What the Cat Dragged In

by Miranda James

  “That’s good,” I said. “Look, did he say anything to you about Alissa? He surely realizes she’s his cousin.”

  “He knows that, but right now he thinks it better that she doesn’t know. All because of the mystery of what happened to his aunt.” Stewart shook his head. “I wish his mother weren’t so bullheaded. Whatever happened to her sister surely couldn’t be that bad.”

  “She obviously thinks it was, or else she wouldn’t be holding out on her son,” I said.

  “She’s right out of the Victorian age in some ways,” Stewart said. “I’m surprised she hasn’t covered the legs of all the furniture in the house so the naked limbs don’t offend anyone’s sensibilities.”

  “She must have a hard time in this world the way it is these days,” I said.

  “She belongs to one of those hellfire and brimstone churches out in the country. At least they draw the line at handling snakes, or so I’m told. She’s the only one in the family who goes. Haskell’s dad has more sense.” Stewart stowed the empty bags in the recycle bin. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “I’ll probably be right here,” I said.

  If Haskell did make it home for dinner, I thought, he might be willing to share more information about what Dewey Seton and his dog uncovered. He hadn’t been with the group at the farm, but I knew Kanesha would have brought him up-to-date. Whether she had instructed him to keep it to himself was the question.

  I had been so focused on the identity of the woman whose bones Diesel and I had found, I realized I hadn’t given much thought to the murderer of Marty Hale. Kanesha might have had a break in that investigation that I knew nothing about, and that was often the case. In the past I hadn’t heard about forensic evidence until after the fact. I speculated that her team might have found something at the crime scene that could help identify the murderer.

  That was the problem with being on the outside. The playing field, if you wanted to call it that, was uneven. Kanesha was sharp, no question about it. By the time I figured out the identity of the killer, she was almost always there, too. Simply by a different path, with clues to which I had no access.

  I decided I would probe a bit with Haskell. If nothing else, he might admit they did have evidence to follow up on. If I got that much out of him, at least it would tell me that Kanesha had made progress. More than I had done, certainly.

  I tired of sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for others to appear. I decided to go up to my room and change my shirt. I hadn’t realized how much dust I had picked up in the attic. Neither Azalea nor Stewart had said anything to me, but I suddenly felt grubby.

  Diesel and Ramses came with me up the stairs, though they both turned the opposite way on the landing. They were going to check on Alissa, and that was fine.

  When I came out of my room several minutes later wearing a clean shirt, I didn’t see the cats or the young woman. I walked back downstairs and into the kitchen. Alissa was seated at the table, thumbing through the album. Diesel and Ramses, predictably, lay on the floor on either side of her chair.

  “Good evening,” I said.

  Alissa looked up and smiled. “Good evening. I had a nice long nap, and I read awhile.” She indicated the album. “Did you find this at the farm?”

  “I did, along with five other albums.” I sat and examined her expression. She didn’t appear upset. “I brought only this one here, though. I hope you don’t mind. They’re yours now.”

  Alissa shook her head. “Fine with me. I know some of the people in these photos, but only because I’ve seen similar ones that my mom has in California.” She slid the album toward me and indicated a picture at the top of one page. “See there? That’s my grandfather and grandmother, and that’s my dad. He was probably fourteen in that photo. Mom has the same one. My dad gave it to her when they were dating, she said.”

  I was right about Mr. and Mrs. Hale in the photos I had already seen. And Martin Jr., too. His face in this photo was clearer, and he did look familiar after all. I really must remember to ask Melba about him. I recognized the setting. The front porch of my grandfather’s house.

  “Have you been all the way through yet? See anyone else you recognize?”

  “No, I only started a couple of minutes ago,” Alissa said. “You know, it’s really kind of weird seeing these pictures of my grandmother. That’s the only way I know her. She must have died right after this.”

  “Let’s see when this picture was taken.” I pulled it loose from the album and turned it over. The date was July 1972. Not long before she disappeared from the family. I replaced the photo, and Alissa turned the page.

  Many of the pictures we looked at had been taken either somewhere in my grandfather’s house, on the porch, or in the front yard. I didn’t recognize other locations. Mrs. Hale dropped out of the record after three more pages, and I checked the date on one of the photos. August 1974.

  “When did your grandmother die, Alissa? Do you know?”

  She shook her head. “In the early seventies sometime, I think. I don’t know the exact date. Dad was about sixteen when she died.”

  Or disappeared, I added silently. I wondered whether I should tell Alissa that her grandmother was rumored to have run away. I would have to think about that carefully. Sooner or later she would find out, but I didn’t know that I wanted to be the one who told her. I should probably leave that to Haskell, her cousin, if he admitted the relationship.

  Alissa turned another page, and suddenly she froze. In a choked whisper, she said, “That’s her. That’s the woman in the room.” Her hand trembled as she tried to indicate the photo.

  I pulled it from the album. It came loose easily. I examined it carefully. There were two people in the photograph, a man and a woman. I didn’t know who the man was, but the woman . . . the woman had no hands.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Do you recognize her? Other than as being the woman in the room?” I tried to keep my tone casual, but I was excited. This was a huge breakthrough. There couldn’t be two handless women in this case.

