Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

22

I should have felt enormous relief, but I didn’t. I was glad I’d found the precious list that Briana had left in Cupcake’s house, and glad I’d given it to an FBI agent. Now he knew which store owners in the area were knowingly selling fraudulent merchandise and charging for the real thing. Of course, targeting retailers and arresting them for selling fake merchandise was only half the solution. The other half was arresting Briana for providing the merchandise, and there was no proof the list had come from Briana.

Except for breaking into Cupcake’s house, there was no absolute proof of any criminal act that involved Briana. She hadn’t been charged with the agent’s murder. She hadn’t even been held in jail as a material witness. Either the homicide officers believed she was completely innocent of any knowledge of the crime or they were waiting for her to lead them to the killer. There was a good likelihood that she would walk away with only a fine for breaking and entering. She would return to Rome or Paris or wherever she lived and continue to run a business that manufactured fake designer merchandise.

Even more depressing was the fact that the person who had killed the FBI agent in Cupcake’s house would probably never be identified or apprehended. I didn’t believe Briana’s claim that she had disengaged one section of the security system for only the time it took her to enter the house. I thought it was more likely that she had left it disengaged the entire time she was inside. The security people wouldn’t have noticed that one small section was switched off, so the security cameras that should have captured photos of Briana, the FBI agent, and the killer entering the house would have been inoperative.

Law enforcement people don’t like to talk about it, but every police department and sheriff’s office has files of homicides in which somebody literally got away with murder. Most homicides are committed by people with whom the victim has some connection. A rejected lover, a disgruntled employee, a jealous husband or wife, people whose emotional barometer went kaflooey one day and sent them into a self-pitying rage that ended with another person’s death. Those killers leave a trail, either a physical trail or a historical one. But when the victim is a law enforcement officer and there are no witnesses or trace evidence left behind, the hunt for the killer becomes highly problematic.

While my mind chased after all the loose ends of the entire Briana situation, a solemn voice in my head asked, What is that to you?

I didn’t have much of an answer. As long as nobody attacked me or stalked me, none of it had anything to do with me. Oh, I could drum up some righteous indignation about people stealing designers’ ideas and selling them as originals instead of the knockoffs they really were, and I deplored slavelike conditions forced on workers in factories churning out fake designer products, but my supply of righteous indignation can only stretch so far, and there were plenty of things closer to home to get riled up about.

Even the FBI agent’s murder was an objective fact to me, not something that engaged my private emotions. I was sorry it had happened, but sorry in the way I was sorry when I read about the murder of any other person I didn’t know. Sorry I belonged to a species that includes beings who have lost their minds and souls to such an extent they can destroy another being. Sorry for the anguish the victims’ deaths caused their families and friends, sorry for the anguish the killer’s family and friends suffered. But the sadness wasn’t personal. It didn’t change my life. No matter how awful I thought the whole thing was, my sadness wouldn’t bring the agent back to life, and my disgust wouldn’t stop some people from cheating other people. Maybe it was pure self-centered selfishness on my part, but my main feeling was that I hoped I never saw Briana again.

At the entrance to my lane, I stopped at the row of mailboxes to pick up mail. I riffled through it and tossed the entire lot into the passenger seat to transfer to the recycle bin under the carport. Most of it was junk mail or ads from posh stores promoting expensive jewelry or designer clothing like outrageously pricey jeans. I made a scornful snort at a photo of a curvy model wearing designer jeans. Even if they were real and not counterfeit, jeans exist to make a woman’s butt look good, and cheap jeans do the trick as well as expensive jeans.

Driving slowly so as not to alarm the parakeets in the trees overlooking my lane, I could see wind surfers on the bay and hear the waves moaning before they slapped the shore. Overhead, a scrawl of white and black gulls wheeled against a clear blue sky. On the beach, little sandpipers scurried back and forth on the sand like kindergartners at recess. Through the open car window I could hear the twittering of songbirds in the trees and the sad lament of a mourning dove somewhere in the distance. I was back in my own world, and for the moment I could forget everything about Briana.

Rounding the curve to the carport, I saw that Michael’s car was gone, and so was Paco’s. A small branch had fallen from one of the oak trees beside the carport and landed on the shell in front of Michael’s parking spot. Old oaks drop branches like that, sort of like a cat shedding hair. I pulled into my own spot and slid out of the Bronco, looking at the branch for the best place to grab it to throw it out of Michael’s way. It was about the thickness of a baseball bat, around five feet long, with a multitude of leafy twigs at its end.

I stooped to grasp it somewhere around its middle. As my fingers closed around it, I heard a scuffling noise in the shell. I turned my head to look toward it and saw a pair of black-clad legs running toward me. Jerking upward, I swiveled toward the running figure, and my move caused the leafy end of the branch to scrape across Lena’s outstretched hand. The twigs caught the hypodermic needle in her fingers and flipped it to the ground.

From the corner of my eye, I caught a spot of red at the edge of my porch. Looking up, I saw a pair of long milky white legs in bright red high-heeled pumps. The legs were sprawled at the top of the stairs.

Lena made a guttural sound and moved away from the branch, but she continued to come toward me, and she held a long knife in her hand. The knife flashed silver in the sunlight, but its cutting edge was stained wine red. She leaped toward me, her teeth glittering like the knife. In seconds, I was in a fight for my life.

Curiously, a red curtain seemed to descend over the world. Through the red haze, I realized that Lena was determined to kill me. The hypodermic needle had been intended to inject something into me to make me immobile while she slit my throat with her knife. Without the needle, she had to overpower me. Lena was hard and wiry and mean, but sheer terror gave me a burst of strength.

I kicked toward the knife and felt a searing pain in my ankle. Blood rushed onto my white Keds, and Lena smiled. Holding the branch with both hands, I swung it at her. I wiped the smile off her face, but she still had the knife, and my ankle was cut badly enough to fill my shoe with blood.

Irrationally, I thought how awful it would be for Michael and Paco to come home and find me dead in the yard.

I swung the branch again, and while Lena was adjusting her stance, I managed to swing it back the opposite direction. The second swing took her by surprise, so I kicked at the knife again. This time I connected. The knife flew out of her hand, and her head raised with a shocked glare. We both dived for the knife. I got to it first, but before I could stand up with it, she fell on me and her arm circled my neck in a steel vise.

Facedown, I clutched the knife under my midriff, but my victory had become a defeat. With her arm so hard against my throat that I feared the hiatal bone would break, I knew there was a good chance that Lena would strangle me to death.