“Thirteen cats,” I murmured as I wheeled my bike into a corner. The felines could only be Madame’s. That must have been what Dodge was trying to tell me. Madame’s cats had all been delivered to Pet Rescue!
“Sorry, boy,” I told Dodge. “I got you now. You can stay here.” The lobby was probably the best place for him to hang today — away from the new charges. Dodge was tolerant enough of Furball, Sam’s cat. But Madame’s cats were pretty … catty, and the insult on Dodge’s nose was pretty fresh.
I followed Gwen to the back room, where the cats were going bonkers, yowling and twitching their tails.
Madame had names for each of her kitties, but we had no idea what they were and there was no one to ask. Gwen, in her no-nonsense way, redubbed most of them with temporary spice names. She walked me past Ginger, Mustard, Curry, Parsley, Sage, Cinnamon, and Cayenne. I gave a few small pets to the poor orphans through the metal mesh, but opening the cages was totally off-limits. The cats were so freaked out and cranky they would have bolted for sure. Some of them looked kind of scraggly, too. Stress, I guessed.
Gwen pushed her hair out of her face and right away I saw the worry in her gray eyes — it was going to take a miracle to find homes for so many ornery, scrappy-looking adult cats.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get them all adopted,” I assured her.
“It’s not just that,” she said. “It’s these guys.” She pointed to two cages near the end of the row. “I’m calling them Salt and Pepper. They’re sick, and I’ve never seen anything like it before. Dr. Byrnes doesn’t know what’s wrong, and isn’t sure they’ll make it. They could be contagious.”
I bent down to check out Salt and Pepper. Their coats were dry and matted and they were lying awkwardly, not even curled up. They seemed like they barely had the energy to breathe. “Oh, no!” My heart went out to them.
At PR we saw lots of animals that weren’t well. Fleas, ticks, mange, bites, scratches, broken limbs, sometimes worse. That’s why we had Dr. Byrnes, a full-time veterinarian, on staff. She could stitch up a wound in no time and diagnose just about anything. But Salt and Pepper looked bad. Neglected — not at all like they’d belonged to an über cat lover like Madame.
“I know.” Gwen nodded when she saw my face. “And then there’s this one.” She pointed to an upper cage where a small white paw with claws extended was poking through the door. “This little thing is a disaster! She’s young and super high-strung. She really needs to be fostered — get a little socialized — but she’s all teeth and claws!”
On the other side of the wire mesh sat a youngish orange-striped tabby with white socks. Totally adorable. She pulled her paw in and I reached toward the cage, talking in a soothing voice to see if I could calm her down. She arched her back and sidestepped away from the door, hissing. Not the kind of behavior that got a cat adopted….
“See? I haven’t even been able to check her vitals,” Gwen said.
“How about the towel trick?” I offered to wrap the little terror up and hold her for the quick exam. It was a technique we used with biters and scratchers, and it worked pretty well. Usually.
With my hands and wrists wrapped I opened the cage, blocking the exit. The tabby was a whirlwind of claws, but I managed to grasp and wrap her up in my terry-cloth armor.
She was a fighter. I could feel her body writhing inside the towel and struggled to keep her from wiggling free. I kept a tight hold on her while we walked to an examination room, and she still managed to push her little orange face through the folds.
“It’s all right,” I tried to tell her as I stepped into the lobby and — oh, man, I totally forgot that was where Dodge was waiting! Dodge stood up quickly, so I held the little cat even tighter and raised my arms.
And then the weirdest thing happened. When the cat saw Dodge she did just the opposite of what I expected. Instead of freaking and trying to escape, she calmed right down! I thought maybe she was frozen in fear or that I’d squeezed too hard. But when I lowered her a little to see if she was okay, she stretched her head out of the towel and touched her tiny pink nose to the end of Dodge’s big black snout.
The second the feline nose hit mine I knew I was face-to-face with the tiny slasher — the kitten who’d sliced my nose. Her dust and thyme smell gave her away. I pulled back in a hurry. I didn’t want to get my tender snout ripped again.
Grrrr. I remembered the sharp insult of her claws. My lips curled back. I could eat that kitten for a snack! But the menace arched out of the towel Cassie had her in. She reached her neck farther and licked my nose with her rough tongue. No kidding — she licked me!
