Chapter Five
“Jack, look at his book.” Grace had been waiting outside Tent City’s office. She felt unexpectedly nervous whenever he was out of sight now.
“Which one?”
“The book about Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln’s mother died of milk sickness from white snakeroot poisoning. Look at the photos of white snakeroot.” She pointed at the book’s photos.
“They taught us about white snakeroot in Army Wilderness Training. Cows graze on it. People drink milk from the cows and die from it. Or they eat steak or burgers poisoned with the white snakeroot and get sick from that.”
“Jack, it looks just like the baby’s breath flowers in the vases. In Emily’s wedding photo. We have to let Emily know.”
“I think she’s drinking champagne. Not milk.” Annie yelled. She didn’t bother to say hello. She had a habit of inviting herself along.
“We need to talk to Consuela and Bridget again. If white snakeroot is all over the ranch, the fur will fly.” Jack gently took the book from Grace before they walked back to the train.
Chapter Six
“Is Bridget a good cook? Desserts are my weakness.” Grace confided in Consuela back on the train.
Jack put his hands on each side of Grace’s waist as if to reassure himself that it wasn’t expanding.
Someone coughed loudly behind them. It was the Hotel del Coronado’s doctor.
“Jack, I just saw Wade. He’s still a little weak. But he’s going to be okay. I told the cook to just bring him soda and crackers. And it’s not too late to go flying today. We could practice some stunt piloting. My plane is parked right behind the hotel.”
“I’m kind of grounded right now,” Jack said.
The doctor let himself out.
Consuela fidgeted with the dust rage. “Mr. Wade doesn’t know it but Bridget used to joke about him. She’d laugh when his stomach hurt.”
“After she prepared Wade’s meals? His stomach would hurt?” Grace asked.
Consuela looked scared. She kept polishing an already perfectly polished brass knob.
“I just want to work,” she said.
“Did you know the boy in the newspaper article in your drawer, Consuela? The one who got killed in the tractor accident. I noticed the photo of the boy in the newspaper article looked like the photo of the boy in your locket.”
“You call him the boy. I called him my fiancé. When Wade killed him, no one cared. They felt sorry for Wade. Felt sorry for him for getting drunk and driving a tractor. They kept saying it could have happened to any rancher.”
“You got a job with Wade—”
“—so I could kill him.” Consuela put her hands over her face.
“And then, I met Emily. And even if I didn’t like her, I wasn’t sure I wanted to make anyone a widow. It was like I was so hell bent on punishing Wade that I didn’t think anyone would get hurt if Wade died. The gardener told me that the flowers were poisonous. And I put the flowers in Wade’s burgers when no one else was looking. Now I’m just so glad he’s going to be okay. When I met all of you, I didn’t want him to die.” Her shoulders heaved.
Jack put his hands on each side her shoulders. She moved her hands up. She looked startled.
“He’s not going to hurt you. But Consuela, you can’t work here. You have to stay away from Wade and Emily. We know that you’re relived that Wade is okay. We’re going to give you money for bus fare back to Texas. Get packing. We’ll get you on the shuttle to Pickwick Station.”
“I won’t come near them again. I promise. I just want to get away.” Consuela looked scared when Tatania meowed.
They waited for her to pack and escorted her off the train.
“We don’t know for sure that he wouldn’t have been poisoned even if she hadn’t put the white snakeroot in the burgers. The cattle could be grazing on it,” Grace said.
“I know.”
Chapter Seven
After the put Consuela on the shuttle, they quietly told Emily and Wade about the white snakeroot while Belle lept over a table in the dining compartment without disturbing a thing on it. Wade walked away from them.
“Bees knees. She doesn’t knock over a thing. It’s like she flies six inches above the table. I’ve never seen a cat who is so much like Tatania.”
“She loves this train. I keep chasing her onboard,” Olga explained.
Tatania had never seen a cat so much like herself either. She still wasn’t sure she liked Belle.
