What the Cat Dragged In

by Miranda James

  I stuck out a reluctant finger and rubbed the tip along the top of the skull. I drew in a sharp breath.

  This was no toy. This was real.

  I drew my hand back and bent closer to the thing. I could see bits of dirt clinging to it. From the attic? Or had it once been buried somewhere?

  My stomach roiled, but I took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself. I stood and looked down at the cat.

  “Where did you find it?”

  Diesel stared up at me for a moment. He turned and walked over to the wardrobe, and I stepped closer to it. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and wrapped my hand in it. One door of the wardrobe stood open enough to admit my inquisitive cat’s head and front paws. I pushed it farther open, and I found myself staring down at a pile of human bones.

  How long have these been here?

  Suddenly spooked, I backed away from the wardrobe and called Diesel to me. I threaded my way as hastily as I could through the piles of junk to the stairs. I lumbered down them, eager to get away from the sight of those pathetic, jumbled bones. I went straight to the sink to wash my hands, but after I did, I couldn’t find a towel to use to dry them. I flapped them in the air for about thirty seconds while Diesel watched me, obviously confused by my actions.

  “Dad, where are you?”

  I had never been so happy to hear my son’s voice. I hurried out into the hallway with Diesel to see Sean standing inside the front door.

  “Thank the Lord you’re here,” I said.

  “What’s the matter?” Sean said, his tone sharp. He had obviously read the anxiety in my voice. He strode down the hallway toward us.

  “Up in the attic,” I said. “Diesel found some bones.”

  “Bones of what?” Sean sounded impatient.

  “A person,” I said tartly. “Look, I need to sit down for a minute. Let’s go into the front parlor.”

  “Good grief, Dad,” Sean said as he followed me back down the hall. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  I didn’t respond until I was seated in an old armchair in the parlor. Sean stood over me, looking down at me with an expression of concern.

  “This is not some kind of joke.” I knew I sounded testy, but the discovery of the bones had thrown me off balance. “There really are bones up there in the attic. In an old wardrobe at the back. Diesel found them. He knocked the skull out onto the floor; otherwise I might not have seen them.”

  “I’m going up to take a look myself,” Sean said. “Where’s the entrance to the attic?”

  “Back of the kitchen. Last room to the right,” I said.

  Sean whirled away, and I heard the click of his booted heels on the wood floors as he hastened down the hall.

  “We’ve got another mess on our hands,” I told Diesel, and he meowed loudly. “But this time you’re the one who found the body, not me.” He meowed again. “Not that anyone will appreciate that distinction, of course. I’ll still catch heck from Sean and Laura about it.”

  My son and daughter had grown increasingly worried about my involvement in murder cases, and I suspected this might prove to be another one. I tried to think of a logical explanation for why anyone would keep a skeleton in the attic. Maybe a medical specimen? Had a member of Martin Hale’s family gone to medical school? Anything was possible, I supposed.

  But there was dirt on the skull, and in that shocked, quick glance at the pile of bones in the wardrobe, I had seen more dirt.

  I shivered and wished Sean hadn’t left the room.

  He returned a couple of minutes later. His grim expression told me he was not happy. “This is a mess,” he said.

  “I think that’s obvious,” I said peevishly. “Why don’t you call the sheriff’s department and get things rolling?”

  “Already did,” Sean replied tersely. He glanced around to find a seat and chose a high-backed sofa. “I wonder how old those bones are.” His eyes narrowed. “If we’re lucky, they’ll turn out to be really old, an archaeological specimen maybe.”

  I brightened at the thought. “That might be.” I also shared my idea that the bones could be a medical student’s study aid.

  Sean shrugged. “Possible, I guess. I don’t know anything about the Hale family. Do you?”

  I shook my head. “Haven’t a clue, but of course the sheriff’s department might know of them. And if all else fails, there’s always Melba.”

  Sean snorted with sudden laughter. “Right.”

