The Catnap Before Christmas Page 9

She glanced at the cat. “It does look that way. Does he always tell you what he wants in this way?”

  “Usually. He paws at stuff, knocks stuff onto the floor, scratches at the door, and meows incessantly when he wants to get my attention.”

  Jane smiled. “A lot like Wiley. Will you bring him back when you are done doing whatever it is he wants you to do?”

  I nodded. “Sure. I can do that.”

  Jane looked at Wiley, who was still drawing. “Jingles is going to go with Cait for a while, but he’ll be back.”

  Wiley picked up one of his drawings and held it out. He didn’t look up, but I sensed he wanted me to have it, so I reached out to take it. He went back to drawing, and I looked at the paper. Santa was in his chair, a brightly wrapped package with flames coming out of it next to him, and a tall man with no face stood in the background. This drawing also had a cat in it that looked a lot like Jingles. The cat was clawing at Santa’s leg.

  “Thank you, Wiley,” I said. “As soon as Jingles and I take care of whatever he wants me to do, I will bring him back.”

  Jingles was restless on the way to the bookstore. When we arrived, he went straight in. Alex was already there, dressed in his Santa suit, despite the fact that his shift didn’t begin for another half hour. There was a short line at the coffee bar, so once I’d let Jingles into the cat lounge, I went to help Tara. Cassie was off today, but Willow was scheduled to help Santa when the kids began to arrive. As long as none of us were pulled away, we should have things covered.

  When the customers at the coffee bar left, I headed to the cat lounge to see how Alex was doing. I glanced into the room to see Alex sitting in his chair with a brightly wrapped gift next to him. Jingles was clawing at his leg, but Alex was ignoring him.

  “Did you add that present after we finished decorating yesterday?” I asked Tara about the gift with the bright green ribbon.

  “No. I noticed it this morning but thought that maybe you put it there. It does seem to round things out nicely.”

  “Alex,” I yelled, “get out of there.” I looked around the bookstore. “Everyone out. Now!”

  I imagine it was the panic in my voice that demanded to be heard, because as soon as I started yelling, every single person in the bookstore, including Alex, piled out onto the wharf. I looked around for the two women at the coffee bar, the blond-haired man with the green sweater, the red-headed woman with the two children who looked to be under ten, and the preteens who’d been giggling in the back of the store near the romance books. It looked as if everyone had made it out. I did one final sweep of the crowd and then panic set in.

  “What is it?” Tara asked.

  “Did you see Jingles?” I demanded.

  “He’s there.” Tara pointed to the front door as he trotted out.

  I pulled out my phone and called Finn. “I think there is a bomb in the…”

  My call was interrupted by a loud bang.

  “Oh God,” Tara said as the cat lounge became engulfed in flames.

  Chapter 15

  Finn heard the explosion through the phone and responded immediately. The fire department arrived quickly, and the damage from the fire seemed to be contained in the cat lounge. Thanks to Wiley’s drawing, I was able to get everyone out in time, so there were no human or feline casualties. Of course, the damage was such that the store was going to be closed for months and months for repairs. Luckily, we had insurance for both the structure and the contents because, by the time the fire was out, the books and novelties in inventory were completely destroyed.

  Tara and I were in shock over the loss of our business, but we were both so happy that no one had gotten hurt that we found ourselves relieved rather than traumatized. We would just have to handle each moment as it came. We’d deal with the cleanup and the paperwork right off the bat, and once the insurance claim was settled, we’d rebuild and start again.

  “I have to say that it is amazing that Wiley knew what was going to happen before it did,” Siobhan said when she came by the scene of the fire to offer comfort. “And I am so incredibly grateful to him for providing a warning. Buildings can be replaced. People can’t.”

  I couldn’t agree more. My heart must have stopped and started a dozen times in the past couple of hours. First, it stopped when I saw the scene Wiley drew for me play out before my eyes. Then it started once again in that split second when I was sure everyone had made it out safely. It stopped yet again when the building blew, only to start beating when Finn and the fire team arrived. All in all, it had been a horrific day, and I was sure the real shock would set in later, but, as Siobhan had said, buildings could be replaced and no one was hurt. For that, I’d be eternally grateful.

