by Molly Fitz
Gorgeous, intricately kept flowerbeds surrounded the house on three sides, and the back opened up to a lovely two-tiered deck, complete with a fire pit and twin porch swings. Farther out, a thick forest rimmed the property, giving it all the privacy you could want and more.
Okay, so half my week would probably now be spent on yard maintenance going forward, but even I had to admit it would be time well spent.
A soft rumble in the distance along with a flash of red between the trees caught my eye, and I tromped through the grass to check it out. Apparently, if I angled my head just right, I could see straight through to the late senator’s yard. A bright red sports car had just pulled up the drive, and it was one I recognized instantly. After all, there were only two fancy red sports cars in all of Glendale; Nan drove one while Thompson owned the other.
I watched in horror as my boss, the senior partner at our law firm, Mr. Richard Thompson, clambered out of his car and up the steps toward the house. Uncharacteristically, he came without the briefcase that was usually attached to him like a boxy extension of his left limb. He also appeared nervous as he loosened his tie and glanced around the estate to see if anyone else was nearby. The police had mostly cleared out by then—or at least taken their get-together elsewhere. And, thank goodness, he didn’t know to search for me on the other side of the forest.
I remained rooted to the spot as Officer Bouchard stepped out of the house and strode forward to greet Mr. Thompson. His badge reflected the sunshine like a polished nickel. “Richard, can I help you with something?”
I craned my neck to try to make out Mr. Thompson’s expression, but a low-hanging branch blocked my view.
“I heard the news,” Thompson said. His deep voice projected through the forest. “Thought I’d stop by to pay my respects.”
Officer Bouchard jogged down the steps and motioned for the other man to follow. “I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that this isn’t the appropriate time or place.”
“I know,” my boss agreed. He seemed unsure of what to do with his hands. “It was just so… so unexpected.”
The policeman sighed and raised one of his arms high to run a hand through his hair. “Yeah, we’re all pretty beat up about this one. It doesn’t change the rules, though.”
They exchanged a few quiet words that got lost before they reached my ears, and then Mr. Thompson climbed back into his car and left.
“What was that about?” Octo-Cat asked, choosing that exact moment to rub up against my leg and giving me the fright of my life.
“I have no idea,” I told him honestly, still very much suspicious as to how both me and my firm at large now became tangled up in every single murder around town. Granted, there weren’t any murders until Ethel Fulton earlier this year—or at least none that I knew about.
“I hope somebody without any pets moves in next,” he informed me with a bored yawn as we both stared vacantly through the trees.
This surprised me enough to risk a glance toward him. It’s not like anything was happening at Harlow Manor anymore. Even Officer Bouchard had disappeared from view now.
“Don’t you like other cats?” I asked him.
“In my territory?” He made a sarcastic psshaw noise. “I’d much rather not share, if given the choice. This is my land. These are my trees to climb, and in their branches? Those are my birds to devour… or at least deliver to the foot of your bed when you’ve been a good human.”
I shuddered at the memory of his most recent gift. “I guess I’ll make sure not to be a good human then.”
He nipped at the blades of grass in front of his paws, swallowed a few bites, and then snickered. “Just for that, now my puke will be green.”
“Um, okay,” I said with a shrug. Honestly, his punishments often weren’t much worse than his rewards, and this one seemed especially tame.
“It will throw off your whole day,” he explained with a smirk. His laughter became sinister, and I knew he’d gone full-on into evil genius mode. The only problem with that is our definitions of the word genius varied substantially.
When he stopped laughing, he took a deep breath and glanced up at me. “You don’t get it, do you?” he said with a frustrated groan that was also part growl.
I shook my head, just as Officer Bouchard popped into view outside of the Harlow place. Why was he there? What was he doing?
“You’ll have to clean up green puke,” my cat explained between laughs that seemed to be losing their steam. “Normally, you start your day by cleaning up brown puke. You see? It will make everything different right from the start of your day. You won’t be able to stand it!”
