Cat in a Bag

by Angela M. Sanders

  “Hank—” She’d turned to share this thought with Hank before remembering that he was gone. Gone six months now, but she still reflexively turned to him.

  Bobby, pausing his infernal card shuffling for a split second but keeping his eyes on the television, said, “Dead.”

  I know. Gilda didn’t even respond. Outside, the trees were beginning to bud. Hank used to crack open his window upstairs at about this time to hear the kids playing at recess. It was her room now. By watching the kids, she had the feeling Hank could somehow see them, too. It was a small tie to him. She couldn’t quite bring herself to remember him lifeless in the hospital bed. Leaving that room—and Hank—behind was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

  She let out a quiet breath, and set the arrangements Fred had brought onto a tray to store in her closet for a week or so until they were dried out. She placed three empty vases on the table.

  Last night, they’d talked over how to approach the Oak Hills golf club to boost Adele’s painting. She’d described it as a small landscape—the painting itself was barely larger than a magazine, although the frame bulked it up—with a buxom milkmaid, a calf, and a copse of oak trees. Italian, she’d said. Grady had done some research, and even with no one’s name on the piece, it was worth a cool seven thousand bucks.

  Gilda still suspected Adele was hiding something from them. Why hadn’t she told her uncle what she’d wanted to do? It didn’t add up. The argument about respecting the great artists? That was hogwash. If she’d felt so strongly she was damaging their reputations, she never would have painted the fakes in the first place.

  Gilda selected some twigs from a pile that Father Vincent had collected on one of his walks and stuck one in each vase. One of the twigs had a splotch of moss. Nice touch.

  Booster Club, schmooster club. She shouldn’t have let Claudine talk her into getting involved. She said it would be good for her to keep busy after Hank’s death. Claudine could hardly play high and mighty about Gilda’s grief since she had dropped by the Villa only a handful of times since then. Sure, she had a new job. But as Hank’s daughter, Claudine was family. The winter months had come and gone with two visits. That was it. Claudine had sloughed off the Booster Club and Gilda along with it.

  She let out a long sigh, but it barely eased the pain in her chest. Well, it shouldn’t be much trouble to drive to some fancy golf club and filch a painting. The gang was kind of excited about using their old skills. Then, chore number one, check. Larry would be happy, and the Villa would be one step closer to getting its license renewed. As for the rest of the paintings, they’d take it as it came.

  7

  Ellie flipped to her other side, but it was no use. The couch was too lumpy for her to rest, even after a sleepless night. No wonder it had been exiled to the attic. She squinted in the dusty light, and the couch’s springs complained under her weight.

  For months she’d plotted how she was going to make the Booster Club pay for having her sent to the Bedlamton Arms. A thousand ideas had filtered through her brain: deadly accidents, poisoned casseroles, doctored hair dye. At last she had settled on a plan that would not only bring the club down, but would help revise the town’s opinion of her. Once she revealed that the Booster Club was a bunch of crooks, she’d have the ultimate “I told you so” moment. The Carsonville Women’s League would welcome her again instead of turning its back. The country club would save her usual table, place a vase of her signature orchids nearby, and lower the thermostat a few degrees to her preferred brisk temperature. As for Roger? Her soon-to-be ex-husband had proven himself a dud, anyway. She wished him luck with his new bride-to-be, some second grade teacher who was happy doing crossword puzzles with him all day. He’d get his once her lawyers were in touch.

  She’d be back. Oh, yes.

  Her plan was simple. She’d steal a particular rare and expensive item and plant it at the Villa. It had taken a few months of research to figure out just what item would be valuable enough and loved enough by its owner to guarantee swift police response, but she had succeeded. Get in, take item, plant it at Villa, leave anonymous tip with police. Couldn’t be simpler.

  Groaning, Ellie rose from the couch and moved to the window to examine Villa Saint Nicholas again now that the light was better. Her view took in the Villa’s front entrance and parking lot. A man with a cane had settled himself out front and was shuffling cards. Another man, sporting a shock of white hair and a utilikilt, messed under the hood of a vintage Mercedes. She could even make out movement in what her study of the Villa’s floor plans had told her was the cafeteria.

