Kat Wolfe Takes the Case

by Lauren St. John

  Kat was furious, but couldn’t decide who was at fault – the actor for twisting her words, or herself for boasting about Charming Outlaw in a way that made Ethan covet Harper’s horse. ‘How did the reins get broken?’

  ‘The horse took fright at a rabbit. Ethan was very sorry and sweetly said we must add a brand-new bridle to the final tab.’

  Kat was still thinking dark thoughts about the Swanns’ ever-growing bill, and how rabbits seemed to be a convenient excuse for everything from intruders to poor horsemanship, when the limo turned into Summer Street. A white van with ‘ANIMAL CONTROL’ on the side was parked next to number 5. Her mum was arguing with someone on the lawn.

  Kat had the door open before the car had come to a halt. ‘Mum, what’s happening? Where’s Tiny?’

  Her mum gave an imperceptible shake of her head. Over the stranger’s shoulder, Kat saw Tiny jump over the neighbour’s fence. She had to restrain herself from rushing to him.

  Dr Wolfe said, ‘Darling, this is Mr Bludger, an animal control officer from the council. I’m sorry to greet you with bad news. Unfortunately, there’s been another case of sheep worrying. We’ve had a call from Wiley Evans, who has the farm on the hill. His wife saw a cat matching Tiny’s description shortly before the sheep was attacked last night.’

  Mr Bludger said, ‘Two farmers have ID’d your Savannah as the culprit.’

  ‘But that’s impossible, Mum,’ cried Kat. ‘Tiny was here with you and Tina, wasn’t he?’

  Her mum didn’t reply. She said, ‘I’ve already told Mr Bludger that no domestic cat – even a half-wild one as big as Tiny – could have inflicted those injuries on a sheep. Mr Bludger, I must ask you to—’

  ‘There’s the beast!’ The animal control officer pointed a pudgy finger in triumph. Tiny was striding across the lawn, green eyes fixed on Kat. ‘If you grab it, I’ll get the trap out of the van. You’ll have the right to appeal, Dr Wolfe, but I wouldn’t waste your time or money. Far as I’m concerned, it’s a cut-and-dried case. Get a British Blue cat next. They’re easier to manage.’

  It was like being caught in the maze nightmare again. Kat wanted to scream, but no sound came out.

  Before anyone could move, there was a joyful yelp. Spotting Tiny, Pax bounded out of the chauffeur’s grasp and raced to greet her feline friend. At the exact same moment, Xena came flying out of the house, yapping with delight at the sight of Kat. Tiny fled with a yowl. Kat wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

  Mr Bludger was livid. ‘I’ll be back. Until then, I’m revoking your cat’s F1 Savannah licence, see if you think that’s funny. As of this minute, he’s a Wanted Cat with a bounty on his head.’

  Dr Wolfe held Kat tightly as they watched the tail lights of first the limousine, then the animal control van, fade away down Summer Street. ‘Tiny is innocent,’ she said. ‘You know it and I know it. I can’t deny he was out wandering last night, but he didn’t do what they’re accusing him of. We’ll order a DNA test to prove it if necessary. Trust me, Kat, we’ll save Tiny. You can count on it.’

  ‘I don’t understand why she has to sit outside my window,’ moaned Margo Truesdale, proprietor of the Jurassic Fantastic Deli, lips puckering as if she’d sucked an extra-sour sherbet lemon. ‘She’s driving away business. There must be a hundred other places she can go. The Outer Hebrides, for example. But if she must come to Bluebell Bay, why can’t she sit elsewhere? I think I’ll suggest that she’ll be more comfortable on the bench in front of the Sea Breeze Tea Rooms.’

  ‘Don’t do that; they might offer her one of their scones,’ said a customer. ‘The plain ones are dry enough to choke a horse. As for their tea, I’d rather drink brine from a jar of pickled onions.’

  To begin with, Kat was only half listening as she stood at the deli counter, watching the oven timer tick down on the mushroom pie she was collecting for dinner.

  ‘Mind you don’t come home with a boxful of crumbs,’ Nurse Tina had kidded as she’d left the house. Everyone knew that Kat could not be trusted with warm bakery goods.

  Kat had made no promises. She was starving, having eaten nothing since she’d got back from Hamilton Park that morning because she’d felt so ill about Tiny. He’d come strolling in at midday, unaware that there was a £1,000 bounty on his head. Once he was sure that Pax wasn’t about to ambush him, his swagger had returned. When Kat had scooped him up, he’d purred like a panther.

