“Oh, just call me Mulie,” the woman said, giving Bridey a fluttery handshake. “Everyone does. It’s short for Muriel, but Afton gave me that nickname, and I guess it just stuck.”
Mulie Morley was a small woman and round as a muffin. Beneath her tightly curled, ashy gray hair, her raisin-sized eyes peered out timidly from a plump, red face. The city had already scared her silly and now, entering the Willey apartment, she was awed by the magnificence that confronted her. She clutched at her straw bag as though she expected someone to try to grab it away from her and tugged at the flowery pink-and-green blouse that struggled to cover her bulky hips. Her lime-green pants strained at the elastic waistband that stretched around her ample stomach and her feet hurt from the new shoes she’d bought just for this trip. She longed to sit down and was thankful when Bridey led her toward a chair in the living room.
“Now, Mulie,” her husband said sharply, “don’t you go getting comfortable. We came here to see the place and we’re going to get right to it.”
Afton Morley was already making a tour of the room, touching things with his work-hardened fingers, lifting pieces of porcelain to examine their markings, opening drawers and poking around in their contents, as though he was taking inventory. He’d acknowledged Mack’s presence with a quick handshake and a gruff recognition of the board’s interest and then paused for a moment in front of the fireplace.
“That’s her, isn’t it?” he said with a gesture of his chin toward Henrietta’s portrait. He squinted aggressively up at it. The picture seemed to return his challenge, flashing its green eyes as though at an intruder, ready to take him on. “Must have been painted a long time ago,” Afton continued, looking contemptuous. “Appears like she was a handful; full of beans, I’d say, with that red hair of hers.” At this, Bridey lifted her own copper-topped head and held her chin a little higher, as though to join her own protest to Henrietta’s. “Personally,” Afton went on, oblivious to Bridey, “I’m not fond of difficult women. Isn’t that right, Mulie?”
Mulie tucked down her chins into her plump neck. “Just what you say, Afton.” Her smile, if that’s what it was, was tiny.
He removed his buff-colored Stetson just long enough to smooth his thinning reddish hair and then planted it firmly back on his head, as though daring anyone to take it from him. With his pointy cowboy boots, his bolo tie and his pale blue polyester suit, he was an alien, bullish presence in this very urban place.
“So!” He planted his feet wide and stuck his hands into his pockets, pulling his jacket taut across his paunchy front. “Where are those cats?” he demanded abruptly. “I want to see what kind of animals that damn-fool woman tried to leave all her money to.”
Bridey, Mack and Gerry all exchanged glances of dismay.
“I’ll get them,” Bridey said. “They seem to be a little nervous today.”
She left the room hurriedly, glad to escape Afton Morley’s poisonous attitude.
“Nervous, huh? Never heard anything so dumb in my life, pampering a couple of animals that way.”
She returned with Silk and Satin who, as soon as she put them down on the carpet, took one hostile look at the Morleys and retreated through the French windows to the safety of the balcony.
“They look pretty useless to me,” Afton said, looking after them briefly. “Back on the ranch, a cat doesn’t work, into a burlap bag it goes with a couple of rocks, and down to the crick.”
Bridey was appalled. “What kind of work do your cats do, Mr. Morley?”
“Oh, we don’t have any cats,” he said dismissively. “Can’t abide the fool things. But if we did, they’d catch mice is what they’d do.”
He was taking a Japanese woodblock print from the wall, examining the provenance taped on its back. “Hmm,” he said. “Eighteen fifty-nine. This stuff worth anything?”
“We don’t have any mice here,” Bridey said, ignoring his question. She felt as though she had to defend Silk and Satin.
“Actually,” Mack joined in, “Silk and Satin do have a job here. You see how they’re sitting there, out on the balcony? Their job is to scare away the pigeons. Terrible mess, those pigeons make.”
Just as he spoke those words, as though to make fun of them, a fat gray pigeon flew onto the railing. It hopped down to the pot of geraniums and was strutting about, clucking pompously at the cats. But the cats’ attention was on the action inside the room and they took no notice of the bird at all. Afton glanced casually over his shoulder toward the balcony as he placed the print back on its hook.
