1 The Big Kitty

by Claire Donally

  And snorted at herself. Oh, it was a lottery ticket, all right. But it was dated about a week before Ada died.

  “Did you find something?” Will was back in the room, looking eagerly at the ticket Sunny held.

  “Not unless lightning struck twice,” she told him, pointing out the date. “Bad enough to be searching for a winning ticket when there might be a year’s worth of losers lying around the house, too.”

  She bent down to pat Shadow, who stood beside the table, looking up at her.

  *

  Shadow watched as Sunny waved the piece of paper in front of the Big Male. Were they going to play with it? If they let it go and it floated down, there might be some pouncing games they could play.

  The male—Will, he seemed to be called—shifted his feet, and Shadow sidled away. He was very aware of feet after what he’d smelled around the chair, and even though his side felt much better, remembered soreness seemed to stiffen his gait.

  There was no mistaking it—the memory of this particular scent had been reinforced with severe pain. The one who had kicked him so badly had been here. That was a bad two-legs, and smells like that always seemed to be connected to bad things. Shadow shifted uncomfortably as he watched Sunny and Will talk.

  Even though he’d lived here, and the other smells were familiar, he wanted to leave this place. It made him nervous.

  *

  They went upstairs to check Ada’s bedroom. Gordie had apparently put in his most serious search efforts here. The closet stood empty and so did the dresser, the clothes bundled into those ubiquitous garbage bags and piled on the unmade bed.

  “I wonder if he checked the pockets,” Will said, poking at the emptied contents of one bag.

  A small jewelry box stood on the dresser. Sunny picked up the top to find the interior almost empty, although slots for rings showed impressions of use.

  “I didn’t look very closely when I found Ada,” Sunny admitted. “Was she wearing jewelry when she died?”

  Will shook his head, looking into the box. “Probably either she or Gordie was pawning stuff.”

  He pointed at several faded family photographs with brighter edges scattered across the bleached wood top. “Those were probably in silver frames. Pawned, too, I bet.”

  Sunny turned away, not wanting to look at these relics of a miserable, lonely life. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  They ended in the kitchen, following Sunny’s notion of walking in Ada’s footsteps. The cans that had filled the cabinets were still on the counter. The shelves themselves were empty, lined with adhesive plastic sheets—still sticking on, but faded.

  “My mom told me that they used to have special shelf paper that was supposed to get switched out once a year,” Sunny said. “Her mom used to slip a dollar under the paper as a reward for whoever changed it.” She tapped the faded floral pattern. “Nothing like that here.”

  One drawer revealed knives, forks, spoons, and a can opener. The other held a tape measure, a handwritten phone book, and a lot of nondescript junk. Sunny peered at the cabinets under the sink. One held cleaning products. The other was full of pots and pans. “You think a ticket could have fallen down here?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if one of the cats ate it,” Will told her.

  “The only other place I could imagine her going was the pantry.” Sunny started for the narrow, shelf-lined hall that led to the cellar door.

  Shadow suddenly appeared underfoot, meowing at her.

  “What?” Sunny took a step. Shadow butted his head against her shin. Taken aback—literally—she retreated a step, and Shadow butted the other shin.

  “People talk about herding cats when they want to describe a hopeless job,” Will said with a laugh. “But here we’ve got a cat herding you.”

  *

  Shadow glared up at Sunny, her face disappearing as memory put another set of features on them—the Old One–Dead One–Gone One, in her familiar housecoat, her mouth open in shock, her eyes wide with fear.

  He’d been sleeping in the pantry, caught unawares as she was flung past him, the screech of the door as it tore open drowning out her weak cry as she went down, down, down.

  Shadow leaped from stair to stair after her, though he knew he was too small to be of help. The door above banged shut behind him, cutting off the light from the kitchen. That didn’t matter to a cat’s eyes, though. He could see clearly enough that the Old One was no more.

  Then that Other One came running down the stairs, the noxious stench on him like the stink that rose from the Old One’s son, only a hundred times more poisonous …

  No! He would not let it happen again!