  My car, as well as Tara’s, had been parked in front of the store and was blocked in by the firetrucks. Cody had shown up shortly after the blast, so I’d put Jingles inside it with Max. Now that the fire was out and the crowd had begun to dissipate, I felt my knees begin to wobble just a bit as shock set in, but I took a deep breath and forced myself to focus on the tasks at hand.

  “The maniac who did this could have killed a lot of people today,” I said to Cody. “That’s two Santas in two weeks. He has to be stopped.”

  “I agree. What do you want to do now?”

  “I want to take Jingles back to Wiley, as I promised I would. I want to try to thank him for his part in saving the lives of everyone inside the bookstore. I don’t know if he’ll understand me, but I need to try. I want to look at all his drawings once again to see what else he may be trying to tell me. And then I want to get the Scooby Gang together to really flesh this out. Now that the mistletoe vandal distraction has been put to bed, maybe we can focus on the Santa killer better than we were able to the last time we met.”

  “What about rehearsal?” Cody asked.

  I closed my eyes and groaned. “I totally forgot about that.”

  “Maybe Sister Mary can cover for us,” Cody said. “She helps out with the play every year. She knows what to do.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You call her. I’ll tell the others what we’d like to do.”

  The others agreed to meet at Finn and Siobhan’s place later in the evening. There was room upstairs to put both Connor and Sammy to bed, and plenty of space for the rest of us to meet and share a meal. Finn had to take care of the paperwork relating to the fire, and Cody and I would be going by to see Wiley, so Tara and Danny offered to get the food and drinks for everyone while Siobhan picked up both babies from day care, took them home, and got them fed, bathed, and ready for bed. Cassie was on San Juan Island today, but as soon as I called her and explained what had happened, she assured me she’d be home by the time we all met.

  Cody and I moved my car to the newspaper office, deciding to leave it there overnight. Siobhan had taken Max with her, so we drove to Harthaven in Cody’s vehicle with Jingles, who I was seriously going to treat with a giant piece of salmon when this was over. I still wasn’t sure how the timing had come together the way it had. Wiley must have seen the event in his mind before it occurred, knowing that the cat would be clawing at Alex’s leg at the exact moment I happened to look into the cat lounge.

  “Cait.” Jane opened the door just as I knocked, stepped out onto the stoop, and gave me a long, hard hug. “I heard what happened. I was so worried.”

  “I’m fine.” I hugged her back. “Thanks to Wiley and Jingles. If not for the drawing Wiley gave me, I would never have known to get everyone out of the store.”

  Jane gave me one more hard squeeze and then stepped back. “My son really is exceptional. Sometimes I forget that. Sometimes I get tired and overwhelmed and only focus on the negative, and then something like this happens, and I realize that Wiley is exactly who he is supposed to be.” She took a step back. “Come on in. Both of you,” she added as she noticed Cody.

  He stepped into the entry and set Jingles down on the floor. The cat ran up the stairs.

  “I’d like to thank Wiley for saving my life and t
he lives of a whole lot of other people,” I said. “I realize he may not acknowledge my presence, but I really need to tell him what an amazing thing he did today.”

  “He can hear you and understand what you are saying,” Jane answered. “He may not look at you or respond in any way, but he’ll know what is in your heart.”

  Jane started up the stairs, I fell in behind her, and Cody followed. When we arrived at Wiley’s bedroom, the boy and the cat were looking into each other’s eyes.

  “Cait is here,” Jane said. “And she brought her husband. She wants to talk to you.”

  Wiley didn’t look directly at me, but he turned slightly so he was facing me a bit more. I supposed that was something.

  “I wanted to let you know that your drawing saved my life today,” I said in a gentle voice. “And not just my life, but the lives of some of my friends and customers. I owe you more than I can ever say, but for now, I just want to thank you. You are an amazing person.”

