Kitty Kitty

by Michele Jaffe

  “You cannot call?” He stayed close to the wall, circling toward me. I circled away from him.

  “I tried but you didn’t answer,” I said. “From Arabella’s phone. The one you’d called the night she died.”

  “That was you. I should have guessed.” He was approaching me with his hands out, like he was trying to show that he was just a good guy, nothing to be afraid of.

  His hands were big. And strong. Like they could circle my neck easily and crush the air out of—

  “So, your apartment is cozy,” I said to distract myself.

  “I do not wish to talk about my apartment.”

  “Do you want to talk about the art on the walls? The Neals?”

  He stopped, as if noticing the display for the first time. “That is old.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I am angry. I blame them for George’s death. I want it to make sense. Now, of course, I see that is not possible, but before…” His voice trailed off. Then he snapped abruptly, “Please keep your hands where I can see them.”

  I stopped reaching into my back pocket for Roxy’s Taser-Tweezers.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I had hoped—I did not want this to be the ending.”

  I didn’t like that word, ending. I gulped. “It doesn’t have to be. You have a choice.”

  “No, Jasmine, I am afraid I do not. I admire you, but I cannot let you—”

  There was a thud from the other room. We both stopped moving and goggled at each other.

  “What have you done?” he asked me.

  Which seemed like a strange question, but before I could comment he bolted toward the room and went in. I followed but he was blocking the door. Over his shoulder I saw what he was staring at.

  Beatrice was lying on the floor. She was gagged with her scarf, her legs and hands duct-taped together. The roll of tape was still attached to her hands and when she saw Max her eyes looked terrified. Imploring. Above her was an open window. Roxy and I must have interrupted Max while he was binding her hands and he’d gone out the window and come back up when Roxy left, not realizing I was still in the house. I should have guessed that Beatrice would be next on his revenge list. The woman who had stood between him and the Neals. The one who had carefully filed his threats, filtered his phone calls.

  This was the moment for le hightailing it out of there to get help, but I couldn’t leave Beatrice alone with him. I was trying for the Taser-Tweezers again when he whirled around and grabbed me in a headlock that immobilized me.

  Little Life Lesson 59: The first six months of Italian army special ops training is pretty thorough.

  Little Life Lesson 60: Your back pocket is not an ideal place for your weapon.

  It all happened so fast it was a blur, but I still had time to see that his eyes burned with a mixture of rage-slash-fury. Like he’d had the Big Gulp–sized Haterade for breakfast. His grip on my arm made my hand numb and the Taser-Tweezers fell from my fingers and hit the floor, sparking.

  Twisting my head, I saw him look at them with a demented smile. He brought his foot down hard on the battery pack and crushed it. Then he moved the smile to me. I struggled, and his hold on my neck got firmer. “I do this for your own good, Jasmine. You wish to meet a killer. Bene. You meet a killer.”

  He shifted his body, like he was getting ready to slam me onto the floor, and then all of a sudden we were both falling. A glance beyond him showed me that Beatrice had managed to wiggle toward the door and kick him with her bound legs. It looked like she’d got him in the calf with a stiletto.

  For a second his grip on me loosened and I wrenched my arm free. I clawed at his face to get away but he pinned my wrists to the ground. “You must stop. It goes better if you do not struggle.”

  I asked myself WWMrTD and the answer came to me in a brilliant flash. Mr. T would remember there’s only one thing to do when you’re doing battle on your back on the ground with your wrists pinned.

  The Windmill.

  I sliced my legs into the air and brought them down on top of Max. I’d been aiming for his kidneys but I think the heel of my boot caught his head instead. There was a thump and a weird scattering noise and something that I could have sworn was a Skittle hit me in the eye.

  Max groaned and flipped onto his back, so I was on his chest, and I decided this was a good time to pull out another break-dance move.

  Which is when the door crashed open.