  Seeing Sunny by that deadly door, and the male behind her, Shadow couldn’t help himself. Even though they didn’t smell the same, dread overcame him.

  He would force her back, pushing, crying out warnings, using his claws if he had to.

  She would not die here!

  *

  “This is silly,” Sunny muttered, feeling her cheeks getting warm. She retraced her steps into the pantry, but couldn’t concentrate on checking the shelves with all the noise Shadow was making. “What is your problem, cat?”

  Shadow walked back and forth in front of her as if he were on sentry duty, his tail lashing around, unhappy sounds coming from deep in his throat.

  “Maybe he doesn’t like being trapped in that little space,” Will suggested.

  “He’s not trapped,” Sunny said impatiently. “He wormed his way in ahead of me.” She advanced on Shadow, trying to shoo him aside. He stretched up to press the pads of his forepaws above her knee, pushing her back.

  “Shadow!” Sunny said sharply and regretted it a second later as the cat jumped away from her.

  Then he did something really weird. Turning in midair, Shadow launched himself at the cellar door. It sprang open with an unearthly screech, but Shadow didn’t go tumbling down. Somehow, he used the door’s resistance to bounce himself back, landing almost at Sunny’s feet. He looked up at her, making a low, unhappy, moaning noise.

  Sunny stopped in her tracks. “All the time he’s lived here, that door has been painted shut.”

  Will stood beside her, making Shadow crouch and lash his tail, his noises becoming bloodcurdling. Frowning, he said, “So the cat couldn’t have known it would open—unless …”

  Sunny looked from Shadow to Will, her throat getting a little tight. “You know, ever since he came to us, he’s been obsessed with pushing things.”

  Taking her arm, Will pulled Sunny back from the spitting cat.

  Shadow calmed down and followed them to the living room, where Sunny knelt down and stroked him.

  Will joined her. “Wow, little guy,” he said, offering a hand to be sniffed. “It’s really a shame you don’t talk. Because I think you were an eyewitness to a murder.”

  20

  “Shadow, come on now.” Sunny tried to sound stern, but even she noticed the desperate note creeping into her voice. “We’ve got to go.”

  “Dumb cat,” Will muttered. “This is the way we came in, and he was fine.”

  That was the problem. They’d entered the house through the open cellar doors and up the stairs into the pantry. That was their only route out, but Shadow pitched a fit every time Sunny tried to go through the door leading down to the basement.

  “How are we going to do this?” she asked, watching the cat get more and more upset.

  Will frowned, studying the situation. “I think we’ll have to be ungentlemanly,” he finally said.

  “What do you mean?”

  He grinned. “Ladies last.”

  When Will headed down the narrow pantry, Shadow didn’t have a problem at all.

  “Apparently, it’s only seeing you come down here first that sets him off.” Will gave one good shove, and the door stiffly swung open, the accompanying shriek piercing Sunny’s eardrums.

  He went down a couple of steps, then turned back. “C’mon, Shadow.”

  Shad
ow trotted to the open door and climbed down into the cellar. Will turned to block the stairway while still holding the door open, and Sunny hurried through.

  Holding tightly onto the banister—she didn’t want to follow Ada’s unfortunate example—Sunny quickly made her way downstairs, then up and out the cellar doors.

  “We don’t have much to show for an afternoon,” she said as she joined Will out in the backyard.

  “Potential fingerprints on that living room table,” he pointed out.

  “And piles of clothes with pockets to go through,” she added with a laugh.

  “I don’t know if Nesbit would authorize overtime to do that,” Will deadpanned. “We may have to shoehorn the job into our copious spare time.”

  “There’s not much of that—time in general, I mean.” Sunny frowned. “The eligibility cutoff for that ticket is just a couple of days away.”

  “And what?” Will said, “you don’t want to lose your chance of winning millions?”

  “I think it may screw up our chances of finding the people who killed Gordie,” Sunny told him. “As for Ada, I’m not so sure. It might not even be the same killer. We still have folks who had fights with Ada. You eliminated the Ellsworths, but not the Towles.” Although she liked them, she had to admit they had a motive. “Or Veronica Yarborough,” she added.

