Chapter 34 Clues

"Hold your horses and tell us what's going on? Are Bella and Oliver missing?"

"Are you home? I'm in over my head right now, I'll talk to you in person."

Selene looked at the pan of cat rice and then at the time on her cell phone and hastily stopped, "I'm not at home right now, I'm back home, you can just say it on the phone."

"... Well, didn't I go to my boyfriend's house yesterday? When I came back in the morning, the cats were still in the house, but I was in a hurry to go out for something in the afternoon, and I seem to have forgotten to close the door, and as soon as I came back both cats were gone."

Selene pondered for a moment, "Have you searched all over your house? Sure both cats aren't hiding in any corner?"

"I searched, my boyfriend and I both rummaged through the house and couldn't find them, I took out their favorite canned food and it didn't respond, it's all my fault, I'm too careless oooh oooh oooh ..."

By the end of the sentence, Linda had started to cry, and Selene could hear her boyfriend softly comforting her from the side.

Selene thought for a moment and then said, "Linda hold on, how long have you been gone?"

Linda huffed and described, "I went out at one o'clock, came back at four o'clock, and then found now, searched the house, searched the hallway, and searched the downstairs of the neighborhood, I just couldn't find it, and when I asked people, they all said they didn't see it ..."

"The hallway?" Selene instantly remembered one of the few times she'd been out of the house, and the door to the safe passage was too heavy for a kitten to supposedly push.

"The door to the safe passage on your floor is open?"

"Well, it looks like housekeeping forgot to close it when they were cleaning, oooooooh ... how everything touches together ..."

That's kind of hard to do.

If the cat had gotten into the elevator, she could have checked the security cameras, but Bella and Oliver weren't her. There was no way they would have pushed the elevator button to get to the elevator.

And she remembered that there were only two security cameras in the security corridor of this neighborhood, one on the top floor leading to the rooftop, and the first floor entrance and exit, which wouldn't have been able to capture the cat at all if she'd jumped out of a window on any floor.

Speaking of surveillance, Selene remembered something else.

"Isn't there surveillance inside your cat room too?"

Speaking of this, Linda cried even harder, "The surveillance broke down last week, and I kept forgetting to fix it."

This is really all touching together.

Selene can only continue to make suggestions: "You first go to the property to check the monitoring, to see if the monitoring inside the community can see the cat, and then go to print the cat-seeking notice posted to the elevator of each building, and the property group to post the cat-seeking notice, to see if there are any tenants who have picked up the cat."

"Okay well ... I'll go now. Thank you Selene!"

The opposite party hung up the phone in a hurry, and it looked like they were heading straight to the monitoring room.

And Selene also hurriedly turned off the fire of the gas stove, ran out of her house, and opened the door in the aisle leading to the safe passage.

It couldn't be helped, Jessica wasn't there, and if she went out and tried to come back in, this was the only way she could do it.

Half an hour later.

An orange cat with a small orange satchel on its back appeared at Selene's door.

After the last time she went out, Selene had gone out and customized a mini satchel. After all, it was inconvenient to carry items in a bag, and the bag now contained her new small-screen phone. The original one was a bit too big and a bit cumbersome to carry around.

She was ready to solve this missing cat case on her own.

Cat Detective, online case!

Selene headed towards the security corridor. She walked up the stairs to the security corridor door on the eighteenth floor.

She had exchanged scents with both Bella and Oliver before. She could recognize them at once, if the cats had gone out from this side, with her superior sense of smell that should be able to smell them.

But strangely enough, Selene didn't smell the cats in the safe passage at all. She went down again, still nothing, not a trace. Bella and Oliver didn't seem to enter the building.

Selene could only try to go back to the hallway on the eighteenth floor, and although the hallway smelled of them, it was most likely left behind from Linda's usual entry and exit, and didn't mean anything.

Had she really walked out and taken the elevator?

Selene glanced at the floor numbers that kept pulsing on the elevator indicator screen and gave up on the idea of walking in.

The odds were that she would run into someone if she went in now.

Selene had to turn back and go back to the safe passage again, but instead of going up, she went down until she got to the first floor, where she jumped to the window, pushed the glass window out a crack that would allow her to get out, and then jumped off the ledge.

The orange cat landed perfectly with her athleticism.

Granted, it was now dark and she shouldn't be too easy to spot if she was moving around outside, but Selene was still cautious as she wound her way down the grass into the lobby of Building A.

If it was true that Bella and Oliver had followed the elevator to the first floor by mistake, there should be a scent left inside the lobby as well.

But Selene carefully ran the lobby all over and didn't smell either of them.

However, it could be that there were too many people coming in and out, masking the odor.

Selene could only run out again, trying to find any stray cats in the neighborhood and ask around.

She had better luck and soon saw a black cat next to a trash can.

"Hello." Selene rushed over to it.

But she was greeted with a "huff" from the black cat.

The black cat arched its back and growled low, "This territory is mine, get out!"

"..." Selene stopped in her tracks and hurriedly explained, "I'm not here to take your territory, I wanted to ask if you've seen two cats, one with blue-gray fur and orange eyes named Oliver, and the other with creamy white long furred blue eyed one named Bella."

