The Cats Came Back

by Sofie Kelly

  “Considering that sorry excuse for a man she’s involved with, you might be surprised to know that my little sister can be quite the goody-two-shoes, especially when it comes to drinking and driving. The truth is our father was killed in a drunk-driving accident. He was the drunk.”

  “I can’t believe Emme would be that judgmental,” I said. Where was everyone? Why hadn’t someone come to the theater by now?

  “She can be a very black-and-white person,” Nora said. “As I told Miranda.” She laughed. It was an angry sound with no humor in it.

  Nora had played with Miranda’s emotions. I wasn’t surprised.

  I swallowed. My mouth was dry and there was a lump in my throat. “All the same, it must have been difficult to keep secrets from your sister.”

  “Don’t go all Oprah on me,” Nora said. “It won’t work.”

  She took another step toward me and I stepped back again. I was getting closer to the main section of seating and farther from the door.

  “Miranda was going to tell Emme the truth and take the consequences,” I said.

  Nora let out a breath. “Yes, she was.”

  “But I don’t understand why you had to kill her.” That was true. I really didn’t.

  “I didn’t want to. But Miranda wouldn’t listen to reason. She had an attack of conscience.”

  “She wanted to tell Emme about the photos.”

  “And other things.” Just for a moment Nora’s eyes flicked away from my face.

  I could feel the warmth of Hercules’s small furry body underneath my hands. Somehow I was going to get us out of here. “What other things?” I asked.

  Nora shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It mattered to you.”

  I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she spoke. “Miranda had figured out some of my . . . business dealings with some of the clubs in Chicago.”

  Another puzzle piece snapped into place. “You were taking kickbacks from some of the clubs Emme was singing at. What did you do? Tell her agent Emme preferred one venue over another for some reason?”

  “I was protecting her career. I was making connections.”

  You were using your own sister, I added silently.

  The whole time we’d been talking she’d managed to slowly back me up to the last row of seats in the front section of the theater. I could feel a seat back cold against my legs. I glanced sideways. The only thing I saw was a backpack on the aisle seat two away from me.

  “Emme told me Miranda’s stepbrother came to see her in Chicago just before you all came here,” I said. Keep her talking. Just keep her talking. “Somehow he figured it out—I mean about the photographs.”

  That would explain why Brent Pearson was still in town—he was trying to weasel money out of Nora. Enough, it seemed, to be able to buy a new truck. If she managed to kill me, he’d be next.

  “It was just stupid bad luck. Robert Burns was right: The best laid schemes of mice and men . . .”

  “Go often askew,” I finished.

  “He was at the club that night and he saw Miranda wearing Emme’s jacket. He put it all together. He was blackmailing her, taking pretty much every cent she could get her hands on. She was going to tell Emme the truth. Everything.” She straightened up. “She didn’t leave me any choice.” She made a move-along gesture with the gun. “Now walk,” she said.

  I squared my shoulders and held on tightly to Hercules. “No.”

  “You do see that I have a gun and all you have is a cat, don’t you?”

  “You won’t kill me. Not here.” I was faking a confidence I didn’t feel, hoping she couldn’t see how badly my legs were shaking. “If you shoot me here, you’ll be caught—too much blood and too hard to explain.”

  “Shooting a cat wouldn’t make that much mess,” Nora said. She reached for Hercules, ignoring or forgetting the warning she’d gotten the first time we’d met. He turned into a whirling dervish of claws, hissing and fur. I grabbed the surprisingly heavy backpack and swung it at Nora as hard as I could. It hit her shoulder, knocking her off balance as books spilled onto the floor. Hercules gave a loud yowl and bolted for the stage. I knew where the stage door was, and we’d be able to get out that way.

  I raced after him.

  chapter 20

  Once we were backstage I could see that I was wrong. The set pieces that had been piled up there the previous day when I’d had coffee with Michel were still blocking the way.

  Hercules was already making his way to the stairs at the far right of the backstage area. I paused for a second, trying to catch my breath. The stairs. We could go up, across the top where the dressing rooms were, and take the far-end stairs to the stage door. That would work.

  But the stairs were blocked off with staging. It looked like some of the stairwell ceiling had come down. Nora was on the stage now. In a moment she’d see us and have a clear line to shoot. The only place to go was the basement. I seemed to remember Ruby mentioning an old coal-cellar door down there, and I decided it was a better option than facing Nora and that gun. I bent down, snatched up Hercules and bolted down the stairs.

  The basement was dark and dank, and the smell of age and dust and mold and old paint hung in the air. The ceiling was very low, no more than six feet, maybe even less, and it felt to me like it was pressing on the space above my head, pressing all the air out of the room. I didn’t do well in small spaces. Hercules nuzzled my cheek and I gave a muffled squeak. For a moment I’d forgotten I was holding on to him.

  I picked my way across the basement, almost tripping over a wooden rocking chair. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw that the space was piled with old props and costumes, some of them on dressmakers’ dummies, which made it look like an army of headless bodies was guarding the space.

  What had Ruby said about the old coal chute? It was on the end of the back wall, but which end? I couldn’t see anything here where we were, which meant it had to be on the other end. That meant heading deeper into the space to look for it.

