Theresa Weir: The Girl with the Cat Tattoo

“I don’t like this,” Joe said again.

“I don’t either.”

“No, I mean it’s not your typical burglary. My guess is that the perpetrator knows you, knew you were gone, and was looking for something.”

“The whole country knew I was in California.” Melody bent to pick up a cushion.

“Don’t touch anything,” Joe said. “Let’s secure the door and leave. I’ll come back in the morning with a fingerprint kit. See if I can get anything, but I doubt it. I think this was a professional job made to look like an unprofessional job.”

Melody found a hammer. While Joe nailed the broken door closed, she wandered through the house, careful not to touch anything.

She should have moved. After David was killed, she should have moved. The house was cursed. She wandered back into the kitchen where Joe was finishing up. “My laptop is gone,” she said in a monotone voice.

He straightened, hands at his waist.

“That’s a pretty typical theft, isn’t it?” she asked. “Just kids stealing a laptop.” The theory reassured her, and the crime dropped in her mental ranking.

But she didn’t like the look on Joe’s face. “What?” she said.

“Maybe the laptop is what they wanted.”

“It’s just a laptop.” With a lot of pictures of Max inside.

They exited through the front door, collected Max, and got back in Joe’s car. He swung the car around and started heading toward his house.

“Take me to Lola’s,” Melody said.

“You can come to my place.”

“I want to go to Lola’s.” She knew Lola was probably in bed, but she needed to see her sister. And she needed to get away from Joe. Far away from Joe.

He paused at a stop sign and turned to look at her. He understood. Completely. Understood that this was it for them. The last straw. Because she had the feeling that the break-in was more about Joe than it was about her. Somebody knew he’d stayed there. Somebody knew he was her boyfriend. Or had been her boyfriend.

Let him lift his fingerprints or whatever they called it. Let him check the database to see if there were any matches. But then he needed to go away and never come back.

He nodded, looked straight ahead, and stepped on the gas.

Lola answered the door in pajama bottoms and a Roxy Music T-shirt. It took her a few seconds to process the news, but then she was pulling Melody inside, pushing Joe outside, shutting and locking the door.

“God, Melody. Oh, my God. And by the way, I saw the Ellen DeGeneres Show .” She shook her head.

“Crazy, right?”

“Did you think about it? Marrying Joe?”

“Not for a second.” She didn’t add that later she wondered. Later she kind of wished she’d done it. But now. Thank God she hadn’t. “A cop. Look at the bullshit he’s brought into my life.”

“There must be some reason you’re attracted to cops,” Lola said fifteen minutes later when they’d gotten Max fed and both sisters were lying in Lola’s bed, eating ice cream. “Maybe you need to stop fighting it.”

“I’m not attracted to creepy cops. Not the cops who were picked on as kids and are now on power trips.”

“Is there any other kind?”

“Yes.”

“See, you’re defending him.”

“Some cops are sweet. Some cops care about people.”

Lola rolled her eyes. “It’s just a job. But anyway, I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

“Joe says they knew I was gone, so I don’t think I was ever in any danger.” She tried to sound convincing.

“Maybe you should move.”

She’d said it before. Lots of times. And now Melody was thinking the same thing. But she also had so many good memories in her house. And leaving… In a way, it would mean leaving David. Abandoning David. He was so much a part of the house. They’d worked on it together. They’d fallen more deeply in love there. And David had died there. That was the strange thing that Melody didn’t know how to explain. Even though his death had been violent, there was something spiritual about the house because David had drawn his last breath in the living room. David was the house. And until tonight, she’d actually felt comforted there, felt his presence lingering in the walls and in the sheets and in the curtains.

“This ice cream is really good,” she said, realizing she’d eaten most of hers without even tasting it. But now she became aware of the dark chocolate flavor on her tongue.

Max was lying between them on the floral quilt. “What was that thing Max did on television?” Lola asked.

“I don’t know. Wasn’t that weird? I’ve never seen him do that before.”

“It was kind of like the moon walk,” Lola said.

“I know!”

They both laughed.

“Why don’t you stay here a few more days?” Lola asked as her sister gathered her things to head back home.

Melody zipped Max into his cat carrier, then straightened. “I’ll be fine. The door has been repaired, an alarm system installed.” Everyone had insisted upon the alarm system, and Melody had agreed. She and Lola had spent the past two days cleaning the house after Joe dusted for prints.

“No matches in the database,” he’d told her once images had been entered into the system.

“I just want my life to return to normal,” Melody told Lola. “I need to get back to work. I want to sleep in my own bed. By myself.”

Lola didn’t seem convinced. “Oh, wait. Your laptop. I mean, David’s.” She hurried to her bedroom, then returned with the laptop she’d borrowed from Melody a couple of weeks earlier. “You’ll need this.”

Melody hadn’t been able to make herself look at David’s laptop. So full of photos of them together. But now she was worried about losing them. What if his laptop had been stolen along with hers? She planned to back everything up as soon as she got home.

“Call me,” Lola said once Melody’s car was loaded. The sisters hugged, and Melody and Max took off down the street.

Once they were home, Melody tried to forget about the break-in. She settled into bed with Max and began to go through David’s old files, backing things up in cloud storage.

The doorbell rang. She peeked behind the curtain and spotted a florist’s truck. Melody opened the door to a massive bouquet of lush, pastel lilies. Tucked among the brightly colors blooms were sprigs of catnip. She thanked the deliveryman, put the flowers and their glass container on the kitchen counter, then opened the attached envelope.

“Oh, look, Max. It’s from Ellen.” She gave him a glimpse of the card before delving deeper into the message. “ Thanks for visiting me in Burbank ,” she read. “ If you ever need someone to officiate at your wedding, let me know. XO, Ellen.” Melody pulled out a sprig of catnip and dangled it in front of Max’s nose. “That’s so sweet.”

He went wild. He ripped the green plant from her hand, chewed it, rolled on it, rolled on it some more, then raced around the house, banging into walls.

“Wow. That’s some high-powered catnip.” Melody watched Max a while to make sure he wasn’t going to injure himself, then she returned to the bedroom to continue with David’s files. Thirty minutes later she came upon a folder that said Cute Cat Photos. She smiled, clicked, and found that the folder didn’t contain jpeg files at all. Instead, it contained documents. Stranger still, they were all labeled confidential police business. So odd for David to have something like that on his personal computer.

Max jumped up beside her and stuck his nose in the screen. She elbowed him away gently. “Should I open a document, Max? It’s marked confidential. What do you think?”