“Don’t worry, Grace. Karma is a sweet, sweet bitch.”
Chapter Three
“We need to get the plane and go downtown,” Jack walked quickly and Grace picked up her pace. Tatania seemed to be leading them to the Boathouse. Tatania became friendly with the Boathouse regulars. If you were human and you gave seafood to cats, you won Tatania’s affection. One of her favorite humans was sitting in a deck chair sipping Budweiser.
“I’ve got a prescription from my doctor for a healthy beer. Prohibition be damned. Cheers.” He held his drink up high.
“Can I talk to you for a few minutes?” Jack asked.
“A few minutes is a long time,” he said.
“This will make it go by more quickly.” Jack pulled some bills out of his pocket.
“Did you see anyone swimming tonight?” Jack looked at the nets strung up by the Boathouse. Jack thought it would be easy enough to swim here from the yacht, grab onto the net, and change into new clothes.
“I don’t recall.”
Jack pulled some more bills out of his pocket and handed them over to him.
“One guy. Looked stiff. Like he usually wears a suit. He went in that boat and then left in a hurry.” He pointed to Edward’s boat, The Hedonista, and they watched Tatania run towards it.
“You have pretty cats,” He gave Zeus fresh sea bass from the catch of the day.
Cats are so sweet and light. And sometimes, painfully trusting of the humans who could crush them. Grace ran after Tatania. The magnificent white cat didn’t always like humans picking her up but Grace looked distressed so she permitted it. She patted Grace on her head. She’d grown fond of her. After Jack began taking caring of her, she knew a female human would show up and want to live with him too. She decided that Jack and her could have done worse than Grace and tolerated her presence at first. Grace’s penchant for supplying cat treats became endearing. And she understood that Tatania chose the pillows she wanted at night.
Grace carried Tatania to the plane Jack parked by their home. Grace loved flying with Jack and so did Tatania. Zeus ran from the plane. He couldn’t take the noise. Grace always silently said a prayer that they’d return safely to Zeus whenever they flew.
“Maybe he left with Prudence. But to seduce a prim but beautiful school teacher named Prudence requires the strategy of Cassanova.”
“What was Cassanova’s strategy?”
‘Time to start the plane,” Jack replied.
Illuminated by the moon, sea lions lept in and out of the bay with the precision of Olympic gymnasts. Grace felt Tatania relaxing against her. Tatania loved and trusted Jack and Grace completely.
Chapter Four
One week earlier
She knew when to kiss him and when to keep her mouth shut. She had all the talents Edward Huntingfield, III ranked high in a mistress. He usually juggled more than one mistress at once but she had more energy and personality than two women combined. She filled his calendar. If his wife questioned why he wasn’t ever interested in sex with her now, he said it was the stress of his job . His response stayed the same when she asked. She’d always wanted consistency from him. He gave her consistency in words if not in action.
“Why did you become a lawyer?” She asked, stretching languorously on high grade cotton sheets.
“In my family, becoming a lawyer isn’t optional. It is mandatory.”
“For how many generations?”
“Seven.”
“California has only been a state since 1850.”
“We were on the East Coast first. We were lawyers in New York before we were lawyers in California.”
“You’re like the Roosevelt and Knickerbockers. My family didn’t have any expectations of me.”
“You could be luckier than you know.”
“Well, that luck doesn’t come with any money. Not like your family did.”
“Family money can be its master. And I’m its humble servant.”
“You’re not humble. Does your family choose everything for you?”
“Only if we call your schools, your profession, your residence, and your marriage everything.” His family had set out his whole life for him like a banquet. All he had to do was show up and eat. It was great as long as he never questioned whether he liked the taste of the food.
“Have you had an affair before?”
“If I say yes, you’ll get angry. If I say no, you won’t believe me. Better for me not to answer the question.”
“So you have had at least two affairs. You have answered that question both ways.”
“You think I can’t anticipate a question unless I’ve heard it before? You think I am that stupid?”
“Not most of the time. But what do you choose? What do you choose for yourself?”
“You. I choose you. For myself.”
“How does your family make becoming a lawyer mandatory?”
“Trusts. My mother controls the money in my trusts and likes telling her friends I’m a lawyer. I think she was waiting for my dad to die so she could get control of my money.” He always attributed the worst of motives to his mother– a woman he apparently never forgave for having three more children after him.
“You make me think of a trapped animal.”
‘Yeah. You like the animal. You call the animal to you.”
“I want the animal out of the cage all the time. Step out of the cage. The door is open. And I’m on the other side . I’m feeling jealous when you’re not with me sometimes.”
“Don’t ever feel jealous of my wife. I’m her husband and I’m in bed with a beautiful woman. You should aim higher. For a better husband than me.” He kissed her on her forehead.
“I don’t think I could marry a philanderer.” She sighed.
His look changed from amused to angry. “Oh, you would sleep with a philanderer but you wouldn’t marry one. And, what does that make you?” He sneered.
“Realistic,” she said.
Chapter Five
Jack expertly landed the plane next to the train station downtown. Instead of walking towards their favorite speakeasy, at the U.S. Grant Hotel, Tatania scampered towards the Port of San Diego. Grace began running. Tatania turned around. Grace stopped.
