The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives

by Clement, Blaize, Clement, John

  I was standing with my back to the street, but I could see the reflection of two of the deputies in the display window as they inspected Mr. Hoskins’s van. Another one of the deputies was across the street with a woman in a white apron, probably someone from the market. I figured they were interviewing every shop owner on the street to find out if anyone had seen anything suspicious.

  I looked at the stack of dictionaries in the far corner of the display, half hoping Cosmo would be there, snoozing away safe and sound in his favorite spot. If he was there, I’d know this whole thing was just one big misunderstanding, that there was an explanation for everything and that Mr. Hoskins was totally fine. If he was there, I’d know I hadn’t stepped right into another big pile of crazy.

  Of course, he wasn’t there.

  9

  I’d probably only been standing in front of Beezy’s Bookstore for a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity. I was beginning to wonder if McKenzie was planning on leaving me there to stare into the display window all day long, but she finally appeared in front of the butcher shop a few doors down, accompanied by the deputy who had interrupted us earlier. For some reason I fished my cell phone out of my pocket and flipped it open, pretending to study something very important on it, like a text message from Prince Charles or a phone call from the state lottery board.

  I don’t know why, but there was something about Detective McKenzie that always made me a tad nervous. Well, more than just a tad. She was thin-boned and plain, but I could tell by the way people treated her that she was a power to be reckoned with. I pictured her brain like the interior of an intricately designed clock, with all its cogs and wheels spinning full speed, sending off little sparks and bits of metal. She walked behind me, putting her latex gloves back on, and as I made one last check of the blank screen on my phone, she opened the door to the bookstore and the little bell over the door rang again.

  She said, “Shall we?”

  There was an eerie silence inside the store, like the silence inside a shell after its owner has abandoned it. Like a silence you can hear.

  McKenzie said, “Sorry for the wait. I just had a very interesting conversation with the butcher.”

  “No problem.” I nodded absentmindedly. “I do have a few more pets I need to check on this morning, but they can wait.”

  “I’d just like you to take a look around and tell me if anything seems different.”

  “Different?”

  “From the way you remember it. Just anything you notice, no matter how small.”

  She walked around behind the counter and flicked on several light switches. Now I could see all the way to the back of the store, and everything seemed the same. I could even see the box on the floor at the very last aisle where I’d found my gardening book.

  I said, “I don’t notice anything.”

  “And what time did you say you were here?”

  I realized I hadn’t ever told her a time, but I let it go. “It was exactly 6:04. I know because I remember looking at my watch. Mr. Hoskins was just closing when I arrived.”

  “Did you see anyone else in the store?”

  “No. In fact, he locked the door right after I came in.”

  She flipped through a couple of pages on her silver clipboard and then pulled a ballpoint pen from one of the pockets on the front of her skirt.

  I said, “Detective McKenzie, do you think Mr. Hoskins…” but my voice trailed off.

  She shook her head, “I can’t say for certain, but it doesn’t look good. We have an unlocked shop, we have a missing shopkeeper, we have blood across the shop’s front counter, and we have a person smeared with blood leaving the scene. So were you shopping for any one book in particular?”

  My eyes widened. “A person smeared with blood?”

  McKenzie nodded, “Yes. Leaving the scene. It was last night after most of the shops were closed. The butcher was locking up when he saw a woman leave the bookstore and get in her car. She took off her jacket, and he noticed her clothes underneath were stained with blood. Normally I wouldn’t be so quick to believe someone could identify bloody clothing in low light from a distance of thirty feet or so. But a butcher…”

  “That was me.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said, that was me.”

  She nodded nonchalantly. “Yes, I explained to the butcher about the car accident, but he wasn’t convinced. He didn’t think anybody who’d just dragged a body away from a head-on collision would be crazy enough to go shopping right afterward.”

  I could feel my ears turning red. I’d only had a handful of conversations with McKenzie in the past, but they generally left me feeling like I’d been tossed out of a roller coaster.

  I said, “The whole reason I was in the neighborhood was to buy a book, and I’ve been coming here since I was little. And they had the road blocked off so I couldn’t go anywhere. I figured while I was waiting I’d run in and get a book. I put the jacket on over my clothes so I wouldn’t freak anybody out.”

  She pulled a strand of thin, mouse-colored hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “Seems fairly reasonable, although you may have a harder time convincing the butcher. And did you notice anything unusual about Mr. Hoskins at the time?”

  I tried to think, which wasn’t easy around this woman. “Well, he seemed a little eccentric, and he was out of breath.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Out of breath?”

  “His face was kind of flushed, and he was breathing heavy. He said he’d been moving boxes around in the back. I think maybe he’d gotten a delivery of books, because he said the one I bought had just come in.”

  “And why do you say he seemed eccentric?”

  “Well, maybe that’s not the right word. Just a little absentminded maybe, and the way he was dressed. Kind of rumpled, shoes untied, and he was wearing big wraparound sunglasses.”

  She nodded. “He’d had an appointment with his ophthalmologist earlier in the day. His daughter said they had dilated his pupils, so the glasses would have been to protect his eyes. Do you remember what else he was wearing?”

