“Patience, Charlotte,” Erma snapped, her stentorian voice belying her ninety years. She looked around at them all. “You’ll hear the rules, and not one person will leave this room until you do. You may have one companion to assist you, human or otherwise.” The glints lit briefly on Shadow and Augustus. “The deeds are in a small, brass correspondence box hidden somewhere in this house. The contest will be over at nightfall, or when someone finds the box. And it begins...now!” With that, the old woman lifted a starter’s pistol from under the shawl on her lap, and fired it in the air.
At the explosive sound, Shadow rose straight up five feet in the air, tail-hairs spread out like a bottle brush, and shot out of the room. Gil scrambled up after him. The nephews and nieces scattered, leaving Great-aunt Erma sitting alone in her wheelchair, chuckling to herself.
Gil cornered Shadow hiding behind a painted fireplace screen in the study next door, where his cousins Brad and Amy were already searching. The house was sprawling, with more than thirty-five rooms, dating back to the last quarter of the 19th century. It had been built at the height of the westward expansion, intended to impress the neighbors, and indulge the old man’s sense of fun. There were secret doors in plenty, some of which led to priest’s holes, others to elaborate underground tunnels, and a few to nowhere at all. When Gil bent to pick him up, Shadow pawed at the back wall of the fireplace. Gil saw a thin line. Shadow had found a door that Gil, who had been in the house hundreds of time since he was a child, had never seen before.
“Good kitty!” Gil said. They were off to a great start.
He dropped to his hands and knees and began to feel his way around the brickwork for a catch. He hoped he would be the one to find the deeds. He urgently needed to find a new place to live. His beloved loft in St. Louis had been condemned and was being torn down to make way for a minimall, and as an impecunious, free-lance commercial artist, he couldn’t afford both a new apartment and a studio. He needed this inheritance.
The whole rear of the fireplace shifted and swung noisily to the left, revealing a dark passageway. The cat sniffed at the musty air that rushed out.
“Gangway!” cried Charlotte. Growling fiercely, Augustus muscled his way into the hearth, scaring Shadow halfway up the chimney. Gil stood up, banging his head on the mantel. While stars danced in his eyes, Charlotte barged past him through the newly opened door.
“Hey, wait!” Gil shouted, but it was too late. He could hear their voices echoing off the tunnel walls like a couple of questing hounds. There was no point in following them. If there was anything down there, they’d get to it first. Better try another prospect.
The echoingly huge kitchens and pantry were overrun with Todhunter cousins who were turning out every cupboard and shelf onto the stone floor. Two of the younger girls had gotten into a flour-fight, and the choking cloud of white filled the room. Shadow sniffed briefly around, checking under the sink, but kept on going out and down the hallway. Gil ran after him. He was counting on the black cat’s instinct for finding the best hiding place, the one the old man had chosen.
Shadow ran up to the green baize door that divided the former servants’ quarters from the main part of the house, and pawed at it. Gil hurried up to open it for him, and the cat scooted through, making for the library. Yes, the library! That would be a good place to try. The thousands of books could easily conceal a small brass box, whether between two of them, or concealed in a cutout cavity. It would appeal to Great-great-grandpa’s sense of humor.
Cousin Scott eyed him suspiciously as the cat and man ran by. He was turning over every picture in the long gallery, looking for a niche or a wall safe. Gil could have saved his younger cousin the trouble. The safe was under the floor of the master bedroom, and it had been empty for years. Cousin Yarra had just tried it, and was stomping around the second floor of the house looking for more hollow places under the floor boards.
Gil flung open the door to the library, and he and Shadow dashed in, only to be confronted by Augustus. The dog marched toward them, a menacing expression on his pushed-in face. Gil backed up until he felt the wall behind him.
Charlotte was already there, pulling book after book off the shelves, then tossing them into a heap on the floor. The Todhunter library consisted of thousands of volumes. Gil was pretty sure they’d been bought by the yard, as many nouveau riche people of the 19th century had done, and never read. Charlotte had only covered two shelves so far. Gil counted more than thirty to go.
“Let me help,” he offered.