  From the attic, her angle of vision was too restricted to see deeply into the cafeteria. She crouched to see if it would help.

  “What are you looking at?” came a little voice behind her.

  Ellie jumped and slammed her body against the wall, arms wide. Almost instantly, she drew herself tall and narrowed her eyes. It was a boy. Some brat with a shaggy haircut and a bandaid over one eyebrow. “How did you get up here?”

  The kid, unfazed, pointed toward the attic door. Damn. She hadn’t locked it behind her. Every detail was important, and she’d blown this one.

  “You’ll go back to class now, and you’ll tell no one what you saw. Or you’ll be really, really sorry. Understand?” Ellie packed as much venom into her voice as she could while still keeping it low.

  The kid nodded and ran out the door. Ellie locked the handle from the inside and leaned against it. Shoot. If he told anyone, she was toast. They’d take her back to the Bedlamton Arms and put her in the Jane Eyre suite in the attic. Her meals would be slid under the door. Even John the orderly couldn’t help her there.

  But she couldn’t sneak out now, either. Not with a whole elementary school in session and a hundred little monsters screaming on the playground.

  So she waited. For hours. At every creak in the building’s joists or trill of the old-fashioned bell, she stiffened. She prepared the dignified speech she’d give the police about how she was carrying out a citizen’s duty. She hid her duffle bag with its vital contents in the attic’s far corner. And she waited some more.

  Sunlight rose over the building, slanted through the attic’s windows, and sank. Car engines idled outside, then left. Every few hours she rose and stretched her muscles aching from the long walk and broken sleep. At last, the school was quiet. No one had come for her.

  Barely breathing, Ellie unlatched the attic door to darkness and the piney scent of industrial cleanser. She stepped forward, and something clattered and rolled, causing her to leap back and bite off a curse.

  The object stopped rolling at her feet. Ellie picked it up. It was a child’s telescope with a note attached. “For you,” it said.

  8

  Gilda waited under the Villa’s front portico as Father Vincent pulled around an anonymous sedan.

  “It’s not hot, is it?” she asked as he helped her into the passenger side.

  “Not exactly. I made friends with a mechanic at the county motor pool. This one’s in for busted air conditioning. Told him I’d fix it if he let us have it a few hours. We won’t need the air conditioning today, anyway.”

  “It’s official, at least.” With the government plates, no one would question their credentials.

  “I aim to please.” Father Vincent wore a button-down shirt and a violently colored kilt. He must have caught Gilda’s stare, because he said, “What? When I’m in the car, no one will be able to see me below the waist.”

  Since taking the cloth, Father Vincent had also taken to skirts and kilts. He said his old priest garb had been so comfortable that he couldn’t return to pants. Gilda had let out a few of her old hostess skirts for him to wear around the house. At the Villa, no one looked at him twice anymore. Not so in the real world.

  “I guess it’s okay.” She clutched her purse to her lap and settled her cane next to her. “Mary Rose said we can pick her up at the family shelter. She’s serving lunch this afternoon.” Ever since
Mary Rose had resurrected her sausage recipe for the firehouse shelter, she liked to be available for compliments.

  Father Vincent drove them across the river. Gilda loved this time of year. Maybe it was working with all those dead flowers, but seeing the leaves itching to bust out gave her hope. Almost as soon as the observation crossed her mind, darker thoughts intruded. Hank wasn’t here to see this spring. She smoothed a palm over the papery ridges on the back of her hand. Who knew? It might be her own last spring, as well.

  It was definitely Adele’s last spring. Poor girl.

  Mary Rose waited on the sidewalk outside the shelter. Father Vincent pulled up, and Gilda rolled down the window.

  “Ready?” Gilda asked.

  “Yeah.” As Mary Rose slid into the sedan’s back seat, she flexed her fingers. “Ladle fatigue. Those street people have hearty appetites.”

