Kiki Lowenstein Books 1-3 & Cara Mia Delgatto Books 1-3: The Perfect Series for Crafters, Pet Lovers, and Readers Who Like Upbeat Books!

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  Clancy and I did as we were told. In a few minutes, Hadcho came back with a box fan that he’d found stuffed in a closet. He pulled the sash up higher and stuck the box fan against the window screen. When he hit the switch, it roared to life.

  “Ah,” I said, as the breeze danced over my sweaty skin.

  While Clancy and I answered Hadcho’s questions, we watched the Animal Control officers round up kitties. On the reluctant ones, they used a catchpole. At first, most of the cats ran away. Watching the officers scurry around, I worried that they might knock over some of the piles of newspapers. Hadcho must have come to the same conclusion. His face glowered at the sight of the uniformed officers darting around the stacks of newspapers.

  “You’ve got to find another way,” Hadcho said. “You can’t be chasing these animals around. It’s not safe.”

  “They look to me like they’re starving. Got any cat food?” I asked the Animal Control officer.

  She opened a can of Little Friskies and stuck it in a big carrier.

  In two seconds flat, she had a dozen cats fighting to climb aboard.

  “Those poor animals.” Clancy watched in horror. She isn’t an animal lover like I am. That means, she’s not nutty about critters. She’s a good person. Kind and loving. She would never hurt an animal. She’s just not too keen on dealing with the mess of owning one.

  “I bet all these cats are dehydrated.” I reached over, lightly pulled up the scruff of the neck of a tabby passing by. The fur stayed in an upright, tented position. “Yep. Definitely dehydrated. I’ll just go into the kitchen and—”

  “You will do no such thing. Sit. Stay.” Hadcho frowned at me. “I need a report from both of you. I can’t have you running around in this mess. What if one of these piles of papers comes down on you?”

  As I scanned the walls of paper around us, a trickle of moisture inched its way between my boobs.

  “Coming through.” A couple of EMTs shuffled by, using their feet to sweep felines out of their way. They carried Marla on a stretcher, maneuvering their burden through the floor-to-ceiling stacks of newspapers. A third EMT followed, carrying a bag of saline and a tank of oxygen attached to our ailing friend.

  Ignoring Hadcho’s shouts to sit down, I tried to keep the animals from getting underfoot, but the cats were faster than I. More wily, too. Two of them made a beeline for the front door. I grabbed a piece of cardstock and used it as a makeshift gate to hold them back.

  I was partially successful. Only one cat escaped. But the thundering herd of kitty paws had definitely gotten Hadcho’s attention. He and Clancy both were trying to round up the escapees.

  By my best guesstimate, there were at least one hundred and one felines. After the techs got by, I ran out to grab the cat who’d run past me and out the door, but it raced under Hadcho’s car. I tried to grab the yellow longhair, but it was skittish. After a couple of attempts to coax it toward me, I gave up. Animal Control would have to lure the cat into a cage.

  “That bites,” said Hadcho, as he stood at my elbow. He watched the techs struggle to load Marla into the bus. “There wasn’t even enough of a pathway through the house for them to use the gurney. Good thing she doesn’t weigh much.”

  “Think she’ll make it?”

  “Who knows?” Hadcho shrugged. “She wouldn’t have a chance if you two hadn’t shown up. That’s one lucky scrapbooker.”

  “Or one unlucky scrapbooker.” The revolving red lights of the ambulance bounced off the glass window in Marla’s front door.

  “Okay,” Hadcho grunted. “Let’s go over what happened one more time. Take it from the top.”

  8

  “How come you’re here and not at your store?” Hadcho asked.

  “Rebekkah.” Clancy and I spoke like a Greek chorus.

  “Pardon? Is there someone else here?”

  “Nope. She’s back at the scrapbook store.” I hitched my thumb in the general direction of Time in a Bottle. “See, she’s Dodie Goldfader’s daughter and she’s been running the business.”

  “That’s exactly the problem,” said Clancy. “Rebekkah shouldn’t be running the shop. She doesn’t have any experience. But Dodie is the owner, and Rebekkah is her child. We’re all dancing hava negila to her klezmer band.”

