Magical Cool Cats Mysteries Boxed Set Vol 1 (Books 1, 2 & 3 & A Christmas Feral)

by Mary Matthews

“Misogyny has a bitter taste, Doll. He has an ugly man’s hatred for pretty women.”

  “Something you’ve never suffered from.”

  “Damn. You’re quick today, Grace.”

  They left Tent City and walked along Orange Avenue to the Ferry Landing. Spreckels’ office building with its beautiful columns always captivated Grace. The Silver Strand Movie House had posters of Charlie Chaplin and Clara Bow in its windows.

  Jack’s Pierce Arrow was waiting at the Ferry Landing. He pulled the car up to an Esso gas station pump.

  “It’s gone up to 25 cents a gallon.” He leaned in the car window.

  “My check will cover it.” Grace winked.

  “Something must link the two of them. The County Health Department will take the food away for testing. Poor Enrico.”

  A rat ran under the car to the tires stacked inside the garage. With the size of the car tire, the rat could make a mansion nest for his family.

  Jack drove the car onto the ferry. They climbed out and watched the sea lions frolicking in the bay. Tatania and Zeus were waiting in the car when the ferry docked in San Diego.

  The drive to the Coroner’s office, made challenging by the lack of traffic signals in San Diego, didn’t faze Jack. He parked in front of the Coroner’s office.

  “Miss, we don’t allow women in here.” The man at the front desk tried to wave Grace away.

  “You do now.” Grace informed him. She walked past him to the Coroner’s examination room.

  “I couldn’t stop her,” Mr. Front Desk said in the doorway.

  “No one can,” Jack said.

  “She’s welcome here. She’s a detective,” the Coroner said.

  “Thank you.” Grace smiled.

  “When Jack told me he was opening an agency with you, I thought he’d moved up in the world. You’re a beautiful woman,” the Coroner replied.

  “Much more alive than the women he usually sees,” Jack said. He caught her hand before she could slap him.

  “What is this? Cat fur?” He looked up from the body.

  Tatania never shed. It looked like Zeus might be shedding.

  “I think it’s good luck to have cat fur on your body when you die,” Jack suggested.

  Tatania knocked a bottle off the counter and disappeared while it was still rolling on the floor.

  The Coroner picked it up.

  “Rat poison. We keep it around. Can’t have rats gnawing at the bodies,” He said.

  “Were the bodies tested for rat poison?”

  “Are they serving it in the Tent City Cafeteria?” The coroner asked.

  “No,” Jack replied.

  Grace’s hand went to her stomach.

  “Don’t they have a problem with rats? I thought all food service areas did. And Coronado has a good water supply. Rats love a good water supply.” He twitched slightly. He’d thought he’d seen a white blur leaving the room and needed to get more sleep before he became hallucinatory. Or stay out of the speakeasies. Or spend more time in the speakeasies and sleep more. That sounded like the best plan. And maybe his wife was right about cups of joe making him jittery.

  “Coronado Tent City has a very special rodent termination program. It goes by the name of Fluffy,” Jack said.

  “I haven’t heard of that brand.”

  “It walks on four legs, jumps buildings in a single leap, and works for fresh fish, back scratching, and adoration.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Tatania meowed.

  “The neighbor identified the woman. Name’s Abby. Forty year old female. Doesn’t look a day over ninety. No known acquaintance of the male. According to the neighbor. She’s an odd one. The man’s sixty. I have a phone number for his son in Beverly Hills.” The Coroner handed a slip of paper to Jack.

  It wasn’t food poisoning. Tatania knew that much from dining at Coronado Tent City Cafeteria often herself. She’d grown fond of the people who served sardines in cream to her. She didn’t want to see them suffer financial losses. That meant she’d have to review the bodies and autopsy findings herself in case the Coroner missed something.

  “What a cute kitty,” the Coroner cooed to Zeus. While he petted Zeus, Tatania read through the Coroner’s notes. She smelled a rat.

  The Coroner pulled out his pocket watch.

  “I need to call my stockbroker in Manhattan before he goes home. I’ll be right back.” The Coroner walked out of the room.