  “And I want to thank you as well,” Cody added. “I can’t imagine my life without my wife. I owe you so much for finding a way to warn her.”

  “I know you and Jingles would like to spend some time together now,” I jumped back in, “so I will leave him here again tonight, but before I go, is there anything else I need to know?”

  The boy picked up a drawing. He held it in my direction. I glanced at Jane. She nodded. I took a step forward and accepted the paper. I thanked Wiley once again, and then Jane, Cody, and I went back downstairs.

  “What’s the drawing of?” Cody asked.

  I looked at it and then turned it around so he could see what Wiley had drawn.

  “What do you think he is trying to tell you?” Cody asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  Chapter 16

  We left Jane’s place, and Cody and I headed back to the peninsula. I realized as we made the trip that due to circumstances was beyond my control, I’d done nothing to keep my promise to Cassie to go through my stuff and be out of my cabin by the end of the week. I supposed that finding the maniac who seemed to be bent on destruction was a lot more important, and I was sure she’d understand, but I could remember my excitement at getting my own place for the very first time and understood why she might be showing signs of impatience. Still, I felt bad that I was making her wait. Cody had moved almost everything that had to go; all I really needed to do was make one final walkthrough to make sure I had everything I wanted to take. Then I could turn the keys over to Cassie, and we could both get on to the next phases of our lives.

  “Did Sammy go down okay?” I asked Siobhan when we arrived at the home she shared with Finn and Connor. Cody had stopped over at the cabin to feed Max and make sure he was settled in for a few hours before heading to the big house for the meeting.

  “He was a total angel. He ate his dinner, smiled through his bath, and went right to sleep when I put him down.”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes because I’d never had even one bedtime ritual go half as smoothly as Siobhan described. I might as well admit if only to myself, that babies and I weren’t a good mix.

  “Conner went down easily as well,” Siobhan added. “Once everyone gets here, we should be all set to dig right in.”

  “Do you know when Finn will be here?” I asked.

  “Soon. Danny texted; he and Tara will be here in about five minutes, and Cassie is about five minutes behind them. So, what did Wiley have to say?”

  I showed her the drawing.

  “What do you think this means?”

  I slowly shook my head. “I’m not sure.”

  The drawing showed Santa sitting on a chair with a young child with blond hair in his lap. A woman was standing in front of Santa, also with blond hair, and a tall man dressed all in black with a scratched-out face was standing behind her. He seemed to be reaching for her in a menacing way.

  “The feel of the drawing is that of a mother in danger from the man in black,” Siobhan said. “You don’t think this is Wiley’s mother and the child is him?”

  “Jane didn’t think it was her. The woman in the drawing has long blond hair, and Jane has short brown hair. She also pointed out that if the image was of her, Wiley would have been frantic, and he wasn’t. I asked for a clue, and he handed me the drawing, but he wasn’t agitated and upset like he was this morning when I was there and he showed me the drawing that led to my clearing out the bookstore before it blew up. If I had to guess, this drawing is of something that either happened in the past or may happen in the future but isn’t imminent.”

  “If this is a prophecy of some sort, let’s hope it never happens at all.” Siobhan swallowed hard. “I can almost picture the woman dead on the floor.”

  I looked at Siobhan. “You have long blond hair, and the child could be Connor.”

  Siobhan frowned. “You think?”

  I shrugged. “There are a lot of women in the world with long blond hair.”

  I could see that Siobhan was concerned when she handed the drawing back to me. Maybe I shouldn’t have pointed out the similarities between the drawing and her and Connor, but I also felt it was better to be prepared than to find yourself in a situation you never saw coming.

  By the time Siobhan and I had made our way to the kitchen, Danny and Tara had shown up with the food. I grabbed some plates and utensils while Siobhan went for the glasses and napkins. Just as we had everything set out, Cody arrived from next door, and Cassie arrived from the ferry. When Finn pulled into the drive, we took the covers off the food, and everyone began to serve themselves.

