Fear on Four Paws

by Clea Simon

  We wouldn’t find the body for another day.

  Chapter Two

  Since Frank had retreated—asleep, I figured, after what must have been a tense day—I focused my queries on Albert.

  “Tell me about the bear.” I didn’t look at my passenger as the trees flew by. Didn’t need to. I could feel him clench up in the seat beside me, and since I was on a straightaway back toward town, the curves of the state road evening out as we drove through the valley, I knew it was in response to my query.

  “The bear?” He paused, and for a moment I thought he was going to deny any involvement. Never mind that he was found snoring yards away from the prone animal. “It’s my job,” he stuttered after the pause became too obvious. “It was a—whatchamacallit?—a nuisance.”

  “A nuisance animal? Hardly.” I may not work for the town in any official capacity, but between Albert’s indolence and my, shall we call it, sensitivity, I end up handling a lot of Beauville’s animal issues. Some of that is purely mercenary. Although I inherited my mother’s house free and clear, I still have to pay taxes on the huge old wreck, which had been built back in the days when Beauville’s mills had translated to prosperity and families were larger. And bourbon alone isn’t enough to keep me warm under those ten-foot ceilings when the winter snows cover the Berkshires.

  Some of what drives me, as Albert well knew, is preference. Animals like that bear—or the misunderstood pets who make up most of my practice—have more of my sympathy than does the average Beauville native. With reason: none of them can lie any better than Albert can, but unlike my portly colleague, the cats and puppies and canaries of our beaten-down little town don’t even try to deceive me.

  “I read the same notices you do,” I lied. I did keep up on the alerts from the state police, reports on errant wildlife with the temerity to encroach on human habitation. I also knew Albert rarely noticed them, nor the more mundane notices—the ones to do with license renewals and the like. Well, not unless he needed one of the fliers to sop up spilled coffee. “There’s been nothing about a problem bear.”

  “Just came in,” he said, with a burp. I turned my gaze from the road to eye him with suspicion. I really didn’t want him sicking up in my car. He hadn’t turned green, though, so I figured it was safe to continue.

  “Who were you hanging out with—today, that is, at the camp?”

  “No one.” He sounded sullen as a teen. I risked another glance—a hard-eyed stare this time. “Only Paul. He must have taken my keys.”

  I let that one go. Paul Lanouette didn’t seem like a prankster. Leaner than Albert and nominally more intelligent, he was also more ambitious. I thought back to the man I’d known since high school and had avoided even then. Tall and rakishly handsome, at least before the drinking began to show, Paul was an operator, always looking for an edge. Something he could turn to his advantage, a trait I hadn’t seen him outgrow, whether he was plying it on one of Beauville’s less-perceptive women or in the series of odd jobs—contracting, painting, what-have-you—that he was always hustling, with that crooked grin and the light-brown hair he let go unfashionably long. The bear wasn’t particularly pretty, but Paul might have been behind the illegal trapping, if he’d seen some score in it. Anger, as much as a desire to get my fragrant colleague out of my ride, made my foot grow heavy.

  “What were you going to do with it?” If Albert noticed that I’d ignored his denial, he didn’t let on. At the best of times, Albert wasn’t the sharpest tool in the woodshed, and as I neared town, I pushed into a final burst of speed that had him wide-eyed and gasping.

  “Nothing.” Another hiccup. “Pru? Could you…?” I squealed to a halt and let my passenger tumble out, gagging, to the pavement. We’d reached Albert’s putative workplace, and I’d gotten all I could out of him. Putting my baby blue GTO into park, I debated going into the modern brick building myself, while Albert was still on all fours in the small lot. I might not have an actual position there, but I had my own set of keys for those mornings when Albert was “delayed.” There were reasons I didn’t want to set foot in that building, however.

  “You going to clean that up?” The main reason stepped out of the foyer—Detective Jim Creighton, senior man at our little town’s cop shop, whose precinct shared an entrance with the animal control office. With that sun-bleached buzz cut and the jawline of a comic book hero, he might look like a boy scout, but he and I had a history.

