Miranda and the D-Day Caper

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

“You’ve looked into it, Miranda.”

“Hardly,” said Miranda, getting more and more exasperated.

“In point of fact,” said Harry, “you have contacted every animal rescue site. No one has seen or even heard about a stray, collarless tabby.”

“Which means there could be more to my cousin’s tale than meets the eye. Like holding the cat for ransom. Who knows?”

“Oh, please, give me a break. Give us both a break.”

It was a little past noon on that same Saturday. Miranda was up on Gray Eagle Crest in the cottage she’d gotten Harry as a house-sitting retreat. He was ensconced in the corner of the pine-paneled living room, tapping away at his laptop, dressed in his usual button-down white shirt and khaki slacks. Add his horn-rimmed glasses as an indication the feature he was working on about the community garden demanded his full attention. Indicating, therefore, that he was at work, much older and mature, and she was just fooling around.

Miranda moved closer. “Can you grant me a few more minutes of your precious time?”

“Afraid not.”

“Don’t pull this, Harry. I’m talking to you.”

Harry stopped typing and let out a sigh as if he was about to humor a mate who was highly impressionable. He whipped off his glasses, brushed a shock of graying hair out of his eyes, and rose up from the desk. Snatching his mug of herbal tea, he shuffled over to the armchair by the stone fireplace directly across from the picture window and plunked himself down.

“All right,” said Harry, “tell you what. You suggest to this cousin of yours that he quit waiting glassy-eyed by his motel phone. Tell him to go to Precision Graphics down the street and get them to crank out some reward leaflets, which he will then put up in the most likely places.”

“Brilliant.”

“Afterwards, he can get on that same phone, make amends, beg for a second chance, and promise to severely modify his next broadcast well before . . . When did you say?”

“Revealing all on Wednesday, five days from now, at the stroke of midnight.”

“Right. Instead, have him make arrangements to sign the NDA and swear to open his program with something like ‘It was all a lark, folks. Actually, I’ve been searching high and low for Duffy my cat and finally found him lost in, of all places, the wilds of the Blue Ridge.’ If by the remotest chance the cat is actually being stowed away, it will defuse everything. Skip will be back on board minus the threat of embarrassing the corporate powers that be, the cat will reappear, and that’s an end to it.”

Miranda countered, “You’re forgetting what drove him out of his digs. You’re forgetting he was tailed to Bucks County. He might have been tailed all the way here. And any missing-cat leaflets will amount to zilch, let alone your let’s-forget-the-whole-thing scenario and all’s well that ends well.”

“Look, I am only taking the bits of information you’ve provided. Moreover, may I remind you that we have a pact. No more craziness. It’s over. You got duped into one goofy escapade. You learned your lesson and, as a result, know exactly what you’re doing.”

“Nobody knows exactly what they’re doing.”

“Oh, that’s clever. That is just perfect. Why do you keep pushing this?”

“Maybe because he looked after me when I was a kid while the girly girls called me names and ostracized me. Maybe because he now needs some looking after.”

“Maybe because your tomboy alter ego comes to the fore when you’re hung up.”

“When I’m motivated, you mean. When a frazzled client gave me a per diem because she was going to pieces.”

“Leading to a perpetrator who had long since gone to pieces. Leading to a little detective work despite what was constantly lurking. That’s not a realtor making an assessment, lady. That’s putting yourself in harm’s way.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Absolutely necessarily if you think about it.”

And that’s where it stalled. Without uttering another word, they both knew they’d come to an impasse. Harry gazed out the window at the sunlit ridgeline in the distance and sipped his tea.

In turn, Miranda began to wonder why she said that about everyone not really knowing what they were doing. Perhaps she was reminded of Middlemarch, the novel her book club had just discussed. A classic, foisted on them by an English teacher in their midst, about characters who found themselves acting against their better judgment and subsequently messed up their lives.

Breaking out of it, Miranda said, “Okay, I give. I let Skip get to me, all right?” With that, she walked out the door.

Harry caught up to her at her SUV. “Look, let him know we’ve got a nice thing going here and wouldn’t want to compromise it.”

“Right.”

“That blurb in USA Today about the intrepid amateur sleuth was just hyperbole. You have to be sensible and Skip will have to take his situation under advisement.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Besides, I’m getting to like this little town. The restless transients stop off at the motel on the way to Florida or heading back north. The residents—the Southern folks tied to the mountains along with the new homeowners—let all that fluttering pass them by as they go on with their lives.”

“Except for a mad local perpetrator.”

“Which was a fluke. By and large, we are nestled in the benign bosom of the mountains.”

