When the Cat's Away

by Molly Fitz

  She shifted back with a shriek, nearly knocking a chair over. I glanced around, expecting to see a mouse or some other intruder, but I saw nothing.

  “Oh god, you scared the crap out of me.” She gasped and held a hand to her chest as she stared at me.

  I realized with the greatest displeasure that I was the creature who had startled her, despite this being my place and she the guest. My tail twitched as I stared at her a long moment, sitting on my haunches, then let out a tentative meow. I’d hoped to start this relationship off on a better paw. However, I still planned to entice her to give me that scratching I was so desperate for.

  “Shoo! Shoo!” She waved her hands at me as if it would somehow blow me off the table. I didn’t budge an inch. “You shouldn’t be on the table; you’d better get off—”

  “I’m afraid Osiris is quite stubborn,” a man said with a chuckle.

  I immediately started purring. Nicholas Havers, the very Englishman who’d carried me out of the sands of Cairo tucked inside his Burberry coat, was here.

  “Oh, Mr. Havers?” the young woman asked.

  Nicholas held out a hand as he walked toward her. “Miss Park, it’s lovely to meet you.”

  I watched in delighted approval as my human and this new human met for the first and, unbeknownst to me then, the last time.

  “He’s a handsome fellow, isn’t he?” Nicholas gave me the scratch behind my ears I desired. I closed my eyes, pressing my head toward those fingers which knew just the right spots to rub.

  “Yes, he’s very handsome, but I’m afraid I don’t like cats,” Miss Park said, keeping her distance from the table.

  “What? Oh, how unfortunate. Cats are capital fellows. They aren’t at all like dogs which follow you about everywhere, staring at you with needy expressions. No, cats are creatures unto themselves, and they do not flatter you. If a cat takes to you, you can be sure it’s because they see your true value, and not simply because you feed them and walk them.”

  I continued to purr, delighted to hear my human’s wise response.

  “Osiris is a very special cat. Aren’t you, my boy?” Nicholas asked me. “He’s an Egyptian Mau. I brought him back from Egypt with me three years ago. See the distinctive black marks on his forehead? They resemble a scarab beetle. Only cat species in the world to have that.”

  I stood proudly at his praise of my markings and watched the young woman, Miss Park, for a reaction. She looked intrigued, but still didn’t come any closer. It was her loss, of course.

  “Helen Cohen in the village told me all about your Egyptian collection. I would love to see it.”

  “Of course, that is why I invited you. Do come and let me show you…” Their voices faded as the humans turned and walked away.

  That was the last time I ever saw my human alive. Nicholas hadn’t just been the human who fed me and gave me a home; he was much more. I knew his true value, and I would not let his death go unpunished.

  Chapter 1

  Pepper

  Sometimes, in order to refrain from committing murder, you have to escape from work for a little bit. I was possibly on the verge of killing my boss—and maybe a few coworkers—if I didn’t get a much deserved and far overdue break.

  My name is Pepper Park and I’m a real estate foreclosure attorney. I’m that person who files a bunch of boring but sadly necessary documents in court in order to reclaim a house when someone can’t, or more often, won’t pay for their house. You’d be surprised at the number of people who actually think they should get a house for free and make us out to be the bad guys. Sure, there are plenty of good people who get behind on bills, and I take a great joy in working to modify their loans so they can keep their houses, but not everyone is like that. My job can make a lawyer jaded pretty quickly.

  After two years and zero vacation days, I was pretty much done. I’d marched into my boss’s office at the beginning of the summer and informed him I would be taking leave for an entire month.

  “Do you have everything you need to work remotely?” he’d asked.

  “No.” I wouldn’t exactly be at the other end of the universe for my vacation, but I wasn’t about to let Mr. Wilkins think he could pressure me into working while I was on vacation.

  “What if we need you?” Wilkins had persisted.

