Finn was the best thing that came out of marrying Hilary.”

Though he needed to know about the other problems, like the half brother who had taken up residence at his place and his sick cat, my news could wait. Tom had lots more to say about the past. “How long were you and Hilary married?” I asked.

“A year,” he said. “Her true colors came out—and hers were mostly black. What did Shakespeare say? Something about smiling and smiling and being a villain? That’s Hilary.”

“Those irreconcilable differences caused the divorce?” I asked, worried I was wandering too far into painful territory.

“That and the fact she cheated on me with my partner, Nolan Roth.” He closed his eyes, jaw tight. “I almost stayed for Finn’s sake, because I understood why he was so miserable. She felt nothing for him. But I knew the marriage couldn’t work. When we divorced, leaving him with her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I feel guilty about it to this day. But I had no choice. I hadn’t adopted him—though I should have—and had no parental rights. Now he’s disappeared and Hilary and Nolan think I encouraged him to run away.” Tom stared down at the purring Chablis. “I didn’t, but I wish I had. Wish I’d found a way to take him away long ago.”

“He ran away? How old is he?” I said.

“Just turned eighteen,” he said.

“And why would those two think you had anything to do with his disappearance?” I asked.

“Because even though I had no legal standing as far as Finn was concerned and was warned to keep my distance—because Hilary said I was a ‘negative influence’—I’ve kept in touch with him. I thought Hilary didn’t know. Obviously she did. Her jerk of a husband took me by surprise the other day. Came busting into my house.”

“Like broke in ?” I said. “How frightening.”

“Yup. He had a gun,” Tom said. “Searched my house, looking for Finn. Said he logged on to Finn’s computer and saw all the e-mails between us—e-mails going back a long time. Stupid to use e-mail, but Finn told me those two completely ignored him, couldn’t have cared less about what he was doing in his spare time.”

“You hadn’t heard from Finn, though?” I said.

“No. What Nolan told me was the scary part—how Finn went missing in the middle of the night. I asked a lot of questions and got no answers except for a pistol whipping. Long story short, we drove in my car all the way to North Carolina to where he and Hilary and Finn lived.” Tom parted his dark hair near his temple and I saw a large gash.

I winced. “Looks like you could have used stitches.”

“Too late for doctoring now, but you can guess I was pretty messed up. He tied a rope from my knee to the steering wheel and cuffed my right hand to the other side of the wheel. We drove for hours like that.”

“What about his car?” I was thinking about the white Ford I saw at Tom’s place, but I had assumed it belonged to Bob. “And why did Nolan need to take you all the way to North Carolina?”

“Okay, going where Nolan and Hilary lived was my idea. A stupid one, looking back. See, I was afraid Nolan was aware how close Finn and my mother were and that he’d end up at her house. Maybe he’d terrorize her trying to get information. I had to protect my mother from him.”

“There’s nothing stupid about protecting Karen,” I said. “How did you convince him to leave Mercy with you?”

“I told him how I was in the security business and could hack into Finn’s computer and discover information from instant messages or any social networking sites Finn frequented, maybe find him through his Internet friends. I called my neighbor to take care of Dashiell and phoned Kara and asked her to handle the business.”

“Why did you drive, though?” I said.

“I told him in this small town people would know I’d disappeared if my car and my van were in the driveway and I was out of touch,” he said. “So we ditched Nolan’s car near the creek and came back to my house. I was dumb enough to think we’d take my van with all my tools. I told Nolan I needed them. But remember, he was a cop once. He knew I probably had at least one gun in the van, not to mention communication equipment. He wasn’t about to offer me any opportunity to get the jump on him. Plus, Nolan figured we wouldn’t have to stop if we took the Prius. For the first time ever, I was pissed off about having a full tank of gas.”

“Did you find anything on Finn’s computer once you got to their place?” I asked.

“I pretended to go through the motions, checked out files and chat rooms and Web sites and told him there was nothing. About then the lightbulb finally came on for Nolan. He figured out I was stalling. So the beatings started—and they weren’t because he thought I could tell him anything. He hated me for sending him to jail.” Tom gave a mirthless laugh. “He enjoyed the heck out of kicking my ass, too.”

“ You sent him to jail?” I said, feeling my eyes widen in surprise.

He nodded. “Oh yeah. Nolan Roth was a dirty cop and I turned him in. He was sure it was because he was sleeping with Hilary. It wasn’t. I’d already made plans to leave her. Nope, I ratted him out because there’s no place on any police force for common criminals.”

“How hard was it to do something like that?” I asked.

“I never lost any sleep,” he said.

“Okay, so what about your ex? Did she… participate in your… abduction ?”

“She was too smart to show her face once we arrived at their house. But she probably had a hand in this. Lucky for me, the second night I was there, Nolan drank too much and passed out. I’d been working on those zip tie restraints every chance I got and they finally gave. I took off. Would have been easier if I’d left in my own car, but Nolan had my keys, my phone and my wallet. I couldn’t risk waking him to get to them.”