Cat in Wolf's Clothing (9781101578889) Read online

  Contents

  Also by Lydia Adamson

  Title page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Special Excerpt from A Cat By Any Other Name

  About the Author

  Alice Nestleton Mystery Series eBooks from InterMix

  A Cat in the Manger

  A Cat of a Different Color

  A Cat in Wolf’s Clothing

  A Cat By Any Other Name

  Look for A Cat Tells Two Tales

  available now in print from Obsidian

  A Cat in Wolf’s Clothing

  An Alice Nestleton Mystery

  Lydia Adamson

  INTERMIX BOOKS, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  A CAT IN WOLF’S CLOTHING

  An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Signet Books edition / November 1991

  InterMix eBook edition / November 2012

  A Cat in Wolf’s Clothing copyright © 1991 by Lydia Adamson.

  Excerpt from A Cat By Any Other Name copyright © 1992 by Lydia Adamson.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57888-9

  INTERMIX

  InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Chapter 1

  Why was the woman whispering?

  I had been in the Salzmans’ apartment for about twenty minutes when I finally realized that Mrs. Salzman had whispered to me from the moment I entered. And that I had whispered back. The entire conversation was being conducted in whispers.

  I was there to be interviewed for a cat-sitting job. Mrs. Salzman needed someone to visit her lonely feline three mornings a week while she was seeking medical treatment in a neighboring state. In other words, she would be sleeping elsewhere and her cat had to be reassured. The nature of the medical treatment was never mentioned, nor was the whereabouts of Mr. Salzman, if, indeed, he existed at all.

  The cat’s name was Abelard.

  When the cat’s name was revealed to me, I had a sudden insight that Mrs. Salzman was quite mad . . . that her cat had been surgically altered and the poor woman was caught in a delusion that her cat had been altered for love of Heloise. She was acting out a medieval castration romance. But the thought vanished as quickly as it had emerged; it was only one of my dramaturgical fantasies—an occupational hazard for actresses.

  Mrs. Salzman kept whispering to me what a lovely cat he was.

  The problem was—where was he?

  I couldn’t see him.

  “He’s very frightened of people,” Mrs. Salzman said, which was the first rational reason she had presented for this whispering.

  Mrs. Salzman lived in a very confused apartment on East Thirty-Seventh Street in Manhattan. The furniture, and there was a lot of it, lined the walls like a military procession. Abelard could be under any one of the pieces.

  If I couldn’t see Abelard, maybe I could hear him. Maybe I could hear his movements. Maybe that was another reason she kept whispering . . . so as to be aware of Abelard’s movements.

  “I am so happy to be able to deliver Abelard to a real professional cat sitter,” Mrs. Salzman whispered.

  I burst out laughing, very loudly. I couldn’t help myself. Mrs. Salzman drew back, shocked, her hand involuntarily smoothing her hair. She was an impeccably dressed woman except for garish green leather shoes.

  It was impossible to explain to her why her remark had collapsed me into laughter. But only two hours before I had entered Mrs. Salzman’s Murray Hill apartment, I had been reading a short squib about myself in the neighborhood newspaper Our Town. The anonymous “People” columnist had mentioned me as a neighborhood resident and noted that: “The stately, long-haired, still-beautiful Alice Nestleton is one of our finest little-known actresses . . . little known because of her penchant for obscure roles in obscure off-off-off Broadway plays.”

  The anonymous columnist then went on to add: “Alice Nestleton has long been a cult heroine to theater buffs.”

  The comment was absurd. Where were these “buffs”? In the supermarket on Third Avenue? I never met them.

  Anyway, the whole point about that ludicrous description of me in the newspaper was that it didn’t make me laugh. But it laid the groundwork. And when Mrs. Salzman characterized me two hours later as a “real professional cat sitter,” the cumulative effect made me laugh out loud, heartily, raucously.

  Mrs. Salzman quickly forgave my outburst and took me on a brief tour of her convoluted apartment. She pointed out the location of the cat food and the watering can for the plants and the lists of emergency numbers and several other key locations and objects.

  There was still no sign of Abelard.

  “What kind of cat is Abelard?�
�� I asked.

  “A lovely cat,” replied Mrs. Salzman, thinking I was asking about his disposition rather than his breed.

  “What color is Abelard?” I persisted.

