The Cat, The Professor and the Poison

by Leann Sweeney

  “Jane, black cats for you,” Shawn said.

  “I adore black cats,” she said with a smile. “Works for me.”

  Shawn took a cream-colored instrument off the dolly. It looked like the scanner they used to price giant bags of kibble. But then I realized what it was. I’d recently had microchips implanted near the shoulder blades of all my cats. Dr. Jensen had used a tool exactly like that to show me how the system worked. He’d held it over the shoulder area after each cat had had its chip put in, and the chip number came up on the device’s screen. Their unique embedded chip numbers are now in a database in case any of them ever get lost again.

  “You think these cats have chips?” I said.

  “That would be too good to be true, but South Carolina law says any rescued cat must be scanned for microchips. And I’ll look for tattoos,” Shawn said. “Some folks used tattoos to identify their pets before the microchip age.”

  “Scanning is the law? I had no idea. Might be a challenge to scan them the way they’re acting right now.” I took my crate to the last enclosure. “I assume you’re taking me up on my offer to foster the calico and her kittens?”

  “Do you mind? That litter I’ve already got is a handful,” he said. “Mom’s getting healthier, but we’re still tube feeding.”

  “Don’t mind taking them, but Syrah, Chablis and Merlot might,” I said.

  Doc Howard said, “I brought vaccines and will examine all the cats before we take off. But until their feline AIDS and parasite tests come back, these cats must be kept away from your pets.”

  “I have plenty of room, so no problem. Do you do this often? Help out like this?” I said.

  He knelt and offered a hand to the white cats cowering in the corner. “All over the state. Terrible cat and dog stray problems, especially in rural areas like this.”

  His attention was fully focused on the cats now, and I had a job to do, too.

  The calico almost looked like she was smiling up at me as I pulled the crate into her prison. Her kittens were feeding—two mackerel tabbies, a bicolor orange and white, and a calico baby that had less white than mama cat. I squatted near them and talked soothingly for a few minutes, noting that she and the kittens lay on straw. That professor hadn’t even given them a blanket. I’d just finished about a hundred cat quilts for a future craft festival in Atlanta, and one of those little quilts would soon be put to good use.

  I opened the crate door, thinking that would help Miss Calico get used to it, but she amazed me once again. She stood, washed her babies’ faces and licked all their bellies. Then she proceeded to lift each by the scruff and carry them one by one into the crate. Once she’d carried the last one in, she stayed in there with them.

  Meanwhile, Shawn was having an awful time scanning the other cats, but he finally finished.

  He walked over to my jail cell, wiping sweat off his brow with a forearm. “Cats never like to be told what to do.” At least he was smiling. “Seems you had no problems.”

  “She put her litter in the crate all by herself,” I said.

  “No way.” He came around and bent down to look at them. “Pretty bunch. But she’s not in a position where I can get a good scan. We’ll take care of that later. Let’s get out of here. This is a bad, bad place.”

  Shawn carried my crate, and when we passed Candace on the way out, I said, “You look deep in thought.”

  She blinked and met my gaze. “I am.”

  “About evidence you found?” I said.

  “No, I’m thinking about the why of what we found here. Seems like someone came and rescued most of the cats and may have killed the professor. That conjures up plenty of suspects of the animal-activist kind—people who thought these cats weren’t being treated as they should.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense. Sort of.”

  “What do you mean, sort of?” She brushed a stray blond hair off her furrowed brow.

  “They left cats behind,” I said. “No true animal lover would leave even one behind. Not in a million years.”

  Eight

  After Shawn, Doc Howard and Jane took the cats out to what Howard called his “portable vet clinic” for examination, Lydia instructed me to wait in the living room so she could question me. If I hadn’t been such a mess from my encounter with barbed wire and fields of jasmine and goldenrod, I wouldn’t have wanted to sit on one of Professor VanKleet’s grubby armchairs. The original color was long lost in a layer of filth. But I was probably dirtier than the chair. I sat, my scratched-up hands clenched on my knees

  Our Mercy vet, Dr. Jensen, arrived carrying a crate less than a minute after I sat down. I said hello and started to rise, ready to lead him to the cats in the bathroom. But Candace came in right behind him and gestured for me to stay put. Minutes later, he passed back through the living room carrying the orange and the tabby in the crate. I’d known him long enough to detect both his urgency and his concern when he departed. Please, oh please, let them be okay, I thought.

