The Big Kitty

19

Sunny felt brightness against her closed eyelids, opened one eye to a slit, and quickly closed it against the glare. Had she left her blinds open? If sunlight got from the edge of the blinds to her pillow, that meant it was pretty …

Late!

She remembered what had happened the night before and sat bolt upright in bed. A glance at her clock showed that it was, indeed, late. Almost flying out of bed, Sunny went down the hallway to check on her dad.

Mike lay on his side, his breathing deep and regular as he slept. Watching him, Sunny wondered, just for a moment, if the whole angina attack thing had been some sort of nightmare. Then she spotted the bottle of nitroglycerin tablets on his bedside table.

Sunny reached over and touched his shoulder gently. “Dad? How are you doing?”

Mike opened his eyes and peered at her for a second. “Huh,” he said. “Kinda late to be sleeping.” He stretched. “Feels good, though.”

Then he woke up enough to remember the previous night’s attack. Reflexively, he put a hand to his chest and then dropped it. “No, really, I feel okay.”

“Good enough for breakfast?” Sunny asked, and he nodded.

She made a brief detour to her room and her cell phone, calling Will Price’s number. When she explained what had happened overnight, he readily agreed to push back the time they were supposed to meet by an hour.

By that time, Sunny had showered herself awake, fed her father, Shadow, and herself, and put on clothes appropriate for traipsing through a dusty, dirty house.

Mike had established himself on the living room couch with the Sunday paper, assuring her he was fine. “You know how these things go,” he said. “They always happen at night. I take the little pills, go to sleep, and I’m right as rain in the morning.”

He made shooing motions at her. “Go and do what you have to do. You’re only gonna be a couple of blocks away, not a couple of towns. And you’ve got your cell phone.”

Even as he spoke, she was checking the charge on the battery.

“Okay,” Sunny said, still feeling a little nervous about the situation.

Will must have picked up on it when he came to the door. He made a point of coming inside and saying hello to Mike.

When they finally left, Shadow darted out the door before Sunny could get it closed. He managed a neat trick—evading Sunny’s attempts to pick him up while staying close to her heels. She looked up at Will, who was trying not to laugh. “Do you mind if he comes along? Maybe he knows where we’re going.”

When they had settled themselves in the pickup, Will said, “By the way, your dad looks okay. You’re who I’d have picked as the one who was up all night with chest pains.”

“Just with worry,” Sunny replied, blinking in the sunlight. Damn! She’d forgotten her sunglasses. “He hasn’t had one of these episodes in months. That leaves me wondering. Dad’s tried to put a good face on it, but I think this whole situation, especially the nonsense aimed at us, or rather, at me, is stressing him out.”

“Then let’s hope we find something to crack this case,” Will said.

That sentiment seemed overly hopeful when they arrived at the Spruance place. Sunny could see that Gordie had moved a lot of stuff around, but he hadn’t gotten rid of anything. Black trash bags lay everywhere.

Probably afraid that if he threw anything out, the lottery ticket would be hidden in it somewhere, she thought. She flexed her hands, trying to get used to the feel of the heavy rubber gloves Will had insisted they wear … along with face masks.

They stood in the living room, a glare of sunlight coming in through the window that had lost its drapes.

“This has to be where our man outside saw the flashlight,” Will said. “So we know the intruder was in here somewhere.”

“Well, we know this is one of the rooms she used,” Sunny pointed out. “It would seem reasonable to search in places she frequented. Ada said she’d lost the ticket. She didn’t say she’d hidden it and forgotten where the damn thing was.” The possibilities involved in that theory made her shudder. “Imagine checking under the liner in the litter box.”

Shadow circled around the room, making little grumbling noises. Sunny watched him, fascinated. Was he looking for the other cats who used to live here? Was he just responding to the way Gordie had rearranged things in this once-familiar room? Or had Shadow forgotten about Ada’s death—was he looking for his former mistress amid the mess?

The cat kept sniffing around Ada’s chair and acting generally unhappy.

Will watched him for a moment, then said, “You know, people who spend a lot of time in meth labs hang around some pretty unpleasant-smelling chemicals. Could our furry friend be reacting to that?”

