Клеа Саймон - A Spell Of Murder

“Hi, Becca—” She paused, spoon in mouth, to hit delete.

“Bec—” Another gone. “Wait—” Gone.

Two more and she was through, but by then the poor girl seemed to have lost her appetite. Leaving her bowl on the table—Harriet and Laurel eyed each other, waiting for the right moment—she headed for the coffee maker. Before she could even fill it with water, the phone rang again. Thumping the pot down hard enough to make the sisters scatter, Becca reached for the offending instrument, a look like thunder on her usually sweet face.

“Jeff Blakey!” Her voice was at a thunder pitch too. “If you think that I—oh.” She stopped so short that Laurel looked up. “Oh, I’m sorry. Yes. Yes, I understand,” she said, her righteous indignation replaced by something more like a soft worry. “The station house? Yes, I know where it is.”

Another pause. “No, no, that won’t be necessary. I want to help. Suzanne is—” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “Suzanne was my friend.”

Chapter 11

Disruption—even when it resulted in abandoned food—was not something any cat could enjoy. And this latest call, which sent Becca out of the kitchen in a rush, was too much flurry for any feline. But Laurel’s latest manipulation—following as it did on Harriet’s lazy summoning of that pillow—was giving Clara an idea. It started as a twitch in her tail and moved up to tickle her whiskers, before emerging as a full-fledged possibility. Since Clara and her sisters did indeed have the powers that Becca believed she possessed, was there any reason they couldn’t use their particular skills to help out the human who had taken them all in?

The sisters had a quick confab on the subject while Becca showered and changed. Or Laurel and Clara did. Harriet was too interested in Becca’s discarded cereal to contribute much.

“And here I thought you didn’t want us using magic in front of humans.” Laurel’s half-closed eyes could have denoted sleepiness, but Clara knew her too well. She was watching her baby sister, hoping to catch her in a contradiction.

“I wouldn’t let her see me — see us — doing anything, of course.” Clara spoke softly but with what she had hoped was a contagious urgency. “But maybe we could poke around a little. Listen in to on her friends and check out what they’re doing when they don’t think anyone is watching?”

Laurel’s ears angled forward, and Clara knew that she was intrigued. “Spy?”

“Well, maybe not that.” Clara had the classic feline sense of entitlement and knew she could enter any room at any time. That word, however, sounded a little nastier than what she had intended. “Just…see if we can help at all. See what we can find out. Becca needs us.”

“Seems to me she’s doing fine.” Laurel was quick to pick up on her sister’s distaste. And as the slender seal point regarded herself the most fastidious of the three felines, she decided to be insulted. Nose up in the air, she turned away from Clara—and then dipped it quickly down to lick Becca’s spoon. Harriet had knocked it out of the bowl when she dove in face first.

“She’s eating. We’re eating.” The slightest tilt of those fluffy white ears—visible above the breakfast bowl’s rim—gave the sole indication that the oldest sister was listening, as Laurel continued to lay out her case. “Am I right?” One dark paw swiped at Harriet’s broad and fluffy tail. “And now she’s rid of both her two-timing boyfriend and the little alley cat he was running around with.” Another swipe. “Hey!” Harriet sat up, licking her chops. “ Stop that!”

“I was afraid you’d drowned,” purred Laurel, nudging Harriet aside.

“ I hadn’t,” Harriet pouted, before beginning to wash. “ Laurel’s right, though. ” She hiccupped slightly as she chuckled at her sister’s joke. Cats do enjoy portraying humans as inferior felines. “Becca’s doing fine, and besides, you were so upset with me the last time…”

Clara sighed and felt her whiskers sagging. If only she weren’t the youngest—the baby, the “clown”—maybe her sisters would take her seriously. Sometimes, she thought, that was why she cared about Becca so much. The young woman was a small creature too, in her own way. And they both needed allies. Which was why the compact calico decided to make one more attempt to win over her siblings.

“I’m not talking about physically.” She worked to keep her voice even. Any hint of a growl and Harriet would be on her high horse about rank and birth order again. “I’m worried about her emotional well-being.”

Harriet blinked. Laurel didn’t even look up.

“Did you enjoy being kicked off the bed last night?” Clara was playing her last card, well aware of the reputation cats had for being selfish. In some cases, she was ashamed to admit, it was deserved. “If Becca keeps tossing and turning, then none of us will ever get to sleep on the nice comforter again.”

Harriet’s nose wrinkled up slightly in thought, making the Persian in her background even more obvious. For a moment, Clara dared to hope.

“Doesn’t matter.” Laurel glanced up from the bowl, her pink tongue wiping over a swath of fur. “We can sleep during the day. And this morning, she left two bowls of cereal unfinished. Two.”

“She has a point .” Harriet looked over at the bowl with longing, but Laurel had already licked it clean.

***

Neither actually refused to accompany Clara when she set out with Becca soon after. But, as if reflecting their person’s mood, the day had turned grey, and the threatened rain was enough to have Laurel up on top of the bookshelf, tail curled protectively around her neat booties. Harriet, at least, sounded conflicted, and for a few moments, her youngest sister had thought the big fluffball might join her.

“I am fond of the girl,” Harriet began as Becca laced up her sneakers. “Truly. But it’s so hard to dematerialize right after eating. Couldn’t we wait a half hour and then follow?”

“She’s going to the police station.” Clara tried to convey the urgency. “Where they lock people up — in cages!”

“Oh!” Harriet drew back, raising one paw as if to bat away the idea. “Well, then. As the head of this family, I don’t think any of us should be going there.”

“No, we shouldn’t,” Clara agreed as she watched Becca head out the door. “But she is, and so I am too.”

Even though Clara had dismissed Harriet’s excuse as unworthy, she was grateful that she herself hadn’t indulged in any breakfast treats. It isn’t difficult for a cat to pass through a wall, not exactly, but they do have to shimmy and squeeze a bit—just as they do through a regular door as it closes—and the atoms of a solid structure do press in an unfortunate way on a full belly. As it was, the calico had to lope to catch up with her person, and she was pleased to see that the young woman had decided to walk, despite the slight drizzle, rather than catch the bus that stopped at the end of the street.

The Monday workday had begun in earnest, for those who had jobs, and it was all Clara could do to keep up with her person as she strode rather purposefully down the city sidewalk. The hat Becca had jammed on her head before she left the house—a wide-brimmed velvet number that kept the rain off her face—helped. But the cloaked cat still nearly tripped a bearded man in a suit when she stopped suddenly to take in the scents of the damp air. By good luck, her near victim was obsessed with his cell phone and only muttered something about the slippery sidewalk as the shadowy feline slipped by.