“No!” she said, fiercely. “Augustus, guard!” The dog shouldered forward like a street tough.
The last step was too much of an invasion of Shadow’s personal space. The cat turned sideways, arched his back, fluffed out his short fur, and showed all his fangs.
“Eeerooooo,” Shadow growled warningly deep in his throat. It was his preliminary war cry. He took a pace forward.
“Mmmruuu-uh?” Augustus mumbled, looking alarmed. He took a pace back.
“Don’t let a cat bully you!” Charlotte yelled at the dog, pulling down one book after another. “Guard!” At her command, Augustus waddled forward and planted himself in front of Gil, showing all his teeth. Gil started to move around him, but the bulldog matched him step for step, growling.
“This isn’t fair, Charlotte,” Gil protested.
“All’s fair in love and money,” Charlotte said, tossing aside a priceless 16th century book on herbs. “And this is money. Aunt Erma didn’t say how our companions could help us hunt.”
“Shadow, do something,” Gil said. The cat sauntered away, and Gil’s heart sank. Shadow was giving up. Just as Gil was about to cry uncle and cede the turf to Charlotte, Shadow walked up to the shelf next to where she was rooting, inspected it, turned his back insouciantly, and emitted a jet of urine.
“Ugh!” Charlotte exclaimed, jumping away and batting at her trouser leg. “That’s disgusting. Stop him!” Shadow moved on to the next spot that interested him, the floor-length curtains framing the window between two of the bookshelves, and sprayed them, too.
“He’s just marking his territory,” Gil said. He sidled a pace, hoping to elude Augustus. The dog’s attention was no longer on him. He was watching Shadow. Abandoning his guard post, the bulldog strode over to the first shelf, and lifted a leg, marking the spot over Shadow’s. He followed the cat, covering up each new blast of scent with his own. The room started to reek of duelling animals, but, as Charlotte rightly pointed out, this was war. Gil threw himself at the nearest bookshelf and started to pull out fat 19th century novels. He had to shift this way and that to avoid the warring dog and cat as he moved on through philosophy, geography, and the sciences.
In less time than he would have thought possible, Gil had shaken out almost all the books on his side. Only one shelf divided him from Charlotte. She kept a grim watch on him out of the corner of her eye as she pulled down the last books on Civil War history. The two of them lunged at the same time for the books on gardening. Charlotte got in there first.
“Mine, Gil,” she said, turning her back on the books to confront her cousin. “I’ll let you visit the old homestead once in a while.” With his superior height, Gil reached over her head for a volume on growing sweet peas on the topmost shelf. Charlotte elbowed him in the stomach. Gil doubled over, sliding to his knees, in time to see Shadow trot out of the room. He took it as an omen, and stumbled up to follow his cat. Augustus watched him retreat with a smug look.
Shadow hadn’t gone far. He was waiting for Gil at the end of the corridor. As soon as the man caught up, the cat trotted through the gallery and into the smoking room.
The cosy, wood-and-leather-paneled chamber was built as a place for the men of the house to lounge around with post-prandial cigars and brandy. A lot of the Todhunter cousins were there, lounging in the big leather chairs under the two-story stained-glass windows or the hunting prints on the
walls, or sprawling up on the gallery, drinking up Aunt Erma’s liquor cabinet and eating goodies from the kitchen. Some of them still had flour in their hair. Others were smudged with soot from the chimneys.
“You still at it?” Cousin Scott asked him, around a Corona Corona cigar. “I think the whole thing is a fake. Auntie’s gone senile.”
“I don’t know,” Gil said, casually. He watched Shadow slink around the walls, nuzzling a chair leg here, a panel corner there. He must have liked the scent of the rolling library steps, because he ground first one cheek, then the other against them. “It’s a good story. I sure could use the money.”
“Huh!” said Cousin Yarra, through a mouthful of cheese. “You’d be better off asking the government to re-open the land rushes.”
Gil got tired of waiting for Shadow to give him a clue, and picked him up. Shadow squalled, and kicked loose to run. He heard the derisive laughter from the other cousins as he followed his pet back down the long hallway. Shadow reached the middle of the grand ballroom, and began to prowl nervously back and forth.
