James Brogan and the Case of the Missing Cat
James Brogan was nursing a lukewarm coffee and a fresh black eye when Mrs. Eleanor Whitcomb swept into his cramped office above the pawn shop. The black eye was from the previous case—a divorce job where the husband turned out to be surprisingly fast with a pool cue.
“Mr. Brogan,” she said, clutching a lace handkerchief like it owed her money, “my precious Mr. Whiskers has vanished.”
Brogan raised an eyebrow. He’d handled missing wives, cheating spouses, and once an entire missing classic Mustang, but a cat? This was new territory.
“Describe him,” he said, flipping open his notebook.
“Persian. Pure white. Blue eyes. Answers only to ‘Mr. Whiskers’ or ‘My Sweet Prince.’ He wears a diamond collar worth more than your rent, I suspect.”
Brogan suspected correctly.
The trail led to the Whitcombs’ upscale neighborhood on the east side. Mrs. Whitcomb’s husband was away on “business” (Brogan had tailed enough men to know what that usually meant), leaving the house suspiciously quiet. He started with the obvious: checking the usual cat hiding spots, then the not-so-obvious ones like the neighbor’s garage.
By the second day, Brogan was deep in the underbelly of suburban cat society. He talked to a chain-smoking retired mailman who swore he saw a white blur heading toward the old railyard. He bribed a group of kids with twenty bucks and pizza to show him their tree fort. He even visited “The Whisker Lounge,” a shady pet boutique run by a guy named Vinnie who definitely had mob connections but swore he only dealt in gourmet catnip these days.
Turns out Vinnie was useful.
“Some guy came in yesterday,” Vinnie muttered, counting cash with nicotine-stained fingers. “Wanted a diamond collar off a pure white Persian. Paid cash. Nervous type. Kept looking over his shoulder.”
Brogan found the nervous type two hours later in a cheap motel on the edge of town. The man—balding, mid-forties, reeking of desperation—was trying to sell the collar to a fence when Brogan kicked the door in.
“Mr. Whiskers,” Brogan said flatly, leveling his .38 at the man’s chest.
The guy cracked instantly. He was the Whitcombs’ disgruntled gardener. Mr. Whitcomb had been sleeping with the gardener’s wife. In a fit of petty revenge, he’d catnapped Mr. Whiskers, planning to sell the collar and skip town. The cat, being a cat, had escaped the motel room through a bathroom window two hours earlier and was now living its best life somewhere in the railyard.
Brogan found Mr. Whiskers on top of an abandoned boxcar, looking regal and mildly annoyed at the interruption. The cat allowed himself to be carried back to the car only after Brogan bribed him with an entire can of expensive tuna he’d bought just in case.
Mrs. Whitcomb wept with joy when Brogan returned her precious prince. She paid him double the agreed rate and even threw in a bottle of 18-year-old scotch.
As Brogan walked back to his car, Mr. Whiskers watching him imperiously from the window, he lit a cigarette and muttered to himself:
“Next time someone says ‘missing pet,’ I’m charging triple.”
He smiled anyway. The black eye from the last case was starting to fade, and for once, nobody had pulled a gun on him.
Just another day in the life of James Brogan.