  “He had suspenders on because his pants were too big, and they were yellow. And a red beret. His pants were brown, or maybe gray, and his shirt was red. I remember it was a button-down shirt because the buttons were shiny brass and he’d missed a couple.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, just the big sunglasses, and he wasn’t at the register when I came in. I had to call him a couple of times before he heard me.”

  “Oh? Where was he?”

  “In the back, but that’s because he was closed. Or at least he thought he was. He said he should have locked the door but he’d forgotten.”

  She made a note in her clipboard. “And how about the cat?”

  “There’s a stack of dictionaries in the window. I noticed when I came in it had orange fur on top of it, so I knew there was a cat here somewhere.”

  “Did you actually see a cat?”

  I sighed. I figured he’d probably have hidden somewhere. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the cat might have been missing, too, but I could tell that’s where she was going. “Just for a split second. I was beginning to think something was wrong, and then the cat came running out of the back office. Mr. Hoskins called him Cosmo.”

  “Did you notice if Cosmo was hurt?”

  “Hurt?”

  She tipped her chin at the counter. I looked closer at the red splotches and felt a shudder go down my spine. The red splotches were cat prints. Either Cosmo was bleeding or …

  McKenzie said, “I’m assuming you would have noticed if the cat was hurt.”

  I nodded. “I didn’t get a real good look. He ran by like a flash, but cats don’t usually race around like that if they’re hurt. They’re more likely to find a place to hide and hunker down.”

  “Where did he run to?”

  I pointed to the space under the front counter. “He came from the back and disappeared ri
ght under there. I didn’t see him again.”

  “Okay. When you say you thought something was wrong, what did you mean by that?”

  “Well, like I said, when I first came in there was nobody at the register. I called out a couple of times, but nobody answered. I was beginning to think maybe the place was empty, but I was about halfway through the store when I heard something in the back, and that’s when Cosmo came running out.”

  McKenzie was staring at me, almost as if she were boring a hole straight into my brain, and I suddenly realized one of the reasons I got so nervous around her was that she never looked me straight in the eye. Instead, she seemed to focus on a point somewhere in the middle of my forehead.

  I tried to keep my train of thought. “So … then I called out a little louder and Mr. Hoskins heard me that time. He said, ‘Be right with you.’”

  She nodded. The strand of hair that she’d brushed away had fallen back and was hanging across her face, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “And Mr. Hoskins, was he racing around the store like a flash as well?”

  “Huh?”

  She pursed her lips together, looked up at the ceiling for a split second, and then looked back down at the middle of my forehead. “You said you didn’t see anyone in the store when you came in, and then you said Mr. Hoskins locked the door right after you came in, and then you said you were midway through the store when Mr. Hoskins called out from the back office. I’m just trying to come up with a reasonable explanation as to how he pulled that off, and your account makes perfect sense if both Mr. Hoskins and his cat were racing around the store like flashes.”

  This woman was either an utter bat-case or a complete genius, or more likely a combination of the two, but either way I felt like my head was about to explode. Plus, I was starting to get a little tired of being spoken to like a fourth grader.

  I took a deep breath. “Okay. No, I guess I misspoke. Mr. Hoskins was not racing around the store like a flash. He locked the door after he came out from the back.”

  She nodded curtly and made another note in her clipboard. “Did he seem nervous or upset?”

  “I don’t think so, maybe a little absentminded, and his hands were trembling, but I hadn’t ever met him before, so I don’t know if his hands always tremble or not.”

  She studied me for a second and took a deep breath, but I stopped her just in time. I knew exactly what she was about to say. I had just told her I’d been coming here since I was a child, but now I was saying I’d never met Mr. Hoskins.

  I held up my hand. “Hold on there, Sherlock. The answer to your question is this: I spent a lot of time here when I was little, but then I didn’t come back for years. In the meantime, the original owner passed away and Mr. Hoskins took over the store. Yesterday was the first time I’d been back since then.”

  The corners of her lips rose in a faint smile as she looked over her notes.

  I sighed. “Sorry. I guess I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed.”

  She closed her clipboard. “It’s alright, I know how you feel. I was up all night on another case. I haven’t been home in twenty-four hours. I barely remember what my daughter looks…” She stopped herself and her cheeks flushed red.

  I said, “I’m a little worried about the cat, too. I’m wondering if maybe he got out of the store at some point.”

  She finally brushed the strands of hair that had been hanging in her face away again and said, “I rather hope he did.”

  I didn’t quite know what to make of that, but it made me wonder if there was something else she wasn’t telling me. My mind felt like it had turned to mush, and I suddenly had an overwhelming desire for sleep. I half considered excusing myself and lying down in my spot under the big claw-foot table, but I didn’t think McKenzie would take too kindly to that.

  She led me to the door. “I have a lab unit on the way, so we’ll know soon enough whether the blood on the counter is human or feline, but until then, if you think of anything else, anything at all, please give me a call right away.”

