How to Wash a Cat

by Rebecca M. Hale

  “The store was empty except for the two of us. I peeked out from under my flowerpot and watched him sneak into the broom closet on the back wall.”

  Monty had moved to within inches of my face. Dried specks of blood freckled his pale, tremulous skin. “I couldn’t figure out what he could be doing in there, so I waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. He didn’t come out.” Monty threw both hands up in the air. “I finally gave up and followed him into the broom closet.”

  I glanced at the open hatch to the basement, anticipating where this story was headed.

  “You’ll never believe it,” Monty said, an intensity rising in his voice. “When I opened the door to the broom closet . . .”

  I cut in. “He wasn’t there.”

  Monty whipped his long bony finger at my face. “What—how did you know?” he demanded.

  I bit my bottom lip, contemplating how much to share with him about my own trip through the tunnel. “Finish your bit first,” I said, meeting his finger with my cane. “How did you wind up in here?”

  Monty spun himself back into the room, determined to regain the suspense of his narrative. Striding slowly past Isabella’s bookshelf, he ran his fingers along its facing, retracting them quickly as she reached over the edge to swat at them.

  “I noticed the floor of the closet was uneven,” he said in a conspiratorial tone. “It threw me for a moment—but then I realized that there was a trap door in the floor, just like this one.” Monty thumped the edge of the open hatch. “I found the handle and pulled it open. I figured there must be a storage area of some sort beneath the store, so I decided to go down and check it out. I thought for sure I was about to have a nasty run-in with . . .” Monty paused, gulping.

  I studied him, trying to fill in the gap he was so tenaciously avoiding. “The person that you were following?” I asked. “Monty, who was it?”

  Monty’s whole upper body convulsed, as if his torso had been dunked in icy water. He pointed the palms of his hands at me, indicating his refusal to answer. His pursed lips parted, and he whispered, “but I climbed down into the hatch anyway.”

  Monty had once again traveled to the front of the store and now stood facing me, on the other side of the still extended dental chair. He leaned towards me, crawling over the back of the chair as he spoke. “Do you know what I found?” he said, nearly squeaking in his excitement. “Guess, guess, you’ll never guess! It was the . . .”

  “The tunnel,” I sighed.

  Monty collapsed facedown on the chair, pounding it with his fists. “The tunnel! The tunnel!” he cried plaintively, curling himself up like a wounded animal.

  Monty raised himself up on his elbows, his face reddened from his exertions. He ran his tongue over his top lip, pondering me for a moment. “And do you know where I came out?” he asked fiercely.

  “My basement,” I said placidly.

  “You knew!” he cried out indignantly. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me!”

  “I didn’t tell anyone,” I replied honestly.

  Monty slid his feet to the floor, sitting himself up on the flattened dental chair. “This whole business with Oscar is a bit strange,” he said quietly, his pale face somber as he looked up at me. “You think something happened to him, don’t you? That his death wasn’t—natural.”

  I leaned back against the cash register counter. Monty took my silence as an affirmative response.

  “You’re not the only one,” he said as he stood up and walked towards the counter. I held my breath as he sidled up to the kangaroo and wrapped his right arm over its shoulders. He looked at the kangaroo’s face as he said softly, “I’ve been asking around about your tulip buddy Leidesdorff. Someone told me a very odd story about him. I didn’t know whether to believe it—until tonight.”

  “What story?” I asked, cringing as Monty stroked the kangaroo’s head.

  Monty raised one eyebrow suggestively. “That Leidesdorff used some crazy potion to fake his death. He assumed a new identity and lived on for many years—here, in San Francisco.”

  I left the counter and walked towards the dental chair, desperately wishing Monty would step away from the kangaroo.

  “I have a theory,” he said, scratching the animal’s chin absentmindedly.

  “Let’s hear it,” I sighed resignedly, tucking my robe more tightly around my waist. I turned towards the back of the room, feeling Monty’s stare on my back.

  “Oscar figured it out,” he said flatly.

  “Figured out what?” I snapped, whipping around to face him.

