The Cat, The Professor and the Poison

by Leann Sweeney

  “Very. That’s why I called you for an expert’s knowledge. But you said ‘peculiar’ professor. You knew him? Because I sure didn’t.”

  “Nah. He wasn’t here long enough, but I saw him around town. Man needed a regular haircut. Dressed and talked funny. Heard he once took all the coins out of that cup sit-tin’ by Belle’s register. You know, the one where they have change if you’re a few cents short?”

  I nodded. And he stole a woman’s cow, too. That did qualify as weird . . . or desperate. “Would you say he was hard up, then?”

  Rufus looked down at the chunky hands resting on his thighs. “Yeah, and I shouldn’t be calling him peculiar. My mama heard me speak unkindly of the dead, she’d slap me upside the head.”

  “Promise I won’t tell,” I said. “Back to my original question. What’s the best product for killing . . . anything?”

  He said, “Nuclear bomb, I guess. Seriously, though, it’s all about how much poison. Anything can be considered deadly in the right dose. Even plain old table salt or water.”

  “Everyday items from the kitchen aren’t the problem in this case. I was at the professor’s place last night, and—”

  “You was there?” He grew more alert, and did I detect a wariness in his eyes?

  I nodded. “Yes, I was there.”

  “Yowee. Folks are gonna start crossin’ to the other side of the street, they see you comin’, Ms. Hart. That’s two bodies you’ve been up close and personal with in the last year.”

  “Not how I want to be remembered. Anyway, the deputy coroner said the professor was poisoned with strychnine. Do you ever use that for killing rodents? Because, as I said earlier, I noticed a few dead rats on the property before they found the professor’s body.”

  Rufus said, “You sure Lydia said strychnine?”

  “Yes. She said that considering the condition of the body, the way he was all . . . contorted, that it had to be strychnine,” I said.

  Sweat beads popped out on Rufus’s forehead. He averted his gaze and didn’t respond.

  “Was she right?” I asked.

  “Oh, she’s right. Might be the first time ever for that woman. Meanwhile, I got to be going.” He slid off the stool, his demeanor totally different now. He seemed eager to get the heck out of my house as soon as possible.

  He was halfway through the living room before I even left my stool, and I had to hurry after him. What just happened?

  I said, “What’s wrong? You seem upset.”

  “Not bothered any which way, but my next customer might be if I don’t get there lickety-split. Nice to meet you, and if you ever have a real problem with bugs or varmints—”

  I touched his arm and said, “Wait. I have more questions.”

  He looked none too happy when he faced me. “I don’t think I can help you.”

  “Just one more. Would strychnine be something you’d supply for killing rats?” I asked.

  “Nope. Don’t need anything that strong for rats. Better and kinder ways to get rid of them. Thank you, ma’am, but I can find my way out.”

  He was done with me; that much was certain. And I surely didn’t want to keep Rufus from a paying customer. I watched him leave, still puzzled by his abrupt reaction to the mention of strychnine. I wished I could have asked him about the sick cats and whether he thought they could have been poisoned with something different. Perhaps another day.

  My cell phone rang, and I pulled it from my pants pocket. It was Shawn.

  “Heard from Doc Jensen,” he said without a hello.

  Merlot and Syrah reappeared and meowed several times. They started toward the kitchen, and I knew from their “feed me now” cries that I’d better pay attention or they’d get even louder. They are the boss of me, that’s for sure.

  “What about the gray? And are the bathroom cats, Trixie and Vlad, okay?” I asked as I followed them.

  “Doing much better. Too thin, dehydrated, but all of them are eating and drinking this morning,” he said. “They’ll be just fine.”

  I sighed with relief. “That’s great news. They weren’t poisoned, then?”

  “Doc doesn’t think so. No microchips on them, though. Three more strays that’ll need loving homes after they’re neutered. Same with the other four we took. They weren’t spayed or neutered neither. The vet’ll take care of all of them soon. You willing to donate anything toward the cause?”

