A Familiar Tail

by Delia James

  “Uh, sure.” I scraped my spoon through the last of my blackberry grunt.

  “It’s just that we’ve been worried about him. Dorothy died so suddenly and . . .” Valerie studied the steam curling across the surface of her tea. “Well, it was unexpected and unsettled.”

  You’re lying to me, I thought dazedly. You’re a nice, open, friendly person, and you’re sitting here lying to me, about a cat.

  A cat and a dead woman.

  “Was she, Dorothy . . . ill for very long?” I asked. I figured this was a better way to go fishing for the source of Valerie’s lie than, So, Sean the bartender says this Miss Hawthorne might have been murdered. What do you think?

  “Dorothy was healthy as a horse.” Val’s smile softened; it was also real this time. “In fact, we were making plans for her eightieth birthday. We were going to hold it here. A surprise party. The whole . . . town was going to be here.”

  “I’m so sorry. That’s hard.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” A new expression tightened Valerie’s mouth and furrowed that freckled forehead. I told myself she must be trying to hold back the tears again. Otherwise, I would have thought Valerie McDermott, my cheerful hostess and owner of a house that bubbled with good feeling, was deeply, fiercely angry.

  Sean’s words about how “some people” thought Dorothy Hawthorne had been murdered came echoing back. It seemed like Valerie McDermott was one of those people. That might explain why she thought there was something strange about Alistair’s disappearance, not to mention his reappearance.

  But just then a gray-haired couple in matching white slacks and blue polo shirts came out through the French doors. Valerie murmured a quick apology and heaved her pregnant self to her feet to go greet them.

  Which put her well out of conversational range.

  Well . . . shoot. I’d blown my chance to ask what, or how, Valerie knew about the Blessingsounds and what about them upset her so much. Instead, I’d let myself get distracted by the possibility of a murder connected to a spooky cat who wasn’t any kind of relation at all. Ginger would have my head when she found out.

  I smiled at my fellow guests as they took their seats on the shady porch, and tried to get back to giving my breakfast the attention it deserved. But the prickling had started up in the back of my neck again. This time I twisted around right away and saw Valerie staring at me from the French doors. As soon as she caught me looking, she gave a friendly wave and disappeared inside.

  I rubbed my neck and contemplated my coffee. Fresh feeling flowed through me, so strong it was almost a Vibe. It told me I should close my suitcases and get out of this weirdness while the getting was good. I could figure out something to tell Martine later.

  There are disadvantages associated with being the product of multiple generations of good, solid New England stock. One was a tendency to sunburn almost instantly when touched by actual daylight. Another was unreasonable amounts of bone-deep pride. If I decided I was ready to leave Portsmouth, that was one thing. But to be run out of town by bad feelings, enigmatic B and B owners and spooky cats? That was quite another. I would be gosh-darned if I was leaving until I was good and ready. Good and ready, though, would not come until I got a clear, solid look at whatever was going on around me, especially if it related to my family.

  I pulled out my phone. Still no call from Grandma B.B. I’d try her again later. Maybe after breakfast I could find the Midnight Reads bookstore Martine had told me about and ask this Julia Parris if she knew about the connection between the Blessingsounds and Portsmouth.

  I got up to help myself to more coffee. If I was about to start uncovering family secrets, I needed it. But as I set the pot down, motion caught my eye and a fresh shiver ran down my spine.

  Away across the stretch of the McDermotts’ back garden, Alistair the Spooky Cat was sitting bolt upright on the back fence. No, make that on the back gate in the back fence.

  And yes, he was watching me.

  5

  IT WAS WELL past noon before I had a chance to check out that back gate.

  B and Bs tend to empty out in the middle of the day. At first, I thought luck, or weirdness, was with me and I might have the place to myself even earlier. I was on only my third cup of coffee when I overheard Valerie say to Roger that she had some errands to run and she was taking their Subaru downtown. After that, though, the white-haired couple seemed determined to spend the entire day arguing over their maps and AAA tour books. Plus, two plump middle-aged ladies camped out in the great room crocheting and chatting, seemingly prepared to wait hours for a third friend to call. Not that I was eavesdropping or lurking. And then there was Roger, who had embarked on an endless round of kitchen chores that rivaled anything Martine could have devised.