  Will looked at her. “So you’re suggesting two different murderers, with completely different motives? That’s kind of messy.”

  “Sort of like life,” Sunny replied. “Sometimes it doesn’t tie up in a nice, neat way.” She frowned. “The problem is, we’ve been playing defense since everything started happening around me, watching out for crazy drug dealers. The other suspects have sort of faded into the background. That’s the other thing about the ticket. It messes up all the motives.”

  “So when it expires, that will go away,” Will said.

  “And so will the drug dealers,” Sunny said gloomily. “The hope of cashing that in is the only thing that’s keeping them around.”

  They were both silent, lost in their own unpleasant thoughts, all the way home. At the last minute, Sunny offered Will a lunch of leftover stew, only to be politely declined. He dropped her and Shadow off—Shadow following Sunny out of the pickup without any fuss—and drove away.

  “Hey, Dad,” Sunny called as she came inside, Shadow charging ahead. “What do you think of leftovers for lunch?”

  She stopped at the entrance to the living room, afraid that Mike was in cardiac distress again. Then she realized her father was pale with anger, not illness, as he sat clutching a piece of paper. “Call that jackass Barnstable—he should still be at the office.”

  “What’s the problem, Dad?”

  “He accused you of stealing!” Mike burst out. “The idiot wanted your cell number—apparently he couldn’t find it. I told him to go to hell!”

  Sunny began to get worried. Ollie the Barnacle had not been happy with some of the stuff she’d done in the last week. Frankly, her job didn’t look all that secure right now, and Mike’s lack of diplomacy wasn’t helping Sunny’s cause.

  She dialed the office number. Ollie picked up on the second ring. “Who is this?”

  Before Sunny even got her whole name out, he growled, “Where’s the goddamn cash box?”

  Sunny blinked. This was his big problem? “I took it home for the weekend. Mr. Richer gave me a large cash deposit—you can check with him. I didn’t think it was safe—”

  “I don’t care what you think!” her boss interrupted. “You bring that box back here right now! And if there’s anything missing, even a penny, you’ll be looking for a new job.”

  He slammed the phone down. Sunny was tempted to do the same.

  Well, he’ll look pretty stupid when he finds out we’re several hundred bucks to the good, she thought. Had Ollie been drinking? God knew he didn’t always wear his wealth gracefully. He could act like a spoiled child if he didn’t get his way. She frowned, remembering the conversation with Will about the possibility of Ollie being a suspect in Ada’s murder. For someone who’s supposed to be rich, he sure sounded awfully worried about the cash box.

  Sunny bit her lip. If he’d learned that Richer wasn’t going to invest in any of his schemes, that disappointment, coupled with the embarrassment of discovering that one of his properties housed a meth lab and burned to the ground, might make his temper even more uncertain than usual. And I get to be the one he takes it out on, Sunny silently complained.

  “It’s just a misunderstanding, Dad,” she told Mike. “But I’ve got to go into the office and straighten things out. Be back as soon as I can.”

  Sunny went upstairs, got the cash box, and climbed into her dad’s truck. She’d gone about half a mile before she remembered her promise to call Will if she was going out alone.

  Just as she reached for her cell phone, an SUV came roaring up behind her. Sunny pulled aside to let the maniac driver pass. But as the SUV came abreast of her, the passengerside window rolled down. A guy leaned out, his mullet streaming in the breeze.

  Sunny immediately recognized Fatso from the brawl at O’Dowd’s. The shotgun in his hands needed no introduction.

  Oh, my God! A quick tromp on the gas pedal, and Sunny’s pickup shot ahead before Fatso could get a shot off.

  She heard confused shouting behind her, quickly drowned out by engine noise as the SUV accelerated after her. It grew larger and larger in Sunny’s rearview mirror as she zigzagged from lane to lane, trying to keep them from pulling beside her again.

