The Bengal Identity Read online

  Books by Eileen Watkins

  THE PERSIAN ALWAYS MEOWS TWICE

  THE BENGAL IDENTITY

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  The Bengal Identity

  EILEEN WATKINS

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  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

  Teaser chapter

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Eileen Watkins

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  eISBN-13: 1-4967-1059-8

  eISBN-10: 1-4967-1059-2

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: April 2018

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-1058-1

  For Bela, my funny, feisty, and

  faithful buddy for eighteen years.

  Named for Lugosi, he lived up to

  that legacy by terrorizing the kindly

  staffers at the local veterinary hospital.

  Here, bits of him live in on Cassie’s

  satiny black cat Cole . . . and in Ayesha.

  Acknowledgments

  Once again, I owe much gratitude to the members of my weekly critique group—Elisa Chalem, Susan Moshiashwili, Harry Pollack, Ed Rand, Jeremy Salter, Janice Stucki, and Joanne Weck—as well as to my fellow members of Sisters in Crime Central Jersey, and to my agent, Evan Marshall, and my editor, John Scognamiglio.

  Chapter 1

  Todd Gillis bounced the keys to my Honda CR-V in his dark-stained palm, as if to remind me that he temporarily held my wheels hostage. “So, Carrie . . .”

  “It’s Cassie, actually,” I corrected him.

  “Oh, right. McGarrity?”

  “McGlone.” Todd seemed too young to have such a poor memory. But I guessed anyone’s brain might be affected by this cocktail of exhaust fumes and motor oil, cooking together in the late-July heat of the garage’s repair bay. His short, dirty-blond hair rose in a kind of crest above his forehead—with the help of gel, or maybe axle grease? He radiated lechery and BO.

  I’d just come by to leave my four-year-old car for its sixty-thousand-mile checkup, and hoped to be on my way soon, but Todd seemed to have other ideas. With several other vehicles also parked in the bay, he’d managed to position himself between me and the glimpse of daylight beyond. There seemed to be no easy escape, unless I wanted to vault over a car hood.

  Todd narrowed his eyes now to give me the once-over. “You said this is your first time here? ’Cause you look familiar.”

  “Maybe you’ve seen me around town. I have the cat grooming and boarding shop on Wayfair Street.” In the next instant, I regretted giving Todd even that much information.

  He snapped his fingers. “The bikini car wash last month, out at The Roost. Were you one of those girls?”

  That stunned me for a second, before I assured him, “Definitely not!” Jeez, how often had he tried that line, I wondered, and did it ever actually work?

  “Aww, don’t say that. You’re as pretty as any of them.” He probably could tell, from the way my eyes frantically searched for an escape route, that he wasn’t getting anywhere, and switched his approach. “So you’re into cats, huh? Say, didya hear about the killer cat that’s loose up on Rattlesnake Ridge?”

  All I wanted at this point was to get back to my shop, where I’d left my assistant, Sarah, in charge. So it could only have been temporary insanity that made me take the bait and echo, “Killer cat?”

  “Yeah! They say it’s big as a mountain lion. Got hold of some old lady’s dog, one of those shih tzus.” He mispronounced the breed, maybe on purpose, to make it sound vulgar. “Ate it up, right in front of her!”

  I didn’t find this outlandish tale the least bit funny, and the wide grin that spread across Todd’s grimy face reinforced my desire to spend as little time around him as possible.

  “That’s awful, if it’s true,” I said. “But someone probably made up that story. We hardly ever get mountain lions in New Jersey, or any other cats that big. Anyway, how soon do you think my car will be—”

  “Ha, shows what you know! My dad told me that, back in the seventies, there was a theme park not far from here that had all kinds of wild animals. Jungle World, it was called, and you could ride through. Sometimes the big cats escaped and attacked people and pets. That’s one of the reasons it got shut down. They got luxury houses up there now.”

  This was my first visit to Gillis’s Garage, but Todd seemed to think that because we were around the same age—I’m twenty-seven, I figured him to be a little younger—fate had brought us together. If this was his idea of seductive chitchat, it sure wasn’t mine. Plus, he was a pretty big guy, and he had edged close enough by now to worry me.

  Once again looking for an out, I noticed a rather sinister figure stroll into the repair bay. A lean, middle-aged man with long, graying hair and lots of tattoos stopped in one shadowy corner. He folded his arms across his chest and glared in our direction.

  Ironically, it made me almost grateful that I was no longer alone with Todd.

  I tried again to cut our conversation short by debunking his local legend. “Well, even if some big cat got loose back in the seventies, it wouldn’t still be alive today.”

  “Maybe not the same cat, but it could have bred with something else, couldn’t it? Don’t they sometimes cross different cats to get new species?”