  “It’s summer. You know half the judges go fishing this time of year and postpone most of their hearings. I’ve rearranged my entire caseload for when I return. All of the judges assigned to my current cases are fine with it. Lord knows the attorneys on the other side won’t have a problem with the new dates. Their clients get an extra month living in their houses rent free.”

  Granted, this probably wasn’t the best argument to give my boss, the man in charge of pleasing the banks who currently employed our little law firm in Oklahoma, but I was desperate to get out of Dodge, if you know what I mean.

  “Okay, Pepper, but just a month. Then we really need you back here.” Wilkins had turned away to attend to the massive, cluttered chaos of his office. God bless his paralegal, Janet. I have no idea how she worked around that mess.

  Thankfully it wasn’t my problem, at least for the next month. Two days later, I stepped out of the black cab that dropped me off in the little village of Chelsworth, England.

  I drew a deep breath, taking in the floral scents. A dozen adorable, picturesque houses along the road had window boxes overflowing with brilliantly colored flowers, likely the source of the dream-like garden aroma that enveloped me. This place was already so different from the acrid air of London, where I’d spent a few hours trying to catch a cab that didn’t mind driving me all the way out here.

  The fare had been killer, but I didn’t want to take the time trying to figure out the bus or train schedules, and certainly wasn’t prepared to drive on the wrong side of the road. I’d saved some money over the last two years, so I let the cabbie swipe my credit card and decided to worry about the cost later.

  “You know where you’re going?” the cabbie asked. He was a stout man with one of those stereotypical little cabdriver hats and a grizzled beard cut short against his chin.

  “I think so.” The cottage in the picture on the rental website had said it was the only cottage with a red-painted door in the village. Once I’d exited the cab, I dragged my giant suitcase behind me down the old-fashioned street. The uneven cobble stones made it nearly impossible, and by the time I found the red door, my arm was vibrating from all that clunking and crashing of the suitcase wheels against the road.

  I’d memorized the email from the owner, Mrs. Lewis, and she’d said that the key would be under a little green frog statue by the front door. I dropped my suitcase and found the key, which thankfully worked. Mrs. Lewis had left her cottage for a month while she visited her niece in Scotland, and I was more than happy to stay in her delightful abode for four weeks.

  Visiting England had been a dream of mine ever since I was a little girl, but I didn’t want to tour London like some tourist. I’d spent my whole life going to school and extracurricular activities or working at my job. The pressure to succeed, to prove I wasn’t useless to my parents, left me exhausted. In a way, this vacation was all about me reclaiming control of the pace of my life, at least for a month. I wanted to live here, to settle into some quaint village and immerse myself in the quiet life. It seemed like such a pretty and peaceful place.

  Once inside, I could see that the Lewis cottage was exactly how it had been featured online: cozy armchairs by a stone fireplace, a kitchen decorated with hanging pots, accented by dried flowers and herbs, and a little nook with a table that seated four people with a bay window surrounded by climbing wisteria. Upstairs contained two small bedrooms and a small bathroom. It was the perfect size for one person to get away from it all.

  I spent the remainder of the morning putting away my clothes in the brown walnut dresser in the guest bedroom before taking a shower to rinse away the memory of today’s travel stops. After the long international flig
ht, I was dead on my feet. I’d heard that if I let myself nap, I’d never get over the jet lag, so I rallied with a bit of strong tea which I brewed on the stove in a little blue tea kettle. The act had me feeling very pleased and British about it all. Then, I set out to find the small grocery store in the village that Mrs. Lewis mentioned would have all the essentials I’d need for the next month.

  Chelsworth was everything I expected of a little English village. People were tending their gardens and running errands, and two ladies were gossiping over a shared, waist-high cobblestone fence. Once they realized a stranger was in their midst, the pair of women descended upon me.

  “Excuse me, dear!” one of the ladies called out. I stopped to wait for her to catch up. With her grayish hair and spectacles perched on her nose, she looked to be in her late sixties. The other was, perhaps, a bit younger, and huffed less as they rushed toward me.

