Death Runs in the Family (6 page)

Once the door was opened, I burst out and saw Tío holding one of my kitchen chairs, it having obviously been what was jammed against the door. I raced into the living room like a maniac, trailed by Tío, who asked questions I was too busy thinking about to answer.

Everything of Kelli’s, including the fish tank, was gone. I tore into the kitchen, where one hundred dollars lay on the floor, mocking me. Back in the living room, I looked out the window to an empty driveway. How long had I been in the office? About twenty-five minutes, including the time after I knew I was trapped. She’d moved quickly. I stopped running as abruptly as I’d started and tried not to panic. The house was very quiet. Too quiet.

“Tugger! Tugger! Come on, boy. Come to mommy.” Silence. “Baba! Tugger! Come on, you two. Treat! I’ve got a treat!” The call of a treat will rouse Tugger from even a deathlike sleep from the top shelf of a closet. It’s never failed. I stopped breathing, hoping to hear the patter of little feet coming from somewhere. All I heard was my uncle coming up behind me.

“The cat carrier, it is gone,” Tío said, his hand on my shoulder, “as well as the litter pan.”

“
Dios mio
! She took the cats. She took the cats!”

Chapter Five

I’m So Duped

I ran to the phone, just as it rang. Looking at the number, I saw it was Richard. I didn’t even let him speak.

“Richard, Kelli stole Tugger and Baba. She’s kidnapped the cats!”

“Oh, crap. I saw her careening down the driveway about ten minutes ago. I wondered where she was going in such a hurry.”

“I need to call Frank, have him put out an APB.” Frank Thompson, Chief of the Palo Alto Police and my godfather.

I heard a beep in my ear, announcing a call waiting. I looked at the name. Damned if it wasn’t Kelli. “Richard, she’s on the other line. I’ve got to go.”

“I’ll call Frank, Lee. She can’t be far. He’s good at finding people who’ve had a much bigger head start. And it’s pretty hard to miss a red Land Rover.” He hung up, and I went into the call with Kelli.

“Where are you?” I didn’t add the word ‘bitch’ to the end of the sentence, even though I felt like it.

“I’m on my way back to Las Vegas, just like you told me,” she said in a voice that carried an edge of assuredness and one-upmanship.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at, but bring back the cats before I get mad.”

She actually laughed her stupid little laugh I once thought so cute. “Here’s the deal, Lee. You get me Nick; I give you back the cats.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, playing for time. “What do you want Nick for? If he doesn’t want to be with you—”

“Just get him,” she interrupted with a snarl. “You go to Vegas; you find him, but this time you hang on to him. I’ll contact you later.”

“You harm one hair on those cats—”

“Lee,” she interrupted again, and her little girl voice was back again, a voice I‘d come to despise. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings.”

“I’ll hurt more than your feelings, if anything happens to them. I can promise you that.”

“Don’t you know I would never do an injury to an animal? But you’ll never see either one of these kitties again unless you get me Nick. I can promise
you
that.” And then the bitch hung up.

The phone rang the instant she disconnected. It was Frank.

“Know anything else about this red Land Rover?”

“It’s a late model, with Nevada license plates. She just called me. She’s holding them ransom, Tugger and little Baba.” I fought back a sob. My uncle, nearby, patted my shoulder.

I heard Frank’s voice say, “That’s Gurn’s cat, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, I’ve listed them both as stolen property, very rare breeds, worth several thousand dollars. It’s the only way I could put out an APB. We normally don’t send out alerts for missing cats. What does she want in exchange?”

“What about an Amber Alert?” I asked looking in my uncle’s grave eyes, not paying attention to what Frank had just said.

“Let’s not push this, Lee,” was Frank’s steady reply. “You know it’s for missing children.” I started to protest. “I know, I know. Tugger’s like your son, but on the books, he’s still a cat. I repeat, what does she want in exchange?”

“She wants me to find Nick. He’s somewhere in Vegas.”

“Why does she want him so bad?”

“I’m not sure, but he’s been hiding out for a week. Maybe from her.” I gave him a capsulated version of the story, knowing with Frank’s brain, bare bones are all he needs.

“I’ve got the All Points Bulletin out,” he said, when all he heard on the line was my heavy breathing. “We should know something soon. She hasn’t been gone long, right?”

“Right.”

My mother’s voice at the front door broke into my thoughts. “Liana, what’s going on?” Lila asked, coming inside.

