The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives

19

It was completely quiet inside the bookstore except for the fading ring of the bell over my head and the steady, pounding beat of blood in my ear. There was an added note of disinfectant mixed in with the dusty smell of all the books, and the bloody paw prints that had been on the counter by the register were now completely gone.

I put my backpack down by the counter and flicked on the lights, then moved through the store slowly, aisle by aisle, carefully studying every shelf up and down. At the aisle where I thought I’d seen something move, I paused for a good long while and waited, but there was nothing.

I was about to move on when I heard a tiny rustling sound. It was coming from the end of the aisle, where there was an air-conditioning vent, with half its grille missing, cut into the baseboard at the bottom of the wall. A tiny brown mouse poked its head out and sniffed the air tentatively. When it saw me it froze, and we locked eyes for a moment; then in a blink it hopped out of the vent and disappeared through a crack between the bookshelf and the wall.

For an instant my mind flashed to my mother. I was about five years old, and we were just getting home from church. As we walked into the kitchen, she let out an earsplitting scream. There was a mouse running along the toe-kick of the kitchen sink, and at the sound of my mom’s screeching it hopped a good foot in the air and then slipped under the stove. I turned around to find a pair of white high-heel shoes, sitting perfectly still on the floor where she’d just been standing.

“Dixie, honey.”

I looked up. My mother was perched on top of the kitchen table, holding her skirt up around her knees and shaking like a leaf. She had literally jumped right out of her shoes.

“Go get your father.”

My dad was certain that poor mouse had been just as terrified of my mother as she was of it, and we laughed so hard that my sides ached for hours. There are a lot of things I inherited from my mother. Unfortunately, fear of mice isn’t the worst of them.

I waited a little while longer to see if anything else poked its head out of the vent, but nothing happened. I glanced at the AC unit built into the wall over the front door and then back at the open vent. It must have been a remnant of an old air-conditioning system, probably broken down at some point and never repaired. I moved on.

At the back of the store, I went through the low swinging door and searched every inch of the office, under the green velvet sofa with tassels, behind the big mahogany desk, even in a little broom closet, though it was closed and latched. Inside there was nothing but a tiny sink and faucet with some old mops and a stepladder. On the floor under the desk were a couple of bowls, one empty and the other with a tiny bit of water left at the bottom.

I’d expected there to be a litter box somewhere in the back of the store, but there wasn’t. I figured Cosmo must have been in the habit of being let out in the alley to do his business, but if he was locked in the store now without a litter box, he’d have found an alternative.

I brought the ladder out and used it to look on the tops of all the shelves in the store, which took a while. There was a gap of about a foot below the ceiling, but just like the rest of the store it was crammed with more books and boxes, so I had to move the ladder at least three or four times per aisle and slide things around to get a good view of everything. By the time I made it to the first aisle at the front of the store, I had lost all hope.

More than likely, the orange cat that someone had found in the alley was indeed Cosmo, and whatever I’d seen moving inside the store was either a reflection in the window or a mouse or my own imagination. The mind sees what it wants to see, and I knew I’d be much happier if I found Cosmo now as opposed to worrying about whether he’d been taken to the pound, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. I decided I’d finish searching this last aisle and then go home and start calling shelters.

I was balanced on the very top rung of the ladder, steadying myself with one hand on the top of the bookcase. When I slid a box over to one side and peered over the top, I saw a man framed in the doorway.

He was outside. At first I didn’t recognize him, but when he pressed his forehead against the glass I realized it was Butch the Butcher. He had changed out of his white butcher’s apron and black boots and was wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt. He cupped his hands around the glass and squinted, sweeping his eyes all around the inside of the store.

I froze. It would have been difficult to explain what I was doing in the store without betraying Mrs. Silverthorn’s confidence, especially since Butch had just told me Cosmo had been found, but it had also been Butch who told the deputies he’d seen me leaving the scene of the crime covered in blood. There’s no telling what he’d think if he caught me snooping around inside the store now.

But what was he doing here? Unless he’d been lying about someone finding Cosmo, why on earth was he looking in the bookstore? I kept myself as still as possible, hoping if I didn’t move he wouldn’t see me. Eventually he stepped back and folded his meaty arms over his chest. He looked up the street a couple of times and then walked back down the sidewalk toward his shop.

By the time I got the ladder folded up and back into its broom closet in the office, I knew what he was up to. More than likely I wasn’t the only one around here with an ego the size of a Texas bull. He probably thought his chances of figuring out what had happened to Mr. Hoskins were just as good as anybody else’s. Maybe he thought he’d notice that one detail in the shop that no one else had seen—that one tiny clue that explained everything. Either that, or I wasn’t the only person Mrs. Silverthorn had hired to find Cosmo.

As I latched the door of the broom closet, my cell phone rang. I think I was probably still a little nervous to be alone inside the store, because I yelped like a baby seal. Probably if I’d been wearing high heels, I would have jumped right out of them. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at the screen.

It was Ethan.

I shook my fist and whispered, “Oh shhhoot!”

We hadn’t talked all day, which wasn’t completely unheard of, but getting rarer and rarer. I had a feeling it was probably due to “the letter”—the one from Guidry, the one still sitting in a basket on my kitchen counter, the one I still hadn’t opened. The fact that I’d let it sit there this long gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’m an old pro when it comes to hiding things from myself, but it wasn’t fair to Ethan. He was probably just as worried about the can of worms that letter might open up as I was.

I sat down on the green velvet sofa, took a deep breath, and flipped the phone open.

Cheerfully as possible, I said, “Hey, what’s up?”