  “He’s not my pet.” We both paused to watch as Albert finished up, staggering to his feet and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “And that’s no furball.”

  “Albert, get a bucket.” Creighton sounded tired, but the note of command was hard to ignore. “Clean that up.”

  “Yeah.” Albert glanced from the officer to me. If he expected me to speak up for him, he was mistaken. “Sorry.”

  “You went out about that bear?”

  I nodded. I respect protocol, at least where animal safety is concerned. Before I’d called Greg, I’d left a message for Creighton. If any charges were going to be levied, they would probably go through him. Not that I felt good about that. The handsome cop was working too many hours these days—Beauville was changing, but his budget wasn’t—and I knew his resources were stretched thin. Still, if Paul Lanouette had fled the scene, leaving Albert and the animal there as some idea of a prank, I’d push for endangerment—of the bear, not Albert.

  “It was a young male,” I filled Creighton in. “Drugged but otherwise apparently unharmed. Greg’s bringing him to wildlife rehab to make sure.”

  Creighton nodded, but from the tilt of his sandy head, it was clear he had another question queued up. I turned away, hoping to ignore it—and Albert—but he didn’t hold back long. “And he didn’t tell you anything?”

  Now it was my turn to pause. Creighton didn’t mean the chubby town official, who was in the process of throwing as much water on himself as on the soiled pavement. He was smart enough to know that I knew that too.

  “We’re talking about a bear, Jim.” My non-answer drew a silence that spoke volumes. Creighton knew more about me than was comfortable. About my sensitivity, in particular: a gift that I was still working to understand myself.

  If I had to explain it, I’d say I could hear what animals are thinking. They don’t talk to me, per se—well, most of them, anyway—and they don’t necessarily think along the lines that you or I would, or, at least, they don’t share the so-called social graces. But for the past two years almost, thanks to a bout of fever and, perhaps, some neural damage done during the wild nights of my former life, I’ve been able to pick up on signals from the creatures around us that most humans can’t. It’s the nuts and bolts of food and safety, family and survival, mostly. Instinctive reactions, that I hear as words voiced inside my head.

  Sometimes, I get their take on us—unvarnished and usually not very flattering—and sometimes what they notice helps me see the world in a new way. That wasn’t the case with the young bear, though. For starters, he was out cold, in a dreamless deep slumber. Besides, as I’d implied to Creighton, even at the best of times, I have trouble getting anything from truly wild animals—you don’t need any special gift to understand that they are often confused, if not afraid, around us.

  In terms of communication with this other male, I was grateful to be able to answer somewhat honestly. Jim Creighton may not be an animal whisperer, but he has an uncanny ability to read me.

  “Anyway, I’m glad I caught you.” I breathed a little easier, as Creighton seemed ready to leave that dangerous topic and move on. There was no way I could explain what I did, and questions could only lead to trouble. “A lady called about her lost cat.”

  I nodded, waiting for details. That Creighton would field such a call wasn’t that strange. Beauville is a small town, and when Albert isn’t answering his phone the message directs callers to reach out to the police for any animal eme
rgencies. One of the reasons the tall, lean man in front of me looked so tired.

  “Maybe you can help her out.” He handed me a Post-it note with an address scrawled on it. “Or maybe you’ll want to hand this one off to Wallis.”

  I glanced up sharply at that, but my sometime-beau was grinning. He seemed to know that I did, in fact, often confer with Wallis, the tabby who shared my big old house.

  “You don’t know Wallis very well if you think she’d want me looking for another cat.” I turned it into a joke, glad to be able to lighten his mood as well as his workload. “But I’ll leave Albert here with you. He’s lost his car keys, apparently. I’m pretty sure Lou at the garage has a copy, if they don’t ‘turn up.’” I made air quotes around those last two words. Creighton shared my opinion of the slovenly mess of an official, who now stood staring at the particularly un-distinguished puddle he’d made. “He was hanging with Paul Lanouette, though, so maybe Paul will ride to the rescue.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” He turned toward our erstwhile colleague. “You go find that kitty.”