“Is it in here?” Gil asked, looking around. The big room had already been thoroughly searched, to judge by the disarray of the little gold chairs that were usually against the wall. The curtains were all askew. The only other thing in the room was the big, silver and rock crystal Austrian chandelier hanging from the ornamented plaster ceiling, and anyone could see nothing was hidden in it. Maybe the other cousins were right. There was no fortune. He was sunk. Bye-bye loft.
“You tricked me, Gilbert Todhunter!” Charlotte cried, charging into the room with Augustus on her heels. “You knew there was nothing in the library. I’ve wasted all that time, and it’s almost sundown! Sic ‘em, Augustus!”
The dog charged at the cat. The two animals circled, growling at one another, while their owners shouted.
“C’mon, Shadow,” Gil urged. “I’ll hold down Augustus so you can beat him up.”
“You will not!” Charlotte sputtered. “Augustus! Charge!”
Setting his jaw, the bulldog sprang to obey his mistress’s order. Shadow had evidently had enough of Augustus. As the dog thundered forward, Shadow sprang up into Gil’s arms, climbed onto his head, and leaped into the swinging chandelier.
“Now look what your stupid dog did!”
“Good boy, Augustus,” Charlotte said, gloating. “C’mon, let’s search while they’re stuck.”
Torn between curiosity and concern, Gil stared up, wondering what to do. The chandelier was priceless, but Shadow was his cat. Shadow wiggled higher until he was standing at the junction of the arms beside the chain. The whole thing swayed alarmingly.
“Come on down, kitty,” Gil said, holding his arms up. Shadow settled himself, his whiskers twitching. “Come on, we’ll go get something to eat.”
Shadow paid no attention. Instead, he pawed at part of the fancy ceiling. The white plaster curlicue moved aside, revealing a black gap, which Shadow jumped up into. A secret passage! Gil almost broke his neck beating Charlotte to one of the gilt chairs that stood along the walls. He climbed up and pulled himself into the ceiling. The little attic was dim, but beside the boss holding the chandelier he could see a small, tarnished box. Gil brushed off a wealth of cobwebs and clutched it, hardly believing it was real. It had probably been hidden in this very spot when the house had been wired for electricity in 1890. Gil looked down through the hole in the ceiling. The chair seemed to be very far away. He looked at Shadow in dismay. That was what the cat had been trying to tell him in the drawing room. He’d wanted him to bring the ladder!
“There’s no way down!” he shouted.
“Throw down the box,” Charlotte said, stretching up her arms. “I’ll hold it while you carry Shadow.” Gil saw the glint in her eye. She’d be gone in a minute, probably even move the chair out of reach. He couldn’t trust her.
“Nothing doing,” he said, eying the distance to the floor. Could he jump it without breaking his neck? While he was trying to decide what to do, Shadow shot away and fled along the ceiling beams. “Come back here!”
Clasping the precious box to his chest, Gil tiptoed over the trusses, afraid he would step between them and fall through the ceiling. Charlotte and Augustus, whom he could hear muttering along below, would win by default. “Darn it, cat, where are you?”
Gil heard Shadow’s joyous cry from a dark corner of the attic. Gil was covered with cobwebs when he caught up with him. Shadow prowled up and back at the top of his discovery. The cat had led him to another hidden staircase! Thanking the shades of Great-great-grandpa and his architect, Gil descended, box under one arm and cat under the other, and emerged in the drawing room, to the astonishment of his half-drunken cousins.
Triumphantly, Gil and Shadow led a procession into the drawing room to see Aunt Erma.
“Congratulations, Gilbert,” Aunt Erma said, over the protests. “Now, don’t all of you grumble. He won, fair and square. I’m not intending to cut everyone else off completely. The rest of you will get ten thousand dollars apiece, but the rest of the pie is Gilbert’s. He earned it.”
“Hmph,” snorted Charlotte. Augustus looked crestfallen. He had disappointed his mistress.
