Raccoon Racketeer

Chapter Three

As it turned out, my cat wasn’t the only one watching too much television these days. Normally, Nan would spend most of her mornings in the kitchen as she did the food prep for the day and whipped up treat after delectable treat for us to enjoy with our daily tea. Today, however, the kitchen sat empty, pristinely clean, and completely abandoned.

“Nan?” My voice felt disturbingly loud as it echoed through the empty manor.

When no response came, I raced to the garage to check if her little red sports car was still parked snugly inside. She often left after lunchtime to volunteer or take a community class, but she generally informed me before heading off. Besides, if she’d left the house early today, I should have seen her from my place on the front porch.

Well, her car sat waiting in the garage, right where it belonged.

So then where was my nan?

Paisley stood on her hindlegs and patted my leg with her tiny clawed feet. “I can still smell her close by. Want me to show you where she is?”

As soon as I nodded, the little dog bolted up the stairs and began scratching at the door to one of the bedrooms we didn’t use.

“Nan?” I called cautiously before pushing it wide open.

Paisley raced in before me, and Octo-Cat slinked in after.

Nan, however, was still nowhere to be seen.

“Paisley, are you sure she’s here?” I asked, seriously beginning to worry now.

“Oh, yes! Up there!” She ran over to the closet and began to jump and do clumsy side flips, not stopping until I looked up and noticed the open attic hatch.

I craned my neck to try to see inside. “Nan?”

She appeared in a cloud of dust. The bright silk scarf on her head featured an emoji print, and she wore cat-eye sunglasses, presumably to protect her eyes from all the floating dust motes. “Oh, hello, dear.”

“What are you doing up there?” I demanded, not any less worried now that I’d found her in a potentially dangerous situation. “How did you even get up there?”

“Just sorting through some things. I started with my bedroom but wasn’t quite ready to call the whole thing quits for the day just yet.” She turned away and crawled out of view.

“Call what quits?” I shouted after her.

“I didn’t know we had a higher place,” Octo-Cat remarked, then dropped low and wiggled his butt, making an impressive leap toward the hatch.

His front paws grazed the entrance but couldn’t get a grip.

“Ouch,” he moaned after he fell clumsily back to the ground.

“Are you hurt?” I asked, attempting to stroke and soothe him.

He flinched and slinked away from my hand. “My poor pride,” he whined. “What kind of a cat can’t stick the landing? Ouch.”

“Oh, Octo-friend. Can I kiss your ouchies?” the dog offered, licking her lips in anticipation.

“Insult to injury,” my cat muttered.

Both animals ran out of the room, leaving me on the ground and Nan somewhere above.

“Nan?” I called again. “What are you doing up there?”

She popped into view again, laughed, and shook her head as if this should have all been obvious. “Why, Mission Marie Kondo, of course!”

“Marie Kon—Wait… Is this from that book everyone’s talking about?” If memory served, there were also memes aplenty.

Nan scrunched her face up. “A book? Hmm, well, I don’t know about that. It’s a show on Netflix. I binged the full first season the other day. I do hope there will be a new season soon.”

I knew for a fact it had been a book first but kept mum.

Her eyes lit up as she explained, “It’s the new Feng Shui. Everyone’s doing it. If something doesn’t spark joy, then it doesn’t belong in your home. Fun, right?”

“Yeah… Fun,” I muttered. Already we had far more house than possessions to put in it. Sometimes I felt like we lived in a museum with all the antiques we’d inherited as part of the estate. We could do with more personal items to fill it out, not fewer.

“Well, are you coming up or am I coming down?” My grandmother tilted her head to the side in a gesture that reminded me very much of her Chihuahua sidekick. “You know what? I’ll come down.”

A moment later she’d scurried out of the crawl space and dropped the rest of the distance to the carpeted floor below. Her knees bent a little on impact, and I worried she’d broken something.

Racing to her side, I gently pulled her back into a standing position. “Oh my gosh! Nan! Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay. What do you take me for? Some kind of invalid?” Both her knees and her voice shook, but shockingly she wasn’t any worse for the wear. Not like Octo-Cat and his poor, damaged pride.

What do I take you for? A seventy-something woman, that’s what! But I didn’t push it since she appeared to be perfectly okay. Maybe one day I’d be in as good of shape as my grandmother, but somehow I doubted it—not when she was part Betty Crocker, part ninja.

“Do me a favor, because you know I worry,” I begged. “Next time you want to go in the attic, grab me first—or at least grab a chair.”

She waved my concerns away. “No need to worry. I’m done for now.”

“Did you get rid of lots of stuff?” I asked, only now noticing the two large trash bags that sat to the side of the closet.

“A good chunk of it. What have you been up to this morning?”

I filled her in on the reappearing flyers and the confrontation with Pringle, ending with the most unbelievable part. “And get this? He says he needs them so he can do origami!” I exploded.

“Oh, good,” Nan said with a pert nod. “I was worried he wouldn’t be able to find any craft supplies.”

“Wait. Are you the one who turned him on to the Japanese art of paper-folding?” Why was I even surprised?

She shrugged. “I had an old book. It wasn’t sparking joy for me, but it seemed to spark joy for our raccoon friend, so I handed it right over.”

“But a book? Does he know how to read?” How could he read if Octo-Cat, who’d lived much more closely with humans, couldn’t?

Nan chuckled. “Well, that’s a question for him, dear. Not me.”

I rolled my eyes hard and let out a long, extra breathy sigh.

“No need to get snippy now,” Nan scolded as she charged toward the door.

I followed her down the stairs and into the kitchen. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. It’s just I’m trying so hard to find clients for Octo-Cat’s and my business, but nothing seems to be working.”

“Oh, you need clients?” Nan raised an eyebrow my way while filling our tea kettle at the sink.

“Of course we do. It’s been two months, and still we have zero clientele to show for our efforts.” Talk about depressing.

My grandmother set the kettle on the stovetop and turned back to me with a giant grin. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I happen to know someone who is in desperate need of your services.”

“What?” I gasped. “And you didn’t tell me?”

Nan hit me gently with a hand towel. “Calm down, you. I just found out yesterday, and I was quite busy at the time.”

With her Marie Kondo-ing, right. I rearranged my features into a placating smile. Even though I loved my nan more than anyone else in this entire world, sometimes her roundabout methods could be a bit infuriating.

“Well,” I said when she still hadn’t said anything after a full minute. “Who is it?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and turned her face away. “Apologize first. That’s twice you’ve snapped at me in the space of five minutes.”

“I’m sorry.” And I was. I loved Nan’s quirkiness and wouldn’t change her for the world. For all her faults, my grandmother was still my best friend and my idol.

As soon as that final syllable left my mouth, she whipped back toward me to make her big reveal. “I prefer to let you be surprised, but I’ll ask your new client over for dinner tonight so she can give you all the details. I feel quite sure she’ll hire you on to help her out.”

“Thank you, Nan!” I sang, wrapping her in a solid hug. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter that she was playing coy with the details. Nan had found a client, a real, honest-to-goodness client!

Finally, things were looking up for Octo-Cat’s and my P.I. business.