Nine Deadly Lives

by Livia J. Washburn

  “I bet you’ve had a rough day, ol’ pal,” he says.

  I want to tell him he doesn’t know the half of it. Those two always bicker like children— and now, Lovey won’t be here to stop them anymore.

  He goes on. “I went to school with Allen. He was always horrible to everyone. And I dated Amelia for a while...” A pained look crosses his face, and I know that means she must have cheated on him.

  “I wasn’t such a good judge of character back then,” he says.

  You got that right, Officer! But love can be blind, they say.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll see you get a good home,” he tells me.

  I get a lump in my throat. People think animals don’t have feelings—but that isn’t true. This man’s offhand kindness is unexpected. I rub my face against his knuckles.

  “Might just take you home with me.” He laughs. “Two bachelors’d do well together.”

  I meow and lick his finger, and he gives me an ear scratch.

  “Sure wish you could talk. I bet you could tell us what happened, here. Something isn’t right. I keep wondering—well, I don’t believe this was a ‘natural causes’ check mark on the death certificate.”

  I don’t either, I want to say. But I can only meow again.

  “I take that as agreement, mister,” he says with a smile. “I gotta go upstairs. Rescue the rookie. He won’t know what in the hell to do with those two in the same room. Wanna come?”

  I am not about to let him out of my sight!

  I jump up and trot along at his side. The stairway is getting harder to climb, I notice. Usually, Lovey carries me up and down the steps, tucked safely under an arm, the other on the banister.

  We walk into Lovey’s bedroom to find a strange tableau before us, for sure. My dear Lovey is covered, neck to toe.

  Her face looks peaceful. I want to believe it is because I’d been there with her when she—well, when she passed.

  The “rookie”, as Officer Rowe had called him, is Officer Peterson. He’s a young one, all right, with not much “command” about him yet. He stands uncomfortably at the end of the bed, scratching his neck.

  Amelia methodically searches Lovey’s jewelry box, and Allen, her dresser drawers.

  Officer Rowe’s face clouds. He glances at Peterson, who puts his hands out in a “Well? What can I do?” gesture. Officer Rowe is about to show him.

  “What are you two doing?” His voice is like thunder.

  Allen turns, like a thief caught in the act—which, of course, he is. Amelia gives a funny nervous laugh and keeps right on looking for whatever it might be she’s looking for. She makes the mistake of pocketing something.

  In two long strides, Officer Rowe is on her like a duck on a June bug.

  “Empty your pockets, please. Both of you.” With a sharp nod at Peterson, he lets him know to take over with Allen. He will see to Amelia himself.

  Sighing, Amelia turns toward Officer Rowe, trying on her twenty-years-past high school aren’t-I-the-cutest-cheerleader-ever smile.

  I know this policeman won’t go for it—and, he doesn’t.

  “I said,” he begins in a frost-covered voice, “empty your pockets. Both of you. And I’m not asking again.”

  They both begin to lay the items they’ve pinched on the bed beside their dead sister.

  A ruby brooch. A diamond-and-emerald ring. A wad of “emergency” cash. Ugh. Allen had gone through Lovey’s underwear drawer!

  I feel a hairball working its way up. Sick bastard.

  “That last thing you stole…” Officer Rowe says to Amelia. He nods at the bed where everything else is laid out. “Put it there.”

  She fidgets, and her lips thin for a moment but she understands Officer Rowe is not going to be cajoled into anything.

  Frustrated, she lays the key she’s taken onto the bed beside the brooch. She heaves a deep sigh.

  “Why, you little witch!”

  Allen always turns red when he gets mad. And he’s livid right now. The key is important…they think.

  But I know better.

  “Allen, I told you it was here and one of us would find it.”

  “You knew where to look! And you were going to keep it from me!”

  “No—no, I wasn’t!” She puts her hands out. Shades of childhood. She’s flashing back, not wanting any confrontation. “I was going to tell you—honestly!”

  “Honestly?” Allen sneers. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  “What does the key go to?” Officer Rowe says, interrupting this lovely family discussion.

  I sit down and lick my front paws. I haven’t washed my face today!

