“This cake is amazing,” Kara said as she stood by the sideboard. “All these little cat decorations are wonderful.”
I heard someone coming in through the back door and Tom called, “Where do you want the drinks?”
I went to the kitchen to help him and saw that Liam was helping to carry a big cooler. I suggested a corner near the entrance to the dining room.
The doorbell rang and I left the kitchen. The first guests to arrive were a surprise—Lucinda Winston and Chester’s son, Earl. I felt awkward in their presence, but they had suffered a loss, blamed the wrong people for murder and now, I hoped, were ready to make peace with the past. Chester had not been a decent man, but even he hadn’t deserved a violent death.
Since Tom knew them and sensed my discomfort—what could I say to them?—he took over. Earl wanted to see where his father had died and Tom took him to that little bedroom down the hall.
It got quite busy after that. Shawn arrived, but without Minnie’s cats. She was still too frail to care for them and he had already promised her he would keep them safe and healthy until they could return home. Simon and Otto would be her companions for now.
Candace, B.J., Lois and Morris came in through the back door next, with Morris immediately complaining about the fact that there were only soft drinks and no beer.
“You’re in uniform,” I said. “Doesn’t that mean you’re on duty?” I sipped sweet tea from a big red cup and offered a smile with my eyes.
Morris looked down at himself. “Oh. I wondered what these strange clothes they make me wear meant all these years. No beer.”
As we awaited the arrival of the guest of honor released just today from rehab, we all talked about how many people now sat in jail and how satisfying it was that every one of us had helped put them there.
Brenda and her brother entered the home next, but her wheelchair wouldn’t fit through the door, so Peyton carried her in and set his sister lovingly down on the sofa. B.J. folded up the wheelchair, brought it in and set it near her. A chair was brought from the dining room so she could prop up her casted leg.
She glanced at all the happy faces greeting her and smiled with her heart as well as with her mouth. She had a crocheted hat on and wisps of her blond hair escaped the edges of the multicolored cap. The scars left by the hole that had to be drilled in her skull were covered until her hair grew in.
She said, “Small towns are the best. Look what all of you have accomplished. I’m used to dealing with tears and unhappiness, but this room is filled with the joy of a job well done.”
Peyton beamed at his sister, her hand clutched in his. Their small family had an attachment as strong as if there had been a hundred members rather than just two. Kara’s instant bond with this man had started so many things in motion and helped lead to Osborne’s downfall.
A minute later, supported on either side by Henry and Greta, Minnie walked into her home. It had been a month since she’d been found wandering in the street with a kitten in tow. One son was missing from the gathering, but Minnie did not seem to have this on her mind now. She had mentioned how sad his arrest had made her and how disappointed his father would have been—but she hadn’t mentioned Harris since that brief conversation.
The look of wonder on her face as she took in all the smiling faces brought tears to my eyes. The shadow of confusion that had once clouded her face was completely gone now. This was the real Minnie, a sweetheart of a woman who had suffered so much.
She saw the bed, but chose to sit on the sofa next to Brenda. Two more guests followed—Aaron Kramer came in with Minnie’s new grandson. The tiny boy was fast asleep in his father’s arms. Lots of oohing and aahing ensued, but Aaron Junior slept right through it.
Minnie’s eyes shimmered with tears and Brenda put her arm around her. Then she gave Minnie a hat that matched her own. We laughed as Greta helped her mother put it on to cover the scars on her head.
Brenda said, “We are connected, you and I.”
Tom cleared his throat. “The first thing I want to do is thank all of you for coming here today. We all worked together and—”
Suddenly Otto raced into the room with Simon hot on his tail. He ran straight to Minnie and leapt onto her lap. The smile on her face as Simon joined his friend made my heart swell. Cats don’t forget. Cats know when they are needed and loved. These two would be better medicine for Minnie than anything that came out of a pill bottle.
Tom didn’t bother finishing what he had been about to say. Kara played hostess with Liam at her side. Soon everyone had a delicious slice of cake, a drink and friends to talk to.
Tom put an arm around me and pulled me to him. “There’s a lot of good in this room.”
I nodded. “You got that right.”
Minnie touched Otto’s nose with a bit of frosting, and he jumped down on the floor in front of her and began to clean it off. He must have decided he liked it, because he was back on Minnie’s lap looking for more.
