11 The Cats that Cooked the Books Read online

  “Aww, that’s a sweet memory. The Siamese loved your house. Do you remember them chasing each other up the stairs?”

  “More like flying.”

  “You bet, Grammy. I plan on at least two, so they can play together and keep each other warm at night.”

  Pearl laid the piece of paper she’d been reading on the bed. She reached over and took a glass of water off the bedside table. She took a sip, then asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you were having problems with Ray?”

  “I don’t know. I guess because I didn’t want you to think I was a failure.”

  “I love you, Emma. I’d never think that.”

  “I haven’t told anyone, except you, of my plans. Grammy, for your safety and mine, if anyone asks about me, please lie and say you don’t know where I am, what I’m doing.”

  “I won’t have to I lie because you didn’t tell me. If anyone asks, I don’t have a clue where you are.”

  “Good. Let’s keep it like that.”

  “Can I ever tell Lawrence?”

  Emma shook her head. “No, not even Lawrence.”

  “My lips are sealed, but what are you not telling me about Ray?”

  “Ray is a control-freak. He’s a manipulative monster. He’d make fun of me in public. He criticized me all the time.”

  “He sounds awful.”

  “He told me that if I ever left him, he’d track me down and kill me.”

  Pearl gasped. “Kill you? Did you call the police?”

  “Grammy, you don’t call the police when you’re living with a gangster.”

  Pearl’s mouth dropped and she repeated the word. “Gangster,” she said, shocked. “Maybe you should call the police now! Right now!”

  Emma sighed. “It’s not necessary. By this time tomorrow, I’ll be as far from Ray as possible.”

  Pearl thought for a second, then asked, concerned, “Does Ray know where I live?”

  “I never told him. He doesn’t have a clue. He was never interested in my personal back story.”

  “What did you see in him?”

  “He was very charming at first, but then I realized he was a jerk.”

  “How long were you two together?”

  “Little over six months.”

  “Did he ever hit you? Hurt you?” Pearl pried.

  Emma looked down at her hands and began wringing them. She didn’t answer. She didn’t want to tell her dying grandmother that once Ray had beaten her so badly, she’d ended up in the hospital. Or how she stupidly went back to him when he begged her to do so.

  Pearl gave a sad look, then said, “Enough said. You’re free of him now. I want you to promise you’ll never risk coming back here—ever.”

  “I can’t do that,” Emma said. “I love you.”

  “Okay, we’ll work on that part. Maybe we can rendezvous somewhere, when I’m better.”

  “Better? Grammy you have stage five cancer.” A tear slid from her eye.

  “Oh, what do those doctors know,” Pearl said with hope. “Let’s change the subject. You need to get rid of your cell phone so he can’t hire someone to track you down.”

  “I’m already on it. I bought a burner phone.”

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “You pay for it in cash. No personal questions asked. No contract. When I’ve used up the minutes, I’ll dump it and buy another one.”

  “Smart girl.”

  “I don’t know about that, Grammy. I’m certainly not very smart when it comes to picking men.”

  “Emma, don’t sell yourself short. You’re getting out of a terrible situation and making a new life for yourself. I’m sure you’ll meet the man of your dreams. He’s out there. You just need to find him.”

  “Thank you for your vote of confidence.” Emma reached over and took Pearl’s hand. “Grammy, I’m not staying the night. I have to leave now.”

  “But, no, Lawrence will be back. We’re having dinner together like old times. Please say you’ll stay,” Pearl pleaded.

  “I’ll call you in a few days.”

  “I hope to hear from you sooner than that. Send me an email.”

  “I deleted my email account.”

  “Is that wise?”

  “I don’t want Ray emailing me. When I get settled, I’ll open another account and use a different user name.”

  “Good idea.”

  “I also took down my Facebook and Twitter accounts, the list goes on.”

  Pearl smiled. “Sounds like you’ve thought of everything. Oh, before you go, I have something for you.” She reached over and opened the drawer of her bedside table. She extracted a bank card. “Take this.” Pearl placed a debit card in Emma’s hand. “The pin number is your birthdate.”