  Tatania sniffed both bodies. With Abby, she kept a distance around the perimeter that allowed her to pick up any scent without touching the body. She was repulsed by the creature. Bad human. She could tell when a human hadn’t treated animals right. A dead woman, without a soul, Tatania envisioned her stealing food from stray dogs.

  With Luke, she was gentle, even nuzzling the body carefully. Sweet human. She imagined him in heaven where the good humans went. Nothing about him repulsed her, not even the distention and maladorous scent that emanated from him. She could see that kindness had always defined him. She could smell bitterness on a human. He didn’t have it in him. She should have known him. She could have cheered him up. He should have had a cat. Life was always better with cats. Humans with cats wanted to stick around.

  Zeus slid on the metal floor. Tatania jumped down and blocked him from hitting a wall.

  Be careful, she let him know, our claws don’t have traction on this surface. She couldn’t get angry with him. He was just too cute. She thought cat cute power worked only with humans until Zeus turned it on her. The cuteness, wielded effectively could help her, as Zeus could always be counted on to serve as a human attention magnet.

  Zeus bounded on top of Luke’s body. He marked Luke with his scent by brushing against his cheek. He viewed Abby with distaste. Even after death, animal abusers could be identified by the magical cats.

  Tatania kicked the bottle of rat poison again. When the Coroner walked back in the room, she lifted her rear end up in greeting.

  “My wife started feeding stray cats a few years ago,” the Coroner said, “you can’t get mad at them. The tyranny of the adorable.”

  Someone rapped at the window.

  “That’s the neighbor. Name’s Mabel,” the Coroner whispered. He waved her inside. Jack and Grace introduced themselves.

  “Do you want to come see Abby’s house? I was her neighbor. I’d love to show you.” She smiled like a realtor speaking to prospective buyers instead of a bereaved neighbor speaking to detectives.

  “Would you like a ride back to the ferry?” Jack asked.

  She rubbed her hands together.

  “Is that your Pierce Arrow? I sure would.”

  They thanked the Coroner and walked past the scowling front desk clerk.

  Chapter Eight

  Tatania knew she’d have to inspect Abby’s house again. She kept thinking about something she’d seen in the Coroner’s notes. She and Zeus got in the Pierce Arrow. She meowed at the humans to hurry.

  Mabel talked incessantly.

  “Abby collected trash everywhere. She collected thousands of empty Charleston Chew candy wrappers.”

  “Why?” Grace asked.

  “She always said there’s a reason. She never told me the reason. She had millions she didn’t want anyone to know about. She wanted people to think she was poor. She was greedy.” Mabel talked without even pausing to take a breath all the way back to Coronado. She had the lung capacity of a deep sea diver.

  “Confucius said that greed and old age are the sublimation of lust and youth. She had millions and lived on the scraps of others. She didn’t want to spend her money. It was a game,” Jack said.

  At the Ferry Landing, they picked up a newer copy of The San Diego Union. The headline screamed: WILL CORONADO TENT CITY SERVE YOUR LAST SUPPER?

  Tatania scratched the newspaper in disapproval.

  With Tatania leading the way, they went to inspect Abby’s house. Zeus jumped up to reach a butterfly on the path. The butterfly kissed Zeus’s nose and went on its way
.

  Abby’s place still looked like a cozy Craftsman home albeit a dusty one. Leaves that may have blown across the large porch months ago crackled under their feet. A porch swing, waiting to be hung, sat on the porch, magazines weighing it down.

  Grace lifted up a copy of Modern Priscilla. A cluster of cockroaches began moving in every direction. “Ewww,” Grace took two steps backwards, while Zeus and Tatania jumped down to the lawn, chasing the bugs.

  “You disrupted their home. Not the other way around,” Jack said.

  “Sure. And it looks like they’ve lived here a very long time.” Grace watched Zeus, ever the hedonist, take the time to roll around in the grass. It looked rarely mowed but often watered.

  “Someone takes care of the landscaping here,” Jack said.

  “I took care of the landscaping. Come inside. Abby would have loved the company.” Mabel put a key in the lock and opened the door.

