Клер Донелли - The Big Kitty

Car—hose—everything sealed … carbon monoxide!

Enough brain cells finally woke up, and she let rip with a fairly naughty word, adding, “Somebody tried to kill us in our sleep!”

“But did you see who stopped it?” Mike bent over the taped end of the hose. Sunny joined him, now making out the tooth and claw marks in the plastic.

“Shadow?” she whispered in disbelief.

“The cat saved us,” Mike said. “He saved us, in spite of what I did to him.”

“What do you mean? What did you do to him? Why was he outside in the first place?”

Her tone of voice must have penetrated Mike’s thoughts, because he quickly straightened up. “We’ll talk about that later,” he said. “Right now I think we’d better call the police.”

*

Sunny had enoughtime to get dressed before a police cruiser arrived. A stocky guy in the uniform of a town constable got out and came up the walk. Sunny opened the door before he rang. “We left everything exactly the way we found it,” she told him.

As he tried to come up with a reply, she saw the ID tag on his chest: B. Semple.

So this is the guy who should have shown up when I found Ada, she thought. The one who’s good at giving out traffic tickets.

“Dispatch said this wasn’t exactly a police emergency,” Constable Semple said in some confusion.

“It might have been a medical emergency, if it had worked out the way it was supposed to,” Sunny told him. “Or a job for the coroner.”

She pointed to the end of the Jeep. “Go take a look.”

Semple took a long minute looking over the nasty little setup. Then he hustled back to his patrol car and got on the radio.

Probably asking for instructions, Sunny thought.

But a moment later, the constable put down his mike and took out a cell phone.

That’s probably Nesbit, Sunny realized. Whatever he’s got to say, he doesn’t want it going out over the public airwaves.

Semple finished his conversation and headed back up the walk, doing his best to keep a poker face. “This vehicle doesn’t belong to you?”

By now, Mike had come down to join them. “It’s not ours. I never saw that Wrangler in the neighborhood before.”

“Okay. When did you first notice it?”

That sent Mike off to the races, giving the whole story, chapter and verse, excluding the fact that the cat had saved them.

Semple went back out to examine the hose again. When he returned, he looked more harassed than poker-faced.

“So, you found this car parked outside shortly after dawn. Did anything wake you up? Did you notice any odd noises?”

“I was sleeping,” Mike said.

“So was I,” Sunny added.

The constable took them through their routine of the night before. “I went upstairs fairly early,” Sunny told him. “I’m working on a story for the Harbor Crier , and I was transcribing notes and working on the lead.”

“I watched some television until the late news,” Mike said. “Then I went to bed.”

“So you didn’t actually see one another for a good part of the evening?”

Mike shrugged. “Not till I popped my head in to say good night. Sunny was working on her computer.”

Semple nodded. “You didn’t hear anything? Anyone coming or going?” He directed the question to Mike. “Since you were on the ground floor.”

Sunny could feel warmth flooding her face. And since Nesbit apparently wants to dismiss this as another publicity stunt. Angry words came to her lips, but she stifled them somehow, even though the effort of clenching her jaws made her teeth hurt.

Mike apparently didn’t catch the constable’s drift. “Nobody went in or out.” Then he paused and muttered, a little shamefaced, “Except for the cat.”

Semple’s police-issue poker face took another hit with that response. “The cat?” he repeated in bewilderment.

“We’ve had a kind of annoying cat staying with us—always turning up where he wasn’t wanted,” Mike explained, getting a bit red in the face himself. “Last night I sort of … tricked him … out the window.”

Sunny shot him a “we are definitely discussing this later” look.

At least Semple had the grace to look apologetic when he came to his next question. “Please understand that I have to ask this. Carbon monoxide poisoning usually happens as the result of an accident—”

“That setup outside looked pretty much on purpose to me.” Sunny didn’t even bother to keep the anger out of her voice.

“—or suicide,” Semple went on, bracing himself for the reaction he expected.

He might have gotten that and more, except the doorbell rang. When Sunny answered it, she found Will Price standing outside. “I was still up after my shift and caught the call on my scanner.”

And apparently rushed right over after a hearty breakfast, Sunny grumpily thought.

As if reading her mind, Will went on, “I was a little delayed because of another crime report. Sal DiGillio said a 2007 Jeep Wrangler was stolen out of his service station.”

He turned to Mike. “Mr. Coolidge, you drive a maroon pickup, right?”

Sunny’s dad nodded. “Yeah, a Dodge Ram. Guess it’s about five or six years old now.”

“And it’s also at Sal’s service station?”

“Sure, he towed it yesterday.” Mike was getting a bit confused with this line of questioning, and his face showed it.

“Just one more question,” Will promised. “What color would you call that SUV outside?”

Mike was definitely wondering if Will had been up too long. “I dunno. Kinda maroon?”

Will nodded. “So if I were to tell someone, ‘Take the maroon truck from the service station and bring it to such-and-such an address,’ it wouldn’t be such a surprising mistake, would it?”

Semple decided to give up on the subtle approach. “The sheriff says—”

“Did the sheriff tell you that Sal reported the license number for that stolen Jeep?” Will interrupted. “It’s the same as the one outside.”

That shut Semple up, but Will went on, “And if our glorious leader is suggesting that someone here went out to get the car—what? They can’t recognize the difference between their own pickup and an SUV? Not to mention, both of the two family cars are out of commission. Sal’s place is on the interstate. I think somebody riding a bicycle would have stood out a little.”

Will looked at the other officer. “Ben, I know you don’t like to get involved in politics. But in spite of what Nesbit says, I think we’ve got to treat this seriously.”

“As serious as—” Sunny bit off what she was going to say because her father was standing next to her.

But her dad finished it for her. “As a heart attack,” he said.

Sunny grinned, but that faded pretty quickly as she turned to Will. “If what you’re saying is right, that means someone had to be watching the house in order to see Dad’s truck being towed.”

Will nodded. “Maybe several people. The meth business can quickly involve a lot of folks—someone to cook the stuff, someone to provide supplies, dealers—and security. This looks like a pretty good plan. The problem is the follow-through. After hitting the pipe, tweakers can be up for days at a time. They’re called tweakers because they try to fill the time fiddling with things.”

“Like maybe the gizmo that wound up in my car?” Sunny asked.

Will nodded. “Often, by the time a tweaker’s finished tweaking with something, it’s useless.” He took in the look on her face. “Hey, look at it this way. If someone was after me, the best description I could hope for would be ‘incompetent.’”

“I’d prefer ‘gone’ or at least ‘arrested,’” Sunny told him.