The Quilt - Leann Sweeney

I closed my eyes, processed her question.“I-I’ve searched the house. No one’s here but me and my two babies.”

“But you do fear for your safety, ma’am?”

“I fear for my cat’s safety and—” Tears sprang unexpectedly to my eyes and I bit my lip.

“Ma’am, is something happenin’ right this minute? Is this intruder back?”

“No. It’s just that . . . I don’t know where he is. I can’t find him.” How pathetic I sounded. Syrah was a cat, after all.

“I fully understand your concern. My name is Barbara Lynne. May I call you Jillian?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Tell me about these babies you mentioned. How old are they, Jillian?”

“Chablis is about five and Merlot is probably around eight. They’re fine. Well, not exactly fine because Chablis is having an allergic reaction and—”

“Oh my. Should we send an am-bu-lance?” Her previously unruffled tone was now laced with concern.

“I have medicine. She’ll be okay in an hour or two. I haven’t had time to give her an antihistamine. I’ve been busy searching—”

“Exactly where are your children, Jillian? I don’t hear them, but I assume they’re with you, with their mama?”

“Oh. Oh no. You’re confused. Chablis and Merlot are my two other cats.”

A pause, then, “Is that so?” Sweetness and concern had now left the building. She couldn’t have sounded any colder if she’d been standing in a blizzard in North Dakota.

I stayed on the line as instructed—I was “ma’am” again—and no longer felt any love from the dispatcher. She offered only an occasional “Are you still there?”

Meanwhile, my panic worsened as I waited for the police. Possibilities ran through my head. The person who broke in obviously let Syrah out. My beautiful, wonderful cat could be lying dead by the road after being hit by a car. He could have fallen off the dock into the lake and drowned. He could have— No . Stop this.

I decided to do something constructive rather than continue to conjure up worst-case scenarios. To make sure Chablis and Merlot wouldn’t run out the door if they got the chance, I put my cell on speaker and set it on the coffee table, then dragged their travel carriers out of the foyer closet. For once, crating them wasn’t like trying to bag smoke. They were compliant, perhaps unnerved enough themselves to want the security of their carriers right now.

Not wanting them out of my sight, I kept them with me in the living room. I dreaded the arrival of sirens and uniformed strangers. It would only add to their trauma.

It didn’t take long for the cops to show. Five minutes later I heard the cruiser’s engine in my driveway, and the dispatcher quickly disconnected when I told her they had arrived. But the car had come without a siren—I guessed because this wasn’t an emergency that required one.

Mercy is a small town—teensy compared to Houston, where I’d lived with John for the six years we’d been married. Seemed like you could get anywhere in Mercy in five minutes. I ran to the foyer and answered before the police officers could even knock. I was sure glad I’d put Merlot and Chablis in their carriers because, as expected, they freaked out and started up with a cat duet best suited for an opera: loud, mournful and tragic.

Two officers stood on the porch, one male, one female. The man said, “Deputy Morris Ebeling. Are you Jillian Hart?”

“Yes. Come in.” I stepped back.

“Deputy Candace Carson,” the other one said as they came inside.

She looked to be in her twenties and Morris had to be about sixty, his face round and pasty. His stomach hung over his equipment-laden uniform belt, his gut reminding me of a sack of potatoes under his brown shirt.

I led them into the living room, and Candace immediately went to the carriers, knelt and murmured to Merlot and Chablis in a comforting voice. They quieted at once. She was an animal person, thank goodness.

“What exactly happened here, ma’am?” Morris’s accent made me think he could have been dispatcher Barbara Lynne’s daddy.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I was on an overnight business trip and came home to find a broken window. And my other cat is missing. He’s an Abyssinian. Sort of amber with—”

“Is he an expensive cat?” Morris asked. “I mean, could someone have broken in to steal him because he’s worth buckets of money?”

“No way,” I said with a laugh. “He was a rescue. After Katrina. So were Merlot and Chablis. They’re all purebreds, but without papers.”

“What kinda papers?” he said.

“A pedigree. The papers that show who their parents were and that they are truly purebreds. He doesn’t have those, so no one would consider him worth a lot of money.”

“Anything else gone missin’?” Morris said.

“Nothing that I could tell from the quick run-through I made. But who cares?”

“Um . . . sure,” Morris said. “Who cares?”

The sarcasm wasn’t lost on me, but even with his attitude, if he could help get my cat back, I’d be grateful.

Candace rose after one last “It’ll be okay, sweetheart” to Chablis. “May I search the premises, Ms. Hart?”

Shiny blond hair was coiled at the nape of Candace’s neck, and her eyes were as blue and intense as Chablis’s, which I found comforting in a way.

“You might want to start there.” I pointed out the broken glass on the window seat cushion.

“I’d like to search from the basement up, if you don’t mind. The stairs?”

“I’ve already looked everywhere,” I said. “If Syrah were here, I would have found him.”

Candace, even though she was young, reminded me of the principal at my elementary school who’d admonished me for chewing gum when I was about eight years old. Maybe the pine green uniform made her look like an authority figure to me.

“That means we’ve got a contaminated crime scene,” she said. “But I can work around that.”

Morris raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Not this crime scene rigmarole again. A damn cat is missing, Candy. Did you hear the lady say anything about missing valuables? Did you notice how her fancy TV and stereo are right here?”

“My name is Candace ,” she answered through clenched teeth. “And—”

“Bet this event was some kid workin’ on a dare.” Morris took a tin of Skoal from his pocket.

Candace said, “You ever consider that this lady is so distressed about her missing cat she might not realize valuables are gone? Some folks don’t care about money and diamond rings above everything else.”

“Oh, for criminy sake. Then puh-leese, go find every piece of lint you can, Candy .” Morris pinched some tobacco and mashed it between his lower teeth and lip.

Candace’s cheeks colored. She took a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and put them on. “That’s exactly what I intend to do. The basement, Ms. Hart?” she said.

I pointed to the kitchen. “Through there. You’ll see the door to the stairs.”

Morris was shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Seemed to me like he wanted back in his police cruiser as quickly as he could manage it. “I need to start the paperwork, Ms. Hart. Excuse me for a moment.”

He went out the front door and took his time before coming back with a clipboard. In the interim, I’d filled a dropper with Benadryl, unzipped the top of Chablis’s carrier and given her a dose. Poor baby’s nose was running like a faucet now. I checked out Morris’s shoulders for any dandruff when he returned, wondering if he’d made her allergy attack worse. I mean, it was obvious that this reaction was caused by an intruder with dandruff.

Morris, whose graying hair seemed dandruff free, sat on the reclining wing chair across from the sofa, a simple, normal action that jolted me. That leather recliner had belonged to John and no one had touched it since his death.