  Alissa, though still obviously upset, took the photograph back and looked at it. After a moment she shook her head. “I don’t know who she is. She has no hands. I think that’s what scared me about her. I was a little kid.”

  “You don’t recognize the man, either?” I asked.

  Alissa looked again. “No, I don’t.” She turned the photo over to find the date. The back was blank.

  “I need to call the sheriff’s department about this picture. Would you mind looking through the rest of the album to see if there are any more pictures of her or this man?” I asked.

  Alissa grimaced but said she would. She didn’t question me, and I was glad that I didn’t have to explain why yet.

  I called Kanesha’s cell phone rather than the department number. To my surprise, she answered right away.

  “What is it?” she said, her tone brusque as ever.

  “I believe I’ve partially identified the woman whose bones I found,” I said.

  Silence rewarded me. I had rarely made Kanesha speechless.

  After a long moment she said, “How? How could you do that? And what did you mean, partially identified?”

  “I don’t know her name,” I said, “but I found a photograph of a woman with no hands in a photo album that belonged to Martin Hale. The elder one, that is. I have it here at my house. We’re going through the album to see if there are any more of her or of the man who’s with her. I don’t know either of them, but somebody will.”

  “I’m on the way. Haskell should be there soon. Turn the photograph and the album over to him immediately, please.” She was gone.

  I had to admit to a moment of deep self-satisfaction. I had found a piece of crucial evidence, mostly thanks to Alissa. I regretted that Alissa had been frightened by the picture, but now that she had seen the woman again, and realized tha
t she had no hands, perhaps some of the horror would fade from her memory.

  I walked back into the kitchen. “Any luck?”

  “No, that’s the only picture with either of them,” Alissa said. “What did they say when you told them about the photograph?”

  “Chief Deputy Berry is on her way here. Haskell should be here any minute. We are to turn the photograph and the album over to him. The sheriff’s department will try to find out who that woman was.”

  “Was?” Alissa frowned. “How do you know she’s dead?”

  “I believe she is the person whose bones Diesel and I found in the attic.” I drew my chair near hers. “I didn’t tell you this before, because I thought it might bother you. The hands and feet were missing from the skeleton I found. Now that we’ve found this picture, and you recognized the woman as the one you saw in that little room, we have more information that will help lead us to her identity.”

  “That’s good,” Alissa said, rubbing her arm. “The memory is still scary. Not as scary as it was before I realized why she frightened me. She must have suffered pretty bad to end up that way.” She paused, frowning. “But there was something else. I’m sure of it.”

  I thought about that for a moment, then inspiration struck.

  “She might have had prosthetic hands, or maybe claws. You know, the pincer type?”

  Wide-eyed, Alissa looked at me. “I think you’re right. Claws. That must be what scared me. But I can’t say for sure. All I really remember is being frightened of her. I was too little to understand.”

  I squeezed her shoulder. “You can forget about it now, or try to. Once we find out who she was, her ghost will be well and truly laid.”

  “Maybe.” Alissa looked doubtful. “But how did her skeleton end up in the attic? That’s super creepy.”

  “It is. Her bones got dug up at some point and stored in the attic. I have no idea why, though, unless it was meant as a prank of some kind.”

  Alissa grimaced. “That’s the kind of thing Marty would have done. Maybe it was him.”

  “I think it was done well before your brother came here,” I said, and I explained about the undisturbed dust in the attic when Diesel and I made our discovery.

  “You don’t understand. Marty came to stay with our grandfather for a couple of weeks about three years ago,” Alissa said.

  “I thought he hadn’t come back here since your family moved to California,” I said, stunned.

  “That was the only time,” Alissa said. “Grandfather said he was sick and needed help. He paid for Marty to fly here, and Marty stayed for two weeks. Maybe three. He didn’t have anything good to say about our grandfather when he got home. He made Marty work like a dog.”

  This was a bombshell on top of the photograph. Had Marty somehow found the bones, disinterred them, and hidden them in the attic as a prank?

  “You’ll have to tell Deputy Berry about this,” I said. “They might be able to determine whether your brother did dig up the bones and put them in the attic.”

  “I don’t know how,” Alissa said. “Can you leave fingerprints on bones?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, though I would find out. If nothing else, I might call my newly rediscovered childhood friend, Dewey Seton, and simply ask him.

  Alissa brightened. “I know. I’ll call my mom. She ought to know who that woman was.”

  I felt a fool. I should have thought of that myself. “That’s a great idea, and anything she knows would be a big help.”

  Stewart returned from walking Dante while Alissa was on the phone with her mother, and thanks to the barking dog and the chattering cats, I couldn’t hear Alissa’s side of the conversation. I gave Stewart a quick update and told him Haskell should be here any minute.

  I’d barely got the words out when Haskell came walking into the kitchen. I tried to tell him what Alissa and I had discovered, but Dante barked even louder at the sight of his adored human. Laughing, Haskell scooped him up and said he’d take him upstairs with him while he changed out of his uniform. Stewart went with them.

