The Telltale Turtle (The Pet Psychic Mysteries) (21 page)

"No, that was bad planning on my parent's part. They probably hadn't changed their will since I was a baby. As for being responsible, I graduated from Duke University the youngest in my class. I've worked at WRSC since I graduated and you don't even want me to go into how many charitable organizations I belong to."

"None of that makes you emotionally responsible, Colin. That's what I'm talking about. What possessed you to sleep with another man's wife in the first place?"

"She was hot." He shrugged with a half smile. "And she wanted me, too."

"That makes all the difference."

"You don't get it!" Colin pulled the van smoothly away from the curb into traffic. "Women like that never want me."

"Please stop or I won't care if someone charges you with murder."

"How was I supposed to know Aunt Ferndelle would be murdered? Of all the people in the world to die a violent death, she would have been last on my list."

"Did you know your aunt was dying from cancer?"

"No!" Colin stared at her. "She never mentioned it. Did the police tell you that?"

"Yes. I suppose it would be better for you if you'd known about it. There wouldn't be any reason for you to kill her if you knew she was going to die anyway." Mary Catherine looked out the window, too disgusted to talk to Colin for a few minutes. Baylor agreed that the boy had some growing up to do.

They drove up Market Street toward the Landfall area of the city, which was booming with growth. Hotels and shops were crowded along the highway between the Cape Fear River and the Atlantic Ocean. Expensive houses joined them for a few miles, their multitiered roofs set behind palmetto and oak trees.

Mary Catherine was glad they hadn't built any of that along the river. She liked the old downtown area with its distinct flavor. She never attended town council meetings, but she hoped the town planners had enough good sense to keep it that way. The old brick buildings and narrow streets might not be good for Wal-Mart or some other big-box store, but it was perfect for everything else.

"Here we are." Colin pulled the van into the convenience store parking lot. "There might be a phone inside. I don't see one out here."

"If not, maybe Teddy has noticed someone suspicious looking hanging around." She got out of the van, telling Baylor to wait for her.

The cat told her not to go without him. She'd never be able to tell if some human was lying to her the way he could. And he was sure he could identify his attacker.

"I don't care. There's too much traffic and you aren't familiar with this area. I don't want anything else to happen to you. I'll be back in a few minutes." She patted him on the head, then locked and closed the door.

Colin looked around at the swarm of people pumping gas and buying diet Pepsi. "How are we supposed to tell the person who called me from any of these other people?"

"That's not the plan," she said. "The plan is to enlist Teddy's aid. I'm sure you can manage to make friends with him. We just called from the radio station. Tell him you're an FCC official looking for the psycho caller. He'll cooperate."

"Great" Colin looked at her. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to look around a little and see if anyone else has seen or heard anything suspicious."

"You mean animals, right? Have we truly established that you can talk to animals?"

"We could establish it by me asking that bird over there to poop on your head." Mary Catherine smiled at him. "Would that take care of it?"

"I'm going in! You don't have to threaten me!"

"You know, Colin, if I'd ever had a son," she sighed, "I hope he wouldn't be anything like you."

He grumbled, but finally went into the store. Mary Catherine watched him talking to the store clerk, probably the same one who answered the phone after the psycho killer. She walked around the exterior of the building. There were plenty of birds on the rooftop and the power lines, but she was hoping to find an animal who knew humans a little better.

There was a half-starved, multicolored cat in the alley who was scavenging in the trash cans for food. She ran off as soon as she felt Mary Catherine's presence. Too bad. The poor thing probably needed help. She could've taken her back to the shelter.

There were hundreds of rats around the dumpster and scurrying along the edge of the building. She could question them if she got desperate. The problem with rats was that they knew human beings too well and had taken on their unpleasant characteristic of lying. You could hardly believe a word from them.

There was a single tree growing to the right of the convenience store. Mary Catherine heard some scratching sounds near it and was surprised to see a raccoon pop his head out. Raccoons were wild but had affiliated with humans long enough to converse easily. This one had lived in the cottonwood tree for several years. He was waiting for the forest to come back, but it had been cut down to build the houses and shopping centers. In the meantime, he foraged what he could from the dumpster and the occasional handout from a kind stranger who was amazed to see a raccoon in an urban setting.

Mary Catherine greeted the old raccoon. He acknowledged her and asked what she was looking for. If it was fish, the stream had long since gone with the trees and the other animals. This was good and bad in the raccoon's opinion, since being alone meant he didn't have to share his meager food source and had no natural predators.

On the other hand, he was lonely and wished he could find a place to live where there was more than one tree.

"I'd be glad to help you with that," she whispered to him. "I know some fabulous places with lots of trees and probably other raccoons. Would you like me to take you there?"

The old raccoon was beside himself with joy. He gladly allowed her to pick him up and walk away from the tree. He confessed a moment of sorrow at leaving his home but was happy about the idea of spending his last days with others of his kind.

"I know this may not make much sense to you, but I'm looking for a man who might have stood out here using a phone, like this one." She showed the raccoon her cell phone. She knew it was a long shot. Even if the raccoon had seen someone back there talking on the phone, how would she ever find him?

But the raccoon, Cheetos, whose name was taken from some trash he fancied, had seen one man in particular in the back of the store talking on the phone many times. He believed the man worked there, since he was at the store for long periods of time. Cheetos was only there at night, like any normal creature would be, instead of the insanity of being out during the day as they were.