  But finally, the senior couple settled on a trip to the Strawberry Banke Museum. The women’s friend did call and they decided that Popovers on Market Square would be a great place to meet up, and Roger headed out with car keys and grocery list.

  As soon as the sound of that last car engine faded into the distance, I grabbed my purse and headed down into the back garden. I had no idea what would happen next, if anything, and I didn’t feel prepared without my purse. Gals, you all understand this.

  McDermott’s back garden was huge—maybe a quarter acre. A big rectangle of a kitchen garden took up much of the space, where, according to the labels on their sticks, there would soon be beans, tomatoes, beets and squash growing alongside a tangle of raspberry canes and a couple of what I recognized as blueberry bushes. A rainbow of daylilies lined the fence. It all looked summery and normal.

  I glanced back at the house. No one was on the terrace or moving behind any of the windows that I could see. I put my hand on the gate and pushed.

  It was locked—from the other side.

  “And that is the end of the mystery of Anna B. and the Spooky Cat,” I said to myself and anybody who might be listening.

  “Merow?” came the answer from over the fence.

  I yanked my hand away from the gate like I’d been burned.

  The determination I’d felt at breakfast wavered. Seeing the subject of local legend was one thing. Following him on some kind of wild-goose chase into a fenced backyard with a locked gate—that was another.

  “I can’t do this,” I said to Alistair and the universe at large. “I just can’t. It’s too much.”

  I turned my back on the fence and the cat on the other side. At that exact second, a plaintive yowl drifted out under the gate.

  “No!” I said to the cat and all the emotions spiking in the back of my brain. “I am not falling for this one.” Whatever was going on with Alistair was a job for Nancy Drew, or maybe Sam and Dean Winchester. I, Annabelle Amelia Blessingsound Britton, intrepid girl artist, had nothing to do with this cat or his dead owner. Or his dead owner’s yard.

  Alistair yowled again. The high, quavering sound ran along my spine exactly the way one of my bad Vibes did. Unfortunately, the Britton pride rose to meet it and the Blessingsound stubbornness came along for the ride. They wanted to know if I was scared of one pathetic cat. Curiosity wormed its way into the conversation—I’d come this far; why not see what was going on? Finally, empathy arrived to back them all up. What if Alistair had gotten stuck in that other yard, or hurt? It could happen, even to cats. Even to spooky cats. I couldn’t just leave him. Well, I could, but I wouldn’t like myself much afterward.

  “I do not believe I am doing this,” I muttered.

  Believing it or not, I looked back toward the B and B. If anybody was still inside, I couldn’t see them. In fact, the only thing watching me was a skinny little goldfinch perched in the right-hand neighbor’s bird feeder.

  Muttering about my own lack of common sense, I rummaged in my purse until I found my nail kit and extracted the metal file. That inquisitive goldfinch chirped once in puritanical disapproval and fluttered away.
I couldn’t blame it.

  When my second-oldest brother, Ted, was sixteen, he had a girlfriend of whom Mom and Dad did not approve. Considering that my parents’ first meeting involved nudity and motorcycles, this was quite an accomplishment. It also meant that in order to avoid detection when going to meet his personal Juliet, Ted started sneaking out through the mudroom window. This worked just fine, until the night I was lying awake because I’d made the mistake of watching The Exorcist on cable. What followed was some light sibling blackmail to get him to teach me how to jimmy the various locks and latches around our house.

  I slid the nail file through the crack between the gate and the fence and wriggled it back and forth. The gate didn’t budge.

  Alistair let out another heart-rending yowl.

  “Okay, okay, I’m coming!” I jerked the file up. There was a rattle as the latch flipped back. The gate came open, and quicker than you could say “breaking and entering” I was on the other side.