  Little Life Lesson 61: Being caught doing a one-handed up-rock handstand on the chest of a killer, even if you are just doing it to get enough momentum to pull away from him, does not make you look like a serious citizen in the eyes of the law.

  And yet, something in Officer Allegrini’s attitude had changed toward me. He moved quickly past sneering, and after helping me off, slapped some cuffs on Max. Roxy had a profound effect on most men, and I’d noticed her calling him “Arnoldo,” but this was pretty strong even for her.

  She’d managed to find Polly, Tom, and the Henches too, so we all worked together to free Beatrice. She had tears running down her face, and as I untied the Hermès scarf around her mouth she said, “Thank God, Jasmine. I thought he was going to kill me.”

  She explained that after she’d hung up with me, she’d gotten a call from Bobby saying he had something important to show her at Arabella’s but as soon as she stepped outside The House that Kills someone had knocked her out.

  “Seems like a theme for our killer,” I said.

  “Yes. I woke up here with the gag in my mouth and my feet taped and he was taping my hands when you came in. You—you saved my life.”

  Roxy had been looking around the room while Beatrice spoke and now she said, “I think I found something.” She was standing at Max’s bureau. On the top of it was a metal trophy awarded to George Manzoni for Archery by a summer camp in Virginia years earlier. Like a kid would have. Inside the top drawer were Arabella’s brooch and a BB gun. Like a killer would have.

  Tom pointed to a hair looped around the base of the trophy and it took me a second to realize it looked familiar because it was my hair. “I think he used this to knock you out that first day. There’s no shortage of evidence,” Tom said.

  “No,” I agreed. “There’s almost too much.”

  “Whatever it takes to put him away,” Beatrice said. “Thank you, Jas. Thank you for catching him.”

  There was a lot of giving statements and fingerprinting and evidence collection after that. “What did you do to Officer Allegrini?” I asked Roxy in between interviews. “He seems practically human.”

  “Arnoldo? I fluttered my eyelashes. Also they were bringing in some man when I got there, and I had the impression that his arrest had something to do with you. He was wearing an old trench coat and had a limp and was carrying a teapot. Does that make any sense?”

  I remembered the case file I’d seen on Officer Allegrini’s desk the morning of Arabella’s non-suicide and laughed. “Yeah.”

  Finally, although it’s hard to imagine, the police decided they’d had enough of us and packed us onto an official boat to take us home. Another boat had been provided for Max, who glared at everyone and said what I thought was, “This is not over,” as they hustled him, handcuffed, inside. As we pulled up at the Grissini Palace dock I looked down at my watch. It was 4:13. Game over, with two minutes to spare.

  I looked up and saw Dadzilla standing there. Boy, was he happy to see us. He was shifting from one leg to the other, and I could have sworn there were wisps of smoke coming out of his nostrils. It’s not easy to talk when your jaw is firmly clenched in the closed position but he managed to pry out, “Jasmine, go to your room this instant. I’ll join you there shortly.”

  Little Life Lesson 62: There are worse things than being attacked by a murderer and their name is Dadzilla.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  While I waited for Dadzilla’s not-at-all-setting-my-knees-atremble arrival, I entertained myself by making up jokes such as:

  Knock
knock.

  Who’s there?

  Life.

  Oh, I won’t be needing one of those.

  I also decided, since it was pretty clear I was about to be locked in a dungeon for period ever period, to check my email. Not that I was looking for anything in particular (message from Jack). I just wanted to see what had come in (and if it was a message from Jack).

  There was only one email.

  (Not from Jack.)

  To: Jasmine Callihan

  From: J.R.

  Subject: Ask your father

  About Smokey LeBraun

  Oh, goodie! More mysteries! Now new and improved with Creepy-sounding Names!

  This would undoubtedly come in very handy in the case of awkward pauses during the upcoming Once Upon a Time There Lived a Girl Named Jas Who Was a Massive Disappointment to Her Father and Was to Be Locked in Her Room Forever story time.

