Cat With A Clue

Chapter 8

That evening, I intentionally immersed myself in lake water so cold that it made me feel as if the top of my head was going to blow off.

“It’ll get better,” Ash said. He was leaning off the back of a powerboat, ready and willing to give coaching advice.

“When?” I asked, teeth chattering.

“Soon as you’re up!” He grinned, and large parts of my insides went a little mushy at the idea that this incredibly good-looking man was dating me. Then again, I was in sixty-two-degree water with a wide board attached to my feet. Sure, I had a life jacket and was being watched over by a professional law-enforcement officer who also had EMT certification, but he wasn’t the one in the water, now, was he?

“It’s the getting-up part I’m worried about,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the motor. The boat behind which I was about to water-ski belonged to, and was being driven by, a friend of Ash’s, whom I was pretty sure he’d introduced as Tank. There was undoubtedly a story there, but to me, a thin guy with long sun-streaked hair and an easy smile could have had a more appropriate nickname.

“Hang tight to the towrope,” Ash said, “and remember the drills we went through on land.”

“Arms straight,” I said to myself. “Knees to my chin. Let the boat do the work.”

“Got it?” Ash called.

I nodded. Excitement and anxiety were knotting up together in my chest. I’d water-skied before, but never had I tried to slalom ski, to get up on one ski. Ash and I had gone out boating a couple of weeks ago with a different friend of his, and I’d looked on enviously as they had cut left and right behind the boat, sending up large rooster tails of spray.

“Next time we ski,” Ash had said, “if you want, I’ll show you how.”

I’d said sure, and now here I was, about to fail miserably. On the plus side, I had a ready-made excuse: Since I didn’t have quality goggles, I’d taken out my contacts, and the world was blurry around all its edges. On the minus side, my vision wasn’t that bad, so it wasn’t that great an excuse.

“No,” I said out loud.

“What’s that?” Ash called, cupping a hand to his ear. “Did you say roll?”

As if. I took a deep breath and nodded. If I fell the first time I tried, it wouldn’t be a big deal. If I fell twenty times, it wouldn’t be a failure. I would fail only if I gave up. “Roll.”

Tank pushed the throttle slightly forward and there was an immediate tug on the rope. The boat puttered ahead with me trailing afterward like a baby duck behind a great big momma.

“Arms straight!” Ash called. “Knees to your chest!”

I nodded, although I was mostly trying to figure out where to put the towrope. To the left of the single ski that was sticking out of the water or the right? This wasn’t a decision you had to make when you got up on two skis. I tried one side then the other and settled on the right. Then, before I really thought about it, I tightened my grip on the handle and shouted, “Hit it!”

The boat’s engine roared. I was hauled forward at an incredible rate of speed. Water rushed over my face and over my head. Then, miracle of miracles, I felt myself rise, felt the ski start to level out. I was getting up! I was actually going to get up! I was . . .

Splash!

I fell forward with a resounding crash. After a second, I even managed to remember to let go of the towrope. Coughing away the water that had shoved itself into my nasal passages, I took stock of my body and of life in general.

“You okay?” Ash was hanging out the front of Tank’s open cockpit boat.

“Fine,” I said, coughing. “I hear fresh water is good for your sinuses.”

Ash laughed. “You were almost up. Ready to try again?”

“Sure. What did I do wrong?”

“Leaned too far forward.”

Since I’d fallen on my face, that made sense. I vowed not to let that happen again. And so, a couple of minutes later, I was in position a second time. “Hit it!”

Splash!

A few minutes later . . . “Hit it!”

Splash!

“Hit it!”

Splash!

The boat circled back around. “You getting tired?” Ash asked. “This is hard work.”

My shoulders were aching and my thighs were screaming, but no way was I going to quit, not now that I’d fallen every way possible. I set my jaw. “Hit it!”

Splash!

“Hit it!”

And then everything came together. Arms straight, knees to my chin, let the boat do the work, all you have to do is stand up . . . and I was up. On top of the water and skimming away. I let out a shout that was pure, unadulterated joy. I was doing it, I was slalom skiing, I was cruising, I was king of Janay Lake, I was—

Splash!

