by Hearn, Shari
A few yards away I noticed something moving under a bush. A face poked out, with big yellow eyes. Spoolie. Crouching low to the ground, she padded over to a stump and hid behind it, waited a few seconds, then ran and hid behind a planter. Pretty soon she had made her way stealthily through two yards, now only one yard away from us.
“You’re the Yankee’s cat, aren’t you?” Chompers asked, gazing up at me. “I’ll be sure to tell her how good you tasted.”
Spoolie padded quietly until she was in the middle of the street, close enough to tempt Chompers, but far enough to give her a speed advantage, even at her advanced age.
“Yoo hoo… Chompers.”
The dog whirled around so fast his slobber was still in the air in time to meet his butt.
“Was that your mama I saw you with yesterday?” Spoolie asked. “Swinging your poop around in a little plastic bag for all of Sinful to gawk at?”
Chompers growled. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the appetizer. I don’t normally like my meat so old, but I’ll make an exception for you, Spoolie LeBeau. You are one stupid cat.”
Spoolie switched her tail. “Talk about stupid. I hear your daddy’s so stupid he threw a package of donuts away ‘cause they all had holes in them.”
Oh no she didn’t. Rule number one of the Dogdom: you don’t dis a dog’s owner.
Chompers tore off after her. I couldn’t wait around to see if Spoolie knew what she was doing; I just had to have faith the old girl could still run and jump. I had a message to deliver to headquarters, and that’s what I had to do. I dropped to the ground and took off in the opposite direction, leaping across five picket fences, scaling two trellises, and traipsing across three rooftops before I was finally at the home of SFL leader, Lula Mae.
I sniffed at the door of the shed. “Lula Mae,” I called out. “Are you here?”
“Merlin?”
I looked up. Lula Mae was upstairs in the house, behind an open window. A tree branch hung a few inches away. Perfect. It took me less than a minute to climb the tree and jump into her room.
And what a room it was. A large, round, fur-lined bed sat on the floor in one corner, while an elaborate cat condo was set up against the wall, complete with not one, but two hammocks. An assortment of scratching posts were situated around the room. On the wall hung a flat-screen TV, currently showing a movie of fish swimming in an aquarium.
“You live here?”
“Modest, I know,” she said. “Have a seat on the sofa.”
She flicked her head toward a small sofa, decorated with smiling cartoon cat faces. Somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to plant my butt on one of them.
“I’ll stand, thank you.”
A human’s voice caught me by surprise. “Oh my, how cute, you have another friend with you, Lula Mae. You are such a popular kitty.”
I glanced toward the door to Lula Mae’s room. A grey-haired woman stood holding a crystal bowl of what smelled like the finest tuna human money could buy. I immediately started back toward the window.
“Stay put, soldier,” Lula Mae said. “She’s harmless. This is Midge, my human servant and number-one worshipper.”
I stopped. “Ma’am,” I said, which I knew just sounded like a meow to her.
Midge placed the bowl of tuna on a placemat on the floor. “Mommy brought you your evening snack, baby.”
Lula Mae rolled her eyes. “First, you are not my ‘mommy.’ Second, I have told you repeatedly not to call me ‘baby’ in front of my soldiers. Third, I believe I requested shrimp and not tuna for tonight’s snack.”
“Oh, you’re so welcome, baby. Now, Mommy was supposed to be with her friends Ida Belle and Gertie tonight, but I had to cancel.”
Lula Mae perked up at the mention of Ida Belle and Gertie. She looked at me. “Hmmm, do you know anything about this, Merlin?”
“Yes. Your Midge has some medical concern and Fortune is taking her place.”
“I see.”
Midge patted Lula Mae on the head. “Unfortunately, baby, Mommy has a boil on her backside and has to lie down for awhile with a hot compress to draw the poisons out.”
Lula Mae rolled her eyes again. “TMI, Midge, TMI.”
“But I’ll be back later to say goodnight.”
“If you must. Now, dismissed.”
Midge waved to me. “Bye-bye little black kitty.”