  Chapter Three

  Out of consideration for Creighton, I didn’t peel out of the parking lot. He wouldn’t ticket me, but I knew he’d had complaints. I did floor it once I was out of sight, however. Creighton might have made a joke of it, but a lost cat is a serious thing. Most domestic animals trade off something for the right to loll about the house, and felines are no exception. Yes, your kitty might daydream about hunting those robins nesting on the porch, but the reality is she or he is just as likely to be scoped out—and scooped up—by any of a half—dozen predators native to our area. Coyotes, fishers…even some of the larger raptors can make fast work of a pampered puss, and since we’ve brought ’em indoors, it’s our responsibility to keep them safe.

  Besides, the neighborhood I was heading toward—Pine Hills, a rather obvious name—had its own issues. Although it was adjacent to one of the older parts of Beauville —situated on the other side of a rock formation that had served as a barrier to the original settlers—it might as well be a different town. All new construction, in an area that had still been woods when I was growing up, the development was separated by more than just the cobble, as the big stone outcropping was called, or the patch of forest around it, which the developers had left intact—and which I now drove around. McMansions, the sprawling homes of Pine Hills would be called anywhere else, with garages as big as the ranches less than a mile away and manicured lawns instead of the meadows that were coming into bloom. Not that all the houses here were that much bigger than my mother’s rambling three-story, I saw as I slowed onto the new blacktop. But my tumbledown Victorian had some history—dating from when Beauville had an industry that wasn’t seasonal. Pine Hills, however, had no real connection to the area—not the sad little river that had once powered the mill or even the conifers and birches that gave the area its name. Anyone who lived there had likely moved in the last year, or—more likely, I realized as I let centrifugal force take me round a turn—was renting for the summer. And that meant any pet was new to the territory, too.

  Creighton’s joshing aside, Wallis would have a heyday with this. Yes, in the dishy cop’s terms, I “let” Wallis out. Once I was able to communicate with my feline cohabitant, I no longer felt comfortable dictating the terms of her life. But she and I had both lived in the city before coming here. Plus, we had spoken often of the risks and rewards of her roaming free. In truth, I believe my tabby was smart enough to stay indoors mostly, contenting herself with sunning on the porch. With cats, so much is about appearances.

  Helen Birman’s showed just how distressed she was. I’d pulled up to the silvered clapboard—at least her house had been built in a traditional New England style—half expecting to have to explain. Some owners call to their pets to come in, and if they don’t, feel they’ve done all they could. The elderly woman in the blue cardigan who greeted me anxiously wasn’t one of those. Red-eyed and clutching a handkerchief as if it were a security blanket, she looked so distressed that I feared that “poor Marmalade” had already come to harm. But no, she explained, as she pulled me inside a sitting room that brought up nightmares of Laura Ashley, the orange tabby—a lifelong house pet, as I’d expected—had simply disappeared. It wasn’t until Ms. Birman realized that a window screen had come loose that she’d figured out what had happened.

  “I called and called.” Her voice caught from the tears. “I’ve walked all over. My companion, Tillie Gershon, is making up signs for me.”

  She held out the prototype: the photo showed a chubby cat with a rather smug expression on her face, as well upholstered as the small sofa where we sat. “Reward,” read the text, above a phone number that—yes—had the area code of the city.

  “Do you think people will call?” She must have picked up on my raised brows. Given her age, I suspected the appellation meant the industrious Tillie was a paid assistant, and I wondered at an aide who would leave such a dear old thing alone. “I hate to think that because I’m not local…”

  “It’s fine.” I conjured up a smile for her. I’ve met mice that were less timid, and the woman perched on the sofa beside me was in real psychic pain. I didn’t want to add to it by suggesting that many in town wouldn’t want to spend the money on a toll call—or that they might resent the newcomers. I had a hard enough time straddling that line, and I’d only been away a few years. “You do know that most house cats that find themselves outside simply hide until they’re found?”