This time when the boat came back around to me, I’d pulled off the ski and was floating in the water, faceup to the blue sky, panting from the exertion, and happy with the world.

“Not bad,” Tank’s gravelly voice said.

“You did great!” Ash leaned over the boat’s transom and hauled in the ski.

“Next time,” I said, kicking my way to the ladder, “I’m going outside the wake.”

“That’s my girl.” Ash helped me into the boat and handed me a swim towel. “You’ll get it in no time.”

“All those years I’ve spent lifting boxes of books weren’t in vain,” I said. “Who needs to go to the gym to lift weights when you’re a librarian?”

Tank and Ash laughed, although I hadn’t been trying to be funny; it was just true. I rubbed the towel over my hair, making it go all frizzy, and pulled on a fleece sweatshirt.

“You going again?” Tank asked, looking at Ash, who shook his head.

“No, thanks. Have a long run scheduled for tomorrow morning. Don’t want to be tired starting out.”

“Got your bet down?”

“What bet?” I frowned. “And what’s with that ‘keep quiet’ gesture, Deputy Wolverson?”

“Umm . . .” Ash made himself busy with coiling up the towrope.

“He doesn’t want you to know because you might get uptight,” Tank said. “But I can see you’re not like that, so I have no problem telling you there are bets at the sheriff’s office and city police on what place is going to be broken into next.”

“Why would I get upset about that?”

Ash took the towel from me and folded it up neatly. “It’s more that I don’t want to be the first one to break our agreement.”

Now, that made sense. The morning of our first run after Andrea’s murder, we decided that we wouldn’t talk about the murder, or any other crime in which I was involved, on an official date. We’d decided that the first one to break the agreement would suffer severe consequences that would be named by the non-agreement-breaker, and sealed the deal with a kiss. Though placing a bet wouldn’t violate the contract, a broad discussion would almost guarantee that one of us, at some point, would cross the line.

Of course, we had yet to decide what constituted an official date, but it’s hard to get everything right on the first try.

“That used-book store,” I said.

“What used-book store?” Ash gestured for me to sit in the boat’s front seat, across from Tank, and dropped into a backseat.

“It just opened a couple of months ago.” Used-book stores had a hard go of it financially. Their margins were thin, and most advertising was beyond their budgets. I had high hopes for this one—their selection of mysteries and thrillers was outstanding—but only time would tell.

“Huh,” Ash looked thoughtful.

“Too late, pal,” Tank said. “You already placed your bet. Minnie, you betting?”

I shook my head. Putting down money on someone’s future misfortune wasn’t anything I’d want my mother to know about. Not that I told Mom a tenth of the things I did, but anticipating her reactions was a good way to judge how I should act.

“Maybe there won’t be any more break-ins,” Ash said.

“Who gets the pot if there aren’t?” I asked.

Tank started the boat’s engine. “Ash, man, you really got to talk to your girlfriend more.”

“What?” I looked from one to the other. “Why?”

“Because he”—Tank jerked his thumb over his shoulder—“said if no one wins, the pot goes to the library.”

He slapped the throttle forward and we zoomed across the lake.

* * *

A few hours later, back on the houseboat, I asked my cat a simple question: “Is Ash the nicest guy in the world, or what?” I opened a kitchen cabinet and, standing on tiptoes, rooted around in the back. “Ha! Found it.” The vase was dusty, so as I cleaned it out I talked to Eddie, who was supervising my efforts from the dining booth. The back of the booth, to be exact, upon which he’d arranged himself into a three-dimensional rectangle.

“Do all cats do that?” I asked. “Make themselves into a meat-loaf shape?” There was probably a proper mathematical term, but to me he looked like a furry meat loaf. “And how do you do that, exactly?”

He blinked at me.

“No, seriously,” I said. “When you stand up, you look like a normal four-legged mammal. But when you’re like that, your legs disappear, your tail disappears, and sometimes—yeah, like that—you sink your head down and you’re almost completely rectangular.”