  “Thank you so much. I’m glad you used my full name. I’ve decided I’m going by my middle name when I move.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet. You do know your mom and dad named you after my godmother, Rachael? She was a sweetheart.”

  “Yes, Grammy. I remember you telling me.”

  Pearl smiled at the memory, then said, “I closed out my other account and opened up a new one, so use this card instead. You stand to inherit a large sum of money, and with this debit card, the money will be there for you when you need it.”

  Emma suddenly realized the gravity of the situation, and how seriously ill her grandmother was. Tears began to fall from her eyes.

  “Come here, honey,” Pearl said. “Let Grammy wipe those tears away. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Emma sobbed.

  Emma embraced her grandmother, then left the room. Tears blinded her as she walked outside. By the time she walked six blocks to the public library, her tears had dried up. She entered the building, signed in to use the computer under a bogus name, and found one at the back of the main floor. She looked around. She was the only user. She inserted the flash drive. Within a few minutes, she knew what was on it, and it wasn’t good news. With mixed emotions, ranging from denial to terror, she thought, Oh, no . . . no . . . Ray, what are you involved in? Then she contemplated the deadly consequences of knowing his secret. She weighed her options. She could get on the bus, head to the bank in Atlantic City, and return the flash drive where she’d found it. She could go home to Ray and take his abuse for not bailing him out of jail. She could give up her dream of starting a new life away from him. Her heart was pounding. She had to make a quick flee-or-stay decision.

  Her inner voice warned, if you’re going back to that low life Ray, you’d better hurry up and do it. Atlantic City isn’t a hop-skip away from Nyack. It’ll take you time to get there. You’ll want to go to the bank before they close.

  Emma worried. What if I’m too late? What if Ray or one of his criminal cronies are waiting for me at the bank?

  After careful consideration, Emma knew what she had to do. She removed the flash drive from the USB port, slipped it into her purse, then walked outside. Using her burner phone, she called a local car service to take her to LaGuardia Airport. She had a plane to catch. She’d worry another time about what to do with the flash drive, but for now, she was flying off to escape, and begin a new life.

  Chapter Four

  Charity Gone Ugly

  Monday

  Katherine finished putting out snacks on the dining room table for the two other members of the Kendall Charitable Foundation Board. Previously, she’d shut the pocket doors and the door to the kitchen from pesky felines, two of whom were notorious thieves when it came to pickpocketing guests or sneaking in and stealing food, especially snacks. The cats stood behind the closed doors and voiced their displeasure — a chorus of loud shrieks and caterwauls. Siamese sisters Scout and Abra jiggled the doorknob and pawed the kitchen door.

  “Cut it out!” Katherine scolded the noisy cats.

  The doorbell sounded its crisp ring and the cats fled to the upstairs cat playroom, except for Iris, who was waking up from a nap under the dining room table. Katherine hadn’t noticed her, because the table was
covered with an oversized tablecloth that nearly touched the floor.

  “Saved by the bell,” Katherine muttered. She moved to open the door. Chief London and Margie Cokenberger stood outside.

  “Well, kiddo, are you going to let us in?” Margie asked in a teasing voice. “It’s so hot out here you could fry an egg on the sidewalk.”

  “My car thermometer says ninety degrees. Feels cool in here,” the chief commented.

  “Hi, Chief. Hi, Margie. Come in.” Katherine smiled and directed them to the dining room.

  The chief looked around. “Where’s the cats?”

  “When they heard the doorbell, they fled upstairs. They’re probably going to nap in their cat room.”

  “You mean catnap,” the chief joked.

  Margie asked, “Katz, when I die and go to heaven, can I come back and be one of your cats? They have it made in the shade.”

  Katherine slid open the dining room’s pocket door and the three walked inside. Katherine quickly closed the door to prevent a possible cat invasion later.

  The chief removed his tasseled hat and placed it on a chair. “I’m off-duty, but I didn’t have time to go home and change out of my work clothes.”