Shadow rubbed against Aunt Erma’s chair, then marched up to the hanging curtains, turned his back on it, and marked them. Gil groaned, as the others snickered.
“It’s all right,” Aunt Erma said, eyes glinting. “He’s just staking his claim. It’s an old family tradition.”
Karen heard the sound outside of the window just about twilight. Her eyes were dazed from looking at the computer screen, so she nearly missed the little gray cat huddled against the slate blue wall for warmth. Though it was always cooler here after the sun went down, it was an exceptionally cool night for a California June. When Karen leaned way over the sill and down to pick up the thin kitten, she found it was shivering.
She cuddled it against her sweater until it felt warmer. She knew how it felt. There wasn’t much extra meat on her slim bones, either. Karen let her curtain of light brown hair fall across the kitten’s back like a blanket. “Aw, poor kitty.”
Chirping curiously, the kitten struggled to get loose. It crawled up her shoulder and jumped down her back, prickling her skin with tiny claws, all the way to the floor, where it started an exploration of the room, its hazel eyes large in its triangular face.
“Oh, all right,” Karen said, watching it in doting amusement. “Just don’t do anything on the carpet, okay?” She turned away and squinted out of the window into the patio. “How did you get into the back yard? Even the mice have to knock. Uncle Barry has every board so tight... I bet you were thrown over the wall, huh? It’s a good thing kittens are indestructible.”
She turned back to the gray kitten for affirmation. It had finished looking around, and was seated atop her computer disk drive washing its paw with vigorous licks of its minute pink tongue. Karen smiled.
“You made yourself right at home, kitty. I think I’ll keep you. I could use the company.” The kitten sneezed, shaking its head. “Terminally cute,” said Karen, shaking hers. She sat down at the computer and stared at the screen until she remembered what she’d been doing. Frowning at her forgetfulness, she went back to work.
Assignments. Work study. Trouble-shooting. Sometimes between her class work and her part time job, she forgot what the hell she was working on. On the other hand, doing temp work for one of the big companies in Silicon Valley was a good way to get an in, for summer work and after graduation. This job was saving her life. Karen had never had a job that paid better, and she could do it at home in her own time. And she had plenty of that on her hands, too.
All her life Karen had had trouble taking chances. If it hadn’t been for the partial scholarship to UCSC, and her married friend promising help finding her work, Karen would never have left Maplewood, Missouri, and she knew it.
Taking chanc
es extended to making friends, too. In other words, she hadn’t made any. When she realized she was wearing out her welcome with Carolyn and Carolyn’s husband, she simply started staying home.
Home was a spare room and bath she rented for $400 a month from her mother’s uncle Barry. When she had realized she would be unable to afford dorm space or an apartment, she had written in a panic to all of her relatives on the West Coast, asking if any of them had extra room, or knew someone who did. Uncle Barry was the only one near enough to her choice of schools. She had always been terrified of him as a child, and in fact had not sent him a request. It was passed on to him by Karen’s Aunt Pat.
Karen received an imperious letter, all but commanding her to come out and live with him. Her mother urged her to accept, convinced that the old man was lonely since her Aunt Phoebe died. Under the circumstances, Karen didn’t dare turn him down.
She was also a little shocked about the size of the rent he proposed to charge her. He insisted, and he was right, that what he asked was less than half the rent for a shared apartment in the Cupertino area. Uncle Barry argued that once she started working, she’d be able to afford better, and this rent would seem cheap later on. Maybe, but it was going to be a thin year in the meantime. Uncle Barry was unsympathetic. He told her to learn to work with resources at hand, and meet challenges as they came, head on. Karen was too frightened of him to do anything but say yes. The room was nice, painted a soothing sunset-pink, with plenty of bookshelves.
She hit the Save command, and the disk drive whirred under the kitten, sending it whipping into a dance to find out where the big noise came from. It batted a cotton-ball paw at Karen when she reached over to pet it. “Yeah, you meant to do that. I know.” It purred.
She scooped it up. “You need a name. I can’t call you ‘it’ forever.
“Meeh!” it said, indignantly, trying to get down.
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