“Daddy, she made poor Furball bleed,” she whimpered. Furball mewed along pathetically, tucking her head. Her ears looked fine to me.
Dad got quiet for a second, then turned and looked me in the eye. His face was serious and I knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth. I nodded at phrases like “additional stress on the family” and “costly vet bills.”
Wait, was Dad saying Bananas would have to leave? I stopped nodding and started arguing.
“Bananas is just adjusting to a new life,” I said, trying to sound rational. “She won’t be here forever.”
“I know, honey. But if she can’t get along with the pets we’re committed to … the permanent members of our family …”
I looked at Dodge and Bananas on the floor, still tussling happily. The little cat was getting along just fine with some of the permanent family members. Dodge stopped playing long enough to give me a look of pure puppy concern. We couldn’t let Bananas get booted out.
“Maybe we can just keep the cats separated for a little while.” I tried not to sound beggy. “Until we can find Bananas her own family.”
Dad looked at the furry pair on the kitchen floor, too, and relented, but barely. He didn’t actually say Bananas could stay; he just didn’t say she had to leave right that second. Which meant I had a new job to add to my list: find Bananas a home, quick! And while I was at it I could try to help the rest of Madame’s cats, too.
After dinner Sam and Furball went upstairs while I cleaned up the kitchen and made a mental to-do list. On the top of the list: find out what Mom thought about the whole “slipped and fell” theory. A detective had to trust her instincts, and mine were screaming that something wasn’t right. I needed to find out what Mom’s were telling her.
It was a well-known fact in our family that Mom watched TV when she didn’t want to think. So when I found her in front of the television watching a home makeover show I immediately wondered what she didn’t want to think about. I knew better than to blurt out a bunch of questions, though. Mom had barely recovered from the stress of being suspended and was still dealing with the craziness of catching up at work. I was going to have to go in slow.
I gave Dodge a look he understood. He walked over and put his square head on Mom’s knee, gazing up at her with his liquid chocolate eyes. She pet him limply, and Bananas (once she saw that this human was okay in Dodge’s book) got close enough to attack Mom’s shoelace.
Mom made room for me on the couch, and we both sat and stared at the screen. I wasn’t sure what to say. Lucky for me Bananas wasn’t afraid to speak up. She stopped thrashing the laces and let out a mew. It was so cute even Mom had to look.
“Oh, really?” She reached out a hand.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I warned. “She’s kind of cranky. I think she misses Madame LeFarge.”
Mom wisely pulled her hand back. “So does Henry Kales,” she said with a wry smile.
My head turned. “Henry Kales?”
Mom nodded. “According to his niece Deb, he had a big crush on Laverne, but she wouldn’t give him the time of day. At one point she even tried to file a restraining order against him.”
Madame LeFarge’s name was Laverne? No wonder she liked Madame. But that wasn’t the only shocker. “What happened with that?” I asked. I pictured Henry on his porch across from Madame’s house. Sitting and staring. It was definitely a little creepy, but was it threatening?
“Judge Thackery didn’t buy it. Madame didn’t have a lawyer, or any proof that Kales was a menace. All she had was a long history of calling the police about problems that weren’t actually problems. So Thackery threw it out. It’s funny that she took it so far. Kales was one of the few people who liked her. Oddly, he’s not the only one who misses her. I do, too.”
Now that was really hard to believe — even harder to believe than Erica Bloom missing Madame. “For real?” I asked.
“I know.” Mom laughed softly. “It sounds ridiculous. Even to me. Would you believe I started to listen to the emergency report calls today, just in case … ?”
Dodge looked up at the sound of the word “case,” and Mom shook the blanket fringe by the floor. Bananas pounced.
“Wait. Why would you be listening to emergency calls? It’s not part of your job, is it?” This conversation was getting more baffling by the minute.
Mom shrugged. “As chief I’m responsible for making sure we handle calls correctly. The dispatcher downloads them daily so I can do random reviews and spot checks. I don’t have time to listen every day, but they’re on my computer — and until recently many of them were from Madame … when she didn’t dial me direct.”