“Yeah, I see how they do that,” Afton said with a contemptuous snort. “I can see how those pigeons are just scared silly.” Now he was holding a Limoges dish above his head, seeing how the light was diffused through the fine porcelain into a soft glow. The cats were the least of his concern. “Listen,” he said offhandedly, “when I take over here, I’ll just get rid of them. Can’t abide the damn things.”
Gerry saw Bridey’s fists clench. And he also saw how Mack Brewster moved away from the fireplace to stand behind her, as though to give her moral support. There was a flash in Mack’s eyes that made Gerry step in quickly to deflect this line of talk.
“Why don’t we move right along?” he said. “You wanted to see the apartment, so I’ll take you through it now.”
“It’s about time,” Afton said. “I want to see just what we’re getting here.” He turned to his wife. “Come along, Mulie.”
“This here’s some damn spread.” Afton reluctantly allowed himself to be impressed. “That old girl really knew how to live it up.” He’d walked through the rooms appraisingly, lifting a cushion here and opening a curtain there, feeling the fabrics roughly and even sitting down to bounce a couple of times on Bridey’s bed. “Betcha it’ll bring in a pretty penny when I sell it off.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Can’t think what anyone wants with all this frippery. Taxes alone must be a fortune. Might want to keep the place, though, at least for a few years. I may be just an old country boy, but I been doing some checking around, and I hear the market’s improving here in New York. I could fill the place up with some cheap stuff and rent it out furnished till prices peak.” He looked cannily around him, calculating what he could make if he sold the contents of the apartment.
“Well, Mr. Morley,” Mack said gruffly, “the board has some rules about rentals of these units—”
“Why don’t I show you the kitchen?” Gerry said, heading off a potential argument. “I’m sure Mrs. Morley would like to see it.”
“Oh, you betcha. Mulie here’s a great little cook. Tell ’em, Mulie.”
“Well, they do say my ambrosia salad is something special,” Mrs. Morley said timidly. She’d been silent until now and seemed uncertain about adding her two cents. “I like to add those little mini chocolate chips,” she said, turning to Bridey as though revealing a girlish secret. “Gives it a little extra sweetness.” She blinked her eyes several times. “Do you like to cook, dear?”
“Uh, yes, I do.” Bridey didn’t know what to offer against Mrs. Morley’s ambrosia salad. “Actually, I do like to cook.”
They arrived in the kitchen, and Mrs. Morley’s mouth opened in astonishment.
“Oh, my!” she said. “I can’t believe this. Not in someone’s home. Why, Afton, just look at this kitchen. Oh, my! Oh, my!” She walked around the work island in the center of the room, staring wide-eyed at the enormity of it all. “Whatever in the world would anyone want with something like this, just for themselves?” she said. “I mean, Mrs. Willey never did have any children, did she? I mean, it’s not like she had to feed a big family every day.”
“No,” Gerry said. “She never had any children. As far as she knew, she had no relatives at all.” He didn’t feel comfortable with this line of conversation and he tried to deflect it. “Do you have children, Mrs. Morley? You and Mr. Morley?”
“No,” she said, pressing her lips together as though she anticipated criticism. “No, Afton and me, we’ve never been blessed with any kids
. But I really love children. I come from a big family myself, three brothers and four sisters, though Afton here’s an only child. I’m always telling him, he doesn’t know how precious a big family is. If I could’ve, I’d have had a whole mob of little ones.”
“Just as well,” Mr. Morley said. He was looking disdainfully at all the chrome and tile and the fancy utensils. He was calculating their resale value in cold dollars and cents. “Kids are just a damn nuisance, if you ask me, unless you can get a good day’s work out of ’em. And most kids today, they aren’t worth what it costs to feed ’em. Anymore, it’s hard to find a kid got as much as even one full day’s work in him.”
There was a moment of awkward silence. No one knew what to say.