  The old stone walls were thick, but it was still cold and I shivered in my shorts and long-sleeved T-shirt. I could hear the squeaks and rustling of some kind of rodents. If they’d gotten in, then there must be a way to get out, I told myself.

  I heard Nora on the stairs. I crouched behind an old travel wardrobe and a group of several mannequins all dressed in Victorian holiday garb and made myself as small as possible. If she came anywhere near me, I was going to push the wardrobe or one of the mannequins over on her and hope I could get the gun. I realized it wasn’t much of a plan.

  Nora had found a large flashlight somewhere. She was sweeping it in wide arcs in front of her. The light glinted off the blue steel finish of the gun in her other hand. I held my breath, ignoring the throbbing in my bandaged left hand. Whatever she did next, I was going down swinging.

  She didn’t see us. She walked right by us, and as her light swept over the far-end wall, I saw a small room off to my left. And I thought I caught a glimpse of some kind of opening in the wall. The coal chute maybe?

  Nora kept going deeper into the basement. I listened to the sound of her footsteps and decided to make a break for the steps. I eased around the mannequins and at the same time her footsteps stopped. I could see the light swinging back in the direction of the stairs. I dropped to the floor and scuttled, crablike, toward the relative safety of a stack of boxes. I was too far away now to make it to the stairs. The only option was to see if I’d been right about that opening I thought I’d seen in that small room.

  Herc and I worked our way sideways, hiding behind boxes and furniture and discarded set pieces. Nora called my name a couple of times. She was working her way back to the front of the basement. There was an open space of about twenty feet between where we were crouched behind a large paper screen and the room. It was now or never. I wrapped both arms tig
htly around Hercules and ran.

  The small room had damp stone walls like the rest of the basement. Two sets of shelves lined its outer walls. Those walls looked scorched even in the dim light, as though there had been a fire at some point in the past. Midway along the longer wall of the room, just above the second shelf, was a small opening. There was no way to tell where it went. Maybe into the coal chute. Maybe I’d fall onto the floor. Maybe I could reach up or climb up and get out. Or maybe I’d get stuck and the walls would close in and crush me.

  Nora was getting closer, making her way back across the basement, the flashlight sweeping in ever-closer semicircles. I felt my stomach roll over. It was the gun or climbing through that hole. It was an easy choice.

  One hand clutching Hercules, I climbed through the square opening in the stone wall. I put a hand above me. There was nothing but ceiling. I reached in front of me and found nothing but air. We had climbed into another small room that seemed to be located behind a partly demolished wall. Most of the space was taken up by a furnace so old its giant leads made it look like an octopus in the faint light.

  I noticed two things right away. First of all, the opening on this side had what I thought might be a metal coal chute lid, fastened up and out of the way. I pulled it down over the hole. It might buy us some protection or at least some time. And there was definitely a bit more light, which told me there was a window or windows nearby, which meant a way out.

  I looked around for something I could use to break the glass, feeling around in the darkness. The air was stuffier. I was breathing heavily and I felt light-headed. “There’s lots of air,” I told Hercules. “It’s just a little stale, that’s all.”

  “Mrrr,” he said softly.

  We made our way past the partly demolished wall, and on the floor near the furnace I found a loop of copper wire and a roll of what seemed to be wallpaper, maybe four inches or so in diameter. I slung the coil of wire over my shoulder, thinking it might come in useful for something, and grabbed the wallpaper. It was heavy and satisfyingly solid in my hand.

  There were two small windows on the back wall but they were both covered with rusted grates. I yanked on them in frustration but they weren’t going to move. I could feel panic wrapping around my chest like a vise, choking the air out of my lungs. I took several raspy breaths. There wasn’t enough air in the small space. The only thought I had was I can’t breathe!

  Hercules stirred in my arms and I felt his fur against my face. I imagined my mother smiling and telling me, “You can do anything you set your mind to, Katydid.” I put one hand against my chest and forced myself to take slow breaths. In and out. In and out. I swallowed down the sour taste of bile at the back of my throat. The only way out of this was to stop Nora.

  “Let’s go get her,” I said to the cat.

  We made our way back to the small room. I could hear Nora on the other side. She was going to come through the opening any minute. Maybe we could use that. I set Hercules on the floor in front of the open hatch and crouched beside him. I hoped he was as smart as I’d always believed. My life was depending on it. “I need you to make noise,” I whispered. “Lots of noise.” He looked down at the floor with distaste. I had a feeling him making noise wouldn’t be a problem.

  I straightened up and stepped back. I slipped the coil of wire off my shoulder and raised the wallpaper roll. “Now!” I whispered to the cat. He gave a pitiful meow followed by another and another.

  I gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Here, kitty. Here, kitty,” I heard Nora call. I imagined the disdain that was probably on the cat’s face at the moment. As though he’d fall for that. He meowed again.

