Martha Grimes - The Black Cat

Melrose checked his watch. Why in hell didn’t Jury call? What was he supposed to do now?

On his way to Islington, Jury got out his mobile, found Plant’s number, and punched it in.

“Where are you?… You’re still in Chesham? Why haven’t you started back with Schröd… What do you mean you can’t tell the difference?… Well, look at their eyes, what color are they?… Yellowish… what does that mean?… Oh, for God’s sake… we can’t keep Harry at the station for bloody ever…”

On Melrose’s end, he asked, “How was I to know there’d be three black cats to deal with? They all look alike… Dora? Well, of course I asked Dora. She knows Morris; Morris is all she’s sure of. She could tell Morris on a moonless night in an alley of black cats. But she can’t tell Schrödinger, she’s never seen him before, and the other one Sally Hawkins dragged in-”

“Listen,” said Jury, “just stuff one or the other into that carrier, shove it in the car, and get back to Belgravia. You’ve a fifty percent chance of being right, which is what you usually have, and Harry himself might not even know the difference. At least it’ll do for a bit.”

“All right all right all right. What do you mean, ‘what I usually have’?”

Melrose found himself talking to a dead phone. He shook it, as if Jury might fall out.

He tossed his mobile on the table and turned to Dora, who’d been listening to the call with great interest. Adults saying dumb things. “What’d he say? What’re you going to do?”

“What are we going to do, you mean. You are going to help me get those cats into the carrier and the car.”

They both checked to see that Morris was still here and not over there. Yes.

Schrödinger (whichever one she was) and Morris Two were behind the bar. They were at opposite ends of a piece of something-rope, meat, fishbone, who knew?-pulling it in opposite directions.

“You go for one cat; I go for the other. That’s the only way I can think to do it.”

Dora said, “I don’t want to get scratched.”

Melrose ignored that and pulled out the carrier from under the table in the window. “I’m going to put it right on this side of the bar so they don’t see it.” They moved to the bar, and he opened the top of the box. “We’ll go about this slowly.”

Dora looked dubious.

Stealthily, they approached.

Melrose grabbed one cat, which rewarded him by slicing the air at his ear with its claws.

“I’ve got her, I’ve got her!” yelled Dora, wrestling the other one to the ground.

“Okay, we’ll take both.” He pulled over the carrier and together he and Dora shoved in the cat she was holding; Melrose then shoved in the other one with great effort and a good deal of yowling. He shut it, then grabbed it up and headed, once again, for his car and London.

The phone rang as Jury was tying his tie. He picked it up and eyed the tie, wondering if it was sending the right message. It had bunnies on it; they were minute ones, but you could tell they were bunnies if you looked closely. Where in hell had he got it?

“Jury.”

It was DI Jenkins, calling from the Snow Hill station. “I really have nothing I can hold him on.”

“Then just cut him loose. He didn’t do it.”

During the brief silence on the other end of the line, Jury wondered where he had got this tie. And was that a speck of egg or just another bunny?

“You know he didn’t?” said Jenkins.

“No, but I’m pretty certain.” He was more than “pretty” certain.

“Well. The reason nobody saw him in Chesham was because he went to pains that nobody would see him. He didn’t want to be associated, he said, with the bloody swine of a cat-”

“‘Swine of a cat’: I like it. Go on.” The phone’s flex was long enough to get him to the bottle of Macallan on the little table beneath the window, which was what mattered, he had pointed out to Carole-anne. He poured out a measure.

“He’s still saying it was a joke. On you. And you knew it.”

Jury knew all right, but it annoyed him that Jenkins seemed on the verge of believing Harry Johnson, pathological liar. No, wait, this story actually wasn’t a lie. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.” Jury observed that his glass was too tall for a whiskey glass, and he told himself to get some proper ones.

“It’s to do with a dog,” Jenkins labored on. “The one at the house that took a fancy to you.”

“Mungo.”

“He says he told you a very convoluted story about his friend disappearing with that dog and, well, frankly, the man sounded a little mad.”

“He is. He’s a nutter. He told me the story and later denied ever telling it. It was a series of stories, actually. Don’t let him con you, Dennis. He’s a great con artist.”

“But I’m not going to get any more out of him.”

“Thanks for doing this. Sorry you had to waste your time on him.”

As Jury said this, Carole-anne walked into his living room so he could waste his time on her.

“Think nothing of it,” Jenkins said. “I rather enjoyed listening to him. He reminds me of Bruno. You know, the calculating, manipulating bastard in Strangers on a Train.”

Jury said, “You know, you’re right. I never thought of that. Good night, Dennis.” He put down the phone and said to Carole-anne, “Make yourself at home.”

Carole-anne had sat herself on the sofa and started flicking through the magazine she’d found there. One of hers, not Jury’s. He didn’t read BeautyPLUS. “Why’re you wearing your best suit?” Her tone was thick with suspicion.

“Because I’m going out.”

Apparently puzzled, she said, “Out?” as if there were no such place, at least not for him.

Was he really supposed to expand upon out-ness?

“With somebody?” she said.

“Yes. You don’t know her.”

She shut her eyes against the news. Not just a woman, but a new one, as if he kept a stable of women to which he was always adding.

“Who is she?”

“You don’t know her.” He said it again.

Carole-anne slapped over another page of BeautyPLUS.

If there was one thing Carole-anne didn’t need, it was PLUS. The building would be in meltdown.

Jury leaned over to tie his shoe, getting eye level with Carole-anne’s silver-and-gold sandal, straps intertwined. Strappy. “What kind of shoes are those?”

She shut the magazine and looked at her feet as if she needed reminding. “Manolo Blahnik.”

“Another pair? You have that kind of money?”

“That consignment shop on Upper Street.”

He wondered what reversal of fortune could make a woman sell off her Manolo Blahniks. “Tell me: why would a woman spend hundreds on Manolo Blahnik when she could get a perfectly good sandal like that at the Army-Navy?”

“Are you daft?” She actually put by the magazine to assess his daftness.

Jury waited for shoe guidance and got none. “Well? Why? It’s a reasonable question.”

Apparently not. She retrieved BeautyPLUS and continued sorting through it for nuggets.

“You think the answer is that obvious.”

“Of course.” She stretched out one leg and let the silver sandal dangle from her toes.

Definitely designer legs, he thought.

She said, “Did you ever see a shoe like this at the Army-Navy?”

“No, but then I’ve never looked for one.”

“Believe me.” Thinking this an adequate response, she drew back her foot.

“All right, then listen to this, Miss Shoe-savvy: I’ve got three women murdered and the only connection between them is they were all escorts and all wearing designer shoes.”

“You mean those ‘Escort Murders’ they keep talking about?” When he nodded she said, “Well? Tell me about it.”