by Katie Penryn
I didn’t answer immediately. A wait would make him more co-operative.
“Felix?” he asked again. “It’s not so bad for me. I’m tough and could live on the streets, but I wouldn’t want that for Naomi.”
“Brutus, I’m willing to do anything I can to help you get your lives sorted but I need some help from you in return.”
“Anything. Just tell me what you need.”
“I need the name of Tidot’s petite amie. Just as you are anxious about your Naomi, I am anxious about my witch, Mpenzi. This case is taking too long and it’s wearing her out.”
“Man, we discussed this. I can’t tell you. My first loyalty is to Tidot.”
Naomi rose to her feet and sidled sinuously around Brutus. “And me?”
I stared right into Brutus’ eyes. He blinked first. “Brutus, Tidot is dead. Nothing you say can harm him and I’ll be as discreet as possible. You want the murderer brought to justice, don’t you?”
I felt bad tricking him into thinking we didn’t know who the murderer was.
The two cats moved a few paces away from me and whispered to each other.
Brutus came stalking back with his stump of a tail high in the air.
“We’ve decided you should know.”
“Well, tell me then. We’re running out of time.”
“She was in the shop on Saturday evening when you came with your witch.”
I thought back but couldn’t remember anyone. “Stop with the clues, Brutus. Just tell me.”
“She was Tidot’s shop assistant.”
Of course. Unnoticeable as she went about her business.
“You mean Nicole Déchet?”
“That’s the one. They’ve been close for a long time. One of the dangers of the workplace, as I know,” he said jerking his head towards Naomi. “The proximity breeds intimacy if one isn’t careful. And Tidot wasn’t.”
Naomi spoke up. “Nicole’s a good person. She’s always been kind to us. Her home life must be difficult. She’s come to work before now with a black eye.”
I remembered her husband. A brute of a man. “Yes, I met her husband when we interviewed Nicole the first time.”
Brutus’ tail began to lash again. I asked him what was wrong.
“If you’re thinking Nicole had anything to do with Tidot’s murder you are barking up the wrong tree. She loved Tidot. What was she like when you questioned her?”
“Devastated in the original meaning of the word — laid to waste. Distraught.”
“There you are then. What did I tell you? No way is she guilty of anything more than falling in love with the wrong guy.”
“I’ll still have to interview her again in the light of this news, but I’ll go gently.”
I thanked the two cats for trusting me with their secret and renewed my promise to find out what could be done for them. I decided to go straight from the bakery to Nicole’s house and ask her about her relationship with Tidot.
Chapter 33
Felix
It wasn’t until I was halfway to their house that I realized her husband would probably be home as it was going on for seven in the evening. However, there was only one car in the drive, a small runabout. I climbed up the long flight of steps to the front door and rang the bell hoping that meant he wasn’t home yet.
A voice called out to me from behind me. Nicole stood at the foot of the steps.
“I was sitting in the garden. It’s such a lovely evening,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
I walked back down the steps to join her. “I wanted to ask you a few more questions about your job with Monsieur Tidot.”
She began to cry and turned her head away from me so I wouldn’t see but too late.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I told her again.
She sniffed and pulled a tissue out of her jeans pocket and wiped her eyes. “Sorry about this, but I still can’t believe what happened. Come round to the back of the house with me. I haven’t got the front door key on me.”
I followed her round to the back skirting the mound on which the house was built.
“We’ll go inside,” she said, opening the back door and waving me in. “More appropriate.”
She showed me into the living room and brought me a glass of orange juice. I guessed that was partly politeness and partly to defer my questioning.
She sat down on the sofa and shook her hair back out of her eyes and I had my first good look at her. Her face was swollen and her nose still raw. Her grief hadn’t abated a jot. I had to agree with the cats that she could not possibly have had anything to do with Tidot’s death, but I had to ask.
“Madame Déchet, I have to ask you a delicate question and would very much like you to give me an honest answer.”
She shrank back against the corner cushion and clasped her hands to her arms. “If you must,” she whispered.
“Madame, would you please describe the nature of your relationship with Monsieur Tidot?”
She double blinked and shrank back further into the cushions.
“Madame, it’s important.”
“He was my employer. A good and kind one. I loved working for him.”
“Was that all?”
She straightened up and looked me in the eye. “What have people been telling you?”
I couldn’t tell her about the cats, and so I said, “There are rumors, madame. This is a small town.”
“That nosy old lady across the road?”
“She told me Tidot had a petite amie, but she didn’t tell me who.”
“So how do you know it was me?” she asked, giving herself away.
“I put two and two together, madame, as will other people eventually.”
She gasped and covered her face with her hands. “Déchet will kill me if he finds out.”
“So, you confirm that you were having an affair with Tidot?”
She looked up her face devoid of color. “Monsieur, it was much more than that. It wasn’t some sneaky hole in the corner affair. We loved each other. And now he’s gone.”
She burst into tears again. I moved across the room and sat down beside her. I cradled her head on my chest and stroked her hair uttering the usual banal words of comfort one uses in situations like that.