Finally, it was Mr. Morley himself who filled in the gap. “But like she says, Mulie here’s real big on family. Good thing she is, too, because that’s how come she got into that genealogy stuff, kind of like a hobby with her. That’s how we came to find out about me being Henrietta’s cousin.”
“First cousin twice removed,” Mulie corrected him.
“Yeah. Whatever. See, one of the local papers had this piece in it about a lady in New York left all this money to her cats, and Mulie recognized the name. Lloyd was my grandpa’s name, my mom’s dad, so when Mulie saw that story about how Henrietta Lloyd Willey’s great-great-grandpa, or some such, made all his money fur trapping out west, way back in the pioneer days, well, it set her to thinking. So Mulie here did a little research, and she tracked down how I was related to this nutty old lady. I never held much with all that genealogy stuff, seems to me a waste of time, but it sure paid off this time.”
“You saw it in the paper?” Gerry interrupted him, looking uncomfortable.
“Sure did. Right there in the Twin Falls Times-News. Didn’t you see it?”
“No, it never made the New York papers. I guess no one thought it was interesting enough.” Gerry made a mental note to have one of his associates track down the item and see how it got picked up. And here he’d been thinking the story had escaped the press.
“Well, it sure got some laughs out in Twin Falls. But I got the last laugh, I guess. Me and Mulie’s just gonna be laughing all the way to the bank.” Once more, he removed his hat and smoothed his hair. “Anyway,” he said, replacing the hat carefully, “I gotta go now and meet with my lawyers. We got us some work to do, getting all the papers signed and everything. They tell me there’s gotta be some sort of hearing first. A kinship hearing, they called it. Guess they’ll be in touch with you pretty soon.” He paused to look into the cats’ special room. “Imagine that,” he said in disgust, “a whole room just for those two.” He pointed at Silk, who by now had come in from the balcony and was circling her bed protectively. “What were you planning to do, put in an extra bed for each of that one’s babies?”
“What do you mean, babies?” Gerry said.
“Her litter,” Afton said. “That there one’s carrying a litter. Can’t you tell?”
All eyes came to rest on Silk. For the first time, they noticed the swelling in Silk’s underbelly, the soft fur poking out all fluffy beneath her. The significance of Afton’s words sank in slowly, as they realized he was right.
“Omigod!” said Bridey. “She’s pregnant! How did that happen?”
“City folks!” Afton shook his head as he headed for the door. “Don’t know a damn thing. Plain as the nose on your face.”
Without another word, he was out into the hall, with Mulie trailing behind him, and Gerry, too, after giving Silk a long, thoughtful look, leaving Bridey and Mack alone, staring foolishly at Silk, who had settled comfortably into her bed, licking her paws and rubbing them over her nose.
Omigod, Bridey repeated silently to herself. How did that happen?
But she already knew.
The night with Charlie Wu, buying fish.
Mack was grinning at her. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to put it all together. Did she think he’d forgotten that early morning he’d caught her coming into the building, trying so awkwardly to conceal whatever it was that was bouncing around in her tote bag?
“Looks like you’ll have to ’fess up, Bridey,” he said.
His amusement only made her embarrassment more painful.
“You could at least stop laughing at me,” she said sharply. She was genuinely angry. “It’s not funny. And anyway, I think you’ve got some problems of your own. Now you’re going to have to deal with that dreadful man, and he may be in no mood to sell. How will you like having him and Mulie for neighbors? Maybe you’ll find that funny.”
Mack’s face clouded over. She was right. There was nothing funny about the whole situation.
“I’d rather eat dirt,” he said.
“Well,” Bridey said, “you may get to try out Mulie’s ambrosia salad. With chocolate chips.”
He shuddered.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Well, right now the thing I must do is get back to my office. I’ve got a desk full of work waiting for me, enough to keep me up late tonight.” He headed for the door. Then he paused and looked back at her. I shouldn’t have teased her. This must be awful for her.
“Maybe we could try dinner again?” he suggested. “We got interrupted the last time, and we still have things to talk about.”
“No!” She hadn’t forgotten their last dinner.
“Are you sure? Tomorrow night? At my place? I make a mean hamburger.”