  ‘Lock him in your room till morning,’ her mum had instructed. ‘Strictly speaking, it’s illegal for us to keep an unlicensed F1 Savannah, a virtual wild cat, but what choice do we have? The only way for us to clear Tiny’s name is to keep him hidden until whatever creature is attacking the sheep reveals itself, or strikes again. Then Mr Bludger will have to eat his words. In the meantime, I’ll keep Pax in the kennels. She won’t be happy about it, but we’ll give her lots of love and attention, and you can take her for short walks.’

  On the way to the deli, Kat had swung by the Grand Hotel Majestic to drop off Xena. Ethan had answered the door with an icepack pressed to one eye. He’d lifted it to show a dark bruise and swollen cheekbone.

  ‘Great look for a movie actor, huh? People keep giving Alicia funny stares, but the truth is kinda boring. I had an argument with the corner of the wardrobe.’

  Kat opened her mouth to speak, but he was already shutting her out.

  ‘My wife’s not here. I’ll tell her you stopped by. Adios, Kat. We’ll be in touch.’

  Ethan’s black eye, and the way he’d clutched at his ribs after leaning down to pat Xena, only fuelled Kat’s suspicions that Charming Outlaw had thrown him. No wonder he’d been in such a hurry to get rid of her – he didn’t want any awkward questions. If she ever got up the nerve, Kat planned to ask him why he’d hired Orkaan from Animal Actors if he had no intention of riding her. Was the Friesian mare purely for show, like the Aston Martin? Was she nothing more than a living prop to put on Instagram?

  Now, as she waited at the counter for the pie to emerge from the oven, Kat’s thoughts returned to Tiny. He hated being cooped up, and, thanks to Mr Bludger, he was a prisoner locked indefinitely in her bedroom.

  Kat tried to decide which Mongoose Move would be most effective if the animal control officer ever tried to drag Tiny into his rusty trap. The ‘Butterfly Sweep’ was not as dramatic as Killer Move 10, the ‘Leaping Tiger’ – the technique used by the bodyguard on the roof of Hamilton Park – but it was a good choice for a girl fighting off an adult two or three times her height or weight.

  She was mentally rehearsing it when a snippet of conversation caught her ear.

  ‘Doesn’t Sergeant Singh care if we’re all murdered in our beds?’ said a woman at a nearby table.

  Her friend leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘The way my niece tells it – she’s a police photographer – he didn’t feel he had a choice. Harry Holt keeps confessing to murder, but he won’t say why or how he did it. And the forensics prove that Johnny died accidentally. Sergeant Singh thinks Harry is only saying he did it because he feels safer in jail than wandering around Bluebell Bay. He seems petrified of someone, but won’t say who. Keeps telling Singh, “They’re out there. They’ll get me.”’

  ‘Who’s out there?’

  ‘Aliens, most probably. Hopefully, the police psychologist will get to the bottom of it. Harry’s seeing her tomorrow. If he’s judged sane, he’ll be released on to the streets.’

  The oven timer pinged and the girl behind the counter took down a large box to put Kat’s pie in. Behind her, the customer was still fuming about Harry’s possible release.

  ‘We should start a petition to keep him locked up forever. One only has to look at his hair to tell that he’s as mad as a box of frogs. We don’t need those sorts of people in Bluebell Bay.’

  ‘You can’t lock people up for having bad hair,’ the woman with the police photographer niece was saying. ‘If that were a valid criterion, my daughter would be in solitary confinement. I confess that, before this happene
d, I liked Harry a lot. He was so kind and helpful. I can’t think what’s happened to make him so afraid.’

  ‘What’s turned him into a killer, you mean,’ retorted the other woman. ‘I’m the one who’ll be afraid if he’s out on the streets again.’

  ‘Anything else?’ the waitress asked Kat.

  Simmering with silent anger on Harry’s behalf, Kat stared at her blankly. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Would you like anything else?’

  ‘Sorry, no – just the pie. Thanks.’

  Kat fumbled for the cash her mum had given her. She tuned into the other conversation dominating the deli while she waited for her change.

  ‘She’s putting people off their food,’ grumbled Margo to a man in a Jurassic Dragon T-shirt. ‘People feel guilty eating at my outdoor tables with her sitting there, judging them.’

  ‘Let’s call the council. Maybe they have a space in a hostel.’