  They look at each other, but neither of them answers.

  “We’re not leaving this room until you answer me.”

  This policeman is becoming my favorite human, now that Lovey…has gone. I can’t bear to look at her. I keep washing my face.

  “It’s a key to her ‘treasure box’, as she called it,” Allen finally mutters.

  “And…what’s inside this ‘treasure box’?” Officer Rowe asks.

  They both shrug, and young Peterson flexes his muscles a bit.

  “Oh, come on! You know, or you both wouldn’t be looking for the key.”

  “We really don’t know everything that’s in it,” says Amelia. “But it’s where she kept her will.” She glances nervously at big brother, who rolls his eyes at her as if she’s just given the policemen a piece of incriminating evidence that could lock both of them away forever.

  “Where is the box?” Rowe puts out a hand to forestall the lies and denials. “Save us some time, here, please.”

  Allen heaves a sigh. “In her closet.”

  Amelia whirls to face him. “Oh. My. God! You already scoped it out? I can’t believe you!”

  This is why I despise Amelia, almost as much as Allen. Her voice irritates me…times like now, she sounds like a true Valley Girl.

  But from what Lovey said, “Amelia only left Oklahoma long enough to find herself in the ‘family way’ and come back home from California looking like something the cat dragged in…”

  But Lovey apologized for that last part, not wanting to hurt my feelings. Then, she’d hugged me and said, “Fred, that’s one thing I love about you. You never do drag anything in. You never bring me gifts of dead birds or rats. You’re a present every day to me—just yourself, and your love.”

  My eyes are watering now. Must’ve gotten something in them. More washing.

  Allen takes the treasure box out of Lovey’s closet and puts it on the cedar chest at the end of the bed. He picks up the key and glances at Officer Rowe, who gives him a quick nod.

  But when Allen tries to fit the key into the lock and give it a twist, it doesn’t work. It won’t turn.

  “Dammit!”

  Officer Rowe—“Brady”, I see on his nametag—holds out his hand. “Doesn’t work. It’s not the right one. But I’ll take it with me for safekeeping.”

  Peterson opens an evidence bag, and as Allen hands Brady the key, he slips it into the bag. Peterson collects the jewelry on the bed and bags it, as well.

  “Where’s the real key, then? To the treasure box?” Amelia’s eyes narrow as she gives her brother the “once over” from head to foot. “If you knew where the box was—how do I know you don’t already have the key?”

  “Why would I have it?”

  He’s red again. Sputtering. Reminds me of a Shakespearean quote: ‘Methinks thou doest protest too much.’ Lovey read Shakespeare to me a lot. He was one of her favorites, because she said, “He understood the human spirit, both good and evil, as no other person who ever lived did.” Which must be true—because my dear Lovey believed it.

  But, I digress. Allen doesn’t have the key. And I don’t have a way to let Brady know where it is. Now might not be the best time for that, anyhow, with the “evil twins” standing in the same room. I need to let him know secretly. The fight continues.

  “How would you know wh
ere the treasure box was kept, either, unless you were in here snooping around, Allen?”

  “Look—she-she told me where it was!” Allen glances at Brady. “In case—you know—something like this ever happened!”

  “Oh, right! I don’t believe that for one minute! If she told you where it was, she’d have given you the key—which she obviously did not do, and—”

  “Enough!”

  Brady’s had it with them…and I have, too. Poor Lovey’s lying up in the bed, dead, and her younger siblings stand there arguing about a damn key to the stupid treasure box. Who cares about that? Lovey…she’s gone forever, and they don’t seem sad about it. All they care about is what she might have left them.

  “Hello?” a voice calls from downstairs. “Coroner.”

  Peterson walks from the room, obviously relieved to have a reason to get away from the discord.

  Now that the coroner’s here, I know I have to tell Lovey goodbye. I’ve watched enough detective shows with her to know that the coroner is the one who removes the body. I run around, past Allen and Amelia, and jump up onto the bed.

  I realize I will be saying goodbye to this room, and the bed, too, where Lovey let me curl up beside her and sleep. Every day, she woke up and smiled at me, first thing.