  As if Dadzilla was going to be letting me get le word in edgewiseo.

  But my way is not Abandon All Hope Avenue. I prefer to travel on Making the Best of It Boulevard. So when Dadzilla pounded on my door like he meant to pulverize it, I put in a sad-yet-winsome smile and let him in.

  Little Life Lesson 63: Apparently to a father, there is no difference between his daughter being escorted home by police because she is a murderer, or his daughter being escorted home by police because she helped them catch a murderer.

  Things started off well. He said, “Get that drippy smile off your face. You have nothing to smile about.”

  Exit: One smile, pursued by a bear.

  Then he moved from Anger to Grave Disappointment. He shook his head. “That’s it, Jasmine,” he said. “No more.”

  “No more what?” I felt it was important to be clear on that. Food? Shelter? Breathing?

  But I don’t think he was really listening to me because he said, “Seventeen-year-old girls are not supposed to be meddling with death. They are supposed to be playing with dolls. And tea sets.”

  Yes. That is what most seniors in high school are doing. When they’re not making bonnets for their stuffed animals and chasing rainbows. But since such nuances are lost on the man who made me keep training wheels on my bike until I was fifteen, I simply said, “I don’t have a tea set.”

  I thought it was relevant and to the point, but he ignored it. “This ends now, Jasmine. The deception. The lies.”

  “I didn’t lie to you. I told you what was happening. The other morning. You laughed.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  That made me mad. “You did too. And I don’t see why I am in trouble. I didn’t do anything except avenge someone’s death. Besides, how am I supposed to behave honestly when I don’t have a good role model for it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I actually had no idea what I was talking about, so I said the first thing that came to mind. “Smokey LeBraun.”

  It was like I’d dusted him with magical lose-all-the-blood-in-your-face powder. He went totally white and stared at me. “What do you know about Smokey LeBraun?”

  “Enough,” I lied. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to keep this up, but it seemed worth it. Especially if it delayed the “you are being sent to a reformatorium-slash-place-where-they-make-sausage-out-of-naughty-little-girls” portion of our discussion.

  Dadzilla ran his hand through his hair and it looked like he’d started to sweat. “How on earth did you find out about him?”

  “On the Internet,” I said. Which was not strictly untrue.

  “This isn’t how I wanted you to find out about your mother.”

  BUH-BOING!

  That is the sound my eyeballs made popping out of my head. Who had said anything about my mother?

  Dadzilla kept talking. “I’ve tried so hard to protect you. I didn’t think you needed to know the truth.”

  EYEBALLS. STILL. POPPING.

  “Lying is never the answer, Dad. You should have told me.”

  “That’s enough, Jasmine. Go to your room.”

  “Um, we are in my room.”

  We stared at each other, him with Dadzilla Expression number five: Scowling Menace; and me with Jas Expression number one: Blank Innocence (Because I Have No Idea What I’m Talking About and Also My Eyeballs Are Stuck Somewhere on the Far Wall). And then he did the last thing that in eighteen million six hundred ninety-five thousand and two years I would have imagined. He said, “You might be right.”

  I almost fainted. In fact, I think I did faint, but it was like a mini-faint, so I was back in time to hear him saying, “I should have told you about your mother. I will tell you.”

  “When?”

  “When we get back to Los Angeles. We leave next week.”

  More almost-fainting now with heart rate picking up with joy. “We do?”

  “Yes. I got word yesterday that Smokey is back in jail.”

  Back in jail? Is what I wanted to ask. Instead I said, “What about your book on soap?”

  He smiled. And not in his dangerous Dadzilla way. In this far-off oh-the-times-we-had way. “I did the research for that twenty-one years ago. That’s how I met your mother.”

  “You and she met here?”

  “In this hotel. She loved Venice.”

  “Is that why we came here now?”

  “That, and I knew you’d be safe. Thought you’d be safe. I never would have guessed what kind of mess you’d end up in.”