  The waitress was back. ‘Sorry for the wait, Kat – here’s your change.’ She called to her boss. ‘Margo, I think I saw that X Factor star go by. What’s he called again? The one who used to be a builder. He was going to come in, but he saw the rough sleeper and veered off up the street.’

  Outside, the target of their displeasure was sitting in the sunshine on a grass mat. A much-mended Indian shirt and ancient ripped jeans clung to her lanky frame. Mismatched socks were bunched in boots with holes in both soles. Long wiry grey hair hung past a deeply tanned face, with eyes as watchful as a wild cat. The woman seemed as coiled as one, too. Yet when Margo advanced on her, she didn’t stir.

  Kat put the pie box on an empty outdoor table. She watched in growing dismay as Margo and her supporters tried to force the woman to move on. The deli owner started off syrupy sweet before moving on to bribery.

  ‘If I give you ten pounds and a slice of chocolate cake, perhaps you could enjoy lunch in the park?’ She was becoming increasingly annoyed by the woman’s stubbornness. ‘If you don’t leave now, I’m calling the police,’ Margo threatened. ‘There’ve been complaints about your patchouli oil. You’re putting people off their food.’

  ‘This is all the fault of the stupid Jurassic Dragon,’ commented one bystander. ‘It’s filled Bluebell Bay with undesirables.’

  ‘Leave her alone!’ said Kat in a small voice, but a bottleneck of shoppers, eaters and rubberneckers had built up in the cobbled street. Nobody heard her above the buzz.

  Something in Kat snapped. She thought of Tiny, condemned to an animal prison just because he was big and looked feral, and about the rich daughter who’d rejected Pax and flung her from a car. And she thought with shame how she herself had rushed to judge Harry as a murderer, based on his unkempt curls and jam-stained shirt.

  ‘LEAVE HER ALONE!’ she shouted.

  The gathered throng turned as one, their faces astonished.

  ‘How would you like it if you had no home and no one cared for you and people judged you just because you couldn’t get to a shower or didn’t match up to what someone on social media thought was OK?’ Kat could feel her cheeks burning. ‘How would you feel if people were cruel to you and put a bounty on your head?’

  ‘Kat, no one’s saying anything about a bounty,’ Margo blustered. ‘We’re merely saying that Bluebell Bay is a nice town with nice people and has a certain reputation—’

  ‘Yes, Bluebell Bay is the most perfect town in the whole universe, except for the people who are mean to anyone who doesn’t fit their perfect picture, or who want to lock animals in cages when their only crime is looking different. Who makes the rules, anyway?’

  Margo was looking uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know what you mean. What rules?’

  ‘Who’s the judge of who’s perfect and who isn’t? You? Sergeant Singh? The editor of the local newspaper?’

  ‘The girl’s right,’ said the baker, who’d come out to see what the fuss was about. ‘What harm is the woman doing anyway? She’s enjoying the sunshine and minding her own business.’

  A family of tourists agreed. They raided their wallets, and others joined them, to fill the woman’s hat with change.

  Kat pushed her way to the front of the crowd. The homeless woman scrambled to her feet, clutching her bedroll.

  Kat said gently, ‘Would you like to come to my house for dinner? It’s just me – I’m Kat – and my mum and Tina. My mum’s a vet, and Tina’s her nurse, and they won’t mind at all if you join us. We have a huge pie for our supper, and you’d be very welcome . . .’

  The woman murmured, ‘This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.’

  ‘Kat!’ cried Margo. ‘Your pie!’

  ‘Or if you’d prefer,’ Kat pressed on, ‘I can give you the whole pie and you can eat it wherever you’re comfortable. It’s vegan, if that’s OK.’

  The homeless woman pushed up her sleeves, revealing a tattoo of an angel on her right forearm. But it was the tattoo on the left that caused Kat to stare. It was a mongoose facing down a cobra.

  ‘Hey, Kat,’ said a boy she knew from school, poking her in the ribs. ‘You might want to check out your pie.’

  Kat wrenched her gaze from the tattoo in time to see a seagull making off with a choice morsel. She dashed to the box. There was nothing left but crumbs.

  Tearfully, she turned to apologize to the woman for offering her a pie that no longer existed, but she’d already fled, leaving behind the hatful of money. Kat looked up and down the street, but there was no trace of her. And before she could think more about the woman’s strange remark – ‘This wasn’t how it was supposed to be’ – she saw Ollie Merriweather, Professor Lamb’s assistant, arguing on a street corner with the rude man from the hotel. The same man who’d told her he knew nothing about the gold-and-black dragon card.

