Tatania walked up to the fish and chips vendor and meowed, trying to communicate with the human that she wanted fish and he could hold the chips.
When one of the bookies heard that everyone knew Nick could be rigging it, he went running out of the Dance Pavilion, and jumped on a moving street car.
“I don’t think he’ll be paying off those bets.”
“That’s the way the bookie crumbles.”
“I’ll call the ferry landing officials and ask them to detain him. People should at least get their money back.”
“The ferry landing?”
“Sure. It’s the only place the street goes from this side of the island. He could be a good boy who wants to do the right thing. Maybe he just panicked. I’m just making sure he does the right thing.” Grace picked up the pay phone. “I need a blonde haired boy wearing a dark blue cap stopped. He’s a bookie at the dance marathon. And he just took off with some betting money. Just put him on the street car and ask him to come back, no one’s going to hurt him. Jack and I will see to that.”
Grace paused. “He’s watching everyone get off the street car. There’s no one younger than twenty, he says.”
“Are you okay?” A juggler asked the bookie boy who reappeared and began going back into the Dance Pavilion. He kept grabbing his ankles.
“Is that a new dance?” Annie asked, staring at the boy.
“I don’t think so.” Grace recognized something familiar in the air.
Tatania swivelled her ears three times and became visible.
The boy threw down his rucksack.
“I felt something on my legs. Something kept brushing against me. I jumped off the street car. I felt something pushing me to come here. Do I sound crazy?”
Tatania looked pleased with herself, grooming a front paw from the top of the podium Nick sometimes stood behind.
No, just out maneuvered by Tatania, Grace thought, noting that she hadn’t even made her own decision about when to get up in the morning for several months. The gentle purring from Tatania and paws on her shoulders let her know that it was time to get up and serve some tuna for breakfast.
“Have a seat. What’s your name?” Grace pulled out a chair for him.
“Billy.” His face flushed red.
“Don’t be nervous. Do you want a glass of milk?”
“Yes,” he said, rubbing his leg and looking around suspiciously.
Tatania just watched from the top of the podium, swishing her tail, and blinking her eyes.
“I’m going to get you some cookies too.” Grace went over to the buffet table and picked up a sugar cookie decorated like a baseball. She added a chocolate chip cookie to the plate too.
He smiled at Grace when she gave him the plate of cookies and milk.
“You’re pretty,” he said.
“You have a strong arm. The way you swung that rucksack around, you could give Babe a run for the money, someday.” She lightly touched his shoulder.
He smiled and bit into the cookie shaped like a baseball.
“What about the money?” He asked, mouth full of cookie.
Grace patted his shoulder. “Does Nick take part of it?”
“I’m not supposed to say anything.”
“You can tell me.”
“Nick gives me ten dollars a week. Everything else goes to him. If Nick’s in trouble, will I have to give the money back?”
“No. You’ll make a payout to anyone who bet on the winning couple.”
“Who keeps the books on that?” Jack asked.
“Nick,” Billy said.
“You’re going to be swell.” Grace rubbed his back.
Zeus climbed on Billy’s lap and purred.
“He’s the cat’s pajamas. It’s like he always has a milk mustache.” Billy pet the black and white cat.
They could hear the clock at the Hotel del Coronado striking the top of the hour. Nick strolled back inside and gestured for the tap dancer to introduce another round of dancing.
She began tap dancing around a group of college boys swallowing goldfish near the hot dog concession. Tatania watched. She didn’t see the point to it. When a human served her fish, which usually happened at her command, she enjoyed savoring each bite. Swallowing fish whole seemed like another odd human behavior that she’d leave for someone else to solve. She’d just solved a mystery for the firm she secretly called Tatania and Associates herself.
A waitress carrying out a tray of champagne tripped on a half-eaten hot dog on the floor and fell down. Zeus and Tatania watched the champagne fly up in the air and then walked over to make sure she was alright. She could pet them. That meant she was okay. They might confirm it with a serving food test later.
