by Clea Simon
“Now, now.” We were back on our customary footing. A little flirtatious, a little adversarial. “I wasn’t involved in his business dealings, whatever they were. But why the fuss? He’ll surface.” He was probably in the Bahamas. Or Tahiti. I looked out at the cold and wished I’d pushed for Tahiti.
“That’s not the problem, Pru. He already has.” Creighton waited a beat. It worked. I looked up. “Your good buddy, Llewellyn McMudge? Early this morning, his car was found down an incline just this side of the New York border. His body was inside. We’re waiting for the report from the state police but the preliminary looks a little odd.”
I gasped. Whatever I’d been about to say—something about his womanizing. Something about the widow. It all died in my throat. “Lew? Dead?”
“Several hours, by the time we found him.”
I’m no wimp, but suddenly the extra coffee seemed like a very bad idea. Lew was no gentleman. He was never going to be the love of my life. But he had been fun, with a taste for pleasure, for adventure. “But he was so alive.” It sounded inane. I knew it, and I said it anyway.
And when Creighton smiled, I couldn’t help it. I stood up to smack him.
“Whoa, whoa.” He held up his hands in defense. The bastard was almost laughing. “You—you’ve got it wrong.”
“I don’t know what kind of screwed up, jealous—”
“Pru, please. I’m just relieved.”
That shut me up. I sat back down and waited.
“You’re shocked. Hurt even. I’m glad.”
I had enough of my self-possession back to glare at him. Wallis would have been proud.
“I mean, I’m glad that you were shocked. That you are…dismayed. It suggests that you didn’t know about McMudge, about Llewellyn’s death before now.”
“Suggests?” I was growling.
“Look, Pru. A man is dead. A second man, and this accident looks a little less freakish and a little more intentional. You knew both. I have to investigate.”
I bit back anything I would have said. He saw it.
“This is good. This gives me hope.”
I didn’t care how cold it was outside. I didn’t care what anyone else said. I slammed back the chair and was heading down the hall before he could stop me. I hadn’t cried in front of a cop when I was a seventeen-year-old caught joyriding. I wasn’t going to start now.
Chapter Eighteen
Momentum carried me out the door, but the shock—and the nasty slap of the cold—stopped me short of my car. Llewellyn dead? It didn’t seem possible. The man I’d known had been so alive. A little sleazy, sure. What had Creighton said, he’d “facilitated” things? I didn’t know what he meant, exactly, though I’d bet Tom did; I couldn’t say it surprised me. Hey, it showed initiative. Appetite. All the things I couldn’t make jibe with the idea of him dead. With the image now filling my head of his friend Donal as I last saw him: still, cold. Already assuming that fake waxy look that sets in so fast.
I shook my head, wrapped my jacket a little tighter. I hadn’t taken the time to zip it, and now my hands were shaking too much to even try. My mother had died almost a year before. That had been different. She’d been so sick, so out of it, that she was gone weeks before the end. Times like that, death really is a release.
Maybe it was that she had never been as alive as Llewellyn. How could she have been, once her husband had taken off, leaving her with a precocious kid who turned into a wild teen? When half the town knew about her husband’s drinking and gambling, and the other half had partied with him? She’d laced herself up tight, early on, to deal with the twin faces of Beauville. The more I took after my dad, the rougher things got at home. When I left for the city, we were both glad to have seen the last of each other. By the time I came back, she was already fading. And then she was gone. But alive? No, I’d never seen her gorging on oysters. Stupid with champagne or sex. Laughing as she drove too fast with the top down. Lew had done all those things. He had been alive. Had been.
I swallowed and looked around the parking lot. My old house was on the outskirts of town, and even my GTO wouldn’t get me home with blurry vision. I blinked, getting ready to try, and heard a voice. Albert, standing close behind me.
“Pru, are you all right?”
It was too late to run. Too late to hide. But not too late to do a little damage control. A big gulp of frigid air helped me find my usual snark, or something near. “Depends who you talk to, Al.” I arranged my face before turning around. “What gives?”