  “Some breeders do, but certainly not with anything that big,” I told him. “Well, as you said before, speaking of cats . . . I’ve got a bunch back at my shop that need to be groomed and fed, so I’d better get going.”

  “Sure, sure.” He gave me a little more breathing room, but still partly blocked my exit. “Y’know, I don’t usually like cats, but I wouldn’t mind having one like that. Imagine owning a wildcat—one that could take down a dog!”

  His enthusiasm for animal-on-animal combat began to turn my stomach, but I tried to find a nonconfrontational way to discourage him. “Hybrids are very expensive, and I hear they can be hard to handle.”

  He leaned back against the doorjamb and leered openly at me. “That’s okay. After all, I can be pretty hard to handle, too.”

  Oh, to leap into my trusty CR-V and speed away! Unfortunately, Todd already had pulled it into the repair bay.

  Behind us, the guy in the corner with the tattoos cleared his throat. “Hey, Gillis, if you’re not too busy putting the moves on your customer, we gotta talk.”


  His boyish face twisting in annoyance, Todd told me, “I’ll let you know when your car’s done.”

  I saw my chance and sidled toward the exit. “You’ve got my number, right?”

  “You bet I do, Cassie!” He winked.

  Ugh.

  I hurried out the door and across the garage’s parking lot. Meanwhile, I could hear the discussion heating up between Todd and his customer.

  “Man, how many times I got to bring this van back here before you fix it right?”

  “Hey, whadya want from me? That thing’s an antique. They don’t even make parts for those anymore.”

  Sounded like Todd had never heard that the customer is always right. I had to give him credit, though, for talking back to a tough dude with flames and skulls crawling down his arms.

  I covered the four blocks back to my shop at a brisk clip. I’d thought I lucked out, finding a place to get my car serviced that was within walking distance. Now I wondered if the convenience was worth dodging clumsy advances from Todd Gillis.

  With a sense of relief, I neared my own shop, on the ground level of a two-story building that originally served as a single-family home. It was over a hundred years old, and at some point the first floor had been converted for retail use. The last owner had operated a fly-by-night beauty salon and left a mess behind. I’d made a lot of renovations and had given the exterior a coat of cream paint with gray trim.

  Now I paused on the sidewalk to admire, once again, my front display window. Large, quirky purple letters spelled out CASSIE’S COMFY CATS, and a smaller font added, FELINE GROOMING AND BOARDING. I’d originally stenciled the lettering myself when I’d opened six months ago. But my first window had to be replaced when a stray bullet went through it during an incident at my shop that spring.

  I’d expected running a business in this small, semirural suburb to be pretty uneventful. But in the short time since I’d opened, Cassie’s Comfy Cats already had seen more than its share of excitement.

  Glancing through the window now, I saw Sarah Wilcox behind the sales counter dealing with a customer. My petite, African-American, sixty-something assistant looked relieved when I stepped through the door.

  “Cassie, glad you’re back,” she said. “I wasn’t sure how to handle this.”

  The young man on the near side of the counter turned to face me. A grayish plaid shirt and faded jeans hung loosely on his thin frame, and his pale, narrow face showed a trace of acne. He needed a shave and a haircut, too. I put his age about the same as mine.

  On the sales counter between him and Sarah rested a rectangular, soft-sided black cat carrier. Even the mesh inserts were so dark that I couldn’t really make out what was inside.

  “You’re the owner?” the man said eagerly. “You board cats, right? Can I leave mine here, just for a few days?”

  The request wasn’t strange, but his manner was. His eyes bugged a little, and his voice had a nervous edge. Still, a customer was a customer.

  “No reason why not,” I said. “We have room at the moment.”

  A couple of months ago, we would always have had room. But that spring we’d gotten some unusual publicity, and now our boarding facilities were sometimes filled to capacity. A large room toward the back of the shop featured more than a dozen “condos,” each the size of a broom closet and with three different levels for litter pans, food and water dishes, and lounging.

  “May I see your cat?” I asked. “Can you take him out?”

  “Her.” He unzipped the mesh door of the carrier.

  Its occupant stepped out with a confident, fluid stride. She was a big, athletic-looking shorthair with a dark brown coat. Her long legs and slightly large ears hinted at some exotic genes.

  A murmur from Sarah told me she also was impressed.

  “Quite an animal,” I said, while the cat allowed me to stroke her back. “What’s her name?”

  He hesitated. “Ayesha. Y’know, like the queen in She?”

  I don’t think he expected me to understand this reference, but I actually had seen the nineteen-sixties fantasy-adventure movie. One of my college boyfriends had a thing for Ursula Andress. My bad luck—a mere brunette, I also couldn’t compete in terms of my chest or cheekbones with Andress the Goddess.

  “That’s certainly regal,” I said. “What breed is she?”

  “No idea. I got her from a shelter as a kitten.”

