“Oh, is she your cat?” I asked. “We thought she was a stray and took her in.”
“That was nice,” he said. “No, I think she’s a feral cat.”
He looked up at me.
“Which means she’s essentially a wild animal, you know, and it’s no good trying to domesticate her.”
“Nobody was - ,” I began.
“Just like that buzzard you people are keeping,” he went on. “That’s a very bad practice. Wild birds were not meant to be house pets.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “I’m the one who gets to clean up after him.”
“I haven’t been able to find out for sure yet,” he said. “But there very well may be a Virginia law against keeping buzzards captive.”
I was getting a little tired of lectures.
“Listen, I appreciate your dedication to wildlife and all that, but who the hell are you, and what business is it of yours if we’re keeping a whole bevy of buzzards in our office?”
“I’m - ,” he began, sticking out his hand.
“Rrrowrrr!” the cat wailed, an eerie noise that sent a chill up my spine.
“Oh, I think it’s time,” he said. “It’s a good thing we caught her when we did. I’ll take care of her now. Yes, you’re a very brave cat, aren’t you?”
The last comment was to the cat, of course, who continued to howl disconcertingly as he walked slowly away with her, his nose glued to the square of screen, telling her every second what a good, brave cat she was. He reached the corner, made a left, and continued walking.
I suppose it would have been nice to offer him a ride, but however relieved I was to find my supposed mugger was actually a feline midwife, I was still shaken. I retrieved my purse, got into my car, and drove off in the other direction.
I didn’t really worry about leaving the cat in his hands. Clearly, whoever he was, he was a softie for animals.
But if he knew about George, he had obviously been inside the Mutant Wizards office at some time. Not necessarily since we’d moved to our new quarters since I didn’t remember seeing him. But then again, I hadn’t been there every moment. What if he had thought Ted was responsible for keeping George in captivity? Or had suspected Ted of some other unkindness to animals?
Which didn’t seem that implausible to me. The office dog pack pretty much roamed at will during the day, in and out of all the cubes and offices, begging food and other attention from almost everyone. Except, perhaps Ted. Even genial Katy had always ignored Ted, and I didn’t remember ever seeing her or any of the other dogs padding into or out of his cube. I’d never seen him mistreat them - I’d have had his head if I’d seen anything of the sort. But I had seen him teasing them, with perhaps the faintest suggestion of cruelty - enough to make me keep an eye on him.
What if our animal-loving biker had actually seen Ted mistreating a dog or cat? And had been angry enough to take revenge?
It sounded a little far-fetched, even to me. The chief would probably laugh at the idea that Ted might have been killed for cruelty to animals. Unless he saw the biker crooning over the pregnant cat, maybe. Then again, if the guy were a little over-enthusiastic on the subject of animal welfare, odds were he’d have already butted heads with the police sooner or later.
“I’ll worry about it tomorrow,” I muttered as I stumbled down the stairs to the Cave and unlocked the door. “It’s way too late for any of this.”
It was 1:30 A.M. I had to be at work at 8:30 tomorrow - correction, today. I ought to go to bed, get as much sleep as I could, so I would be alert and rested for the busy day that awaited me. Sleeping was the only logical, sensible thing to do.
I called Michael.
“You’re up late,” he said. “Insomnia?”
“Investigating,” I said, and I poured out everything that had happened since we’d last talked. Dr. Lorelei’s love tryst, my discovery of Luis’s notorious past, the midnight visit from the obsessed fan, Roger’s porn site, and my encounter with the biker in the parking lot.
Well, not everything that had happened. I decided he didn’t need to know about Roger’s failed attempt to enlist me into his social life.
“You need to do something about the porn site right away,” Michael said. “And if you ask me, this Roger creep is the most likely suspect for the murder, too.”
“He’s up there, yes. Ted could have been blackmailing him about using Mutant Wizards servers for his porn operation.”