Donally, Claire - Cat Nap (A SUNNY & SHADOW MYSTERY)

“I figured you’d want to be close to the door, since you’ll be getting out first.” Jane’s voice sounded reasonable enough as she talked over the rumble of the starting engine—or it would have, except for the smug undertone that Sunny picked up.

Just as well Jane isn’t by the door, because I’d be kicking her to the curb right about now. For a second, Sunny enjoyed the mental image of Jane skidding along the snowy shoulder of the road.

Will nervously filled the chilly silence with cop stories about Mark Trumbull. “About five years ago, a house burned down, killing the man and woman who lived there. The fire department considered it an accident. There were no accelerants; it appeared to be an electrical fire. But Trumbull suspected arson—and proved it. Turns out the guy’s ex-wife had a sideline making rustic lamps—wood base, very nice. She gave one to her husband, wired for low wattage, knowing the guy liked bright lights. Of course, he put in a heavier bulb, and sooner or later the damned thing went up in flames.”

In spite of herself, Sunny spoke. “How could Trumbull know that was intentional? More importantly, how could he prove it?”

Will shrugged from behind the wheel. “He kept at it. Figured out the starting point for the fire and traced the lamps. Apparently, it was the only low-wattage one the woman had ever made. She could probably have still claimed it was accidental, but when she saw the case he’d assembled, she confessed. Wound up getting life.”

Jane stirred from where she sat cuddled up against Will.

Not the best choice for a bedtime story, Sunny thought, talking about a vengeful ex-wife to a woman whose former spouse just turned up dead.

“Look, the guy could have been a regular Inspector Javert five years ago,” Jane said. “But when he was with me, he just looked like a sad old man barely asking any questions at all.”

“All I’m saying is, don’t be so quick to dismiss him,” Will warned. “Trumbull is very, very good. And if he has any reason to suspect you, look forward to being investigated within an inch of your life.”

After that, the only conversation was directions from Jane. She was efficient, if short. They soon arrived back at Martin’s office, where Sunny had left her Jeep.

“Should we stay?” Will began, but Sunny shook her head.

“Get Jane home,” she told him. “Whether she wants to admit it or not, she’s had a shock.”

Jane opened her mouth to protest and then stopped. “You’re probably right.” She sighed. “I came here tonight thinking I was prepared for anything Martin could throw at me. Finding him that way was the last thing I’d ever have expected.”

Will started up the pickup again, and they drove off. Sunny pulled up the hood of her parka. She still had to clear snow off the Wrangler before she could head home. Digging out the long-handled brush from under the front seat, she set to work on the windshield.

It’s not so bad, she thought as she worked. The shrubs blocked a lot of the snow from coming down here. She stepped back against the piney brush. Huh! No snow at all.

Another step, and she found herself in a little clear area. Sunny looked up to see darkness—or rather, interlocked evergreen branches above her head, holding off the snow. Back in the day, these bushes had probably been a lot shorter, maybe even trimmed into some sort of topiary shapes. But like the old house, they had been neglected, left to grow as they would, both upward and outward.

Then Sunny noticed a break in the evergreen wall around her, a fuzzy white patch located a bit above her eye level. On tiptoe, Sunny peered out into the snowstorm, the flakes illuminated by the lights of Martin Rigsdale’s house. She wobbled for a second, clutching at the branches in front of her—and realized that several of them were broken.

It looked like someone had created a peephole to keep an eye on Martin’s office.

I suppose this would be a perfect observation post, provided you could get in here unnoticed, she thought.

Yanking off her gloves, Sunny dropped to one knee, feeling around on the damp, freezing ground in the darkness. Her fingers encountered what felt like a small battered cardboard tube. Peering at it in the dark was just hopeless. But as she brought the thing up, she got a pungent odor of tobacco smoke.

Sunny held her prize carefully in her palm as she pushed out of the open spot, hurriedly climbing into her Wrangler. Turning on the dome light, she examined the item she’d found. It was a light cardboard tube, maybe two inches in length, crushed flat. One end held what looked like the burnt-out stub of a cigarette, the source of the sharp tobacco smell.

An image swam up in her brain, memories from a couple of years before, when she’d worked on the Standard ’s New York City edition. Vanya, one of her fellow reporters, hailed from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, a neighborhood known as “Little Odessa” because of all the Russian immigrants.

Vanya had taken a group of reporters to a club, a place with crowded tables, loud patrons, and a cloud of cigarette smoke up by the ceiling.

Sunny had remarked on a couple of silver-haired, red-faced men flaunting the municipal smoking ban by puffing away on cigarettes like these, the tubing pinched into a sort of cigarette holder.

Her friend had laughed. “Those guys have to be real old-school—probably mafia. You can only get cigarettes like that from Mother Russia.”

Sunny hadn’t wanted to know from Russian mafia back then. Now, however, she turned the crumpled cardboard tube over and over in her hands. Wait a second! There was something printed on one side.

She held the lettering up to her light—not that she could figure out what the word was.

“I’d say it was Greek to me,” she muttered, carefully straightening out the cardboard, “but I suspect it’s Russian.”

*

Sunny finished cleaningoff her SUV and then called home. Mike sounded as if he’d just woken up, but was jovial enough. “I thought maybe the silver-tongued Martin had persuaded you and Jane to go off with him for dinner and dancing, so I ate a while ago,” Mike said.

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Sunny told her dad. “He’s—oh, I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. I hope there are still some leftovers from that stew. I haven’t had anything to eat.”

She took the bridge back across the Piscataqua, staying on the interstate till she was past the built-up section of Kittery Harbor. Then she took more winding country roads until she came to Wild Goose Drive and home. Traffic wasn’t a problem—there were fewer cars than usual on the road. Which was just as well, given the snow that kept coming down heavily all through her drive.

Sunny left four-inch-deep tire tracks when she pulled into her driveway. The door opened before she was halfway there, Mike standing outlined in the light from the hall.

“I spread some newspapers down for you to put your boots on,” he said. “And the stew is in the microwave, ready to be nuked.”

Catching her looking around as she removed her wet boots, Mike added, “Your friend is up on top of the refrigerator again.”

Shadow came down when he saw Sunny, sniffing around her vigorously but avoiding her hands when she reached for him.

“What’s going on in that head of yours, cat?” Sunny asked.

But he just stayed at her feet, his odd, gold-flecked eyes giving her an inscrutable look.

“Suit yourself.” Sunny heated up the stew and brought it to the kitchen table. Mike had already set out the utensils and left her a bottle of horseradish to season the stew. Sunny smiled, remembering how Shadow had investigated that horseradish bottle—once. He’d made it abundantly clear that he hadn’t liked the contents one little bit.