Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Sidekick. Purrfect Deseit. Purrfect Ruse [calibre 5.14.0]

“Can you access that footage?”

Chase nodded, and messed around on his computer some. Finally the screen showed some grainy black-and-white footage of the intersection in question, and so for the next fifteen minutes we all watched… nothing. No cars passing by at that time of night. And then, suddenly, a car did pass. It crossed the intersection and then in a flash was gone.

“Is that the right direction?” asked Odelia.

“Yeah, it is. They’re coming from the neighborhood and driving away from town.”

“Can you see the license plate?”

Chase paused the footage, then selected the part containing the license plate and blew it up and jotted down the number. He typed it into another application, looking it up in the registry. And when the name popped up on the screen, they both gasped.

“Ruth Harrison!” Odelia cried.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Chase said.

“What was Franklin’s mother doing out there? And, more importantly, could she be our mystery caller?”

“Why don’t we go and ask her?” Chase suggested, and grabbed his coat.

Arriving back at the house, this time with Chase behind the wheel of his squad car and Odelia riding shotgun, Odelia had that excited sensation that she was close to solving a baffling mystery.

“There’s probably a perfectly good explanation,” said Chase as they got out of the car and walked up to the house. “So don’t get your hopes up, all right?”

When he rang the doorbell, this time it was Ruth Harrison herself who opened the door. When Chase flashed his badge, a look of fear briefly flashed across the woman’s face.

“Chase Kingsley, Hampton Cove police department,” he introduced himself. “And you’ve met Odelia Poole, my civilian consultant.”

“And also your wife, or so I’ve been told,” said the woman, quickly regaining her poise.

“Yeah, we got married last week,” said Chase with a slight grin.

“Congratulations,” said Mrs. Harrison as she stepped back to let them in. Once more they passed through to the sitting groom. “If you’ve come to talk to Marvin, I’m afraid you just missed him. He drove back into town to attend to some business.”

“It’s actually you we want to talk to,” said Chase, not beating about the bush.

“Me?”

“Yeah, something has come to our attention that we’d like to run by you.”

Odelia and Chase took a seat on the davenport, with Ruth Harrison opting for a chair.

“What were you doing outside the house where your son Franklin lived on the night of the fire, Mrs. Harrison?” asked Chase.

“What do you mean? I was never there, at that filthy place.”

“If you weren’t there, then how do you know it was filthy?” asked Odelia.

“People have told me these things, Miss Poole. They knew how concerned I was for the wellbeing of my son, and so they reported back to me what was going on in his life.”

Chase had taken out his phone and now showed it to Mrs. Harrison. “This is a picture taken with a traffic camera at the intersection close to Parker Street 51, Mrs. Harrison. You will note the timestamp, and also the license plate, which is clearly visible. A license plate, I might add, which is registered in your name. So I’ll ask you again: what was your car doing out there, five minutes after a person using a voice changing app called 911?”

The woman stared at the picture for a moment, then finally relented. “Yes,” she said. “I was driving that car. I–I didn’t want to be associated with this mess, so I used a voice changer on my phone when I called in the fire. I’m sorry for lying to you, Miss Poole, but…”

“Yes, why did you lie?” asked Chase.

She folded her hands in her lap. “You must understand: even though Franklin had gone down a dark road, he was still my son, and I still loved him and wanted him to turn things around and get on his feet again. So that night I decided to pay him a visit. I’d heard he’d been kicked out of the apartment where he lived and had shacked up with a couple of his notorious friends in some squat place, so I wanted to talk to him and plead with him to change his ways. And to reconcile with his father before it was too late.”

“Did you go in through the back?” asked Odelia.

“I did,” said Ruth after a pause. “I thought if only I could talk to Franklin… But when I got there it was obvious there was nothing I could do. The building was on fire, so I turned back and called the police, then drove off, hoping they’d be able to save my son.”

“You didn’t go in?”

“N-no I didn’t. There was a lot of smoke and flames. There was simply no way…”

“You didn’t think to stick around until the fire department got there?”

“No. Like I said, I didn’t want to be associated with this mess. I have Marvin to think about, and my husband, and of course the business, which relies very much on keeping its reputation intact. I can only imagine what the press would have made of it when they snapped a shot of me at such a notorious drug place, my dead son the addict inside.”

“So you ran.”

“Miss Poole, you can’t understand what it’s been like for us these last couple of years. And also, my husband decided to shut Franklin out of our lives for good. If he’d known I was still in touch with him, he’d have been devastated.” She wrung her hands. “Though it doesn’t matter now, of course.”

Suddenly a young woman stuck her head in the door and announced, “The ambulance is here, Mrs. Harrison.”

“Tell them I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Something wrong?” asked Odelia.

“My husband,” said Ruth. “He died.”

“Died?”

Mrs. Harrison nodded, her face suddenly a mask of grief. “Shortly after you left. I went to check on him, and found him unresponsive. He’d been ill for a long time. In fact the doctor had warned us it could be any day now.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Odelia, and Chase murmured a few words of sympathy.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to bury my husband and my son.” Her composure suddenly crumpled, and a lone tear slid down her cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said as she touched it with the tip of her index finger. “It’s been a terrible week. Probably the worst week of my life.”

Chapter 31

Like before, Dooley and I had been left to our own devices outside. Frankly I preferred it that way. Being out and about is what it’s all about, wouldn’t you agree? And besides, I had some thinking to do: not just about the case, but also about the Harriet versus Shanille war that had broken out and threatened to split cat choir neatly down the middle if I didn’t come up with something to stop that from happening.

We wandered over to where Jane still stood, and her face lit up when she saw us. Dooley, of course, kept an eye out for Chester’s pitchfork, but so far so good.

“Hey, fellas,” she said. “Twice in one day, huh? What did I do to deserve this?”

“Nothing special,” I said. “Just that one of your humans seems to have gotten herself into some kind of trouble, that’s all.”

“Which human would that be?” she asked, interested.

“Ruth,” I said. “She drove her car into town the night her son died, and forgot to mention it to the police.”

“Ruth is getting old,” Jane said. “It must have slipped her mind.”

“I doubt it,” I said dryly. “But no worries. Odelia and Chase are on the case. They’ll get to the bottom of this thing. So what’s happening with you?”

“Nothing much,” said Jane. “Only that they’re having some builders coming in soon, or so I’ve been told by a little birdie.”

I knew we could take that literally, and said, “They’re building some kind of extension? Putting in a pool, Jacuzzi?”