  Then she rifled through an open chest drawer. “Look at all the salt and pepper shakers. She stole them from the Tent City Cafeteria.” Mabel pointed to the drawer’s contents — amidst the salt and pepper shakers, more mustard and catsup bottles than one person could use in a lifetime rattled.

  Tatania looked at the woman. Odd response to her neighbor’s death to say the least. Acting like it’s an impromptu party, the woman asked Jack and Grace if they wanted anything from Abby’s kitchen.

  “No!” They said in unison.

  “Do you want to see where Abby’s dogs died?” Mabel asked next.

  “Dogs?”

  “They all died by the pool. You should come outside with me. When she began drinking a lot, she’d teeter around the pool, walking the dogs on leashes, and wouldn’t notice when the dogs fell in the pool and drowned.”

  “I hate her,” Grace whispered to Jack.

  “I do too. She’d better be in hell.” Jack put a hand on Grace’s back.

  They coughed at the mustiness. At first glance, the interior looked like a walk in trash dumpster. Remnants of scraps, food, paper, and assorted car parts lay strewn around the room. Perhaps, in an effort at order, some of the heaps had been put in stacks resembling a kind of maze.

  Zeus lept up one of one of the heaps. A collection of whiskey bottles fell down, prompting an impromptu dance by Grace, Jack, and the neighbor. Tatania flew away.

  Zeus looked a little sheepish. Grace picked him up. “Little angel, you must be careful, we couldn’t live without you.”

  “She used to look like a rat walking through here,” Mabel said gleefully.

  “How long were you neighbors?” Jack asked.

  “For years. I picked up whiskey for her everyday. Whiskey and cigarettes were the only things she spent money on. The dogs were fed scraps from the trash.”

  Jack recalled the Coroner’s office. Even dead, the woman reeked of booze. She had enough alcohol in her to put her in a coma. He shook his head. She was a forty year old with the body of a seventy year old. That wouldn’t get you far in Southern California.

  Tatania remembered another odd detail in the Coroner’s notes. It appeared Abby had only half a heart. That explained a lot.

  Grace carried Zeus outside to the fresh air. She put the adorable tomcat down gently on the grass and her wrist purse slipped off.

  “Keep your purse on your wrist. And me on your little finger. And you’ll be fine,” Jack whispered.

  Zeus climbed an orange tree and knocked oranges down for all of them. With Zeus, everyday felt like Christmas.

  “She wanted to be cremated. And her ashes spread around the Cypress tree in the front yard. She was too cheap to pay the water bill. I watered her landscaping. She would cry that she was too poor to pay the water bill. I think she’s several years past due now,” Mabel said loudly.

  Grace and Jack looked at each other.

  “Where is her family?”

  “She has a cousin in New York. She’s not in the will. I’m the beneficiary. And the executor.” The neighbor pulled a paper out from her bra.

  Neither Jack nor Grace moved forward to touch it. Grace looked at Jack. Reluctantly, he moved and looked at the paper.

  “She bequeaths all her property to Mabel Cabbell. Let me guess — your last name is Cabbell.” Jack watched Tatania move around her legs without brushing against them.

  “Yes. And the money from her bank accounts goes directly to me. I got her to put my name on all the accounts as joint account holder. She had millions socked away,” Mabel said proudly.

  Zeus knocked a few more oranges down. Tatania went up the tree like a mom about to reprimand an errant child.

  “What do you do when you’re not watering the landscaping here?” Grace asked.

  “I offer dinners to veterans from my home. Two dollars for dinner,” Mabel said.

  The orange tree seemed out of place in the backyard. Fresh, fragrant, and healthy, it was a discordant note in the weed ridden backyard with the murky swimming pool water.

  “When did she stop cleaning the pool?” Jack asked.

  “She stopped paying the pool man. So he stopped showing up. I’d come over and scoop leaves out of the pool sometimes.”

  Jack stared at Mabel’s dress. It was a pretty white satin. Tatania could smell a recent perm in her hair from up in the tree. Carefully applied make up. Everything about her suggested someone trying to look pretty who couldn’t quite get there.

  “I started inviting her to come to dinner for free. I didn’t know what she was eating. She’d come home with scraps wrapped in newspapers. I could see her unwrapping the newspapers but I couldn’t tell what she was eating. I shouldn’t have worried. Coronado has good trash,” she said.