  “Hello, Mr. Fred,” she’d say, and give me a good ear scratch before she got up. She never forgot that.

  Now, I rub against her one last time. I’m going to miss her, so much. Looking at her still, pale face, I hope I was always good. I hope I was—worthy. She was everything to me.

  I glance down at her, past her…to the small wastebasket beside the bed…and see a half-finished muffin…

  And suddenly, I know what killed her. She was eating the muffin just before she had her “spell” that led to her death.

  And those muffins were not brought over by her brother; I knew that much.

  “Reeow!”

  Amelia lifts me off the bed—a bit roughly—and it startles me. She’s not normally rough, but in her touch, I feel nervousness and tension.

  She sets me down on the floor and Allen tries to give me a kick. But I expect that from him, and run under the bed. I know where I’m headed, and what I need to do.

  I come out on the other side of the bed, right beside the small wastebasket.

  Lovey never let me eat chocolate. She said it was bad for dogs, so it might be bad for cats, too. The muffin is chocolate, and it smells wonderful, but…there’s another smell there, too. One I don’t know.

  But the coroner will…

  I put a paw on the trash can and pull it toward me. When it tips over, the partially-eaten muffin rolls out onto the floor.

  Officer Rowe notices it and stoops to pick it up, just as the coroner and Officer Peterson come through the bedroom door.

  Amelia’s eyes get big. “Oh, you bad cat! Here, Brady, let me—”

  But the policeman wasn’t born yesterday—and I’m so glad he is the one nearby instead of the rookie.

  Brady pulls the muffin away from Amelia’s grabby fingers.

  “Hi, doc,” he says to the coroner, taking a step back away from the bed.

  The doctor steps closer to Lovey and nods.

  Amelia doesn’t even acknowledge the coroner. She’s still trying to figure out how to get the uneaten half of muffin away from Officer Rowe.

  He looks right at her. “Evidence,” he says. His voice is steely, and he stares directly into her eyes.

  “But—it’s just trash—”

  “We haven’t finished this investigation, Mrs. Spaulding.”

  Oh, he’s gone all formal, now. Amelia doesn’t know how to deal with that. She puts on her pouty look—the one she used on him in high school, her glory days in this small town.

  “Now, officer…I just want to help clean up the mess this bad kitty has made.” She makes another grab for the muffin.

  I see in Officer Brady Rowe’s face he knows he’s found the first piece of the puzzle to how my Lovey was killed. He knows she was murdered.

  “Well, then.” Amelia squares her shoulders. She tries to hide her anger, but it’s impossible.

  Brady’s eyes tell me he’s quickly putting this all together. Before he can say anything else, the coroner straightens and walks to the door, and into the hallway, looking over the banister to the living room. He’s left the front door open, and now he motions to the paramedics who’ve had nothing to do but wait until he could get there and conduct his business before loading my dear companion into the ambulance.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” the coroner says, looking at Allen first, then Amelia. Allen nods and mumbles a thank you. Amelia….Amelia is more composed. She meets the coroner’s eyes and says, “Thank you,” directly to him, rather than to the floor, as her brother does.

  As they take Lovey out, my eyes start to feel prickly again. She was the only one who loved me. No more old John Wayne movie-watching together. No more warm nacho cheese in a Styrofoam cup. Ah, what a treat that was…No more love.

  I have no illusions. I’m not a cute little kitten anymore. And I’m black—almost completely—except for my paws.

  Lovey decided not to name me “Boots” or “Socks” or something “cutesy”— as she called it. I’ll be forever grateful to her for that. She knew, someday, I’d grow up. No one remains cute and cuddly forever, you know.

  “You look like a ‘Fred’ to me,” she’d said. “I think I’ll call you that, mister.” Then, she smiled, and rubbed her cheek against me gently. “Mister Fred. Perfect.”

  The room empties out. The coroner, his assistant, who’d arrived late—the paramedics, Officer Peterson…and Lovey.

  I walk over beside Officer Rowe, and sit down close to him. He will not step on me. He is aware of everything around him.