“I saw you come out. You looked, I don’t know.” Head down, his scruffy beard only a few shades darker than his down vest, Albert resembled some shaggy forest creature. Only bears don’t gossip at Happy’s each night. I needed to change his impression—and fast.
“Cop shop. What do you expect?” I managed a smile. If it was off kilter, so what? For all the portly man in front of me knew, I’d been interrogated under the lights. At this point, that seemed like it would be better for my reputation than the truth.
“You in trouble?” From anyone else, it might have been sympathy. I could see the gleam in Albert’s little beady eye. “Bad?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.” A sudden thought hit me. “Why do you ask?” If he had info, I wanted it.
“Well, I saw you run out and I had the strangest thought that I should go after you. Maybe it was Frank using mind control or something.” He chuckled. I didn’t. I knew the ferret was smarter than his human.
“You brought Frank in today?” It was tempting, but in my current state, I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk it.
“Yeah, wanna come play with my ferret?” Albert kind of wagged his head, letting me know that he was joking. As if.
I gave him the dead-eye stare. It was useful to keep him in his place. Besides, I really didn’t want to have Frank freak out on me again. Losing Lew was bad enough, I didn’t need to be rejected by a ferret.
“Sorry,” Albert mumbled, beard back into his down. He really wasn’t worth much, even as an adversary. And then it hit me—Frank probably really had manipulated the fat man into coming after me. That meant he had something to tell me. At the very least, it would be distracting.
“I’m just giving you shit.” I reached out to pat his arm and thought better of it. “Shall we?”
***
Glass entranceways are not as bad as glass houses. As I walked into the foyer that led to the shelter, however, I couldn’t avoid looking over at the cop shop. No Creighton in sight. Just to be sure, I swung open the inner door with assurance, shoulders back. Immediately, I felt better. An animal shelter isn’t usually a happy place, but it was my place. Besides, between seasons the town shelter tended to be empty. No tourists to complain about raccoons. The pets abandoned last summer had already been adopted—or destroyed—and Albert’s congenital laziness kept him from working too hard at trapping or community outreach. The building was quiet. At least until a small sharp voice started up, close inside my head.
“And what are you going to do about all of this?”
“Excuse me?” The moment’s quiet had lulled me into a false peace. Now I started.
“Huh? Sorry.” Albert covered his mouth. He must have belched.
“Nevermind.” I was grateful for the cover. “So, Frank’s here?” I made my way over to Albert’s desk. Sure enough, the voice was louder there.
Albert scuffled over ahead of me and opened a drawer. A small masked face popped up, its black eyes shining bright.
“Took you long enough.” I shrugged. Albert was his responsibility.
“And the snow cat is yours!” I couldn’t help staring. Luckily, in addition to his psychic communication, the little creature was chattering away. Albert turned too, oblivious to our conversation. “Hurt, angry…sound familiar?”
“What do you think’s got into him?” Albert was still rummaging in his desk, and I wondered what else he kept in there.
“Maybe he doesn’t like being locked in a drawer when you g
o out.” I pulled up a chair and sat down, gingerly extending my hand to the lean animal. Just as gingerly, he reached out a black forepaw. We both braced. Whatever had passed between us last time had been painful. “Hey, little guy.” I kept my voice soft. The words were meaningless, it was the tone that carried the import. Frank knew me. He trusted me. I was telling him, with my body and my voice, that I was safe for him. That he could risk it. Only just then, Albert slammed a drawer open, breaking the tentative connection.
“Tasty!” Frank hopped sideways, a sign of excitement. “Juicy.” I got an image of a bird’s nest as he must see it: the eggs tempting and a little too large, like cuckoo’s eggs. I didn’t know if he was thinking of some treasure stashed away in the desk or if he’d actually gotten out into the early-spring woods.
“Do you want a treat?” I tried to keep my wording innocuous and reached out once more.
“Shiny leaf!” He’d moved on. I got a flash, just for a moment of green and glitter. “Want more!”
“Frank?” Was it gum? A bag of candy? I murmured, hoping Albert wouldn’t interrupt again. “What’s shiny? What’s ‘shiny leaf’?”
