“I got nothing for you,” I said with a laugh, “except that she maintains
“Not in my book. If Lydia thinks she can compete with you, she’s completely deluded. But don’t be fooled by Marian Mae. I installed her security system and she’s as fake as that red-colored crabmeat at the supermarket.”
“You’re kidding. Fake how?”
“I shouldn’t be saying anything about former clients, but since her check bounced and I never collected near what she owed me—mostly because I can’t seem to escape being Mr. Nice Guy—I don’t feel I need to keep secrets about her.”
“She’s not rich? She sure dresses and acts like she is,” I said.
“Rough divorce. Money troubles. I felt sorry for her, I guess. Baca’s taking care of her now, so she’ll be fine.”
“Okay, enough about the Mercy-ites,” I said. “Can you muster a little Mr. Nice Guy and pacify poor Candace? Is there anything you can tell me about that computer?”
“Mom told me that you had Ed open the shop after you heard he’d rescued it from the dump.” He rested a hand on mine. “Even if you’re using me to get information, I don’t give a crap. It’s fine with me.”
“Hey. Don’t think like that. You’re easy to talk to, easy to look at and I’d like to get to know you better,” I said.
“Good. What do you want to know?” he said.
“You’re willing to tell me if you found something on that computer?” I said. This was so much easier than I’d thought it would be—and much more fun than I’d had in the last year.
“Sure, because there isn’t much to tell. Looks like Wilkerson was running his cat business off a MyFriend page. That’s not good news for Baca.”
“MyFriend?” I said.
“Sort of a MySpace and Craigslist rolled into one. But though I reconstructed enough of the hard drive and memory to figure that out, it’s too late for a preservation order. The page he was running—called Match-a-Cat, by the way—has been taken down already.”
“What’s a preservation order?” I asked.
“An order from a judge not to destroy any account access records to the pages a user has created,” he said. “That computer is a challenge all by itself, but then you add the complication of a business run off MyFriend? Tough stuff. Figuring out where the Internet traffic to that site originated is nearly impossible.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Traveling on the Internet is like traveling on any highway. The more turns you take, the harder it is to follow your trail. You log on through your provider, you go to, say, Yahoo or Google or Hotmail, wherever you pick up your mail, and there are passwords at each stop. Using a server like—”
“I got it. It’s sort of like peeling back an onion to find out who’s been logging on. Lots of layers.”
“I’ll quit with the geek speak if you want,” he said.
“If I wanted that, I’d just say, ‘Shut up, Tom.’ ”
He laughed. “I like the direct approach.”
“Can you tell when the page was taken down?” I asked.
“Baca sent a request to the MyFriend owners asking about any sites recently dismantled that had to do with cats, pets, cat breeders, any combination that might offer a clue as to what to look for. He could have been running more pages than his Match-a-Cat. Cheesy name, but probably has good search engine productivity. I don’t expect an answer soon. But whoever dismantled the site had the password, and if it went down after the murder, that’s good information.”
“Meaning the person who shut it down was probably the one who murdered Wilkerson? And perhaps they were in business together?” I said.
“Seems likely, doesn’t it? And probably that person hoped to obliterate all the evidence by smashing that computer to smithereens.”
“Are you sure it’s okay to tell me all this?” I said.
“What am I disclosing? That I did computer forensic work on a battered hard drive and got next to nothing? That’s no state secret. I was glad I got to show the big man I know a few things he doesn’t, though.”
“It’s a competition, then?” I said.
“With men, life’s mostly about competition,” he said.
“And you’re sure the gorgeous Marian Mae Temple has nothing to do with this competition between you two guys?” I said.
“No way,” he said emphatically.
Perhaps a little too emphatically, I decided.
He brought me home not long after, and we spent another couple hours getting to know each other better. Merlot stretched out between Tom and me on the couch. He’d never done that when John and I sat side by side, and I wondered if my big Maine coon was making sure I stayed a respectable distance from this man. But when Merlot turned over for Tom to rub his belly, I figured it was more about getting some affection.
The conversation finally came back to the murder, and I decided to show Tom what I’d done with the shredded paper from the Wilkerson house. Three cats knew what was up and followed us, hoping to get into that darn closed-up sewing room. But they were shut out again.
I flipped on the lights and Tom stared at the pinned-up pieces on the design wall. Finally he said, “All the talking in the world couldn’t tell me this much about you.”
“What does that mean?” I said.
He waved at the wall. “You are a persistent, precise woman. Actually, you should work in a crime lab. They have to do stuff like this all the time. Put pieces of paper back together, look at bugs and dirt and all sorts of crap people never think is important. You’ve gone above and beyond here, Jillian.”
“Funny. Ed said how we throw stuff away before we even know how important it might be,” I replied. “I guess this is an example of how what Flake Wilkerson saved might be important.”
“Good old Ed. He is one cool dude and the best thing that ever happened to my mom—even though he looks like the Unabomber.”
“I’m fond of Ed myself. But back to this.” I waved at my work. “You’ve been inside plenty of Mercy houses these last few years. Do you recognize this gray cat?” I said.
He tilted his head one way and another, looking at the half-constructed pictures. “Doesn’t look like any of the cats Wilkerson had. But why are you even doing this?”
“Because . . . This may sound silly, but I know this is important to finding out what happened last Sunday. And I may not be a policeperson, but I do know how to piece things together. Here, check this out.” I pointed at the photo I’d printed of Sophie that was pinned next to the piecing project.
He stepped closer to the board, and since they were stuck up there at my eye level, he had to bend to compare them. “Similar,” he said. He rotated a finger around where I’d pieced the cat’s front left leg together. “This looks different than the printed-out picture, though. Or is there some trivia about cats changing their spots that I’m unaware of?”
I laughed. “You’re just confirming what I thought. Two different cats.” I pointed at Sophie. “This is the cat Mr. Wilkerson stole from his own daughter. Does it look like any cat you’ve seen, say, in the last year?”
“Cats hide when I work in someone’s house, so I’m not a source of useful information, I’m sorry to say. I might have seen this cat, but that’s like asking me to pick out a specific banana I saw in a bowl on someone’s counter two weeks ago. No can do.”
“Okay,” I said. “It was worth a shot.” I glanced at my watch. It was past midnight.
“Time for me to go?” he said.
“Yeah. But thanks for being so open with me. And for understanding about, well—”
“You hoping to get information from me?” he said. “Anytime.”
His smile was so infectious, so honest, I grinned back. But the major blush burning my cheeks? I had no control over that.
I’d been energized by our evening together, and after he left I returned to finish the gray-cat puzzle. This may