He said, “I was just about to ask you the same thing. What are you doing?”

I wondered what he might say if I told him I’d been hired by Mrs. Silverthorn and that I was sneaking around in Beezy’s Bookstore looking for a missing cat. Then I thought, Well, there’s only one way to find out.

“Umm, you might want to sit down for this.”

He sighed. “Uh-oh. Now I’m sorry I asked.”

I laughed. “No, really, it’s fine. Ask me where I am right now.”

“Do I have to?”

“I promise it’s not that big a deal.”

“Okay, where are you right now?”

“I’m in Beezy’s Bookstore.”

“What the hell? Really? Did Mr. Hoskins turn up?”

“Unfortunately no. The owner of the building hired me to find his missing cat.”

There was a pause. “The owner of the building…”

“Yup.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

“You mean Mrs. Silverthorn?”

I nodded, “Yep. I’m pretty sure somebody already found the cat, but I was walking by and I thought I saw something move inside, so I came in to check it out just to be on the safe side. I think I must have been seeing things.”

“How did you get in?”

“Mrs. Silverthorn gave me the keys herself.”

“Wait a minute, are you telling me you actually met her?”

“Impertinent man!” I said, doing my best impersonation of her. “We didn’t just meet. We had tea in the library at the Silverthorn Mansion!”

There was silence.

I said, “Hello?”

“Uh, yeah. I was just picking my jaw up off the floor. I’ve been working with the Silverthorn family for years and I can barely get that woman to talk to me on the phone.”

I shrugged, “Well, we’re old pals. Maybe I’ll introduce you sometime.”

“I’m not so sure I like the idea of you being in that store alone.”

“Oh poppycock!” I said, doing my Mrs. Silverthorn again. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I guess I’ll just have to trust you on this one,” he said, but then the tone of his voice changed. “Listen…”

I winced. When Ethan starts a sentence with the word “listen,” it usually means something very important is on his mind, but I already knew what it was.

I said, “Wait, I know what you’re going to say, and I’m sorry.”

“What are you now, a mind reader?”

I said, “Sort of. It’s about that letter, right?”

He sighed. “Yeah. Listen, I don’t want to pressure—”

“Ethan, I promise I’ll open it tonight. I don’t know why I’ve been putting it off.”

“Listen, it’s none of my business if—”

“No, you listen. It’s completely your business. I’m just not in the habit of thinking about anybody but myself, and it’s been so crazy the last couple of days, and I know you think things were left up in the air with Guidry and me, and I know you know I wouldn’t want to do a thing to make you—”

He interrupted. “Hey.”

“What?”

“First, stop talking. Second, would you like to have dinner tomorrow night?”

I took a deep breath and smiled. “Yes. I’d like that very much.”

“Sweet. I’ll pick you up at eight, but promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“If you see anything weird in that store, call me right away.”

I said, “I promise.”

Suddenly it felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders, a weight I’d been carrying around ever since that letter had arrived. For a long time, everything that had happened to me, big or small, happened to me and me alone. I was beginning to realize that no matter what Guidry had to say in that letter, I wouldn’t have to deal with it by myself now.

That was a feeling I hadn’t had in a very long time.

After I hung up, I pulled a Baggie of kibble out of my pocket and filled the empty bowl under the desk, and then I topped off the water bowl, too, just in case.

As I headed up toward the front of the store, I’d already planned my course of action. First of all, I’d phone Mrs. Silverthorn and tell her Cosmo had probably been found, and if she wanted me to confirm it I’d be happy to check with the local shelters. If he did turn up, I’d take him to the Kitty Haven, where I knew he’d be safe until we figured out what happened to Mr. Hoskins.

Second of all, I’d go home and open that letter. If Guidry was writing to say he’d changed his mind, that he missed me, or that he was unhappy with his new job and leaving New Orleans to come back to me, I’d just have to tell him it was too late, that I was with Ethan now and nothing could change that.

I was just about to get to “third of all” when something stopped me dead in my tracks. I was standing at the front door, my backpack slung over my shoulder, with the cash register and counter just to my right.

My fingers started to tingle.

I took a step back and looked down.

There on the floor, just a few inches from the edge of the counter, was a single, glistening red paw print.

My mind went numb. I gently pulled my backpack around and pulled out my penlight. Then, as quietly as possible, I put the backpack down on the floor and slowly lowered to my hands and knees. I clicked the light on with my thumb and directed its beam into the gap under the counter.

There were a few pennies lodged in a bed of dust and cobwebs next to a yellowed pencil, its edges pocked with teethmarks. To the left, tucked into the corner, was another air-conditioning vent, its metal grille covered in dust and lying on the floor in front of it. The vent opened up into the crawlspace beneath the big picture window, and as the light moved across the opening, I saw from deep within the reflection of two gleaming points of yellow, floating in the dark and staring back at me.

“Cosmo?”

I lay down flat on my stomach and pulled myself even closer under the counter. If I turned my head just so, I could wedge myself close enough to the vent opening to see all the way inside the space under the window. I squeezed my arm through and maneuvered the point of the penlight into the vent.

It illuminated an unfinished crawl space, directly beneath the big display window. It was less than two feet high, about four feet wide, and only about three feet deep. It was the perfect size for a nice kitty hideout, but as I swept the light from one corner of the space to the next, I felt a tremor start to well up from somewhere deep inside my body. The two yellow points of light weren’t cat’s eyes.

They were the shiny brass buttons on Mr. Hoskins’s shirt.

His lifeless body was folded into a crumpled pile in the corner, lying in a pool of half-dried blood, his red beret laid across his face like a death mask.