“Look for me at the bar,” she said.
“We always do Annie,” Jack replied.
Chapter Two
Before they could knock at the door of his suite, he opened it. He looked more annoyed than worried that his wife was missing.
Henry had the kind of suite only the Big Cheese would have — filled with complimentary platters of fruit, wine from the Del’s Prohibition wine cellar, and petit fours. When you’re rich, people spoil you by giving you things for free.
"They were going up to an excursion in La Jolla. Isabella and two of the other wives. They were excited. They thought it would be cat's pajamas." Henry fidgeted with a Hotel del Coronado matchbook in his hands while he spoke. “I think they were going to go horseback riding on the beach. And shopping or whatever dames do all day.” He stared at Grace.
“How long have you been married?” She asked.
“We’re newlyweds.” He lit a cigarette with a match from a Hotel del Coronado matchbook. Tatania jumped on one of the tables and pawed a bowl filled with identical Hotel del Coronado matchbooks.
“We are too.” Grace turned to Jack, who was staring at a photo of a naked girl on the night stand.
“My wife was a photographer’s model in New York.”
“Is that where you met?”
“No. She came out on one of the orphan trains.”
“What is an orphan train?”
“Orphans from New York are put on trains and sent to the midwest and west. To ranches. To farms. To families. It gets them off the streets of New York.” He shrugged.
“How old is your wife?”
He looked away.
“She’s nearly eighteen now.”
“Do you just show up to meet an orphan train? How does it work?” Jack asked.
Henry fidgeted.
“I saw her at the train station. A buddy of mine took her home. His wife always wanted a daughter. They had four sons. They introduced her to me. A couple years later, we got married.” He was beginning to sweat. The room wasn’t warm.
“Do you have any idea what could have happened? Why she wasn’t there when the car left to come back to Coronado?”
He shook his head.
“Did the two of you have an argument about anything?”
He looked perturbed.
“Never. We were happy.”
“We’ll fly up to La Jolla. See what we can find out.” Jack shook his hand after he wrote a check. They liked to take their fee in advance.
When Jack shut the door behind him, Grace whispered, “What kind of man keeps a nude photo of his wife on his night stand?”
“A lucky one,” Jack said.
“Could she have been kidnapped? He looks full of money.”
“I think he would have mentioned it if someone called and demanded money for his wife back. He’s using a free Hotel del Coronado matchbook to light his cigarettes. He’s too cheap to buy a lighter. Or a cigarette case.”
“Lets ask Annie about that.”
Annie sat in Coronado Tent City drinking a cup of joe.
Tent City always made Grace smile. She liked the sound of children laughing on the Merry Go Round and in the bathing pools. Residents sat in rocking chairs outside their tent cottages with ingenious names like Stagger Inn, Barely Inn, Dew Drop Inn, Seldom Inn, Wobble Inn, and Sail Inn.
“Annie, when men use matchbooks instead of lighters do you think they’re cheap?”
“I’m not that shallow. I judge men on their looks. Not their money.” Annie smiled.
“We’re looking for a shoe dealer’s wife who disappeared in La Jolla.”
“La Jolla is a lovely area.” Annie said, dragging smoke from her six inch cigarette holder.
“Do you like this one?” Annie waved the red cigarette holder in front of her.
“It matches your lipstick,” Grace said. Really, she wished her friend would quit smoking all together because Grace was beginning to notice Annie’s breathing sometimes seemed labored and she coughed more often. Grace thought it might be related to the onslaught of smoke her lungs took everyday and night.
An orange rolled off the counter and onto the floor. Tatania and Zeus batted it around the floor. Zeus picked up the orange in his mouth and then dropped it. The taste of citrus didn’t agree with him. Tatania lept up in the air and batted the orange again.
“Remember Cupcake Kitty, the dame who would slice orange ends off to use as a makeshift diaphragm? She thought the orange’s acid acted like spermicide?” Jack asked.
“How could I forget? I was never able to look at oranges the same way again.”
“Maybe Tatania is trying to tell us his wife has a boyfriend.”
“Are you flying up to La Jolla?” Annie asked.
“Absolutely,” Jack said.
Two Years Earlier in New York
Chapter Three
A rock hit her paw hard. She limped towards shelter. It hurt to move. She was a feral cat. She couldn’t sustain an injury and survive unless she could hide. Without humans or a cat colony, she relied solely on her own savvy, speed, and the kindness of fishermen who threw her fish to survive everyday.
It took a little time but her injury healed. She decided she needed to pick a stray human. The right stray human would be good for a stray cat. She chose him at first sight. He was tall and sinewy with dark hair. She wouldn’t have thought she’d pick a teenage male but this one had kindness in his eyes when he looked at her. He went up to a snack bar by the pier and bought a bottle of milk. He poured the milk in one of his hands for her to sip.
When he went into a nearby store, she followed him. He had mastered the art of moving like a cat. He moved silently. She followed him to the back of the store where they both heard a noise and stopped.
The cat jumped up on a stack of boxes. There was a small human on the other side. She didn’t know why the human didn’t just crawl in a box like a cat.