  The other side of the fence was shaded by a pair of apple trees. A stray green fruit bumped my forehead as I ducked under the branches. A flagstone path stretched out at my feet. I didn’t follow it. I was too stunned by what I saw in front of me.

  Plenty of old yards have flagstone paths. Very few, however, have a path that spirals gracefully between curving formal beds filled with a summer riot of flowers and herbs.

  Now I did move forward, carefully, following that spiral path through the formal plantings. Their rich, green scent hung heavy in the air. I recognized mint, sage, rosemary and thyme as I passed, and suspected there had to be parsley in there someplace. There was definitely lavender and golden echinacea, more roses and marigolds.

  It was all beautiful, but there was also an air of quiet mourning here. No one had come around to care for this delightful place in a long time. Grass poked up between the path’s stones. Pricker weeds, teasels and volunteer cornflowers were duking it out with the marigolds. The neglected lawn had passed ankle-high and was headed for knee-deep.

  The center of this overgrown labyrinth held another surprise. I’d expected a gazing ball, or maybe a goldfish pond. Instead, I found a fire pit with a beaten copper cover. A copper-and-brass chest stood beside it, for wood and kindling, I assumed.

  The house in front of me was a snug fieldstone cottage. Pink and yellow rambler roses overflowed their trellises and climbed the walls. The mottled grays of the stone reminded me sharply of Alistair’s fur. Its slate roof was a complex landscape of peaks and gables topped by a weather vane in the shape of a crescent moon shot through with an arrow. It looked cozy and picturesque and instantly inviting.

  What I did not see was any sign of Alistair.

  I turned in place, breathing the green summer scents and drinking in the beauty and the isolation. I liked it here. This house and its garden had mystery and character and contrast. My fingers twitched. I not only wanted my pencils right now; I wanted a trowel, too. I wanted to capture this summer setting, the slow return of the wilderness to the garden, the shadows under the trees and the light on the flower beds. I wanted to trim and tidy and assist, not that I was much of a gardener, but it was never too late to learn, right? When I was done, I could settle back beside the fire pit for the evening with a cool drink in my hand and a cat on my lap, watching the fireflies. A place like this had to have fireflies. And chipmunks. And . . .

  Wait. I told myself. Stop.

  This was a Vibe. I hadn’t recognized it right off, because it wasn’t like any Vibe I’d ever felt. Usually, I knew if a place was full of goodness or badness. If it was a happy house or the reverse. I’d never had any Vibe that felt so much like . . . welcome. That was the only word for it. This place welcomed me.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” I clenched my fists. “You don’t even start with me.”

  The wind gusted, and overhead, the crescent-moon weather vane swung around and pointed west. Even as I thought that, the Vibe shifted. It started in the soles of my feet and traveled up to the pit of my stomach. Something was about to change, and it was about to change forever.

  Seriously, universe?

  As if in answer, Alistair yowled, sharp, short and impatient. I jerked around to face the cottage again. This time I saw that the back door was open, just a little. Just enough, say, for a cat to slip through.

  My sense of standing on the brink doubled, and doubled again. No matter which way I jumped, it was going to be a long climb back. I had to decide.

  “Cat,” I muttered as I marched toward the house, “this had better be good.”

  6

  SINCE THE COTTAGE shutters were closed, the inside was quite dim. It took a lot of hard blinking before my eyes adjusted. I was standing in a black-and-white kitchen that looked like it had last been updated sometime in the 1930s. It still had the deep enamel farmhouse sink, a wooden floor and tile countertops. Only the stove and refrigerator were from the current decade. The garden window bowed out to make room for a cozy breakfast nook with built-in benches. It was easy to picture the generations of Portsmouth housewives who congregated there for tea and gossip.

  And one of them had been Dorothy Hawthorne. She had tended that magnificent garden, picked those apples, and sat here with her cup of tea. Unless she was a coffee person. I wondered what she’d looked like. My brain conjured up a vague Miss Marple sort of image, with white hair, a tweed skirt and big gloves, but somehow that didn’t seem to go with the house. Old-fashioned and cozy it might be, but this was not a tweedy sort of place.

