Mele's Ghostly Halloween Caper: Plus Sami's Story by J.D. Winters and Dakota Kahn (Destiny Bay Cozies Mysteries Book 6)

by J. D. Winters

  This was not a cat friendly house. Very few shelves. The counters bare. Most of the rooms had untrodden carpeting and the smell of nobody being there. Every window had a shade down or a shutter closed.

  It was a temporary house. A means to an end.

  I did not like Fred.

  I also did not like that, as I pawed my way behind him, there were very few places I could hide.

  He unceremoniously dropped Little Bell’s cage a few feet inside from the garage, and continued into a room off the hall. No one else was around, so he didn’t have to shut any doors… but that also meant that at anytime he could just turn around and see me.

  Despite that, one door at the far end of the hall was shut, and had a metal plate and a padlock attached to it, locking it from the outside.

  I came to Little Bell’s cage, also locked from the outside, and froze when I heard someone call out.

  “Hello?”

  I hunkered down, then realized it was a person over a phone, their voice made tinny by the little speaker.

  Fred replied. “It’s me. Yeah, it’s all just about set up. A lot more trouble than it’s worth, maybe—”

  “Oh, no. That parrot, if it’s the kind we think it is, is worth all kinds of trouble.”

  That parrot? I paused in my valiant though not apparently very useful attempts to attack Little Bell’s latch. What parrot could they mean? Were these villains actually heroes sent to get rid of my menacing winged interloper?

  “Maybe. But I’ve got a surprise for you. While I was getting things set up, I did the Animal Control gag.”

  “Fred, this was a one and done sort of deal. You weren’t supposed to set up shop in town, just go in, get that parrot, and get out.”

  Fred wandered out into the hall, making me beat a quick retreat into the kitchen area. There were two doorways into the kitchen, and from the second one I could see the locked door. Also, I could jump onto the kitchen counter, and be partially hidden by some of the only accouterments in the entire house: an enormous bag of tortilla chips. The kind with nacho flavoring.

  I love those. They’re salty and cheesy and crunch and… unfortunately come in a crinkly bag, so a cat in quiet mode couldn’t get to them very easily…

  While I was exploring this perfectly understandable tangent, Fred had gone to the locked door, undid the padlock, and stepped inside.

  He held the phone up to his face, and I could see the person he was talking to on the device, wearing dark glasses, grim-mouthed. He was talking to him with video-chat - something that cats could use with our expressive tail-twitching ways… if we ever had the need to communicate long distance.

  “Here, this is what I wanted to show you,” Fred said. Unfortunately, he closed the door after him, so I couldn’t see or hear anything.

  But I could smell, in a single whiff, what was inside there. My powerful nose knew, without me having to hear a single squawk, that that room was full of stolen birds.

  “So I think that Fred steals birds to sell them, and he’s talking to his dealer right now. I’d bet rare birds could be worth a pretty penny,” I said to Little Bell when I returned, valiantly having rescued some chips from the bag - I figured behind the door, if I couldn’t hear Fred, Fred couldn’t hear me.

  “I have no idea what any of those words mean,” Little Bell said.

  I sighed in a cat fashion. Oh, to be so innocent of the human nonsense that goes on that I could forget, if just for a moment, all I knew about sordid dealings, money and crime. But a cat detective has responsibilities, amongst them helping out damsel kitties in distress. I went back to working on the latch. Something about it didn’t look right - I’d pulled on the right parts, and it didn’t look like it was securing anything. Little Bell hung on the door, watching what I was doing.

  “Bell, are you pulling in on the door?” I said.

  “Well, a little.”

  “Try pushing.”

  She did, and the latch, which hadn’t been that secure in the first place, slipped right open. The silly thing was keeping herself in the whole time. Or at least part of the time.

  “Bell…” I started, but had to dash again, as the door opened, and the voice over the video spoke out again.

  “Okay, maybe it was worth it. But now people know your face around town, Fred.”

  Fred came into the kitchen, just as I was about to leap onto the counter. I twisted in place, stopped the jump and remained unseen, but couldn’t help making a thump sound.

  “What the—”

  Fred came around, just as I padded away, trying to keep as quiet as I could.

  “How did you get out?” he said, looking down at Little Bell, who stood just outside her cage, thumping her tail against the wall.

  Maybe the damsel wasn’t so distressed after all. That was quick thinking, covering for me. I sneaked around into one of the furniture-free front rooms. I could easily see him from there, but the room was dark and my natural blackness made me almost invisible.

  “Ugh, I do not have time to chase you around,” he said, taking a step toward Little Bell. She backed up, her hair starting to go on end.

  “Whatever. I’ll lock you in the house. Good luck anyone getting you out before you starve,” he said, turning back down the hall.

  He pushed buttons on his phone, then pressed it to his face, so he wasn’t using his video-chat to talk. Just a normal phone call.

  “Hello, Mele Keahi? Hi, this is Fred Bowman, from Animal Control. Yes, I was there this morning. Yes, I’d heard your cat ran. No, ma’am, I haven’t seen him, but I’m out here on the 101 down where it turns to San Luis. Yes, ma’am, and I saw a cat on the side of the road and was afraid… Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll wait here, but to me it looks like… Yes. All right. See you then,” Fred said, then he set his phone down on the kitchen counter, and chuckled to himself.