“No way! I’ve got too much to think about.”
“Maybe I can help.”
She hesitated. In a way, they were on the same side now.
“Well . . .”
“Good! Seven o’clock. I’ll see you then.”
And he was gone, leaving Bridey with her mouth open, her thoughts spinning and the beginning of a bad headache adding to her woes.
Chapter Thirteen
As soon as she was alone, Bridey plopped down right there on the floor next to Silk’s bed and scooped her up onto her lap.
“Oh, Silk, you really went and did it, didn’t you?”
Gently, she probed the soft fur under Silk’s belly and confirmed what her eyes had already told her. There was no doubt; there was a plumpness there that could mean only one thing.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you to just say no?”
Bridey’s headache was getting worse. She knew she was in trouble with Gerry Kinski. And she was humiliated that Mack Brewster, of all people, had been there when Afton Morley, that smug, pompous know-it-all, showed them all up as blind fools by—oh dear, Bridey groaned in advance at her own bad pun—letting the cat out of the bag.
She let Silk jump down from her lap and sat back on her heels, watching disconsolately as she circled around the room as though she was hunting for something.
“And now I am definitely in the soup. You silly thing, don’t you understand? It’s bad enough I’m losing this apartment; now because of you, I’m going to lose it in disgrace.”
She couldn’t bring herself to add, aloud, what else was in her thoughts: that her embarrassment was that much greater because she’d been shown up in front of Mack. She felt like a bubbling pot of anxiety, as events moved inexorably against her. And floating over it all, like the Cheshire cat’s smile, was Mack’s smirk of knowing superiority. What did he have to feel superior about? He was about to be dumped, too. And why had she agreed to have dinner with him? What could she have been thinking?
Silk came back to her and pawed at her knees, but Bridey was too miserable to pay any more attention to her. She had calculated how long it would take Gerald Kinski to return to his office and, sure enough, right on the dot, the phone rang.
“I think we ought to have a little talk, Bridey.” He sounded very serious.
“I know, Mr. Kinski. I know. I’ve been expecting you to call.”
“So . . . do you have something to tell me?” His tone was cool and her heart dropped another couple of notches toward her stomach.
&nbs
p; “Maybe first I should take Silk to a veterinarian,” she said hopefully, “and have her examined. To make sure Mr. Morley is right.”
She didn’t want to face up to the question she knew was really on Gerry’s mind. It wasn’t a matter of whether Silk was pregnant; it was a question of how she got that way.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure he’s right. As soon as he pointed it out, I could see it. But take her to a vet, by all means. Be sure to get it confirmed.”
The usual friendliness was gone from his voice, but Bridey understood. He was bound to be pretty cool to the idea that she’d let Silk get out unsupervised.
“Maybe Satin is the daddy.” She offered this up hopefully.
“Not possible. As soon as I got back to the office I checked his papers. He’d been fixed before Mrs. Willey agreed to take the cats. She didn’t want a lot of little kittens running around the place. No, Bridey. Somehow Silk got out of that apartment, and it must have happened while you were there. So why don’t you just tell me about it?”
She wished she could die.
“This isn’t easy, Mr. Kinski. I’m really embarrassed.”
He remained silent, and there was nothing for her to do but continue.
“She must have slipped into my tote bag one night without my knowing it. I went to the fish market and she came along for the ride, I guess.” She told him the whole dumb story. “I would never have deliberately let her out of the apartment, and I didn’t tell you because I got her home safely and I didn’t think any harm had been done. And because I was so embarrassed. I had no idea she’d gotten herself pregnant. If I’d known, honestly, I would have told you. I swear it; I’d have told you. Honestly! I know how valuable she is, of course, and that you trusted me, and I didn’t want you to think you’d hired an irresponsible jerk to take care of Mrs. Willey’s cats.” She could hear herself racing along, trying to explain and apologize and be reassuring all at the same time. “I’m not irresponsible, Mr. Kinski. Really, I’m not. And this job is so important to me . . .”
“Okay, Bridey. Okay.”
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