The Cat Vanishes

by Louise Carson

  “Miss Coneybear. Gerry. We’re having a little party at the inn tonight — a buffet with drinks — if you’d like to come. It must be lonely in that big old house by yourself.”

  She knew the woman meant to be kind, but a certain cold watchfulness in her eyes made Gerry feel defensive. “Oh, I have the cats to keep me company. But thank you very much. I’d love to come to your party.”

  As she walked home, she fumed. Not everyone is meant to be paired off like the animals entering the Ark two by two. I do have the cats. And my friends. When they’re around, she finished rather dolefully. Cathy’s house. Got to get over there this afternoon.

  She made a nice big brunch with scrambled eggs, the last of the ham and the last croissant. Maybe I should get some groceries this aft, she thought. She made up the fire and went outside to replenish the stockpile of fuel on the back porch. She let Bob accompany her.

  Automatically, she headed for the rear of the shed, where the large blue tarp the Hudsons had spread over the hole in the roof stopped her. “Right,” she said under her breath, and let herself in the little lean-to at the other end of the building.

  She squeezed through the inner door Prudence had managed to push ajar. Remembering her friend’s encounter, Gerry felt a bit nervous, but Bob slithered between her legs and ahead of her and jumped up on the woodpile, his tail twitching. “My supervisor,” she quipped.

  He watched her remove the first few armfuls, but by her third trip, had disappeared. “Watch out, mice,” Gerry called, and continued her work.

  She decided to transfer the rest of one long row of logs and settled into a rhythm. By the time she’d almost finished, she was thirsty. “Cup of tea, Bob?” No answer. She made the last few trips and then began seriously to look for her cat.

  “Bob! Where are you?” Nothing. She edged around the wood to the back wall of the shed where the blue tarp sagged. She frowned. Something had happened to the woodpile. It had collapsed. “Now what?” she muttered. She looked down into a hole full of firewood. “Cripes! The tree hit the roof, went through, and hit the woodpile, which went through the floor.”

  “Meow!” came from the hole.

  “Bob? I can’t see you.”

  Bob appeared, dragging something.

  “What is it, Bob? The rest of that chicken?” Gerry teased.

  But this bone was too large for Bob to lift. Gerry got down on her knees, then had to shift to her belly. “Have you got a dead ox down there, Bob?” Her fingers closed on the bone and she raised it towards her face. She knew this one had come from no farmyard animal.

  After the police had left, taking as many of the bones as they could find and forbidding Gerry to go near the hole — why would she want to? she gloomily wondered — she made her usual afternoon coffee.

  She felt a bit sick. It was all very well for Prudence to experience whatever it was she’d experienced, but actual bones in the ground on Gerry’s property — well, that wasn’t even a bit entertaining.

  She sat in front of the fire, clutching her mug. “At least I took out lots of wood before, before — where is Bob now?” She’d totally forgotten him in the dizzying flurry of activity that had followed their grisly discovery.

  She’d phoned 911 but had been clear this was no emergency, so had been given another number to call, had called it, had mumbled a few words about finding old bones under her shed floor, and waited.

  It must have been a slow day because someone came rather soon, took a look and phoned someone else. The someone else came with a few people and collected the bones. “Not to worry, miss,” one of them said, “we can tell they’re old.”

  “Prehistoric?” Gerry asked hopefully.

  The woman laughed. “Not that old. But old enough that we know we’re not looking at a fresh crime.”

  Nevertheless, thought Gerry, absently fondling the kittens in their box, this house has been in my family for over 150 years. Someone must have known who was buried or laid there. Someone must have known.

  “The bone!” She rushed to the kitchen garbage and rummaged until her fingers closed around the bone Bob had brought to her bedroom. “I should give that to the police.” She put it on the mantel.

  She ran a hot bath and soaked, which usually helped when she felt upset, then changed into her trusty black dress, black tights and funky ankle-high black boots. “Colour. I need colour.” She rummaged until she found a gauzy green scarf. She even put on lipstick, a pretty coral pink. As usual, she cheered up when she looked at her reflection. Dark red hair, blue-green eyes, freckles. “Enjoy yourself!” she urged, thinking of the bones. “Life is short.”

