Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives

“Dixie, honey.”

I looked up. My mother was perched on top of the kitchen table, holding her skirt up around her knees and shaking like a leaf. She had literally jumped right out of her shoes.

“Go get your father.”

My dad was certain that poor mouse had been just as terrified of my mother as she was of it, and we laughed so hard that my sides ached for hours. There are a lot of things I inherited from my mother. Unfortunately, fear of mice isn’t the worst of them.

I waited a little while longer to see if anything else poked its head out of the vent, but nothing happened. I glanced at the AC unit built into the wall over the front door and then back at the open vent. It must have been a remnant of an old air-conditioning system, probably broken down at some point and never repaired. I moved on.

At the back of the store, I went through the low swinging door and searched every inch of the office, under the green velvet sofa with tassels, behind the big mahogany desk, even in a little broom closet, though it was closed and latched. Inside there was nothing but a tiny sink and faucet with some old mops and a stepladder. On the floor under the desk were a couple of bowls, one empty and the other with a tiny bit of water left at the bottom.

I’d expected there to be a litter box somewhere in the back of the store, but there wasn’t. I figured Cosmo must have been in the habit of being let out in the alley to do his business, but if he was locked in the store now without a litter box, he’d have found an alternative.

I brought the ladder out and used it to look on the tops of all the shelves in the store, which took a while. There was a gap of about a foot below the ceiling, but just like the rest of the store it was crammed with more books and boxes, so I had to move the ladder at least three or four times per aisle and slide things around to get a good view of everything. By the time I made it to the first aisle at the front of the store, I had lost all hope.

More than likely, the orange cat that someone had found in the alley was indeed Cosmo, and whatever I’d seen moving inside the store was either a reflection in the window or a mouse or my own imagination. The mind sees what it wants to see, and I knew I’d be much happier if I found Cosmo now as opposed to worrying about whether he’d been taken to the pound, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. I decided I’d finish searching this last aisle and then go home and start calling shelters.

I was balanced on the very top rung of the ladder, steadying myself with one hand on the top of the bookcase. When I slid a box over to one side and peered over the top, I saw a man framed in the doorway.

He was outside. At first I didn’t recognize him, but when he pressed his forehead against the glass I realized it was Butch the Butcher. He had changed out of his white butcher’s apron and black boots and was wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt. He cupped his hands around the glass and squinted, sweeping his eyes all around the inside of the store.

I froze. It would have been difficult to explain what I was doing in the store without betraying Mrs. Silverthorn’s confidence, especially since Butch had just told me Cosmo had been found, but it had also been Butch who told the deputies he’d seen me leaving the scene of the crime covered in blood. There’s no telling what he’d think if he caught me snooping around inside the store now.

But what was he doing here? Unless he’d been lying about someone finding Cosmo, why on earth was he looking in the bookstore? I kept myself as still as possible, hoping if I didn’t move he wouldn’t see me. Eventually he stepped back and folded his meaty arms over his chest. He looked up the street a couple of times and then walked back down the sidewalk toward his shop.

By the time I got the ladder folded up and back into its broom closet in the office, I knew what he was up to. More than likely I wasn’t the only one around here with an ego the size of a Texas bull. He probably thought his chances of figuring out what had happened to Mr. Hoskins were just as good as anybody else’s. Maybe he thought he’d notice that one detail in the shop that no one else had seen—that one tiny clue that explained everything. Either that, or I wasn’t the only person Mrs. Silverthorn had hired to find Cosmo.

As I latched the door of the broom closet, my cell phone rang. I think I was probably still a little nervous to be alone inside the store, because I yelped like a baby seal. Probably if I’d been wearing high heels, I would have jumped right out of them. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at the screen.

It was Ethan.

I shook my fist and whispered, “Oh shhhoot !”

We hadn’t talked all day, which wasn’t completely unheard of, but getting rarer and rarer. I had a feeling it was probably due to “the letter”—the one from Guidry, the one still sitting in a basket on my kitchen counter, the one I still hadn’t opened. The fact that I’d let it sit there this long gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’m an old pro when it comes to hiding things from myself, but it wasn’t fair to Ethan. He was probably just as worried about the can of worms that letter might open up as I was.

I sat down on the green velvet sofa, took a deep breath, and flipped the phone open.

Cheerfully as possible, I said, “Hey, what’s up?”

He said, “I was just about to ask you the same thing. What are you doing?”

I wondered what he might say if I told him I’d been hired by Mrs. Silverthorn and that I was sneaking around in Beezy’s Bookstore looking for a missing cat. Then I thought, Well, there’s only one way to find out.

“Umm, you might want to sit down for this.”

He sighed. “Uh-oh. Now I’m sorry I asked.”

I laughed. “No, really, it’s fine. Ask me where I am right now.”

“Do I have to?”

“I promise it’s not that big a deal.”

“Okay, where are you right now?”

“I’m in Beezy’s Bookstore.”

“What the hell? Really? Did Mr. Hoskins turn up?”

“Unfortunately no. The owner of the building hired me to find his missing cat.”

There was a pause. “The owner of the building…”

“Yup.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

“You mean Mrs. Silverthorn?”

I nodded, “Yep. I’m pretty sure somebody already found the cat, but I was walking by and I thought I saw something move inside, so I came in to check it out just to be on the safe side. I think I must have been seeing things.”

“How did you get in?”

“Mrs. Silverthorn gave me the keys herself.”

“Wait a minute, are you telling me you actually met her?”

“Impertinent man!” I said, doing my best impersonation of her. “We didn’t just meet. We had tea in the library at the Silverthorn Mansion!”

There was silence.

I said, “Hello?”

“Uh, yeah. I was just picking my jaw up off the floor. I’ve been working with the Silverthorn family for years and I can barely get that woman to talk to me on the phone.”

I shrugged, “Well, we’re old pals. Maybe I’ll introduce you sometime.”

“I’m not so sure I like the idea of you being in that store alone.”

“Oh poppycock!” I said, doing my Mrs. Silverthorn again. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I guess I’ll just have to trust you on this one,” he said, but then the tone of his voice changed. “Listen…”

I winced. When Ethan starts a sentence with the word “listen,” it usually means something very important is on his mind, but I already knew what it was.

I said, “Wait, I know what you’re going to say, and I’m sorry.”

“What are you now, a mind reader?”