  “Anyway, Rebekkah came up with this idea to establish community,” I explained. “She decided we should sponsor a series of roving scrapbook crops. A crop is basically a scrapbook party. Rebekkah thought we should go from one customer’s house to the next. I’ve been telling Dodie it’s a bad idea. It puts too much pressure on people.”

  “This Mrs. Lever was one of your customers, and you planned to have one of these parties here? That would have been some picnic.”

  “I had no idea this place was such a mess. You’d never guess it from the address, would you? Marla Lever is a very nice person. Very sweet. She sort of wandered in one day. Then she brought pictures of her cats and wanted to make an album. Next thing I know, Rebekkah says Marla should be our hostess one week.”

  Hadcho snorted with laughter.

  “It gets worse. Rebekkah insisted that Marla should have the other scrapbookers come here. Marla was panicked by the idea, but Rebekkah—”

  “We’ve been saying ‘but Rebekkah’ a lot lately,” Clancy interrupted me.

  “But Rebekkah wouldn’t let it go. Even when Marla said it wouldn’t work for her. Rebekkah kept hounding the poor woman. Finally, Marla said yes. She said that she’d been meaning to tidy up, and this would give her a good excuse.”

  “Evidently not enough of one,” muttered Clancy.

  “Since Marla said she needed to tidy up, and because she seemed so reluctant to have the crop here, I suggested that Clancy and I could come early. I figured we could do a quickie cleaning job or help get things ready. I talked to Marla yesterday; she knew what time we were coming. In fact, she said she was trying to get someone to mow her lawn. As you can see that didn’t happen.”

  “Mowing won’t cut it.” He snickered at his own pun. “Someone needs to spray everything with RoundUp, kill it, and start over.”

  “As soon as I saw the place, my gut told me there was a problem,” I said.

  “No kidding?” Hadcho grinned. “What was your first clue, Sherlock?”

  I ignored him and kept on talking. “I called Rebekkah while we were sitting in Clancy’s car. Of course, she told me she didn’t have time to listen to my whining.” I did not add that Rebekkah never listened to any of us about anything. She pretty much did as she pleased.

  “Kiki’s been complaining—” Clancy started.

  “Not complaining. Just protesting. Want to make that perfectly clear.”

  “Protesting, complaining, whatever. Kiki’s been telling our boss to re-think this. In fact, Kiki’s been worried about Rebekkah’s attitude for months.” Clancy ended her tirade with a tiny huff of disapproval.

  “No joke?” Detective Stan Hadcho pointed his pen at me. “Listen up, Mrs. Lowenstein. Next time you get that ucky feeling, do not pass go. Turn around. Hop in the car. Drive off into the sunset. Got it?”

  “What difference does it make?” I shrugged. “Sooner or later somebody had to stumble in on this mess.”

  “Next time let someone else do the stumbling. Preferably someone with a background in law enforcement. You steer clear of messes.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Do you realize how lucky you two were that she’s out of it? Mrs. Lever, I mean,” Hadcho said. “Things could have been worse for you. Both of you. A lot worse.”

  9

  “Excuse me?” I had no idea what he meant. Clancy looked puzzled, too.

  “This woman is clearly emotionally disturbed,” said Hadcho. “Might even have a touch of dementia. Plus she’s a hoarder, and what she’s doing here breaks the law.”

  An Animal Control officer dressed in dark brown pants and a neatly pressed khaki shirt waved to Hadcho. “The van’s full. We’re taking these to the shelter. Another van is
on the way.”

  “Marla’s in trouble?” I didn’t want that. I was just trying to help. “These cats are her life. You should see the cute album I helped her make with photos of them.”

  “That’s right,” said Clancy. “It’s the cat’s meow.”

  We all groaned.

  “The St. Louis County Ordinance allows homeowners to have five pets,” Hadcho said. “Four of any one species. These cats have to go. Once Animal Control gets them all in carriers, they’ll take every one of them to the animal shelter. We are lucky, in a way, that Mrs. Lever is out of it. Hoarders do not like seeing their pets taken away. They get militant. Your friend is likely to become un-glued.” He laughed and elbowed me. “Get it? A scrapbooker coming unglued?”

  That wasn’t funny. Not to me.