“Don’t worry. You’re safe. People don’t see what they don’t expect to see.”
Arthur reassured the young girl cowering behind boxes at the back of the store.
“When people come in here, they don’t expect to see a girl hiding behind boxes at the back of the store.” He could sense she was a street rat like him.
The cat jumped in a box and purred. Then she poked a paw out.
The young girl smiled.
“Is she your cat?”
“Yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“I haven’t named her. She’s been following me around. I just call her the cat.”
“The cat. It suits her.” She stood up and stroked the cat’s silky white fur.
“You didn’t ask my name. I’m not as cute as the cat. I’m Arthur. Are you hungry?”
She shook her head.
“Proud little girl.” He pulled a small banana out of his pocket and handed it to her.
“Monkey,” she said.
He laughed.
He waited patiently for her to finish the banana. She had golden hair and blue eyes. She didn’t look like a kid from the streets. She looked like a painting in the museums he snuck into sometimes. He wanted to paint her. A poor artist, he drew with charcoal on scraps of butcher paper he found on the street.
They heard a noise a few feet away. She jumped up and then stumbled. He reached for her. Her big toe was swollen and red and sticking out at an angle. The cat emerged triumphantly with a rat.
“You just heard a rat jumping around. The cat took care of it.”
The cat dropped the rat. And then picked it up and carried it around in a kind of victory lap.
“I’m okay.” She tried to walk and limped.
Arthur felt protectively towards her, and resisted the urge to take off his coat and put it around her. Her shoes looked as tattered as his own. That was one of the worst parts of being a street rat. You couldn’t always get your feet warm. Even when there wasn’t snow. The ground stayed cool. They didn’t have heat in the buildings they some
times camped in at night.
He would steal new shoes for them.
The cat came over and brushed against her legs, purring.
“Are you going to tell me your name?” He asked.
“Isabella.”
“Come with us. You’re not safe here alone. You’re injured.” He picked her up and took her out the back entrance.
People called the kids who lived on the streets of New York, street rats. Well-heeled New Yorkers would look at them reproachfully as if it was their fault they weren’t earning a better living at ten years old. Isabella and Arthur were nearly sixteen when they found each other. They were wary.
It was the cat, ultimately, who bonded them. She brought stray humans together. Humans who could be more stubbornly independent than cats.
“I’m going to be an artist,” Arthur would say.
“You already are an artist.” Isabella shyly told him. He drew nude portraits of her. All the kids improvised baths with the street hydrants around them. She had felt him watching her one night, when she was bathing under a full moon with the help of a fire hydrant that was spurting fresh water onto the street. She knew the sheet she had draped over herself was transparent.
They learned why people on the streets slept on top of newspapers. The newspapers offered a barrier from the cold ground. It could be impossible to fall asleep on cold ground. Except for the drunks who simply passed out.
If they were street rats, Arthur was top rat. Isabella reached for Arthur, and it was like a protective shield encircled her from the nefarious elements.
With the cat watching out for her, and Arthur looking out for her, life developed a rhythm, and the three of them became a family. Arthur found food everyday. And they slept on beds Arthur created from scrap and newspapers. Sometimes, the cat would come home with rabbit and Arthur would make a fire and they would eat it.
Just when they’d settled in to a comfortable routine together, the Children’s Aid Society began looking for children to send west. Farmers wanted children. And New York City had children on the street it didn’t want. They were running trains of orphans from New York’s streets to the midwest and west.
“Do you need help?” A woman in a long white dress asked Isabella. She looked like an aristocrat. Isabella had never seen a white dress look so clean.
She ran from her. Adults might ask if you need help just out of idle curiosity. It didn’t mean they would help you.
Chapter Four
The cat always found them safe, secure shelter at night. Away from nosy adult eyes. Or unscrupulous other street rats. They’d counted on the cat and she’d never let them down.Arthur had lived on the streets from the time he was five or six and woke up to a terrible stench and found his parents dead in the small room they rented. He ran out into the streets screaming. He never went back. And he learned that no one noticed a child screaming out in the streets.
Arthur never attended school. One day he walked into the New York Public Library. In the library, he felt a new hunger. He craved books. He taught himself to read. And from that, he taught himself to speak well. If he spoke well, and stayed clean, adults didn’t harangue him. He stole clothes and food he needed to live. Nothing more. He turned down offers to join street gangs. He refused invitations to larceny. He worked like a maverick. Solitary. Like a cat.
Sometimes, he borrowed things. Like the time he borrowed a camera and took photos of Isabella, and then borrowed the photography shop’s dark room, developed the photos of Isabella, and left with the photos the next day before the sun even came up.
Arthur and Isabella shared a recurring dream of finding a place built with resolute stone. That wouldn’t bend or break or blow away with the weather. Shelter for the two of them. And the cat. Always, the beautiful cat, who like a guardian angel, graced them with her presence, protecting the two of them against all predators. She would fight fiercely to protect her humans. She proved that small size didn’t limit her ability to battle. She’d take on any foe that wandered into their territory, threatening them. The dream came to both of them, again and again, and they’d wake and hold hands and talk about it, marveling that they were dreaming the same dream.