  “But I called for her.” Stress won out over logic as she kneaded the handkerchief. “I did, and she always comes when I call!”

  “She’s probably scared and disoriented. There’s a lot more outdoors here than she’s used to.” Fear can make the most sensible among us panic, and a large part of my job was to translate. In this case, not only from pet to person, but also from urbanite to Beauville, as few others in this town could. Feeling for her, I made a snap decision. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you wait here by the phone, and I’ll go look? If I can’t find her right away, I can put down some traps. They’re completely safe, humane traps,” I rushed to reassure her as she started. “We’ll put some of her favorite food in, and maybe we’ll get her when she gets hungry.”

  More likely, we’d end up with a couple of confused raccoons. This wasn’t the city or even suburbia, but the plan was still worth a shot.

  “I called her name.” She wasn’t hearing me. Either that, or my original impression of her as an intelligent, competent adult was very off.

  I patted her hand like I would smooth the coat of any frightened animal, and she grabbed onto it as if it were her missing pet, her cool, smooth fingers closing anxiously around mine. Her distress was real. I was more concerned about Marmalade, however, and so I extracted my digits and backed out of the paisley den.

  “Marmalade,” I called aloud. I could almost feel Ms. Birman’s pale eyes on me as I made my way around the side of the little house. “Marmalade!”

  I was heading for the window where the orange cat had last been seen but I took a roundabout route, wanting to distract the distraught woman. I was also hoping to pick up some stray signs of the cat’s passing, if not the kitty herself. “Marmalade?”

  No luck. And once I reached the window, I stood, back against the wall, trying to open my mind. As I’ve explained, animals don’t usually speak directly to me—none but Wallis, anyway—but I can often pick up what they’re feeling. Fear, hunger—these were what I was searching for, the other usual motivators, like lust and the drive to protect a family, having been largely ruled out by Marmalade’s status as a spayed, older female. Not that we ever really give those over, but on balance, a warm, safe home and steady meals likely took precedence for the missing feline.

  It would help, I knew, if I had the orange cat’s real name. “Marmalade?” I tried to picture the old lady’s lined and worried face, hoping that loyalty, if not af
fection, would evoke a response. I could understand some resentment: cats are dignified creatures, and being named for fruit preserves would make that hard to maintain. But seeing as how a plump older house cat was basically a marshmallow snack waiting to happen out here, I thought maybe the feline would make an exception. The transition from city to country is hard for people, but at some level the cat would’ve figured this much out. “Kitty?”

  Bingo—I got a hit. A sense of confusion, topped with curiosity about a stranger—me, apparently—in the area. Marmalade didn’t get to meet many people these days, I gathered. Still, I found it intriguing that the cat could pick up my signals as well as I could hers.

  “You around here? What happened?”

  A flash of panic, as I made the connection. I was lost, consumed by the terror. Fear on four paws, I felt my chest tighten. My breathing quickened to a pant as I desperately sought a way to retreat, to back further into my little sanctuary. My safe space, here, in the dark…

  Of course. I rounded the corner to the back of the house and saw the brush at the edge of the property rustle. Could have been a squirrel or even the wind, but I could sense the wild out here—and apparently Marmalade could too. I turned back toward the house, where a silver-gray lean-to nestled up against one wall. Sure enough, when I peeked behind the trash enclosure, I saw two green eyes staring up at me. How a twenty-pound feline managed to squeeze into the space between the covered attachment and the wall was beyond me, but as I squatted to face her, I did my best to convey my intent. I pictured the sofa with its overstuffed cushions. The nice old lady, her veined hands wringing the handkerchief. The cozy blue cardigan. When that didn’t give me anything, I visualized the cat treats that Wallis indulged in.

  “Reina.” The word popped into my head.

  “Reina?” I said the name out loud, softly, and extended my hand. She reached out gingerly to sniff. “Are you ready to go home?”