  “What mess? Nothing bad happened! In fact, the police—”

  “Pfui.”

  We were back to our old selves.

  “Don’t forget that you have Italian class tomorrow.”

  “Golly, no. I so enjoy it.”

  He made a stern face. But at the door he stopped and turned back and looked at me. “You’re just like her, Jasmine. In every good way.”

  And suddenly I found it a little hard to breathe. Or see. Or swallow.

  When Polly came back she said, “You’ve been crying! Was it awful?”

  “No, it was fine. I think I just have allergies. Late-onset.”

  “Late-onset allergies. Got it.”

  And because she puts the RAD in BEST FRIEND EVA, she didn’t ask any more questions. Not that I would have known the answers. But I would have made stuff up. Anyway, after everything that happened, my head was spinning so much as we went to bed that I barely even thought about the fact that Jack still hadn’t called back. Or emailed. Or probably even thought about me one half a time.49

  Venice looked different to me the next day as I walked to Italian class in the outfit Polly had laid out for me (dark green sweater, denim skirt, beige cowboy boots with the nuts on them, floaties). Maybe it was because I knew it was my mother’s favorite city. Or because I knew there was one less killer on the streets. Or maybe it was because I knew we’d be going home soon. But somehow even the prospect of whatever dialogue Professore Rossi had in store for me seemed appealing. The birds—even the pigeons—were adorable and the tourists were charming and the croissant I had for breakfast was extra flaky and delicious.

  As I walked, my brain kept wandering to the hole in my life where the call from Jack should have been, so I tried to keep it reined in by thinking back over the investigation. There were still a ton of unanswered questions. I thought back to all the evidence, the prints on the glass and the pen and the phone.

  The phone. My brain hiccupped. Why had Max left the phone when he knocked me out the first time? He had plenty of opportunities to take it. He had to know that his call would be on the call log, like a neon arrow in the night pointing toward a connection between him and Arabella.

  Oh. My. God.

  The last pieces fell into their places like checkers in a Connect Four game. The ruffles in her bathroom being wet, the ones on the couch all pointing in the same direction. The missing curtain rope and dust on the window. The fact that the killer had left the phone when I was knocked out. Beatrice being the next victim. Arabella ask
ing Professore Rossi how to say “birth certificate.” I knew why the brooch had been taken. I knew how Arabella had been killed.

  The killer had been scattering evidence around like birdseed for me to find. Laying a trap I’d walked right into.

  The killer had said, “This is only fun if it’s a real competition.”

  There was only one person who could have done all of it. One person who would have said that. And it wasn’t Max. Max never used contractions.

  I wanted to hit myself over my own head when I thought of it. It was so obvious, staring me in the face, and I’d missed it like a train to Bologna.

  I had to get to the police. I turned around to run to the station and saw a shadow loom up over my shoulder. Even before I felt the searing pain, I knew what it meant. I hugged my arms around myself to minimize the chances of broken ribs as I fell and was out cold before I’d even hit the pavement.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  When I woke up, Bobby was hovering over me with a knife. I thought my eyes were blurry because he seemed kind of out of focus, but then I realized it was because his eyes were doing this weird rolling around thing, and he was sort of weaving back and forth. My wrists were taped together over my chest and he kept jabbing toward them with the knife. My feet, I discovered when I tried to move, were also taped together.

  “I’m sorry, Jas,” he said. “I think you could have made a better man out of me.”

  He rose up, holding the knife over his head like he was going to stab me through the heart.

  I said, “Bobby, you don’t—” but stopped as he came plummeting toward me. I rolled out of the way. The knife blade sliced into the floor. And stayed there, quivering. Bobby was passed out cold.

  That’s when I saw the hypodermic needle in his arm. And the murderer standing behind him.

  “How sweet that he was trying to free you,” she said. “He really did have his moments.”

  “Hi, Maria.”