Софи Келли - Final Catcall

I smiled at the memory. The clapping had begun slowly and spread through the theater like a wave of sound. I’d been enchanted when Tinkerbell came to life again and soared over the stage.

“The audience claps every time,” Mom said. “But there’s always someone who doesn’t. There are always one or two people who can’t get past the fact that Tinkerbell is just an actor being pulled through the air in a harness. They can’t stop looking at the wires long enough to see the magic.”

She reached up and took off her earrings. “That’s what you and your detective are doing. You’re too focused on the wires to see the magic.”

She got to her feet and kissed the top of my head. “I have to brush my teeth before I go back to the theater.”

I drove Mom down to the Stratton and told her I’d be back in a couple of hours to get her. There was no sign of either cat when I got home. I wandered into the living room, thinking maybe I’d call and see if Roma was back from her visit to Eddie.

Owen was lying on his back in the middle of the footstool, feet in the air.

“Owen!” I snapped. “What are you doing?”

He rolled over, jumped to his feet, and immediately hung his head. For months I’d suspected Owen was napping on the stool. It was old and I knew the fabric wouldn’t stand up to a cat’s claws, so the only time either cat got anywhere near the footstool was if he was sitting on my lap or sprawled across my legs.

I glared at him. “Get down,” I said.

He jumped to the floor and slunk past me to the kitchen.

Mom had been sitting in the wing chair before she left, talking to my dad on the phone. She’d left her purse behind and it had slipped to the floor, spreading its contents all over the polished hardwood.

I bent down and started picking everything up. Mom’s wallet felt like it had a couple of pounds of change inside. And why did she have a little tin of bacon-flavored mints?

I thought about what she’d said. Was she right? Were Marcus and I focusing on the wrong thing? Were we getting too distracted by our differences?

A clump of gray cat hair floated down from the top of the footstool. Owen was losing his touch. I knew he’d been lounging up there for months, but he’d always managed to be sitting on the floor, the picture of innocence, when I walked into the room.

And then I got it. I looked at the tin of bacon mints in my hand and suddenly I wasn’t trying to push a square peg in a round hole. I’d been had. By a small gray tabby cat, and not for the first time.

I sat back on my heels. Owen let me catch him on the footstool to divert my attention from the greater sin of rummaging through my mother’s purse in search of the almost irresistible smell of bacon. Could a cat really be capable of that much subterfuge and misdirection? I was fairly certain this one could.

Suddenly it was as if everything had shifted just a little to the right and now everything was lined up properly, every peg sliding into the right hole. If Owen could misdirect my attention, why couldn’t someone who’d spent their life creating a fantasy, making people believe in fairies and forget about the wires, do the same thing?

I put everything back in Mom’s purse except the little white tin and then I went to the kitchen. Owen was under the table doing his shamefaced act. I leaned down and looked at him. “Come out from there,” I said. “I know what you’re up to.”

He came to stand in front of me and I held out the little tin. “Were you looking for these?”

He meowed and reached out a paw before he remembered he was supposed to be pretending to be guilty over rolling on the footstool. He hung his head again.

I patted my lap. “Give it up, Fuzz Face,” I said. “I know you went through Mom’s purse and spread everything all over the floor looking for these and then you couldn’t get them open. You left teeth marks on the package.”

He understood either my words or my tone because he gave up the act, climbed onto my lap and leaned over to lick the plastic wrapping around the tin.

I shook my head. “That’s just sad,” I said. “These are not for cats.” I set the mints on the table.

He got a sulky look on his face. “They’re breath mints with the taste of bacon. No real bacon.” I shook my head. “No bacon.”

He clearly understood the “no bacon” part. He leaned his head against my arm and made a sound a lot like a sigh.

I stroked his fur. “You should be in trouble,” I said. “You should be on the kitty equivalent of bread and water for the next couple of days.”

He lifted his head and looked at me. We both knew that wasn’t going to happen.

I gave him what I hoped was a stern look. “What you did was bad. Very bad. You don’t go through people’s things just because you think you smell bacon. Are we clear?”

“Merow,” he said after a moment.

I picked him up and got to my feet. “The only thing that’s saving you is that thanks to your little stunt I think I know who killed Hugh Davis and maybe even why.”

Owen nuzzled my chin, looking very pleased with himself. I kissed the top of his head. “Now all I have to do is prove it.”

21

My laptop was in my briefcase. I set it on the kitchen table. The moment I sat down Owen jumped onto my lap. Clearly I was going to have help with the research I needed to do.

He squinted at the screen as I brought up my favorite search engine. There was a lot more information about the play Yesterday’s Children than I’d expected. I scanned several articles written about the first production of the play. Then I typed in Ben Saroyan’s name to narrow the search. Owen stayed perched on my lap, eyes on the screen as though he was reading as well. And for all I knew, maybe he was. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for.

There was one more thing I wanted to check on. “Cross your paws that these archives are online,” I said to Owen.

He looked down at his feet and then up at me.

I scratched the top of his head. “Never mind,” I said.

Some newspapers have their entire archive of back issues searchable online. The paper I was interested in turned out to be one of them. It didn’t take long to finish my search.

I leaned back in the chair. Owen shifted on my lap and tipped his head to one side, eyeing me with curiosity. I stroked his fur. “I know the who,” I said. “And now I think I understand the why.”

He meowed softly in what I decided to believe was agreement.

I stretched and looked at my watch. It was almost time to head down to the Stratton. I set Owen on the floor, put the computer away and ran upstairs for a sweater.

I thought about calling Marcus and decided that part of the puzzle could wait until later.

Ben and Abigail were in the production office at the theater. “Hi, Kathleen,” Abigail said, getting up from her makeshift desk. “I think your mom’s upstairs. I’ll go tell her you’re here.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “She’s wonderful.”

“There’s no rush,” I called after her. I leaned against the door frame.

Ben got up and poured himself a cup of coffee. “Would you like a cup?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No thanks. How did rehearsals go today?”

“A lot better than yesterday. Your mother’s a good director. I think we’re going to be ready for next week.”

I grinned at him. “So the festival’s not jinxed.”

He exhaled loudly and shook his head. “Why do people believe in that rubbish?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because it’s easier to believe in a jinx or a curse than it is to accept that bad things happen and sometimes we don’t have any control over that.”

“The first time Hugh mentioned Yesterday’s Children I should have said no,” Ben said, adding sugar to his coffee.