Carol O’Connell - Stone Angel

As he set the grocery bag down on a slab of butcher block, a hiss called his attention to the top of the refrigerator and the narrowed eyes of a large yellow cat.

“You just sit yourself down.” Miss Trebec gave Charles a gentle push in the direction of the table.

The cat on the refrigerator followed his every move. He stared at the animal as he spoke to the woman. “This man Mallory’s accused of murdering – ”

“Babe Laurie?” She put the cans of orange juice in the freezer compartment, brushing the cat’s tail aside to open and close the refrigerator door.

“Babe?” He raised his voice to be heard above the noise, for she had quickly moved on to the chore of grinding coffee beans by touching one finger to a state-of-the-art machine.

“He used to be called Baby Laurie – that’s the name on the birth certificate. He was the last of eleven children by the same woman. When the doctor put the newborn in the mother’s arms, he asked what she would call this one. She said, ‘I’d call it a baby,’ and then she died. And that’s the truth.”

While she set out the coffee cups, he was told that Babe Laurie had started out as a child evangelist on the tent-show circuit through the prairie states. Charles volunteered that his cousin Max had once journeyed across the country with a tent show, but Max had done a magic act. According to Miss Trebec, Babe Laurie had done much the same thing.

He watched the hot water from the coffee machine drip into a carafe as she explained that the murdered man was the figurehead of the New Church, which was not so new anymore, having been started thirty years ago when Babe was only five or six years old and still called Baby.

“Wouldn’t be too surprised if your friend did kill him. Didn’t like him none myself.” She put a sugar bowl and a cream pitcher on the table. Each belonged to a different pattern of china, and both were familiar to him as priceless museum pieces.

“You’ll be staying in town at the Dayborn Bed and Breakfast – am I right?”

He nodded, pulling out the newspaper photo of the stone angel and unfolding it. He stared down at the likeness of Mallory’s mother. “This sculptor, Mr. Roth? I gather he knew Cass Shelley very well.”

“Yes, he did. And Kathy too. That child spent as much time in Henry’s studio as she did at her own place. Did I mention that the dead man was found near the old Shelley house?”

“Who found the body?”

“Your friend did. She found Babe by the side of the road while she was driving the deputy back to town in his own patrol car. Oh, I didn’t tell you that? She saved the deputy’s worthless life – delivered him to the paramedics at the volunteer fire department. Travis is in the hospital now. I hear he’s in critical condition.”

“But if the deputy was with her when she found the body – ”

“The deputy was driving toward town when he had his heart attack. Babe was found further up the road on ground your friend had already covered. She could have killed him before she met up with the deputy.”

A moment ago, the golden cat had been perched on the refrigerator. Charles had only blinked once or twice, and now the cat was standing on the table a short distance from his right hand. How like Mallory was that trick of disappearing from one place and appearing in another.

“You said she drove the deputy’s car to town. She was on foot?”

The woman nodded. “She was walking in the direction of her old house. It’s on this side of the bridge, but not that much of a walk from the town square.”

Miss Trebec poured coffee into his cup and then turned back to the half-emptied grocery bag and unpacked the rest of the canned goods.

The cat hissed and arched its back as Charles’s hand moved toward the sugar bowl. Apparently, he had violated some house rule of table manners. Slowly, his hand withdrew from the bowl and came to rest on the table by his cup. The cat lay down, stretching her lean body across the checkered cloth, and the tail ceased to switch and beat the wood. When his hand moved again, she bunched her muscles, set to spring, relaxing only while his hand was still. The cat controlled him. Now who did that remind him of?

The old woman was back at the table. “Don’t touch that cat. She doesn’t like people – barely tolerates them. She’s wild – raised in the woods. When I found her, she was too set in her ways to ever be anybody’s idea of tame. She had buckshot all through her pelt and chicken feathers in her mouth. Now that told me, right off, she was a thief. And she is perversity incarnate. Sometimes she purrs just before she strikes.”

Charles nodded while the woman spoke, and he ticked off the familiar character flaws as she listed them. Now he peered into the cat’s slanted eyes. Mallory, are you in there?

Miss Trebec bent down to speak to the cat, to explain politely that an animal did not belong on the table when company was calling. The cat seemed to be considering this information, but she left the table in her own time, as though it were her own idea. The tail waved high as she disappeared over the edge.

It was disconcerting that the animal made no sound when she hit the floor. It crossed his mind to look under the table, to reassure himself that the cat did not float there, waiting to catch him in some new breach of etiquette. Instead, he peered into his cup as he stirred the sugar in his coffee. When he looked up to ask his hostess a question, the cat was riding the woman’s shoulders.

“So, have you thought of a story to give the sheriff?”

He shook his head. Making up stories was not his long suit. Under Mallory’s bad influence, his few attempts at lying had been disasters. “Could you take a message to Mallory? Tell her I’m here and I want to help?”

“I’m your worst possible choice,” she said. “Me and Tom Jessop – he’s the sheriff – we’ve been sticking pins and needles in one another for years and years. He wouldn’t leave me alone with that girl for a minute.”

“I have to see Mallory, but I don’t want to create any problems for her.” He tapped the newspaper clipping spread out on the table. “Do you think Henry Roth would help me?”

“Well, Mr. Butler – ”

“Charles, please.”

“Charles, then. And you must call me Augusta. Yes, he might help you. Henry’s a mute, so be sure you got a paper and pencil on you. He doesn’t always carry his notebook.”

“My father was a deaf mute. Does Mr. Roth use sign language?”

“Yes, he does. Kathy and her mother used to be the only ones in town he could talk to with his hands. Well, you and Henry should get along just fine.”

So, like himself, Mallory had been fluent in sign language as a child. In the past thirty minutes, Charles had discovered more about her early childhood than his old friend, the late Louis Markowitz, had learned over the years of raising her. For all poor Louis knew, his foster child had sprung to life as a full-blown ten-year-old thief on the streets of New York City.

And now, because Augusta Trebec wanted to keep an eye out for an expected visitor, he picked up his coffee cup and followed the old woman back down the hall toward the small door in the brick wall. He was wondering where the cat had gone. Then he saw the animal’s bright eyes gleaming in the shadow of an ancient porcelain umbrella stand. She was set to spring, and her gaze was fixed on him.

“Be sure you don’t let that cat out,” said Augusta, as she passed by the umbrella stand. “I can’t have that poor animal getting her hopes up, thinking she might catch a bird for supper.”

“I thought cats were rather good at that.” He would have bet his life that this one was particularly good at bloody violence.