The sandpaper kiss hurt. A little. But that wasn’t what put me in a stay. I was stunned. I could not move. It was the first time I’d seen a cat apologize. Ever.
While the shock wore off, the kitten did the happy little growl cats do. I shook a bit, to make sure this was happening. Yeah. It was happening. She’d attacked me. And now she was glad to see me. The cat was as crazy as her woman — her dead woman.
Woof. That thought set me back on my haunches. I knew how it was to lose your human. Ruff. The bite went right out of me. All I could do was sit.
Cassie and Gwen looked shocked, too. All they could do was stand. With their mouths open. Then Cassie set the cat down on the floor. The stripy kid walked up to me, bold as a boxer. Like we were pack mates. She rubbed against me. She wove in and out of my front legs.
“She likes you,” Cassie gasped. A smile was spreading across her face. The first Cassie smile I’d seen since our late-night investigation.
“Likes? Loves!” Gwen cried. She closed one of her eyes, then opened it. Quickly. I’d seen humans do that before. It meant they had a little joke. A little secret. Only I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t get it.
“I guess we found our foster family!” Gwen said. She elbowed Cassie. Cassie’s smile got even bigger.
Now I got it. Oh, woof. I got it all right.
When Cassie’s shift was over, we didn’t leave PR alone. Guess who left with us?
“I’m so glad you’re taking her,” Gwen said. She handed Cassie a bag of kitten food. The tiny pest was on my heels. She hadn’t been more than a tail’s length away from me since Cassie set her down.
“That little cat is bananas,” Cassie said with a laugh. “In fact, I think that’s what I’m going to call her: Bananas!” Then she looked at her bike. And the bag of kitty kibble. “But, uh, how am I going to get her home?”
My drooping tail perked up. I was saved! Cats don’t do long walks. The little twerp would have to stay behind! Then bow-OW! Again with the claws. The stripy kid was on me. Actually on me. Like I was a horse.
Cassie and Gwen cracked up. I couldn’t even look at them.
“Aw, Bananas is hitching a ride!” Cassie cried. Her voice told me that she thought it was great, even if I didn’t. Like it or not, I was helping out. And I couldn’t let my girl down. I stood up straighter so the hitchhiker wouldn’t slip. The Kid held steady, and it didn’t hurt … too much. Still, totally degrading. But Cassie was smiling. Woof.
I stood at the base of the tree, ready to climb, happy to be back. But as my foot hit the bottom rung of the ladder I heard something so wrong it stopped me in my tracks. There were voices, more than one, coming from our secret fort.
“Who’s up there?” I called, suspecting that Sam had snuck her friends into our clubhouse. But it wasn’t Sam. It was worse than Sam.
“Oh! Cassie!” Summer’s head peeked over the edge of the platform. She looked flushed. Embarrassed, even. Which didn’t make any sense. It was Summer’s fort. Our fort. Our secret fort.
What was going on?
“Summer?” I felt my brow wrinkle with confusion.
“Hi, Cassandra. I, uh, didn’t know you were back from your grandparents’ already.”
“Really?” I said, still confused. I heard my voice in my head but couldn’t make it come out of my mouth. How could you not know? We had a whole plan for my f
irst day back. I brought you shells from the beach, and the mystery I finished in the car that you’ll totally love, and … I could only stand there, frozen, at the bottom of the ladder.
“Guess what?” Summer asked, still gazing down at me like some kind of specimen in the zoo. Her blue eyes sparkled icily. Were they always that cold? “I initiated Eva and Celeste into our club. And we thought of a new name!”
“A better one!” another voice said. One of the intruders.
Two more heads appeared over the edge of the wooden floor, Eva’s pixie cut and Celeste’s long pigtails — both blonde, just like Summer. The three of them squinted at me — a tiny brown rodent far below. Summer held something in her hand.
“Oh, and they just love our book,” Summer chirped.
“Yeah. Your detective notes are hilarious!” Celeste said, snickering. Then they laughed, all of them, so hard they had to back away from the edge so they wouldn’t fall.
Hilarious? My notes?