“You got me,” I said with a resigned sigh. It would be better for us both if he thought he’d found a new means of punishing me. He derived such great pleasure from trying out new training techniques, that I didn’t have the heart to correct his misunderstandings when it came to what did and didn’t work for disciplining humans.
“Got it out of your system now?” I asked, turning back to study him with a skeptical smile.
“For now,” he answered. “But just you wait until tomorrow morning!”
“Okay, great.” I glanced back toward Officer Bouchard’s immovable form and my curiosity continued to grow. Who would kill a four term senator when she was so liked by her constituents? Why did the police find it necessary to guard the crime scene? And what, if anything, did her weird, hairless cats have to do with it all?
“Hey, are you busy right now?” I asked my cat when I realized he might be able to sneak through the woods for a closer look.
He just turned his nose up and said, “Yes,” then turned around with his tail also held high in the air, flashing me an unnecessary view of his kitty butt.
“Well, thanks for that,” I shouted after him.
With one more glance though the trees, I decided to give it a rest. At least for now. Maybe the cops had already identified the culprit and that’s why they were guarding the scene. Even if I had an official title now as part of Mom’s impromptu branding session this morning, I was still inexperienced and new at this.
The police were the experts, and I had to trust them to do their jobs right. Even as I thought those words, however, I knew it would only be a matter of time before I found myself creeping through those trees to investigate the scene of the murder firsthand.
Chapter Seven
Night was fast approaching by the time the movers left. They not only helped me move my meager belongings in, but they also stayed to help reorganize the existing furniture within the manor and to pack some of the unneeded pieces into their truck for a quick stop off to the local charity shop.
Okay, maybe not so quick, considering they ended up moving more out than they moved in. But I definitely wasn’t keeping the bed Ethel had died in, or any of her bedroom set for that matter. I didn’t care that Nan was just fine repurposing the furniture for her own use. Tt creeped me out and I refused to keep any part of it in my home. It was already bad enough that Octo-Cat absolutely refused to part with the formal dining room set that had hosted the poisonous dinner party. I did not need to top that off with my Nan sleeping in some other old lady’s death bed.
“I’m glad they’re finally gone,” Octo-Cat said, standing with his forepaws on the low window frame as he watched the moving truck pull away. “They smelled bad, like human body order. Blech.”
I rolled my eyes, but luckily he was too distracted to nice. “That’s probably because they were moving heavy things for us the better part of the afternoon.”
“Still gross. I have a very delicate olfactory operation up here,” he said, twitching his nose demonstratively. Well, I couldn’t really argue with him on that point.
“Are you good?” I asked, hoping he would go easy on me, though I half expected him to make me move his belongings from one place to another all night long until he came up with the winning arrangement.
“I’m good,” he answered. His complacency gave me a wicked sh
ock to the system. Would living here be like living with a different, less demanding cat? One could only hope.
“I’m ready for the funeral when you are,” he said, plopping his butt on the worn oriental rug and staring up at me with large, probing eyes.
The teacup—right. “Okay, I’ll go get the box,” I said, trying to remember if I’d left it in the car or tucked it away somewhere in the kitchen.
Octo-Cat raced ahead and blocked my path. “I said when you’re ready.”
“I am ready. We can do it now.” Aww, he was being so sweet to consider my needs for a change. Maybe the loss of his teacup made him value the friends he had left. Maybe we really had reached a turning point in our relationship.
He shook his head and took on a condescending tone. “No, Angela. You are not. I wasn’t going to say anything, because I assumed you already knew, but…” He paused to take a deep, dramatic breath. “You smell like human body odor, too.”
…Or maybe nothing had changed at all.
I threw a hand on each hip and stared down at him. “So what? You want me to take a shower first?”
“Not want,” he corrected, studying his paw nonchalantly. “Require.”
