Callahan and the Spy

Callahan and the Spy

Cat Callahan Cozy Mysteries, Book 5

By Rebecca Barrett

Dedication

For Ginger McSween, the original Ginger, minus the Titian hair. Steadfast friend, animal lover, and champion of lost causes.

Chapter One

Hello, Trout, Ginger says.

Instantly I rise from a light snooze on the window seat overlooking Petronia Street. Unfortunately, the greeting isn’t for the vision of trout almandine already forming in my feline mind. It is, instead, addressed to a sandy haired man in deck shoes, tattered khaki shorts, and a faded Hawaiian print shirt standing in the center of the foyer.

Ginger. The man called Trout says.

What brings you to the Paradise?

My morning charter. She was supposed to be at the marina at six.

One of mine?

Yeah.

Name?

Liberty Anderson.

That would be the Toucan Suite. Not exactly your usual fare.

Trout shrugged. Her money spends like any other.

Trout exudes an intoxicating mixture of scents: sea air, cotton dried in the sun, fish. I admit the latter is enough to draw me to examine his deck shoes.

I see one of the Hemingway cats has strayed from home again. He places his hands in the pockets of his shorts and watches me as I investigate.

He’s not a museum cat. Ginger replies.

Yours? You’ve gotten yourself a pet?

He belongs to a guy named Dax. He’s doing some work for me. Converting the garage into an apartment. And some other odds and ends I’ve let slide for too long.

Trout loses interest in me and crosses to the reception desk. He places an elbow on the high mahogany counter and runs his other hand through overlong, curling hair, and sighs. You want to hustle up my charter?

Sure. Ginger picks up the phone receiver and punches in two numbers. She watches Trout as she listens to the barely audible burring ring of the phone in the Toucan Suite drifting down the stairwell to the reception area. After several rings, she lets the receiver fall away from her ear and dangle from her curled fingers. She raises her eyebrows. Did you try her cell phone?

For the past forty-five minutes. I decided the battery must be dead. He rubs the stubble on his chin. You haven’t seen her this morning, have you?

Ginger hangs up the phone and shakes her head. I’ve been up and busy with breakfast since five. She could have slipped out for a run while I was in the kitchen. She glances at the line of hooks on the wall behind the reception desk. Her key’s not here, so probably not. She hesitates then says, Coffee’s on. You look like you could use a cup.

Ah, what’s this? Do I detect a hint of interest on the part of Ginger? There’s something in her voice that makes me wonder, a very subtle something, but it’s there, nevertheless. I turn my attention once again to Trout. What is it about this particular male that strikes a chord with the world-weary mistress of the Paradise Bed and Breakfast?

Do you think you could check to see if she’s in her room? he asks.

Ginger leans back from the reception counter. I don’t normally like to disturb my guests unless they request a wake-up call, but sure. The something has disappeared from her voice. She takes the ring of master keys from a drawer.

Thanks. Trout jangles the change in his pocket. I was counting on the booking. I’m a little pinched right now.

The faint lines on Ginger’s forehead smooth and she crosses the foyer to the stairs. I decide this is my opportunity to explore the Toucan Suite. The guest who booked it has been very standoffish and doesn’t appear to have much affection for cats, and me, in particular. She’s been quick to close her door on my inquisitive nose. She even had the nerve to tell me to scat. Now I’m on a mission to gain access to her room just for the heck of it. After all, she brought it upon herself.

Ginger knocks on the door of the Toucan Suite and waits, keys in hand. She glances down at me, arches an eyebrow and says, Behave.

What? Dax and I have only been in town three days. Why would she think I wouldn’t behave?

The knock goes unanswered and Ginger frowns. She knocks harder and when there is still no answer, no sound of anyone stirring within the suite, she sighs.

I can see that she’s hesitant to intrude on the privacy of a guest at this early hour, but it appears the desire to accommodate Trout overcomes her misgivings. She uses the master key and opens the door.

Sprawled across the bed is the guest I have labeled Birdbrain. I instantly catch a whiff of an unusual scent, one I haven’t yet encountered in my ramblings. Underlying that rapidly fading odor is one that is all too familiar. Liberty Anderson will never again shoo cats or any other creatures from her door. She is dead in Paradise.

