Рита Браун: Catch As Cat Can

“If you all don't need me anymore I'll get back to the store. Saturdays are always our busiest day.” He took a few steps, then stopped. “You all are coming to the Wrecker's Ball, aren't you? First Saturday in May. It's our fund-raiser for the project Building for Life, which helps poor people who need homes.”

“Wouldn't miss it.” Cynthia closed her notebook.

“My ex-husband asked me to your ball months ago. I was so proud of him for planning ahead but,” Harry laughed, “it's foaling season so for all I know right in the middle of the dance his beeper will go off. The perils of veterinary medicine, I guess.”

Fair Haristeen, Harry's former mate, was a much-sought-after equine practitioner. He'd built up a fine practice, constructing a modern clinic with an operating room.

“Eradicating vermin. Ha,” Pewter cackled, trying to direct Harry to her furry pals.

Harry looked down at the gray cannonball of a cat. She would have scooped her up but her arms were full of hubcaps.

Miranda whistled for Tucker.

A yip told them where Tucker was and also that the dog was in no hurry to return to the humans.

“Let me put these by your car, Miranda. I'll even put them on for you but I'd better find those two first. Do you mind?”

“Of course not. I'm taking up your Saturday afternoon.”

“I was coming here anyway, really I was.” Harry walked briskly back to the Falcon, parked in front of the new main building. She stacked the hubcaps by the driver's door.

“Hey, I'll put the hubcaps on. How do we know someone else won't pick them up or try to buy them?” Cynthia came over. “You get the kids.”

Harry put Pewter in the truck cab, careful to roll down the window partway even though it wasn't that warm, only in the low fifties. She then hurried back to the garage. “Tucker!”

“I've got a rat!” Tucker crowed.

“A rathole. Be accurate,” Mrs. Murphy corrected the dog but she, too, knew the rat was in the hole and her tail fluffed out a little. A rat could be a formidable enemy, with teeth that could tear a hunk of flesh right out of you.

Harry opened the large sliding door and slipped in. Three old cars, in various states of interior and exterior rebirth, sat side by side. The walls were hung with tools, an air compressor sat in the corner, and the pièce de résistance, an expensive hydraulic lift in a pit, bore testimony to Roger O'Bannon's passion. Just as Sean loved old buildings, Roger loved old cars; and fortunately for both brothers, the market for old cars and trucks was soaring just like the restoration business.

One wall was filled with tools, vises, rubber fan belts hung on pegboard. Everything was organized and neat except for the garbage can overflowing with beer cans.

Tucker and Murphy crouched in the back right-hand corner of the shop.

“Come on. Time to go,” Harry ordered.

“He's in here. He's got a bag of popcorn.” Tucker's nose never failed her.

“Wonder where he got the popcorn,” Mrs. Murphy said.

A voice much deeper than expected startled them. “The vending machine. I know how to get in and out. Now leave me alone before I tear your face off.”

“I'll rip your throat out first!” Tucker ferociously replied.

“Listen, you nipshit, I've got lots of ways in and out of this joint. If I want to I can just slip out and you won't even know it. But this is my living room and I want you out.”

“You can't talk to me that way. I'm Tucker Haristeen!”

“Yeah, and I'm the Pope. Look, Tucker, you're on my turf, I'm not on yours. And take that cat with you before I get really mean.”

“You two are pushing the envelope!” Harry grunted as she lifted an uncooperative Tucker. “Now we're going and I mean it. Mrs. Murphy, if I have to come back here for you, no catnip tonight. Is that clearly understood?”

“Mean. You can be so mean sometimes,” Mrs. Murphy grumbled.

“Pope Rat, I will come back here and get you! Your days are numbered,” Tucker promised.

“Dream on.” Laughter emanated from the hole.

Two disgruntled creatures joined a languid Pewter on the front seat, the driver's window rolled down partway. Miranda had waited for them. Cynthia had left to respond to a fender bender at Wyant's store in Whitehall.

“Thank you again, Harry.”

“Please.” Harry waved her hand as if to say it was nothing. “What are you going to do for the rest of the day?”

“I'm going to plant pink dogwoods at the edge of my front yard. It needs an anchor. Did you know that the Romans planted quince trees at their property corners? It's a good plan but I'm going to plant dogwoods, pink.” She drew out the word “pink” until it sounded like “pa-ank.”

“Pretty.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Plow the garden. It's about time.”

“We might have one more frost but I doubt it. Although I remember one year back in the fifties when we had a frost in May. Don't forget to plant okra for me.”

Before either woman could get in her vehicle, Roger rumbled through the opened front gates. A shiny trailer rolled behind his Ford dually. Unlike a horse trailer, this one had no side windows, slats, or side doors.

He screeched to a stop. “Hey, babe.”

“Am I the fourteenth woman you've called ‘babe' this morning?”

“Nah, the ninth.” He pulled over so traffic could get in and out, cut the motor, and stepped out of the rig. “Mrs. Hogendobber, you're a babe, too, but your boyfriend would knock my teeth down my throat so how about if I just say, ‘Hi, lovely lady.'”

“Roger, you're an original.” The good woman smiled.

They filled him in on the hubcap episode. He was delighted the hubcaps had been recovered immediately.

As the humans chatted Pewter remarked, “If he'd lose twenty pounds, trim up his hair, and take a little more care about his person he'd pass.”

“As what?” Mrs. Murphy snickered.

That made Pewter and Tucker laugh. Tucker stuck her nose out the slightly opened driver's window.

“Kinda chilly.” Pewter ruffled her fur.

“Yep,” Tucker replied, watching Roger drop the tailgate to proudly display his stock car. They stepped up the tailgate ramp for a closer look at this latest incarnation of the Pontiac Trans Am.

“—someday.” Roger crossed his arms over his chest.

“Well, I hope you do get into big-time racing but, Roger, it's so dangerous.”

“Your green Hornet is impressive.” Harry admired the brilliant metallic-green Pontiac.

“Oh, I love this machine, I do, but it's kind of the difference between”—he thought a minute—“a real nice horse and a great horse. NASCAR is the top of the top, you know. I'm down here in the bush league.”

“You've got a lot of horses right here.” She patted the long hood of the car, then stepped back onto the ramp. “Grease monkey.”

He turned up his palms, grease deep in the skin. “Daddy had me swinging that wrecker's ball by the time I was twelve. In the blood. 'Chines.” He looked up at the steel giraffe. “Still works.” Then he looked at Harry. “Come on.”

If it had a motor in it, Harry was enthralled. She clambered up the metal steps ringing with each footfall, up to the operator's cab.

“What is she doing?” Pewter crossly complained, paws on the dash as she peered upward through the windshield.

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker followed her example. They heard the motor fire up.

“You know,” Miranda said out loud, “I believe I'll move my car.”

“If she's getting out of here, we should do the same.” Pewter headed for the open driver's-side window.