“I think we couldn’t lose our cats if we tried.” Jack reassured her.
Tatania paused at a plant mere steps away from where the ships pulled into port all day and night. She kept sniffing around the plant.
“Jack, there’s something odd here.” Grace pointed to what looked like an opening partially hidden by a tray under the plant. Jack kicked the tray. There was an opening with a metal ladder on the side. Tatania jumped through the opening, looked up at them, and meowed.
“Jack, it’s a tunnel. Come here, Tatania.” Grace climbed down the ladder as quickly as her Ferragamo pumps could carry her.
Jack didn’t argue with cats or women. He followed Grace and Tatania.
“There really is light at the end of the tunnel, Jack.” They could see a light and hear laughter and glasses clinking. Tatania sniffed the air. It was like a mixture of perfume, liquor, and something else she couldn’t immediately identify but knew she had smelled before.
Their walk had led them to the U.S. Grant Hotel’s underground speakeasy. It didn’t have the usual speakeasy door with the metal grate that required you to speak a password for entrance. If you could simply find the tunnel and walk through it, Prohibition inspired cocktails were all yours.
Tatania lept on the barstool and expected prompt service. The bartender didn’t disappoint and had a shot of cream in front of her within seconds. Tatania put her paws up on the counter and delicately lapped up the cream. She thought lapping hurriedly was for dogs and drunks. Some of her favorite humans were bartenders. They could be a little gossipy but that helped Grace and Jack solve some of their cases.
Jack showed Edward’s picture to the bartender. “I know him. Of course I do. Judge. Real society family. Isn’t he the guy who drowned? I heard somet
hing about someone falling overboard in the bay tonight. News travels fast here.”
Grace thought again that every moment with Jack, she was exactly where she wanted to be and doing exactly what she wanted to be doing. She felt grateful.
“He used to disappear early in the afternoon. Dismiss court unexpectedly. You know what that means.”
“Yes,” Jack said.
“No. What does that mean?” Grace asked.
Jack coughed.
“He was a great seducer. And he conducted his affairs in the afternoon.”
“He’s very nice looking,” Grace stared at the picture. There was still something about him that made her uneasy.
“Great seducers have more than looks.” The bartender filled two flutes with champagne. He handed the glasses to Grace and Jack.
“Great seducers have champagne?” Grace sipped her drink.
The bartender laughed. Ogden Nash said, “Candy is dandy. But liquor is quicker.”
“Great seducers have more than champagne and good looks. Casanova said you must figure out a secret want that no one else is giving a girl. Then seduce her by giving her what she secretly wants.”
“How would you know that, Jack?”
“I read the autobiography of Casanova It was the only thing to read in the barracks during the war. When I couldn’t sleep between missions, I read.”
“Drinks are on me, Jack. You fly boys from the Great War deserve the best of everything. You should all be awarded medals and pretty wives like Grace.” The bartender shook a tumbler of gin and smiled at Grace.
“I think philandering is like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location. I heard the tunnels next to this speakeasy can lead you to stairs that go up to the hotel’s rooms without passing the lobby.” A familiar looking man sat at the end of the bar.
“Miss, I know this sounds like a line but I promise it’s not. Have I met you before?” He stared at Grace.
“Yes, in Coronado. I met you with your cousin Prudence at Tent City Cafeteria.”
“You’ve got a great mammary. I mean a great memory. I’m going to visit Prudence as soon as I have a few drinks.”
“Prudence is on her way back to New York. She quit her job to take care of her ailing parents.”
“Her parents died a few months ago. Her lawyers handled selling the farm for her. It was one of the biggest sales in New York this year. A lot of dough for that joint.”
Tatania batted an olive stick out of Jack’s martini glass. She focused on rolling the olives on sticks across the bar counter top and watched with appreciation when with one determined slap of her paw, another olive stick went hurling up towards the speakeasy’s ceiling.
“She’s our little physicist. She loves to study motion,” Grace said.
“I think the G forces of martinis’s olives are the current focus of her study.”
“What is G forces?”
“Gravity. We think she may have spent one of her nine lives with Newton. She helped him discover the law of gravity.”
When the bar patrons laughed, Tatania thought, not so fast. Cats help uncover the greatest limits of humans’ knowledge. Without cats, humans might remain ignorant of nature’s laws.
“Edward’s a horndog,” Jack said.
“Is a horndog an actual breed?” Grace asked.
“I think horndogs are mixed breed, Grace. Same as pussy hounds.”
“Bees Knees. That’s so American.”
“Where’s Arabella? The manicurist. We haven’t seen her since a yacht party earlier tonight.” Jack pushed his empty flute towards the bartender for more champagne.
“There are over four hundred rooms in this hotel. She could be in any one of them.”
Chapter Six
“I don’t want to take the tunnel to the lawyers’ offices. You know my favorite entrance, Jack.”
Jack paid for the drinks and they walked outside the U.S. Grant Hotel. A doorman opened the Men’s Entrance for Grace and Jack.
“It’s the Women’s Entrance now.” He smiled at Grace.
She tipped him well. She’d been saying that for awhile now and it was satisfying to hear U.S. Grant employees repeating her words.