  Lydia, to her credit, kept me waiting for only ten minutes and brought along Morris Ebeling as her designated note taker. He sat in the equally dirty chair opposite me. After Lydia considered her option—a torn-up, stained Victorianesque sofa—she remained standing, her manicured hands on her hips.

  “Tell me about this adventure of yours this afternoon. Candy filled me in for the most part, but I’d like to hear your version,” she said.

  I didn’t trust her gentle and reasonable tone for one instant. I wanted to say, “You are one crazy quilt, Lydia,” but instead I kept my voice even when I said, “Are you worried I may have somehow managed to pour this poison—what was it, strychnine?—down Professor VanKleet’s throat?”

  “Well, I never thought of that, Jillian. You have opened my eyes to a whole new realm of possibilities. I know how much you love cats. Is that motive enough to kill a man you thought was mistreating them?” Her syrupy smile made me want to vomit.

  Morris cleared his throat. “Um, Lydia. Do you really think—”

  “Morris, you’re here to take notes,” she said.

  “But I am the acting chief, and—”

  “Which you’ve told me a hundred times. Sorry, but Jillian has brought a crime theory to our attention, and I hope you’ve written her words down for our report.” She focused on me again. “Now. Tell me what happened today.”

  I did. If I wanted Lydia to leave me alone, I needed to relate everything as dispassionately as possible—just the facts, ma’am—and so I recited what had gone on since Wednesday night, including the premature kittens and the missing cow.

  “Good. That matches what Candy told me. You can go,” Lydia said abruptly. She waved in the direction of the door. “If you were trespassing here, I figure that’s Candy’s business.”

  “My business, too,” Morris said. “And from what you’ve told me about this poison and when the rigidity wears off, Ms. Hart was probably with Shawn Cuddahee at the time the man died.”

  “And you’re discussing this in front of her?” Lydia whispered to him out of the side of her mouth.

  Morris reddened. “She’s no suspect in my book, but as for the cats—”

  “Who cares about the cats? You can leave, Jillian,” Lydia said. “There’s no compelling evidence that you had anything to do with this death.” So she believed me just like Morris did? Thanks to what I guessed was a recent Botox treatment on her forehead, it was hard to read her.

  I said, “I’d love to go, but I don’t have a ride.”

  “That’s right. You’ve been playing policewoman with your pal Candy again. Don’t go calling up Tom and pleading for him to come and pick you up. Morris will find you a ride.” She returned to the kitchen, and all I could do was give the palms-up “I don’t get it” gesture to Morris.

  But once he walked me outside in search of a ride from fireman Billy Cranor or a paramedic who might still be hanging around, we found Shawn pacing at the end of the driveway.

  He said, “Been waiting for
you. Need a lift back to the sanctuary?”

  How could I have forgotten that I’d agreed to take the calico and her litter home? Stress, I decided.

  I believed Morris was more grateful than I was for Shawn’s presence. He thanked Shawn and headed back toward the house.

  The crated litter and their mom—her white tag read DAME WIGGINS—were in the backseat of Shawn’s extended-cab truck, and they made no sound. Sleeping, no doubt. What a long, awful day for everyone. On the way back to the sanctuary, Shawn told me that Dr. Jensen believed the most pressing issue with the cats from the bathroom was dehydration. Dame Wiggins was in amazingly good shape, but then she’d found a way out of her cell in search of food, probably more than once.

  I shook my head, feeling terrible about what the cats had endured. “What was wrong with that professor?”

  “Whatever it was, he paid in spades. Man, the way his body was all twisted up was the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen. The other cats seem a little malnourished, but not nearly as bad as those two Dr. J. took to his hospital.”