“Getting back to normal has been nice, but you have a decision to make,” I said.
“Well,” Tom said. “I know what you’re talking about. I’ve consulted with Dashiell, Syrah, Merlot and Chablis. They told me I should ask you.”
“Our cats talk to you, do they?” I said with a smile.
“All the time.”
“You don’t have to ask me anything, Tom Stewart. You are doing the job you were meant to do, Mr. Police Chief.”
“You’re on board with my decision to make the job permanent?”
“I’m on board with you for the rest of our lives.”
We kissed. He might not have known that he’d never been an “acting” police chief. But I did.
Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next book in Leann Sweeney’s Cats in Trouble Mystery series,
The Cat, the Boy and the Bones
Available in October 2017.
The sound of a mewling newborn kitten could slash at my heart like nothing else. A whole chorus of kittens was even worse. I was on the top step of a ladder at Mercy Middle School in South Carolina—and I was worried. August was not usually a month for a new litter, and if we didn’t rescue these babies from the ceiling, they would melt.
Why was I in a school on a ladder in August? Good question. A call had come from an unlikely person. His name was Jack West, and he was twelve years old. I’d met Jack several years ago when his mother’s cow had gone missing. Yes, you heard that right. That story was for another day.
My friend Allison—the newly minted veterinarian Dr. Cuddahee—was having a hard time finding a safe place in the rafters to keep steady so she could hand me each kitten and then the mama cat—if Allison got lucky and could catch her, that was. I would then hand each kitten to Jack’s mother, Robin, who would place the kittens in the special incubator-type box Allison had brought with her.
“Keeping my balance is tough, Jillian,” Allison said to me. “Point your Maglite more in my direction so I can see that my knees are on a wide-enough beam.”
While I tried to help her out, the kittens ratchetted up their noise. Their mother had raced away into the depths of the attic the minute we’d removed the correct ceiling tile to gain access to the brood. I glanced back down at Jack, as well as at the principal of the school and the custodian, Mr. Johnson. He had been told in no uncertain terms by Principal Florence McNeal that workmans’ comp might not cover injuries sustained during a cat recovery. That was why we were here after school hours and only after we’d signed waivers promising not to sue the school should we fall through the ceiling. Considering how old the building was and how flimsy the ancient ceiling tiles were, that was a real possibility.
“Do you feel safe over there?” I asked Allison.
She gave me a thumbs-up before reaching toward what looked like a tattered plastic bag. Soon I was holding a squealing, fat gray kitten whose newly op
ened eyes blinked when it was brought into the full light of the school hallway. Boy or girl? I wondered. It was often impossible to determine gender with kittens as young as this. My guess was they were about three weeks old.
Two creamy white kittens followed—they were about the same size—and the last one had what seemed to be Siamese markings: charcoal-tipped ears, dark feet and a dark smudge on its nose. But this one seemed thinner than the rest. It might need more help than its wailing siblings. They wanted their mama—and right now.
“Jillian, bring another flashlight and get up here with me. We need that queen, even if she’s freaked-out. Of course if she’s feral, we might never find her.”
“Let me put my gloves on.” Both of us had brought heavy leather gloves for the possibility of handling an angry mama cat.
Soon I joined Allison in the stuffy area, which wasn’t as stifling hot as I thought it would be. Warm enough that sweat now dripped from my hairline down my neck, but not unbearable. This wasn’t, I realized, actually an attic, but merely the crawl space between the roof and the drop-down ceiling. The blown-in insulation wasn’t good for those babies, and I wondered how in heaven that mama had gotten up here to have her litter. Maybe she’d crawled into a cupboard, found a hole in the wall and gotten up that way. Cats were resourceful—that was for certain.
Just as I joined Allison by creeping carefully along metal beams that made my fortysomething knees scream in protest, I heard Jack’s voice behind me.
“Let me help. I have a pillowcase. Maybe you can carry the mother cat down inside it.”
I heard the panicked Robin West below us announcing her protest to this idea. “Jack, no. You’ll get hurt. You’ll fall. You could suffer a serious injury and—”
“Mom, I’m twelve. Not to mention you are supposed to be allowing me more freedom. Our therapist said so.”
I had to smile. Jack, with his genius IQ, was learning to manage his mother better and better as he got older.