  She paused, cocked her head, and smiled. “Mixed.”

  “Mixed what?” My question came out a bit testy.

  She ignored that question and led me into one of the hallways. “There are your three envelopes,” she said. They lay on a small elegantly carved French cherrywood table.

  “One for each day you’ll be cat sitting next week,” Mrs. Salzman explained. She picked up one of the envelopes and opened it—I could see there was a single hundred-dollar bill inside.

  My God! Three envelopes! Three hundred-dollar bills! For three visits of about forty-five minutes each to a cat I hadn’t even seen yet and might never see! Was this woman mad? It was a truly exorbitant rate of pay. Unless of course . . . unless there were problems associated with Abelard that she hadn’t disclosed.

  I was about to ask for a modest reduction in pay when Mrs. Salzman suddenly and dramatically put her finger against her lips, urging silence.

  Had she heard Abelard? Was the mysterious cat about to emerge from the shadows?

  We waited. Mrs. Salzman closed her eyes and seemed to go into an anticipatory trance. What a strange woman she was: gray hair; thin, serious face; tall, with a stoop at the shoulders; the very slightest hint of an Austrian accent clinging to her whispers; an abstracted manner, as if she were very far away.

  We waited. And we waited. And we waited. Where the hell was Abelard?

  “Maybe we should call him,” I suggested gently.

  Mrs. Salzman opened her eyes in horror. I had obviously said the wrong thing.

  “He does not like to be called,” she said in a compassionate voice, as if, even though I was a professional cat sitter, I was suffering some kind of mild learning disorder.

  “What does Abelard like?” I retorted a bit sarcastically.

  The sarcasm passed blithely over Mrs. Salzman’s head. “He likes flowers and fruit and fresh turkey and music and birds . . .” She stopped suddenly in the middle of her hysterical list, a bit self-conscious. She smiled and led me to the door, telling me that Abelard wanted more than an employee—he wanted a friend.

  I walked home quickly, thinking about my cats, Bushy and Pancho.

  Granted, they were a bit peculiar. Bushy, the Maine coon, was no doubt one of the drollest beasts ever created. And Pancho, my stray rescued from the ASPCA, well, he was borderline psychotic—spending most of all day and all night fleeing from imaginary enemies.

  But at least my cats were visible! Not like Abelard. And my cats obviously had a grudging affection for me.

  I climbed the stairs quickly. Thinking about Bushy and Pancho always made me miss them fiercely—even though I had been away from the apartment for less than two hours.

  “Alice! You’re finally home!”

  I stopped suddenly and peered up the badly lit landing toward the voice.

  It was Mrs. Oshrin, my neighbor, the retired schoolteacher.

  She was standing at the top of the landing. On either side of her was a very dangerous-looking man.

  Kidnappers? Rapists? Junkies? Neighborhood derelicts?

  I panicked. I turned sharply on the stairs and started to run back down to seek help.

  “Alice!” I heard her call out. “Wait! There’s nothing wrong!”

  I turned back, confused, still frightened.

  “They’re police officers, Alice! They want to see you—not me!”

  I waited, tentative.

  “It’s all very hush-hush,” Mrs. Oshrin pleaded, as if that was an explanation. There was something about the way she used that very old-fashioned phrase—“hush-hush”—that sent an anticipatory tingle along my spine. But it wasn’t fear.

  Chapter 2

  Mrs. Oshrin brought them to my door as I fumbled with the keys. Obviously they had originally rung the wrong bell.

  One was a short, thick man with bright red hair who introduced himself as John Arcenaux, a detective with the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

  His companion was taller, a wiry bald man—his name was Harold Rothwax, and he was a detective with the Manhattan South Division of the NYPD, temporarily assigned to a special unit.

  They entered nervously. Both were wearing bluish suits and reddish ties, although the styles and shades varied.

  The moment we were all inside, Rothwax said, “Detective Hanks has spoken highly of you.”

  So it was Hanks, my old friend/enemy, who had been a perpetual problem during that bizarre case of the aged Russian émigrés from the Moscow Art Theater who had taken to smuggling diamonds to enhance their lifestyles in an alien land along with their strange white cats.