  Although I happily cheered for the Wild during hockey season and the Vikings starting every September, growing up mostly in New England meant my baseball heart had always belonged to the Boston Red Sox and Big Papi, David Ortiz. Hands shaking, stomach churning, I pictured him making his way to the plate from the on-deck circle. It’s the bottom of the eighth inning, game two of the American League Championship series against the Detroit Tigers, I told myself. I could hear Nora climbing through the chute, pushing at the cover. But in my mind I was seeing the Tigers’ reliever, Joaquin Benoit, do his windup. The chute lid opened and Nora’s head and shoulders came through, followed by the rest of her. I was seeing Big Papi go into his swing.

  The roll of wallpaper connected with the back of Nora Finley’s head as I remembered Ortiz hitting the game-tying grand slam. Nora dropped like a rock, the gun skittering across the floor.

  And the crowd went wild. At least I and one small cat did.

  I dropped the wallpaper roll and used the wire to restrain Nora. She was out cold, but she had a pulse and she was breathing. It was a lot better than she had been planning for me.

  Hercules was sitting next to the gun. He meowed loudly at me. “Yes, I see it,” I said. I picked it up carefully. It was a Colt Detective Special, a .38. I was fairly sure I knew how to take the bullets out. I’d spent some time with the prop-master when my dad had been in a production of Some Like It Hot, and he’d taught me about gun safety.

  I kept the revolver pointed at the ground and managed to remove the bullets. I stuffed them in one pocket and the gun in the other. I picked up the roll of wallpaper again and dropped it through the hole in the wall. I started to cough, and I had to stop then for a moment and catch my breath.

  I reached for Hercules but he had decided it was faster to just walk through the wall. I took a breath and climbed through to the other side.

  We were safe.

  Hercules was sitting next to the wallpaper roll. I picked up both of them and started across the basement. I was wheezing from the exertion. The air wasn’t any better on this side of the basement.

  “We’re going to Eric’s,” I rasped at the cat. “We’re going to buy coffee in the biggest cup they have and not decaf; I don’t care what time it is. And I’m going to get you the biggest piece of fish they have, and I don’t care whether or not cats are allowed in there.”

  He meowed his enthusiasm for the idea.

  As we got to the bottom of the stairs I heard voices above me. I raised the roll of wallpaper—it was some kind of blue flocked design, I noticed for the first time—ready to go all Big Papi on whoever it was. But it was Marcus with a giant flashlight.

  “Oh, good Lord, Kathleen!” he exclaimed. He bolted down the stairs and grabbed my shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine.” I pointed in the general direction of the hole in the wall, swaying because I was suddenly light-headed. “Nora Finley not so much.”

  “She killed Miranda Moore,” he said.

  I nodded, which made the room swirl around me like I was on a carousel ride. “I know,” I said.

  He frowned. “How do you know?”

  “Gavin figured out she sent the e-mails to Alec.”

  “Gavin?” he said. He frowned. “Wait. Gavin Solomon?”

  I nodded again. The room spun faster. “Uh-huh,” I said. “I may have to put a horse’s head in someone’s bed someday.”

  I tried to focus on his face, which like everything else kept going out of focus. “How did you know?”

  “We finally got the security footage from the marina. At the edge of one frame you can just make out Nora Finley with Miranda.”

  I started to cough and Marcus put an arm around my shoulders. “We need to get you up into some fresh air,” he said.

  “Here,” I said. I pulled the gun and the bullets out of my pocket and gave them to him.

  He helped me up the steps and sent two patrol officers down to find Nora. As we headed through the auditorium I saw the backpack I’d hit Nora with on the floor, books spilling out of it. Captain Underpants. That seemed strangely appropriate.

  There was an ambulance outside, lights flashing. Paramedic Ric Holm and his partner were waiting.r />
  “I think she needs some oxygen,” Marcus said. “She’s been in the basement breathing some pretty bad air.” He gestured at my hand. “And I think that needs to be re-bandaged.”

  Ric smiled, easing me down onto the wide bumper of the ambulance. “Hey, Kathleen,” he said. “It’s been pretty quiet lately. Good to see you.”

  I reached behind me and set Hercules on the floor. He jumped up onto the stretcher, shook himself and looked around with curiosity.

  “Get a piece of jerky out of my backpack for him,” Ric said to his partner, indicating the cat. “But whatever you do, don’t touch him.”

  He winked at me and I started to laugh, which just made me cough again. “It’s Hercules, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Hey, Hercules,” Ric said to the cat.

  He meowed hello and took the jerky Ric’s partner was offering.

  Ric got oxygen on me as his partner moved to take my blood pressure.

  It’s over, I thought. We’re safe and it’s over.

  A crowd was gathering and I could see Emme and Derrick among them. I started to cough again and my chest ached with the effort. I knew it would pass. For Emme, the pain was just beginning.

  chapter 21

  Nora had a concussion—I’d hit her harder than I’d realized—so she spent the night in the hospital, handcuffed to the bed with a police officer at the door. Emme came to the house to see me early Saturday morning. She was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes, and she held Derrick’s hand the entire time.

  “I’m sorry, Kathleen,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m not trying to make excuses for Nora, but this isn’t the sister I grew up with.”

  “You don’t have anything to apologize for,” I said.

  She wiped away a tear. “It turns out I didn’t know my sister at all and maybe not my best friend, either.”