The door crashed back against the wall and I looked up with horror. Déchet was home. I hadn’t heard his car. He must have parked in the street and walked up to the house. That didn’t bode well.
Before I had a chance to move, he strode across the room and tore me up away from his wife. He was a powerful man and he caught me off balance. He tossed me across the room like so much flotsam.
I imagined he had misread my comforting of his wife for something of a different character, but it proved worse than that.
“What the hell are you doing here, you snoop?” he yelled at me.
Madame Déchet edged forwards on her seat. “Please Jules. Don’t do anything stupid. Monsieur Munro was only trying to cheer me up.”
“Cheer you up? Cheer you up?” he screamed at her, his voice growing louder with every word.
I took a step away from the desk that had walloped my head. “Monsieur, I think you have misunderstood what was going on. Everything was innocent. I was merely soothing your wife in her distress.”
He spun around and waved his fist in my face. “Thought you were going to take over from where Tidot left off, did you?”
His wife gasped behind him and buried her head in the cushion. “No,” she whispered.
“Oh yes,” Déchet answered. “Yes, yes, yes. I know all about you and your precious Tidot. Did you think you could keep something like that from me? Me, your husband?”
He spat as he spoke. Madame Déchet cowered away from him.
“And now you’ve told this nosy blighter. Do you think I like people knowing my wife has been sleeping with other men?”
Had he been listening at the door?
Déchet raged on. “Wasn’t it enough to have done it? Did you
have to tell him?”
I could see the same question going through her mind. How did he know what she’d said to me?
He leaned forwards and shook her roughly.
I called out. “Leave her alone, you bully.”
He threw her back on the sofa and spun round to me.
“I heard every word. I’ve been bugging this room for months. Every phone call. While I’ve been at work she’s been having long conversations with him. With a baker!”
I couldn’t keep the astonishment out of my voice. “So you knew about your wife’s affair with Tidot before his death?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he shouted. “Why do you think I did what I did?”
I was saved from answering by his wife who cried out, “Oh no. I can’t bear it. What did you do?”
And he turned back to tower over her and shout, “I did what you forced me to do.”
I had to get out of there fast before he realized he had raised my suspicions about his part in Tidot’s death. If he’d been involved he wouldn’t stop at killing me to prevent discovery.
I made it to the top of the steps before I heard him charging out of the house behind me. He barreled into me pushing me tumbling down to the bottom. On the way I hammered my head against the concrete and arrived dizzy and disorientated on the gravel. Being a cat although in man mode, I landed on my hands and knees, right way up, but that was no protection from Déchet. Through my shaky vision I watched him pick up a stone and move towards me.
He must have knocked me out. I came to in semi-darkness, black shot through with pinholes of light. The vibration and the noise of wheels humming over tar told me I was in the trunk of a car. I stretched out my hands to check and found he had bound my hands and feet. I held my hands in a ray of light — electrical ties. This was no simple abduction for money or to gain time. He was out to get rid of me and on his way to somewhere he felt safe. I had to warn Penzi. Maybe she’d send the cavalry in time to rescue me. I felt in my pocket for my phone. Either I had dropped it in the kerfuffle or Déchet had taken it.
My movements had set up a searing pain up and down my ribs. I double checked. He had kicked me, but what did I expect? After all, the definition of a cad is a man who kicks another when he’s down. I had no idea how far he was driving. I had to think, but my head was still spinning. I closed my eyes and spent a couple of minutes taking deep breaths.
Of course. I could shift down to my cat mode. The ties would be too big for me then and I could slip my four legs out of them. I prepared myself for the shift but I couldn’t summon up the necessary mental or physical energy. All I did was make my head swim and pump myself full of useless adrenalin.
I must have passed out again. When I resurfaced the second time, I found myself on my back in the dark with the smell of stale beer all around me. Was I in a bar? No, I was outside. A couple of early stars told me that. So I was in the open and it wasn’t yet midnight. I felt around me with my bound hands. Cans and more cans. Lightweight by the noise and lack of resistance. Beer cans. I wriggled. Cans slid down on me from all sides. I squirmed back to the top. My eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. I lay in a giant dumpster on a mountain of cans.
I struggled to my feet but couldn’t get any purchase. Every time I stood up I sank into the sea of cans. The sides of the dumpster towered above my head. I couldn’t get out as a man even with my limbs untied. Could I jump out as a cat? It was worth a try. Maybe I had enough strength now to shift. At least I’d be able to free my hands and feet. I adjusted my thoughts took several deep breaths and shifted to cat mode. I made it. The ties fell away. Now I was no longer bound I could set about escaping.
I coiled myself down and took a mighty leap. As I jumped the cans moved beneath me taking the force away from my upward motion. I hit the side of the dumpster with my claws and tried to get a hold but slid down to the bottom again. After two more tries it was clear to me that I couldn’t make it as a cat. After a rest I shifted into my leopard persona knowing that we leopards could leap a good ten feet vertically. However, I hadn’t bargained for my greater weight pulling me further into the mass of cans than before, and I fell short of the top of the dumpster. The second time I allowed for the downwards fall and managed to hook my claws over the top but couldn’t hold on. The pain in my ribs had increased with each stretch and I was running out of strength.
