Миранда Джеймс - Six Cats A Slayin'

“Well, if you say so,” Milton replied. “Look, guess I’d better get off the phone, you’ve probably got a lot to do, and I’d better get back to work before Jenny fires me.” He chuckled.

“All right,” I said. “Tell Jenny hello for me, and I guess we’ll see you at the party, if not before.” I ended the call before Milton could launch into another ramble. He was one of the nicest guys around, but have mercy, he could talk the trunk off an elephant and probably its ears and tail, too.

I stared blankly at the work on my desk awaiting my attention. I thought about what Milton had said. He had the feeling he knew Gerry Albritton, but he couldn’t remember how or why. I wondered if I ought to share that with Melba. Maybe if the two of them got together they might figure it out between them without any further help from me.

I laughed at that idea. This was one rabbit hole I didn’t need to fall into, trying to solve a mystery where there probably wasn’t one. None of my business who Geraldine Albritton was, if she wasn’t who she claimed to be. Besides, Tammy didn’t need to come into the store and find Melba and Milton in a corner somewhere, talking ninety to nothing. She’d try to scratch Melba’s eyes out.

For another hour I managed to keep focused on work. When I checked the clock next I discovered that the time was eleven forty-six. Might as well stop now and go home for lunch, I decided. My neck and shoulders needed a break. I tended to hunch over the desk while working.

On the way down the stairs I heard my cell phone ringing, and I dug it out as I reached the bottom of the flight. I glanced at the caller ID. Azalea. Probably wanted me to run by the grocery store.

“Hello, Azalea, what can I pick up on the way home?” I said.

“Mr. Charlie, are you about ready to come home for lunch?” Azalea sounded annoyed, and I figured the kittens had gotten loose and she needed help finding them.

“Yes, I’m on my way out of the building this minute,” I said.

“Good. Somebody’s been peeking in the windows,” Azalea said.

FOUR

I cut Azalea off in my haste to get going. “Call the police. I’m on the way.”

I stuck my phone back in my pocket and hurried out of the building to my car. Traffic thankfully stayed sparse. I made it home in under seven minutes. When I pulled in to the garage and stopped the car, I saw no sign of the police. I thought they might have arrived by now. Athena wasn’t such a large town that the police were ever very far away.

Heart pounding, I stumbled once climbing out of the car but managed to get to the kitchen door without falling. I opened the door and stepped inside to find Azalea and Diesel waiting. Considering the situation, I found their calmness unnerving. Azalea was frowning at me.

“Did you call the police?” I asked.

Azalea shook her head. “No need to call them. I would’ve told you, Mr. Charlie, but you hung up on me. Didn’t try to call you back because I figured you’d be rushing to get here.”

Diesel came to me and rubbed against my legs. He could tell I was worried and wanted to reassure me. I scratched his head to let him know I was okay. My heart rate began to drop back toward normal.

“What about the prowler?” I asked. “Weren’t you afraid he might try to break in?”

Again my housekeeper shook her head. “No, I wasn’t afraid of any such thing. Whoever was peeking in the windows wasn’t a grown man or woman.”

“Do you mean a child or a teenager was the peeping tom?”

Azalea nodded. “Child. Couldn’t be more ’n about ten, I’d say.”

“Did you get a good look at him or her?” I asked. “I wonder if it was the child who left the kittens on the doorstep.”

“Reckon it likely was,” Azalea said. “All I saw was dark hair on top of a head a couple times. Caught a glimpse out the corner of my eye when I turned around. Head ducking down out of sight of the window.” She indicated the window over the sink. “By the time I got to where I could see better outside, whoever it was had run off. I didn’t see no point in going chasing after them.”

“No, no point by then,” I said. “I’ll bet it was the kittens’ owner coming to check on them.” A thought occurred to me. Why wasn’t the child in school? The local schools weren’t out for the holidays already, were they? I thought they had a couple of more days to go, at least.

Even if the schools weren’t out, a child could have sneaked away from the elementary school that was about five blocks from this house, I reasoned. The more I considered the idea, the more I was convinced it was probably the answer. Identifying that child, however, would be problematic. I could hardly go to the school and ask if anyone noticed a dark-haired child sneaking off or back on to the school grounds around lunchtime.

Chances were that the child would return at some point for another attempt to catch sight of the kittens. I suggested this to Azalea, and she agreed.

“I’ll be on the lookout from now on,” she said. “Now, how about lunch?”

“Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll just go wash my hands and have a look at our newest little boarders.”

Diesel followed me to the first-floor washroom under the stairs and waited patiently outside while I completed my ablutions. Since I left the door open, he didn’t try to crowd inside with me as he would have done if I had started to shut the door.

“Let’s see about the kitties,” I told him as I finished drying my hands. He chirped several times and trotted ahead of me as I walked to the living room. When I arrived he was sitting atop one of the bookshelves, surveying the scene.

The kittens were playing with one another, and I watched their roughhousing for a moment before I realized that there were only four of them. After a closer look, I determined that Ramses had somehow managed to get out of the corral. “Well, that was sooner than I expected,” I told Diesel. “I didn’t think they’d get out for another week or two. Can you find him, boy?” I hoped Ramses hadn’t managed to get far.

Diesel trilled loudly and leapt off the bookshelf. He started hunting around the room while I watched. I figured he would find the stray more quickly than I could, by scent if nothing else. He could also see under and behind furniture more easily than I could.

Sure enough, after a moment Diesel located Ramses. Diesel scrunched the front half of his large body under the sofa, and I heard a combination of chirping and mewling before Diesel emerged with Ramses. He herded the errant kitten back toward me and the corral, scolding all the way.

Ramses ran to me, perhaps to get away from the fussing Maine Coon, and before I realized what he intended, he had scaled his way halfway up my pant leg. I winced as the sharp, small claws connected with flesh a few times. I scooped him away from my leg and held him close, cupped in my hands, his face only a couple of inches from mine.

“Okay, Ramses, I didn’t intend for you to emulate your namesake and start having adventures at this age,” I told him. In the series in which the character Ramses featured, he had been a terrifyingly precocious child, prone to wander on his own even as a toddler.

Feline Ramses stared at me, apparently fascinated by the close proximity of my face. Without warning, he leaned his little head forward and licked the tip of my nose.

“I’ll take that for an apology,” I said, and the kitten mewed. I stroked his head with one finger. “Now listen here, Ramses. Let’s not go exploring anymore for a while yet, okay?” He mewed again, and I put him back in the corral.

Diesel had watched me the entire time I held the kitten, and once Ramses had been returned to the fold, Diesel resumed his vantage post atop the bookcase. He trilled to let me know he intended to keep watch for a while. At least, that was how I interpreted his communication with me.