“Most accidents happen at work.” Fred shook his head. “That’s why I make it a point to never do anything resembling work.”
Grace turned slightly and saw Zeus bounding out the door after a jackrabbit. Zeus jumped in an open Cadillac. The rabbit jumped out. Grace went to grab him before someone accidently drove away with the little rascal. When she touched Zeus, the car started moving.
“You’re not getting out of here alive, Doll. Settle down and stop squirming.” The man driving commanded.
Grace didn’t panic. She felt surprisingly calm. She’d always been afraid she’d lose Jack. Now, with someone threatening to kill her, she knew she’d be okay. It was her destiny to return to Jack.
Jack, Tatania, and Zeus had become as necessary as oxygen for her to breathe. They were all a necessary element. It seemed impossible that she could live without them. Impossibly sad and unfair. And wrong. There had to be a way out. She wished she could see as well as a cat in the darkness.
She tried to throw him off balance by talking to him.
“What’s it like to fall in love with your father’s wife? Is it a Greek tragedy? Or comedy?”
“Did I say you could talk?” He hit the steering wheel with his fist.
“Did I tell you to talk?”
“No, is that a requirement?”
He didn’t scare her. He was a brute. And brutes are inherently cowardly. Easily frightened away.
Grace reached for the window. Locked. Zeus howled.
She pulled open the curtain on the back window further. Tatania was following them. No one noticed. The noise from the music was loud.
She couldn’t see the driver. There was a curtain behind the front seat.
Grace held in her mind the image of a small, stone church in Coronado. A church made of solid resolute stone. From another century.
She held on to the image and felt calm. As calm as one could feel being driven away in a locked car against her will.
She wanted only to find her way back inside that small resolute stone church. Rock solid. Like her and Jack together.
She saw Tatania appear and leap over the front seat. She watched her swivel her ears three times and become invisible. Grace grabbed the steering wheel and turned it right, off Orange Street and across the green grass. A red light appeared and a siren sounded on a sheriff’s car behind them. Just like Grace wanted.
“You’re so stupid. You’re so stupid.” The driver turned around, pulled the curtain, and looked at Grace. He wasn’t Fred.
Still invisible, Tatania found the brake and the car slowed. Stan squirmed, trying to figure out what was going on. He felt something furry around him. He sneezed.
The sheriff pulled alongside them. Grace heard him put out a radio call for back up help. There were cops at Nick’s Dance Marathon. With news of the carbon monoxide deaths traveling from Los Angeles, they’d wanted an increased law enforcement presence. After the sheriff arrested Stan, he asked Grace if she needed a ride. She assured him she could walk back on her own.
“You look familiar,” he said.
“I know. You’re the prettier half of Wentworth & Brewster. That’s why you look so calm. This is another day’s work for you.”
She smiled.
“I want to walk to church. It’s
only a few blocks from here.”
“I understand.” He nodded.
And she walked, with Tatania and Zeus leading the way, to the church.
Inside, she found Jack, sitting in the front pew. She ran forward and embraced him. He still smelled faintly like the sea.
“Stan kidnaped me. He’s the saboteur.”
“How’d you get away?”
“I grabbed the wheel and turned the car right off Orange Street to Spreckels Park. Tatania swivelled her ears three times and became invisible and I think she applied the brake. The sheriff came after us just like I’d hoped.”
Tatania meowed loudly.
“Well done,” Jack said.
Tatania meowed again.
“You’re the cat’s meow.” Jack picked up Tatania and she put a paw on Grace’s head.
“I felt like I had to come here. I held on to the image of the church in my mind when I began to panic.”
“When I was injured in the Great War, I would lay in bed, and imagine this church, and think that I would meet my wife here.” He held her hand. “Of course I didn’t know you’d already be my wife when we met here.”
He pulled a strand of bobbed hair back from her cheek. Zeus came forward and wound through their legs, brushing lightly, marking them both as his humans.
