Lisa Jackson - Born To Die

“Local plates?”

“Oh. . I have no idea.” She was shaking her head. “The second Kaiser did his thing, I hurried into the house.”

“Do you remember what kind of truck?” Alvarez asked. This was probably nothing, but they didn’t have a lot to go on.

“No. . but it was large, not one of those smaller ones.”

“Domestic?”

She shrugged. “All I remember is that it was dark. Black or blue or gray and was fairly new, I think, no dents, and had really nice tires.” She smothered a little bit of a smile, as if her dog were such a naughty, but clever little beast.

“But you didn’t get a look at the man’s face.”

“No.”

“What about his ethnic background or race? White? Black? Hispanic?”

“White. . I think. Can’t be sure.”

So much for identifying the mystery man.

“He was here often?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I just noticed his truck a couple of times. Only saw him once, walking up to the door, and I was behind him, with Kaiser.” Offering a feeble smile, she said, “Sorry.”

“You said there was a second one?”

“Oh. . maybe. Maybe not.” Lois thought it over. “Might’ve been just the one with the dark truck.”

Alvarez asked a few more questions but got no more information. Ms. Emmerson knew little about Jocelyn’s friends, though she thought most of her social life was through people she worked with at Evergreen Elementary. She had heard of a sister living somewhere out of state and parents maybe; the two women had essentially met at the mailbox or the common area or the parking lot when Jocelyn was jogging and Lois was walking Kaiser. The information Lois had gleaned had been in bits and pieces.

Alvarez learned what she could, which wasn’t much more, then drained the remaining tea from her cup. She was standing, intent on ending the impromptu visit, when Lois looked up at her expectantly.

“Mind if I read the leaves?”

“Pardon?”

“The tea leaves in your cup. That’s why I gave you loose leaves, so I could read them.”

“You do that?” Alvarez couldn’t believe it. Since moving to Grizzly Falls, she’d met Ivor Hicks, who swore he’d been abducted and probed by aliens, and Grace Perchant, the woman who believed she spoke to ghosts and saw the future, and now this… woman, who looked like an ex-librarian, was going to read the dregs of her hot beverage?

“Of course I can.”

“Have at it,” she offered, but Lois had already stood and rounded the table so that she could peer into the cup. She turned it upside down on a napkin so that the final drips of tea were removed from the cup; then she righted the porcelain again and studied what remained inside.

“Oh, my. . hmmm. .”

Alvarez wasn’t going to rise to the so obvious bait.

“This is interesting,” Lois went on and, when Alvarez didn’t respond, said, “It looks like you’re in for a change… work-related, maybe? Or… maybe not. Certainly a love interest. There’s a heart in your near future, but. .” She frowned.

Don’t ask! However, the words tumbled out of her mouth. “But what?”

“There’s danger, too… evil.” She pointed to a squiggle of small leaves on the rim of the cup. “This is the present, and here, the heart, a little further into the future. .” One of her graying eyebrows lifted. “A new boyfriend?”

“I doubt it.” Alvarez pulled her coat from the bar stool.

“I take it you’re a nonbeliever.”

“Depends upon what you’re asking me to believe in.” She was just shrugging into the coat’s sleeves when Kaiser, who had been lying beneath the table, scrambled to his feet. Barking madly, he raced to the sliding door, where he stood on his hind legs and began clawing at the glass while growling and barking and working himself into a frenzy.

“Hush! Kaiser! You stop that!” Lois yelled as she scooted her chair back. “What in the Sam Hill?” She was on her feet and heading to the back door. “Oh. . my.” Her hand flew over her chest as she looked through the glass.

Alvarez followed her gaze and spied a bedraggled cat seated on the back patio’s covered table, its luminous eyes unblinking as it stared into the apartment through the slider.

“Dear God in heaven, that poor thing is Jocelyn’s. Oh, for the love of. . I can’t let her in because of Kaiser. He’d tear her limb from limb… but she’s freezing.”

“I’ll take her.”

“Oh, no! I won’t let you take her to a shelter! We’ll find her a home.” Lois was horrified as she bent down and picked up her quivering, anxious dog.

“I meant I’d take her home.”

“Oh, well… good!”

Still barking as if he’d seen the face of Satan, Kaiser wiggled and scrambled as Lois carried him out of the living room. “His kennel is in my bedroom,” she called over her shoulder, then reprimanded the dog. “You know better, Mr. Kaiser. . ” Her voice became muffled, and the cat, frost in its whiskers, looked up at Alvarez.

Alvarez unlocked the door and slid it open. Without a second’s hesitation the cat, black with white toes and a spot under her throat, strolled inside to rub up against Alvarez’s jean-clad leg. “Hey.” She leaned down, petted the cat’s arched back, and melted when the animal started doing figure eights between her ankles.

Somewhere a door shut.

“I swear he hates cats!” Lois said, returning to the living area. “Oh, I see you’ve already made friends. Poor little thing! She must be starving.”

“I’ll feed her.”

“Good! Good!” Lois tried to pet the cat, but it ran and hid beneath the sofa. “Uh-oh. So now she’s shy. You know, I’ve got an extra pet carrier. I used it when Kaiser was a puppy. We could put her in that.”

“If we can catch her.”

“You try and I’ll find the crate.”

To Alvarez’s surprise, the cat didn’t put up much of a fight. Within ten minutes, she was in the car, driving back to her own apartment, the animal yowling piteously from its carrier in the backseat.

She wondered, as she hauled Jane Doe, the name she’d settled on for the moment, toward her front door, if she would have the heart to take the cat to the shelter, or if as of now Jocelyn Wallis’s cat was hers. In her mind’s eye she saw Lois Emmerson and her dog in matching sweaters and couldn’t help but fast-forward to her own life. Would she suffer the same fate as the older lady? End up living alone with an animal who was a surrogate child, a cat with her own set of clothes?

“Never,” she breathed, unlocking her door and stepping into the sterile studio she called home. She fed the cat from a can she’d gone back and swiped from Jocelyn Wallis’s apartment, folded a towel for a kitty bed, and let the cat explore. While Jane Doe was nosing around, Alvarez poured some of the kitty litter she’d also taken from the dead woman’s home into a box with short sides. She placed the cat into the box. “Remember this, okay, Jane?” she asked, and the cat promptly ran out of the bathroom. “Great.”

Alvarez hurried through the shower, toweled off quickly, and changed into black slacks and a rust-colored turtleneck. She added big hoop earrings, and for once, let her long black hair fall free.

Back in her small kitchen area, she found a dusty bottle of Cabernet in the pantry and swiped it clean while the cat dared jump onto the counters. “You’re pushing it,” she warned, and Jane responded by yawning and showing off needle-sharp teeth. “Be good.”

Not on your life, she imagined the cat saying as she grabbed her coat and scarf, threw them on, and, before she could talk herself out of it, snagged the bottle and her purse and walked out the door.

Snow was softly falling, millions of tiny flakes glistening in the lamplight.