Hairless Harassment

Chapter Thirteen

At the Harlow manor, Matt begged off to take a call, leaving Nana and me to locate and load up the two Sphynx cats. Despite our best efforts to be quick, it still took nearly an hour for us to find Jacques and Jillianne, catch them, and then get them back to my house. Apparently they were every bit as adept at hiding as they were at telling riddles. So that we wouldn’t risk them slinking off again, Nan and I carried them straight up to the room I had dubbed my future library and closed the door tightly before letting them out of their carriers.

I’d also brought Octo-Cat in to join us, and I had the fresh scratches to prove how very not thrilled he was to be there.

“I object!” he cried, hurling himself at the closed door in protest.

“Oh, hush, or I’ll give you something to object about.” I had no idea what that might be, but luckily my mostly empty threat worked.

“C’mere, my sweet kitty!” Nan cooed, tapping her fingers on the hardwood floor where we both sat with our legs crossed.

Octo-Cat hated being called kitty but he loved Nan, so he traipsed over and climbed into her lap. She immediately fussed over him and began to scratch that special spot right beneath his chin. I could see the rage melt right out of him. Thank goodness.

“Let’s make this quick,” he said, eyeing me with obvious disappointment. Luckily I was used to his theatrics and his disappointment, so this didn’t thwart my plans in the least.

The two Sphynx cats had retreated to the far corner of the room and sat shivering near the central cooling vent. They looked so miserable that I almost felt bad confining them here. Still, they had intel that we needed, and they were the ones who’d chosen to sit right beside the cold air pouring into the room.

The little one let out a croaky meow, and Octo-Cat sighed. Like he’d suggested, I’d do my best to make this as quick and painless as possible. If not for him, then at least for our two visitors.

“Let’s go,” Nan said, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “I can’t wait to solve some riddles.” I’d already told her everything she needed to know on the phone that morning, and now she was primed and ready to see some action.

“Okay.” I focused my gaze on Octo-Cat, who did not return the eye contact. “Octo-Cat,” I said again to get his attention. “If you want this to be quick, you have to pay attention.”

He turned toward me with ears back and tail poofed. “Fine. What do you want me to ask the two hairless wonders?”

“Ask them who killed their owner,” I said with the same impatient attitude I’d perfected as a teen.

Nan giggled gleefully, and Octo-Cat remained seated on her lap as he shouted toward the Sphynxes.

They remained in their dark corner, almost as if they’d been glued there. It took much longer for his back and forth with them than it had with our former terrier witness, and I’ll admit I started to get a bit bored as the minutes passed by without any further answers.

Then, suddenly, Octo-Cat snapped his eyes toward mine, his whiskers twitched, and he did not look happy. “I knew it!” he cried. “You thought I was being breedist or whatever, but my first instincts were absolutely right.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, rubbing my hands on my legs to awaken the sleepy nerve endings.

Nan glanced down at Octo-Cat with the dearest admiration as he revealed, “They killed the senator.”

“Oh, c’mon!” I shouted. Was he really coming back to me with this?

He remained steadfast in his insistence of their guilt. “No, really. They just admitted it.”

“Yeah? Then tell me what they said,” I demanded, wishing I didn’t have to rely on him to be my translator when there was a clear bias at play here.

“It would be a whole lot easier if you’d just take me at my word, you know? But fine.” He sighed then recited back their latest riddle. “‘Excuse us while we provide this breakthrough, for the guilt lies with the ones you see before you.’”

He was right, of course. The answer was obvious, but…

“That’s not even really a riddle,” I said glumly. “It’s just a rhyme.”

“Good gravy. They just gave you a confession, and it’s pretty direct as far as their type goes. What more do you need?”

“Ask again in another way,” I demanded, then whispered to Nan to fill her in while Octo-Cat talked with the Sphynxes some more.

Another several minutes passed before Octo-Cat addressed me again. “Well, Angela. They said, ‘You didn’t believe us the first time, but you already know who committed the crime.’”

Octo-Cat thumped his tail hard against Nan’s leg, and she abruptly stopped petting him. “Good enough for you now?” he demanded with wide eyes.