“Right!” I snorted, remembering how much it bugged Mom that Madame repeatedly found her inside line.
“I never could figure out how she kept getting my number. Or why I didn’t always change it when she did. I guess I kind of like eccentrics.” She smiled halfheartedly.
Bananas grabbed Mom’s shoelace, rolled on her back, and “gutted” it with her hind legs as if it were a dangerous animal. I swear Dodge looked proud.
“I keep wondering if I should have paid more attention. But I just wasn’t sure what to do with her,” Mom said thoughtfully, gazing down at Bananas. “And now I’m not sure what to do with you!” she teased the little kitten.
I sucked in a big breath and let it all out, flapping my lips. Pbbbbb. I knew how she felt.
* * *
Upstairs, my posse and I settled on the floor. I had research to do and hoped my findings would lead me to my next step. I took out my notebook, the scrap from Erica Bloom’s garbage, and the damaged bottle Dodge had given me. It was time to turn up my powers of observation.
The bottle had no label and no lid. It smelled like fish. I wrote that down. The white plastic was chewed, like a dog would chew a toy, only it was chewed by cats — smaller holes. That was strange. Cat toys were usually soft and moved so cats could chase them — like mice on strings. Or they had catnip in them. Were the cats trying to get something from inside the bottle? I wrote that down, too.
Next I smoothed out the scrap from the bag of fertilizer. I’d managed to get about half of the CAUTION label, but the plastic had stretched when I’d ripped it, messing up the printing. I could only read half of the ingredients.
Dodge put his head on my leg, his eyebrows twitching. “Yup,” I agreed. “More info would have been nice.”
I leaned back against my bed and tapped my pencil on the page. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tapping helped me think, and I needed to do some serious thinking. I had more questions than answers. I wrote those down, too:
1) Why would a gardener (Erica Bloom) throw away fertilizer?
a. Was she trying to hide it?
b. Was it lethal to cats? (Dad says probably not.)
c. Was Erica trying to poison Madame’s cats?
2) Why did Madame fall in her kitchen?
a. Note: There were no bottles in recycling; she wasn’t a drinker.
b. No rugs/tripping hazards on the kitchen floor.
3) How does Henry Kales fit in?
a. Stalker? Secret admirer?
b. Since he was always watching (and said he found the body), could he have seen something?
c. If he was rejected, could he have done something?
d. Was Henry a threat?
I thought back to the last time I saw Madame alive. I closed my eyes and pictured Erica yelling her head off while Henry tried to help Madame to her feet. Madame had blown Henry off, but she didn’t seem scared of him. Just annoyed. But if he wasn’t a threat, why would she want a restraining order?
Oh, right. We were talking about Madame LeFarge. I pictured the double-parked truck, the minor traffic violation that Madame felt warranted a stakeout.
I sighed and gave Dodge a pat. I knew that a lot of what Madame complained about was blown out of proportion.
But what if all of it wasn’t in her head?
I was dozing on my bed
with Bunny and The Kid. Or almost dozing. I couldn’t actually sleep very well with the little cat curled up against me. I was afraid I might roll over and crush her. Plus, she purred like a lawn mower.
So I was somewhere between asleep and awake. Listening to the purr and Cassie’s pencil scratching paper. Lying there, peaceful, when The Sister walked into our den.
“What do you want?” Cassie asked as soon as her pack mate stepped into our territory. She didn’t look up. Didn’t make eye contact. The sisters were on the outs. Mostly it was about the felines. But something else, too. Something to do with the day we got in trouble for being on Prospect Street. When The Sister’s scent was all over our den.
“I just came to tell you something,” The Sister said in a pouty voice.
“’Kay. What?” Cassie still didn’t look up.
“Summer stopped by before dinner. While you were at Dad’s office.”
Summer? My good ear stood a little taller.
Cassie’s lip twitched. She kept her head down, but her heartbeat picked up speed. Summer always made Cassie’s hackles rise. And her coming by was definitely suspect. “Did she throw rocks at my window?” Cassie asked, almost showing her teeth.