  “That’s perfectly okay.”

  “I didn’t either,” Margie seconded. “I just came from the job site. I’ve been working hard on that reno on main street.”

  “You mean the old antique store?” Katherine asked. “When is the new owner moving in?”

  Margie sat down and grabbed a handful of pretzels. “When is she moving in? Now that’s a story,” Margie said with exaggerated emphasis. “When she wired me the deposit, she said she’d be here at the end of the month, then lo and behold, she showed up yesterday. I was fit to be tied.”

  “Why?” Katherine asked, surprised. “I thought you’d be pleased to show off what you’ve done to the place.”

  “I’d love to, but it’s not finished! The paint is barely dry on the walls. I called Stevie to drop what he was doing and come over and finish the electrical, but he said Salina and he had plans in the city, and he’d start first thing today. And you won’t believe this part of the story. She stayed overnight without a piece of furniture and no electricity.”

  “Why didn’t she stay at the Erie Hotel? It’s next door,” Katherine asked.

  “She said she didn’t want to. Later, Cokey and I felt sorry for her, so we took her a box fan and our inflatable guest bed, sheets and pillows and stuff so she wouldn’t have to sleep on the dusty floor.”

  “Aww, Margie, that was so sweet of you two,” Katherine praised.

  “She was tickled pink when we showed up.”

  The chief sat down and grabbed a pretzel and popped it in his mouth. “What kind of vehicle is she driving?” he asked.

  Margie answered, “She doesn’t own a car. She said she was going to buy one soon.”

  “If she doesn’t have a car, how did she show up? Parachute? Teleportation?” the chief asked with a mischievous look in his eye.

  “Or beamed in like Captain Kirk in a Star Trek movie,” Margie said with a grin. “What can I say? She just appeared. I was working in the kitchen and she waltzed in. She seemed to come out of nowhere.”

  “Mysterious,” Katherine added. “So, I take it the front door was unlocked.”

  “Yep. My bad.”

  “Did you ask her any questions about how she got here?” Katherine asked. “Just curious.”

  “Nope, I was so surprised to see her, I didn’t ask.”

  The chief, referring to how nosy Margie was, commented, “You’re slipping.”

  Margie rolled her eyes. “But I do know, she wasn’t very happy about us not being finished.”

  “Gosh, what did she expect?” Katherine asked. “She came early.”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong. She’s a very nice person. I meant to say she was disappointed and didn’t get the message that the place wasn’t finished,” Margie explained. “It’s been rather hard to communicate with her.”

  “How’s that?” the chief asked.

  “She calls and leaves instructions on a voice mail, then when I try to call her back, I get this robot telling me I punched in an invalid number.”

  The chief scratched his short beard. “How many times has this happened?”

  “Ah, about three times. It’s been hard for me to coordinate the work, let alone ask her a question if something unexpected comes up.”

  Katherine suggested, “Have you tried texting?”

  “Same thing. I type in this big ole message, send it, and it pops back ‘Not Delivered’ in ugly red letters.”

  The chief crunched on another pretzel. “What’s the gal’s name?”

  “Rachael Thomas.”

  “Got her address?”

  Margie smirked. “404 Main Street, Erie, Indiana.”

  The chief joked, “Not her address here. Where does she come from?”

  “I don’t have a clue, but I do know she bought the property through an LLC, which means—”

  Katherine finished, “An LLC doesn’t have to divulge personal information about its members or their transactions. In other words, there wouldn’t be a public record of Ms. Thomas’s place of residence when she bought the property. Chief, I don’t see why it’s so important. We’ll find out soon enough when we welcome her to our little town.”

  “True, but this has piqued my interest, that’s all,” the chief said. He took out a small notebook, wrote down Rachael’s name, then slipped it in his side pocket. He adjusted his weight on the chair and said, “Okay, Katz, I think we got sidetracked here, let’s bring this meeting to order.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Margie teased.