“How do we know it’s not just Gordie’s smell, since he was setting up the lab himself?”

“We don’t,” Will admitted. “But I’m betting Shadow’s responding to the freshest scent.”

He got down on one knee. “The chair’s been moved,” he announced. “You can see the indentations the legs left in the rug.” He looked at the slightly shaggy upholstery and shook his head. “Nothing here that would take a print.”

Examining the table next to the chair, though, he got a little more hopeful. “The dust is disturbed where someone might have picked the table up or shifted it.” He pointed, keeping his finger carefully above the surface. “Whether there are prints, smudges—or if the guy wore gloves like us—I’ll leave that up to the lab people.”

“It makes sense,” Sunny said, peering around the pieces of furniture. “Ada spent a lot of time here. Do you think we should have a look?” She pointed at the chair cushion.

“I don’t think it would hurt. As I said, there are no prints here.” Will pulled the cushion loose to reveal a comb, several hard candy wrappers, an emery board, and a catnip mouse that had all gotten tucked down the seams. No lottery ticket, though.

“I’ll take a look for any marks in the kitchen,” Will said. “That’s the only other place the intruder could have gotten to in the amount of time he was here.”

Standing alone in the dusty living room, Sunny tried to imagine what it would be like to live here, with her life bounded by the few little areas that Ada had struggled to keep clean. The living room chair and the TV. The kitchen. She’d use the stairs in the back to get to the cellar if she needed anything from there. The kitchen door, for bringing in food supplies. Maybe the pantry area could do with a search.

Sunny glanced over toward the front door. Would Ada ever come and go that way? She walked over to the foyer and the little odds-and-ends table that stood beside the door. It was just the place to pick up a purse or car keys before going out—or perhaps to rest a bag when coming back from shopping.

A thick layer of dust covered the surface of the table, however, so it was clear that nothing had rested there for a while. A row of three small, impractical drawers stretched under the tabletop—pretty, but you couldn’t fit much in them. Two held buttons, spare keys, change—the sort of stuff that gets emptied out of pockets. The middle one, though … Sunny’s heart almost stopped when she saw the lottery logo printed on the back of the paper. Fingers trembling, she turned it over …

And snorted at herself. Oh, it was a lottery ticket, all right. But it was dated about a week before Ada died.

“Did you find something?” Will was back in the room, looking eagerly at the ticket Sunny held.

“Not unless lightning struck twice,” she told him, pointing out the date. “Bad enough to be searching for a winning ticket when there might be a year’s worth of losers lying around the house, too.”

She bent down to pat Shadow, who stood beside the table, looking up at her.

*

Shadow watched as Sunny waved the piece of paper in front of the Big Male. Were they going to play with it? If they let it go and it floated down, there might be some pouncing games they could play.

The male—Will, he seemed to be called—shifted his feet, and Shadow sidled away. He was very aware of feet after what he’d smelled around the chair, and even though his side felt much better, remembered soreness seemed to stiffen his gait.

There was no mistaking it—the memory of this particular scent had been reinforced with severe pain. The one who had kicked him so badly had been here. That was a bad two-legs, and smells like that always seemed to be connected to bad things. Shadow shifted uncomfortably as he watched Sunny and Will talk.

Even though he’d lived here, and the other smells were familiar, he wanted to leave this place. It made him nervous.

*

They went upstairs to check Ada’s bedroom. Gordie had apparently put in his most serious search efforts here. The closet stood empty and so did the dresser, the clothes bundled into those ubiquitous garbage bags and piled on the unmade bed.

“I wonder if he checked the pockets,” Will said, poking at the emptied contents of one bag.

A small jewelry box stood on the dresser. Sunny picked up the top to find the interior almost empty, although slots for rings showed impressions of use.

“I didn’t look very closely when I found Ada,” Sunny admitted. “Was she wearing jewelry when she died?”

Will shook his head, looking into the box. “Probably either she or Gordie was pawning stuff.”

He pointed at several faded family photographs with brighter edges scattered across the bleached wood top. “Those were probably in silver frames. Pawned, too, I bet.”