They weren’t supposed to be.
* * *
I could still hear the sharp peals of laughter echoing in my head when I opened my eyes. I closed them again, tightly, to try to squeeze out the dream. When I reopened them, Dodge was gazing at me with a worried puppy face.
“Was I talking in my sleep?” I asked. He gave me such a sorrowful look that I patted the mattress beside me. Mom wasn’t crazy about dog hair on the sheets (or the couch), but sometimes you just need to cuddle your dog.
Dodge crawled up, being careful not to wake Bananas, and gave me a lick on the cheek.
“Thanks,” I whispered as he hunkered down beside me.
I peered over Dodge’s shoulder at the orange cat curled up with Bunny on Dodge’s bed. It was such a crazy sight I wondered if I was still dreaming. A cat. With Bunny. On Dodge’s bed. What the heck?
We’d only been fostering Bananas for two days, but the wacky kitten had made herself right at home. And the strangest part was that Dodge was totally putting up with it. Enjoying it, even.
Dodge was fairly feline tolerant for a canine. He put up with Furball, who could be a lot to take. Still, he was definitely not what you’d call a cat lover. I’d actually been worried about leaving him home with two cats while I was at school. But now that I’d seen Bananas sleep on Dodge’s head and curl up next to him? I knew my worries were unnecessary. I smiled at the miracle of it — Dodge was full of surprises — and buried my face in his scruff.
We were still snuggling when Bananas woke up and realized she was alone on Dodge’s big bed. She gave a cat stretch and leapt up beside us, snuggling as close to Dodge as possible before nestling down and going back to sleep. Amazing.
The bad dream was fading into a distant memory when Sam passed my partially open door. I barely caught a glimpse of her sparkly sneakers but she was back in a flash, framed in my doorway and staring in disbelief at the cat and dog pile on my bed.
“Aw. Who says cats and dogs can’t be friends?” she crooned.
“I know, right?” The cuteness was proof that animals could overcome differences. Still, if Sam thought that Dodge and Furball would ever get this cozy, she’d need to think again. Those two would never be anything but enemies.
“You’d better get going,” Sam told me. “It’s almost eight.”
I squinted at her — I hated it when she told me what to do — and waited for her to disappear again before tossing the covers aside and getting out of bed. Bananas rolled over and stretched a paw over Dodge’s leg.
“You two snuggle bunnies can just stay here,” I told Dodge quietly. “I’ll leave your kibble in your bowl and see you when I get home from school.”
He whimpered quietly but didn’t move thanks to Bananas and her kitty grip.
Fifteen minutes later I was out the door with a cereal bar and an apple. I took a bite of fruit and glanced at my phone to see if Hayley had texted. No messages, just one missed call. I looked at the caller ID, then looked again. It was from Summer!
I hit delete and shuddered. I’d just been dreaming — or nightmaring — about her, and then her name was on my screen. The relatively friendly hello the other day was strange enough. Now she was calling, too? Was she stalking me? Setting me up for something embarrassing? I shoved the phone in my pocket and took another bite of apple, telling myself that she’d misdialed. Or that Muffet was trying to call Dodge. (Okay, I knew that was impossible, but it somehow made more sense.) Summer’s name popping up on my phone was just plain weird.
I picked up my pace, not really wanting to investigate that particular mystery, and hurried to catch up with Alicia and Hayley in the schoolyard. With just five minutes before the bell, I wasted no time filling my two best friends in on the Madame LeFarge situation.
“Wait, she’s called Madame? Are you serious?” Alicia stared at me like I was the crazy one. Being relatively new to Bellport, she didn’t know who Madame LeFarge was.
“Oh, she’s the town cat lady,” Hayley explained.
“What’s a cat lady?” Alicia asked. Apparently they didn’t have those in Somalia and Cambodia, where Alicia’s family lived before, when her parents worked in the Peace Corps.
Hayley explained that cat ladies were nice-but-nutty women who collected stray cats. “They usually end up living with a lot of animals.”
“Madame only had thirteen,” I said.
“Only thirteen?”