  Mrs. Oshrin excused herself, smiling cryptically at me. The moment she left, the detectives became very nervous. I don’t think they knew how to proceed with this tall, thin actress with the long golden-gray hair, dressed in an almost floor-length Virginia Woolf dress with gathered shoulders. But I knew they were there for my help, so I could afford to be benevolent.

  “Won’t you sit down?” I offered formally.

  They sat carefully on the sofa, eyed by Bushy, who was lying regally on the rug and swishing his tail lethargically, or was it contemptuously. They sat as if I was about to serve them poisoned coffee—which I wasn’t.

  Arcenaux looked around the room intently and then said, “We need your help. Did you read about the Fourteenth Street murders?”

  “The two brothers?”

  “Yes.”

  I had indeed read everything I could find in the papers about them. It was very sad. Two brothers, both in their sixties and unmarried, who lived together in a new high-rise on Fourteenth Street. They were both recently retired city workers—one in the Department of Parks and the other in the Fire Department. They had been shot to death by a burglar. The police had apprehended a suspect. The brothers had lived with a beautiful Siamese cat who had not been harmed at all. The cat’s picture had been in all the papers.

  “But I’ve forgotten their names,” I said.

  “Jack and Arthur Tyre. Anyway, we arrested and charged a kid, Billy Shea, who works at the local supermarket. But it now turns out that all the kid did was rob the apartment after the brothers had been murdered by someone else.”

  He stopped and looked at Rothwax as if soliciting his colleague’s help in soliciting my help.

  Rothwax stood up and walked around the sofa, behind Arcenaux.

  “May I call you Alice?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said, though I’d be damned if I was going to call him Harold.

  Something struck me very funny; I was in a drawing-room comedy; these men were investigating something absurd. The two detectives continuously shot quick glances at each other. It was as if they had been forced to visit me against their best judgment. And now that they were in the den of the cat woman, me, they were confused as to what was real and what was theater; they were confused about who I was and why they had been sent to seek my help.

  Rothwax continued: “Let me get to the point. Over the past dozen or so years we’ve had a helluva lot of unsolved homicides. But we now believe that seventeen of these homicides were committed by a single individual—the one who murdered the Tyre brothers.”

  “A serial killer, as the movies say, Miss Nestleton,” Arcenaux noted, “or a mass murderer. Either name would fit.”

  Rothwax continued: “We have never run across anything like this before because in every one of the cases, the mode of the murder was different. Each homicide was different in regards to weapon. The murderer killed seventeen times, differently.”

  I was confused. “Then how do you know it was the same person?”

&nbs
p; “In each of the homicides there was no forced entry, and the victim owned at least one cat, and that cat was not harmed.”

  “A lot of people live with cats,” I replied skeptically.

  Rothwax leaned forward urgently, conspiratorially. “You see, we found something at the scene of the murders that, for the first time, ties them all together.”

  “Something?” I mimicked.

  “We’d like to show this ‘something’ to you. We want your opinion. Detective Hanks says you’re very sharp. And very knowledgeable about cats.”

  Pancho whizzed by and both men flinched. I laughed out loud.

  “He moves fast,” I said. They nodded.

  “Now,” Rothwax said, “can you go with us now?”

  For the first time I truly sensed and believed the urgency in his voice.

  “Why not?” I replied. The detectives smiled. Or were they grimacing? I looked at Bushy, who was now giving me one of his aloof treatments—staring either a million years back in space and time or a million years forward. That strange tingle came over me again—the one that had so mysteriously emerged after Mrs. Oshrin characterized the visit by the detectives as “hush-hush.” But now the tingle itself could also be characterized. I was tingling like I always did when I landed a part . . . a role . . . a juicy but difficult portrayal. I had slipped into the most prevalent delusion of the aging, perpetually out-of-work actress—confusing anything and everything with a role . . . the delusion of an always struggling actress who had hitched her fading star to a kind of theater of the absurd—to a kind of stretching of the theatrical envelope that simply no longer existed.

  But this was a murder investigation—not a role! It was something that had to be remembered. Just as I sometimes had to kick myself to remember that Bushy was not a cat-sitting client . . . he was my cat.

  Chapter 3

  The Tyre brothers had lived in a very large wraparound studio on a very high floor of their Fourteenth Street building, which stood just west of Fifth Avenue. The wall-less kitchen was in the geographical center of the apartment. Two small bathrooms were set in the short hallway which led from the door to the studio proper.