  Gilda glanced in the rear view mirror to see Mary Rose shedding her smock and swapping out her tennis shoes for pumps.

  “Did you bring a clipboard for me?” Mary Rose asked.

  Gilda handed it to her, along with an ID to snap to her collar.

  “Mary Rose Hinkley, County Health Inspector,” she read. “I take it from the skirt that Father Vincent’s staying in the car.”

  “It’s just you and me. As the senior member of the team, I’ll take the lead.”

  Twenty minutes later, Father Vincent pulled the sedan through the gate of the Duchess Heights complex. On the way to the golf club, the car passed two faux Tuscan villas, a mini-chateau, and four English manors before turning down Marquise Way. He idled at the long awning at the clubhouse’s entrance.

  “This is it,” Father Vincent said.

  “It shouldn’t take long,” Gilda said.

  Mary Rose held Gilda’s cane as she lifted herself from the car. Damn these legs. They used to dance across the best nightclubs in town, and now they could barely manage a flight of stairs. She turned an ankle to admire the curve of her calf. Maybe these legs couldn’t skip up stairs, but they still looked good.

  “Come on,” Mary Rose said.

  The golf club was in a new Tudor-style building with saplings in the parking lot. Everything was new out here. Built with new money and meant to feel old. People with the title of CEO making their homes on streets named after dead hierarchies.

  “Me, first,” Gilda told Mary Rose and stepped ahead to enter the lobby. True to the building’s exterior, the lobby had the exposed beams and faux half-timbered walls of a Shakespearean cartoon.

  “May I help you?” A woman looked up from a desk in the dark foyer. Gilda had halfway expected to be greeted by someone wearing a beefeater’s uniform, but this woman had a platinum crew cut and hoop earrings as big as Gilda’s fist.

  “Yes.” Gilda smiled sweetly. She knew how to look like a kind old lady when she needed to. “I’m Gilda, and this is Mary Rose. We’re from the Carsonville County Health Department. Just a spot inspection.”

  The woman rose. “We had our inspection last month. I can show you the paperwork.” She fished keys from a pocket and made her way across the foyer to a door built flush into the wall and made to look like part of the paneling.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Mary Rose said. “We’ve seen all that.” She patted her tote bag as if the club’s paperwork were already there. “This is something different.”

  Gilda edged in front of Mary Rose. “It’s a random mini-inspection. A formality. No need to be concerned.”

  The woman looked from Gilda to Mary Rose and back again. “What do you need?”

  “Just a few minutes to walk through the facility.”

  The woman pushed her chair under the desk. “That’s fine. I don’t have a meeting until eleven. I’ll come with you.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” Gilda said. “We’ll poke our heads around and be out of here in a shake.”

  The woman was already at their side. She glanced at Mary Rose’s ID badge. “It’s no trouble, Mary Rose. The members will feel better if I’m with you. Shall we start in the kitchen?”

  Gilda nodded at Mary Rose. “The kitchen is a good idea. Tell you what. To keep this shorter, we’ll split up, and I’ll look down here.” She pointed her clipboard toward a corridor off the foyer. Adele had told them the painting was in the outer hall.

  “That’s mostly meeting rooms,” the woman said. “Nothing the health department would care about.”

  Gilda raised an eyebrow. “What about vermin?”

  “There’s no vermin here.”

  “Then it will go quickly.”

  Mary Rose set off for a doorway marked “Dining Room,” forcing the golf club’s manager to follow her. Gilda turned in the opposite direction after only a second’s hesitation. Mary Rose had the tote. If Gilda found the painting, she’d have nothing to hide it in. As Hank had always told her, every job had at least one surprise. Carrying off a heist meant thorough planning, but it also meant being able to think on your feet.

  She gripped her cane and started toward the corridor. Gaudily framed photographs of the golf club’s leadership lined its walls. No paintings. Gilda forged ahead, her ID badge swinging. The hall turned right, and she followed it.

