Meow or Never (Vanessa Abbot Cat Protection League Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

5
    Vanessa strode into the police station
and approached the front desk. “Where’s Detective Wheeler?”

    “I’m right over here,” he called out.

    Vanessa caught sight of Penny
Cartwright and Alan Braitwaite standing next to Pete’s desk. “Walter Connelly
is here in town.”

    His eyes flew open. “What?”

    Vanessa nodded. “I saw him watching me
through binoculars, and then he shot at me.”

    Pete rose to his feet. A black cloud
darkened his face. “Where?”

    “That’s just the thing,” she told him.
“He was in an old abandoned barn across the road from the property I just went
to look at. Someone from the real estate agent’s office must have found out I
was there and tipped him off.”

    “You should have found out who works in
the office,” he replied. “We could have compared their criminal records to see
if any of them have any past or present connection to Walter.”

    “I tried to,” Vanessa told him. “The
agent wouldn’t give me that information. She said if it really is part of a
murder investigation, she should be talking to the police.”

    Pete nodded and sat down in his chair
again. “Fair enough. At least we have somewhere to look.”

    “How do you explain him being here in
town?” Vanessa asked. “He’s supposed to be under house arrest in Washington.”

    Pete shrugged. “Who knows what lurks in
the minds of the federal government? Maybe their idea of house arrest is not
going out for pizza. I don’t know. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is how
we’re going to deal with him now that he’s here.”

    “Can’t you just drive out there and
arrest him?” she asked.

    “He’ll be long gone by now,” Pete
replied. “Besides, now that we know he’s here, he’ll be a lot easier to spot
than trying to find some mystery stranger. We all know what Walter looks like.
We don’t have to try to find out who’s doing his dirty work for him.”

    “He could still be using agents,”
Vanessa pointed out. “He wouldn’t be going around blowing up aluminum plants
and cutting brake lines himself. That would be beneath him.”

    “You would think,” Pete replied, “that
sneaking around abandoned barns and spying on people with binoculars would be
beneath him, too. You would think he would send someone else to shoot at you.
That way, if you happened to catch sight of them, you wouldn’t recognize the
person. But he didn’t. He wanted to see you for himself. He might feel the same
way about cutting my brake lines and blowing up the plant. He might not trust
an agent to do the job right.”

    Vanessa waved a finger at him. “You
can’t tell me that Walter Connelly— Doctor Walter Connelly—criminal
mastermind and underworld kingpin, snuck into that plant, climbed up that
scaffold, and drilled a hole in a copper gas line just to silence a potential
witness. You’re taking this whole thing too far. Besides, as you said, someone
would recognize him, especially there at the plant, since he wasn’t a regular
employee.”

    Pete shook his head. “This is getting
us nowhere. We have to track him down before he strikes again.”

    Vanessa turned to the pair next to his
desk. “Hello, Penny. Hello, Alan. What are you two doing here? You’re not going
into protective custody, are you?”

    Penny glanced at her brother. “We
weren’t sure what to do. We came here to talk to Detective Wheeler and Captain
Jameson about the situation. But that was before we knew Walter was in town.
This changes everything.”

    Vanessa sighed, and they all sat down
around Pete’s desk. “I wasn’t all that excited about going into hiding myself,
but now that I’ve seen Walter from myself, I’m starting to have second
thoughts. If Walter has people planted all over town and can get information
about where we are and where we’re going at the snap of his fingers, none of us
are safe. We might not even be safe in protective custody.”

    Pete stared down at his desk. “I used
to