  That was low. A dirty, ugly human trick no cat would ever play--convince Mele I was some kind of road angel, run over way out in a place that would take her a long, long time to get to and back to find out her Sami was alive and well… I did not like this Fred at all.

  And I was ready to tell him so when he raced past me, not even seeing a hint of me in the dark of the front room, then opened the door. He had a bird cage in his hand. He paused, then called back.

  “Cat, if you want out, do it now.”

  He waited, and Little Bell hissed.

  “Fine. Nasty little…” and he was still muttering as he shut the door fast behind him.

  Not so fast, Fred, the animal mistreater. Not so fast.

  Chapter 5 - Sami For the Win

  I, on the other hand, was fast, fast enough to get on the counter and try, best I could, to start poking at that darned phone. It was fancy, and didn’t have any buttons that you could push. Using one of these touchy screen was the sort of thing I’d seen human do my entire life (keep in mind, old friends, that though erudite and wise beyond my years, and stately in my manner, I’ve been in this world less than a decade.) It was the sort of thing that was a complete affront to my dignity to do - but I found my nicely shaped paws could hit the screen quite nicely, and none of the on-screen buttons had those nasty words humans use to confuse things. Just pictures that looked like things.

  I pushed the phone-looking button, and then saw a big list. I do not know how to read a list, but figured Mele would be on top, and next to the ugly letters that spelled who knows what there was a little picture that looked like a camera.

  By the time I’d touched that, Little Bell had joined me on the kitchen counter, nosing her way up so that she was face to face with the phone.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  “It’s a phone.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “It phones people,” I said, hmphing at her ignorance. “If you want to get somebody’s attention, you phone at them.”

  “Oh, it’s like a meow machine,” she said, and then the phone begin to make its ringing noise. “I don’t like that. Not a proper
meow, anyway.”

  The screen of the phone blinked, and a pair of eyes, red-rimmed and bleary looking, blinked at me.

  “What the—” The person of the other line said, and then they pulled back the phone, and I was looking at a little video of Mele. She looked so small on it, that it made me wonder what it would be like to chase little humans. They’ve got those nasty hands that grab, it probably wouldn’t be as easy as you’d want it to be, as a mighty hunting cat.

  I meowed at her, and Little Bell, not to be outdone, meowed, too.

  “I don’t believe this,” she said, her eyes going wide. “It’s Sami!”

  “What?” A man said, his voice sharp and unfriendly and soon a face I did not care for had joined Mele’s in the video. That awful policeman, something McKnight. There was nothing I had to say to him, so I kept my meows in.

  Little Bell was not nearly so discerning. She meowed away, having a fine time as the baffled humans blinked and sputtered at two very handsome black kitties.

  “That’s not on the freeway. That’s in his house,” Mele said.

  “I can see that,” McNight said, roughly and not nearly as nice to Mele as he should be. I made a little sneezy noise at that, like a chuff-chuff. “This is weird. Is anyone there?” Knight said, speaking loudly.

  “Yes, me and Little Bell,” I said, exasperated at his human ignorance. Nothing came out of it, though…

  But almost as if his raised voice were enough to reach outside, the door to the front swung open, and Fred was there, muttering to himself.

  “Forgot my damn… phone,” he said, pausing and looking just as confused as the better humans on the other side of the video did to see two cats using his contraption. He then followed it with a string of words that I cannot communicate without debasing my fine feline nature. I did not like them, nor the way he swiped at me to get his phone.

  “Wait a minute, that’s the guy!” Mele said before Fred had gotten to the phone and shut it off.

  He turned to scream at us, but Little Bell was already out the open door and I legged after her. It was dusky now, plenty of shadowy places for a clever cat to hide forever, and I was clever, and Little Bell had my example to follow so by the time the angry Fred was outside, looking left and right, shouting, we were nowhere to be seen.

  He used more human bad language, then shook his head. He looked like he was torn between two ideas, taking one step toward the house, another to the yard, where there was, after a dense bunch of undergrowth, a fence leading to the neighbors yard, against which he had leaned a ladder, and the bird cage he’d left the house with was there, attached to the ladder.

  All at once my fantastic feline intuition struck, and I knew where I was. See, all those naps I took in cars didn’t forestall my ability to complete my investigation one bit, because the back of my mind always knew where I’d end up.

  We were next door to my house. Bebe owns a large parcel of land, and there are several small rental houses just on the outskirts, owned by some company that blah blah blah human stuff who cares? It was here, at this fence that he threw that bird over the side, and it landed right on me. Maybe the whole point of his scheme was elaborately planned to get this cat in trouble so he would have an excuse to come on to the property and see that parrot.

  I hated that parrot.

  But he was mine to hate, not Fred’s to steal. At this very moment Fred was cursing, climbing up the ladder. Heading to my territory.

  “I say thee nay, villain!” I shouted in cattish, though all Fred must have heard, nearly at the top of the ladder, was a mighty feline roar.

  He said, “Huh?” and then his world was turned upside down.

