Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives

She said, “My—” and then stopped herself. It suddenly occurred to me that she wasn’t out of breath at all. She was crying.

I said, “Mrs. Silverthorn, are you okay?”

She said, “I’ve just been speaking with an unfortunately bland woman from the sheriff’s department.”

I said, “You mean Detective McKenzie?”

“Yes. Wretched woman. Horribly dull. And oh, my dear, how horrible for you. I just can’t imagine…” Her voice trailed away, and then there was a muffled sob.

“Mrs. Silverthorn, I’m so sorry. Were you close to Mr. Hoskins?”

She took a deep breath. “Oh, darling, it’s too late now. No use crying over spilt milk, as they say, but I’m afraid there’s still the matter of Moses Cosmo Thornwall and your payment. Come to the house this afternoon for tea—four o’clock. I’ll be better by then. And I’ll let Mr. Silverthorn know you’re coming so he can write a check for your efforts so far.”

“Mrs. Silverthorn, I—”

But she’d already hung up.

I sat staring out at the beach. There was a group of girls hitting a volleyball back and forth on one of the courts set up in the sand and a gaggle of boys in board shorts cheering them on. Just beyond the court was an elderly couple in big straw sunhats, pulling an ice chest behind them and making their way down to the water’s edge. I closed my eyes and shook my head.

Poor Mrs. Silverthorn. I hated hearing her cry. She seemed like such a strong woman, but I knew what she was thinking. The thought of Cosmo, scared and alone, guarding the body of his dead owner … it was enough to make me cry, too.

I tried not to think about it. If anything, it made me want to work harder to find Cosmo. I decided I wouldn’t give up no matter what. I’d keep searching the neighborhood and asking questions and putting up signs until I could either deliver him directly into Mrs. Silverthorn’s arms or assure her without a doubt that he had found a good home and was being taken care of.

For the rest of the afternoon, I did my best to stay positive. I thought about Tanisha again and forced myself to smile as I finished up my rounds for the day. It actually worked, at least until I opened the front door at Meg Kerry’s house on Oxford Drive. Sammy, her bluepoint Siamese, was waiting in the hall, paws spread and tail twitching. He took one look at me and hissed.

He wasn’t buying my fake smile for a second.

I didn’t take it personally, though. In fact, that’s one of the best things about cats. They don’t walk around pretending to be something they’re not—they just tell it like it is. A cat will never betray you. It might scratch you, it might bite you, it might pee in your suitcase, but it will never look you straight in the eye and lie to you.

That’s more than I can say for most humans—in fact, if you’ve got a friend as faithful as a cat, you should thank your lucky stars.

22

When I stepped out of the elevator on the sixth floor, Cora was waiting for me down at the end of the hall in front of her apartment door. She held one freckled arm high over her head and waved excitedly. She’s not much taller than five feet, with a little wisp of cottony silver hair that floats on top of her head like an afterthought, and glittery blue eyes that never fail to put me in a good mood. She was wearing a pale pink housedress with a scooping neckline, and white fluffy house shoes with puffballs on the toes.

The way we came to be friends is a long story—her granddaughter was a client—but except for the very negligible genetic factor, she feels more like a sister to me than anything else, and I like to think she feels the same about me. I always stop by Cora’s whenever I feel my batteries need a little recharging, which these days is at least once a week, sometimes more. Plus there was the little matter of Guidry’s letter, and Cora was the best person on earth to give me advice in that department. She may look like a sweet little old lady, but she’s sharp as a tack and doesn’t pussyfoot around.

As I came down the hallway, she was teetering on her toes and grinning from ear to ear, which she always does, but this time I was particularly happy to see it. Just a few weeks before, I’d gotten a call from Vickie, the concierge in the lobby at Cora’s building. She had called to let me know that they’d taken Cora to the hospital for heart palpitations. I was already racing down the stairs when she said Cora was back home and doing fine. At first I considered driving over to Cora’s building and wringing Vickie’s neck for not having called me sooner, but of course it wasn’t her fault. If anyone needed a good neck-wringing it was Cora. If I get so much as a mosquito bite everybody hears about it, but Cora is a card-holding member of the stoic, suffer-in-silence generation.

She told me later she hadn’t called me because she didn’t want anyone to make a fuss or worry about her, which I couldn’t very well argue with since it sounded exactly like something I’d do myself. Even so, I made her promise that in the future, if she didn’t want my wrath raining down on her like a plague of sand fleas, she’d call me right away if anything like that ever happened again.

Most people would think that given the fifty-year difference in our ages we wouldn’t have much in common, but they’d be wrong. I wouldn’t be the relatively sane person standing before you now if it weren’t for her.

She was practically beaming at me. “Oh my goodness, dear, you look pretty as a picture.”

I said, “Ha. You’re just saying that because you know I have goodies for you.”

She held the apartment door open with one skinny arm. “Well, you’re right about that. I’ve got you nicely trained, don’t I? All I have to do is tell you how pretty you are, and you show up with all kinds of treats.”

On the way over I had stopped by the market and grabbed some of Cora’s favorites—chicken noodle soup, a big fat slice of cornbread, and a fruit salad with fresh sliced kiwi, strawberries, and mango, plus other sundry supplies for the week. While Cora shuffled in behind me, I unpacked everything on the kitchen counter and put the soup in the refrigerator.

Cora’s apartment is bright and cheery, with pale pink tile floors and walls a slightly deeper shade of coral. To the left is a small galley kitchen behind a bar with folding louvered doors to close it off, and to the right through an arched doorway is a modest bedroom. The living room has a marble-topped coffee table, with a sofa covered in fern green linen and two pink chintz armchairs that nobody ever sits in. Instead, there’s a little ice cream table with two chairs in front of the sliding glass doors, which open up to a narrow sun porch overlooking the bay and spilling over with potted plants and cooking herbs.

Cora said, “I’m so glad you’re here. There’s hot tea, and I made a little surprise for you.”

The “surprise” was Cora’s world-famous chocolate bread, which I know for a fact she makes every single day whether I show up or not. When I first met her, she only made it about once a week, but demand was so high now with all her friends in the building that she’d been forced to step up production.

The recipe is top secret. All I know is that she makes it in the bread machine her daughter gave her for Christmas one year, and she could probably make it in her sleep. At some point in the middle of the baking process, she opens up the top of the bread machine and pours in a cup of semisweet chocolate chips. The result is a deliciously crusty bread, with chewy rivers of rich, creamy chocolate running through every slice. It’s scrumptious fresh and it’s scrumptious a week later cold from the refrigerator, but Cora serves it the best way possible: Fresh out of the oven, torn off in steaming chunks and slathered with melting butter.