“Oh sure, send the cat. Just because I’m faster, lighter, and smarter. Uh-huh, I see.” Octo-Cat complained but he did so with a smile, and when he’d finished saying his piece, he dutifully hopped down to investigate.
“There’s no screen,” he called back up, then began to paw at the edge of the glass. “It opens out rather than pushing in. I need you to try it.”
“No. Can’t leave prints,” I reminded him.
“Then we’re not getting inside. It’s as simple as that.”
“I’ll think of something,” I assured him. “Now come back up.”
He hopped out to join me, offering a withering glance my way.
“I’m hitting a dead end,” I admitted.
He rolled his eyes.“No, you hit a roadblock, and for some reason you refuse to move around it.”
Was I being too cautious when it came to leaving my fingerprints behind? I wasn’t up to any wrongdoing, and Officer Bouchard knew me well enough to already know about my amateur sleuthing. Plus I was about to be married to the best attorney in town. I probably wouldn’t get in much trouble—if any—but still, something about the situation gave me pause.
And as a P.I. it was important I listened to my hunches… And to rely on my partner for help.
“Can you think of anything else we might be missing?” I asked him.
He nodded as if deep in thought.“We only knew her for a couple of weeks, so think back to all of your encounters with her.”
“I only met her that first day. Every other time I communicated with her was via animal control or the police or the post office.”
“I never met her face-to-face, but I did enjoy peeing on her porch,” he said with a self-satisfied smirk.
“Wait.” We were close, I could feel it in my bones. “If she didn’t see you, how did she know?”
He cocked his head to the side and regarded me suspiciously.“Know what?”
“That you’d peed.” That’s when I remembered that the animal control officers had come bearing photographs more than once. I ran back toward the porch and began to search the rafters.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a singsong voice.
I turned to him briefly to explain.“Looking for a hidden camera.”
“It’s there,” he said, motioning with his nose.
“What? Where? And how do you know? You didn’t even know there was a camera.”
He crinkled his nose.“It’s got a weird shimmer to it. It just stands out like a sore thumb. Don’t you see it?”
I shook my head, then moved to the side and pointed.“Hot or cold?”
He plopped his butt down and wagged his tail wildly in response.“I don’t know what game you’re playing here, Angela, but I don’t like it.”
I growled and stamped my foot, growing very frustrated with this.“Am I close or far away?”
Finally he got it and was able to direct me to the camera. I grabbed it down, forgetting for a moment about my reluctance to leave prints.Shoot.
“We’ll take this back to the house, but I think she had more of these set up around the property. There were other pictures, taken from other angles.” I wished then that animal control had left the pictures with me so that I could use them to help figure out the camera placements, but no.
Octo-Cat grinned deviously.“You need me to go find them, don’t you?”
“I do, but first let’s get this one home and see what we can find.”
12
Back at home, I did a quick web search on the make and model of the trail cam we’d found on Ms. Miller’s porch. Once I understood how the thing was intended to work, I began taking it apart in search of evidence. Even though I followed the directions exactly, I couldn’t find the memory card that was meant to store the video feed.
“Am I overlooking it?” I asked Octo-Cat in frustration, but he didn’t find anything either.
A scrabbling at the window drew my eye across the room. Pringle stood waving with one hand and pointing at the door with the other. As much as I still hadn’t forgiven the raccoon for taking Paisley hostage last week, I did want to hear if he had any theories about what happened next door. His mind was always running at a million miles per minute. Usually that was to my detriment, but occasionally his penchant for overthinking could prove beneficial.
I set the camera down on the table, then moved toward the front door and carefully let myself out onto the porch, blocking the way so Pringle couldn’t squeeze past me into the house.
Octo-Cat followed through the pet flap. Even though he wasn’t a fan of Pringle, he was a fan of drama. He’d also become invested in this case.
“You got some new tech?” the raccoon said as soon as were standing on the porch with him, all the while rubbing his hands together as if he were washing them in a stream. “I wanna see.”
That was right. Our resident raccoon was obsessed with all forms of technology. Gossip too. Which made him the perfect spy whenever he managed to focus on the task at hand. It also meant he had a lot in common with the deceased. He might actually understand what had made Angela Miller tick, because I certainly didn’t get it.
Dang it, I needed his help.
“I’ve got a job for you,” I said, praying I wouldn’t later come to regret this.
“It’ll cost you.” Pringle rubbed his hands together faster and faster, an addict on the verge of getting a fix.
I’d given into his insane demands many times before, but now that I knew Pringle a bit better, I knew I could get by with much less. “I will let you play with my cool new tech, if you do me a favor first.”
“Favor, favor, yes!” he cried, his eyes growing wide as if he could already see a future in which he had taken possession of his prize.
There were three things I needed his help with, but if I told him the full list at once, he’d get distracted and forget to do any of it. If I told him in the wrong order, he could abscond with the evidence before actually handing it over to me. It was like a strange logic puzzle with only one right answer.
I thought it over for a few minutes to make sure I was happy with my plan of action before revealing said plan to the hyperactive raccoon. I also needed to give him enough details to explain the task without providing too much and making him bored.
“There’s a big buck out in the woods,” I began, speaking slowly and making sure to enunciate each word. “He wandered into the neighbor’s backyard last night and got crime scene tape stuck in his antlers. We need him to talk to us, but both times I’ve tried, he’s gotten frightened and run off. Can you get him to talk?”
“You need a confession? Roger that.” He nodded vigorously. “I can torture him with—”
“No!” I screamed so loud, the house behind me seemed to shake. “He’s a potential witness, not a suspect, which means NO interrogation, okay? I just need to know what he saw. It may be the clue to cracking this case wide open.”
He paused, suddenly becoming stock still as he raised his eyes to meet mine.“What’s in it for me?”
“I’ll let you check out the new tech, and when we’re done using it as evidence, I’ll even let you keep it.”
He took a step back, considering my offer.“What is it? What does this new tech do?”
“That’s part of the fun.” I made my eyes wide and my smile wider. “It’s a mystery surprise. So are you on board?”
Pringle raised his hand to his chin and rubbed it as he thought, then jumped straight up into the air and shouted,“I’ll do it,” before turning tail and running off in pursuit of our witness. I just hoped he took it easy on the poor buck who was already scared half out of his mind.
Octo-Cat pawed at my leg to get my attention.“Why didn’t you ask him to go into the house and find the missing memory thingy?”
I shuddered.“I’d rather leave my prints all over that place than unleash that little bandit on a big empty house full of potential treasures.”