  “Thanks to Dame Wiggins and her escapist ways, we probably saved some cats today. I never would have found out what was going on if not for her,” I said.

  I arrived home close to midnight, and after I disabled the alarm, I took Dame Wiggins and her family into the house through the door below the deck. This entrance led to the basement game room, which had an attached unfurnished bedroom. I set up my foster cats with fresh water, food and a disposable litter box. This “basement apartment” had a fully stocked pantry and a bathroom—for the guests that so far I hadn’t had yet.

  There was a guest room upstairs, but John had made sure we’d finished the basement for the grandchildren my late husband hoped to have. I couldn’t have kids, but John did have his daughter Kara from his first marriage. She’d never even got a chance to visit us in South Carolina. The last time I’d seen her was at John’s funeral in Houston, where she still lived. We had never been close, and John’s death hadn’t changed that. How I wished that were different.

  “Dame Wiggins,” I said before I went upstairs, “I bequeath this empty room to you and promise to bring a comfy quilt after I visit with my friends upstairs.” I opened the crate for her and then left, closing the bedroom door behind me.

  I’d also closed the door to the upstairs so three curious friends wouldn’t come down to check out what I was doing. Syrah, Chablis and Merlot might not appreciate feline visitors, although I’d occasionally kept a few lost cats and they hadn’t minded too much. But kittens? Nope, I’d never brought home kittens, so I had no idea how they would respond.

  I climbed the stairs and opened the door, leaving it ajar now that Dame Wiggins was safely sequestered. Cats hate closed doors.

  When I flipped on the kitchen lights, three loving feline faces stared up at me—and they had been waiting with a gift.

  A dead mouse lay in front of them.

  Syrah tapped the lifeless body toward me, as proud as punch. Sheesh. Another dead body. Tiny but still dead. But it wasn’t like they hadn’t made offerings like this before.

  I said, “I’ve eaten, thanks. But nice work, you three.” I recalled the stalking behavior I’d witnessed on the cat cam. They’d been chasing bigger prey than spiders in my absence. I took a wide path around the poor dead thing—didn’t want to hurt the cats’ feelings and dispose of their prize too soon. That might seem ungrateful.

  Once we were all in the living room and far from the dead animal, I sat on the floor and bestowed plenty of love on my best friends. But my cats were less interested in petting and playing than they were in sniffing me from head to toe. Merlot even put his Swiffer duster paws on my chest and met me nose to nose. He recognized the scent of a foreign cat and wanted to drink it in completely.

  A few minutes later, they grew tired of me. After all, I hardly ever came in through the basement, so I was sure they felt something must be explored down there. And I was also sure they were hoping there would be other invaders that needed to be stalked, trapped and killed.

  As they hurried down the stairs, I followed as far as the kitchen, ready to dispose of the dead mouse. I pulled a few paper towels off the roll, realizing I felt more compassion for this creature than for the professor. Did that make me a good recruit for animal activism? No, not yet, I decided, as I headed out the back door for the trash can to dispose of the mouse. Whoever released or captured those cats today had probably tackled more barbed wire in their pursuits than I ever wanted to see again.

  Right before I lifted the trash can’s lid, I had a thought.

  I could call an exterminator tomorrow. I’d seen a dead spider earlier today, and now this mouse. Just the kind of things exterminators live for. Not that I actually wanted to exterminate anything. No, I wanted an expert opinion.

  As I’d waited those ten minutes in the professor’s disgusting living room earlier, I’d thought about his note taking, the way he fed half the animals dry food and the other half that repulsive concoction from the jar. Was that why he was on sabbatical? To develop some new kind of cat food?

  But before he could complete whatever he was doing with the meat on the counter or the red mixture in the jar, the professor had died. The question remained—had he been done in by his stupidity or by another’s hand?

  Maybe someone not quite as nice as Ruth Schultz got angry about cats wandering on their property. A few cats had managed to escape from the professor’s prison and ended up with her, after all. Could someone else have tracked down the professor and decided to gather all the cats and dispose of them at the same time they got rid of the source of the problem—the instigating professor?