I meowed as pleasantly as I could as she exited the room.
“Nice woman,” I told Lula Mae.
“She’s dog poop crazy is what she is. Are you here with news on the catnip?”
But I couldn’t concentrate, distracted for a moment by all the cat structures and toys in her room, my gaze landing on a cat cabin, then next to it a cat teepee, and next to it a jungle gym. It was as if I had died and gone to Petco. “Your scratching posts don’t look like they’ve been used.”
She scowled. “Of course not, I scratch Midge’s sofa downstairs. Why destroy my own furniture? It came all the way from China, for God’s sake. That’s good stuff.”
It made perfect sense, so I nodded.
“Merlin, snap out of it. Do you have news for me?”
I told her about Spoolie’s diversion with Chompers, then gave her the news about the catnip’s grower. She nodded at the name.
“Dill Nolin. I’ve had dealings with his cocker. Damn dog can’t go five steps without peeing on something. Dill lives out near Buffy, along the bayou. Probably where he grows the stuff.”
The snap of a twig outside brought our focus to the window. Plant-debris- and slobber-covered, Spoolie pulled herself up on a branch, her legs wobbly. She took aim for the window and jumped, landing with her front paws in, but her lower body hanging out.
“I… can’t… hold on.”
“We’re coming, Spoolie!”
Lula Mae and I raced to the window. Lula Mae stuck her head out the window and nudged Spoolie’s body upward. I bent down before Spoolie, acting as a bridge, allowing Spoolie to cling on to me with her claws.
Her sharp claws.
“Hurry,” I said, feeling her nails ripping into my skin. Spoolie grunted, then dug deeper into my back and hauled herself up and over me, landing in a heap on the floor.
“Chompers wasn’t as slow as I thought he would be,” she said, hopping on the sofa, panting. But it was the news she delivered next that almost made me toss my Cat Chow. “Buffy is missing.”
I jumped up next to her on the sofa. “What?”
Spoolie nodded. She explained that she got the news out of Chompers while they were tussling in a bed of begonias. She had been inches away from scratching one of his eyes out when he begged for mercy, saying he had information about the missing cats.
“What missing cats?” I yelled into her ear. “And where’s Buffy?”
“Calm down, soldier!” Lula Mae commanded.
I pulled back from Spoolie, but my heart was still racing.
Lula May focused on me, her expression grave. “The past week we’ve noticed a few cats have been missing from the alleys of Sinful,” she said softly. “We thought maybe they had been shut inside their homes by their human caretakers. Chompers says otherwise?” she asked Spoolie.
Spoolie nodded. “He said he saw Buffy a few hours ago, sniffing around some catnip growing near the bayou. One thing led to another and she was rolling around in the stuff. Chompers was going to make his move and take advantage of her catnipped state, but then a man came up, talking sweet-like to her. He grabbed her and said, ‘Looks like I got me another one.’ He said he saw the same thing happen a few days ago to a big orange tabby with long hair.”
“Mr. Whiskers,” Lula Mae said ominously. “I haven’t seen him for days. Dear God,” she said, her one eye growing larger, “something even bigger than catnip is happening. Spoolie, Merlin, we need to round up every available cat for an emergency meeting.”
A stupid meeting wasn’t good enough for me. Not with Buffy’s life on the line. “An emergency meeting my furry butt!”
I leapt for the windowsill.
“Soldier, you have not been dismissed!” Lula Mae shouted.
“I’m going to go get Buffy back. Have fun with your meeting.”
“He’s too hotheaded,” Spoolie said.
“Go back home, Merlin. You stay away from Dill’s house. Is that understood?”
I jumped out of the window and onto the branch of the oak tree outside.
“Look at me, boy,” Lula Mae commanded. Her one eye was a laser shooting straight to my soul. “How many rescue missions have you taken part in, Merlin?”
“That’s not—”
“How many rescue missions?”
“None.”
“Spoolie and I know what we’re doing. Go home. We’ll come for you when we’re ready.”