  “Hi,” I greeted and held out my hand. “I’m Pepper Park. I’m renting Mrs. Lewis’s home for the next month—”

  “While she visits Harriet in Inverness. Yes, of course. We’ve all been wondering when you’d turn up. Are you settling in well?”

  “Oh, yes. I was just headed to the grocery store.”

  “Excellent. We’ll walk with you, dear. I’m Helen,” the woman with the glasses said.

  “And I’m Lisa,” the other added.

  “It’s nice to meet you.” I hoped it would be, that is. Part of me was a little worried to have caught the attention from the two women who were likely to spread gossip around town like a plague.

  For the next hour, Lisa and Helen fill me in on all the local goings on—their forte, as I suspected—while I shop for groceries. They told me of an upcoming church fete which I’m not to miss and confided that the vicar does more than take confessions with some of the local widows. The library was going to host an author as a guest speaker the week after that if I was interested, though rumor had it that the librarian grew up with the author’s mother, which was how she managed to get him to come.

  My shopping done and with several grocery bags daggling from my arms, I begin the trek to my temporary home. The two women continue on either side of me, chattering away like magpies.

  “Oh! You know what I’ve just thought of, Lisa?” Helen almost shouted this, despite the fact that barely four feet separated them.

  “What?” Lisa asked.

  “Pepper needs to meet Nicholas Havers.”

  Nicholas Havers was the richest man in Chelsworth, the man whose estate abutted the small cottage I was currently living in.

  “Oh, yes, she positively must meet Nicky! They’d have so much to talk about.”

  “What do we have to talk about?” I asked as we returned to my cottage at last.

  “Why…history, of course.” Helen said, as if that were obvious. During their earlier interrogation, the pair of ladies had managed to suss out some of my personal details, like the fact that I was an avid lover of history and had majored in it while I was at college.

  “He’s into history?”

  “Yes, yes, quite so. You must go see his mummy.”

  “His mom? Why would—”

  “No, his mummy, dear! He traveled to Egypt three years ago. Came back with quite a few artifacts—and that odd cat, of course. The one with the glowing eyes.” Helen was digressing again, something I learned she did when she got too excited about a subject.

  “He can’t have a mummy. It’s not legal to transport those out of Egypt,” I said. I’d watched my fair share of TV specials about Egyptian archaeology, enough to know that most artifacts were supposed to stay in Egypt.

  “Well, the mummy came from his great grandfather…but yes, I suppose he ought not to have acquired all those things. Still, it was a different time then. And, well, that’s the way of it sometimes, isn’t it?” Helen’s voice held an odd note. “Why don’t you get settled in. I’ll call Nicky and tell him to expect you in half an hour.”

  “Oh really, Helen. I couldn’t—”

  “Nonsense. Nicky loves visitors. Doesn’t he, Lisa?”

  The other woman nodded. “He certainly does. If only Lucas came home more often…” Lisa sighed.

  “Who’s Lucas?”

  “Nicky’s son.” Helen rolled her eyes. “Tall, dark, and handsome. You know the type. He’s a banker in London. Doesn’t have much time to spend in the country.”

  Tall, dark, and handsome; that was trouble I was glad to avoid. I didn’t have much luck in the dating department, probably because I was a bit too intelligent for most men, and yet not pretty enough for that not to matter.

  My blue eyes with a hint of gray aren’t too bright, and my blond hair is more flaxen than golden and tends to be a bit on the frizzy side. Not trying to be hard on myself, but the simple truth is that I’m just sort of average in the looks department. I dated a few men in college, but my dating game really fell apart in law school. You can’t have a life outside of studying if you want to actually pass your classes. By the time I’d finished, I had to focus on finding and keeping a job. It’s not nearly as easy for young lawyers to find jobs their passionate about. Long story short, I’m still single and the very last thing I needed was to meet some tall, dark, and handsome Englishman because I’d only make a fool of myself.