Sunny turned away, not wanting to look at these relics of a miserable, lonely life. “Let’s go downstairs.”

They ended in the kitchen, following Sunny’s notion of walking in Ada’s footsteps. The cans that had filled the cabinets were still on the counter. The shelves themselves were empty, lined with adhesive plastic sheets—still sticking on, but faded.

“My mom told me that they used to have special shelf paper that was supposed to get switched out once a year,” Sunny said. “Her mom used to slip a dollar under the paper as a reward for whoever changed it.” She tapped the faded floral pattern. “Nothing like that here.”

One drawer revealed knives, forks, spoons, and a can opener. The other held a tape measure, a handwritten phone book, and a lot of nondescript junk. Sunny peered at the cabinets under the sink. One held cleaning products. The other was full of pots and pans. “You think a ticket could have fallen down here?”

“I’m beginning to wonder if one of the cats ate it,” Will told her.

“The only other place I could imagine her going was the pantry.” Sunny started for the narrow, shelf-lined hall that led to the cellar door.

Shadow suddenly appeared underfoot, meowing at her.

“What?” Sunny took a step. Shadow butted his head against her shin. Taken aback—literally—she retreated a step, and Shadow butted the other shin.

“People talk about herding cats when they want to describe a hopeless job,” Will said with a laugh. “But here we’ve got a cat herding you.”

*

Shadow glared up at Sunny, her face disappearing as memory put another set of features on them—the Old One–Dead One–Gone One, in her familiar housecoat, her mouth open in shock, her eyes wide with fear.

He’d been sleeping in the pantry, caught unawares as she was flung past him, the screech of the door as it tore open drowning out her weak cry as she went down, down, down.

Shadow leaped from stair to stair after her, though he knew he was too small to be of help. The door above banged shut behind him, cutting off the light from the kitchen. That didn’t matter to a cat’s eyes, though. He could see clearly enough that the Old One was no more.

Then that Other One came running down the stairs, the noxious stench on him like the stink that rose from the Old One’s son, only a hundred times more poisonous …

No! He would not let it happen again!

Seeing Sunny by that deadly door, and the male behind her, Shadow couldn’t help himself. Even though they didn’t smell the same, dread overcame him.

He would force her back, pushing, crying out warnings, using his claws if he had to.

She would not die here!

*

“This is silly,” Sunny muttered, feeling her cheeks getting warm. She retraced her steps into the pantry, but couldn’t concentrate on checking the shelves with all the noise Shadow was making. “What is your problem, cat?”

Shadow walked back and forth in front of her as if he were on sentry duty, his tail lashing around, unhappy sounds coming from deep in his throat.

“Maybe he doesn’t like being trapped in that little space,” Will suggested.

“He’s not trapped,” Sunny said impatiently. “He wormed his way in ahead of me.” She advanced on Shadow, trying to shoo him aside. He stretched up to press the pads of his forepaws above her knee, pushing her back.

“Shadow!” Sunny said sharply and regretted it a second later as the cat jumped away from her.

Then he did something really weird. Turning in midair, Shadow launched himself at the cellar door. It sprang open with an unearthly screech, but Shadow didn’t go tumbling down. Somehow, he used the door’s resistance to bounce himself back, landing almost at Sunny’s feet. He looked up at her, making a low, unhappy, moaning noise.

Sunny stopped in her tracks. “All the time he’s lived here, that door has been painted shut.”

Will stood beside her, making Shadow crouch and lash his tail, his noises becoming bloodcurdling. Frowning, he said, “So the cat couldn’t have known it would open—unless …”

Sunny looked from Shadow to Will, her throat getting a little tight. “You know, ever since he came to us, he’s been obsessed with pushing things.”

Taking her arm, Will pulled Sunny back from the spitting cat.

Shadow calmed down and followed them to the living room, where Sunny knelt down and stroked him.

Will joined her. “Wow, little guy,” he said, offering a hand to be sniffed. “It’s really a shame you don’t talk. Because I think you were an eyewitness to a murder.”