The Cat, the Wife and the Weapon: A Cats in Trouble Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

away.” Tom stared down at the purring Chablis. “I didn’t, but I wish I had. Wish I’d found a way to take him away long ago.”
    “He ran away? How old is he?” I said.
    “Just turned eighteen,” he said.
    “And why would those two think you had anything to do with his disappearance?” I asked.
    “Because even though I had no legal standing as far as Finn was concerned and was warned to keep my distance—because Hilary said I was a ‘negative influence’—I’ve kept in touch with him. I thought Hilary didn’t know. Obviously she did. Her jerk of a husband took me by surprise the other day. Came busting into my house.”
    “Like broke in ?” I said. “How frightening.”
    “Yup. He had a gun,” Tom said. “Searched my house, looking for Finn. Said he logged on to Finn’s computer and saw all the e-mails between us—e-mails going back a long time. Stupid to use e-mail, but Finn told me those two completely ignored him, couldn’t have cared less about what he was doing in his spare time.”
    “You hadn’t heard from Finn, though?” I said.
    “No. What Nolan told me was the scary part—how Finn went missing in the middle of the night. I asked a lot of questions and got no answers except for a pistol whipping. Long story short, we drove in my car all the way to North Carolina to where he and Hilary and Finn lived.” Tom parted his dark hair near his temple and I saw a large gash.
    I winced. “Looks like you could have used stitches.”
    “Too late for doctoring now, but you can guess I was pretty messed up. He tied a rope from my knee to the steering wheel and cuffed my right hand to the other side of the wheel. We drove for hours like that.”
    “What about his car?” I was thinking about the white Ford I saw at Tom’s place, but I had assumed it belonged to Bob. “And why did Nolan need to take you all the way to North Carolina?”
    “Okay, going where Nolan and Hilary lived was my idea. A stupid one, looking back. See, I was afraid Nolan was aware how close Finn and my mother were and that he’d end up at her house. Maybe he’d terrorize her trying to get information. I had to protect my mother from him.”
    “There’s nothing stupid about protecting Karen,” I said. “How did you convince him to leave Mercy with you?”
    “I told him how I was in the security business and could hack into Finn’s computer and discover information from instant messages or any social networking sites Finn frequented, maybe find him through his Internet friends. I called my neighbor to take care of Dashiell and phoned Kara and asked her to handle the business.”
    “Why did you drive, though?” I said.
    “I told him in this small town people would know I’d disappeared if my car and my van were in the driveway and I was out of touch,” he said. “So we ditched Nolan’s car near the creek and came back to my house. I was dumb enough to think we’d take my van with all my tools. I told Nolan I needed them. But remember, he was a cop once. He knew I probably had at least one gun in the van, not to mention communication equipment. He wasn’t about to offer me any opportunity to get the jump on him. Plus, Nolan figured we wouldn’t have to stop if we took the Prius. For the first time ever, I was pissed off about having a full tank of gas.”
    “Did you find anything on Finn’s computer once you got to their place?” I asked.
    “I pretended to go through the motions, checked out files and chat rooms and Web sites and told him there was nothing. About then the lightbulb finally came on for Nolan. He figured out I was stalling. So the beatings started—and they weren’t because he thought I could tell him anything. He hated me for sending him to jail.” Tom gave a mirthless laugh. “He enjoyed the heck out of kicking my ass, too.”
    “ You sent him to jail?” I said, feeling my eyes widen in surprise.
    He nodded. “Oh yeah. Nolan Roth was a dirty cop and I turned him in. He was sure