“Belle, I think God wanted to create a perfect kitty. And that’s why God created you,” Olga cooed to her silver tabby.
Grace hadn’t even considered that Olga had a life before Tent City. Olga still looked to the future even though she mourned the past.
“When Belle came to my cottage, it felt like Christmas morning again. And I never thought I’d celebrate anything after my son died. I learned to the world through a cat’s eyes.”
“I wish my eyes were that good.” Annie lit one of her filtered cigarettes that matched her lipstick.
Belle purred loudly. Zeus put one front paw out after the other and then, stuck his rear end up in the air.
“This one makes me smile.” Olga patted Zeus’s rear end.
“Emily, you can always come back to Coronado. You could stay with us or get a cottage,” Grace said.
Jack stared at Grace. Tatania and Zeus wound circles around Grace’s ankles.
“I wish I’d known about white snakeroot,” Emily said.
“You’ll always wonder. You’ll always look back and think, if I”d turned a different way, taken a different route, zigged instead of zagged, would I still have ended up at this place? The answer is probably yes. But you don’t want to spend so much time looking in the rear view mirror that you can’t enjoy what’s in front of you.” Olga patted Emily’s back.
Emily kept drinking champagne. She looked at Grace. “When I met Wade, I thought of you in Coronado. Married to a detective. Working. And you were happier than any of us from Finishing School. You’d broken away.”
“Broken away? I lost all my money. I needed to work. Jack quit Pinkerton because it doesn’t hire women. We started our own agency.” Grace had been so focused on recovering from her losses that it never occurred to her that she a life on her own that someone else could covet.
“Don’t judge me for eloping with Wade. You have Jack.” Emily paused and lit a cigarette. She had a gold plated lighter. Grace couldn’t read the initials on it.
Tatania jumped on the shelf and blew out the lighter.
“Let me help you with that.” Jack took the lighter from Emily. The initials on it were T.B. He lit Emily’s cigarette. Tatania jumped down.
“I borrowed Ted’s lighter. I was curious about the conductor. I thought it would be exciting to be with a cowboy. Once I was on the train with Wade, I started to question what I was doing. Emily blew smoke rings.
“If he ever feels well enough, I think Wade’s dream is to travel across all the states in this train. What’s your dream, Jack?” Emily’s voice trembled slightly.
“I’m pretty much living it.” Jack twirled a strand of Grace’s bobbed hair.
Zeus slipped away from Emily and gave Grace’s purse his full attention. She reached inside for the jar of treats. Tatania and Belle appeared too. Belle didn’t always eat an offered treat. Sometimes, she’d just watch the other cats eat. Belle seemed to come from another world.
“How do people live without cats?” Olga asked.
“We’re never going to find out,” Jack said.
“Obviously, she married him for the money. He’s in his fifties. She’s barely over twenty,” Annie said quietly while she watched Emily pour more champagne.
“This business about the maid has been scary. If you can’t trust your own maid, it’s enough to make you think about cleaning your own house.” Annie dragged on her cigarette.
“You mean that?” Martin asked.
“No. I was just being dramatic, Martin. I
could not live without a maid. I like a clean house. And someone else to clean it for me.” Annie sipped her Martini.
“Most people never stop and think about how much a maid is noticing. How much a maid learns just from emptying the trash. Wade never even thought to question her loyalty,” Grace said.
“Do you think we should never have a maid?” Jack joked.
“Only if you want to help clean, Jack.”
“Lets not be hasty.”
The light began to flicker. Wade appeared and walked slowly, with his hand reaching out for the backs of chairs, to help propel him along. He looked shaky.
“I think I’m ready to go home. Ted can drive the train. He’s well-rested.” Wade tried to smile.
“Hopefully, we can all toast good health on your next visit to Coronado.” Grace twirled her pearls.
“We’ll be back too. You can’t get rid of us that easily,” Annie said.