I gave myself time to recover and had a brain wave. I would pile the cans in the corner and run up them and leap. It didn’t work. They rolled back down under my paws taking me with them.
I needed to rest and while I rested I weighed up my options. If there was to be the remotest chance the next morning to get out of the bin, I would stand a better chance if I had some sleep. My muscles needed to repair themselves. As I drifted off Bond-like images of compactors and giant magnets flooded my imagination.
Chapter 34
On my return from Father Pedro I couldn’t find Felix. He wasn’t back yet. Gwinny told me he had borrowed her car.
“But he hasn’t got a driving permit,” I said. “In fact, he hasn’t any official papers apart from his import papers as a cat. If the police stop him, there’ll be the most awful to-do. Milk soup all over the place.”
“Couldn’t you magic him some documents?” Gwinny asked.
“Maybe, but I need him to teach me the spell. You know I can’t read.”
“If he gets into trouble, I could help you learn the spell.”
“Thanks. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
For me being taught a spell by my mother would be like the average person being taught to drive by their mother or father. It wouldn’t work.
*
My early night woke me up earlier than usual and so I sat up in bed to read, waiting for time to pass and for Felix to bring me my morning tea. Although I’d gone up to bed before Felix returned I expected him to come in and tell me how he had fared with the cats at the bakery. The time came and went and no Felix. Maybe he’d overslept after his late night.
When he hadn’t appeared by half past seven, I put on my dressing gown and went in search of him anxious to hear what he had learned and to tell him about my visit to Father Pedro. His bed hadn’t been slept in. A look outside showed me Gwinny’s car was missing. I checked my phone. Three missed calls because I had switched it off early the night before.
One voice mail late at night. Pick up, Penzi. Pick up! I’m hot on the trail of Tidot’s lover. Oh well, talk to you later.
So where was he? I was beginning to worry. He took his bodyguard duties seriously. It wasn’t like Felix to leave me unprotected for a whole night even though I now had the semper tuens aura around me.
I would have to retrace his steps until I met up with him if only to still the collywobbles churning in my belly. I snatched up my car keys and drove off towards the bakery to see what the cats could tell me. As I turned the corner onto the Esplanade, I met Jimbo on his way back from Brioche’s. I stopped, let down my window and asked him for two croissants, one for me and one for Felix when I found him.
Jimbo refused to give them to me. “You shouldn’t be on your own, Penzi. Felix wouldn’t approve.”
“I’m trying to find Felix. He didn’t come home last night.”
“Then take Sam with you, please. Something horrible might happen to you.”
I couldn’t tell Jimbo about the magic protective aura around me. We hadn’t told anyone except Gwinny about the witchdoctor. I had to waste time turning around, rousing a sleepy Sam and setting off again for the bakery.
When we arrived at the site of the explosion, I left Sam in the car. He wanted to come with me to question the cats but I told him he couldn’t because he wasn’t a magic person. The cats wouldn’t talk to me if Sam was there.
“Make sure you yell loudly if you need me then,” he said settling back in his seat in a huff. “I don’t know why you woke me up if I’m not to be of any use.”
I trod a careful path through the debris until I
reached the garage and the storeroom. Felix hadn’t told me the cats’ names and so I could only call out, “Puss, puss. Here, puss, puss.”
I hoped the cats wouldn’t be offended.
The cat flap rattled and a large Siamese shot out and made for the empty food bowls to the side of the flap. When he saw they were empty, he sat down and gave me a dirty look but did a double-take.
“Whoa,” he said. “I know who you are. You’re Felix’s witch. What are you doing here? Have you come to give us our breakfast?”
I shook my head. I should have thought of bringing the cats some treats.
“Sorry, not this time, but someone will be along soon, I’m sure. Felix arranged it. Talking of Felix, have you seen him?”
“Last night. Why? Have you lost him?”
“He didn’t come home last night. I’m worried he may have run into trouble. Would you mind sharing with me what you told him? I know he wanted to ask you about Tidot’s petite amie.”
The cat flap opened to let out a marmalade cat with a delicate face. “Tell her Brutus. She’s Felix’s boss.”
“I don’t like to. He may be off doing private stuff.”
The marmalade cuffed him. “Brutus, Felix was working, you know that. Tell her.”
Brutus licked his paw and wiped his whiskers, taking his time. “I told him Tidot’s petite amie was Nicole Déchet, the shop assistant.”
That surprised me. We had already interviewed her once and she hadn’t mentioned it, but I remembered her husband had been there. She wouldn’t have wanted to tell us in front of him even if she had been prepared to own up to the affair.
“Many thanks,” I said to the cats and turned on my heel. I knew where she lived. The sooner I asked her about Felix the better.
*
“Well?” asked Sam as I slipped behind the wheel and switched the engine on.
“He went to Nicole Déchet’s house to interview her again.”
“The wife of the guy who runs the recycling center?”