How to Wash a Cat

by Rebecca M. Hale

  I waited for a moment inside the closet, wanting to make sure Harold got far enough ahead, so that he wouldn’t hear me open the hatch. A discarded flowerpot had been tossed into the corner. I counted slowly to ten, imagining what Monty must have looked like with the pot on his head, then I eased open the hatch.

  The iron bars of the ladder disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. I had no flashlight, I sighed ruefully as I stared down into the abyss. Grimacing away my hesitation, I swung my foot out to catch the first iron bar of the ladder and started down, silently closing the hatch above me.

  My feet struggled to find each rung in the darkness. I waited, hanging against the wall, hoping that my eyes would adjust to the absence of light. Slowly, the shadowy margins of the ladder emerged in front of my face. I gripped the metal bars tightly as I continued down the ladder, feeling a great relief when my right foot hit the solid surface of the floor of the tunnel.

  Damp, clammy air sunk in around me as I looked up and down the dark passageway. A buzzing murmur of insects percolated beneath my feet, up the walls, and over my head.

  To my left, heading away from the direction of the Green Vase, a dim light bobbed in time with Harold’s unmistakable limp. I headed off after him, struggling to keep my footing on the slippery concrete floor.

  With each step, the walls that I could sense more than see crept closer and closer towards me. The tunnel’s width collapsed down, feeding the claustrophobic frenzy building in my brain. I tried not to think of the corpse I’d seen earlier that morning, buried for a hundred and fifty years, submerged first in water, then in yards and yards of sand and mud.

  Finally, I drew near enough to the glimmer from Harold’s light to see more of my surroundings. The constricting sides of the tunnel were wetter than I remembered, undulating with a myriad of insect inhabitants, each of them ogling me with their antennaed eyes. I wrapped my arms about my waist, trying not to touch the pulsing, suppurating wall.

  The corners of the tunnel rustled resentfully as I edged forward. I gripped my sides tighter, hunching over as legions of insect legs scrambled across the low ceiling. Armored plates of black, shiny chitin clicked at me in a menacing, threatening undertone. My presence in this subterranean domain was clearly unwelcome.

  I had to force myself to slow my pace. Every screaming instinct demanded that I hurtle pell-mell to the nearest exit. I crunched myself up into a walking ball and tried to focus on the straggling glimmer of Harold’s dim light.

  The tunnel became rougher and more unstable. The damp draft of air funneling through it carried the feculent tang of raw sewage. A slimy, glutinous coating layered the floor and the walls. I stared desperately at Harold’s light, still bumping along about twenty feet in front of me.

  To my over-hyped imagination, the grumbling, discordant chant of the tunnel’s insects seemed to be taking on more of a hungry tenor. I clamped my hands down over my ears, trying to dampen the voice shrieking inside my head, warning that the bugs were preparing to eat me. My pulse quickened as an unmistakable whirl of ravenous cravings suddenly raced down the tunnel towards me and swarmed around my head, boring into my ears with its deafening roar.

  I dropped to the floor, my voice screeching in terror. The rippling surface of the ceiling erupted into a frenzied, flying foment. A multitude of creatures pelted down on top of me, clattering like pecans as they landed and chivied across the concrete. My fingers frantically scraped at my scalp. Every inch of skin shivered in a retching effort to dislodge the scattering hoards.

  Hoping that my scream had been masked by the thundering passage of the BART train, I slowly pulled my head up from its fetal position and glanced down the tunnel towards Harold’s light. My breath caught in my throat as the beam stopped and swung upwards.

  Each second dragged out until I realized that Harold and his flashlight were moving up a ladder. A loud sigh escaped my petrified lungs. I was finally getting out of this wretched tunnel.

  I watched Harold’s costive movements as he slowly scaled the ladder. My initial relief was quickly muted by the dimming of his disappearing light. A few moments later, I stood in the darkness, listening as Harold clambered through the hatch and snapped it shut.

  A narrow shaft of light filtered through the tunnel, lifting the cloak of blackness enough for me to see my hands if I held them in front of my face. As I did so, a delicate, tickling sensation scurried up my arm, launched over my shoulder, and disappeared down my back.