“’Scuse me?” A hand went up to the beard, and I realized Albert had been shoving something in his mouth.
“Shut up, Albert.” Whatever he’d been eating now powdered his beard with orange. “And you really shouldn’t be feeding your ferret Doritos.”
“I wasn’t.” He held up a bag of Cheetos and smiled. His teeth, where they weren’t orange, were gray. I turned away in disgust. Maybe I moved too fast, because Frank recoiled, too.
“The terror…” It was happening again. He was closing off. Panicked. I needed to try a different tack.
“What did you feel last time? What happened?” I focused on the ferret’s sleek fur, trying to will my thoughts into some kind of concrete form. I breathed in his scent, slightly musky but so much fresher than Albert’s. “Can you tell me? Give that to me?”
I felt something, the beginning of a thought. Frank was trying to convey something, to let me sense what he had experienced.
“So, you involved with the killer kitty?” Albert had come around the desk. Belly in my face almost as I looked up, startled. Jeans hiked up, hands thrust into his pockets, he was not a pretty sight.
“Albert.” It must have been my tone. He backed away, but whatever link I had with his smaller, cleaner housemate was broken. I looked over at Frank. He was still on his hind feet, forepaws close to his chest. Neat. Adorable, even. But mute, to me anyway. Whatever he had tried to say to me was gone.
“Well, are you?” Now that he had retreated to a safe distance, Albert was braver.
“The cat in question is not a killer.” A wave of fatigue washed over me. Would my species ever get it? “There was an accident, some kind of horrible accident. That doesn’t mean—”
I caught myself in mid-sentence. Terror. That’s not what Frank felt. It was what he had picked up—a sense memory, some kind of smell, from my hand. Wallis had said as much, telling me about Albert through such secondhand clues. It was all coming clear now. Someone had been holding the white cat. Pressing her leather paw pads into the trigger guard. Forcing her, terrified, onto the trigger. “Let go! No, stop!”
It made a lot more sense than the accident theory, no matter what the widow had said about Donal being alone. Plus, it would explain the cat’s reluctance to be touched, even more than some tenderness in the foreleg. That tenderness might prove useful, though. I couldn’t tell anyone what I heard—what I suspected. But if I could prove that the cat had been injured in a struggle…
“What? I’m sorry, okay?” Albert was standing there, looking confused. Not unusual for him, but not what I needed right now. I must have been staring. “I was just teasing because, you know, you have a history with animals.”
“It’s fine.” I waved him away. I didn’t need him to explain or to apologize. What I needed was a moment to think. The man had been alone, or so Creighton believed. Well, that didn’t figure—not with what I suspected. He’d been on the phone. With his wife, Louise. Maybe she had heard something. And if she had, and hadn’t come forward, maybe that meant she was involved.
I didn’t relish the idea of broaching the widow. There was something strange about her. Something beyond the usual neediness of grief. There was that boy toy on her arm when I’d first met her. Her assistant. An odd accessory for the newly bereaved. Plus, she had been involved with Llewellyn. Perhaps she had even superseded me in his affections, such as they were. It stung, I’ll admit it. But that wasn’t what mattered now.
Could I win the white Persian’s trust? Get her to talk to me? I had a sinking feeling about that one. Whether because of the shooting—I could no longer think of it as an accident—or the trauma, I had failed to make any sort of connection with the longhaired survivor. But I wasn’t doing much better with Frank today either. I’d had a restful winter. Lots of sleep, some fun. Could it be that the strange ability was fading, leaving me alone in the world of humans?
“Uh, Pru? You okay? I really didn’t mean anything.” Albert was rocking back on his heels now. I considered summoning up a smile for him, but knew that would throw him worse than anything. So I scowled.
“I’ve got a lot on my plate, Al. Do you mind?”
In response, he slunk back around to his chair. “Fine.” He sounded a little hurt and started muttering to himself as he reached for the ferret. “If you don’t wanna talk…”
He never finished. Fast as a cobra striking, the ferret turned and bit him. Two drops of blood appeared in the soft pad of his palm as he pushed his chair back to the wall. “Jesus!” He waved his hand in the air, then decided to suck on it. Frank and I watched him, both fascinated and appalled.