  Before she got in her car she called for Bob and checked the shed. No Bob.

  When she got to the inn, one of the Parsley teens was there to direct her to a parking place. As she gave her coat to another teen in the lobby, she joked, “Don’t your parents ever give you kids time off?” The girl smiled sourly. Gerry slunk into the dining room, then straightened, glad she’d dressed up.

  Live music — a singer and a guitarist — performed softly from one corner. A roaring fire blazed. And many, many Parsleys and other notables of Lovering filled the room with happy chatter.

  Gerry took a glass of white wine from a youngster behind a table and looked around for her hosts. Betty Parsley was probably supervising in the kitchen. A roar of laughter told her she’d located Phil Parsley, standing with a group of men. Gerry walked over to the group. “And then I said, ‘Will no one rid me of this nagging wife?’” The men burst into laughter.

  Gerry flinched but nonetheless said, “Merry Christmas, Phil. It’s nice to be here.”

  “Gerry!” A large man, Phil gave her a bear hug. Obviously, he was already full of good cheer. “Glad you could make it. Cats not keeping you too busy? Not coughed up too many furballs?” He roared with laughter at this incredible piece of wit and his cronies joined in.

  Gerry’s eyes widened but she kept her smile fixed in place. “No, no. They’re no trouble. Oh, is that — ?” She pretended to see someone she knew over by the buffet table and retreated.

  She knew it. The town saw her as a laughingstock. A solitary female living with twenty-three cats. She fumed as she piled food on her plate. She’d show them. She’d —

  “Hey, Gerry, leave some for the rest of us,” a quiet voice urged at her elbow.

  She turned, ready to lash out, but saw only Doug Shapland’s nice face and unassuming smile. She looked at her plate. It was laden with mini-quiches, fried shrimp, roast turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes. “Oh, my gosh, Doug. You take half.” She scraped a portion onto his empty plate. “I guess I was blinded by fury.”

  “Sounds serious. Let’s get a table.”

  The restaurant tables had been bunched up on one side of the room so people could circulate, chat or dance. They found a good spot near a window and ate their supper. Well, Doug ate. Gerry just stared at her food.

  “It’s the cat thing. People make remarks. I get angry.”

  He paused eating to say, “Your quiches are getting cold.”

  She bit into one and relaxed. “Spinach, nutmeg, Swiss cheese. Yum. As good as Cathy’s.”

  “She may have made them,” he replied. “I think Betty buys from her. That’s better. As for the cat thing, embrace it. Make it work for you.”

  “How would I do that?” She took another quiche from Doug’s plate — mushroom and thyme in a cream sauce.

  “I dunno. You’re an artist. Paint portraits of the cats. Support a spay and neuter clinic with the profits. Protest pet stores selling cats when so many are in shelters.”

  Gerry said slowly, “You mean really become a crazy cat lady, but do good with it.”

  “Something like that.” He shrugged. “But in the mean time, let ’em talk. After all, what can they say that will actually hurt you? I should know.” Doug, a recovering alcoholic,
raised his ginger ale. “Cheers!”

  “Cheers, Doug!” They clinked glasses. “You’re right. They’re just teasing. But I’m not used to it. I never stood out for any reason before. How are the boys?”

  “Oh, you know — distant as only young adults can be.”

  “That reminds me, I have a gift for David. And one for you. Want to see me home and I’ll give them to you?”

  “I don’t have a car yet, but I can drive yours,” he suggested. “You’ve just had a drink.”

  “Good idea. That’s the last thing I need: to lose my licence out here in the country. Oh!” She covered her mouth with her hand. “Did you?” When he nodded, she apologized. “I didn’t know.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, getting up. “I got it back. I just can’t afford to operate a second car and the boys are using Margaret’s tonight. You’ll have to drive me home later.”

  “Deal.” She looked around for her hostess to thank her but only saw Phil. She shrugged. No way she was approaching him again!