  My whole body shook violently as I tried to dislodge the interloping insect. Trembling, I brought my hand back up, scanning its surface.

  Tears began streaming down my face as a quivering cockroach blinked back at me, tittering conversationally, inquisitively twitching his long, sinuous antennae. I slung my hand up and down, trying to dislodge him. But when I dared to look back down at my hand, he was still there—amorously batting his beady eyes at me, whirring his wings in a proud, preening fashion.

  I cringed as the roach began to pace back and forth on my palm, chattering away in a foppish manner. Then he paused, one antennae hovering pointedly in the air as his angling eyes studied me. “I have a theory.”

  “Surely, I’ve lost my mind,” I replied.

  But the convivial bug wasn’t finished. He resumed his discourse, fluttering his wings as he circled my palm. “What if Oscar pulled a Leidesdorff? What if he faked his death? Shouldn’t you at least consider the possibility?”

  A swirling of half-Oscar images appeared in the darkness, each of them clothed in his stained, navy blue shirt. One of them took on Gordon Bosco’s large beaking nose; another, Harold Wombler’s loose, hanging skin. A third marched up wearing Frank Napis’s mustache and turban. I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the vision.

  It couldn’t be—it wasn’t possible. Uncle Oscar wouldn’t have done this to me.

  One by one, each of the Oscars faded back into the tunnel. I was alone in the darkness, surrounded by the pre-fab walls of my office cubicle.

  An oppressive silence closed in on me. My grasping fingers scraped at the cloth-covered walls. My mouth gasped for air as my lungs constricted, straining for oxygen.

  And then, a sound I never thought I’d be so happy to hear cut through my delusional rantings.

  “I think we should go with the pink taffeta bolster, Dilla,” Monty’s muffled voice permeated through the ceiling above my head. “It’ll match the tint in the icing on the cupcakes.”

  Chapter 38

  I CHARGED UP the ladder, momentarily forgetting about Harold Wombler as I burst through the hatch. Monty’s voice droned somewhere nearby as I stood up in a dark closet.

  “Don’t worry, Dilla, I’m going to go check with the caterer right now.”

  I slid forward, holding my hands out in front of me, my feet blindly searching the space ahead. My left toe stubbed up against a vertical surface, and my fingers found the soft, painted panel of a door. Without thinking, I pulled the tulip key out of my pocket and fumbled it into the smooth, tulip-embossed door handle. A clicking sound broke through my pounding breathing as the key turned, and the door creaked open.

  I peeked out into a forest of stainless steel appliances. I appeared to be in a kitchen at the Palace Hotel. The train that had run over the top of the tunnel must have been the BART line on Market Street.

  To my right, an industrial-sized dishwasher arduously steamed rows of white china plates. Pots and pans of every size hung from racks on the ceiling. Stacks of wide-mouthed aluminum bowls were crammed onto every available shelf.

  There was no sign of Monty—or, for that matter, Harold.

  “Monty?” I called out softly, creeping around the back side of the dishwasher down a narrow hallway lined with mammoth-sized walk-in freezers.

  “Monty?” I whispered a little louder, my voice bouncing off of the sterile, stainless steel walls.

  “Good grief woman, put a sock in it!” Monty’s voice scratched hoarsely as one of his Jell-O-like arms snaked out from the close
st walk-in and yanked me inside. “She’s going to hear you.”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” I said, expelling a sigh of relief. “You’re not a roach.”

  Monty’s jaw squinched out of alignment as he responded with a half-quizical, half-offended look.

  I stared at him, puzzled. Perhaps it was the dim, fluorescent lighting and the refrigerated air of the walk-in freezer, but Monty looked truly distraught. Gray hollows sunk under his green eyes, further accentuating his clammy, chalk-white cheeks. His pale, anemic countenance was a drab contrast to his cheerful, daisy-shaped cufflinks and matching sunny-yellow bow tie. The curls that usually bounced along on the top of his head had been stretched beyond their natural elasticity. He had the rough, haggard look of a hunted animal.