“Call me when you learn anything, Frank.”

“Will do.” He hung up.

Tío looked at me. “Try not to lose the control,
mi sobrina
. You will get Tugger back. And the little girl, too. The woman, she took the litter pan. That means she will take care of their needs.”

I crossed the room to my mother, whose questioning eyebrows arched above eyes filled with concern. “Mom, I’m so sorry to be dumping anything more on you than you’re already dealing with—”

“Don’t be silly, Liana. Richard told me what happened. I’m here to help,” she said, taking the phone out of my hand and setting it down on the end table. I stood frozen in place, my mind racing. Mom enveloped me in her arms as only a mother can do. “We’ll get the cats back.”

“You don’t understand, Mom. This is my fault. I never should have let her in the house. Or believed her. She manipulated me, and then she took the cats as hostages until I hand over Nick. Somehow Nick is tied in with Stephen’s death. I don’t know how, but he is. I’ve got to find him.”

Fifteen minutes went by with me pacing and chewing the inside of my lip. The phone rang. I made a lunge for it on the coffee table. It was Flint.

“Flint! You don’t happen to know where Nick went, do you? This time it’s vital.”

He chuckled as only a man who was on top of things would. “I know right where he is. I’m across the street. That’s what I calling to tell you.”

I tried to breathe normally and felt my first surge of hope. “You are amazing. Do you know if those other men followed him, too?”

“No. They were too busy talking on their cellphones. What’s going on, Papoose? You sound upset.” I told him while I checked my watch. Nearly an hour had passed since Kelli took off.

“Well, if this don’t beat all,” Flint said. “Catnapping. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Never been a cat man myself, but she must have known she had you by the short and curlies when she took them.”

“I practically packed them in the car for her. As long as she’s got the cats, she’s calling the shots.”

“In that case, do you want me to grab him? Give you some leverage? I can do it.”

“No, not yet. It’s looking like I’ll be flying to Vegas later this afternoon. If so, we’ll take him together. Meanwhile, keep an eye on him. Something is going down. I don’t know what it is yet, but I will. Thanks, Lonato. I owe you a big one.” I heard the call-waiting beep and saw Richard’s name. “Got to go. Don’t lose Nick, whatever you do.”

“Not to worry.” We disconnected, and I went into Richard’s line.

“Richard, I got her cell phone number.” I looked at the received calls on my phone. “It’s 555-872-5478. Can you track it?”

“I can try, but I’ll have to do it from the office. It’s not as easy as it looks in the movies. At best, it could take several hours. I don’t carry that kind of equipment with me.”

“Then go. But before you do, are you calling with any update?”

“Not a good one. I just talked to Frank, and he said they found the Land Rover abandoned on a side road of the Oregon Expressway about two minutes ago. No sign of her.”

“The cats?”

“No sign of them, either.”

“What about a fish tank?”

“Come again?”

“A fish tank with a goldfish. Was there one in the car?”

“No.”

“So then she’s got an accomplice. Or this was so well planned she had another car stashed where she dumped the Land Rover. Either way, there’s no way she could carry two cats in a carrier plus an awkward fish tank on foot very far.”

“She’s on the lamb with a fish tank? What kind of a lunatic is this?”

“A lunatic who is seriously good at deception. Richard, Kelli could be anywhere. We don’t know what kind of car she’s in, who she’s with, or where she’s going. We might never see Tugger again. And there’s little Baba; she’s such a sweet little girl.” I almost gave in to the overwhelming sense of helplessness at the fate of the cats. Then something rallied inside me.

Don’t give up. If you do, you’ve already lost. And no Alvarez is a loser.

“Okay, I’m hanging up now. I’ve got to talk to Frank. Then I’ll get on the laptop for a list of flights to Vegas.”

“I’ll do it,” offered Mom, heading for the laptop on the coffee table.

I turned to Lila. “Thanks. Mom, are you still going to Phoenix?”

“Yes, the boys are asking for me. And I want to see Jennifer face to face. Maybe she knows more about what’s happening than she thinks she does. But if you need me to go with you to Las Vegas…” Her voice dropped off.

“I’m okay, Mom. I spun down for a moment, but I’m okay. I’ll find out who killed Stephen. And I’ll get Tugger and Baba back, too. I promise you, Mom, and I promise myself.”

“There’s the Liana I know and love,” she said and blew me a kiss. She went back to her search on the Internet.

“Maybe we’ll be leaving at the same time. If so, I’ll drive you to the airport.”