  As Doug helped her on with her coat in the lobby, Gerry thought how comfortable it was that he was a man of only medium height and build. It was nice not to have to look up so far.

  After his initial gawk at her damaged car, he drove them home, where he took in the blue tarp over the shed roof. “Want me to have a look at repairing that?”

  “Yes. But not tonight. I’ll tell you inside.”

  A few of the cats greeted Doug. They knew him from his cutting the grass and gardening for years for Aunt Maggie, and lately, for Gerry. She put on the kettle as Doug built up the fire. “Would you like one?” she asked, seeing him stroking the kittens.

  “David might like it.” She brought him a cup of tea and his gift. “Thanks, Gerry. I didn’t get you anything.”

  “No need. This is to say thank you for all the odd jobs you do. Open it.”

  It was a book cataloguing the work of Chihuly, the world’s greatest glass artist, with coloured photographs. “Oh, wow,” breathed Doug. “Look at that.” They pored over the book together.

  “I thought you could try doing in neon what he does in glass,” Gerry suggested.

  “Well, obviously,” Doug teased. “I’ll be world famous in no time.”

  “Like me with my future cat portraits,” Gerry teased back.

  They clinked mugs. “To Art!” they exclaimed in unison.

  Gerry handed him another flat package. “And that one’s for David. A graphic novel. I know he draws.”

  Doug leaned over and kissed her cleek. “Thank you very much, especially for remembering David.”

  Gerry smote her forehead with one hand. “Oh, no, I’ve forgotten to do Cathy’s house again. That’s almost four days. I was in it on Christmas. All this skeleton business distracted me.”

  “What?!” Doug almost dropped David’s package and his book on the kittens. “What skeleton business?”

  “I’ll show you. Well, not the skeleton, but where I, I mean Bob, found it.” Grabbing her coat and the flashlight from the kitchen, Gerry led Doug outside.

  “Oh, Bob. Well, if Bob found it, that’s okay,” joked Doug.

  They entered the potting shed and walked through into the larger woodshed. “I’m sure the police won’t mind if we just look,” said Gerry.

  The police had moved some of the junk so they could fully open the interior door. The piled-up farm implements, lamps and other small objects loomed from the tops of desks and tables. Likewise, wood had been thrown from the neat stacks Gerry had made in the fall, to form a pile away from the hole in the floor.

  “What a mess!” said Doug, looking down.

  Gerry swept the light around the room. “Yes. But the wood will be gone by spring, and then we can have a good turnout of all this stuff.”

  “You could have a sale,” said Doug, dropping to his knees beside the hole. “Can I have the light?” He shone it into the hole. “I wonder how long he was down there. Wouldn’t it smell?”

  “The police said they were old bones. Maybe they were put here as bones, so there’d be no smell. Or maybe —” Gerry looked at the hole in horror. “Maybe the person who killed him was the only person who came into the shed. In the old days, the women wouldn’t come in here. The men would, or the servants, to get things.”

  “You’re, we’re, assuming the bones belong to a male, not a female, and that the person was murdered.”

  “Oh, it’s a male all right. I feel it is,” she added with less assurance. “The way Prudence described her experiences, I felt sure it was a male.”

  “Prudence’s experiences? Tell me inside the house. It’s cold in here.”

  As they stood in the kitchen, Gerry told him of the tap on Prudence’s shoulder, the tug on the rope. “So we’re going to see Mrs. Smith and see if anyone over there can help us.”

  “Over there.”

  “You know. Mrs. Smith and Prudence believe they’re talking to Prudence’s mother, for one. Sometimes Gramma Ellie is around too.”

  “Gramma Ellie.”

  “Look. If I don’t support Prudence in this, she may not want to return to The Maples. She’s spooked enough about Aunt Maggie’s death here. This shed guy may make it worse.”

  “Shed guy.”

  “Are you repeating me to be annoying on purpose, or is it just happening?”

  “Just happening,” he said with a grin. “Come on. I’ll help you check Cathy’s. Then you won’t have to do it tomorrow.”

  “In the dark?” Gerry said doubtfully.