  “Grace wouldn’t know that. She never takes it out,” Jack said.

  Mabel seemed befuddled.

  “Do we need reservations for dinner for two?” Jack asked.

  Grace felt nauseated.

  “Tonight. I’m making lamb. Please come.” She beamed at Jack.

  “We’ll be there,” Jack winked at Grace who was shaking her head.

  “We can’t tonight, Darling. I think we have plans.”

  “We’ll make it work.” Jack smiled at Mabel.

  A car honked incessantly on the street.

  “Maybe someone else wants to see where Abby lived.” Mabel ran quickly through the house.

  “She’s like a bride at her wedding. It’s like she’s been waiting her whole life for this moment. Jack, I am not going to eat lamb at her house. We’re being lead to slaughter. She must have killed her for the money.”

  “We need more information.” Jack reminded her.

  Grace chose fresh air over going through the house again and walked around to the unhinged front gate.

  “It’s typical of a scheme to gain the confidence of a moneyed miser. Offer her something for free, like dinner and watering service because she’s too cheap to pay a gardener, and getting increasingly lazy. And then, the next thing you know, the predator is in the will. I’d guess the neighbor was older than Abby. Abby had to die first for her to win.”

  “Then why are we going to a murderer’s house for dinner, Jack?”

  “Don’t worry. I have a plan. Trust me?”

  “Jack, we can’t eat dinner there. What if she’s poisoning people?” Grace’s hand went to her heart. She looked at Tatania and Zeus. She couldn’t bear to think of them alone in the world.

  “You just keep pushing food around your plate. Pretend like your eating. You know how to do that. They must teach it at Finishing School. And then we’ll carry away some portions for testing. I want to see if she’s showing a propensity to poisoning. Sometimes people do it slowly. Let levels build up.” He looked over her head at the window of the General Store they were passing. Live rats were displayed with an ad for rat poison.

  Zeus and Tatania made clicking noises in their throats, indicating they were considering a kill, eyeing the rats. The cats could strike more quickly than a snake. Yet unlike the snake, their inherent adorabl
eness ensured someone, somewhere, would offer fresh fish later. And maybe cream from an afternoon tea at the Hotel del Coronado. They could let the rats live another day.

  The rats relaxed when Zeus and Tatania walked past them. Jack and Grace didn’t look threatening to them. Their intense faces made Grace queasy.

  “Do you want to take a nap before dinner?” Jack asked.

  “I never seem to get any sleep when I take a nap with you, Jack”, she replied.

  “You never regret it.” He lightly touched her bobbed hair.

  Grace shut her eyes and smiled. “Bees Knees.”

  Chapter Nine

  In Grace’s room, Jack picked up and put down her phone. He stared at the phone number for Luke’s son.

  “It’s a Beverly Hills phone number. Why didn’t the son and daughter in law just invite him to their place instead of asking him to meet them at The Beverly Hills Hotel?” Jack stalled for time. He didn’t really want to call them.

  “You know what Beverly Hills is like, Jack. A bit on the snobbish side. When babies are born, doctors tell them, we don’t like strangers in these parts.”

  Jack laughed and dialed.

  “I’m looking for Thomas.” Jack announced.

  “Why?” Helga the Horrible, Luke’s daughter in law, spoke with a voice that resonated like a squeaky chalkboard. Jack thought being in the trenches of the Great War would be preferable to being in bed with her.

  “His father died.” Jack took a deep breath.

  “Will we get money for that?” Helga the Horrible asked.

  Grace fidgeted, wanting to hear what Helga the Horrible was saying while Jack held the cone shaped earpiece against his ear, and spoke into the round mouth piece at the top of the candle stick style phone.

  “Maybe. If you can get hired as a grave digger in San Diego.” Jack drew a picture of a beast on Hotel del Coronado stationery and showed it to Grace. Tatania jumped on Jack’s shoulder and tension flowed out of his body.

  “You can’t talk to me like that. I’ll tell my husband.” Jack held the phone earpiece a few inches away from his head so they could both hear her yell.

  “Tom, this man’s telling me to dig a grave for your father. Get over here.”