  Ah, here were a few paintings. A girl with a bonnet; a horse; a man hunting with two hounds. No landscape. Just ahead, a wide door labeled “Members Only” opened onto the corridor. That’s where they’d keep the choice artwork. A man came out, his hair damp, and nodded at Gilda. Gilda smiled in return, and, as if she’d been there a hundred times, pushed open the door.

  Heat and steam choked the air, and it took a moment for her vision to clear. When it did, she found herself facing three elderly men seated at a card table. The men wore nothing but towels. One man’s mouth dropped open. Another man stopped scratching his heat-reddened chest, and his hand fell to his lap.

  The fourth man, his comb-over plastered to the side of his face, said, “Gilda?”

  Shoot. It was Wilfred, Carsonville’s chief of police sometime in the Kennedy administration. They’d had a short but profitable relationship. Lousy kisser, Gilda recalled.

  She smiled, then booked it for the exit. She couldn’t move fast with her cane, but she had the advantage of being fully clothed.

  “Gilda!” she heard from behind her. “What are you doing here?”

  The hall she’d come from had lines of sight that were too clear. Just ahead, the hall turned right again and likely circled to the dining room. Maybe she’d find a back door.

  “Gilda, stop!”

  No time to investigate dining rooms or back doors now. Gilda leapt into the first nook off the hall and pressed her back against the wall. She mopped her forehead. “Laundry,” read the sign on the door next to her. The architects probably put this nook here to keep mundane services out of the direct sight of the members. Two men, towels wrapped around their waists, passed the nook. Gilda caught a glance of pasty backs and sparsely haired legs.

  “She’s gone into the dining room, Wilf. We can’t go in there like this.”

  “What the hell was she doing here, anyway? I thought she was in Florida.”

  “Probably someone else. Come on. We’ll have to deal a new hand.”

  When the men had returned to the steam room, Gilda closed her eyes and let out a long breath. She had told him she was moving to Florida, Gilda recalled. That was her default too-da-loo. Boca Raton, she’d tell them. To live with her sister. Still, after all these years, he remembered her.

  But she had no time to gloat. She was in a pickle—trapped, recognized, and she still didn’t know where the painting was. Father Vincent would be idling the car out front. What next?

  She opened her eyes. On the wall directly across from her was Adele’s landscape. She screwed her eyes closed and opened them again to the soft colors of Tuscany in summer. Yep, that was it. She had no time to question her luck. She had to get the painting out.

  The laundry room next to her was locked. A second after she released the doorkno
b, the door opened, and a small, dark woman peeked out.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “Spot inspection.” Gilda flipped her ID badge. “County health department.”

  The woman opened the laundry room door, and Gilda circled the room, nodding at the whirling washing machines and humming dryers. The woman had been folding towels from a large canvas tub on wheels. Gilda picked up a fresh towel, sniffed it, and dropped it back into the tub.

  “I’ll borrow this for a moment.” She pushed the tub out the door, leaving the woman to watch. “Confidence,” Hank had always told her. “They’ll never question you if you look like you know what you’re doing.”

  When the door closed, she dropped the landscape into the laundry tub, fluffed a towel over it, and wheeled the tub toward the back of the golf club. Yes, a side entrance. Leaving the tub in the hall, she wrapped the painting in a towel and slipped out to a gravel path bordered by azaleas so new that the earth around them was still black with soil from the nursery pots.

  It had been a while since she’d moved so fast with just the cane, but in less than a minute she was at the club’s entrance. Father Vincent met her, the sedan’s door open. Mary Rose was already in the back. Gilda tossed the painting toward her and collapsed into the seat. The door was barely closed when Father Vincent pulled away.

  “You got it,” Mary Rose said.

  “Yes.” It took her a minute to catch her breath. “Yeah. Got it. But I don’t care what Larry the Fence or Adele have to say. We’re not doing this again.”

  9

  The Villa’s residents huddled in the cafeteria.

  “It was a disaster,” Gilda said. “How was I supposed to know I’d run into the old chief of police in the locker room?” She pushed her dessert plate to the side. Adele had seemed surprised they ate so early, but she’d made short work of the coq au vin and drank Cook’s Burgundy like her lips would never touch wine again.