Then Principal McNeal piped in. “Jack, I cannot allow this. We have no signed waiver for you. If you should tumble—”
“Too late,” Jack said as he crawled toward us. He certainly was Jack Be Nimble getting up here, compared to Allison and me. “Will this pillowcase help to bring her down? Because kittens this age will require their mother’s milk to survive. I understand there are substitutes for mammals who—”
“It will help, Jack,” Allison interrupted. “Plus, you might be the best person for the job. Mama is over in that corner where the roof slopes. It would be a tight fit for Jillian or me.”
I glanced in that direction, and sure enough I caught the glint of lovely cat eyes.
With my Maglite then turned on Jack, I saw him absolutely beam. Ever since he’d called me at lunchtime, this had probably been his most fervent wish—to be a hero and not just the weird boy who knew a hundred times more information than the other kids in this school.
Robin’s head appeared in the opening created by the ceiling tile we’d removed. “Jack. Please.”
“Robin,” I said evenly, “I won’t let anything happen to him. I can hear those kittens we saved, and they could sure use some comfort. We’ll be down in a sec.”
“Are you sure? Because—”
“She’s sure, Mom. Remember how she helped us before? She is a most trustworthy person.”
Robin disappeared, and I heard her groan a little as she descended the ladder. This was truly more of a job for superkids like Jack.
Allison had pieces of kibble with her, and when the mother cat made a few tentative steps toward her outstretched hand, we all knew what Jack whispered to be true. “Not a feral. That’s a good thing—right, Dr. Cuddahee?”
“Very good,” she whispered back.
The mama was a mixed shorthair who looked very much like the runt of the litter we’d rescued. We took our time talking to her, reassuring her, feeding her—and, wow, was she hungry. Finally, Jack was right next to her and petting the sweetheart. I heard her begin to purr, and that’s when Allison told Jack to put her in his pillowcase.
He did this so gently that I thought my heart might dissolve. The cat did not protest. My guess was, if a cat could be relieved and grateful, this girl was. She’d gotten herself and her babies into quite a fine mess.
Allison led the way out with the flashlight I’d brought for her. I told Jack to go next. He could actually walk on the beams and not crawl like we had to do. I went last, and as I edged past the shredded bag where the queen had nested, I caught a terrible whiff of something. Oh no, I thought. Had a kitten died in that bag?
As Allison and Jack made their way out, I said, “I’ll be right behind you.” I have to check. I have to make sure. Perhaps the mama had been feeding on rodents and that was what I smelled, but I would not leave a dead animal behind—not even if it was a rat. Good thing I had my gloves.
I made my way to the bag and shined the light directly on it. I couldn’t see anything but tufts of milky cat hair. Then I noticed another bag resting between beams behind the area the mama cat had used as her nesting spot. The black bag was tied up, but was beginning to fall apart in the heat and humidity of this space.
Why would someone leave a bag of garbage up here? But it explained why our mama might have been drawn to this spot. She might have thought she would have food. Even garbage would work for a cat in need.
Holding the Maglite above the bag, I carefully peeled back one of the plastic shreds.
I blinked, not sure what I was seeing. Being careful to begin from the top of the bag, I pulled away at another tear to make a wider opening.
“Oh no,” I cried. “Oh no, oh no.”
I heard footsteps on the ladder ascending rapidly while I remained frozen, unable to move or even breathe.
It was Allison. “Jillian, are you all right?”
“Y-yes,” I rasped. “But someone isn’t.”
“What are you talking about?” She was now crawling toward me.
I help up a hand. “Don’t come any closer. There are bones in this bag. Human bones.”
I shined the light on the skull I’d uncovered.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leann Sweeney is the New York Times bestselling author of the Cats in Trouble Mysteries, including The Cat, the Sneak and the Secret and The Cat, the Vagabond and the Victim. Leann was born and raised in Niagara Falls and educated at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Lemoyne College in Syracuse, New York. She also has a degree in behavioral science from the University of Houston. A retired registered nurse, she has been writing in the mystery genre for many years and also writes the Yellow Rose Mystery series. Leann has lived in New York, Texas, and now in South Carolina with her husband, Mike, her two cats and her spunky, hyper Labradoodle, Rosie. Visit her online at leannsweeney.com, cozychicksblog.com, facebook.com/leann.sweeney, and twitter.com/leannsweeney.
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