  “What are you doing here?” he whispered crankily, fretfully peeking around the edge of the door to the walk-in freezer.

  “I was following Harold Wombler,” I said simply, omitting for the moment a retelling of my tunnel-tracking expedition.

  Monty jumped as if I’d snapped his last frayed nerve. “What’s he doing here?” he demanded. “As if there weren’t enough people here already,” he muttered under his breath.

  He pressed his finger to his lips, silently shushing me. From the other side of the room, I heard the heavy, thunking sound of footsteps.

  “Montgomery Carmichael,” a female voice called out huskily, as if she were trying to lure an escaped pet. Fingernails clicked against the surface of the metal tables in the next room. Monty pulled the freezer door completely shut and flicked off the interior light. We stood together in the refrigerated darkness as footsteps echoed on the tile hallway and clunked out of the room.

  I poked Monty as he cracked open the door. “Oh, come on. It can’t be that bad.”

  “You have no idea,” he replied grimly. He poked his head out the door and swiveled it to look up and down the hallway.

  “You can’t hide from her forever,” I said, rubbing my arms to keep warm.

  “Who . . . what?” he asked distractedly, still casing the corridor.

  “From Dilla,” I said, exasperated. I was certain that it had been her voice calling for Monty. The pressure of planning the charity event, I figured, was getting to him.

  “Right.” Monty pulled his head back into the walk-in and gave me a weak, wan smile. “Dilla.” He began pacing back and forth, his color returning as he picked up a cucumber and tossed it into the air. It somersaulted above his head and smacked down onto the palm of his hand.

  He launched the cucumber back into the air. “You see, I’ve got a bit of a situation here . . .”

  The cucumber took a sideways twist and came down awkwardly. Monty juggled it for a moment, trying to clasp his fingers around the slick surface of the tubular vegetable, but it slipped out and clanged into a stack of metal pans on the floor.

  Monty’s face blanched as the cucumber cascaded from one row of pans to the next. He grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the walk-in. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”

  Monty led me out of the kitchen area and into a maze of hushed, hotel corridors. Plush carpeting muffled our footsteps. Smooth, caramel-colored walls lined with gilded mirrors streamed past as I struggled to keep up with his long strides.

  We approached a wide corridor, the main artery on the first floor of the Palace Hotel. Sleepy, floating music tinkled in the background. Monty stayed hidden behind a recess in the hallway as I squirmed around him and peered out into the elegant arcade.

  A group of suited men carrying briefcases flashed by, closely followed by a bellboy pushing a shiny chrome luggage cart. I was about to step out into the corridor when Monty’s strong fingers yanked my shoulders backwards, jolting my feet off the floor. He pulled me into the side hall just as Dilla’s bustling figure swept past in the main corridor.

  She wore a bright, parrot-green suit accessorized with a colorful scarf and a hat plumed with an arching green feather. She smiled pleasantly at the gawking hotel guests, nodding as she passed them, occasionally pausing to glance down at the cell phone she clutched in her right hand.

  Monty collapsed against the wall. “Whew,” he breathed, staring at the ceiling.

  I walked to the corner and peeked out into the corridor, watching as the feather bobbed into the ballroom at the opposite end.

  “I think you’re safe,” I reported to an anxious Monty. “For now anyway.”

  On the other side of the corridor, across from our recessed position, gold lettering identified the entrance to “The Pied Piper Lounge.” I double-checked for Dilla’s feather, beckoned to Monty, and crossed to the heavy wooden doors.

  I held the door open as Monty scampered across, crouching and dodging in and out behind the people passing by, antics which only succeeded in drawing attention to himself.

  The heavy doors swished shut behind us, closing off the din of activity from the busy corridor. The dark-panelled room featured a gold-trimmed bar that spanned the length of the lounge, protecting a ten-foot painting mounted on the wall behind it. Monty began circling the room as I wandered in front of the room-filling canvas.

  I’d seen the mural several times before. It was a famous Maxfield Parrish piece that had been commissioned by William Sharon, Ralston’s business partner, who completed construction of the Palace Hotel and ran it for many years after Ralston’s death.

