Chapter 3 – The Uninvited Guest
“Well?” said Gwen, looking at the woman.
“I love those cats,” she said, looking at the pair sitting on the counter, “Russian blue cats are so smart. Did you know the same Russian family was the breeder of those cats for, like, 300 years or something? The family lived in the Czar’s palaces, special treatment, all of that. All they had to do was produce really smart cats for the Czar. Cushy job. I don’t think the members of that family got out a lot though. I’m not sure how THEIR breeding line worked out. There are paintings of them in Moscow, and they all look a little crazy.”
Roger looked at Gwen and said, “I thought Russian spies and assassins were supposed to be like steel. Never say a word, even under torture. She likes to talk. I don’t think Russia is what it used to be.”
Gwen said, “Sometimes those cats make this really cool sound, ‘Caooh’. Do all blues do that?”
The woman looked shocked, which both Roger and Gwen picked up on. Roger said, “I thought Russian spies and assassins were supposed to stay inscrutable, even under torture. She’s like a method actor, letting it all out.”
“You have THAT kind of blue cats? You have a pair of ‘Caooh’ blues? Jesus, they are worth like $50,000.” Roger motioned to her to keep talking. “Only the Czar’s immediate family ever was allowed to have ‘Caooh’ cats. When Lenin did his revolution thing in 1917, he tried to hunt down all the ‘Caoohs’ and kill them. He thought they were icons of Russian aristocracy. They were higher on the assassination list than some Romanov family members. Wow, and you’ve got two of them. They don’t happen to be boy and girl, do they?” The woman looked hopeful.
Roger looked at Gwen and asked, “Do we know if they’re fixed or not? Does Jinny or Guignard know?”
Gwen glared at Roger. Interrogators were not supposed to divulge information to the people they were interrogating. Here he had gone and given up the names of two friends. She looked at the clock, which showed 4:30am. Maybe Roger was off his game because it was the middle of the night. Still, no excuse.
The woman smiled.
“Why are you in our house?” Gwen asked, politely. Not so politely she said, “You’re lucky to be alive.” She remembered the sounds of someone uninvited in her house in the middle of the night, someone who was a threat to her husband and to the The Deneuve. Gwen got a hard look on her face, and this caught the woman’s attention. Her breathing quickened ever so slightly.
“You’re right,” the woman said. “I’m supposed to not say anything if I get caught. It’s just being in such a nice house, and then seeing both of you naked from the waist down, and then you telling me you have ‘Caooh’ cats.”
She lapsed into silence, which at this point Gwen was a little thankful for.
“Why do you have a gun, and what were you going to do with it? Where you going to kill us in our beds?”
Roger gave it a try. “You’re all dressed in black, like an assassin. Even your underwear is black. Are those silk?” Gwen looked at him. “You’re lucky my wife didn’t drop you on the stairs. Why did you take this risk? Tell us and we won’t torture you very much. Our neighbors object to the screams, and we like being good neighbors, right hon?” he asked, looking at Gwen.
Gwen decided she might have to put him to bed and get Catherine down here to help deal with the situation. Before she did that, she would try some coffee on him. She could use some herself. The adrenaline rush of finding an intruder in her house at 3:45am, and coming close to killing the intruder, was beginning to wear off.
Gwen said, “Would you please make some coffee?”
“Eggs and potatoes, too?” Roger said.
“This is not a picnic. All these guns are real, you know.” She looked at the kitchen counter with the Glock, the Beretta, and the Walther on it. She sensed the smell of gun oil.
While Roger fiddled with the big Italian espresso machine, Gwen stared at the woman. What a pain in the ass. Everything had been going along really well, and now this. The first two Russian couples the Junes had brought to Charleston six months ago were spending time in their beachfront houses. The Peter and Pater boys were making progress setting up their ballet academy, working with Selgey and Bart. And Jinny and Guignard were….hmm, what were they doing? They visited regularly, but never seemed to say what they were doing for a living. They would say they had gone fishing that day, or had eaten lunch at this or that restaurant, or had gone to see a movie. But they didn’t talk about doing anything to make money. Oh well, not our business.
She and Roger had talked once or twice about reconstituting the caper team, and getting the next contingent of Russians out of the Saint Petersburg February deepfreeze, but nothing had come of it. They were expecting Jinny and Guignard to run out of money and come to them about getting more cash cows here to Charleston, but that hadn’t happened. Gwen wondered if Jinny was generating an income he wasn’t telling them about. As a couple, Jinny and Guignard seemed happy together, so butt out is what Gwen thought.
And now this. Now this woman, sitting in their kitchen in her underwear, duct taped to a chair.