  The SUV got right behind her and rammed her rear bumper, sending her fishtailing along the road. Sunny had to grip the wheel with both hands, her phone dropping into the well beneath her feet.

  Wonderful, she thought. I can’t outrun them, and I can’t call for help.

  All she could do was hang on and hope she could control the speeding truck. If those guys made her spin out, that would be the end. She’d seen the look in Fatso’s eyes. He fully intended to use that shotgun on her.

  A second smack on her bumper jarred her, but she was prepared now. Sunny’s hopes rose as the SUV shrank in her mirror briefly, but then it came at her again—the driver had just pulled back for a little more running room.

  Then, up ahead, she saw her only chance: an old shortcut. Sunny hadn’t taken that rutted, disused road since she was in high school. It wasn’t even much of a shortcut, but bouncing along between the ruts was about the closest thing local teenagers had had to an amusement park ride.

  The shortcut angled off from the road, and Sunny hit it at full throttle. Despite the fact that her dad had always dinned into her the importance of using her turn signals, for once Sunny was willing to be a bad driver if it didn’t give those goons behind her any warning about what she planned. The pickup bounded into the air and landed with a shock strong enough to shake her fillings loose.

  If I make it through this, I guess I’m going to owe Dad for a new wheel alignment, she thought.

  The truck jounced over the ruts, flinging her against her seat belt until she was sure she’d have bruises. Sunny braked, forced to lose speed if she wanted to keep control. She grimaced as the front wheel dropped suddenly with a head-rattling bang. Maybe I’ll have to throw in new shocks, too.

  Her mirror had been knocked askew, so she didn’t get a full view of the pursuing SUV. But she saw it take that same punishing dip that she’d just gone through.

  Besides the rattling bang of protesting car parts clashing together, she also heard a lower, sharper boom! ring through the air.

  Behind her, she saw the SUV slew erratically back and forth, finally jouncing to a stop. Sunny continued on her wild ride, content to see her attackers diminishing in the mirror.

  She finally hooked up with a county road about a half mile away, well out of Fatso’s shooting range, and brought her truck to a stop. Her whole body shook as she groped around under the seat for her phone.

  Sunny finally got her fingers around it, got it open
, and called Will. As soon as he answered, she spewed out, all in a rush: “I had to go in to the office—urgent call—and two guys came up and tried to shoot me—”

  “Sunny!” he interrupted. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the southern end of the old shortcut.” It used to have a name—what was it? “Ridge Road—that’s what we used to call it. Do you remember it?” she said into her phone. “Look, I really have to get to the office. Barnstable is going to fire me if I don’t turn up. The SUV that chased me looks to be stuck out there. They had a shotgun, and I think it went off—”

  “Sunny, are you okay? You sound—”

  “No, I’m not okay,” she answered, cutting him off. “Somebody tried to shoot me with a shotgun.” Sunny wasn’t sure she could deal with that right now. What she could deal with was reaching the office and saving her job.

  “You can’t just drive off, Sunny.” Will sounded every inch a cop now. “And you’ve got to call 911.”

  “No, I’ve got to get in to work. You call 911.” Getting angry did one thing—it steadied Sunny’s nerves and hands. She started up the truck and drove down into town and the MAX office.

  *

  She arrived to find Oliver Barnstable sitting behind her desk like a judge ready to pass sentence. “About time,” he said, ostentatiously looking at his watch.

  Sunny put the box in front of him and handed him the key.

  Ollie the Barnacle unlocked and flipped open the lid, then gawked. Bouncing around in the cab of the truck had left bills, change, and receipts scattered all over the box. But he could still see the sheaf of hundreds at the top of the pile.

  “Er—ah,” he said.

  “Maybe I lived in New York too long, but the bank had closed, and that seemed like too much money to leave in an office that’s this open to the street. That’s what I did with the last big cash infusion.” Sunny tried hard to keep her voice calm. “I keep a running tally of income and outgo, so it should be easy enough to check.”

  “Um.” Ollie’s round, florid face was even redder than usual. “I can see that’s probably not necessary. It’s just—finding it gone after a rather difficult week—”