Hairless Harassment

Chapter Three

Despite the flurry of activity outside, the inside of the manor house sat empty—eerily so. As soon as I entered, I came face to face with the grand staircase. It had been cordoned off and the area was already scrubbed clean, though the recent disturbance was obvious.

One of the lower steps had caved in on itself, calling into question the soundness of the entire structure. A few feet from the landing, the body position had been marked in a shining white outline. The poor senator. She’d been a huge force in life, but the outline marking her death seemed impossibly small.

As much as my mother assumed I didn’t know about the political scene or about current events in general, I’d actually voted for the senator in her two most recent elections. She’d fought hard to protect the natural beauty of our great country and the citizens within it. Even though I liked to think of myself as non-partisan, I agreed with Senator Lou Harlow’s stances more often than not.

Plus, from the few televised interviews or online news articles I’d managed to catch, I liked her. She reminded me of Nan, but in a tailored pant suit instead of a flowy silk kimono.

She’d done so much tireless work on behalf of the people, and now one of those people had killed her. I bowed my head and said a quick prayer, hoping that her death had happened quickly and without pain, and that the killer would soon be brought to justice.

I’d been around murder a lot lately, but somehow this one felt more personal. Lou Harlow wasn’t a stranger. She was someone I’d seen on the TV, the Internet, and even the odd newspaper that still found its way into the firm where I worked.

“There you are,” Mom shouted after me, disturbing the sanctity of the moment as she flew in through the open front door.

I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead. Was there some important clue I’d missed because emotions were clouding my judgment with this one?

“Such a shame,” Mom clucked, finally showing a blessed bit of remorse.

We stood side by side, studying the scene. A glint of yellowish green at the top of the stairs drew my eye and I stepped forward to get a better look.

“What is it? What do you see?” Mom asked in an excited whisper.

I still hadn’t figured out what was up there, but I pointed anyway.

We both craned our heads and shifted our angles until finally I saw a scary, mummy-looking face watching me from above. “It’s some kind of animal, I think.” Although it looked like none I’d ever come across before. Maybe in a zoo, but in the wilds of coastal Maine? I think not.

“The senator did have two pet cats,” Mom pointed out, still struggling and twisting in an effort to discern the animal for herself.

“Whatever’s up there, I’m not really sure it’s a cat.” I took another step forward, bending my neck straight back to achieve a fresh perspective. All that did was hurt me, though. “Ugh. I wish it wasn’t so dark in here,” I moaned.

Mom lifted her phone high and then snapped a picture of the area using her flash. The burst of light was more than enough to fully illuminate that same little animal that had first caught my eye. A second larger one of the same kind also sat farther back away from the bannister. They still looked like something that had come straight out of a horror movie, but now at least I could clearly tell they were cats.

Cats with no fur and lots of wrinkles. Eww.

I shuddered as I pictured Octo-Cat shorn down in a similar fashion, and that particular mental image was even scarier than the two odd Sphynxes sitting before me.

Mom showed me the picture she’d managed to get on her phone. “They’re hairless cats,” she said matter-of-factly.

I shivered again. “Why would anyone want a cat without hair?”

“Allergies? Attention?” Mom guessed and offered me a casual shrug. “Could have been either with the Senator.”

A growl sounded above, and I swear the little hairs on the back of my neck shot straight up. I was a newly branded cat person, so why did these two freak me out so much? Was it that they were hairless or that they were staked out at a murder scene? Both?

After another emphatic growl, the larger of the two cats appeared at the top of the stairs, peering down at us like a dissatisfied overlord. Or a prison guard. Or a killer.

“Hi,” I said, even though I knew he couldn’t understand me without Octo-Cat here to translate.

He opened his mouth wide, then let out a terrible hiss before turning tail and stalking off with the smaller cat in pursuit.

“I am officially terrified of those things,” I said.

Mom shoved her phone back into her bag and turned to me with that same excited expression she’d worn most of the morning. “Know what I’m thinking?”

“I’m not sure I want to know,” I admitted. I should have been at home packing the last of my boxes for the big move, not shaking in my flip flops at the sight of these two bizarre felines. There was absolutely no reason this little investigation of ours couldn’t have waited.

