I thanked the dock worker again and then turned back in the direction of the parking lot. Just then, however, Paisley started to growl. I glanced down and found her hackles raised and teeth bared.
Panic shot through me in an instant. I held my breath and asked,“What is it, girl?”
Paisley growled again, then ran forward at a feverish pace. I wasn’t sure if we were running toward something or running away, but run I did.
Paisley darted right through a flock of seagulls that had gathered on the pier, barking furiously, then circling back around to chase off the stragglers.
When I finally caught up, I scooped her into my arms.“What was that all about? Is everything okay?”
“They were saying mean things about you, Mommy,” she whimpered and squirmed in my arms. “One of them was even going to poop on your head!”
One of the seagulls glided back down and landed on the wooden railing.“I hear you’re getting married, Angie Russo,” the bird said in an eerily familiar voice.Alpha! He was the very same seagull I’d ousted from control of his flock after Charles and Pringle had proven he’d hired a cat to take out a rival flock to expand his territory. Since then we’d become good friends with his successor Bravo and Bravo’s adopted daughter Abigull, but I hadn’t seen the former head honcho again until now.
“What do you want from me?” I asked, my voice shaky with fright. This guy had murdered dozens of his own kind, and he definitely had an axe to grind with me for revealing his crimes and getting him exiled.
“Oh, you’ve already done more than enough for me. I just figured it’s time I return the favor. See you at the ceremony,” he said before flying off.
Paisley barked at him until he was out of sight, and I added another item to my mental to-do list. I’d need to make sure to seagull-proof my outdoor wedding. How hard could that be?
17
By the time I returned home, I was well past exhausted. Still, I had to keep going, especially when I sensed I was so close to finding out what really happened to old Ms. Miller next door.
I’d hardly gotten through the door when Octo-Cat descended upon me, a look of derision etched across his furry face.
“What took you so long?” he demanded, his mouth held partially open to reveal his sharp incisors.
I dropped my purse onto the bench by the door and pushed off my shoes.“First we went to that new pet store in town. Talking to the owner didn’t give us any real leads, but then—”
“Can it, Angela. I don’t care.”
I glanced down to find him glaring at me. Whatever was upsetting him, he clearly blamed me for it.“But you just asked—”
“Again, I do not care.” He growled and sauntered away as if I wasn’t worth wasting any more time on. “You have already wasted enough of my time. Now follow me.”
He led me over to the dining room table where I’d left both my laptop and the camera we’d filched from the neighbor’s porch. A third item also sat waiting beside them.
“Is this..?” I asked, unable to hide my surprise.
“Yes, I completed my primary objective in hardly any time at all. Then I was left to wait in agony as you twiddled those opposable thumbs—thumbs I could have made very good use of, by the way. Now turn on the video. I’ve been so anxious to see what’s on this thing that I’ve hardly been able to eat or nap all day.” He sighed heavily and then yawned to further emphasize his point.
I avoided making a sarcastic remark, especially one that involved his weight or activity level. After all, I was genuinely curious what we’d find in this footage too.
I popped the small chip into the SD card slot on my laptop and waited for it to load. Most of the footage was boring, still shots of Ms. Miller’s front porch. Occasionally, she’d come out to water the flowers or to yell into her speaker phone—about me, no doubt. I couldn’t say for sure since our feed had no sound. I zoomed through the footage faster and faster, about to give up when…
“There!” Octo-Cat shouted and lifted a paw to motion at the screen. “Stop and go back a little.”
I did as instructed, then watched in silent horror as my cat appeared on camera, squatted in the center of the porch, and did his business.
“Haha, nice one,” Octo-Cat cheered on his past self with clear pride.
“You’re disgusting,” I said, shaking my head. “If you’re not going to take this seriously, then there’s no point in even watching.”
I zipped the footage ahead again. We’d now made it to yesterday morning. Later that day, the cranky old neighbor would be found dead. Yet again, I was just about to give up and exit out of the feed when something important caught my eye. There on the screen, I watched as a large man strode up the porch steps and knocked on Ms. Miller’s front door. He appeared to be the rough-and-tumble sort with a bald head, thick beard, and worn-down clothing.
Could it be…?
I zoomed in to get a closer look, which only made the image grainier. Frustrated, I paused and looked to my kitty companion.“Octo-Cat, can you tell what he’s got on his arm there?”
“Of course, I can tell. Feline vision is far superior to human vision, as is our hearing, our intellect, our beauty, our—”
“I’m going to stop you right there, your greatness,” I cut in with a snort. “I just need to know what’s on his arm. Little bit of help here?”
Octo-Cat chuckled and shook his head.“What would you do without me, Angela? Seriously? It’s right in front of your eyes, clear as day, and still you can’t tell that the thing on his arm is a drawing of a crab.”
“A drawing? Like a tattoo?”
“How should I know? You’re not cool enough to get any ink of your own, so I’ve never seen one in person before.”
Well, I couldn’t let him get away with that assertion. I rushed to defend myself. “Correction, I am cool enough for a tattoo. It’s that I’m not brave enough. There’s a big difference between the two.”
He just shrugged and turned away, probably rolling his eyes at me. Whatever.
I started the video again and watched as Angela Miller opened the door and appeared to have a heated exchange with the man. He shifted, affording me a better view of his forearm ink, and that’s when it all clicked into place.
I grabbed my phone and reopened the web search I’d done earlier from the pet store parking lot. I zoomed in on the logo I’d found on the woefully out-of-date website and held it up to my laptop screen.
“What do you think?” I asked my partner as I too glanced from one device to the other. “Do these two crabs match?”
“Yes, they’re the same,” he confirmed without further comment.
“Steve Scotch,” I said with an enormous sense of relief at having identified the mystery visitor. “He’s definitely our man.”
Now my cat looked irritated with me once again.“Great, but who’s Steve Scotch?”
“You’d know if you had let me tell you about my day instead of interru—”
“Then tell me already,” he insisted, the irony clearly escaping him.
I sighed but did as he asked. Even when I was one hundred percent in the right, it wasn’t enough to make the cat back down on his opinions. And we had too much to discuss for me to waste time lecturing him on manners. As far as those things went, my words always went right in one fur-lined ear and out the other. For the moment, though, I had Octo-Cat’s rapt attention.
“Angela,” he gasped when I’d finished. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this earlier? These are key facts for our investigation.”
“I tried to, but—”
He held up a paw to silence me once more, then hopped off the table and glanced back up at me.“We have clear evidence that connects this shady warehouse guy with the stiff. It’s time to go to the police.”
“Right. And how will we explain how we happened upon this evidence, or even why we find it significant? My key informant is a cat named Beans, and we illegally secured that footage. We don’t need Charles here to tell us that this won’t be admissible in court. We have a connection, but not a motive. Not yet. We need to find those other cameras and see what they reveal.” I hated the words even as I spoke them. Now we were operating on far more than a hunch, but it still wasn’t enough to prove anything to the authorities.