Kelly Sofie - Curiosity Thrilled The Cat

I folded the paper and stuffed it in my pants pocket. “We have to go,” I said. I unzipped the top of the messenger bag and tapped the bottom with a finger. “Hop in.”

He stretched. He yawned. He took a couple of passes at his face with a paw. And then finally he walked over and climbed in the bag.

“Thank you,” I said, before I closed the top.

I got to my feet, slid the bag over my shoulder and felt my way back along the porch. A moth—at least I hoped that was what it was—fluttered by my face. I waved it away. Hercules shifted against my hip.

I started down the walkway to the street and couldn’t help letting out a sigh of relief. We’d made it. No one had seen us. I hadn’t had to explain about Hercules or what I was doing crawling around Oren’s deck in the dark on a Saturday night. We were free and clear.

A car came along the street and stopped in front of the house. The passenger’s window lowered and Detective Gordon leaned over from the driver’s side. “Good evening, Ms. Paulson,” he said.

Free and clear? Maybe not.

18

Slap Face with Palm

Hercules stopped squirming. I put a hand around the bag as a warning for him to stay very still and very quiet. Walking around on a Saturday night with one’s cat in one’s bag didn’t exactly make one look like a criminal, but it didn’t exactly make one look all that stable, either. I put on what I hoped was an innocent-looking smile.

“Hello, Detective Gordon,” I said, walking over to the side of his car.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” he asked.

“Thank you, no,” I said. “I was out for a walk and stopped in to see Oren, but he isn’t home.” The brownies. I was still holding the cloth grocery bag with the brownies inside. “I wanted to drop some brownies off to Oren as a thank-you for fixing a leak at the library yesterday.”

There—a perfectly good explanation for why I was standing in Oren’s yard. I was in the clear after all.

“Get in,” Detective Gordon said.

Or not. “Excuse me?” I said.

He leaned over a little farther and opened the passenger’s door. “I’ll drive you home. It’s not a good idea to be walking around alone this late.”

This late? I didn’t want to do something as obvious as look at my watch, but by my calculation it wasn’t more than nine o’clock. Plus, I had my big flashlight, my pepper spray, a cat, and six brownies.

“I’m fine, really,” I said.

“I’d feel better if I saw you home safely.” I couldn’t decide if he was being charmingly old-fashioned or just a bit patronizing.

“I don’t generally accept rides from strangers,” I said. That made him smile.

“We’re not exactly strangers, Ms. Paulson.”

He was right. My feet were tired, not to mention my shoulder. And I had no idea how much longer Hercules would stay quiet, which could open a whole new can of worms, or at least a bag of cat. “You’re right,” I said.

I got into the car, setting Hercules between my feet. Detective Gordon turned in Oren’s driveway and headed back along the street. “What are you doing out on a Saturday night?” I asked.

“Police business,” he said.

“Gregor Easton.”

He didn’t answer and he kept his eyes on the road. But he did smile just a little.

It occurred to me that maybe the detective had been on his way to see Oren. Time to talk about something innocuous. “I didn’t know you were a cat person, Detective,” I said.

That got me a quizzical look. Then the light came on. “Roma drafted you to help her this afternoon,” he said.

“She did.”

“Did you have any luck catching Lucy?” He stopped at the corner, checked for traffic and then turned down Mountain Road.

“We got her,” I said. “And you were right. Her leg is broken. Roma’s scheduled surgery for tomorrow.”

“That’s good.” He slowed to a stop behind a truck that was waiting to turn left. “I’d hate for Lucy to have to be . . .”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what he was thinking. “Roma told me you were the one who found Desmond,” I said, fighting the urge to lean down and check on Hercules.

“Yeah. He’d been in a fight with some other animal. He was by the edge of the road. I wasn’t sure at first if it was some kind of animal or someone’s coat that had been thrown out of a car.”

“How on earth did you get him to Roma? How did you get him into your car?”

“Well, it wasn’t easy.” He slowed down, put on his turn signal and pulled into my driveway. “I didn’t know he was feral.” He turned sideways toward me in his seat. “I didn’t know anything at all about feral cats. Desmond went crazy when I picked him up. He howled, he hissed, he scratched both of my hands. Luckily I was driving a department car with the divider between the front and back seats. I managed somehow to get him into the back.”

He shook his head. “I threw a blanket over him, which seemed to help a little. Then I hightailed it for the clinic—lights and sirens blazing.”

“You saved Desmond,” I said, unbuckling the seat belt and reaching for my bag. “Because you rescued Desmond, Roma found out about the cats at Wisteria Hill. So in a way you saved all of them, too.”

He fiddled with the collar of his shirt. “Roma is the one who saved the cats and she does the lion’s share of the work.”

“Even so . . .” This time I was the one not finishing a sentence.

I remembered the brownies again. They’d made it to Oren’s and back pretty much intact. “Here,” I said, handing him the foil-wrapped package. “And thank you for the ride home.”

I got out of the car, holding Hercules against my body with one arm.

Detective Gordon leaned across the seat again. “Thank you for the brownies,” he said.

I watched him back out, then walked around the house and let myself into the porch. As soon as I was inside I opened the messenger bag. Hercules was curled comfortably in the bottom. “We’re home,” I said.

He opened one eye.

“C’mon, I have some of those stinky crackers left.” That got him out of the bag. “Don’t think this means you’re off the hook for what you did at Oren’s,” I said, shaking a finger at him.

I flipped on the kitchen light and Owen blinked at us from beside the sink. I laughed. “You heard me, didn’t you?” I said, leaning down to pet him. “You heard me say ‘stinky crackers.’”

He made a soft “murp” in the back of his throat.

I got a glass of milk and gave each cat a small pile of cheese-and-sardine crackers. Then I sat at the table and pulled out the piece of paper Hercules had found. The fact that Owen and Hercules seemed to be trying to help me figure out what had happened to Gregor Easton made no sense. No sense. On the other hand, neither did their other abilities. I decided, for now at least, to forget about logic and reason and just roll with what was happening.

I smoothed the piece of paper out flat on the table. Now that I could clearly see the markings and numbers I hoped they’d make some kind of sense.

They didn’t. And, realistically, what were the chances that Hercules would find the one clue that would help me make sense of how Oren was connected to Gregor Easton? Just because I talked to the cats like they understood what I was saying didn’t mean they did. They were cats. Smart cats with some unbelievable skills, but cats nonetheless. At the moment one had cracker crumbs on his face and the other had a dust ball at the end of his tail.

Nothing made any sense. I was tired and frustrated and the only thing I wanted to do was sink into a tub full of bubbles and then into cool, crisp sheets.