Mom grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. Obviously, we were not thinking the same thing here. “I’m thinking,” she revealed with a happy squeal, “that this looks like a job for Pet Whisperer, P.I.”

“Pet Whisperer? P.I.?” I shook my head and tried very hard not to roll my eyes. Of course, she’d given me a special headline-worthy moniker. She’d probably already written and rewritten my featured story in her head several times over.

“That’s your new name,” she said, squeezing my hand again. “Do you like it?”

“Um, I’m fine just being Angie.” Must not encourage this. I wanted my special ability to remain a secret, not become front page news.

“Not for you,” Mom said with a sigh. “For your business.”

“I don’t have a business,” I pointed out. I still didn’t like where she was headed with all of this.

“Wrong again,” she crooned. “You’re already doing the work. You might as well hang out your sign and get paid for it.”

“Interesting idea, but I don’t want people to know I can talk to animals,” I reminded her. Besides, I still had my part-time salary from the law firm and my full-time stipend for being Octo-Cat’s official guardian and the overseer of his trust fund.

“Everyone will think it’s a gimmick,” Mom countered with a wink. “But only we’ll know the truth. Besides, it will give you an excuse to bring your cat with you while investigating, which is what you need anyway, right? I mean, if he’d been here this morning, we could have cracked the whole case wide open by now. Those cats definitely know what happened. I just know it.”

“Why do you have to be so excited about this?” I asked, resigned to the fact that I was apparently opening a business now—and, worse still, that my cat would be my new business partner.

“That’s branding, baby,” Mom answered with a glamorous flip of her hair.

Oh, brother. Or rather—oh, mother.

I took a couple big steps back, careful not to upset the crime scene as I walked away from the crazy lady who just so happened to be my mother. Turning to the door now, I said, “Okay, great. So, I’m just going to go make sure the police know the cats are up there. With the stairs cordoned off, it might not be easy to get them down.”

Mom followed after me as I returned to the bright world outside. I squinted from the sudden onslaught of sunniness and swept my eyes over the premises in search of the one officer I knew well enough to approach. Once my eyes adjusted to the light again, I spotted Officer Bouchard at the edge of the property examining a small copse of evergreens at the edge of a much larger deciduous forest that divided Harlow’s property from mine.

I jogged over to him, knowing my mom would have no trouble keeping up if she wanted to.

“Did you know there are cats inside?” I asked him, embarrassed by the fact my breaths came out labored from that short burst of exercise.

“That would be Jacques and Jillianne,” he said with a chuckle. “Ugly little things, aren’t they?”

“They’re… cute. Um, in a different way,” I insisted. In a very different way. Still, even though I’d just had the same thought myself, I suddenly felt defensive on their behalf.

My mom joined us then, having chosen to stroll elegantly across the field rather than run like I did. I guess it was now part of her persona or something. The news waits for no man, she’d often told me, but for a woman, it just might.

Officer Bouchard smiled kindly at Mom. “Yeah. The senator picked them up from a breeder in France, thus the fancy names. They’re slippery little buggers, too. I’ve been trying to catch them all morning, but so far, no luck. Figure with the next of kin on the way, the cats can be his problem when he gets here.”

“Next of kin?” Mom inserted herself between me and him. She’d already pulled out her phone and started the recording app, which she now held up to him like a microphone. “And who might that be?”

Officer Bouchard stared at the phone, then cleared his throat and answered in a crisp, clear voice, “Her son, Matthew Harlow. Lives in Chicago. Should be here by nightfall.”

“And who do you think killed Lou Harlow?” Mom asked, pressing the phone even closer to his face.

He sighed and pushed her hand aside. “I think it’s too soon to say. We haven’t even ruled out the possibility of it being an accident yet.”

Until today, I’d only seen one crime scene before—Bill and Ruth Hayes, who were murdered in their own home. I saw it long after the fact, but I’d had the same feeling today as I’d had then.

Call it my gut.

Call it intuition.

Or maybe even just a lucky guess.

Whatever the case, I knew it had been no accident that killed Lou Harlow. Someone had wanted her dead and decided to take matters into his or her own hands.

Now we just had to figure out who.

The Pet Whisperer P.I. was officially on the case.