  Monty beamed a triumphant smile as he raised his overused forefinger in front of my face. “How he did it—Leidesdorff, that is. Oscar must have figured out how Leidesdorff faked his death.”

  “I guess that’s possible,” I said tersely. I’d had enough of Monty for one evening. “What ever happened to this guy you followed into the tunnel?” I asked tiredly.

  “Still alive, as far as I know,” Monty replied evasively.

  I poked him in the stomach with the cane. “You followed him into the tunnel. Where did he go from there?”

  Monty googled his eyes around the room, searching for the man he had followed into the flower shop. He made as if to turn back towards the kangaroo, but I grabbed his long face in my hands and wrenched it towards me.

  “Monty,” I said firmly. “Who was it? Who did you follow into the tunnel?”

  He swallowed hard, and I released him. He pushed past me, ambling to the back of the room. “I only ever saw him from behind, but—from that angle—he looked like . . .”

  Monty’s face skewed up so that when he spoke, the name squeaked out of him. “Oscar.”

  I rubbed my forehead, covering my face with my hands. “Out!” I said forcefully.

  Monty’s fingers shook as he fumbled with the still open hatch. “You really should put a lock on this,” he advised.

  “Out!” I reiterated, swinging my arm towards the door. I marched over to it and unhooked the padlock.

  “Right,” he replied. He paused on the threshold to point at me one last time. “Shouldn’t you at least consider the possibility . . .”

  I slammed the door shut on him, squashing his wingtipped toes with the metal frame.

  I TURNED OFF the lights in the store and climbed the stairs to the kitchen. Sleep, which had earlier seemed so close, had fled a million miles away. I placed my hands against the edge of the kitchen table and leaned over it, my eyes pouring into the swirling grooves on its surface as my head spun with images of Oscar.

  Oscar cooking in his kitchen . . . commandeering a dozen chicken legs simmering in a wrought iron pot . . . preparing chicken broth for the cats . . . estimating the appropriate amounts of the ingredients as he siphoned them off into small bowls.

  I looked up at the wall across from the kitchen table that held the shelf lined with cookbooks. Never, in all of the dinners I’d watched him prepare, had Oscar ever referenced a written recipe.

  My eyes scanned the titles as my fingers danced along the spines. “The Art of Chicken” was particularly worn. I hooked the end of my finger into the top edge of the book’s binder and pulled it out. Isabella watched closely as I carried it back to the table.

  “Wrao,” she said encouragingly, hopping up onto the chair beside me.

  The cover creaked as I lifted it open. A faded sheet of paper had been tucked into the front flap. I pulled it out, my hands trembling as I examined the document. The ink was barely legible from watermarks and age, but I knew exactly what I was looking at.

  It was an army death certificate—presumably the one mistakenly issued by the nurse when she had been about to send Oscar’s body to the morgue.

  My eyes traveled down to the bottom of the page to the slot allotted for the cause of death.

  One word had been typed in—encephalitis. The same brain swelling diagnosis that had been given to a comatose William Leidesdorff almost a hundred years earlier.

  Chapter 27

  LA
TE AFTERNOON MONDAY, I sat on the curb outside my apartment, waiting for the local moving company that was scheduled to transport the last of the larger items of furniture from my apartment over to the Green Vase.

  Before long, a bulky, green moving truck with a large, Irish shamrock painted on the side double-parked in front of my apartment building, and an eclectic mixture of Spanish and Irish accents tumbled out of the crowded cab.

  I bade goodbye to the empty shell of my apartment as the last of my belongings were hefted into the truck. I’d been sleeping over at the Green Vase for less than a week, but in the short span of that absence, my apartment had grown cold and foreign. With all of the furniture gone, the scuffed, dingy walls seemed harsh and unwelcoming; the previously unnoticed noise of the traffic below my window grated on my nerves. I climbed into my car to follow the moving truck to Jackson Square and didn’t look back.