“Molly and Stan talk about going fishing. And Tatania was showing us ads for fishing bait. Molly and Stan ordered bugs that crawled into people’s beds.” Grace inwardly shuddered at the memory of a bug crawling on her.
Grace looked at a Memorial Plaque with a quote: “I bequeath my soul to almighty God and commence my body to the earth for proper Christian burial.”
“Absolutely beautiful. Do you know what I love about this moment, Jack?”
“What?”
“Everything.”
He put his hand on her cheek and kissed her.
Chapter Seventeen
They held hands and walked back to the Dance Pavilion. Words were unnecessary. They’d been wrong about Fred and Myrtle. They were still dancing. And they still looked smug.
A woman in an ill-fitting dress from another century ran onto the dance floor. She held a pistol, shooting it up in the air. The dancers kept doing their quick step, thinking the shooting was part of Nick’s act. Nick’s mouth hung open.
Jack reached for the gun, wrestling it away from her. Grace recognized the thin woman with a mark on her face they had seen in the private railway car when they first came to the dance marathon.
“Party’s over for you, Nick.” She spat in his face.
“I’m taking you out of here.” Nick grabbed her arm.
She slapped Nick.
“Not so fast.” Jack pulled her back towards the dance floor. “Who are you?” He looked into the face of an angry dame.
“Mom!” Fred yelled.
“I told you not to come in here.” He walked off the dance floor and put an arm around her. Myrtle stood on the dance floor, mouth gaping open.
“She gets away with everything,” Melanie finally snapped, quickly walking by and grimacing, to the extent she could grimace with a cleft lip at Myrtle.
“So does he. But talent will triumph in the end. Like justice.” Jimmy caressed her cheek.
Three San Diego policemen moved towards Nick.
“Everything’s okay here. Just a minor disturbance.” Nick tried to wave away the police with both hands.
“Mr. Rocco, you’re under arrest. For bigamy. Your wife said you pulled her out of an institution and kept her captive in your railway car.”
At last, the band stopped playing. And the dancers stopped dancing.
“What do we do now?” Melanie asked Grace and Jack.
Jack handed Melanie a Wentworth & Brewster business card. “Call us tomorrow. We’ll have lunch. The prize money should be split among the remaining couples.” Grace looked around. There didn’t seem to be more than a few couples left.
“Who will make Nick pay it?”
“We will. And we want you to meet a friend of ours from La Jolla.” Grace remembered the cosmetic surgeon.
“Swell.” Melanie smiled. She was a brave and beautiful woman.
They stopped at Olga’s to pick up the two headed calf on the way home.
“Lets bury him on our land,” Grace suggested.
Chapter Eighteen
“May the little calf rest in peace.” Grace watched Jack bury him with the dignity he’d been denied in life.
“He will,” Jack said. He flipped a strand of her dark bobbed hair back behind her ear. “Sometimes, I think you’re an insouciant woman. And then I remember you’re the kindest person I’ve ever met.”
She kissed his neck. She breathed in the faint scent of the sea. He was a soldier. And she was wounded when they met. Given a choice, he’d never leave her.
Tatania and Zeus were sitting on the comfy porch chair they’d claimed as their own.
When Jack opened the door, they jumped off the chair and went in the kitchen to look for snacks.
Grace tread lightly up the steps to their bedroom, taking off her Mary Jane pumps, and her clothes until she was naked except for her pearls. Jack carried her to their antique bed.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Liar,” Grace said.
“You don’t believe me?”
“No. I won’t until you repeat it a trillion times. Keep saying it.”
And he did.
9 Lives to Live
“Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.” Anais Nin
Chapter One
While Grace slept next to Jack, Tatania relaxed on Jack’s chest and swished a tail in Grace’s face. She liked to remind Grace that she met Jack first. Grace woke up and looked at Tatania. She blinked sleepily on Jack’s chest. She thought the cat had swished her tail in her face again but the tail was curled up around the cat.
