Black Cat Crossing

by Fitz Molly

  So I fell to my knees, making sure to play up the drama, and inched over to him. “Harrison,” I whispered loudly. “Tell me, Harrison, did someone here hurt you?”

  The cat turned to face me and relaxed as we made eye contact. I offered him a reassuring smile, and he started to move toward me, his muscular body gliding sleekly and non-threateningly as he rubbed against me. Wow, was he strong. I had to struggle to keep from falling over as he marked me with the side of his face.

  “What are we supposed to do?” asked the blonde. For the first time she sounded less like she wanted to start a fight with me and more like she was deferring to me for help.

  Hmmm. What were they supposed to do?

  I guess I’d been hoping that someone would confess to some kind of wrongdoing, be it murder or otherwise. But it didn’t seem like cracking this case was going to be anywhere near that easy. Heck, I didn’t even know for sure there’d been a crime, although I definitely had my suspicions.

  “Are the doors still blocked?” I asked as Spook now started to rub against the other side of me. Thank goodness I was wearing all black because by the end of this exercise I was going to be more cat hair than girl.

  Zoey ran to the door and gave it a quick pull. “Won’t budge.”

  “Let’s get Harrison somewhere he won’t get, um… vengeful.” I knew I was walking a delicate line when it came to making them afraid of Spook. They needed to feel secure enough not to attack, but not so secure they wouldn’t give us some privacy.

  “We should take him somewhere familiar,” Zoey suggested.

  “His room,” said the surly man.

  “Ernest, we can’t lock a giant thing like that in his room,” said the blonde.

  “I don’t see a lot of options here, Madeline,” he growled back.

  “We should just throw it in the basement,” barked the redhead.

  “He’s not an it, Aunt Helen!” snapped Ernest. “If it is Dad, we need to treat him with some respect.”

  I glanced over to him. He’d seemed so angry and grumpy, seething with negativity before. I hadn’t expected him to be the one to rush to my aid—but hey—I’d take my breaks wherever and from whomever I could get them.

  “He’s right,” I said quickly. “Let’s get Harrison up to the room and see if we can calm everyone down.” Also, getting up to his room would give me a great chance to snoop around.

  “C’mon, Harrison,” I said as I pushed myself to standing. Once again, Spook seemed to understand me implicitly and immediately guided me over to the stairs. Watching the wild creature climb up those very domestic stairs was truly a sight to behold. Part of me longed to take a break from all this mystery-solving and just stare in awe at Spook for the rest of Halloween break.

  Halloween!

  If we didn’t get out of here before tonight, I was going to completely miss out on my favorite holiday. It was bad enough I couldn’t find the party last night, but now I was going to be trapped in a stranger's house with a possible murderer?

  What a way to celebrate…

  Chapter Eight

  Zoey shut the door behind us, and I immediately collapsed onto the floor and let out a deep breath. I pressed my back against the bed and folded my legs to my chest. I hadn’t realized how much tension I was carrying in my body until I was finally able to let it all go.

  Spook jumped onto the bed like he owned the place, then lay down, bringing his head close to mine. I reached up to stroke his face.

  “What do you know that I don’t?” I asked between deep, tired breaths. “If you could talk, would you tell me who killed your friend?”

  Zoey sat across from me on the floor, her back against a dresser, her face sporting a bemused smile. “So…”

  “Please don’t say ‘I told you so.’”

  She snorted. “I don’t need to say what you already know,” she pointed out, widening her grin.

  “Smug doesn’t look good on you,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Nonsense.” She waved away my complaints. “Smug looks good on everyone.”

  I blew a raspberry at her, then closed my eyes and leaned back against Spook.

  “I’m being serious,” Zoey whined. “We’ve dealt with more than our fair share of dangerous magic. Some good old-fashioned human killers might be exactly what we need.”

  I opened my eyes and she made a silly face, then we shared a laugh.