“And she wasn’t that nice. She was mostly, um, difficult.” I told Alicia about Madame’s paranoia and crankiness, and how she was hard to deal with. “She had lots of crazy conspiracy theories and called the station all the time to report ridiculous stuff. The last time I saw her she was doing her own stakeout on an illegal double-parker. A one-woman shakedown!”
Hayley smiled and shook her head. “She was always onto something.”
Alicia tapped a finger on her chin. “So this Madame LeFarge collected cats, conducted stakeouts, and made crazy reports?”
I nodded. “Yup.”
“And then one night she just fell in her kitchen and died?”
Hearing Alicia say that out loud totally shed a spotlight on why Madame’s death wasn’t sitting right. She wasn’t some feeble old lady. She was cantankerous, strong, spry, and annoying — the kind of person who hid in the bushes and leapt out at you in a rage — not exactly an “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” candidate. There had to be more to this story, and I suddenly wanted to pull out my notebook, sit down with Dodge, and get to the bottom of it. I wanted to take the case. Unfortunately, the bell was ringing and I had to take my seat in homeroom instead. Detective work would have to wait until lunch.
* * *
When Hayley and Alicia came into the lunchroom three hours later, I was sitting alone, hunched over my notebook, furiously scribbling notes. I was so absorbed in logging details and suspicions about Madame’s neighbors that I barely looked up.
“Um, hello?” Hayley said, sliding her tray onto the table next to mine.
“Hey,” I replied distractedly.
She peered at my open notebook. “Annoyed enough to kill?” she read.
“Sounds juicy,” Alicia added as she took her seat across from us. She opened a container of garlic-and-ginger-scented noodles and twirled up a bite. Her lunches made even the cafeteria smell appetizing.
“Local woman killed by mob of fed up neighbors,” Hayley said dramatically, reading an invisible headline.
I chuckled and put my notebook away. Lunch was too short to eat, talk, and take notes. I opened my yogurt and had barely swallowed my first bite when Hayley sent an elbow into my ribs and almost made me choke.
“Trouble at eleven o’clock,” she whispered, pointing with her chin.
I looked across the room and spotted Summer picking at her lunch. Eva and Celeste, her look-alike BFFs, were in a platinum huddle, ignoring their leader. Summer sat there with her ice-blue eyes laser-locked on me. I felt a chill, remembering the hello and the missed call. I knew in my bones that something was goin
g on — something I’d have to investigate. The wheels in my head started spinning so fast that I accidentally did something really stupid. I returned Summer’s gaze. And then what did she do? She kind of, sort of, smiled at me.
What the heck?
Smiling at me was not normal Summer behavior. Summer sneered. Summer scowled. She raised her snotty nose and turned the other way, muttering nasty things behind my back.
A friendly Summer was more terrifying than global warming.
My mouth must have dropped open in shock, because Hayley reached out a finger and lifted my chin, closing it. “Keep it together, girlfriend.”
“What gives?” Alicia asked, clearly confused. “Doesn’t she hate you?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Definitely. A lot.” If Sherlock had Moriarty, I had Summer Hill. My archenemy. My nemesis. The bane of my existence.
But a little voice in my head added: She didn’t used to be.
Ka-woof! I sneezed. Ka-woof! Ka-woof! Again and again. Probably cat fuzz. I hated cat fuzz. I hated sneezing, too. Only I didn’t mind this sneezing fit too much. Because the fuzz making me sneeze was Banana fuzz. Not the fruit, the kitten. The Kid had gotten under my skin.
I told myself I wasn’t crazy. That she was more dog than cat. I’d even collected evidence to prove it. For example, she liked to fetch the little ball The Brother threw for her. She liked eating kibble (hers and mine). And she hated The (Other) Cat, who hated her back. See? Hard evidence!
Of course The Cat had no idea how to be welcoming. Not even to a guest of her own kind. I wasn’t crazy about welcoming a kitten into our pack. At first. But The Cat acted like it was the end of the world. She arched and walked sideways every time she saw Bananas. She hissed and spat even though she was twice The Kid’s size. Talk about crazy!
After Cassie left for school we hung out — me and Bananas — at the house. Part of me was itching to get out for rounds. But I couldn’t leave The Kid with The Cat. She needed me. And, well, she was good company.
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