  My friend Melba Gilley, whom I’d known since childhood, appeared to know everyone in Athena, Mississippi, or if she didn’t know someone personally, she could usually figure out whom to ask about them. She had been hugely helpful in the past when I was involved with murders, thanks to this knowledge of hers. I had a feeling she would be useful in this case, too.

  “It’s interesting,” Sean said.

  “What is?”

  “Seeing the house that Granddad grew up in,” Sean said. “And Aunt Dottie, too. I guess you don’t remember much about it.”

  “More than I thought I would,” I said. “I do have some fond memories of this house, most of them to do with my grandmother.” I smiled briefly. “She would have adored you and Laura, and I hate that you never got to meet her.”

  “At least we had Granny and Granddad.” Sean eyed me with blatant curiosity. “Why are you so sad? I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Memories of times lost,” I said after a moment. “Sometimes I really miss my parents. There’s a feeling of rootlessness without them to anchor me in the past, I suppose.”

  “I think I understand that,” Sean said. “I know with Mom gone I feel like part of me is missing.”

  We looked at each other for a moment in silence, and then we tacitly changed the subject. Diesel chirped loudly. I knew he must be feeling uneasy because of the naked emotion in the room.

  “I suppose we’ll be locked out of the house while the sheriff’s department investigates,” I said. “I didn’t really have much time to look around, but everything seems to be in good shape.”

  “Seems to be,” Sean agreed. “How old is it?”

  “Built in the late 1860s after the Civil War,” I said. “There was an earlier house, but it got burned down during the war.”

  “So Harrises have owned this house and this land for over a hundred and fifty years,” Sean said in a wondering tone. “That’s amazing. This is really a part of who we are.”

  “Yes, it is.” I heard footsteps on the porch, and a moment later there came a knock at the door.

  Sean rose. “I’ll go let them in.” He strode from the room.

  When my son returned, he brought with him Kanesha Berry, chief deputy of the Athena County Sheriff’s Department, along with several others, including Haskell Bates, one of her deputies and also my good friend and tenant.

  “Good morning, Charlie,” Kanesha said. “I hear you’ve found another body.”

  Kanesha’s dry tone was calculated to nettle me, but I refused to respond in kind. Instead, I said in my mildest tone, “Actually, Diesel found it, not me.”

  Hearing his name, the cat meowed loudly, and I would have sworn that I saw Kanesha’s lips twitch ever so slightly.

  “I’ll be sure to include that in the report,” Kanesha said. Behind her, Haskell, normally stone-faced while on duty, winked at me. “How do we get to the attic?”

  “I’ll show you,” Sean said.

  Kanesha and her team, with the exception of Haskell, followed Sean out of the parlor and down the hall toward the kitchen. Haskell seated himself in Sean’s former place and took out a notebook and pen. “Tell me about it, Charlie.”

  I gave him a quick rundown of the events of the morning, trying to paint the full picture. Haskell nodded occasionally as he scribbled in his notebook, but he didn’t interrupt me. When I’d finished, he flipped his notebook closed and
put it away. “Thanks, Charlie, that’s pretty thorough. Any idea who it might be?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” I said. “This is the first time I’ve been in the house since I was about six years old, not long before my grandfather died. That’s well over forty years ago. As I mentioned, I had no idea the house was still in the family. I thought my grandfather had sold it.”

  “Kind of a strange arrangement,” Haskell commented.

  “I thought so, too,” I said. “But the Harris family has owned this house for so long, I suppose my grandfather didn’t want to let it go even though my father had no interest in running the farm after him.”

  “Farming’s not an easy life,” Haskell said.

  I remembered that Haskell had grown up on a farm, though he never talked about it much. “That’s what my father told me,” I replied. “I know my grandfather was disappointed, but he didn’t try to stand in my father’s way when he was determined to find a job in town.”

  “Same thing with my dad,” Haskell said, “but my younger brother wanted to be a farmer, so my dad didn’t kick up much that I wanted to be a cop.”