  ‘Kat Wolfe?’ The mother from the caravan park, the one whose daughter had fallen in love with Xena, was smiling down at her. ‘I saw what you just did. I’m sorry about your pie, but if you’d allow me, I’d like to buy you and your family another. I haven’t forgotten your kindness to Immie. If I can make it up to you, I’d like to.’

  That was the thing about humans, thought Kat. Just when you were ready to give up on them, they turned around and surprised you.

  ‘No prizes for guessing how the burglar broke in,’ said Harper, standing on tiptoe to inspect the jagged hole in the window of the old hall. ‘Where was Mike when the intruder was smashing the pane with a rock? On the phone to his mum? Playing video games?’

  ‘Mike wasn’t on guard duty last night,’ her father said tiredly. It was seven o’clock on Tuesday morning and he’d been up since four thirty. ‘We have a new man, Bash. It’s not his fault. He’s highly experienced and came with glowing references. Unluckily, he was answering a call of nature when the thief struck.’

  ‘Must have been a long call,’ quipped Levi, one of the volunteers. ‘The thief had to get in and out. Did Bash eat a bad prawn?’

  Professor Lamb ignored him. He crunched over broken glass to the main hall, where dishevelled and yawning volunteers and students, one still in his pyjamas, were gathering around the coffee urn. Eleven chairs had been put out for them.

  Kat came in with the last of the volunteers, breathing hard after racing down the hill. URGENT! Harper had messaged. Break-in at the old hall! Need your eyes and ears. Could be connected to our case. Come – but be invisible xx

  Kat slipped in, almost unnoticed, and took a pew on a pile of dusty cloths. She was all but hidden by a table. Harper stood with her father and Bash, the new security guard, before the semi-circle of chairs.

  Professor Lamb said, ‘Many of you will be wondering why I haven’t called the police. One reason that Sergeant Singh is working round the clock on a murder enquiry that started in this very building with the discovery of Johnny Roswell’s remains. I don’t want to bother him unnecessarily.’

  ‘If parts of one of the rarest dinosaurs in Britain have been stolen to order, it’s an emergency!’ cried a concerned student. ‘I’ll call the police if you wo
n’t.’

  Professor Lamb lifted a hand. ‘Thanks, Tibor, but you might want to hear me out. It’s my belief that the robbery was an inside job.’

  Ollie leaped to his feet. ‘Are you saying you don’t trust us – your own team?’

  ‘Sit down, Oliver. I’m saying that I’m giving the thief a chance to do the right thing before I involve the police. I’ve asked my daughter to be here because Harper’s both an insider and an outsider. She’s grown up around fossils and palaeontologists, but she’s not in the business and often sees things I miss. If whoever has stolen the long chi – that’s Chinese for “dragon’s teeth” – comes forward now, they have my word they’ll face no consequences.’

  A buzz went through the room. Kat noticed that, beneath his chair, Ollie’s boots jiggled furiously.

  ‘Why don’t we check the CCTV?’ he said. ‘I wager that everyone in this room will be in the clear.’

  ‘We have studied the CCTV,’ Professor Lamb told him. ‘Someone set the video to play on loop last night. For nearly twelve hours, Bash here was watching what appeared to be an empty hall.’

  ‘Why would any of us risk ruining our reputation to steal a few teeth?’ asked Samira, a fresh-faced geology student.

  Professor Lamb shrugged. ‘Why does anyone steal anything? Greed? Desperation?’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re accusing us after all we’ve done for you,’ Ollie said angrily. ‘This is an outrage.’

  Theo Lamb looked sad. ‘Is it, Ollie? Well, it’s easy enough to prove. As you know, I’m a technical dunce, but my daughter takes after her mom. Harper could code by the time she could walk. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been besieged with calls offering me a fortune to sell off bits of the Jurassic Dragon. I’m aware that many of you have, too. To be on the safe side, I asked Harper to help me set up extra security cameras. Let’s take a look at them now.’

  Harper projected a video on to the wall of the hall. The crew watched as a figure in a black hoody slipped through the unguarded gate, seconds after Bash had scuttled to the bathroom. Kat studied the crew as they viewed the footage. The grainy burglar broke the window with a gloved hand and went directly to the drawer where the smaller fossils were kept. Using a penknife to prise the drawer open, he pocketed a pouch. As he spun to leave, a street light revealed his face.