“Olga, would you like to join Annie and me for dinner?” Martin asked.
“I don’t have to be asked twice.”
“Grace?”
“We have to serve the cats dinner,” Jack said.
Grace and Jack didn’t leave until the train pulled out of sight. They watched seagulls flying over the bay while they walked home. The birds seemed to be laughing at private jokes every time they opened their mouths. Maybe they were laughing at the people below.
“Emily is a mess, Grace. I don’t want her here. I’m not sure her husband is even equipped to deal with her. We have a business, Grace. We can’t spend all our time cleaning up messes.”
“Jack, she was like family to me when we were in Finishing School.”
“That’s why I helped her. She’s still a messy drunk.”
“Jack, some of our best friends are drunks. Look at Annie.”
“Annie’s smart as a shark. She’s less of a mess than most people we know. When you have someone from your past that you have nothing in common with except shared history, and it wasn’t the greatest shared history, it could be best to say goodbye.”
“Those were the easiest days of my life. When Emily and I were at Finishing School in London, my responsibilities began and ended with making my bed in the morning.”
“Were they really the easiest days, Grace? Your parents were dead. Your uncle left you at a Finishing School three thousand miles away from home. Did you cry yourself to sleep at night? You are talking to me.”
“No. People would have heard that. I cried only in the shower.”
“So did I. I cried only in the shower during the war. When I found out in the morning that one of my buddies hadn’t made it back from a mission the night before.”
“Oh my God, Jack. I am sorry. I am really sorry.”
“I’ll feed the cats,” he said when he opened the door to their home.
“Jack, I want you to keep flying. And I want to fly with you. And Tatania. I just need to know our plane is safe.” She pulled her hair. “I have got to get the smell of smoke out of my hair. I love Annie but she’s smoking incessantly and I get that smell in my hair when I’m around her too long.” She walked upstairs. She heard him opening cupboards. She knew he was for the cat food. She turned on the shower and let the steam envelop her. She was still washing her hair when she looked up and saw the cats watching her from a shower shelf. They seemed to think she needed constant supervision. They were grooming their paws in the ritual they practiced after eating.
She grabbed a towel and stepped out of the shower. Zeus started grabbing the towel with his paw. Then Tatania joined him, tussling the towel, and rolling around on it. If the cats wanted the towel that much, she’d leave her hair dripping. She went to their bedroom. Jack stood by their fireplace.
“Hi Nudie Girl,” he said.
RIGHT MEOW
Chapter One
“I feel better now.” Grace stretched on satin sheets.
“Sex does that,” Jack said.
“We have to get dressed.”
“Pity.” He watched her get up and open her closet doors. He’d asked the contractor to build shelves for all her pretty shoes. She still decorated the floor with her high heels whenever she took them off. He’d grown accustomed to what he considered her decorative shoes and stopped feeling irritated when he saw how much their cats loved to rub their chins against them.
“Julia’s expecting us at her yacht party. She said it will be the hottest party this season.”
“Well, I don’t know how it could be until we get there.”
“Is this dress too see-through?” She held up a black tulle dress peppered with gem stones.
“Not to me. It would look good on the floor,” he said.
“You always think my dresses would look good on the floor.”
“I haven’t been wrong yet.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing Julia and Charlotte.” Grace hadn’t expected to be friends with her late uncle’s mistress but Julia was one of the kindest people she’d ever met. And Charlotte was her little cousin and practically her last living family member. Julia was having a yacht party for Charlotte’s favorite teacher, Prudence, who was returning home to New York to help care for her ailing parents.
A white Persian cat lept on the bed and meowed a reprimand at both of them for usurping her territory for too long. She claimed the bed as her own.
“Do we have dried tuna and sardine treats for the cats? We’d better stop at Tent City’s General Store on the way to the party so we don’t run out,” Grace said.