I so badly wanted to call this whole ridiculous teacup funeral off, but instead I turned on heel and headed toward the bathroom. Man, he really did have me trained.
As much as it irritated me to be told what to do by my cat, the hot water did soothe my aching muscles, and I felt more like myself after slipping into my favorite jeans and rejoining Octo-Cat downstairs.
“Ready!” I trilled, going once more to retrieve the teacup.
His furry form appeared at the top of the stairs, giving me quite the fright in the process. “No,” he said simply. “This will not do.”
“What’s wrong now?” I asked, tapping my foot impatiently. That was one bit of body language he understood well since he often did the same thing by flicking his tail.
“Isn’t it customary for humans to wear black when attending a funeral?” He tilted the head to the side as if it pained him to have to explain such a simple concept to me. After all, I was supposed to be the human expert around here.
“Yeah, but—”
He held up a paw to silence me. “That’s what I thought. So, chop chop, you.”
I sighed but went to find the dress I had worn to Ethel’s funeral a few months back, anyway. At this point my annoyance was such that my cat was lucky we weren’t headed to his funeral.
He’s grieving. He’s grieving, I reminded myself over and over again. But the truth was, he could be having the best day of his life and would still treat me this way. Most people had a sense of cats’ haughtiness and entitlement but didn’t know how deep it ran due to their inability to hold a conversation with their beloved animal overlords the way I could. Still, no matter how much he complained, Octo-Cat did forgive me for most of my flaws, so I did my best to put up with his.
The next time I came back down those stairs, I clung tightly to the handrail in case the tabby’s agitation matched my own.
Octo-Cat gave me a purr of approval as he took in my black maxi dress and swept back hair. “Finally. Now come,” he trotted through his electronic cat door and waited on the porch for me to join him. Once outside, I grabbed the tiny makeshift coffin—which had once been the box for a pair of flipflops I’d purchased from the discount shoe store—from my car’s glove box and followed him to the side of the house.
He stopped at the end of a retaining wall that had beautiful pink azaleas spilling over the sides. “I chose this spot,” the cat informed me, “because these remind me of the pretty little flowers that once lined our dearly departed teacup.”
When I squinted at the flowers and then down at the remains of the Lennox dishware in my hands, I realized that he was absolutely right. It was really quite sweet that he’d put so much thought into this. I wondered if he’d be so discerning when planning my farewell, should he outlive me. A morbid thought, it was true, but with all the murders around here lately, it was also a valid one.
“Should I go get a shovel?” I asked when he made no move to dig into the soft earth.
“That would be for the best, Angela.” He bowed his head reverently. Was he praying? If so, what deity did cats pray to? Did he have the same God as me? And how did one send off a soulless object to the great beyond? So many questions when, honestly, I’d always just assumed my cat worshiped himself and expected me to join his strange religion as well.
I left him to his… whatever he was doing. There would be time for questions later. Now I had to respect the strange ritual I didn’t quite understand but knew enough to see it was of vital importance to him.
Luckily, it didn’t take me long to find a small hand shovel among the supplies in Ethel’s gardening shed. As I jogged back to the scene of our interment, I wondered if Ethel had ever tended to the landscaping herself or if she’d always hired it out. I also wondered how long it would take for me to learn the specific care for each of the many types of plants that lined the property. Hopefully not so long that I killed some of them in my ineptitude. I really didn’t want to have any more funerals for inanimate objects. Sure, plants were technically living, but I still didn’t think they deserved to have funerals in their honor. Obviously, the teacup was a special case; I hoped this was obvious to my cat as well.
Returning to him, I settled onto my knees and began to dig in the spot Octo-Cat had pointed out. While I did this, he stood by and started into a lengthy eulogy about the life and times of his friend teacup.
“It always gave me water when I was thirsty,” he moaned. I decided not to point out that this was because he refused to drink from any other vessel.