  Ivan’s bricklaying project was in full swing as we pulled up to the Green Vase. Already, the transformation was amazing. Bright red, neatly square, un-crumbled bricks formed the crisp outlines of the windows and door. Freshly smeared mortar oozed thickly between each brick, like the rich, creamy center of an Oreo cookie.

  Ivan stood up from his stooped position near the front door to greet me. “Your neighbor’s looking for you,” he said as he helped one of the movers through the entrance.

  “I’m sure he is,” I replied, ducking as my chest of drawers soared past. I had somehow managed to avoid Monty on my way out the door earlier that morning.

  Twenty minutes later, most of the contents of my apartment had been squeezed into the flat above the Green Vase. What wouldn’t fit upstairs had been left in the showroom. I leaned against the cashier counter, surveying the crowded chaos, numbed by the magnitude of the mess.

  Ivan cracked open the front door and called inside, “I should be able to finish up the brickwork tomorrow morning.” His tool belt jingled from the assortment of hammers and other implements hanging in its loops. “I’ll swing by to pick you up in about half an hour to go to the construction site.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”

  He waved and turned to leave. “Full Monty, incoming, twelve o’clock,” he warned.

  Smiling weakly, I braced myself for Monty’s entrance. I peeked through the glass sections of the door as it swung shut behind Ivan.

  Monty was chugging across the street in high gear, the purple and green silk tie he’d cinched around his neck flapping in the breeze. A freshly cut, violet-colored tulip clung to his lapel as he vaulted up the steps to the Green Vase and barged through the front door.

  “It looks like you’ve moved out of your old place,” he said, snooping through the piles of my belongings.

  I nodded, wiping a film of grit from my forehead. “This is the last of it.”

  Monty strode over to the closed hatch to the basement and began to hop up and down on it. “So, I was wondering,” he said, the floor squeaking as he bounced up and down. “Who else knows about the tunnel?”

  Rupert peeked around the corner of the stairs, investigating the source of the commotion. His furry head jiggled as he followed Monty’s jack-hammering legs.

  “Rupert and Isabella,” I replied, opting to leave Mr. Wang out of the picture for the time being.

  Rupert decided to join in on the hop. He trotted up to Monty and began to bounce beside him.

  “Ivan?” Monty asked, his gaze focused on Rupert, who was struggling to catch up to Monty’s energetic tempo.

  “No,” I replied, shaking my head at the sight of them.

  Monty stopped hopping and bent down towards Rupert’s panting fluff of fur. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about the tunnel, either. I thought we were mates!”

  Monty walked back towards the front of the store; Rupert paced amicably behind him. “I want to show you something in my studio,” he said. “It’s a painting I’ve borrowed from Dilla.”

  “What kind of painting?” I asked skeptically. I felt exhausted from the effort of the move.

  “One of a warehouse,” Monty said with an air of exaggerated nonchalance. “With a line of tulips across the front.”

  He leaned back against the cashier counter as I stared at him, a recognition triggering somewhere in the recesses of my memory.

  Monty yawned into his hand and then stretched his long fingers out in front of his face, as if examining his manicure. “It’s the warehouse that was owned by that Leidesdorff fellow.”

  “I saw that painting in Miranda’s office!” I exclaimed as the canvas on Miranda’s wall suddenly flashed into focus.

  The corners of Monty’s mouth pushed down, an impressed look on his face. “Yes, I suppose Miranda had it in her office for a while. She doesn’t keep anything in there for long. Always looking to trade up.”

  Monty slapped the side of his neck with the inside of his hand, releasing a whiff of his citrus aftershave. “So are you coming or what?”

  WE CROSSED THE darkening street to Monty’s brightly lit studio. He unlocked the door and held it open, ushering me inside.

  In stark contrast to the dusty, cramped, and disorganized Green Vase showroom, the smaller square footage of Monty’s studio felt spacious. Paintings were artfully spaced throughout the room on creamy, off-white walls. Four-inch spotlights had been carefully aimed to highlight each frame. Partitions crisscrossed the room to provide additional wall space.

