Hairless Harassment

Chapter Fourteen

Mom arrived about ten minutes later. That was the thing with small towns like Glendale—it never took long to get where you were going. I was a bit removed from the main village action, now that I lived on the swanky East side, but everything remained incredibly close and the traffic was generally light.

Nan pranced through the foyer to let her in, a fact which Mom did not seem happy about.

“Angie?” she asked, charging into the living room where she found me sitting with my smart phone. “What’s she doing here?”

Not her politest moment, but my mom and Nan also preferred each other in small doses. Apparently personality types in my family skipped a generation, so if I ever had a daughter of my own, I’d find myself with a little girl who was both too garrulous and too ambitious for her own good. Nan and I had gotten the weirdo gene, and that suited me just fine.

“We were discussing the senator’s death,” I answered, hating the way the corners of my mother’s mouth dipped even further.

“I thought we were working on the case together?” she said, her usual confidence strained. She glanced back toward the door as if debating whether she should make a run for it.

“We were,” I said gently, hating that I’d hurt her feelings yet again. “I mean, we are, but…”

Nan breezed past Mom and plopped down onto the couch. “Oh, come off it now, Laura Jean. We’re all in this together. Right?” She patted the seat beside her and motioned for Mom to join us.

“Right,” I said, offering my mom a quick hug to lift her spirits. “Besides Nan hasn’t been here long. Right?”

“Right,” Nan answered with a wink that I doubt my mother missed. Sigh.

“Well,” Mom said, shaking her head and tilting it to either side—a nervous tic she’d picked up during my toddler years, or so I’d heard. “As long as I’m still part of the club, I have some news to share.”

She reached into her purse and pulled out a notepad. “First off, the death was ruled an accident. They think she may have had too much to drink at a charity fundraiser and then tripped and fell down the stairs.”

Tripped over her cats, I thought, but didn’t say anything. I still wasn’t ready to talk to Octo-Cat in front of my mom and didn’t want to invite questions that would require either doing so or telling her no when her feelings were already very clearly hurt.

“The next of kin came in last night,” Mom continued. “Matthew Harlow, a divorced salesman from Chicago.”

I nodded along mutely.

“The county has assigned a police detail to guard the place whenever he’s not at home,” Mom continued.

“A police detail. Why?” I remembered seeing Officer Bouchard there yesterday afternoon and how unsettling I’d found it. Nobody had been there this morning, though, when I stopped by. Well, except for Brock the handyman.

She set her notepad down and fixed her eyes on me. “Because the senator was such a prominent person in the area, they’re worried that people might come by to loot or take souvenirs. It certainly doesn’t help that she has one of the nicest homes in all of Glendale.”

Mom widened her eyes at me. And so do you, her body language yelled loud and clear.

“So, what now?” I asked, that familiar sense of disappointment creeping up on me again. I should have been happy that the death was solved, but something still didn’t feel right. “Case closed?”

“Ha!” Mom shouted. “Hardly! They can call it an accident all they want, but I know something fishy is going on here.”

I grinned and gave Mom a high five. I was so glad we agreed on this vital point.

“And when the cops won’t do their duty, it becomes the reporter’s responsibility to find the truth. Right, dear?” Nan said with a placating smile.

“Right,” Mom said, although she seemed less sure of herself now.

“I agree,” I said, grabbing my phone and handing it to Mom. “These are my notes. Granted, I have a few things to add after talking with Matt this afternoon.”

“You met Matt? Without me?” Mom shook her head and kept her focus on the phone, but I could tell it really hurt her feelings.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” And I meant it. I needed to try harder, now that the two of us had started spending more time together, now that we shared this interest. “It wasn’t exactly planned.”

“She ran into him in the forest last night,” Nan said, leaning forward and clasping her hands together.

“Nan,” I cried. “Would you please just stop helping?”

I caught my mom up on all that she had missed in the past day and a half. “Sorry for not calling sooner. It’s just been one thing after the next,” I said when I’d finished.

“Thanks for filling me in,” she said a bit too cordially for my liking. “But I should probably be off. Bye, Mom,” she told Nan, who remained seated in her chair as I walked my mother to the door and said goodbye.

“Why do you do that?” I asked my grandmother when I returned. “You know it bugs her.”

“That’s why I do it,” Nan said with a chuckle.

I placed both hands on my hips and stared down at her.

“What? She does the same thing to you!” Nan insisted, and she was right about that.

“Maybe let’s all work a little harder on getting along.” I fell back into my chair with a sigh. “I mean, we’re all grown-ups here.”

“As you wish.”

“Great.” Now, that Nan was properly chastised, this brought us to our next matter at hand. “So, will you please stay the night?”

A naughty expression crossed Nan’s face as she laughed and asked. “To protect you from the monsters under your bed?”

I just glared at her, refusing to play these games. “You know why.”

“I do,” she said, nodding thoughtfully and appearing completely somber as she did. “I just had to get one last jab out of my system. I promise I’ll play nice from now on.”

“And you’ll stay?” I asked, making no attempt to hide how important this was to me.

Nan nodded. “I’ll stay.”

I let out a giant sigh of relief just as Octo-Cat returned from wherever he’d been during my mother’s visit. I assumed this was because he still hadn’t forgiven her for the teacup incident yesterday.

“Um, hello there. Hi. What are we going to do about the two murderers you invited to live with us?” he demanded, nodding his head toward the upstairs.

“Oh, Jacques and Jillianne!” I cried. “I guess I should let them out of the library now. Huh?”

He took several steps back and squinted angrily, not unlike the expression I’d expect him to make if I ever dared punish him by spritzing him with a water bottle. That is something I would never in a million years do, though—especially now that I knew he could murder me with ease, should the inclination arise.

“Absolutely not,” he said emphatically.

“But you said it was an accident,” I reminded him, making slow work of rising to my poor, tired feet.

Octo-Cat flicked his tail so crazily that it looked like one of those giant, wavy armed blow up guys outside of an auto dealership. “Yeah, and do you want them accidentally killing you? You only have one life, right?”

“Okay, you have a point.” I’d give him that. As much as I felt for the two Sphynxes, I really didn’t feel like dying today.

Nan watched with amusement as my cat and I talked, even though she only understood one side of the conversation. “If those two Sphynxes are staying in there, we should probably take them food and water. And a kitty box,” she added.

“Good point.” They were our guests. The least I could do was make them a bit more comfortable. “Octo-Cat, where did we put your spare litter box?”

“Oh, no. No way. No how. You have absolutely got to be kidding me. You give them my litter box, and I’ll make extra sure I use your bed for all my kitty business going forward.” Well, that wasn’t what I wanted, but it also felt wholly unnecessary to need to head to the store to buy new supplies when we had everything we needed right here.

I sighed and asked a question I was almost certain I would regret. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to send them home. I don’t like having them here.” He remained tense, standing between me and the stairs.

“But don’t you want to find out who killed the senator?” I asked, taking several steps closer.

“Uh, hello? We know who killed the senator.”

I thought about this. Perhaps there was still a way I could get through to him. “Then shouldn’t we keep them locked up until they can… um, stand trial?” I was reaching, I knew. I had no idea what animals normally did to mete out justice, but I knew Octo-Cat was a big fan of legal television shows. Hopefully appealing to his fondness for all things crime and punishment would convince him to start seeing things my way.

“Oh, Angela, you’re absolutely right,” he ground out, as if this possibility shocked him to the core. “I’ll go stand guard.”

“He’s going to keep watch,” I explained to Nan, wondering how I’d just managed to add kitty prison warden to my resume and if it would ever even come in handy.

Well, at least Octo-Cat was occupied.

For now.