  I couldn’t imagine Haskell as anything other than what he was, a good, hardworking, honest officer of the law. “I’m glad it worked out for you,” I said.

  Haskell nodded and pulled out his notebook again. “Go through your story once more for me. I want to make sure I’ve got it all down.”

  Suppressing a sigh, I did as Haskell had requested. I kept to the pertinent details, including my surprise at inheriting the house after having no idea that it still belonged to my grandfather. When I got to the discovery of the bones in the attic, a thought I had tried to keep out of my mind finally forced its way in.

  Did that collection of bones belong to someone who had died in this house? What if that person was murdered here?

  THREE

  I caught Haskell looking at me with some concern. “I’m okay,” I said.

  Haskell nodded. “Anything else to add?”

  “No.” I shrugged. “I didn’t know Martin Hale personally. My parents might have mentioned him when I was much younger, but I don’t think he was one of their friends.”

  Haskell flipped his notebook shut and tucked it away. “We’ll ask you to come down to the sheriff’s department and sign your statement later.”

  “Of course.” My attention focused on the sound of approaching footsteps, several pairs of them. Moments later, Kanesha and Sean appeared in the doorway. Behind them lurked a couple of Kanesha’s team.

  Kanesha advanced into the room. A glance at Haskell brought him to his feet, and he joined his fellow officers behind her.

  “Any conclusions?” I remained seated, Diesel beside me. He edged closer, and I rubbed his head. He felt my sudden tension, I knew.

  “My best guess is that those bones were buried somewhere and then dug up and put in that wardrobe. When that was done, I don’t have any idea,” Kanesha said. “We’re going to go over the property to look for signs of a grave, and in the meantime, I’m going to call in an expert to look at the bones.”

  “Who’s the expert?” Sean asked.

  “Professor at the college,” Kanesha said. “Forensic anthropologist.”

  “Dewey Seton,” I said. “Of course, I should have thought of him.”

  Kanesha nodded. “We’ve consulted him before. He’s top-notch.”

  “I hope they turn out to be really old,” I said, “though I hate the thought that someone might have desecrated a burial site.”

  “It happens,” Kanesha said. “Tell me, does this house have a root cellar? Houses this old usually had one.”

  I started to answer that I wasn’t aware of one, but then I remembered my grandmother taking me down into it to retrieve some canned goods she was giving us to take home.

  “Yes, there is,” I said slowly. “Or there was. I think the entrance was under the back porch.”

  Kanesha turned to two of the officers behind her and instructed them to check.

  After a moment I understood the reason for her inquiry. The root cellar would have been a good place to bury a body. As I remembered it, the floor consisted of hard-packed earth, not concrete or wood flooring. Accessible for digging and burying.

  I felt a sudden chill at that thought. I sent up a silent prayer that, wherever the body had originally lain, it wasn’t in the root cellar beneath the house.

  “You’ll be treating the house as a crime scene.” Sean stated it bluntly.

  “Yes, we will,” Kanesha said. “It will take a few days, until we know more about the bones, their likely age, and so on. Depends on how recently the person died.”

  “What’s your best guess?” I asked.

  Kanesha narrowed her eyes at me. “For what?”

  “The age of the bones,” I replied.

  She shrugged. “I’m no expert. I haven’t been called to a crime scene with potentially really old bones before.”

  That’s not much help. I kept the words to myself. I wanted reassurance, but obviously Kanesha wasn’t going to give it. I would have to be patient until the experts had time to investigate.

  I stood. “Then I suppose we might as well go home.” I dug the keys to the house out of my pocket and handed them to Kanesha. Haskell gave me a receipt for them.

  “You go ahead, Dad,” Sean said as he followed me to the front door. “I’m going to stick around a little longer to see whether they find anything in that root cellar. I’ll call you right away.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Come on, Diesel, let’s go home.”