  “My quilt business has picked up since all that publicity after the murder last year, so sure, I can help out,” I said.

  “Bags of pet food would be great, which reminds me. How’s your hungry little bunch of fur this morning?” he said.

  “You mean the ones yowling at me this minute or the rescues?” I said with a laugh.

  “Them and the visitors you took in, but it sounds like you’d better do right by your best friends,” he said.

  I opened the pantry, looking for a flavor of wet food they hadn’t eaten recently. “The mama cat and kittens are doing fine,” I said. “But Chablis wants to visit them. Can she?”

  “Yup. Leukemia, parasite and FIV tests were negative on the mother. Doc used a flea comb on our Dame Wiggins, but I’d check those kittens for any fleas or ear mites before you let your three anywhere near them. You got any ear-mite medicine?”

  “I do.” I breathed a sigh of relief. Fleas and mites I could handle, but unlike humans, cats can transmit leukemia to one another, and FIV stands for feline immunodeficiency virus, another deadly and transmittable illness. “Do you have any clue about who might have taken the other cats?” I asked.

  “No such luck. Candace asked me to check with rescue groups, seeing as how they’re the most likely folks to stage a raid, but I got nothing. Problem is, since there’s been a death and all, I doubt I’ll hear anything.”

  I picked a can of chopped grill, and Syrah nearly tripped me by winding in and out of my legs as I left the pantry. Merlot plopped down beside the empty cat dish. He was doing the half-tweet, half-purr call that said, “If you don’t hurry, I might eat you, my human servant.”

  I said, “No chance the people who cut the fence just set those cats loose?”

  “If an activist did it, no way. Heard tell Candace and Morris were headed back over to that professor’s place this morning to look for any evidence outside the runs. They needed daylight to see if someone dropped something or left footprints at the spots where the fence was cut. Maybe they’ll get a lead or clue—anything to make Candace’s day.”

  I put the phone on speaker and set it on the counter. Then I popped the can and squatted by the cat dish. Chopped grill sounded so haute cuisine, but was merely a brown smelly blob of who knew what.

  Syrah was on the food so fast, you’d have thought I never fed him in his life. Merlot quieted, waiting for his turn. He might be bigger, but Syrah was first in line when it came to food.

  “Did you hear if there are any suspects in the professor’s death?” I asked Shawn. I stood and opened the fridge. Time for sweet tea.

  “Suspects? Are you thinking he was murdered?” he said.

  “I understand he could have killed himself, or maybe his death was even an accident, but the fact that those cats disappeared says someone wasn’t happy with the professor,” I said, pouring myself a glass.

  “His house was salmonella waiting to happen,” Shawn said. “I’m thinking he did himself in. Besides, all I care about are the feline victims. Not sure I care diddly-squat about this professor. And professor of what? Evil?”

  “That’s like one of the worst lines ever from a B movie, Shawn. And no one deserves to die such a miserable death,” I said.

  “You sticking up for the guy?” he said.

  “No. But sometimes you say things I don’t think you mean. You never even met the man.”

  A short pause followed, and then he said, “I get hot when people do ugly stuff to animals; that’s all.” He went on to tell me I could visit the gray, Vlad and Trixie at the veterinary hospital. Then he said an a
brupt good-bye.

  Shawn will be Shawn, and he’d have forgotten about this less-than-pleasant end to our conversation the next time we spoke. But he did have me thinking.

  Professor of more than just biology?

  Ten

  Syrah and Merlot gave up on their food when they saw me head for the hallway. They thought I was about to start working on quilt orders, since it was that time of the morning. But rather than enter the sewing room, I went to my office and booted up the computer. They sat next to my desk chair and looked up at me as if to say, “You’re in the wrong room, staff person.” Though the computer was fun because that meant I stayed in one place, the days I spent quilting were heaven for all of us. Yes, they loved fabric almost more than I did. Syrah had even been known to sit on a three-inch square of fabric if that’s all that was available.