Cornelius was in his office working late again. Before she even sat down, Grace asked, “What happened to Aunt Alice?”
“Alice was going up the steps at Galeries Lafayette in Paris when she saw another customer carrying a dress she wanted right in front of her. Alice reached up, grabbed the dress right out of the women’s hand, lost her balance, tumbled backwards, and croaked. Store security found her dead at the bottom of the stairs. She died like she lived. Grabbing things out of other people’s hands.”
“That sounds just like her,” Grace said.
“Your aunt and uncle both identified you as next of kin, after each other in their estate plan, Grace. When one died, everything went to the other. When they were both dead, everything returned to you, Grace. You’re an heiress again.”
Grace reached for Jack’s hand. “We’re working on a case now but I want to come back to talk to you. I might want to set something up to help my cousin Charlotte. She’s taken care of now but life is long and who knows what might happen.”
“You can come back and talk to me whenever you want, Grace. I know your uncle would be very, very proud of you.”
“You might want to set something up to help your husband,” Jack suggested.
“I might. But whatever I do, my husband is well endowed.”
Tatania swivelled her ears three times, became invisible, and decided to explore the office where Edward worked in the life she spent with him. It still stung that he had thought of her as a stray cat. She had chosen him. She had loved him. She’d had better luck with humans in this life. She’d have to remember the good humans. No point in remembering the bad. She opened Edward’s old desk drawers and found a brochure for an olive ranch. Beautiful photos. She picked it up in her mouth and carried it to Grace’s purse. Then, she swivelled her ears three times and became visible again.
After they talked to Cornelius for awhile about how odd it was that Edward was missing, after apparently jumping off Julia’s yacht, and Cornelius acted like it didn’t seem odd at all, they went to the baggage handling claim area at Union Station. Prudence hadn’t had enough baggage for a cross-country move in the car. They needed to know if her baggage had been checked all the way through to New York.
“Good looking, Dame,” the baggage handler said when Grace pointed out Prudence in a school picture of schoolteachers from Coronado. “I used to see her coming back from the U.S. Grant Hotel. Or was it shopping at Marston Department Store? She always looked radiant from a day of shopping. I heard she was meeting a judge for trysts at the U.S. Grant. But that didn’t seem right. She taught kids.”
“She grew up on a farm in New York. She was supposed to be on her way back there. Did she check her luggage through?”
“No. She said she was going to Fallbrook.”
Chapter Seven
Back at the speakeasy, Tatania had another quick shot, swivelled her ears three times, and became invisible. A few minutes later, they saw a stack of hundred dollar bills waft through the speakeasy, seemingly suspended by air. Two old drunks rubbed their eyes and then grabbed their drinks.
“Just give me the whole bottle,” they said in unison.
Tatania swivelled her ears three times and became visible. She lept on the nearest barstool and dropped the billfold with hundred dollar bills on the counter.
“I think Tatania wants to buy a round,” the bartender said.
Edward ran towards the counter. Prudence, clad only in a towel, stood next to him. Even without any makeup, she looked amazingly beautiful, clean-cut, wholesome, and all-American.
“How did you find us?” Edward asked.
Tatania meowed. Grace and Jack were never entirely sure that she was deaf. She seemed to have selective hearing. She would selectively decide when she wanted to hear what hu
mans were saying.
“You left a trail like a horndog,” Grace said.
“I’m not a bad guy, Grace. I’m just a guy who never had the life he wanted.” Edward looked at her as if he was seeking some kind of absolution.
“Maybe you didn’t know the difference between what you wanted and your family wanted.”
“Exactly. This is the first time in my life I’m choosing what I want. I know some people will think I jumped off the yacht because I wanted to kill myself. I jumped off the yacht because I chose life. I ran to my boat for dry clothes. Then, I ran to the ferry landing to find Prudence before she left. I’m not a bad guy,” he repeated.
Grace decided that whether he was a dastardly philanderer or just a guy who got trapped in a life he didn’t want, wasn’t her judgment to make.
“ I hope you have who and what you want, Edward,” she said finally. He might be a life-long philanderer. Or he might be old or improved.
“Did Betty send you?” Edward asked.
“She hired us,” Grace said.
“She wanted discretion. No one knows we’re here. If you wanted to—.” Jack looked away from Prudence’s gaze.
“—Come back? Nothing in that life could ever tempt me again.”
Grace thought Edward looked different. Truly and totally happy for the first time. Tatania meowed. Tatania pulled the brochure of the olive farm she’d found in Edward’s old desk drawer out of Grace’s purse. Grace noticed the photo credit.
“Yes, I’m P. Spicer. I want to be a photographer. Photos taken by women don’t get accepted for publication. So I used my first initial and my last name.” Prudence pointed to her signature at the bottom of the photo.
“Prudence wants to leave teaching and photograph the world. I’m going to accompany her. While I help her spend her inheritance from her family’s farm, I’ll write articles for her photos. Is that cat going to slap me again?” Edward took a few steps backwards, away from Tatania.
Magical Cool Cat Mysteries Boxed Set Volume 3 (Magical Cool Cats Mysteries) Page 20