  Monty glided across the polished tile floor and led me to an easel at the back of the room. An arrangement of fresh flowers, mostly pink roses, perched on the corner of his desk, near a rounded divot that marked the spot where Monty propped up his feet when he leaned back in his chair.

  Monty picked up the corner of a sheet hanging over the easel and, with a grand flourish, flipped it up.

  It was the painting I’d studied in Miranda’s office. The same large, barn-like structure dominated the picture. It was situated on the edge of the water. I now realized that the lush row of purple flowers along the front of the building were tulips. Each tulip head was represented by three upward swinging brush strokes, creating the familiar three-petaled design I now immediately associated with Leidesdorff.

  “How do you know this is Leidesdorff’s warehouse?” I asked, my eyes scanning the canvas.

  Monty pumped his eyebrows. “Because it matches this.” He pulled out an ink sketch matching the building in the painting. “I copied this out of a book at the library.”

  “And the writing in the bottom corner?” I asked, indicating the smudge I’d been unable to make out in Miranda’s office. “Who’s the painter?”

  Monty raised a finger and pulled out a magnifying glass from his desk drawer. He walked around to the front of the painting and leaned over the writing. “It’s hard to say,” he said, squinting as he rotated the lens back and forth. “The name is kind of hard to read.”

  Monty slid the magnifying glass towards the middle of the painting, running it along the stretch of tulips fronting the warehouse. Suddenly he stopped. His pale green eyes narrowed, and his small mouth puckered.

  He shook his head back and forth as if to clear it and refocused the lens of the magnifying glass. A disturbed, shuffling sound bubbled up from where he had plastered himself against the painting.

  “There’s a flashlight in the top drawer,” he said, his eyes not leaving their position inches away from the row of tulips. “Toss it over, would you?”

  I fished the light out of the drawer and handed it to him. “What is it?” I asked. “What do you see?”

  Monty grumbled bitterly under his breath. Finally, he leaned back from the easel and stretched his back, a sour expression on his face. “Someone’s having a go with us,” he said, handing me the magnifying glass.

  I took up Monty’s position near the bottom of the painting. With the flashlight in one hand and the magnifying glass in the other, I leaned in to the spot he’d been studying.

  There was something in the leaves, lurking just bel
ow the purple heads of the three-petaled tulips. Something white and round and fluffy—with orange-tipped ears and a pleasant, sleepy smile on his face.

  “Rupert?” I asked, incredulous.

  Monty sighed. “And Isabella. She’s a couple of inches to the left.”

  I slid the magnifying glass down to the signature on the bottom corner that Monty had been unable to decipher.

  As the writing expanded under the lens, I bit down on my lip to stifle the exclamation that nearly leapt out of my mouth.

  The painting had been signed with a sloppy, looping “O,” trailed by a long, squiggling paraph.

  Chapter 28

  I’D BECOME SO engrossed in the painting, I’d nearly forgotten about Ivan. As Monty bent back over the canvas with the magnifying glass, I saw Ivan’s figure ambling up the street towards the Green Vase. If Monty caught sight of Ivan, there would be no way to keep him from joining us at the construction site.

  “Well, that’s very interesting,” I said, stepping back from the easel.

  Monty remained crouched over the canvas, absorbed in the rendering of the two white cats hiding in the tulip leaves.

  “I, uh, hmm,” I said, scrambling for an excuse to leave. “I need to get back to the store to, uh, feed the cats.”

  I began backing away towards the door, but something on the corner of Monty’s desk caught my eye. It was a small wire cage—just like the one I’d found in the mouth of the kangaroo.

  “What’s this?” I asked, reaching for the wire object.

  Monty glanced up, still distracted by the painting. “Oh, funny story,” he said, returning his face to the magnifying glass. “My dry cleaner said he found that in the front pocket of one of my shirts. I figure he got me mixed up with someone else.”

  I turned the cage over in my hands, letting the light reflect off of the metal wires. It was the perfect shape for an acquisitive cat to have carried off in her mouth as she ran down the stairs from the kitchen to the Green Vase showroom—and leapt up onto Monty’s shoulders.