“Not quite,” I answered to his great dissatisfaction. “They say we already know, but I have a whole list of suspects. It could be Mr. Thompson or Matt or even Officer Bouchard.”

“Or it could be the two freakazoids who literally just confessed to murder,” he spat, shooting them a cold look, which he followed up with a hiss.

“What do you think, Nan?” I asked after relaying the latest clue.

“Phooey,” she moaned, rubbing her temples in little circles. “I was never very good at riddles. Either of you could be right with your interpretations.”

I chewed on my bottom lip while thinking about what to do next. “Okay, how about this?” I said, waiting for Octo-Cat’s attention to snap back to me. “Ask them how they killed her. Not how she died, how they killed her.”

“We already know that,” he said, condescension dripping from each syllable.

I shook my fist at him and growled, which was enough to get him to cooperate for a little bit longer.

When he returned to me with their message, he stated it plainly with no commentary. “‘Up it goes and at the same time down, it is here that the answer’s found.’”

“Stairs,” I said, recognizing a version of this riddle from my school days. “Okay, so that was where. I still need to know how.”

He batted a paw in my direction. “You’re insufferable. You know that?”

I could tell his patience hung on by a single frayed thread—mine did, too—but we weren’t done yet. “Oh my gosh, please just ask them already!” I exploded. I’d wrongly assumed that his fondness for the senator would make him more cooperative this time around. Then again, this whole time he’d been certain that he’d already single-handedly solved the case. Who needed facts and testimonies when you have an ego the size of our entire home state?

Octo-Cat groaned and said, “You owe me. You owe me so big for this.”

“Bigger than the mansion you requested after that last favor?” I shot back, refusing to be bested by a cat… again.

He rolled his eyes but revealed the Sphinxes’ next riddle despite his protests. “‘Sure of foot and light of heart, this is how she fell apart.’”

“Now I feel like they’re just volleying my question back at me. This is going to take forever,” I whined, resettling myself on the uncomfortable floor. I couldn’t wait to fill this room with comfortable furniture and wall-to-wall shelves of books. I would have sat in the window seat for this exercise had Nan not settled on the floor first. Seeing as I was more than forty-five years younger than her, I shouldn’t have been having this hard a time.

She reached forward and put her hand on my knee. “Honey dear, if you trust your cat, just let him do all the talking. It seems that might be easier for everyone involved.”

If I trusted him. That was a huge if. Colossal.

Octo-Cat had clearly made up his mind before he’d heard even a single detail about Harlow’s death. But still, I couldn’t deny that the Sphynxes did seem to be confessing to the crime in their own special round-about way.

“You’re right,” I told Nan with a small smile, and then to Octo-Cat, “You don’t need to translate for me. Just talk with them and then catch me up later.”

He eyed me wearily, then hopped out of Nan’s lap and joined our two hairless witnesses in the corner. After several minutes of mixed meows, he trotted back and took up his spot in Nan’s lap once more.

“They did it. They killed her by tripping her when she was on the stairs. They are sorry and say they feel really bad about it. As much as I despise them, it doesn’t seem like they did it on purpose, but who knows?”

“Thanks,” I murmured. I felt a little better, seeing as he’d conceded one point. Earlier he had been certain that they murdered their own in cold blood. Now he was saying that they did it accidentally. Could this whole investigation really been all for naught? Were my instincts that wrong? I was supposed to be getting better with each case, not worse.

Just then, the phone in my pocket buzzed. I fished it out and read the new text message from Mom that popped up on my screen:

Police ruled H’s death an accident. I’m coming over.

Well, that answered that.

I passed my phone to Nan so she could see the message, too.

“You don’t really believe that, dear,” she informed me, setting Octo-Cat to the side so she could push herself up from the floor in one smooth, fluid movement.

I struggled to a stand with far less grace. “I don’t know what to believe any more,” I admitted. The last couple days had passed in a dizzying whirl, from moving to snooping and everything in between. Both my mind and my body were exhausted. Was it possible I was seeing clues where none existed?

One look at Nan told me she hadn’t given up on this yet.

And that was enough for me to keep going, too.