She dropped on her haunches, stuck her leg straight in the air and began licking herself.
Spoolie shot me a look. “That means—”
“Yeah, she’s done talking. I know. And FYI? I think sticking your leg up in the air and licking your butt is a freaky way to end a meeting. So there.”
I scaled my way down the tree and headed for home. Hoping to God these two old biddies knew what they were doing.
CHAPTER FOUR
Fortune
Ida Belle couldn’t stop pacing. It was midnight and she, Gertie and I had been keeping vigil in the hospital waiting room, hoping for word on Vivvy. It had taken an hour for us to slowly transport Vivvy from the moonshine cabin to the boat, not wanting to cause her leg further damage. The other two women, Sandy and Katherine, were shaken up, but otherwise okay, and were now together at Sandy’s house.
“Would you sit down?” Gertie said. “Your pacing is making me dizzy.”
Though she tried hard to contain it, I could see the rage rolling around inside Ida Belle. I really didn’t want to bring up what should have been obvious, but if she was going to explode at anyone, it might as well be me.
“We need to call Carter.”
She stopped pacing and pointed her shaking finger at me. “No. This is SLS business and we’ll handle it our way.”
“Vivvy was working an illegal still,” Gertie said. “You know Carter, he’ll have to investigate, then he’ll have to arrest her.”
“He could help find out who did it.”
“I already know who did it,” Ida Belle said, clenching her fists. “Stinky Labatte. And he’s going to pay for it. I’m just thinking of all the ways I’m going to stick it to him.”
Ida Belle began pacing again.
“Okay, so tell me why you think it’s Stinky,” I said to Gertie.
“Well, Stinky’s tried to raid our still once before. He’s had this idea in his head that he should be able to make a line of hooch and sell it in Sinful.”
“Shouldn’t he be able to?”
Gertie looked at me as if I had suggested she let Stinky have his way with her. “Absolutely not. Sinful is SLS territory.”
“You realize how that sounds.”
She stared at me blankly.
“I mean, you know, that sounds a little like organized crime. Al Capone, that sort of thing.”
She patted my hand. “You know why we started the SLS?”
“Because the regular mafia wouldn’t let you in?” I meant it as a joke, but her fingers digging into my arm said she wasn’t finding the humor in it.
“To give women a voice. We wouldn’t have been able to run the town all these years if we played by the rules. Rules, by the way, that aren’t meant to benefit women. The proceeds of our cough syrup go to help the female population of Sinful, so if we have to go all Mafioso-like once in a while, so be it. As long as we show good manners while we’re doing it. This is still the South, after all.”
“So, if we find out who did this to Vivvy—”
“When we find out,” she corrected me.
“When we find out who did this to Vivvy, we take care of the perps? Or do we somehow let the law in? I just want to know what I’m dealing with here.”
Up until this point in my involvement with the SLS, I had acted as more of an investigator, helping to expose the bad guys so they could be arrested and put away. I was more than willing to kill someone to defend my friends’ lives, and had done so since I arrived in Sinful, as they had done for me. And I was more than capable of handing out justice; that was my job as a CIA assassin. But I had orders from my government to do so. This was entirely new territory for me.
“We’re not going to ask you to kill someone, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Gertie said, shocked by the insinuation.
Ida Belle stopped pacing, and looked over at us. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”
“She’s just a little excited now,” Gertie said, patting my hand. “She’ll calm down.”
But the look in Gertie’s eyes betrayed her concern.
“Where’s Vivvy?” a voice demanded.
A woman in her fifties, five-foot-two give or take a skinch, raced into the waiting room. A younger woman was close behind, probably her daughter.
“Betty,” Ida Belle said as she reached out to give the woman a hug.
Betty stepped back and stiffened, leaving Ida Belle’s arms dangling in midair.
Ida Belle dropped her arms to her side, a look of confusion on her face. “She’s still in emergency. Looks like she broke her ankle.”
“Who did this to her?”
“She couldn’t say. He was wearing a mask and didn’t talk much.”
“My sister was working your still, wasn’t she?”