Isabella slept later than Arthur. She would wake, and find the cat purring next to her, watching, ready to alert her to any danger. Arthur came back with a sheet and breakfast. She didn’t ask where he got the sheet, worried that he took it from someone’s clothesline and they would miss it. Breakfast was a stale roll he carefully split in half for them. He knew a baker who would give him day old bread. And somehow, whatever they were eating or drinking, he managed to find a little cream for the cat. It was a gesture of thanks and love. The cat was a protector. And a pet. And a huntress who could find her own food. She killed what she ate for herself.
Arthur carried newspapers under his arm. He could pick up a bundle and sell them for coins. Then, they’d had have delicious nights of warm, roasted chestnuts bought from a street vendor.
First rule of being a street rat: don’t look like a street rat. Second rule of being a street rat: don’t talk like a street rat. Look like your mom is waiting for you to come home from school. And your dad will be home later for your family dinner. Speak articulately. Do not swear.
“Do you want me to come with you to sell today?” She knew he liked having her with him. He said she attracted boys. And made him look successful because a pretty girl makes a boy look successful.
“Not yet,” he said, pulling out the white paper the butcher would give him for his drawings. He liked to sketch Isabella. He stared at her blouse. And she took it off, because she knew he liked to sketch her topless. The sheet he’d brought was draped over their boxed in space, creating a tent like structure, and people walked by, not knowing there was a half naked girl there, being sketched by the boy who loved her. They slept peacefully that night with their arms and legs entwined.
When they woke in the morning, the cat made a low growling sound they’d never heard before. They got up cautiously.
“I thought I saw you on the street last night.” A man with bad breath stood too close to Isabella. She backed away.
“I’m sure it was you.” He grabbed her arm.
“Don’t touch her.” Arthur yelled.
“She’s a hooker.”
Arthur slugged him.
He got up, rubbing his jaw. Like most bullies, he was cowardly, and ran away from them.
Chapter Five
The magical white cat kept up her impeccable grooming even when she lived on the streets of New York. She might be staying in the slums but she could easily pass for a Fifth Avenue cat. Sometimes, when it looked like she was napping, she would wake up, groom a paw, and then fall right back to sleep. She always looked beautiful. Not a cat hair out of place.
The cat stuck close to Isabella, and she became less squeamish about the rodents that filled their tiny space. A cat could be your best friend in the slums. The white cat stood guard over Isabella and protected her from intruders. Arthur, Isabella, and the cat became a family, bound together.
Cute and little, she understood that she had the upper paw in life. If she stayed cautious. She loved being with Arthur and Isabella. She followed them to the public library where Arthur showed Isabella a map of California. The cat rolled around on it.
“Look at all that space,” he said, “we won’t have to breathe smelly air again.” The New York Public Library was their favorite place to go during the day. One of the librarians would let them stay for hours in the stacks, and sometimes, slip them part of her lunch.
They studied the world. They discovered that books could transport them out of the slums. And they were in America. Where they knew that anything was possible. For anyone with enough guts and determination.
Before she met Arthur, and the cat, Isabella had suffered on the streets alone. She knew that on the street, she was not only at the mercy of anyone who might try to abduct her, she was at the mercy of the state. She was barely sixteen. She had
no parents. She had no legal guardian. She had no power. But now she had a boy who loved her.
Her parents had died on the ship from England to New York. She had made a run for it off the ship. And being very pretty, she managed to get waved on through Ellis Island without being questioned too closely. Her father taught her to read from the bible. It was their only book. She wanted to enroll in school but couldn’t. She didn’t want anyone to know she was living on the streets on her own.
Arthur opened the library door for Isabella and the cat. When the cat turned to go back in the library, Arthur and Isabella stared at each other indecisively.
And then adults bounded up the steps and grabbed them by their collars. Their lives were no longer their own.
“You’re under arrest, child.”
“For what?”
“For whatever I want. Don’t get insolent with me.”
Isabella looked away.
“You have an attitude.”
“Thank you,” Isabella said.
“We have trains that will take you to a nice family in California,” the woman said.
“I don’t want to go live with a nice family in California. Why don’t you go live with a nice family in California?” Isabella asked.
“I wish I could. I’m not a young girl,” she said.
A cop grew impatient with the street rats. He didn’t want the work of dealing with them. He didn’t want to feel guilty that he didn’t help them when he want home at night.
“If you don’t get on the train, you’ll be under arrest,” the cop said.
“For what? For not having parents? How many years would I go to jail for that?” Isabella asked.
“Don’t try to get away,” the cop kept speaking, “I’m old and fat. I won’t be able to run after you. So when kids run away from me, I just shoot them.”
If she’d been a Fifth Avenue kid, he wouldn’t dare speak to her that way. She knew it. Being poor was bad. Being an orphan was bad.
Magical Cool Cat Mysteries Boxed Set Volume 3 (Magical Cool Cats Mysteries) Page 6