  Ayesha, who had been scanning the counter with her brilliant golden eyes, suddenly pounced on a pile of our brochures, scattering them to the floor. Sarah caught her before she could jump down after them. The blond man helped get her under control.

  “Has she had all her shots? Do you have any recent vet records?” I asked him. “She certainly looks healthy, but I have to be careful about bringing in any cats that might be carrying contagious diseases.”

  “Sorry. I don’t.”

  Which raised another question. “Is she spayed?”

  When he shook his head, I prepared to turn him down. I’d never yet had to refuse a customer, but my boarding area is pretty close quarters. A cat with FIV or another contagious disease, or a female in heat, could cause serious problems. “I’m very sorry, but we have rules. . . .”

  The guy looked on the edge of tears. “Please, I’m desperate! My . . . my house burned down last night. I can’t go back there, and I have to find someplace else to live that will let me keep Ayesha. I just need a couple of days!”

  I worried that it might take him more than a couple of days to find new quarters. Still, I sympathized. I have three cats of my own, and couldn’t imagine what I’d do if all of us were suddenly homeless. “You don’t have any friends or relatives . . . ?”

  “Not around here. I came from out of state, and I can’t go back. Please, this is an emergency. I’ll come get her as soon as I can.”

  I thought of the extra-large condo that my handyman, Nick Janos, had recently built on a wall opposite the others. I’d asked for it just in case we ever had to quarantine a boarder.

  “All right,” I told the blond guy. “Maybe I can keep her kind of isolated.”

  “That’s great!”

  He paid a week’s board in advance, cash, and wrote down his name—Rudy Pierson—and a cell phone number. With his help, Sarah urged the lively Ayesha back into her carrier. Though a standard size, it almost seemed too small for her.

  “Does she need any kind of special diet or handling?” I asked.

  Rudy requested an all-natural food that I figured I’d have to get from the big pet-supply store on the highway. “She’s well-trained, but she needs a lot of exercise.” He glanced through the wood and mesh screen that separated our playroom from the front sales counter. “I can see you’ve got a big space with cat trees and wall shelves. She’ll like that.”

  I nodded. “We let the boarders out there every day, in shifts.”

  “Terrific! Oh, and she’ll walk on a leash. Y’know, with a harness.”

  “Really?” Sarah peered into the carrier.

  “Anyway, thanks so much,” Rudy said, on his way out. “You guys are lifesavers!” From the doorway, he cast a sad, backward glance at the black carrier, as if he feared he might never see his pet again.

  “What a shame,” said Sarah, after he’d left. “I wonder where the house fire was? I didn’t hear anything about it on the local news.”

  “He said he’s from out of state, so maybe you wouldn’t have. I also wonder, though, how he heard about my place?”

  “You’re on the Web. If he’s got a smartphone, he might have found you that way.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I shrugged off the small mystery. “Well, let’s get Miss Ayesha settled. I’m going to put her in that big condo away from the others. Let’s just hope she doesn’t go into heat while she’s here, or even our neutered male boarders might freak out.”

  Sarah put a pan with fresh litter at the bottom of the quarantine condo, while I filled one dish with water and another with high-quality dry food. Her Highn
ess would just have to make do until I could track down some of the fare Rudy had recommended.

  If it’s a natural brand, Dawn even might carry it at Nature’s Way. That would be convenient. I dropped by my friend’s health food store frequently, just to visit.

  I toted the black carrier back to the condo area, where a few of the other boarders looked up or meowed in interest. Meanwhile, the lean cat’s weight surprised me. When I unzipped the bag and lifted her out, I noticed again how muscular she was. Before putting her in her new quarters, though, I hesitated. Although Ayesha had short, sleek fur, in some areas it looked matted.

  I usually groom boarders at a discount, anyway. Given Rudy’s circumstances, I’d throw in the service for free.

  “I want to deal with her coat first,” I told Sarah. “It’s kind of sticky or something.”

  My assistant followed me into the grooming studio. “Maybe from the house fire?”

  “Could be. From the smoke or some other kind of fumes in the air.” I set the carrier on my stainless steel grooming table, let the new boarder out, and gave her fur a sniff. “Definitely has an odd, perfumey smell.”

  Though lively, restless, and strong, Ayesha didn’t fight the grooming process. Sarah was able to hold her by the scruff while I started working with a slicker brush. The cat’s coat had a slightly stiff texture, and it took a bit of effort to pass the brush through.

  “What breed do you think she is?” Sarah asked. “She’s an unusual color—such an even, dark brown.”

  “There is a Havana Brown breed,” I told her. “I’ve seen them in pictures, but never in person. And Burmese are brown. But those are valuable purebreds. Rudy said he got her as a kitten from a shelter.”

  I switched to a comb, which seemed to glide through the hair more easily, but then noticed something weird.