  But I wanted to learn about the professor, seeing as how I knew next to nothing, except that he liked to dress up like a cat burglar and steal cows. I remembered he’d been on the faculty of Denman College, and I brought up the school’s Web site first. Not much to learn, I soon discovered. They offered degrees in general studies, biomedical engineering, mathematics, nutrition and biology. Not big on the arts, but the school was small. No profile page for him when I clicked on the button for faculty.

  Next, I Googled Professor VanKleet, and that yielded better results. I found a ten- year-old photo of him and his wife, Sarah, at a fund- raising event. No long hair, and he seemed genuinely happy, his arm around his wife’s waist. But her expression seemed tense, and her hands gripped a rhinestone bag so tightly that her knuckles were white. I printed out that picture and veered back onto the Internet highway. I learned that the professor had dual PhDs, one in animal nutrition and one in biology. At least he’d told the truth about teaching biology. There was a link to a profile page at Denman College, but all I discovered was a message saying that the page no longer existed. The few abstracts for academic papers I was able to locate indicated that he had researched commercial pet food. This was confirmation of what I’d thought yesterday, so no surprise there.

  Science was never my strong point in college—my degree was in fiber art—thus, the few summaries I dug up on his papers made my eyes glaze over. Though I didn’t understand all the talk about amino acids and vitamin content, I at least felt more confident that the man might have been researching cat diets in that grubby farmhouse kitchen.

  When I sat back in the chair, processing this information, Syrah jumped up on the desk. He stared intently at me.

  “Do you like what I feed you, sweet boy?” I said.

  He meowed in response to the distress he must have heard in my voice. If what I’d seen in the professor’s kitchen had anything to do with the breakfast I’d just fed my cats, well . . . I didn’t want to know that much about cat food.

  I was set to resume my quest for more personal information on the professor—including wife Sarah—but I was interrupted by the doorbell.

  I checked my watch and discovered it was already noon. That’s what the computer is—a giant time suck. Syrah and Merlot were joined by Chablis by the time we reached the foyer. All three sat several feet from the door as usual, not too close, but they of course wanted to see who might be calling this time.

  My eyes widened in disbelief when I looked through the peephole. John’s daughter, Kara, stood on the front stoop. I hadn’t spoken to her in so long, I couldn’t imagine why she was visiting.

  “Hey there,” I said, after opening the door. I saw right away that dark circles under her eyes marred her complexion. Her shiny brunette hair drooped over her right shoulder in a braid. Although Kara looked tired, she was still one of the most attractive young women I’d ever met. I opened my arms for a hug.

  She embraced me briefly and then rolled her suitcase past me and into the foyer. “Hope you don’t mind, but I need a place to crash.” Her tone was brusque, and her brown eyes avoided mine.

  “Um, no problem. Sure,” I said. “Been a long time.” I swallowed hard. Gosh, she looked like her father—that is, when John had been dog tired.

  Kara dropped her shoulder bag, released her hold on her suitcase and glanced in the direction of the living room. She put her hands on her slim blue-jeaned hips. “So this is the house that Daddy built.”

  The house your daddy and I built, I thought. But this was Kara. I’d so wanted her to warm to me, but that had never happened. She was here now, and no matter what, she was part of John and that made her special.

  “Are you thirsty? Hungry?” I said.

  “Nope. Why don’t you show me the house? I’ve been driving for hours and would rather walk off the stiffness.” She started down the hall that led to my office, the sewing room and the bedrooms.

  I noticed that all three cats were gone. A cold wind will make a cat run for cover. Kara was out of sight now, and I rolled her suitcase behind me down the hallway toward my bedroom. When I caught up, I said, “Let’s drop this off, and then I’ll give you the tour.” We walked on to the last room on the right, and while I put her suitcase in the guest room closet, she stopped at the four-poster bed and rested a hand on the quilt. It was one of my favorites, a monkey-wrench pattern in pinks and browns.

  “Nice,” Kara said.