  The cat had been silent all this time, but now he chirped happily. The atmosphere in the house had grown oppressive, or so it seemed to me, and no doubt it had affected my cat. On the porch I paused to take a couple of deep breaths and let my eyes adjust to the bright sunlight. I heard a rumble of distant thunder as we headed for the car. I remembered that possible thunderstorms had been forecast for the afternoon or early evening.

  While I drove, my brain might as well have been a hamster on a wheel, the way various ideas spun, one after another. I shook my head at one point to try to clear it, and Diesel meowed loudly from the backseat.

  “I’m going to concentrate on driving,” I told him, and I did my best. I couldn’t banish a mental picture of that skull on the attic floor. I had little doubt that I would be dreaming of it tonight and probably nights to come. Suddenly I recalled one of my favorite Nancy Drew books, The Secret in the Old Attic. Nancy had been looking for music manuscripts. No pile of old bones for her. Lucky me.

  Traffic increased as I approached the outskirts of Athena, and I forced myself to pay more attention to driving. Athena was a relatively small town, but it was a busy one thanks to the college and a regional medical facility. From the city limits to my house in an older part of town the drive took only ten minutes, and soon Diesel and I climbed out of the car and went into the house from the garage.

  An orange tabby fur ball attacked us the moment we stepped into the kitchen. Ramses, now nearly ten months old, had grown steadily more rambunctious. I looked forward to the day when he began to settle down a bit and stopped climbing my legs. Those sharp claws didn’t feel good, but at least today I was wearing jeans.

  He scampered up my leg and onto my shoulder so quickly I didn’t have time to deflect him. He stuck his nose in my ear and licked. I had to laugh. I managed to get hold of him and pull him into my arms. He lay on his back like a baby and looked up at me with trusting eyes. I rubbed his stomach, and he purred.

  At my feet Diesel warbled loudly. I knew he was jealous. I rarely picked him up and held him like this because of his size, but of course he didn’t understand that Ramses weighed about thirty pounds less than he did.

  I heard a chuckle and turned to see my housekeeper, Azalea Berry, entering from the hallway.

  “You put that rascal d
own,” she said. “He’s so badly spoiled, he’s about rotten, and that’s not helping.”

  I laughed. “I’m not the only one who spoils him.” Azalea had taken quite the shine to Ramses, and he sometimes went home with her on the weekends. He had a bad habit of hiding himself in her straw bag—the one she left conveniently accessible for him to crawl into whenever he wanted.

  Bending down, I let Ramses slide gently out of my arms. He righted himself on the floor and immediately attacked Diesel. My Maine Coon glared disdainfully at the younger cat and batted him away easily with a large paw. Diesel looked at me and meowed before he ambled into the utility room. Ramses followed, a dinghy bobbing in the wake of an ocean liner.

  Azalea stood at the stove, stirring the contents of one pot. Smelled to me like purple hull peas cooking in fatback. I sighed. Not exactly healthy, but one of my favorites. Nothing better than peas and fresh, hot buttered cornbread.

  I pulled a glass from the cupboard and filled it with cold water from the fridge. After draining half the glass, I refilled it and took my usual seat at the table. “Azalea, did you ever know my grandparents? My dad’s parents, I mean.”

  Her tone wry, Azalea replied, “Everybody in town knew Mr. Robert Harris, I reckon. He ran for sheriff a couple of times when I was a little girl. I remember my daddy talking about it. He was a tough man, but fair. Never got elected, but he stirred things up good.”

  That accorded with what my father had told me when I was a teenager and doing a family history project for school. “What about my grandmother?”

  “Everyone said she was the sweetest lady they knew.” Azalea opened the oven door to inspect whatever was inside. After a moment she shut the door and went back to the pots on the stove.

  “I don’t remember much about her,” I said. “I was only about four when she died. What I do remember, though, is that she loved me.”

  “Why you thinking about your grandparents today?” Azalea asked. “Can’t remember you ever talking about them before.”

  “I found out this morning that I’ve inherited my grandfather’s house and property,” I said. “I thought it was out of the family.”