  I really had lucked out by getting her as a roommate. She always had my back, no matter how crazy things got. Maybe if Eli hadn’t…

  Focus on the problems of your present, Phina. Not the problems of your past, I told myself.

  Slowly I rose to my feet and took a glance around the room. I hated to say it, but it smelled like old man in here. Like creams and medications and antiseptic. Maybe a hint of mothballs, too.

  “Oh, Spook. I’m going to introduce you to a whole new world of smells. You aren’t going to know what hit you,” I promised the lovable lug who sat watching me from his perch on the bed.

  “Where do we start?” Zoey asked as she got up onto her feet.

  Okay, it was time to pretend I knew what I was doing again… “We’ll hit the obvious places first,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Drawers and closet.”

  I knew from experience that there were thousands of hiding places in a bedroom. But it seemed Harrison had lived on his own. So he probably wouldn’t have the need for any extra secret hiding spots. Unlike sixteen-year-old me trying to keep a stack of love notes crammed beneath the mattress so my parents and sisters wouldn’t find them.

  “Were you hiding any secrets, old man?” I said into the stale air. “Any hidden love letters or deathbed confessions?”

  “He had kids,” Zoey pointed out. “But no signs of a wife. Wonder what happened to his kids’ mom, though.”

  I didn’t see any feminine touches in the room. Mostly, the place was covered in a forest of browns and greens. The furniture maintained the same antique style from the living room. One thing was for sure, Harrison seemed to have very particular tastes, and that was something I could respect. Especially considering his great taste in cats.

  “We don’t even know how he died.” Zoey sighed. “Which is going to be a major issue when it comes to finding out who killed him.”

  “We know some things,” I countered, twisting my mouth to the side as I thought. “Someone downstairs said he died peacefully in his sleep. Which is especially interesting because—"

  “Spook had blood on him,” Zoey finished for me. “How do you think that happened?”

  I bit my lip in thought. “I don’t know. But if someone downstairs has some nasty looking cat scratches, that could be a big flashing neon sign pointing to our killer.”

  Zoey slapped a hand on her knee. “Great. So we just need every one downstairs to strip naked, and then we’ll have our answer!”

  We both snickered at the idea.

  “Maybe that will be our last resort,” I agreed with one last chuckle.

  We both turned to the collection of framed photos on his nightstand. It was odd to see all of the stressed and angry people downstairs looking so happy. In one photo, the blonde, Madeline, and her husband, Roger, stood with their arms around each other, smiling. The redhead sat in what looked like a modeling headshot from years ago. And the surly guy, Ernest, still looked surly in the picture of him with the deceased before he kicked the bucket. Ernest must just be one of those ironic names, I thought as the corner of my lip curled up.

  The pictures didn’t say much. Though I didn’t see any of the guy in the suit and glasses that we’d met downstairs—the one person we didn’t have a name for yet.

  “Who do you think the suit is?” I asked Zoey beside me.

  “I don’t think he’s family,” she said. “Maybe the lawyer or something? He was kind of standing apart from everyone. And when Spook went full panther mode, everyone kind of bunched together except him.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Harrison just
died last night and already they’ve gotten a lawyer involved?”

  “This might not be a mansion, but still look around. Our guy obviously had some money. And with so many possible heirs, maybe someone is more concerned about money than… you know, morals, ethics, basic human decency.”

  I turned to search the dresser drawers but only found clothes. It wasn’t until I got to the closet that I actually found something of interest. “Check this out!” I called to Zoey.

  “Ooh, what did you find?” Her eyes grew wide as she approached.

  “It could be nothing.” I grunted and pulled a heavy box out of the closet and into the middle of the room. “But I bet you that if there’s anything in here that could help, it’s going to be in the paperwork.”

  Zoey snorted. “Or we’ll spend hours poring over some boring legal documents and gain absolutely nothing from them.”