  I mumbled a thank-you. Did she realize I’d made the quilt? Surely she must. I pointed out the bathroom before we walked back down the hall. We stopped in my office, and her gaze settled on the bookshelves. I noticed her swallow and close her eyes briefly. She recognized many of those books. They’d belonged to her father.

  She blinked several times and said, “What else is in this hall?”

  I led her to my sewing room.

  Though I went in, Kara stood in the entry. “This is where you run your little business, huh? How’s that going?”

  She did remember what I do, and her tone hinted at interest rather than the indifference she’d shown in the past.

  I said, “Better than I ever imagined. I can hardly keep up with the orders.”

  “I suppose all that publicity after you became the hometown hero didn’t hurt,” she said.

  “I wasn’t a hero,” I said quietly. “But I guess that means you read about what happened here.”

  “Duh. I worked for a newspaper.”

  She’d gone snarky on me, something I was familiar with since the day we’d first met. She’d been a freshman at the University of Texas. Her mother had died of cancer a decade before. At that first meeting, it seemed obvious to me that she still hadn’t gotten over her mother’s death. Sullen didn’t begin to describe her attitude back then. And nothing much changed over the ten years John and I were married.

  I hadn’t missed her use of the past tense when she’d said worked. “Newspapers are going through tough times,” I said. “I don’t want to pry, but I do care, and—”

  “Yes, I lost my job. And no, I don’t want to talk about it. Show me the rest of this place. Daddy talked so much about the plans, the lake, and . . . you. Since I have nothing but free time now, I thought I’d find out about his life before he died.”

  I heard the catch in her voice, and it dawned on me that though my grief over losing John had begun to ease, hers might only now be kicking in.

  She turned and pointed across the hall. “Is this your bedroom?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  In the master bedroom, all three cats lay on the king-size bed. This time, they didn’t run off.

  Kara stopped a few steps into the room and whispered, “How Daddy loved those cats.” She approached them and held out her hand. Merlot stood and arched his back to stretch and then sniffed her fingers. He rubbed his head along the side of her hand. Cats know when a person needs comfort, and Merlot was great at offering affection whenever I was upset or troubled. He was doing the same for Kara now.

  She petted him for a few seconds, but then the photograph on my bureau caught her eye—the last picture of John and me, taken on one wedding anniversary when we’d visite
d Ireland.

  She walked around the bed and picked up the photo. Though her back was to me, I heard her say, “I don’t have this picture.”

  She lowered her head, and her shoulders began to shake with sobs.

  I went over and rested a hand on her shoulder. She stiffened and continued to hold the framed picture tightly. At least she didn’t step away from my touch.

  My search for information concerning the professor was forgotten. For the first time since I’d married John, Kara and I talked about him—for two solid hours. But she was still as standoffish as she’d been during every holiday or vacation we’d shared together while she was in college and after. Plus I was stuck with my original assessment that she had only begun to grieve her enormous loss. She’d worshipped John and had trouble with my marrying him from the beginning. I tried over and over again to befriend her, made her gifts, called her, sent her cards, but I could never break through the wall she’d built between us. But that didn’t mean I stopped trying. Oops. Except for the last year and a half. Yes, I’d allowed my own grief to consume me, had cut myself off from the world.

  During our conversation, I’d managed to get Kara to eat a tuna sandwich. I didn’t ask, just made us both one and put hers in front of her. When she would come home for college semester breaks, usually with two or three friends, I could put anything to eat in front of her and it would be gone in fifteen minutes.

  Now, between bites, words poured out of her like a stream that had been dammed up since her father’s death. But she never made eye contact with me. That wall remained between us.

  When she finally seemed to be finished talking, at least for the time being, I asked whether she’d like to visit my new foster children. One thing I was certain about Kara—she did love animals. She’d had a little mutt for a while but had to find him a home when she moved to a place where pets weren’t allowed.

  Soon we were down in the basement sitting next to where Dame Wiggins and her brood lay on the quilt I’d brought down last night. And since I left the door open, Chablis joined us. Her wish to visit these strangers had finally come true.