  “No, silly, we’ll turn on Cathy’s lights. Come on. Fifteen minutes and it’ll be done. Then you can drive me home.” When Gerry still looked doubtful, he added, “You’re not afraid, are you?”

  “N-no. Not afraid exactly. And it would be nice to have someone with me. I can’t drag Prudence over there again. It’s not really in her job description. Let’s go.” Stopping only to pick up the flashlight again, they set off towards Fieldcrest.

  They passed Andrew’s house. It was dark and, again, his car was absent. “Andrew is away at night a lot lately,” commented Gerry.

  “He’s sleeping at his mother’s sometimes, I believe. She doesn’t like being alone.”

  “Poor Andrew. He’s the only —” Gerry stopped, aghast.

  “You were going to say, he’s the only sane or likeable person left in that family, now Geoff is gone. You’re right. I feel sorry for Andrew, too. I just drop the boys off at Mary’s. She doesn’t want to see me.”

  “Her loss,” Gerry said softly and took his arm.

  They passed the stone crypt of the Coneybears, nestled in a thicket between Andrew and Cathy’s properties. “I always forget about this thing. Why is it here again?”

  They paused and stared at the squat, flat-roofed structure. “I imagine it was because people died before there was a church or churchyard,” Doug explained. “One of your forebears is in there, I believe.”

  “Really?” Gerry played the light on the two sides of the crypt she could approach. “Coneybear on one side and Muxworthy on the other. Funny. Just last names. She flashed the light towards Cathy’s driveway. “Let’s get this over with.”

  A light snow began to fall as they walked up Fieldcrest’s long driveway. In the sombre light, the dark house looked asleep. Gerry thought of the many people who’d slept beneath that roof over the 150 or so years the house had existed. She saw them: in their long gowns and sober suits; they sat or stood in the public rooms downstairs; loved or suffered or died in the private ones upstairs.

  She shook herself, as if coming out of a trance, and climbed the front stairs.

  7

  Gerry took off her gloves to unlock the broad front door. After she fumbled for a few seconds, Doug, saying, “Shall I?” took the keys from her. Their bare hands brushed and Gerry felt — what? That old sweet magic? A thr
ill in the pit of her stomach? Like swooning?

  She felt something all right and heard something too, a “meow,” as Bob appeared on the porch stairs and brushed past her legs and into the house. They followed him in.

  “He’s fascinated by this place! That’s the second time he’s followed me here. Bob, what is it?”

  “Big old house like this must be full of mice,” Doug suggested. “No cats. Just a lazy old dog.”

  “Hey,” Gerry replied indignantly, “Prince Charles is my friend. And there are plenty of mice at my house for Bob to chase.”

  “Ah, but lots of competition.” Through the balusters, Doug stroked Bob, who sat six steps up the staircase, grooming snow off his sleek black coat. Then the cat turned and bounded up the remaining steps.

  “Shall we?” asked Doug, bowing so Gerry could precede him. She flicked the light switch. Nothing. Somewhat annoyingly, Doug then flicked it once or twice.

  Gerry went halfway up the stairs, reached into the fixture and tightened the already tight bulb. Nothing. “That’s funny. It worked when Prudence tightened it.”

  Doug joined her, loosened then retightened the bulb. No luck. “Not our problem,” he shrugged. “Bulb, wire, even the fixture could be at fault.” They followed the cat who was running from one side of the long upstairs hallway to the other, pausing at bedroom doorways, and checked the bedrooms together.

  Standing at the window of what she thought of as “her” room, Gerry remarked, “I never noticed when I was staying here, but you can just see a corner of The Maples from here, my bedroom, actually. I wonder if people ever looked from there to here, long ago, you know? Lovers, perhaps,” she added dreamily.

  “You’re in a funny mood,” was all he said. For some reason, she felt disappointed by this response. “Probably can’t see The Maples when the trees are in leaf. Let’s check the main floor now.”

  The big reception rooms downstairs looked even emptier at night than they had when Gerry had inspected them by day. “Be sure to check all the windows,” she called from the dining room. “I don’t know if Bob is getting in on his own or following me. He’s so clever, he —”