Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Whiskers

You would’ve thought he hadn’t seen me in years. First he ran around in circles, leaping up and down like a rabbit, and then he lavished me with kisses. I found Tom in his wheelchair at the kitchen table, where there were stacks of files and spreadsheets laid out in front of him in a wide semicircle.

Billy Elliot ran over and sat by his side, looking back at me with a wide grin as if to say, Hey, look what I found!

I said, “How was your vacation?”

Tom has a boyish round face with a head of curly black hair and a little round belly. He wears steel-rimmed glasses that always make me think he looks a bit like Harry Potter, that is if Harry Potter were forty-two and slightly pudgy. He’s one of the most well-read people I’ve ever met. He knows a little bit about practically everything—art, music, architecture, literature, finance. When I grow up I want to be just like him.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Well, considering my son is a complete maniac, not to mention an immature, binge-drinking wreck, it was fine.”

“Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good at all.”

He chuckled. “Well, I might be exaggerating a bit. To his credit I think he invited me down just so I’d give him a lecture about how he needs to grow up. The kid is twenty-six years old and has never held a job for longer than a year. But don’t get me started. How are you?”

“Well, funny you should ask, I’ve had an interesting week so far.”

He pushed himself back from the table. “Oh, good, tell me all about it. I need something to divert my attention from these spreadsheets.”

I said, “Well, I’m fine now, but look…”

I lowered my head and parted my hair to the side.

“Ouch! How’d that happen?”

I considered telling him, but the thought of one more person thinking of me as a delicate fainting flower made me sick, so instead I just very slightly altered the truth.

I said, “Um … I slipped on an orange peel. Can you believe that? I was at a client’s house. I went straight down and hit my head. But Tom, the weirdest thing happened. While I was lying there catching my breath, I saw an image in my mind, it was a statue, kind of like a Buddha, except it was a woman. Have you ever heard of anything like that?”

Tom frowned. “Wait, you’re saying you got knocked out?”

Billy Elliot sighed and stretched out on the floor at Tom’s feet. I think he knew from the sound of our voices he wasn’t getting a walk anytime soon.

I said, “No, no. Nothing like that. But it hurt like hell and I was definitely a little dizzy for a minute, so I was just lying there waiting for it to go away when that image popped up in my head, and it’s just been bugging me ever since. I must have seen something like it somewhere, but for the life of me I can’t think where.”

“Was it Kuan Yin?”

I said, “Connie who?”

He grinned. “Kuan Yin. She’s what they call a bodhisattva, an enlightened being that’s reached a state of grace. Some people think when they die, Kuan Yin places their soul in the heart of a lotus flower. She’s the most well-known female Buddha figure I know of.”

I said, “Huh. She sounds awesome. Does she have big huge bowling-ball-sized breasts?”

He tilted his head to one side. “Um, no.”

“Oh. Well, this one did. And her toes were painted red and she was totally naked and big and curvy.”

He put his glasses back on. “Ha—that doesn’t much sound like the Buddha I know. I think the word you’re looking for is zaftig. Except for the red toes, it sounds more like an ancient earth goddess, like Gaia or Shala.”

“Who?”

“Almost every ancient culture has one. Usually they represent the bounty of nature or fertility, like Venus, the Roman goddess of love.”

“You mean Venus on a half shell?”

He chuckled. “You’re thinking of how Botticelli envisioned her, but the idea was around long before he came along. Some of them date all the way back to the Paleolithic age … Here, I’ll show you.”

He turned his wheelchair back to the computer and tapped a few keys. The screen filled with pictures of all kinds of small sculptures and figurines. They were mostly made from stone or clay, some crude and jagged, but others carved with exquisite care.

“Are they expensive?”

He smiled. “Some are modern knockoffs, but some, especially an older one, could be worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions.”

I said, “Huh.”

Something had clicked in my head. It might very well have been my poor skull shifting back in place, but I think it was something more. Unless I was remembering something from my past life as a cavewoman, there was absolutely no way I’d fainted that morning, because those figurines on Tom’s computer … I’d never seen anything like them before … so how could the whole thing have been a dream?

I looked closer at one that had caught my attention. She was made of white stone. Her oval eyes were blank, but her lips were set at a slightly mischievous angle, and her head was as smooth and bald as an egg.

I pointed. “Hey, Tom? Do you think you could print that out for me?”

19

The parking lot at the Sea Breeze is shaped like a racetrack, with a big oval of lush green grass in the middle, and sometimes I wonder if Tom didn’t move here for that reason alone. It’s the perfect place for Billy Elliot.

In his heyday, Billy was a champion racer, and he had a longer career than most. A lot of greyhounds his age, especially the ones with an illustrious record, have to contend with all kinds of health problems stemming from the abuse their bodies took from racing, but so far Billy is in pretty good shape. Tom gives him daily supplements to help keep his joints limber, and he needs a mild pain reliever now and then, but otherwise he’s fit as a fiddle, which is more than I can say for myself.

The order of events is basically the same every day. After Billy does his business and marks a couple of bushes for future reference, we start out at a relatively slow pace around the lot. Then, once we’re both warmed up, we increase the speed a bit. Billy’s usually the one to make that call, and I know he waits a little longer than he’d prefer for my sake.

I do my best to keep up with him, but I never last much longer than twenty minutes. If he looks like he’s still got a little gas in his tank, I’ll let him off the leash and he’ll shift into greyhound gear and race around the lot a few more laps at breakneck speed. That gives me the opportunity to stand doubled over with my hands on my hips and wheeze like a donkey.

While I did that, I thought about the picture Tom had printed out for me. It was folded up and tucked away in my back pocket, and I’d already told myself what I needed to do next: it was time to call Mr. and Mrs. Keller. All I needed was one look at those little statues on Tom’s computer screen to know what had happened to me in the Kellers’ house wasn’t a dream, nor was it the product of my overactive imagination or low blood sugar. Paco was right. Somebody had attacked me.

I still didn’t know where that statue had come from or how it wound up in the hands of my attacker, but I had a feeling Mrs. Keller might be able to shed some light on the subject.

I’d wait until I was back in her house, and since Italy is six hours ahead, it would be around midday there and a perfect time to call. I wasn’t looking forward to worrying her about it, and I really didn’t feel like getting caught up in whatever web of deceit she’d woven to appease her husband, but I knew I didn’t have a choice.

After that I’d call Detective McKenzie. I wanted to tell her the whole story—everything I’d figured out about that morning, including Paco’s theory that my bump wasn’t consistent with a fall, and I also wanted to show her the picture Tom had printed for me. Given how much that figurine might be worth, it seemed perfectly reasonable that somebody could have broken into the Kellers’ house to steal it. Seeing as how it was so early in the morning, they probably thought they could escape without any of the neighbors noticing. Deputy Beane had mentioned she’d canvassed the neighborhood and no one had reported anything suspicious, so all in all it was a perfect plan … except for one thing: Levi.