Ginger hesitates on the threshold as if she too senses the absence of life in the pale body before her. She clears her throat. Ms. Anderson.

I pad across the room to the foot of the bed where one hand trails to the floor. Yeow. I sit and blink at Ginger.

Liberty? This time Ginger speaks louder and takes a couple of steps into the room. Liberty Anderson!

She moves quickly to the side of the woman in red sprawled across the still-made bed and now sees the already clouding blue eyes open in an expression of what could be considered astonishment.

Ginger places two fingers against the artery in the woman’s neck for a couple of seconds then backs away to the door. Trout! she calls down the stairs. You’d better get up here.

* * *

Ginger’s heart tapped a double beat when she looked down into the lifeless eyes of the woman in the Toucan Suite. She knew Liberty Anderson was dead even before she checked for a pulse.

Her mind raced ahead with questions she knew the police would ask the moment they arrived. Ginger needed to call them right away, but she couldn’t seem to move. Her gaze followed the movements of the funny-looking gray cat called Callahan. He sniffed the dead woman’s hand then leapt onto the bed and sniffed around her mouth.

Was this what had set the cat off in the middle of the night? Ginger thought back to the images of his meltdown at one in the morning. He had demanded to be admitted to the bed and breakfast with his caterwauling. But Liberty hadn’t been in her room then. The keys to her suite had been on the board behind the registration desk.

She took a deep breath and released it slowly. Trout topped the stairs and came to stand beside her, looking into the room.

Passed out? he asked.

Dead, she replied.

* * *

Trout looked from the dead woman to Ginger, then back again. He didn’t need to enter the room to know that Ginger was right in her assessment of the situation. There’s a stillness in death that’s like no other and, with the exception of the dumpy gray cat with the golden eyes, there was no life emanating from the room.

He shifted his body weight away from the doorway, an involuntary movement brought on by other deaths and other lonely hotel rooms.

The police would need to be called and the process of a suspicious death would begin. He didn’t plan to stick around for the formalities.

He jangled the change in his pocket. Was she ill, do you know? A heart condition or something?

I’ve no idea. She’s just a tourist doing the tourist thing.

The tourist thing?

Sleeping late, out half the night, dressed for… Ginger hesitated. The woman was dead, for Pete’s sake.

Action? Trout suggested.

She was having a good time. Let’s just leave it at that.

Did she bring anyone back to the Paradise?

No.

All right, then. I guess we should call nine-one-one. He watched as the cat worked his way down the length of Liberty Anderson’s body, sniffing the whole way. And get that damn cat away from her.

The cat paused at the woman’s left foot and fixated on her big toe then lost interest.

Unwilling to break the plane of the door casing, Trout made a hissing sound through his teeth in an effort to scare the cat off the bed. The cat flattened his already floppy ears and sniffed one last time. He then sat back on his haunches and observed Trout through the narrow slits of his golden eyes.

Ginger gave a small shake of her head and sighed. Callahan, she said, off the bed.

The cat called Callahan turned his gaze to Ginger, blinked three times, and hopped down from the bed. He made his way silently to the purse and its spilled contents on the floor by the dressing table. After he examined all the items, he padded off into the bathroom.

Crazy cat, Trout said. Neither he nor Ginger made a move to set in motion what they both knew had to happen. It occurred to Trout that a dead body at the bed and breakfast couldn’t be good for Ginger’s business. Late summer wasn’t the most lucrative time of the year for either of them. Fewer tourists were willing to risk a ruined vacation at the height of hurricane season. Parents were getting children ready to return to school, and retirees didn’t want to be in the sub-tropics when temperatures ranged in the high nineties and the humidity was off the charts.

It was as if the inability to rally to action lifted from each of them at the same time. Trout and Ginger turned toward the head of the stairs.

When they reached the ground floor, Trout looked at Ginger. You okay?

She nodded.

He noted the paleness around her lips. He had hoped to skip out while she phoned the police. He didn’t want to get tangled up with an investigation. After all, he didn’t know the dead woman. Not really. She was simply a charter to him.

When Ginger reached for the phone on the reception desk, he noted the slight tremble of her hand. He had left it too late. His window of opportunity slammed shut. He couldn’t leave her now that he knew how shaken she was.