  “Okay, let’s get down to the charity of the month,” Katherine said, glad to change the topic of discussion and get down to business. “Last month, Mrs. Owen got a new dishwasher—”

  Margie interrupted, “That was dramatic.”

  “What? How was it dramatic?” Katherine asked.

  The chief chuckled. “Let’s just say that Mrs. Owen doesn’t take kindly to charity.”

  “What happened?”

  Margie explained. “Mrs. Owen is ninety-years-old and as feisty as the day she was born. When the appliance store guy tried to deliver it, she stood on her front porch with a shotgun pointed at him.”

  “What?” Katherine gasped. “You’re kidding me.”

  “She said she’d been washing her own dishes for a very long time and she didn’t need a dishwasher.”

  “Refresh my memory. How did her name get on our charity list?”

  “She has a son, daughter-in-law, and four kids that live with her,” Margie said. “That’s a lot of people who generate lots of dishes. Seems Mrs. Owen has memory problems.”

  The chief added, “Which normally isn’t a good thing, but in this case, because of her bad memory, she forgot to load the gun.”

  “What happened then?” Katherine asked.

  The chief chuckled. “I intervened, took the shotgun, and called her son to come subdue his mother or I’d have to arrest her for attempted assault.”

  Katherine’s eyes grew wide. “You’d arrest a ninety-year-old woman?”

  The chief put his hands up in mock defense. “Well, yeah. She was disobeying the law.”

  Margie added, “We solved the problem by having the delivery guy bring the dishwasher to my garage, until the son could be home. Cokey caught up with him at the diner and set up a time when he could install it.”

  “Whoa! Close call,” Katherine said.

  The chief said, “You know what they say about random acts of kindness?”

  “What’s that, Chief?” Margie asked.

  “My wife says that for every act of kindness you perform, one more brick gets added to your path to heaven.”

  “That’s so sweet of Connie,” Margie said.

  The chief reached in his back pocket and pulled out a dog-eared laminated photo of his wife. “See,” he said, turning th
e photo over, “Connie wrote the saying on the back. Whenever I get down in the dumps or just want to look at my wife’s pretty face, I take this out of my pocket.”

  “That is so precious,” Katherine complimented, studying the photo. She handed it back to the chief, who returned it to his pocket.

  Iris grew bored sitting under the table. The floor was hard. The humans were loud. The Siamese wanted to escape the room, but with the doors closed, she was trapped until the humans let her out. She stood up, stretched, and slipped her brown-velvet paw inside Margie’s bag, which was lying on the floor with its flap open. Not finding anything of interest, she padded over to the chief and explored his back pocket. With a quick hook of a claw, she snagged a dog-eared photo. She dragged it under the table, then returned to see what else she could find. She spotted the chief’s hat sitting on a side chair. Sneaking over to the chair, she snatched the tassels in her jaws and quietly dragged the hat to join the photo beneath the table.

  “Okay, let’s move on,” Katherine prompted. “It’s my turn to come up with a name for this month’s charity. I’ve learned from Lizzie Howe, at the rescue center, that a neighbor had a terrible car crash, and broke her leg. She has a caregiver to tend to her needs, but she needs someone to visit every day to take care of her two cats, which are quite old.”

  “Geezer cats,” Margie commented.

  “Yes, exactly. One is sixteen-years-old and the other is twenty.”

  “Wow,” Margie said. “That’s old for cats.”

  The chief said, “The only woman I know who was in a serious auto accident is Ruth Reynolds.”

  “Yes, that’s her,” Katherine answered.

  “I knew her husband. My wife and I went to his funeral. I don’t understand why their daughter can’t take care of her mom and her cats?”

  “She moved to Florida and has no intention of coming up to care for her mother,” Katherine said.

  Margie piped in, “Ruth needs someone to come in once a day and solely tend to the cats. Easy as pie.”

  “Yes, but I was thinking about hiring a cat sitter to come in twice a day.”

  “Sounds good,” the chief agreed.

  Katherine smiled. “All in favor of the charity of the month going to Ruth Reynolds say aye.”