  “C’mon,” I teased. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  She let out a sarcastic peal of laughter. “My sense of adventure got locked out of the house when the two of us got locked in.” Despite her protests, she sat down and pulled a folder from the top of the stack.

  As much as I tried to psych us up about the search, Zoey had a point. It was rather monotonous. So when her phone rang, she practically sprung up to answer it. “Hello?”

  “If it’s my parents, tell them we’re shopping,” I hissed.

  “Oh, hi,” she said in a dreamy tone that immediately told me it was Owen who had called.

  Suddenly the paperwork seemed so much more interesting. I grabbed another folder and tried not to listen in to Zoey’s conversation with her boyfriend.

  “Trouble? Of course we’re not getting in trouble,” she said with a giggle.

  I flipped through the pages, looking for anything interesting, especially if it might hint at a motive.

  “Phina has us going after a murderer. So you know, pretty normal stuff... No, I’m fine. I mean we are trapped in the house with the killer, but it’s really not such a big deal.”

  Great. Now she was tattling on me to her boyfriend. I really didn’t need Owen yelling at me for putting Zoey in danger. The fact that Owen looked so much like his brother, my ex, didn’t warm me to him one bit. Those two were so sickly sweet in love it made my teeth hurt. Me on the other hand, I was officially jaded and ready to be a panther-owning spinster for the rest of my days.

  I kept on rummaging through the papers on the verge of giving up, when… I found it. “Zoey, hang up the phone.”

  “But—”

  Before she could argue, I reached over and grabbed the phone from her. “She’ll call you later,” I said before hanging up on Owen.

  “Hey, that’s rude!” she pouted.

  “Hush up and look at this.” I held up the paper I had found. “I found it. Our motive.”

  Chapter Nine

  “What is it?” Zoey inched closer.

  “It’s a will,” I said, lowering the document to meet her eyes. “A will that was changed as of last week to leave everything to Ernest.”

  “So that means his sister would totally have a motive, right?”

  “Or it means Ernest would kill him to get the money.”

  “Well, we’re assuming that he has money. For all we know he was living his best life and happily spending his entire retirement fund on all this fancy furniture.”

  “Oh, no. He had money.” I took out one of the statements and handed it over.

  “Wow.” Zoey’s eyes practically bulged out of her head. “That’s a lot of zeros.”

  “It’s a lot of motive,” I pointed out.

  “Okay, so you’re right. This is looking more and more like murder. And, more than likely, we’re trapped in the house with whoever did it. That’s it, I’m calling someone.” Zoey grabbed her phone back from me and began a panicked scroll of her contacts.

  “You can call someone all you want, but what good is it going to do if we can’t open the stupid door?”

  “What if I call someone magical?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Who would you…? Oh. Owen is in town.” I didn’t even try to hide my disappointment.

  Zoey tightened her lips. “I didn’t invite him to come. He got into a fight with his family and he’s been texting me. But I told him I was busy! I wasn’t about to ditch you. However, I do think having someone trying to get in from the outside would be a good idea. Besides, isn’t having Owen here better than calling your parents or the cops?”

  I snorted. “We are not calling the cops, and if anyone at Darnborn heard you say that, your reputation as the tough invisible girl would be toast.”

  “I don’t care if anyone from Darnborn judges me. I just care about keeping us safe.”

  “Fine. Feel free to tell him where we are as a backup plan. But we won’t need him, because I’m going to guilt our killer into a confession before he even manages to find a parking space.” Feeling emboldened and reckless, I twisted the doorknob, called for Spook to follow me, and went to face the suspects.

  * * *

  As soon as I returned to the main level, I could feel the tension snake through the room. Red-haired Helen and prime suspect Ernest both leaped to their feet in response to my arrival, while Madeline and Roger clung to each other on the couch as though I was some big bad villain about to blow their house down.

  “What did you do to Galvin?” demanded Helen as Spook stayed close to my side, assuming a protective stance.

  I practically shuddered at the name. A cat named Galvin?