Coronado Tent City become a misnomer years ago when adorable cottages replaced its tents. Now it not only had shops, it had a Merry Go Round, a rifle range for anyone whose dreams of the west included becoming like Wyatt Earp, salt-water bathing pools, and a Dance Pavilion where you could dance all the way out to the end of Coronado’s pier under the stars at night.
Tatania decided to jump off the bed and lead the way to Tent City. Her kitty companion, an adorable tuxedo cat they called Zeus, joined them but walked dutifully behind Tatania.
“Sometimes it seems all wet that I became good friends with Uncle Charles’ mistress. Buy you know how dreadful Aunt Alice was to me. And Julia is the mother of my little cousin, Charlotte. Just about my last living bio relative.”
“I never liked the word mistress,” Jack said.
“Why not?”
“There’s no male equivalent.”
“Is there a female equivalent for philanderer?”
“I hope not.” He rubbed her back.
They looked both ways before they crossed the street to Tent City. A street car ran on tracks from the ferry landing straight to the Hotel Del. People smiled at Tatania and Zeus. Grace and Jack had grown used to people walking towards them with their heads down because they were looking at the cats.
“Do we need anything else?” Jack asked at the entrance to Coronado Tent City’s General Store.
“No, we have everything. But we can never do enough for the cats,” Grace always liked to reply.
“Should we get her flowers? What goes well with a yacht party?”
“Me. I hope. I’m going to my first one today.” A petite girl with blonde bobbed hair looked at Jack.
“Hi Prudence. I’m glad you’re going to the yacht party. I mean, it is in you honor.” Grace said.
“Why do I know you?” Prudence asked.
“I ask myself that all the time about her.” Jack joked.
“Your student, Charlotte, is my little cousin. Julia invited us to the party.” Grace refrained from mentioning that Julia was her late uncle’s mistress while she watched Prudence seem to calculate the chasm in age between Grace and Charlotte.
“You used to teach at the Del’s school for long-term guests?” Jack asked.
“Yes. It’s for local Coronado kids too. I’m going to miss teaching on the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen. But I have to move back to New York to help my parents. They’re getting old.”
Grace picked up pink roses. �
�Don’t worry. Julia will have abundant food.”
“Oh, I’m a terrible night-time eater. This is for later.” Prudence juggled crackers, cheese, and lots of sausage.
Tatania meowed next to tins of sardines. Zeus rolled around adorably on the floor, extending one paw out after the other.
“Our cats are incorrigible.’ Grace explained.
“Have the little angels been fed?” The cats’ favorite shop clerk opened a jar of dried tuna treats. Both cats lept on the counter quicker than a sea gull on a tourist’s dinner.
The clerk dropped treats on cheese cloth and Tatania got there first. She graciously moved over, allowing Zeus to eat next to her. Prudence carefully placed her planned purchases around the cats so she didn’t disturb them.
“Take anything you want, Prudence. You’ve been a great customer. Put your money away.” The clerk wrapped Prudence’s food and drinks in the remaining cheese cloth.
“Cheese, crackers, medicinal wine, olives, bottled water, sardines. I think we’ve got it all.”
“Do you want me to carry that for you?” Jack asked.
“Yes. I can see why you have him around.” Prudence looked up and down at all six-foot-two inches of Jack.
And isn’t it nice that he can carry things too?”
Zeus put his paws up on Grace’s leg, indicating that he wanted to be picked up.
“If I live to be one-hundred and two, I’ll never see a tomcat as cute as you,” Grace cooed to Zeus.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever see a student as cute as your little cousin, Charlotte. Julia is too good to have a going away party for me. I’m probably going to be on the last ferry leaving tonight.”
The shop clerk held the door open and Jack helped Prudence arrange what seemed like enough food and drinks for an Army battalion in the car.
“Where’s your baggage? I’ve never seen a woman travel with more food than shoes.” Jack looked in the car windows.
Magical Cool Cat Mysteries Boxed Set Volume 3 (Magical Cool Cats Mysteries) Page 18