Клер Донелли - The Big Kitty

As he spoke, a brown hen came wandering around the tractor, her head bent over in search of food. She halted in surprise to encounter Sunny’s running shoes—a strange pair of feet—and scuttled off in a new direction.

“Oh, yeah,” Nate said with a laugh, “and Isabel brought in some chickens. Why don’t you come in and meet her?”

Nate led the way to the farmhouse porch and opened the door. “Isabel?” he called. “Company.”

Isabel Ellsworth was a trim, bustling woman in comfortable jeans and a flannel shirt. With her strong features and deep tan, she looked like Hollywood’s idea of a farm wife.

When Nate explained that Sunny was writing a story about the cats and the chickens, Isabel shook her head. “It’s sort of traditional that farmyards should have a flock of chickens scratching around, and we decided they ought to be free-range. There’s lots of room for them to wander in the orchards.”

“And lots of bugs out there for them to eat,” Nate put in. “Helps to control the insect pests.”

“Then, too, the flock gives us a supply of eggs.”

“Both for our kitchen and for Isabel’s famous blueberry-cider doughnuts,” Nate put in.

Isabel ducked her head at the compliment. “And every once in a while we’ll dress a capon to sell at Judson’s Market. This isn’t some sort of factory farm, with thousands of birds in cages. It’s just enough to feed us, and maybe bring in a few extra dollars.”

“Like Isabel said, these are free-range. We don’t fence the chickens in.” Nate picked up the story. “The more adventurous ones will even go as far as the berry patches. They all come back at night to roost in the chicken coop at the side of the barn.”

“When you let the chickens out like that, you’ve got to expect to lose some,” Isabel said. “There’s foxes and half-wild dogs around here.”

“And lately folks have even spotted coyotes,” Nate added. “So it wasn’t exactly a surprise when something started raiding the hen house. That’s when we put in the cameras.”

“And then we got the surprise,” Isabel said. “Show her, hon.”

Nate opened an old rolltop desk to reveal a laptop computer. A few taps and clicks, and a fuzzy, grayish image appeared on the screen.

“It’s low-light stuff, so the picture looks a little weird,” he said apologetically.

But it was clear enough to show a long, lean cat shape creeping into the chicken coop, grabbing a bird by the neck, and skedaddling.

Sunny asked to see it again. It was hard to make out details like stripes, but …

Is that Shadow? she wondered.

“Once we saw it was a cat, we checked around and found out about all the cats Mrs. Spruance kept,” Isabel continued.

“And when we went over there, we found a whole bunch of bones in the backyard—chicken bones,” Nate said. “Including a leg with one of our ankle tags on it.”

Isabel’s eyes narrowed, emphasizing the crow’s-feet in her deep tan. “This was right after she made such a fuss about that dog going after one of her cats. But she didn’t seem to mind her cats coming after our chickens.”

Probably because she saw the cats as her friends, Sunny thought, while the chickens were just … food.

“Anyway, there was a lot of back-and-forth in your newspaper, people writing letters to the editor and such.” Isabel rolled her eyes. “It seemed pretty simple to me. That woman said the dog should have been controlled. Well, shouldn’t she control her cats? And frankly, she had so many she couldn’t keep track of them in the first place.”

“That was all annoying enough,” Nate said. “But folks around here began taking it personally. Customers we’ve had for years suddenly weren’t coming by. We even had a bunch of tour groups cancel. They just didn’t want to get in the middle of anything.”

“It sounds like a real mess,” Sunny said sympathetically.

“We’re trying to make a living here,” Isabel said. “This whole debate definitely didn’t help.”

“So did you do anything to deal with any other possible predators?” Sunny asked.

Nate nodded. “Bought myself a varmint gun.” He pointed toward the fireplace. The gun rack over the mantel was pretty old, but the rifle hanging there was obviously brand spanking new.

“Fellow at the store wanted to sell me a .22, but I wanted something with a little more oomph. That’s a .308 caliber.”

“Have you tried it out?”

“No,” Isabel replied sharply. She clearly didn’t like the idea of a gun in the house. “This isn’t the country anymore. There are houses sprouting up all around here, and that means kids. So no shooting. We keep the bullets locked up separate from the gun.”

From the look on Nate’s face, this was an argument they’d had more than once. Obviously, he didn’t want to get into it right now.

Sunny closed her notebook. “Well, thank you for talking with me. I wanted to make sure I got your point of view.”

They saw her to the door, and she set out for the parking lot and her car.

She couldn’t see the Ellsworths killing Ada over a couple of chickens. But if she’d continued the controversy, splitting the community so that fewer people went down to the farm, that could have threatened Nate and Isabel’s ability to keep their place.

So, that was motive. As for means … well, farm chores kept them pretty strong. Sunny remembered Nate’s callused grip when they shook hands.

And finally, she thought as she got into Mrs. Martinson’s Buick, there’s that .308 rifle that Nate is so proud of. It’s not exactly rare, but Isabel said that none of the ammunition had been used. If Will wanted to look in that box of bullets, I hope Nate didn’t sneak off for a little target practice behind his wife’s back.

Sunny started the car and got onto the driveway heading back to the road. She had to veer suddenly as a foraging hen scurried almost under the wheels of Mrs. Martinson’s big Buick.

Stupid chickens, she thought.

12

Thursday morning, Sunnywas back in the MAX office, stifling yawns. The good news was that she’d finished writing the article for Ken with time to spare. Sal DiGillio had brought back her dad’s pickup with plenty of apologies. Best of all, nobody had tried to kill her in the night.

The bad news—Shadow was gone. After saving their lives and irrigating Mike’s prized rosebushes, the cat had disappeared. When she’d completed her article and e-mailed it off to Ken, Sunny had taken a walk through the neighborhood but had had no luck spotting him. She’d even driven through town in the evening in search of the cat, but there was no sign of Shadow.

It looked as if he didn’t want to be found.

At work, Sunny shook her head when she found herself reading the same e-mail for the third time. Come on. He’s a cat, she scolded herself, trying to break out of her funk, not the man of your dreams.

The door opened, and Ken Howell came in, carrying a stack of newspapers. It was the week’s supply of the Harbor Crier , destined for the wire rack beside the potted plant in the office window. Usually Ken took the day off after spending the night printing his paper, delegating distribution to some of the local kids. But today he made it personal.

“Here it is, reasonably hot off the press,” he said with a smile, holding up one of the folded copies so Sunny could read the above-the-fold headline: LOCAL WOMAN’S DEATH LEAVES UNANSWERED QUESTIONS.

Sunny sighed. “It’s not as dramatic as ‘Murderer Revealed!’ I didn’t exactly crack the case.”

“Still, it’s a very professional story.” Considering his surly reaction when she’d first approached him about a job, Ken was being positively jovial.