The Sister stepped back. “I don’t know why you’re so mean to her,” she said. Still pouty. She stared at her feet. Disappointed. “She’s nice,” she added more softly.
Cassie jerked her head up. She looked The Sister in the eyes. Held them — a challenge. “Nice? Are you kidding?”
“Yeah. Nice.” The Sister said, staring back. She even raised her chin a little. The sharp smell of a fight made my nostrils twitch. “There must be something you like about her. You used to be best friends.”
Cassie cringed. I cocked my head one way, then the other. What? My girl used to be friends with Summer? Best friends? That wasn’t possible. Hayley was Cassie’s best friend. Well, human friend. Right after me. I figured The Sister was just clawing at scraps to get back at Cassie for what The Kid had done to The Cat. Or maybe my good ear was going bad.
“Get out,” Cassie barked. She wasn’t fooling, either. She was ferocious. The Sister had found a tender spot, a spot Cassie was protecting.
The Sister rolled her eyes and turned on her sparkly heel. “Whatever,” she said, and walked away.
* * *
That night Cassie brushed her teeth extra hard before coming to bed. She hurled her clothes into the basket. And she didn’t fall asleep quickly. She sighed. And tossed. And turned. And sighed.
I listened. And chewed. The Kid was the only one in our den getting any rest.
Cassie was stewing on the Madame situation. And the Bananas situation. And the Summer situation, which was the weirdest situation of all. How could she have such a sore spot — the kind that made her show her teeth — that I didn’t know about?
After a long time Cassie gave up on sleeping. She got up and started working at her desk. She scratched on paper. She tapped on the computer. Then she aimed her phone at The Kid, who was asleep on my back. Cassie took a picture, then tapped some more. Finally she padded downstairs to the office. I would have followed, but The Kid was having a dream, and it seemed like a good one.
When Cassie got back she showed me a paper. It had a lot of squiggles on it. And a picture of Bananas.
“That ought to do the trick,” she said.
Trick? What trick? Cassie didn’t explain, but I think it worked. She fell into bed, yawned once, and was asleep. Woof. Good trick.
Alicia and Hayley came over after school to help me finish up the flyers. I felt a tiny bit guilty because I was supposed to be at Pet Rescue, but when I told Gwen my plan she told me that finding homes for the cats was top priority; she could do the afternoon chores without me. And I had to admit that the flyer had turned out great — especially the picture of Bananas, the resident cutie. I couldn’t wait to get them up.
“She’s so adorable!” Alicia said as she watched Bananas and Dodge wrestle. Hugo, her rescued rottweiler, stared in amazement. He clearly had no idea what to make of the fearless kitten.
“Totally adorable,” Hayley agreed. “But do you think she might be part dog?”
“Meowf!” Bananas interjected.
I smirked and tossed Dad’s staple gun into my backpack along with a roll of packing tape. “Dodge seems to think so,” I said. “I’m pretty sure she likes his kibble, too.”
Laughing, the six of us trooped to the copy shop. I momentarily considered telling my friends about the dream I’d been having — the one with me standing at the bottom of the tree fort, betrayed. But dreaming about Summer was bad enough; I didn’t really want to talk about her when I was awake. And Hayley had heard all the details, anyway. She knew how Summer and I became friends in preschool and how our friendship crashed and burned in fourth grade.
Lucky for me, Hayley moved to Bellport the summer that Summer turned horrible. Hayley even had a good-turned-evil best friend of her own at her old school. She didn’t want to think about Ashley any more than I wanted to think about Summer. So we decided to act like it had always just been us, like those brat girls had never existed. It was silly, but it worked. At least until now.
“Hey, Mr. Karahi,” I greeted when we piled through the copy shop door. Mr. Karahi had two dogs of his own that he’d adopted from PR a few years ago, and welcomed canines in his crowded store. “We need to make about a hundred flyers.”
He gazed at the picture of Bananas on the paper in my hand. “Nice kitty.”
“Meowf!” the actual Bananas replied.
Mr. Karahi blinked in surprise. He hadn’t seen Bananas on Dodge’s back.
“She’s one of Madame LeFarge’s,” Hayley explained.