  Have you ever held a cat that became very insistent it be put down? First there’s the low growl, then the paw close to your throat. And if you do not very quickly do what the cat says… well, there’s something in that human black book lots of people read about inheriting the whirlwind. I believe it was said with cats in mind.

  Now imagine that this cat was not asking to be set down, but was instead jumping on, and doing whatever he wanted to the barely protected back of a man climbing up a ladder?

  Fred fell, shouting. I leaped expertly from him so I wasn’t crushed beneath him - but I barely got out of the way of the ladder that came falling next. It hit him and he made a heavy “oof” sound that was kind of funny.

  A car was roaring up the drive, and I didn’t need to see the red and blue flashing light to know who it was. I was happy to hear Mele’s voice coming out from it, saying, “My Gosh, it is him! It’s Sami!”

  As far as I was concerned, the story was done. Sami had saved the day with quick thinking and quicker cat reflexes. Fred was stealing birds from a sanctuary, yes, but that was his sideline. Inside the locked room there was a very detailed map of Bebe’s land, and some newspaper clippings about the parrot. It used to belong to a man who was murdered, see. So its picture got in all the papers, and it looked like a very rare and valuable species of bird. The murder that brought it into my life was one I helped Mele figure out.

  But that’s another story, one full of secrets I am likely to keep to my next cat life.

  Little Bell got a new family, somewhere in town. She said she’d see me again someday, but most cats do not have my wandering ways, so the chance of meeting is, I think, remote. Too bad. A little self-pitying, that one, but she had some instincts that, refined by constant Sami scrutiny, could have made her a decent cat detective.

  Now it’s time to sleep. (Of, course, I’m a cat - It’s always time to sleep.) If you haven’t found anything from my story to take away, consider this - if you’re going to be doing some nefarious, mean and nasty human stuff… don’t do it on my territory. Or to my friends.

  Or to my enemies, either. I’m a simple cat, I don’t have much. But what’s mine is mine.

  The End

  Mele's Conclusion

  This is me, Mele, again. And that was Sami’s story. Pretty interesting, I thought. How many of the cats who’d been chosen for the calendar could come up with a piece of writing like this? Someone, somehow, had to take a second look.

  I took the story in to work with me. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with it, but I was impressed and I wanted to show someone how extraordinary Sami really was!

  I carried it around with me all morning. I had it with me when I had a short meeting with the mayor, but there didn’t seem to be any chance to thrust it at him. When I brought up the subject of the calendar, the mayor scoffed at me.

  “Cats!” he said with scorn. “Whose idea was that? Who wants pictures of cats?”

  “I do,” I told him stoutly. “Maybe we can do a dog calendar later,” I added, hoping to mollify him a bit. “Or maybe birds.”

  He laughed and left the room before I could say any more.

  I attended another meeting with a lot of supervisors, and Greta Gaines, who was part of the panel that had picked the pictures, was even sitting right across from me at the conference room table, and I couldn’t think of a good way to approach her about things until it was too late and she was heading for the door. That was when I realized it was now or never.

  I ran after her, waving Sami’s story, and I tried to find the words that would convince her that she needed to read this. I could see her eyes glazing over. I wasn’t getting anywhere. She excused herself and turned to go and I felt tears stinging my eyes. I was failing again.

  And then she turned back and said, “Oh, by the way. That black cat of yours? I found his photo in the copy machine. Someone must have left it there the other day. Sorry, but I’m afraid he didn’t get included in the panel judgment for the calendar. Maybe next year. I put the photo on your desk.”

  She shrugged, smiled and walked off. I stood there staring after her.

  He hadn’t even been considered! No fair! But it was too late, wasn’t it? Everyone had been notified. It was over. Oh Sami!

  I walked back to my office feeling as though the weight of
the world was on my shoulders. And I knew darn well the happiness of my family had been sabotaged. I pulled out the dummy copy of the calendar and looked at the setup. The photos of each cat had been included now, and it was going to be a wonderful calendar. Without Sami.

  I sighed, then slapped it closed on my desk and stared at the cover.

  The cover.

  Wait a minute.

  We hadn’t decided on a cover.

  I looked at the picture Greta had left on my desk. There was Sami, looking smart and gorgeous, as always. A grin began to grow on my face. I picked up his picture and placed it on the cover. The cover which was to be designed at my discretion.

  Oh my!

  Whoo hoo!

  Not only was Sami going to be included, he was going to be the cover cat. Exceptional cat of the year! Perfect. What a great idea. Just wait until I told Bebe!

  “Oh Sami, you’re going to be so pleased.”

  The tears were back, but this time they were tears of happiness.

  My little family was saved!

  The End

  You have just been reading Sami's Story, a companion novella to the Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries by J.D. Winters. Dakota Kahn--also known as Sami's alter ego--helped out by writing his side of things for a change. It can be read at any time in the series.

  J.D. Winters

  Visit her website for more information, or join her mailing list to get the latest news on the new Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries!

  Dakota Kahn

  If you’d like to know more about Dakota Kahn and her upcoming series of novels set in Whispering Pines, visit her blog at dkcozy.blogspot.com or subscribe to her mailing list.

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