Tatania opened her mouth, meowed, and reached one paw towards Grace. Jack kept snoring. Tatania meowed again. Grace got up to get Tatania’s breakfast. If she didn’t, things would get louder in the house really quickly. Jack would snore right through Tatania demanding breakfast and Grace would have to listen to it. Spoiled brat cat. Grace slipped on pumps with art deco heels that she’d picked up at the Hotel del Coronado’s shoe dealer convention the day before.
Tatania loved new shoes. She jumped down from the bed and rubbed her chin along Grace’s pumps. Grace reached down and scratched behind Tatania’s ears. Annoying but adorable cat.
“I think all you need are these shoes and pearls,” Jack said.
“Since you’re awake, you can feed the cats.”
“I think they like it when you do it.” Jack yawned.
“Do you think they’re giving away free samples of shoes at the shoe dealers convention at the Hotel del Coronado?”
“I think we’re going to find out.”
In the kitchen, Grace accidently burned toast while Tatania and Zeus helpfully sniffed the butter.
The phone rang in Jack’s home office.
Tatania led the way to the phone, helpfully knocking the ear piece off the candlestick holder for Jack. She flew over the desk, five inches above the papers, so she didn’t disrupt a thing. She took pride in purposely knocking things over by choice. She didn’t just scatter things around like any animal.
“Wentworth and Brewster,” Jack said in the earpiece.
A tuxedo cat cleared off the desk.
“Shoes? Maybe she just put them under the bed? Does she have a cat?”
Zeus and Tatania looked at him reproachfully. Tatania, though deaf from birth, seemed to understand what was being said.
“Shoes are missing from the shoe dealers convention at the Hotel del Coronado,” Jack said.
“The shoe dealer who called said he’s missing shoes. And his wife. She disappeared during an excursion to La Jolla. He wants to meet us in his suite.”
Tatania put her
paws up on Grace’s leg, indicating it would be okay to pick her up. Sometimes, she consented to being held but only by Grace and Jack.
“She wandered away from the group and when it came time to come back to Coronado, they couldn’t find her and called the sheriff. When it got late, they came back to Coronado and the sheriff promised to keep looking. Husband’s upset and wants us to look for her too.”
“Will we step on the toes of the sheriff?”
“Sheriff Ed suggested he call us too. He remembered having drinks with us in the speakeasy next to the pawnshop downtown.”
“Bees Knees. We meet the nicest people drinking.”
Their home was merely steps away from the grand Hotel del Coronado that sat regally on the beach with red turrets that dated back to the Victorian age.
Tatania, and her black and white cat friend, Zeus, led the way from their home on the bay to the majestic hotel. They paused before they crossed the road and looked both ways for streetcars.
“Good morning, Tatania.” The doorman watched the cat climb up the stairs to the entrance. She was well liked at the hotel and often dined at the seafood buffet. Humans never tire of serving cats.
Grace picked up a brochure listing the designers exhibiting at the hotel: Salvadore Ferragamo, Wolock & Bauer, Andre Perugia for Charles Jourdan, Charles Strohbeck and Ignozio Pluchino were included.
Some of the shoe dealers stayed in Coronado Tent City cottages enjoying the same ocean view as Hotel del Coronado guests but at beer prices instead of champagne prices.
The elevator operator greeted Tatania first too. Since they had Tatania and Zeus, Jack and Grace had become accustomed to the sight of people greeting them with their heads down, staring at the cats. Although Grace had won a beauty contest, and Jack would be considered handsome, the cats were adorable.
“Are you on a case?” Annie Knickerbocker, their good friend ,appeared at Grace’s side.
“Annie, you’re getting to be as psychic as Olga the Palmist in Tent City. We’re going up to see a new client in his suite now. We’ll be back for a cup of joe if you’re still around.”
Magical Cool Cat Mysteries Boxed Set Volume 3 (Magical Cool Cats Mysteries) Page 5