  Harrison seemed like such a cool dude except for that.

  I held up the will that I’d found and glanced from one person to the next, landing on the nameless guy in the suit. “What I have here is proof that one of you killed Harrison.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” bit out Madeline.

  “Maybe,” I said with a shrug. “Maybe not.” I directed my gaze at the one stranger in the room. “You.”

  He physically took a step back. “What about me?”

  “You’re the only one here who isn’t actually family. Am I right? And I’m thinking dead guy plus random clone in a suit equals lawyer. Am I wrong?” I raised an eyebrow at him and waited.

  “J-John Amos. Harrison was my client.”

  Wow. That bluff had actually paid off. Time to move on to the next one. “So you know what’s in this will. Don’t you?” I shook the papers at him. “You also know that Harrison changed the beneficiary just one week ago. That now it all goes to his favorite child, Ernest.” I carefully studied everyone’s face, trying to see who was surprised and who already knew.

  It was the women who seemed to be blindsided. “What?” screamed Madeline as she jumped off the couch while Helen took a step back and raised her hand to her mouth in shock.

  “Honey,” said Roger patiently. “We don’t need his money. You know that.”

  She turned to glare at him, betrayal clear in her eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your father hinted that this might be coming, and I assured him that we’d be fine.”

  She spun on him and wrung her hands. “We’d be fine with your money and your nest egg. But what about mine? Don’t I deserve a safety net?”

  Poor Roger looked like he’d been shot. “You mean a safety net for you to leave me?”

  Well, I’d walked right into this soap opera. Too bad I didn’t have time to make popcorn.

  “What about me? What sort of safety net do I have here?” our resident redhead Helen yelped.

  Ernest snorted. “Please. My dad knew you’ve been stealing from him for years. If you didn’t get a good enough safety net from that, then I don’t know what to tell you.”

  She scoffed but immediately averted her gaze. “What are you talking about? If Harrison knew—er, thought I was stealing from him, he would’ve told me.”

  “And fight with the one sibling he had left? Please. He was never good with confrontation.”

  Well, dying and leaving your
kids nothing was one way to confront someone. I glanced over to Zoey to try to get a read on what she was thinking, but she simply shrugged. So if Madeline and Helen didn’t know about the change in will, Roger didn’t care, then…

  I looked to Ernest. “You knew,” I said softly. “You signed as his witness. If he died, you’d get all of his money. Provided he didn’t change his mind in the interim.”

  Ernest pursed his lips and took a step back. “Hey, don’t get any ideas. He left me that money because I’ve always been the one to take care of him while everyone else just worried about themselves. I’m a good son.” He said the words with so much vitriol that they were obviously an accusation aimed at the others. “We don’t even know that he was murdered! For the love of—he died peacefully in his sleep!”

  “He died peacefully, but it wasn’t painless. Not for the killer.”

  I reached my hand down and set it on the panther’s head. “Spook—” I winced as I caught myself. “I mean, Galvin,” I corrected through gritted teeth, “was covered in blood when we found him. He attacked whoever was here last night with Harrison, and he wants his owner’s death avenged.”

  I really thought Ernest was about to tell me I was crazy, but he didn’t. Instead he glanced right past me. “You,” he spat.

  I turned to see that the entire family was now staring at suit guy, the lawyer, along with him. And they were all on their feet, wearing matching expressions of rage as they pressed in on him.

  “Last night. You asked for a band-aid,” said Helen.

  “I saw the bathroom,” Madeline said. “You must’ve used five or ten. And you didn’t even clean up all the papers. I thought whoever it was was just being rude, but this is…”

  The lawyer shook his head so fervently I thought his glasses would fly off. “No. You don’t understand.”

  “If Harrison were to die, then John would handle the estate,” Ernest revealed, referring to the lawyer. “And you knew Madeline and Helen would fight having everything going to me, that it would take a while to sort out, and... How could you?”