“You know, Betty, we don’t really talk about—”
“Don’t give me that,” Betty said. “I know that’s where she went today. She was working your still and got jumped by someone.”
“She was out on SLS business, that I can tell you,” Ida Belle said. “Look, I feel terrible about what happened to her.”
“Not terrible enough,” Betty said.
Gertie stood. “You’re wrong about that, Betty. We both feel awful about what happened to Vivvy.”
“Well, you should. How dare you ask these women to go out and do dangerous things like work a still.”
“Every woman who volunteers with certain… projects knows the risks,” Gertie said. “We never ask anyone to do anything she’s not comfortable with.”
“Like hell you don’t!” She pointed her finger at Ida Belle. “You say jump and these women jump. You don’t care what happens to them. You never have.”
I’d had enough. I stood up. “Hey, lady, you’re out of line.”
Betty’s daughter stepped forward. She had held her tongue with Ida Belle and Gertie, probably out of respect for their age. It didn’t look like she was going to be so kind with me.
“You are going to stay out of this,” she said, pointing her finger at me. “You’re an outsider. Other than being Marge’s great-niece, the only thing we really know about you is that once you arrived, the murder rate went up.”
“And that’s my fault, how?”
Ida Belle held up her hand. “It’s okay. I can understand them being upset. So let’s just agree to disagree, okay? The admitting nurse said Vivvy will have to be kept overnight. It would really be nice when she finally gets settled into her room that we can all be a calming presence for her.”
“She won’t be seeing you. Her family is here now,” Betty said. “So I think it’s time for the three of you to leave.”
* * * * *
The drive back home was quiet, though I had a feeling both Ida Belle’s and Gertie’s brains were filled with inner dialogue and thoughts so loud that speaking would seem a relief. This silence certainly wasn’t working for me. I had questions I needed answers to, and they weren’t doing me any good just bouncing around inside my head.
“Okay, so who benefits with your still out of the picture?”
“Why do you ask?” Ida Belle asked from the backseat of my Jeep.
“I’m trying to formulate a suspect list.”
“There’s
no need for that. I already know who did it.”
“Okay, so you mentioned Stinky Labatte as a potential suspect.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her pursing her lips. “He’s not a potential suspect. He IS the suspect.”
“Okay, then tell me why he’s a suspect. What does he have to gain by wiping out your still and hurting Vivvy?”
Gertie reached over and touched my shoulder. “Let it go.”
“Let it go? No. If we’re thinking about going after Stinky Labatte, I have to know why.”
“We have a history,” Ida Belle said. “Slow down.”
“What?”
“Slow down. There’s a dirt road coming up to your right. You’re going to miss the turn if you don’t slow down.”
I had never experienced this side of Ida Belle before. She was on automatic pilot. I pulled my foot off the gas, slowing to 30 mph. “And why am I turning right?”
“Stinky Labatte always has a poker game going on about now,” Gertie said. “It would be my guess Ida Belle wants to have a word with him.”
Gertie turned in her seat to face Ida Belle. “Are you sure about this?”
“Damn sure. I’m responsible for the ladies of the SLS. I have to make this right.”
“Okay.” Gertie turned back and looked at me. “It’s about a mile up the road.”
“Am I going to need my weapon for this?”
“It depends. Do you want to be the one shooting, or the one getting shot at?” She opened her purse and pulled out her pistol, as well as a flashlight.
Ida Belle had me cut the engine and lights and coast to a stop when we caught sight of a small cabin. Through a picture window I could see a table of men playing poker and drinking some clear liquid out of mason jars.
“There’s a door in the back; we’ll go through there.” Ida Belle quietly opened the car door and slipped outside.
“You’ve been here before?” I asked.
Gertie nodded. “This cabin used to be Ida Belle’s. She sold it to Stinky a few years back.”
I reached for a tool kit under my seat. “We’ll need a lock pick.”
Gertie opened her door. “Don’t bother. Ida Belle kept a set of keys, and Stinky’s too cheap to have changed the locks.”