  “On your way now and I’ll tell Nicky you’ll be up the road to see him soon. You two can talk mummies all afternoon!” Helen seemed tickled pink with her platonic matchmaking as the two women left me alone to put away my groceries.

  Half an hour later, I’d determined now was as good a time as any to meet Mr. Nicholas Havers, but I vowed to make it a quick visit. Certainly, this English gentleman had far more important things to do than hang out with me. I should be able to escape fairly quickly.

  The walk to Champsley Manor was enchanting, like most things in this village. The gravel road was lined with towering oak trees whose branches stretched over in a near-endless green tunnel, broken only by small beams of warm summer sunlight. I could imagine that the fall would coat these trees in fierce reds and brilliant golds. In the winter, snow would drape over the thicker branches and soften the landscape with blankets of white. Though I dearly loved the powdery precipitation, the small amount of snow that fell in Oklahoma always turned into an ugly gray slush that caused cars to slide off the roads. I knew without ever having seen it for myself that winter in Chelsworth would be beautiful.

  The manor house was a quarter of a mile down the emerald road, and I literally stopped and gasped when the two-story Tudor mansion painted white amidst crisscrossed beams of dark wood came into view. Dozens of gables formed peaks and valleys along the roofline, lending an air of mystery mixed with country charm. The house seemed to have come out of a fairy tale on a lazy summer day like today, yet I could also imagine it being a bit spooky during a stormy night as lightning backlit the sky and cast the house in silhouette.

  It was exactly the sort of place I’d hoped to see during my stay. The flower beds along the house’s edge were overrun with wildflowers. The chaotic blend of shapes and colors was gorgeous. At the front of the house, a tall black painted door with a lion’s head brass knocker hanging squarely in the middle beckoned me forward.

  I gave the knocker a hard rap, but I didn’t think anyone in this large house would actually hear it. When the door opened a few moments later, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “May I help you, lass?” The thick Scottish brogue came from a tall, burly looking man in his fifties.

  “I…I’m supposed to meet with Mr. Havers?” I asked carefully. I half-expected this Nicholas Havers to turn me away, despite Helen’s insistence that she and “Nicky” were old friends.

  “Oh! Miss Park?” the Scottish man asked. “From America?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Apologies, miss. I was expecting someone about thirty years older.”

  It seemed Helen had given them all the details they could about me, except for my age. “Are you Mr. Havers?” />
  “Wot, me?” He chuckled. “Nay, lass. I’m Mr. Havers’s butler. The name’s Ewan Dougal.” He held out a meaty palm, which didn’t seem at all like something a butler should do, but I was glad for it. I shook his hand. His gray eyes were bright and merry, and I didn’t feel as anxious as I had moments before.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” I replied.

  “Come, this way,” Ewan said.

  I followed the Scottish butler into Champsley Manor. Pesky legalities aside, I expected, or rather hoped, I would soon see a real Egyptian mummy up close.

  It was all shaping up to be a splendid afternoon. If only I’d known then that before nightfall it would all go horribly wrong, and that my only hope for staying out of jail might rest on a strange Egyptian cat.

  Chapter 2

  Pepper

  Nicholas Havers wasn’t your average collector. The room we stood in now looked like a small library with tall windows, except the shelves weren’t full of books; they were full of dozens of trinkets.

  Well, trinkets wasn’t the right word. These items were rare and priceless Egyptian artifacts. Part of me wanted to quote Indiana Jones and say, “This belongs in a museum.” But at the same time, I couldn’t deny there was something almost mystical about the way the artifacts were tucked into the crevices of this space. The sunlight even made the ancient gold on some the objects glow and the jewels embedded in various pieces wink and sparkle.

  Resting about chest-high on a shelf, lay about dozen scarab beetles the size of my palm. As I held one, the cool gold began to grow warm in my hand. A funny thing about gold that most people don’t know is that it’s a soft metal. It’s malleable and can be dented, bent, and broken. It also holds the heat or the chill of the environment around it.