  Once they’d departed, quiet reigned again, except for Alissa’s brief responses to her talk with her mother. From Alissa’s expression, I judged that something was amiss. Seconds later Alissa put her phone down and turned to me.

  “This is really crazy,” she said slowly.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She gazed up at me. “I told my mom about what happened today, and about the photograph. She says she doesn’t remember ever meeting a woman like that while she lived in that house. She can’t explain what I saw.”

  I frowned. Would her mother deliberately lie to Alissa about something like this simply to torment her daughter?

  “Let’s look at the picture again.” I sat beside Alissa and we pored over the photograph. I noticed something right away that hadn’t registered before, having been too shocked by the sight of the woman with no hands.

  “Their clothes are funny looking,” Alissa said. “Like right out of an old movie.”

  “You’re right,” I said. The clothes were definitely not contemporary with those of the other pictures in the album. The man and woman looked to be in their thirties, and the clothes dated from the forties. I recognized the styles. Laura had worn a similar dress in a production of a World War II–era play she had done in Los Angeles.

  “How could this woman have been in the house, in that room, and your mother not know it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Alissa said. “Unless my mom was lying to me for some reason.”

  “Has she done that before?” I asked.

  “Yes, she has,” Alissa said, her expression grave. “Marty was always her favorite. That’s one reason I loved my stepdad so much. I was his favorite, and he wouldn’t let Marty pick on me or make fun of me when he was around.”

  I realized that I had conceived a thorough dislike of Marty Hale, and that now extended to his mother. I had only Alissa’s word for all this, and I cautioned myself not to believe everything she told me about her family. I had only known her a brief time, after all. Diesel had really taken to her, though, and that was usually a good sign.

  “I have read, more than once, that little children are more open to the paranormal,” I said. “They don’t know that such things as ghosts are not supposed to exist, for example, and when they see things the adults around them don’t, it usually gets dismissed as an active imagination.”

  “You think maybe I saw a ghost in that room?” Alissa looked uncertain.

  “If your mother is telling the truth, I’m not sure what else to think,” I said. “If it weren’t for that photograph, I’d say maybe some stranger had wandered into the house to steal something, and you saw her and frightened her away.”

  “Even my mom wouldn’t have left me alone in the house,” Alissa said. “Someone else would have been there, I’m sure. They would have seen her, too.”

  I looked at the photograph again, to check the woman’s feet. She was sitting, and the man stood next to her, a hand on her shoulder. Her handless arms were crossed, wrist against wrist, in her lap. I couldn’t see any feet, but I suspected the chair she was in was a wheelchair, one of the old high-backed kind.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “The problem is, your mother is the only one, besides you, who lived in that house at the time who’s still alive. I’m sure Kanesha will want to question her, and if your mother was lying to you for some reason, Kanesha will get the truth out of her.”

  “I hope so,” Alissa said. “I’d rather think Mom is lying than that I saw a ghost.” She shivered.

  I heard the doorbell. “That must be Kanesha. We’ll be right back.”

  Diesel remained with her, but Ramses followed me to the front door. I scooped him up before I opened it, because he often tried to run outside.

  I invited Kanesha
in and closed the door firmly behind her before I put Ramses down. Kanesha looked at him and grimaced. “My mother loves that silly cat, the Lord only knows why.”

  I chose to ignore that comment. Azalea had told me recently, during one of Kanesha’s visits with her, she had left the room for something and come back to find Ramses in her daughter’s lap. Kanesha was stroking him and smiling. I would keep that to myself for now.

  “Let’s go in the kitchen. Alissa’s there, and you can see the photograph,” I said.

  Kanesha followed me, Ramses like a small dog at her heels. He was probably confused because she was ignoring him.

  Alissa and Kanesha exchanged greetings, and I handed the deputy the photograph. Kanesha took the chair across from Alissa and studied the picture. She looked up. “You don’t know these people?”

  “No, I don’t,” Alissa said. “When I was really little, before we moved to California, I think I saw her in that room where my brother was living at the farm. She frightened me. That’s all I remember, really.”

  “Alissa called her mother a few minutes ago,” I said. “Asked her about this woman, and her mother claims she never saw her at the farm.”

  Kanesha frowned. “Are you trying to tell me you saw a ghost?”

  “I don’t know,” Alissa said. “I was only two, I think. I didn’t remember any of it until I walked into that room. Then it terrified me again.”

  “Would your mother lie to you?” Kanesha asked.

  Alissa nodded. “Sometimes she does. It was always Marty and her against me.”

  “Let me have your mother’s phone number, and I’ll call her.” Kanesha pulled out her phone and punched in the number as Alissa recited it.

  “Mrs. Willoughby, this is Chief Deputy Kanesha Berry in Athena, Mississippi. How are you?” Kanesha paused to listen. “I hope you have time to talk with me. I have a serious matter to discuss. It’s about an old photograph your daughter found in an album from the farm.”

  Kanesha’s expression remained impassive as she listened. Apparently, Mrs. Willoughby had a lot to say, because Kanesha didn’t respond for what seemed like several minutes.