“I’ll drive you both,” said Tío, entering from the guest bathroom. “And
mira, mi sobrina
! See what I find on the sink.” From a fingertip he dangled a large silver ring with a huge red stone.

“Kelli must have taken it off when she took a shower,” I said, as he dropped it into my open hand.

“I thought this could not be yours. It has the cheap look.”

I appraised it. “Maybe not, Tío. This might be a genuine stone. Mom, would you look at this and tell me what you think?” Lila got up and crossed over to me, handing off a hand-written list of flights to Vegas for the remainder of the day. At a quick glance, there was a flight leaving in two hours. Perfect.

Mom took the ring from my other hand and gave the stone a once over with a practiced eye. Not only can she shoot the backside off a gnat at fifty paces using any weapon with bullets, she can tell a gem’s worth from nearly the same distance. Lila Hamilton Alvarez has many gifts.

“I don’t have my loupe with me, but this looks like a Burmese Star ruby. It’s in an atrocious design, so one might think it was set in silver or worse, but I can assure you, this is the finest platinum.”

“Worth what?”

She let out a slightly annoyed sigh. “Liana, I told you I don’t have my loupe with me. I can’t be sure.”

“Guesstimate, Mom.”

“Seven, eight thousand dollars, maybe more.”

I whistled, took the heavy clunker of a ring back, and put it in my pocket. “A possible bargaining chip.”

I heard a knock at the door the same time as it opened. Frank walked in, dressed in his uniform, looking crisp, important, and no nonsense. Frank Johnson, a black man who started his life in East Palo Alto, met my dad, a Latino, when they were freshmen at Stanford, both having gotten there on good grades and scholarships. In those days, Frank liked to say his granny ran a brothel in Harlem, just to see people’s reactions. The truth was his granny’s family owned a mom and pop grocery store in Jamaica. I’ve seen pictures of Sidney Poitier in his heyday, and Frank could have passed for one of his brothers.

“That was fast,” I said.

“I thought I’d come over in person and see what kind of mess you got yourself into this time.” He looked over at Mom and Tío. “I don’t know how you put up with her.”

He wore a forced grin, and I knew he was trying to lighten the situation. He also played with his hat, rolling it by the band back and forth with his long, expressive fingers. This alone showed me he was more upset by what was going on than he wanted to reveal. Frank Thompson is one tough cookie on the outside but a marshmallow on the inside.

“The taking of the pets seems to be tied into Stephen’s death, Frank. I don’t know that Liana did anything inappropriate,” Mom said before I could open my mouth. She stepped forward, not only in a protective manner but also defiantly. I saw Frank stiffen.

Frank had been Dad’s best friend since they met in the late seventies. Actually, more than that, they’d been heart brothers. When Dad married Lila, Frank and she had to contend with one other. Even after Dad’s death, as godfather to both Richard and me, Frank will always be family. I love Mom and Frank to pieces, but they just don’t ‘get’ one another.

Tío, the family peacemaker, jumped in. “Now, we all know Liana, upon the occasion, she leaps in with the heart before she thinks with the head. But we would not have her any other way,
¿
verdad?
. Still, what is done, we cannot undo. We must try to recti-recti—”

“Rectify, Tío,” I said. “Rectify the situation, if that’s what you’re trying to say.” He nodded his head to me with a smile.

I saw warmth spread over Frank’s face. He opened his arms and stepped forward.

“This has been a helluva day for you already, hasn’t it, pumpkin?”

I nodded and stepped into his embrace, and for one shining moment, I was comforted by his very being. For one shining moment, I felt closer to the father I’d lost too soon, too fast.

“Okay,” I said, swiping at my hot eyes. “Enough of this feeling sorry for myself. It’s getting us nowhere. Let’s sit down and talk.”

I reached back for Mom, while still holding onto Frank with one arm and embraced her with my other. I felt her relax somewhat. The three of us walked over to the seating area arm in arm, followed by Tío.

“Frank,” I said, guiding him to the leather easy chair before sitting down next to Mom on the sofa, “I’m beginning to think Kelli told me a lot of half-truths. If that’s the case, unless she rented a car and somehow maneuvered both cars where she wanted them to be for the disappearance, I think she had an accomplice, maybe one who drove her Mercedes here while she had the Land Rover. I’d like you to put out an APB for a late model, yellow Mercedes, probably Nevada license plates. With a little luck, she’s in that car.”