  “The food looks wonderful,” I said to Tara. “You must have read my mind when you decided on Italian.”

  “It sounded good, and I feel like we’ve had a lot of pizza lately. I got the usual spaghetti and meatballs and fettuccine Alfredo, but I also got some of the daily special, penne pasta with spicy sausage in a creamy chipotle sauce.”

  “That sounds wonderful. I’ll have to try it.”

  “How was Wiley when you stopped by?” Tara asked.

  “He was drawing, as he has been every time I’ve seen him. This time, though, he handed me a disturbing drawing of a mother and child visiting Santa, with the man with the scratched-out face lurking behind the woman.”

  “Do you think the drawing is a warning?”

  I pursed my lips. “I’m not sure. This morning he was really agitated when he showed me the drawing about what was going to happen at the bookstore, but he handed me this one when I asked if he had any clues he wanted to pass along to me. My gut tells me the drawing is of something either in the past or in the very distant future. It seems if anyone was in immediate danger, he would have been a lot more animated than he was.”

  “Still, we might want to keep our eyes and ears open,” Tara pointed out.

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Tara and I joined the others at the table. Once we’d eaten, Finn began to speak immediately. A lot had happened in the past few hours; I was sure he had a lot of data to disseminate to us.

  “First, I just want to say that I am very grateful that we are all here this evening to have this meeting. Things could have turned out a lot more tragically than they did.”

  Everyone agreed with Finn’s assessment of the situation.

  “Before we jump into the discussion of the attack on Santa at Coffee Cat Books, which I realize is the real reason we’re here, I want to share a few things I found out about Tom and the things we found in his pocket when Jingles led Cait to his home.”

  Everyone sat quietly, waiting for Finn to continue.

  “As you remember, Cait and I found a key, four quarters, a phone number, and a bullet casing in the pockets of a pair of pants Tom had left in his dirty clothes basket. We aren’t certain any of these items are connected to what happened to him, but the cat led Cait to the house and seemed satisfied when we’d found it, so we assumed the items in Tom’s pockets were what we were there to find. I’ve spent some time looking closely at
all the items. Initially, we felt that the key might be associated with a safety deposit box because it was smaller than the sort of key one might have for a house or automobile, but I checked all the banks on the island and was unable to find a match. Quite by accident, I stumbled onto some information while at the Driftwood for an early breakfast this morning. It seems that Tom purchased a boat a couple of weeks ago. It is docked at the private marina on the north shore, and it was not widely known that he’d bought it. In fact, he hadn’t even gotten around to registering it in his name yet. The man from whom I got the information about the boat was a buddy of Tom’s. He stopped by my table to see if I had any leads on his death. We got to chatting, and he not only told me about the boat but also where to find it. As soon as I finished eating, I headed to the old marina to check it out. The boat is a cabin cruiser, and below deck, I found a wall with cabinets that lock. The key Cait and I found opens them.”

  “Wiley drew Santa on a boat,” I said.

  “I thought of that as soon as I found out that Tom had bought a boat,” Finn replied. “And when I saw the wall of cabinets we thought might have been either a mausoleum or safety deposit boxes, I realized this was what Wiley had actually drawn.”

  “So what is in the cabinets?” Siobhan asked.

  “A variety of things, the most interesting of which was a bag of Washington quarters like the ones we found in Tom’s pocket.”

  I narrowed my gaze. “Okay, so why did Tom have all those quarters? I thought you said they weren’t all that valuable.”

  “Generally speaking that is true, but coins, if uncirculated, which these appear to be, can bring in a pretty penny. I suppose that the coins would hold a certain appeal for a collector. But then I noticed that again, as with the four we found in a pocket, all the coins in the bag are dated between 1932, which is the first year they were circulated, and 1935. I still don’t know why Tom had the coins, but given the fact that they were uncirculated, I figured they came from a collector. After doing some research into the history of the coin, though, I found that there were no Washington quarters minted in 1933 at any US mint.”