“Mrr,” said the geometric shape.

“I suppose that’s some sort of an answer.” I poured water into the vase and opened a drawer. Once upon a time, my mother had given me a pair of kitchen scissors. I still didn’t know what normal people did with them. I’d asked Kristen once, but her explanation had involved the naming of parts of chickens and turkeys that I hadn’t known existed.

“Scissors work great for this,” I told Eddie, clipping off the ends of the flowers Ash had presented as he’d dropped me off. “He’d had these in a cooler in the back of his SUV the whole time we were out water-skiing. Aren’t they pretty?” I popped the flowers into the vase and arranged them as artfully as I could.

“Mrr,” said the meat loaf.

“What kind are these? Well, those are daisies,” I said, pointing. “And those are . . . are yellow flowers, and those are blue ones.” Maybe it was time to start studying the wildflower book that was in the bookmobile. I’d learned a lot about birds over the past year while driving around the county, and there was no reason I couldn’t learn more things.

“Not that these are wildflowers,” I told my critical cat. “I’ve heard you’re not supposed to take wildflowers from where they grow.” Why, I wasn’t exactly sure, but it probably had something to do with native and protected species and public lands, and that removing the blooms could hurt the flower’s reproduction possibilities.

I moved the vase to the middle of the dining booth’s table and turned it this way and that, admiring the colors. “Sounds weird, though, doesn’t it? Flowers reproducing, I mean. Kind of makes you think about them sneaking around after dark and making out.”

The image amused me. “Maybe that’s how we get new species—adolescent flowers doing what Mom and Dad warned them not to do, and suddenly there’s a brand-new flower in the family.” Smirking at myself, I turned back to the sink and washed off the scissors. “Then there’s this new flower, and it’s not accepted by any of the other flowers and—”

Crash!

I whipped around. “Eddie!” I lunged forward, grabbing at the tipped-over vase with one hand and reaching for the flowers with the other. Water streamed onto the floor and puddled around my flip-flopped feet.

Eddie, who was now sitting on the table, just watched.

“Why on earth did you do that?” I shoved the flowers back into the vase before they could drip anywhere else. After refilling the water, I put the vase on the kitchen counter.

“These,” I said, glaring at my cat and pointing at the flowers, “are not a cat toy. They are mine. Not yours. Understand?”

Eddie stared straight at me, then yawned, showing long and white teeth.

“Yeah, yeah.” I pulled off a length of paper towels and knelt on the floor, reaching under the table to get the far end of the puddle. “How did you get water way back here? You’re a mess maker—that’s what you are. Like a matchmaker, only different. We could make up new lyrics to the song. How about—”

Crash!

“Eddie!” I started to stand, bonked my head on the underside of the table, slid out of the danger zone, and spun myself around on the floor, holding my hand to my head. “What is with you, cat?”

My furry friend was paying no attention to me. He was on the kitchen counter, his entire being focused on pushing a daisy out of the fallen flower arrangement and onto the floor. Plop.

“Off,” I ordered.

“Mrr!” he ordered back, but he did jump down.

“And quit playing with my flowers.” I pulled the daisy away from his outstretched paw. “Not a cat toy, remember?” For the third time, I put the flowers in the vase. After adding some water, I looked around for a safe home and quickly decided there wasn’t anywhere both out of reach and viewable by those houseboat residents—which would be me—who would enjoy looking at the flowers.

“You are horrible.” I put the flowers into the fridge. “I’ll have to take those to the library to get any pleasure out of them.”

Eddie pawed at the refrigerator door. “Mrr!”

“Really? How many times do I have to tell you? Not a cat toy.”

He gave me a look of fierce disgust and stalked off.

“You’re not going away mad, are you?” I called.

“Mrr.”

“I love you, you know!”

He paused at the top of the short stairway and looked back. “Mrr,” he said, and hopped down the stairs, pushed open the door of my tiny closet, and flopped onto my shoes, where he stayed the rest of the night.