“What is this?” Miranda said. “A few months doing features at the local paper and you’re now a shill for the visitors center?”

“An advocate for preserving precious energy.”

Brushing past him, she said, “Well, I need to waste a little more energy, check out the realities, and see for myself. I need to come to terms with one of those pesky transients!”

As a few clouds scudded across the crisp Carolina blue sky, Miranda pulled into the motel on Route 70 across from Blue Ridge Biscuit and Brunch. She figured Skip was sleeping it off by now and Cindy had already checked in for her afternoon managerial shift. There were only a few motorists around—the tourist season wouldn’t be in full swing until May—which made Miranda’s immediate task simpler. Cindy would be so eager to convince anybody who happened by that she was marking time till she got a showgirl booking in Vegas, she’d carry on and let things slip. Like what may have really happened to Duffy the cat.

The second Miranda entered the cramped office, Cindy began sashaying around, puffing up her amber do, fishing for a compliment.

“Like it?” Cindy asked. “I told Lois at Kim’s Cuts to give it more body but keep it natural and loose.”

Miranda nodded. It never seemed to matter why you dropped in as long as Cindy could manage to get some attention. She did a little twirl, draped herself over the Formica counter, and blew on her coral-coated nails to make sure Miranda noticed that everything matched, including her wraparound skirt. Only the wrinkles in her lip gloss and eyeshadow were a dead giveaway her showgirl opportunities were severely limited.

“Looking snazzy, girl,” Miranda said, easing into what she was after.

“Taking a line-dance class at the Lake Tomahawk Center to keep it going. I tell you, I am primed.”

“Yes ma’am, looking good.”

More sashaying around the counter, humming a country rock tune, showing off some trendy steps. When she paused to straighten one of the oversized what-happens-in-Vegas-stays-in-Vegas posters, Miranda took the opportunity to jump right in.

“Speaking of the exact opposite of looking good, guess my cousin Skip looked a lot worse for wear when he checked in.”

“Your cousin? Didn’t know that. Why didn’t you put him up?”

“I didn’t know he was in town till this morning. That’s good ole Skip for you. Everything on the spur of the moment when he’s on the run.”

“What do you mean?”

Covering up, Miranda said, “I mean, when his plans are up in the air. But I’ll bet you made him feel right at home. It was really nice of you to let his cat stay with him.”

“His cat? What are you talkin’? You mean the other guy’s.”

“What other guy?”

Cindy made another face, crinkling her heavy makeup as if she was having a senior moment. Then she sidled up to Miranda. “Later on.”

“You mean that’s when you first spotted it?”

Lowering her voice, going into her gossipy mode, Cindy said, “Not me. First this guy cruises by—one of those compact rentals from the airport. You can always tell. A plain, white Toyota Corolla. At first I barely noticed, but there was practically nothing else on the road at that hour. He pulls in, gets out, and looks everything over. Like he was casing the joint or something.”

Cindy stepped back, leaned over the counter and blew on her fingernails once more, milking the story for all it was worth. “Then he comes in, still casing the joint, and starts coming on to me with this deep, syrupy voice. Looks at the poster, says he can tell I must’ve put it up. ’Cause he’s willing to bet other motels in these parts only have shots of mountains and streams.”

“Did he check in?”

“Yeah, sort of. Right when we were changing shifts.”

“Okay, go on. What do you mean, the cat belonged to him?”

“’Cause,” Cindy said, easing her way back to Miranda, “sometime in the middle of the night, Pete on the late shift says the guy starts up his car. Which was right out front, and he’d backed into the space. Like he had to cut out early or something.”

“So is that it? I don’t get it.”

“No, that’s not it.” Going over to the plate glass window, tossing in a bit of pantomime, she said, “Not long after, Pete peers out. Says he heard a motorcycle come by but didn’t see one. Only a minute or two later, he hears the motorcycle take off. When Pete peers out again, he could swear a cat was staring back at him through the rear windshield of the Corolla.”

With her mind racing now, Miranda said, “How secure are the door locks?”

“What do you mean?”

“Could you use a credit card to slip the latch?”

“I suppose. What does that have to do with anything?”

Unable to take the do-si-do any longer, Miranda confronted her. “This guy. The one in the white Corolla. What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. Kind of stocky maybe.”

“Walrus moustache? Smoked cigars? Smelly cheroots?”

“Yeah, come to think of it.”

“Name of Russ Mathews?”

“How did you know? Say, wait a minute. The cops called earlier. What’s the story here?”

Miranda had no answer. There was a missing cat. There were wider implications. Without missing a beat, she moved on.