  She handed me her card, which wasn’t really necessary. I already had her number in my phone, but I took it anyway. Out on the sidewalk, I looked once again at the stack of dictionaries. Thinking about Mr. Hoskins and Cosmo, that something bad could have happened to them, unleashed all sorts of emotions in me. I was afraid I was about to break down into a sobbing mess right there on the sidewalk, but I held myself together. I had a feeling 99 percent of the deputies in the sheriff’s department already thought I was a certified basket case. I didn’t want to make it any worse.

  McKenzie snapped off her latex gloves and took one of my hands in hers. At first I thought she’d noticed something was wrong. I was expecting her to give me a sympathetic smile and ask if I was okay, but instead she just shook my hand firmly and said, “Oh, I almost forgot. Why are you here?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why are you here?”

  I was thinking I could easily have asked her the same thing. Mr. Hoskins couldn’t have been missing more than twelve hours or so, and a track of bloody paw prints across a countertop hardly seemed reason enough to launch a full-scale murder investigation, but then again, it was entirely possible McKenzie did know something I didn’t know. In fact, I had a feeling she knew a lot of things I didn’t know.

  I showed her my book and flipped it open to the back. “It’s the one I bought from Mr. Hoskins last night. It’s missing a whole section in the end. I just stopped by to tell him.”

  She said, “Hmm,” and then seemed to get lost in her own thoughts. “Well, call me if anything comes to mind.”

  “Detective McKenzie, I’m worried about those chocolates.”

  “What about them?”

  “Well, they’re toxic to cats.”

  She nodded. “I understand. I’ll remove them myself before we leave today.”

  For a second I wondered what she planned on doing with them. Surely she wouldn’t just throw them away … I toyed with the idea of offering to “remove” them myself, but then a mobile forensics unit pulled up and I snapped back to my senses. Sometimes I really do wonder if I shouldn’t join the local chapter of Chocoholics Anonymous.

  McKenzie signaled for two of the deputies to follow her back in the bookstore and then held out her hand. “Let me know if you remember anything else?”

  I nodded and then watched her disappear into the bookstore as the lab techs opened up the side door to the truck and unpacked their gear.

  When I was a deputy, which hadn’t been that long ago in the grand scheme of things, a mobile forensics unit had consisted of a couple of oversized tackle boxes, but in the past year an anonymous donor had given the department almost half a million dollars. That was enough to buy a new state-of-the-art mobile crime truck, complete with sophisticated evidence collection systems, lab chemicals, computers, and satellite Internet, not to mention two full-time lab technicians to drive it around.

  I would have liked to see the inside of it, but I figured those techs had better things to do than give me a private tour. As I made my way back to the Bronco, a van pulled up. I imagined it was probably a photographer, called in to take pictures of every inch of the bookstore. A photographer is standard procedure at any crime scene. No matter what happened afterward—even if the entire place burned to the ground—there’d always be a detailed photographic record of exactly how everything looked at the scene of the crime. That way they wouldn’t have to rely on anybody’s memory to re-create it.

  Which was good, because I planned on forgetting the whole thing as quickly as possible.

  10

  According to Cosmopolitan magazine, I am a woman in the prime of her life—physically, sexually, and mentally. Physically, I’d say my daily jogs with Billy Elliot keep me in relatively good health. Sexually, well, that’s in progress; I’ll report back later. Mentally? Well, for argument’s sake let’s just say yes.

  Still, I misplace things all the time. I lose my car keys at least onc
e a month. I’ve found them at the bottom of my dirty clothes hamper, I’ve found them in the washing machine, and more than once I’ve found them in the freezer, tossed in next to the ice cream and the frozen corn. Sometimes my mind just starts wandering and I forget what I’m doing.

  Mr. Hoskins may have been a lot of things, but he was clearly not a man in the prime of his life. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me that he could easily have misplaced his keys somewhere. In fact, I distinctly remembered him patting his pockets and looking around as if he’d lost something, and that would explain why the door was left unlocked overnight.

  It was simple. He couldn’t find his keys and it was the end of the day, he was tired, and he wanted to go home—who would rob a bookstore anyway? It’s not like they’re known for having lots of cash on hand, especially not in this day and age when anybody with half a brain and an Internet connection can sit around in their underwear all day and buy every book their little heart desires with just the click of a key. So Mr. Hoskins probably decided the store was perfectly fine and he’d just look for his keys in the morning, but to be on the safe side, he had emptied out the register and taken the cash with him. It all made perfect sense.

  Except none of that explained the bloody prints on the counter, not to mention the fact that he hadn’t come home the night before … and he had seemed a little nervous …

  I shook my head. There was nothing I could do about it, and it wasn’t my business anyway. I had already let myself get mixed up in plenty of things I shouldn’t in the past, and with Ethan, my life was already busy enough. I didn’t need any more things to distract me.

  By the time I pulled into the covered carport at Julie Caldwell’s condo, I’d made up my mind. Whatever had happened in that bookstore after I left the night before had absolutely nothing to do with me. Yes, Detective McKenzie was a little odd, and yes, she made me feel like a child on the first day of kindergarten, but she was also about the smartest person I’d ever met, and if anyone could figure out what had happened to Mr. Hoskins, it was her.