  I wondered where Dorothy had died, and how. I hadn’t thought to ask Sean, and Valerie had left before I could really get up to speed on my prying. But I did wonder all the same, like I wondered what it was about her death that made “some people” think it was murder.

  Curiosity is a terrible thing. You can be having the strangest morning ever and it still whispers tender words to you, like, You’re already inside. A quick look around can’t hurt anything.

  “I am not doing this,” I muttered as I stepped quickly across the kitchen, almost but not quite tiptoeing. “This is somebody else. This is not me. Annabelle Amelia Blessingsound Britton is way smarter than this.”

  A swinging door led into the hushed dining room. White sheets covered the chairs and a table and what I took to be a sideboard. The sun shone through a three-paneled stained-glass window set high in the right-hand wall, casting a pattern of red and green tulips onto the carpet. Another door led out to a front parlor. The walls were lined with built-in bookcases, and at the front of the house there was another bay window, this one with a lovely, deep window seat. I passed by the ghostly shapes of more sheet-covered furniture. A pocket door let me into the dark-paneled foyer with its bare floor and simple staircase rising along the opposite wall.

  The stairs were at least as steep as the ones at McDermott’s. I looked up and saw a railing surrounding the stairwell above that would have been perfect for kids to peek through. Only instead of any giggling kid, it was Alistair who looked down between the spindles.

  I meant to tell the cat, and myself, that this was it. No farther. This might not technically be breaking and entering, because the kitchen door really had been open, but it was definitely trespassing. Dorothy Hawthorne might be dead, but the place belonged to somebody. They’d left all this furniture. Hadn’t Sean the Bartender mentioned a nephew? Whoever he was, he probably wouldn’t appreciate my little sightseeing tour.

  On the other hand, the state of the garden and the presence of a loose cat said the nephew didn’t come around that often.

  “Okay, one quick look upstairs and then I’m gone,” I told the cat, or maybe myself. “Like into-the-next-county gone.”

  By the time I got to the top, though, Alistair had vanished again.

  I looked around and saw that a total of four doors opened off the short hallway, two in front of me and one at either end. At the same time, all the hairs on the back o
f my neck stood up. My heart raced too, but not from the climb. That sense of being on the edge was as heavy up here as the smell of warm dust and Murphy Oil Soap. There was something in here. I was getting close. I felt it.

  “But close to what?” I murmured.

  The minute the words were out of my mouth, a fresh Vibe hit. A sense of expectation surged through my skin and my bones. No, not expectation; something stronger. Eagerness. This house not only welcomed me; it had been waiting for me.

  Panic hit hard enough to send the hallway reeling. I pressed my hand hard against the wall. I made myself take a deep breath and hold it. I let it out slowly and paused. And breathed in and held it. And let it out and paused. My heart steadied, and the shock of this new, unexpected and very specific Vibe receded, at least a little.

  “Okay, cat,” I said. “I get it. Really. You wanted me in here. This . . . this house wanted me here. Here I am. Now, where are you?”

  Alistair howled, and I about jumped out of my skin. It sounded like he was right over my head.

  “Okay, okay,” I gasped. “So, there’s an attic, right? A house like this is bound to have an attic. Perfect place to hide a cat.”

  Fighting to regain at least some of my hard-won control, I faced the pair of doors in front of me and picked the one on the right. I put my hand on the knob and rattled it. Locked. A quick check showed the knob was an elaborate, old-fashioned piece of brass hardware, complete with a keyhole you could have spied through. It was also well past the limits of my skill with a nail file.

  “So what now? Do I say ‘open sesame’?”

  Surely it was a coincidence that right then I felt the knob turn. There was a click. I lifted my hand away. With a long, low creak of antique hinges, the door drifted open.

  Alistair sat calmly at the top of a short flight of stairs, entirely unharmed and untraumatized. In fact, his tail swished back and forth as if to say, What took you so long?