  That could mean the missing cats were victims, too. Now they were who knew where, maybe some as sick as the gray, or the orange cat and the tabby Dr. Jensen took away. Though it wasn’t my business to investigate anything aside from how well certain fabrics complemented one another, I felt compelled to help in any way possible. Cats were involved. Lots of cats. Since Mercy has experts on everything from quilting thread to coffee beans, why not rodent poisons—and, sadly, possible cat poisons?

  Yes. I needed to talk to an expert first thing tomorrow. And with that thought I pushed down the little voice that said, “What are you getting yourself into now, Jillian?”

  Nine

  I finally got to sleep at a reasonably normal time on Friday night and woke up the following morning feeling almost myself again. First thing, I contacted Rufus Bowen, the owner of What’s Bugging You? The choice of an exterminator was easy, considering only one company was listed in the thin Mercy yellow pages.

  I tried questioning him over the phone, but Rufus cut me off, said he knew where I lived and would stop by on his way to an appointment. Then he hung up.

  He knew where I lived? Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Everyone knew everything about everyone in Mercy.

  When I answered the front door a half hour later, my gaze was drawn past his tall, broad and muscled body. I was looking at his truck parked in my driveway. A giant cockroach does catch your eye, and this one was painted on the side of the pickup. The customizing was beautifully done, but I still stifled a “yuck.” Spiders and mice I could handle. Cockroaches made me shudder.

  Syrah and Merlot entered the foyer when I greeted Rufus. One whiff and they hightailed it to parts unknown. Since cats have a sense of smell hundreds of times more acute than that of humans, I figured they probably detected the “odor-free” chemicals clinging to Rufus Bowen. All I smelled was perspiration.

  Chablis didn’t bother to show her face, unusual since she enjoys greeting visitors. She’d been downstairs when I went to feed Dame Wiggins early this morning, and my educated guess was that she was still there, parked outside the bedroom door.

  “So you got yourself a vermin problem?” Rufus said.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “Can we talk for a minute?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Sure, but I don’t do snakes if that’s—”
>
  “No snakes. Come into the kitchen.”

  I led him through the living room, and when we sat at the kitchen counter he removed his Atlanta Braves baseball cap to reveal thinning, greasy brown hair.

  “Would you like coffee? Or sweet tea?” I asked.

  “No, ma’am. I just need to know the problem.”

  “Here’s the deal. My cats killed a mouse yesterday, which got me thinking that exterminators would probably know plenty about any chemicals that kill animals.”

  “You’d be correct, ma’am. But are you saying there’s more than one mouse hanging around your house?” His glance swept the kitchen floor. He was doing a “Candace.” Looking for evidence of infestation.

  “Perhaps there are more mice, but that’s not—”

  “If so, you got two better exterminators than this old boy. Nothing prettier than watching a cat pounce on a rodent.” His lopsided smile indicated genuine admiration for cats, and I liked that.

  I said, “What if the mouse was, say, poisoned, and one of my cats ate it. Would that make him sick?”

  “Did they?”

  “Did they what?” I said.

  “Eat it?”

  “Oh no, but I’m just asking what if. See, I saw some dead rats close to where several cats were being . . . imprisoned is the only word to describe it,” I said.

  He squinted at me. “I think I know where this is going, but quit throwing curveballs and pitch one right down the middle of the plate. What do you want?”

  “A consultation—which I am happy to pay for,” I said.

  “You don’t need to pay me for talkin’. Glad to assist you, ma’am.”

  I smiled gratefully. “Here’s a couple of questions: What would be your first choice to kill a mouse if I didn’t have my own personal exterminators? And what might be the danger to the person handling the poison?”

  Rufus nodded and for the first time seemed a tad uncomfortable. “This is about that peculiar professor getting poisoned, ain’t it? Read the cop column in the Messenger this morning, and when I stopped at Belle’s for coffee I heard a bunch of cats got sprung from that setup he had at the old Taylor farm. And you’re interested, huh?”