  The painting depicted a scene from the Pied Piper fairy tale. In the story, a small town becomes infested with rats. The townspeople try everything to get rid of the vermin, but they are unsuccessful. In desperation, they hire the Pied Piper. With one twirl of his flute, the rats are sent running, but the townspeople refuse to pay him. Feeling cheated, the Piper absconds with the town’s children. The eventual fate of the children—whether they are thrown off the edge of a cliff or returned safely to their families—depends on which version of the tale you chose to read.

  Monty circled back to me and leaned up against the bar. “Hmph,” he said derisively. “The Pied Piper. It’s never been one of my favorites. A bit pedantic for my tastes.”

  He turned away as his cell phone began ringing in his suit pocket. I remained fixated on the painting’s depiction of the Piper and the kidnapped children scaling the rugged mountain terrain above the town. My eyes panned to the profile of the Piper and his prominent, hooking nose.

  The nose was almost exactly the same shape as the hawk-like beak that fronted Gordon Bosco’s otherwise flat face.

  My confused, tumbling thoughts suddenly clarified.

  “Monty,” I murmured slowly as Miranda Richards walked into the lounge through the swinging wood doors, dragging an apologetic-looking Dilla behind her. “Have you ever considered wearing a turban?”

  Chapter 39

  FRIDAY MORNING, A damp—but clean—Rupert sat on the cashier counter by the window, slowly grooming through his rumpled, wet hairs. Isabella perched on top of the bookcase, her expression serene as the sun soaked her white, gleaming coat. I was still upstairs, cleaning up the mess from Rupert’s mid-bath escape.

  I let out a sad, pitiful sigh as I surveyed the scene.

  Thanks to Rupert’s wet romp through the litter box, dried clumps of litter now clung to every surface. The ubiquitous, sandy particles were splattered on the walls, sprinkled across the floorboards, and sifted into my sheets. It was a miracle there was any left in the box.

  My knees ached from the hour spent crawling on the hardwood floor. Tiny pebbles of litter were imprinted into the palms of my hands and the soft covering of my knee-caps.

  I finally cleaned my way to the bathroom—the site of the worst carnage. Litter lined the sides of both the tub and the sink. It had been artfully sprayed across the shower curtain in the form of an uninterpretable abstract image.

  In the middle of the mess, the upended domed lid to the red, plastic litter box rocked silently back and forth. Rupert had knocked it completely off the bottom tray during his soapy rampage.

  Rupert and Isabella sat
down in the hallway just outside the bathroom, curiously watching as I bent down to pick up the lid.

  “Awfully brave of you,” I said testily to Rupert. “Returning to the scene of the crime. What—have you come to admire your handiwork . . .”

  My voice trailed off as I stared at the underside of the litter box lid. A small package had been taped to the interior cavity that was meant to hold the charcoal filter.

  Isabella clicked her vocal cords and chirped informatively.

  I pulled the package off with difficulty. It was layered with excessive amounts of strapping tape.

  Leaving the mess in the bathroom, I slowly carried Oscar’s package downstairs to the kitchen. Rupert bounced along behind while Isabella wound between my feet, herding me down the steps.

  I cut into the dusty package with a pair of scissors, carefully peeling back the layers of tape. Cautiously, I spread the contents out on the kitchen table.

  An hour later, I’d unwound several industrial-sized paperclips and, following Oscar’s detailed instructions, had begun to fold them into odd-shaped wire boxes.

  Holding one up for inspection, I looked through the wire cage to the shelf on the wall opposite the table.

  I set the cage on the table, stood up, and reached for Oscar’s worn phone book.

  After flipping through the yellowed pages, I found the marked entry under ‘Eckles’ and picked up the phone.

  Chapter 40

  A HARSH, CALLOUS wind ballooned against the black silk folds of my evening gown as I stepped out of a taxi in front of the Palace Hotel. A pair of porters jogged down the marble steps to help me unload the cats.

  Monty followed the porters down the stairs, the long tails of his black velvet tuxedo flapping out behind him. “They’re the stars of the show tonight, boys,” he called out. “Take them right on into the ballroom.”