  “Sometimes they go from unglued to violent.” Hadcho snapped his fingers. “Like that.”

  “But they’ll take good care of the cats at the animal shelter. They’ll find them homes, right? It’s a no-kill shelter, so they have to.” Even as I said it, I knew better. I felt sick, not sick-at-my-stomach sick like Clancy had been. Sick-at-my-heart sick.

  “No, they’ll probably put a quarter of them down.”

  “Put them down? What? Why?”

  “Most of them are beyond help. I doubt any of them are up to date on their vaccinations. See that one, over there in the corner? Notice how he’s so lethargic? Doesn’t even notice his pals being all stirred up. I bet he has feline distemper virus. If one has it, they all probably do. These cats have been sick a long time. See how scrawny that one is? And that one? His eyes are matted shut? And that big black cat in the corner? Notice how dull his coat is? That’s one sign of feline leukemia. The vet at the shelter will check them over, but I can tell you from experience that a good number of them will be euthanized,” Hadcho said while watching me to see if the horror had hit me.

  “That’s…awful.”

  “It’s inhumane. Your pal will probably go bonkers when she finds out what happened. You are lucky she was out like a light.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s me. I’m really, really lucky.”

  10

  “Rebekkah?” I held my phone to my ear as I stared out the window into the backyards of neighboring houses. Nice houses. Houses with normal numbers of pets, like two. Upper limit, three. “I need you to call everyone who said she was coming to the crop at Marla Lever’s place in Ladue. Tell all our guests the event has been cancelled. Hello? Rebekkah? You there? Could you turn down the music?”

  “Can’t hear you.”

  Of course she couldn’t. She regularly turned the store radio to the loudest hip-hop station on the dial. This was her little passive aggressive way of protesting the forced change in her lifestyle. Rebekkah recently told her parents that she wasn’t sure about her major, accounting. In fact, she wasn’t sure she wanted to finish school, period. Her parents said, “No problem. You can think it over in the comfort of our home.”

  They went back and forth a couple of rounds before Horace rented a Penske van and drove it to the apartment Rebekkah shared with another student. The place was right off the campus of University of Missouri. Rebekkah hadn’t come home willingly.

  Kicking and screaming are the words that come to mind.

  Things got worse. Dodie had discovered a lump in her breast. Horace lost his job. Because he was unemployed, Dodie delayed going to the doctor. She wasn’t about to plunge the family into debt for her medical treatment.

  Rebekkah had been home three days shen her parents saw the tattoo of St. Francis on her backside—a “tramp stamp” is what they call it. Whatever disagreements the Goldfaders were having about her future escalated into full-blown nuclear warfare.

  “You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves; I am the Lord.” Dodie moaned. That thump, thump, thump sound I heard was her banging her head against her desk. “You’ve read Leviticus nineteen-twenty-eight! You can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery! Oy!”

  “Maybe I don’t care!” Rebekkah shouted.

  “I’m calling your father. He’ll have a heart attack. How could you have ruined your flesh like that! What are you, meshuggannah?”

  There followed a long, low moan. “Show me. Right now. What is that? Who is that on your tuches? Moses Montefiore?”

  I pressed my ear against the door. Yes, I know that’s rude. I know it was uncalled for. I know it was bad. But I did it. In the interest of research and job security I needed to know what was going on.

  “Saint Francis of Assisi.”

  “Eekkk! You got a tattoo—and it’s not even Hebrew? Does it wash off?”

  “I hope not. I paid good money for it.”

  “Argh.” This was a gurgle from Dodie.

  “Mommy, St. Francis was a good man. He loved animals!”

  More moaning.

  The door minder dinged, sending me to wait on customers.

  Horace Goldfader arrived shortly thereafter. Through the big display window, I watched his car pull into our parking lot. Customers kept me busy after that, except for one time when I raced into the back to check on a special order. Even through the thick walls, I could hear weeping and wailing.

  I don’t know how they left matters, but shortly after, Dodie printed up business cards identifying Rebekkah as the “Sales Mangler” of Time in a Bottle. I tried not to sit in judgment of the Goldfaders. Being a parent is the hardest job I’ve ever had, and all of us hire on as amateurs. Had I been in their position, I might have done the same. College wasn’t cheap. We certainly needed help at the store. Maybe they reasoned that giving Rebekkah more responsibility would force her to up her game.