“Guess you startled him.” It was the best I could do. The ferret and I had been on the brink of something before Albert had interrupted. We’d both felt it. “You probably want to wash that. Put some kind of bandage on it.” I didn’t need Albert risking an infection and possibly taking it out on his pet. Besides, I wanted him out of the room.
“Yeah, I guess.” He got up. Good. “Doesn’t know which side his bread is buttered on.”
We had a minute. Maybe two. I couldn’t count on Albert’s sense of hygiene keeping him any longer. Leaning forward, I focused on the ferret once more. Locking onto his shiny black eyes, I let the question form in my mind. “What happened? What did you see?” Only a few minutes before, we’d been close to a breakthrough. “What did you feel?”
Frank stared back, clasping his little paws tight in concentration. I strained to hear. Water running in the other room. Albert, still grumbling as he washed. And I felt my resentment growing. Albert, Beauville…humans in general. Go back to the city? Hell, I needed to get farther away.
A bead of sweat trickled down my back. Albert had started humming. Otherwise, the room was still. No familiar tickle in the back of my mind. No smart little voice. No Frank.
Then the bathroom door slammed open, and Albert was back, settling into his chair like an aggravated beanbag. “We’re out of Band-aids,” he said.
From Frank, I got nothing. I had to face the truth. My gift had started to fail.
Chapter Nineteen
“Sometimes there’s just no talking to you.” Wallis’ voice dripped with sarcasm. I didn’t care. I could have scooped her up in my arms and hugged her. That’s how grateful I was to get home and to hear her—to really hear and understand—the cantankerous tabby’s voice.
“Don’t.” Her tail underscored each word with a lash. “Even. Try. It.”
“Okay, Wallis. I won’t.” I was ridiculously teary, more of a mess than I’d been since, well, since I’d fled the city.
“If you’re losing it again, I’m not hanging around.” She looked up at me. The difference in our size in no way diminished her authority. “Got it?”
“Got it.” I knew that I had broken into a big, stupid grin. I couldn’t help it. When I’d left the shelter
, desperately trying to hang onto my cool in front of Albert, I’d been in a panic, or as close as I’d come in nearly a year. The birds. The Persian. Frank. The silences weren’t aberrations; they were the norm. I was losing my gift, and the idea of being cut off—of not being able to eavesdrop on the non-human conversations around me—seemed horrible. Like suddenly going deaf.
“Be careful what you wish for, huh?” Wallis’ tone brought me back to the here and now. I’d gotten myself home and she’d been waiting. Sitting on the kitchen table and eying me with that cool tabby look. For a moment, she’d sat in silence, then she’d said it for the first time—“Be careful what you wish for”—and that’s when I had lost it. Sobbing and grinning like a fool.
“Like a human.” Wallis had settled onto her belly now, white paws tucked neatly under her snowy breast. She looked resigned, if not relaxed. That was a load off.
“So I can still do it.” The horror hadn’t worn off. “At least with you.”
Wallis’ apple head tilted up, green eyes appraising. “Do you even hear yourself?”
I did. I’m not the needy type. Never have been. You could blame my father for taking off, or my mother for strong-arming her way into survival. You could blame my temper. Lots of folks—usually men—had. All I knew was that relying on others has never been part of my makeup. Right now, though, I felt as limp as an eviscerated mouse, and I looked to my cat for approval.
“A mouse would be more interesting.” She had turned away. “A mouse you can play with.”
“Come on, Wallis.” I took a deep breath. I had to get some control back. “It was a shock. A big one.”
“As big as the first time? When you ran screaming out of the house and into a hospital?”
“That’s not fair.” She looked up at me, but I held her icy gaze. Yes, when I had first heard her speak—first heard all the animals around me speaking—it had been rough. Yes, I had fled. Packed my old car up and run away. But I’d taken Wallis, taken good care of us both. Hadn’t I?