  I hear Officer Peterson locking the front door as everyone exits.

  Brady—Officer Rowe—looks at Allen, then Amelia. “This is the scene of an ongoing investigation. The house will be secured with police tape that will not be breeched. Understand?”

  Allen nods. But Amelia gets her back up.

  “You mean—you mean we’re being locked out of our sister’s home? We can’t come in?”

  “It’s a possible crime scene.”

  “What?” Amelia screeches. Makes me shiver.

  Allen looks up quickly. “You believe someone k-killed our sister?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “But—”Amelia starts to protest again.

  “Just get your handbag, Mrs. Spaulding, and you and your brother head for the door. We’ll be in touch with you. Don’t either of you leave town—I may have some questions.”

  “But—what—Brady! Are you insinuating that I or Allen might be a suspect? A murder suspect?”

  “I’m not sure yet, Mrs. Spaulding. That’s why I’m asking you not to leave town.”

  Amelia tries a different tact. She moistens her lips, takes a deep breath, and...

  “All right,” she says, in her calm little acquiescent voice. The one that she uses to get her way.

  “Don’t load up your pockets on the way out,” Brady says.

  Amelia huffs.

  Brady nods at Peterson to escort them out. Allen goes meekly, with no comment, trailing after his sister.

  “Don’t come back,” Brady calls. “I’ll be in touch.” He follows them out and watches from the hallway as Peterson ushers them to the door.

  Amelia turns and looks up at him. “What about the cat?”

  “I sure as hell don’t want him,” Allen says with a smirk. “I hear cats taste a little like chicken.”

  Amelia gasps. “Allen!”

  Brady does not laugh. He doesn’t even smile. In fact, he looks like he’d like to take a fist to Allen’s smarmy grin. “Animal cruelty is a felony,” he says. Allen sobers quickly.

  “I-I don’t have a place for him,” Amelia says, trying to placate everyone. “Poor Mr. Fred. Lovey loved him so much.”

  “I’ll take care o
f things,” Brady says.

  “Oh, good. I hate to have him put down, but—well, he’s old, anyhow.”

  I see revulsion cross Brady’s face. Amelia is one cold human. At least, Allen is honest about it. He doesn’t like me. He never has. Amelia pretends, but I’ve always felt her resentment.

  Brady says nothing else as Amelia and Allen go out the door, followed by Officer Peterson. He’s probably making sure one of them doesn’t steal the new bird bath Lovey bought last week.

  Brady reaches down and puts his hand close to my face, then picks me up.

  “Ah, don’t worry, boy. You’re coming with me. Don’t pay them any attention, Fred. You’re safe.” He strokes my head.

  My heart is so grateful. There’s no way Brady can know what his kindness means to me. And I’m going home with him!

  He scratches under my collar. I used to be a little embarrassed about that collar. Lovey bought it for me, and she said it was fit for a prince. It’s red, with sparkly red rhinestones. She put my rabies vaccine tag on it along with…the key. She said it was the key to her heart, but I know it goes to the treasure box.

  I look at Brady. I lift my head so he can see the key, but the tag is in front of the key.

  He scratches my ears, and I courageously lift my head higher, baring my throat. I don’t ever do that, but it’s necessary. He has to notice the key!

  “What’s this, buddy?”

  He found it! Oh, if I could talk! I wish I could tell him—but, he knows. He puts me on the bed and unfastens my collar to get the key off.

  It only takes him a second to get it. When Lovey put it on my collar, she said she’d never lose it, because she’d always have me.

  “I bet I know what this goes to, Fred.” He turns toward the treasure box. He inserts the key, and turns it. The tumblers click and he lifts the lid.

  I’m curious, of course. I’ve been wearing that special key on my collar for many years now. Now that Brady has the treasure box open, I just have to know what’s in it. You know what they say about cats and their curiosity.

  Lovey called it “Mr. Fred’s” treasure box sometimes when she talked to me about it.

  “Mr. Fred’s treasure box,” she’d say, giving the ornate wood box a pat as she turned the key and put it back on my collar. “Everything is in order, dear boy.”