“And unlike it’s brother,” Octo-Cat continued. “It was never contaminated by letting a fly into my Evian.” His voice quivered as he continued, “No, sirree. It kept the water in and the flies out, just like a good teacup should do. I’ll miss you, teacup. Breakfast just won’t be the same without you. Nor will my dinner.”
I worked very hard to keep my face straight, and thank goodness for that, because he turned toward me in complete seriousness and said, “Now it’s your turn to say a few words.”
Well, shoot. Why hadn’t I prepared anything? I should’ve seen this coming from miles away. Still at a loss, I said the first thing that came to mind, hoping it would please him. “It was a good teacup. Pretty. Matched the others in its set.”
“It did! It did!” Octo-Cat cried, and when he drew quiet again, I heard the unmistakable sound of a crash on the other side of the woods.
“What was that?” I whispered to my tabby.
He stood quietly, staring down into the open grave I’d dug for the teacup and its coffin.
“Did you hear that crash?” I asked again, more frantically this time. What if the murderer was back? What if he was coming for us and we were just sitting right out in the open, unmoving, not even looking?
My palms began to sweat. Thank goodness I was no longer holding onto the teacup, because I’d have dropped it to a second death.
Octo-Cat kept his eyes cast downward, still serious, still reverent, completely unmoved by my fear. “I think we’re just about done here,” he said sorrowfully. “Angela, will you please shovel in the dirt?”
I nodded and carefully pushed the dirt around the shoe box as Octo-Cat sang a mournful song with no words, only mews. It would have been beautiful, if I wasn’t worried that it was leading a killer straight to us. Luckily, he closed his eyes as he sang, which enabled me to glance over my shoulder and keep an eye on the woods.
It took about five minutes to finish his wordless song. Our weird ritual now finished to his apparent satisfaction, he bowed his head one more time and said, “Okay, time to go play detective,” then ran head-long into the woods.
Chapter Eight
I could scarcely keep up as Octo-Cat tore his way through the dense forest. Branches slapped into my chest as I wove my way deeper and deeper. The
woods that joined the two properties didn’t run more than fifty feet wide at the most, but with no clear path to guide me through, they felt much deeper and darker than they had by the light of the afternoon.
Even treading carefully, I managed to snag my foot on a knotted root, which sent me careening face forward into the dirt. Of course, I’d needlessly been wearing open-toed dress shoes for the teacup funeral, which made for a particularly painful toe-stubbing experience.
I moaned and rolled over onto my side, clutching my poor injured toes and I searched the darkness for Octo-Cat. He’d probably made it all the way to Harlow manor by now, which meant I was alone in the creepy forest, sporting an injury that would make it difficult to escape quickly should trouble come calling.
An ominous crunch sounded a few yards away as something took slow, deliberate steps toward me over the bed of dried leaves that clung to the forest floor like a thick carpet.
Please don’t be a wolf. Please don’t be a wolf, I begged inwardly. Would wolves be brave enough to come so near a residential area? I had no idea, but the forest that linked our houses stretched far and long throughout the posh neighborhood. It was totally possible that some bigger animals had made their homes nearby and had now spotted me as an easy post-supper snack.
“Hello?” I called into the darkness, because it felt more terrifying to remain silent. Perhaps Officer Bouchard was still standing guard at Harlow Manor and would come running into the forest to rescue me. Hopefully he’d be at least a touch more careful than I had been.
The crunching leaves silenced, leaving me alone with the eerie howl of the wind sweeping through the trees. Well, I was never ever coming out here at night again. Nope, wouldn’t do it, no matter how curious something made me.
And tonight seemed like a really good time to start my “no woods at night” rule, just as soon as I could get out of here.
I shifted onto my back and pulled myself to a seated position. Everything hurt, and I’d definitely be needing another shower. Thankfully, nothing appeared to be broken, so I pressed my already dirty hands deeper into the dirt and pushed myself to a standing position. My injured side had a hard time taking the weight, so I hobbled like a zombie, moving very slowly through the growth.