Mr. Karahi’s face darkened. “So sad,” he said. Then he sort of shook his head and directed us to a copy machine. “This one is best today. The others are jamming like crazy.”
I nodded and set my flyer on the glass, then pushed buttons. A few minutes later we had one hundred and one flyers ready to go.
Mr. Karahi wouldn’t let me pay. “On the house, Cassie,” he insisted. “Always happy to help Pet Rescue. Do you have everything you need to put them up?”
I nodded and showed him my tape and staple gun. “Excellent,” he said. “Good luck.”
“Thank you!” Alicia called as we headed out. We left the edge of downtown and turned onto Chestnut, putting up posters as we went.
“If I didn’t already have Hugo, I’d totally want Bananas,” Alicia declared as I stapled a poster to a telephone pole. Hugo was a former Pet Rescue dog. He’d had a cruel first owner, but was a happy boy in his new life. Hearing his name, he glanced up from the fire hydrant he was sniffing and let out a bark.
“Meowf!” Bananas replied from Dodge’s back. The tiny tiger had no fear of dogs — any dogs. She was totally one of the pack.
“That is one crazy, adorable kitty-dog,” Hayley announced. “Or doggie-cat.”
We passed a bunch of county buildings, and even in the daylight the gray stone reminded me of my visit to Dad’s office. I shuddered. I could still picture Madame LeFarge’s dead body. Plus, Dad’s assessment was still bugging me. Toxicology reports took a really long time, and I was impatient. There had to be something in there.
“I still think it’s weird that Madame LeFarge just fell down and died,” Hayley said, studying my face. She knew what I was thinking.
I nodded my agreement and stapled a flyer with extra oomph. “Totally.”
“Do you think she was drugged?” she continued, her dark eyes widening. “Or pushed?”
“I do think something made her fall,” I said.
“That sounds awful.” Alicia looked alarmed.
“Awfully suspicious,” Hayley said in a low voice. She loved a murder.
When we got to Madame’s street we hung extra flyers and stuck them under doormats. Henry was in his usual spot on his porch, sitting and staring.
“I’ll be right back,” I told my friends. I put on a friendly, i
nnocent face and walked toward Henry with Dodge and his passenger at my side. Henry did so much watching I thought maybe he’d seen something useful. As we approached, though, I wasn’t so sure. He was staring at Madame’s house so intently he didn’t even see us. I thought maybe we were invisible when he started and turned, narrowing his eyes.
“What do you want?” he asked gruffly.
I smiled and handed him a flyer. “We’re trying to find homes for Madame LeFarge’s cats. There were thirteen of them, and —”
“I know precisely how many there were,” he interrupted. “She loved those animals like they were her own children. They were her entire world.” He bit down on the last two words, then crumpled the flyer into a ball and dropped it to the ground. “If you ask me they don’t deserve homes!”
Wow. He was mad. I flashed to my list, mentally highlighting “rejected.” An admirer who’d been turned down could do really bad things. Only they usually tried to hide their rage, at least a little…. “Oh, well, sorry to bother you,” I offered, backing away.
“What was that about?” Alicia asked when we reached the sidewalk.
“I’m not completely sure, but he definitely won’t be adopting any cats.”
Hayley nodded. “That seemed obvious.” She led the way across the street, right to Bill Heinz’s door. “May as well interview the other mysterious neighbor,” she said, ringing the bell.
The six of us stood on Bill’s porch, waiting. Finally we heard footsteps, and the door opened. Bill’s sparse hair was standing straight up, but he smiled at us.
“Whoa, it’s a porch party,” he said in a friendly way. It smelled like he was frying fish in the kitchen, and the dogs’ noses started twitching like crazy.
“Hi, I’m Cassie Sullivan, and these are my friends, human, canine, and feline,” I said, handing him a flyer.
“Woof!” Hugo punctuated.
“We’re trying to find homes for Madame LeFarge’s thirteen cats. Do you think you might be interested in adopting one?”
“A couple of her cats live here already,” he said with a dry laugh.
That stopped me. “Really?” I asked, needing more information.
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