Mary Catherine pointed him toward the clerk in the store, who was still talking to Colin. "Is that the man?"

Cheetos answered that it was the man, though he wasn't sure why he was there now. The raccoon asked again about the forest and the other animals, then snuggled into Mary Catherine's arms to take a nap.

Colin came out of the store. "I think we might have something. Teddy was scared when I told him I was with the FBI." "

I thought you were going to say FCC?"

"FBI sounded better." Colin grinned. "You know; Colin Jamison, FBI."

"Anyway..."

"He said a man came in here and paid him to use the phone." Colin took out a scrap of paper with a little chili on it. "He wrote down what he should say. And this isn't the first time it happened. The clerk said the man paid him one hundred dollars each time. He's the one who called me when Aunt Ferndelle was killed."

"Excellent! Does he think he can identify the man who paid him the money?"

"He says he can and also knows what kind of car he drives; a red '80s Honda."

"Does he have any way to get in touch with him?"

"I don't think so. It sounds like he just shows up." "

I think we need more before we can call Detective Angellus." Mary Catherine smiled as the raccoon in her arms woke up and looked around.

Colin jumped back two feet from her, his eyes comically large. "What the hell is that thing?"

COLIN REFUSED TO GET in the van with the raccoon. Mary Catherine reluctantly returned the old animal to his tree with a promise that she'd come back for him. Because he was a wild animal, he trusted and believed her. A dog or cat would've been less trusting, having lived with humans for so long.

"I'm sorry," Colin apologized as they drove to the clinic. "Those things carry diseases that can kill you. I'm too young to die because of a raccoon."

"Never mind. I'm sure that poor, old animal doesn't mind waiting to find someplace to die. I'll go back out later and get him."

"So, who do you think the man is who paid to have the store clerk call the radio station? I'd say Cousin Bob, if Angellus hadn't said he wasn't capable of getting out of bed."

"It has to be someone who knows you and would profit from you losing the family fortune because you were in prison."

"There's no one like that except Cousin Bob. Maybe he tricked Angellus someway. Maybe he's really behind all this. Maybe he ran back home and pretended he had a stroke."

"I'm sure Detective Angellus would've researched that," she said as Colin parked the van beside her building. "Is Cousin Bob the last member of your family?"

"The last one who can inherit except for myself and my children, which are still in the planning stages."

"Not for long, unless you tell Mindy the truth." Mary Catherine got out of the van. She looked up to see the handyman on the roof nailing down shingles. "I hope he doesn't fall."

Colin looked up too. "Who is that guy?"

"He's the handyman Danny hired for me to do odd jobs around the building. He's been a big help so far."

"He kind of creeps me out. Why not hire a service where the workers don't look like walking corpses?"

"You have a vivid imagination." Mary Catherine put Baylor on the ground to follow her inside. The cat objected immediately, springing back into her arms, complaining that she wanted him to be lured into another trap. She told him he was being ridiculous, but carried him into the building anyway.

Inside, several independent (she assumed they were independent) dog food testers were working with jenny on the new Meaty Boy formula.

Jenny looked up as she was speaking to one of them, saw Mary Catherine, and stalked toward her. "Where have you been? Was I supposed to handle all of this by myself? You could at least find me some volunteers. I have enough to do without testing dog food."

"Have you found anything yet?" Colin made the mistake of asking.

"What do you think? Would we be here testing if we had?"

Mary Catherine intervened, as she frequently had to do in jenny's relationships with other people. It was a good thing animals loved her so much, because most people couldn't stand her. "Of course not. Colin was trying to be pleasant."

Jenny snorted, her long, curly gray hair held back from her face with a bulldog clip. Her clear blue eyes narrowed. "Is that what it was?"

Mary Catherine turned to Colin. "I'm sure you need to get back to the station and talk to Mindy."

His cell phone rang. "You must be right. I'll talk to you later. I'm going to visit Cousin Bob myself and make sure he's not faking."

"That sounds fine." She was already walking into the back of the clinic. Bruno was demanding attention with his deep barking. "Be sure to take someone with you in case he jumps up and hits you with his cane."

Colin agreed and turned to leave. He groaned as he opened the front door. "Oh no. It's Buck! Is there a back way out?"

"Through the clinic." She stood back and let him go through. She knew she might as well wait for Buck anyway. He was bound to have something to say about this morning's show.

"What happened?" Buck didn't wait to get inside before he started talking. "It's all over the media. The USDA is going to shut me down until they run a complete examination of all my facilities. I thought we had an agreement that you wouldn't tell anyone about what happened."

"Go back and listen to the show," Mary Catherine recommended. "It wasn't me. The psycho caller who's been plaguing the show called in again. Somehow he knew what happened."

Buck closed the front door behind him. For once he wasn't wearing his Stetson and his usual air of self-confidence and bravado was missing. "This could ruin me. I may never recover from it. I could sell the houses, I suppose, and the race car. But my life is over.

"Don't be so melodramatic, at least not yet. Let's continue the testing here and offer our results to the USDA. Maybe that will help." Mary Catherine started upstairs to her apartment. "Come up and have some tea. I have a few questions I'd like to ask you."

"All right. But no cracks about Meaty Boy."

She smiled, but didn't answer. There was no reason to gloat over her victory. The dogs only wolfed down the food because he'd cheated. That meant no commercials for her.

Mary Catherine made some lemon balm and chamomile tea to help soothe Buck's nerves. He wandered through her living room and library while the water boiled and she put out the honey bear and cups.