Just as Selene had reached out to describe to the black cat how big the two cats were, the black cat finally calmed down.

It licked its paw and thought for a moment, "I haven't seen one, but I seem to know where the two cats you mentioned went."

"Really?!"

The black cat jumped off the trash can lid and walked over to Selene, "I did hear those two names in the afternoon, they were howling in a car, it was extra loud."

"A car?" Selene froze, "What kind of car?"

"A white car." The black cat tried to describe it more, but realized he had no idea how to describe what a car looked like.

It scratched its ears awkwardly, "Never mind, I'll take you to it."

"Thanks! My name is Orange, what's yours?"

The black cat cocked its head, "My word ... Mimi? That's what humans call me."

Selene was silent for a moment, "... Or I'll call you Black Rice."

"Black Rice? That sounds like a good one, okay, I'll take it." The black cat narrowed her eyes.

"If you like it, let's go."

Selene followed Black Cat all the way to the underground garage of the neighborhood.

Since it was a holiday, the underground garage was unusually full of parked cars, and Black Rice led Selene around most of the way before locking onto a white sedan.

Selene jumped to the windshield of the car and looked inside, and saw a familiar jacket on the passenger side, a jacket she had seen Linda wear.

And there were two pillows on the back seat of the car, one with a cartoon drawing of the Muppet Cat and the other with a cartoon drawing of the Blue Cat.

The owner of the car was obviously Linda herself.

Why would Blackie say that he had heard two cats howling in Linda's car during the afternoon?

If it was Linda who had taken the cats out, there was no need for her to raise a fuss now to look for them. In the end the pet cat was just her private property in other people's eyes. Even if she lost the cats, at the most, she would be morally condemned. There was no relevant law that would penalize her. There was no need for her to direct her own show.

... Wait, is she missing any clues?

When Linda was on the phone with her just now, her boyfriend seemed to be on the sidelines.

The person who could drive Linda's car was not only Linda herself, but also her boyfriend.

If that was the case, everything made sense.

Why are there no traces of the two little ones in the safe passage? That's because they didn't even run out of the safe passage, but were directly brought to the underground garage in a cage in an elevator, and finally put in a car and taken out of the neighborhood.

So now to find out where the cats are, we have to investigate where this car has been.

Thinking of this, Selene turned back, "Black Rice, do you know where this car has been?"

Black Rice choked, "How could I possibly know that! That's as far as I can help you, I'm going back to look for food."

"... Well, thank you."

And yeah, there was no way the cat could have known where the car would go.

This was a bit of a headache. If she asked Linda to check the car's recorder she could find out where it had been, but what excuse should she use to get her to do it? Not to mention, her boyfriend was right next to her, and he would surely stop it.

Compared to her boyfriend, who was already talking about marriage, she was just a new friend she hadn't known for a few days, and obviously didn't carry much weight.

Still had to figure it out on her own.

Selene hopped out of the car, pulled her cell phone out of her backpack, and opened the mapping app.

Linda had left the house at one and returned at four, so that's when his boyfriend took the cat out, and even if he drove and tried to drop the cat off farther away, he wouldn't have gone too far. It would have been about an hour's drive away from where he could get to, which would have been about twenty kilometers.

Considering that the cat would have run off on its own, she widened the range and drew a circle with a diameter of thirty kilometers, centered on the Snowdrop Yard, roughly identifying the places where the two little ones might be.

Now it was time to look for clues in the car, where the car had been, where traces might exist on the tires and on the body of the car.

Selene drilled directly under the chassis of the car and began to look at the tires.

There was not much dirt on the tires, but some black gelatinous material. The material looked relatively new. Has any new asphalt road been built recently?

Selene tapped the public number of Morning Sun City's Pep Boys on her cell phone and started searching for related news, and found out that there was a main road called Morning Sun North Road that was renovated, and it was changed from a concrete road to an asphalt road.

North?

Selene looked at the scope of the map. Even if she knew the general location, it was hard to determine where the cat was. There were too many buildings.

All she could do was get out from under the car again, hopped up on the hood and started looking around.

She had felt a scent if anything just now, except that the smell of motor oil was so heavy inside the underground garage that it made her nose a little numb.

What was that smell?

Selene inched closer to the windshield, and the scent grew stronger.

She looked down and noticed some very fresh cinnamon flowers piled up inside the windshield wiper.

Cinnamon? October was indeed the time for cinnamon to bloom, but it didn't seem like cinnamon would be planted on the roads of Morningside City, and she hadn't even smelled cinnamon on the roads.

Where in Morning Sun City did they plant osmanthus flowers? For someone who didn't love flowers, this was really a blind spot in her knowledge.

One would have to find someone to ask.

Realizing this, Selene's head instantly remembered someone.

She remembered that Rowan seemed to love flowers and plants?

Selene hurriedly took a picture of the cinnamon flowers with her cell phone and sent it to Rowan.

[Do you know where this flower grows in Morningside?]

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