He had known Ginger since he first landed in Key West almost two years ago. After a six-month hiatus he thought of as his lost period, he had looked around for a means to support himself. He crewed on a couple of deep-sea fishing boats for the remainder of that year and decided this was the life for him.

During that first year, he had seen Ginger on occasion at the Smokin’ Tuna, a restaurant and bar frequented in the after-hours, off-season, by locals. She, and a couple of other small establishments had been willing to keep fliers of his charter company available for interested guests.

When he was near the end of a six-pack, Trout acknowledged to himself that he was more than a little attracted to her. In his more sober moments, he never allowed his thoughts to linger in such treacherous waters. Trout had purposely chosen the life of a loner and Key West was an ideal setting for like-minded people.

The gray cat caught Trout’s eye as he came down the stairs. He paused on the third step from the bottom and sat, curling his tail around his front paws. Trout was accustomed to the Hemingway cats that roamed the island as well as the conchs who made Key West their home. This cat, Callahan, Ginger had called him, wasn’t like any of them. He had strange ears that didn’t stand up straight and he had a less than sleek body. In fact, he was more than a little dumpy.

Trout listened to Ginger’s end of the phone conversation with the police. They had her stay on the line, so he went through to the kitchen and poured each of them a cup of coffee. He hesitated over the blueberry muffins but decided it would be unseemly to take one under the circumstances.

* * *

Ginger accepted the steaming cup of coffee from Trout with a nod of thanks. She had hung up on the nine-one-one operator after assuring her that she wasn’t in any danger, there was nothing anyone could do for the woman in the Toucan Suite, and that she wasn’t going anywhere.

As she sipped the hot brew, she realized her hands were no longer shaking and her mind was reviewing the details of the room when she had first opened the door to the Toucan Suite. The image that stuck in her mind was the lone red shoe that rested on its side on the floor just below where Liberty Anderson’s left foot rested half on and half off the bed.

Is this your first dead body? Trout asked.

Ginger cleared her throat, but in the end only shook her head.

The sound of a police siren grew louder as it approached from the direction of Truman Avenue. She took another sip of coffee and placed the cup on the registration counter.

Did you smell anything in the room? she asked Trout.

He thought for a second, his forehead creased with a frown, and shook his head. No. He looked down at Ginger. Like perfume you mean?

Not that exactly. She glanced toward the front door where two uniformed police officers were entering the building. It was an unusual scent, very faint. Her shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. Probably just my imagination.

Ginger knew Trout didn’t want to be there, that the thought of becoming entangled in the investigation had him halfway to the door. She was grateful that he had remained with her, had given her time to recover from the initial shock of her discovery. Sorry about all this, she said.

Trout jangled his change once again. What are friends for, right?

Friends. They were friends. She had felt drawn to him the first time she saw him balancing precariously on a bar stool at the Bull and Whistle, his head in his hand. His hollowed-out eyes and morning shakes had, with time, given way to a permanent tan that made his pale blue eyes startling when you first saw him. His frame had filled out with hard work and the slow return of his appetite.

Whatever had driven him to abandon his former life and bury himself in the Florida Keys was still a mystery to her. It was a common state of being for many who drifted down the state seeking some intangible something. Or seeking nothing at all.

Ginger didn’t know which it was with Trout.

One of the police officers went up the stairs to stand guard over the body in the Toucan Suite while the other separated her and Trout. She saw Trout’s wistful glance at the front entrance of the Paradise as the policeman motioned for him to wait in the kitchen. A twinge of guilt tugged at her. She should have sent him on his way the moment she got off the phone with the police. Now it was too late.

Duncan Moore strolled through the beveled glass front doors of the Paradise. One of the uniformed policemen intercepted him, obviously giving him the run-down on the situation.

Of all the people they could have sent, Ginger thought. She had mentally prepared herself for Ricki Lofton, a detective with the police force and a friend. Instead, she had Duncan.

Ginger. Duncan shrugged his shoulders in that forward roll of his. Got a bit of a complication, I hear.

Duncan and Ginger had fallen into a short-lived relationship a couple of years back when she first returned to Key West to take over the Paradise. He was a handsome man with his dark hair beginning to gray at the temples, deep blue eyes, and a compact but solid physique. The problem with Duncan was he had a habit of falling into short-lived relationships.

Ginger had long since gotten over Duncan. In truth, she had