  “I’d have gotten a tattoo, too, if it meant a promotion,” said Clancy when I told her about the family feud that preceded Rebekkah being named Sales Mangler. Clancy and I worked together companionably to trace circles on paper for an upcoming Zentangle® class.

  “Not me. No way.”

  “Prediction.” Clancy waved her hands over an imaginary crystal ball. “Big mistake. Big, big mistake. I see a cloudy future, confusion, and many problems ahead for you and me both.”

  By golly, Clancy had been right.

  “And Bama?” I had to throw that in.

  “Bama will always come out smelling like a rose.” Clancy shook her head. “It’s a talent you don’t have.”

  Although Rebekkah was normally a sweetie, her new title had gone straight to her head. And her head was up her butt. Or up her tuches, if you prefer the Yiddish word for backside. That meant the title was resting comfortably somewhere between…never mind.

  “Is it possible that she’s just acting out?” Clancy poured herself a cup of coffee in the back room.

  “Acting out?” I didn’t get what she meant.

  “Yes. Think about it. Dodie finds a lump in her breast. Horace loses his job. Rebekkah decides college is too much for her.”

  I hadn’t seen it that way, but Clancy had a point.

  “Horace accepted that job in Chicago. They’re working out the details. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “Hmmmm. His insurance won’t kick in for a while. At least I don’t think it will. I’m no expert, but I bet that’s why Dodie keeps putting off seeing a doctor.”

  “Meanwhile, tensions are building.” I tried to sound flippant, but my attempt failed.

  “You’ve got that right. There’s pressure on Horace to get this wrapped up. Pressure on Dodie because she remembers her mother died of breast cancer, and Rebekkah was far from home. I bet that’s one reason she couldn’t settle down at college. Too much on her mind.”

  “You do know that Dodie lost a child, don’t you?”

  “A son. Nathan.” Clancy sighed. “That changes a family’s dynamics. I saw it in action when I was a teacher. Not every family acts the same, but I would guess that Nathan’s death has made Dodie and Horace more protective of Rebekkah.”

  “I can’t imagine…” and my voice trailed o
ff.

  “Neither can I,” Clancy agreed.

  After that conversation, I felt more compassionate, trying to put myself in Dodie and Horace’s place. Why not give their daughter a title? If that encouraged her to be more responsible, a title was a small price to pay.

  Except that Dodie and Horace didn’t pay the price. Clancy and I did. Day after day, we reaped the bitter harvest from that conciliatory promotion. First we suffered when Rebekkah decided to “build community” by having us travel from home to home. Second, and perhaps more importantly, we got tripped up whenever a problem arose, because Dodie demanded that we take any concerns, questions, or problems directly to Rebekkah. Since I worked the majority of hours on the sales floor and I had the most day-to-day contact with customers, I wound up asking Rebekkah a lot of questions.

  Not surprisingly, she came to think of me as a troublemaker. By contrast, Clancy worked so few hours, she rarely had a reason to consult with our Sales Mangler. And Bama? Bama never butted heads with Rebekkah. They seemed to have formed some sort of secret sisterhood, pledging to always see eye-to-eye. Bama could do no wrong.

  That left me the odd woman out. Especially when a problem raised its ugly head. A problem like Marla not answering her door.

  Rebekkah’s way of handling uncomfortable situations was to take her head out of her butt, stick that same head in the sand, wave her tail feathers in the air, and turn up the volume on her radio. That’s exactly what she did when I tried to tell her what was happening with Marla Lever.

  “Rebekkah!” I nearly shouted as I stared at the outside world and wished I was free to walk away from this dump. “Listen! There’s a problem! You need to—”

  My plea was interrupted by a high-pitched screech as Rebekkah switched the phone line to the fax line. Later she would claim it was an accident. I knew she would. But she’d pulled the same trick last week, so I was onto her games.

  I hung up on the fax machine and gave Clancy the bad news. “If you’ve got that checklist, I suppose we could go through the roster and try to call everyone ourselves,” I said. “We have a few cell numbers. Most people gave us their email addresses. You could contact them with your Blackberry.”