by Неизвестный
The cat’s dark gray ears twitched. It ignored me and looked off at something else.
I followed the cat’s gaze over to the neighbor’s yard. A creepy face, pale and round, stared back at me. Startled, I dropped the pet carrier with a clatter. But there was no pale-faced person watching me. Just a snowman. He wore a formal top hat and a jaunty red scarf, like the classic snowman you’d see on a greeting card.
While I was distracted, the cat whipped past me in a streak of gray, darkly visible against the bright snow.
I grabbed the carrier and gave chase, stumbling through the overgrown hedge between my father’s yard and the neighbor’s. The cat led me straight to the dapper snowman, scaling its body in bounding leaps. The cat scrambled up, toppling the snowman’s black hat and then taking the hat’s place, right on top of the head. From its new vantage point, about six feet above the ground, the cat surveyed the neighborhood and began licking one elegant front paw.
Undaunted, I put the pet carrier on top of my head and proceeded calmly. Sniffing the salmon-flavored treats, the cat strolled right into my trap. I closed the cage door and pumped my free hand in a fist.
I set down the carrier and picked up the top hat. Feeling whimsical, I plopped the hat on my own head and pulled out my phone for a snazzy self-portrait. This would be the perfect image to show my ex I was having a great time and had made the right decision in walking away from everything we’d built. In the photo, I looked rosy-cheeked and happy. The snowman, however, had a crooked grin that made him seem creepy.
I decided to take a better picture once I’d fixed his crooked grin. I rearranged a few of the pebbles that formed his smile, but that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t his grin that was off-kilter but his whole head.
Meanwhile, the cat had finished the snacks and meowed impatiently inside the carrier.
“Just a sec,” I said. “I’m giving this snowman a face-lift, so to speak.”
I grasped the base of the perfectly round ball forming the snowman’s head and pushed up. The head didn’t budge. The cat meowed again, sounding irritated.
“I know we don’t have time,” I muttered to the cat. “But I want my old friends to see that my life is perfect, and a crooked snowman face doesn’t cut it.”
I gave the snowman three firm karate chops to the neck, through the red scarf. The ball jiggled as it came loose. I grabbed hold and gave it a solid tug up. The snowy ball split in my hands, revealing a core that was definitely not snow. Stunned, I dropped the two hollowed-out halves.
Sticking up from the upper body was another head, a human head. I blinked in astonishment. This had to be a prank by neighborhood kids. Some clever brat had re-purposed a Halloween costume to give someone a scare.
But rubber masks usually resemble famous people, not my father’s cranky neighbor, Mr. Murray Michaels. This face was highly detailed. It even had eyelashes. The chill in my hands spread through my entire body. This wasn’t a Halloween mask that looked like Mr. Michaels.
Frozen inside the snowman was the actual Mr. Michaels.
I stumbled backward, sucking in air, preparing to run or scream or both. But I didn’t scream, and I didn’t run. Something propelled me forward, slowly. I reached out and gently touched the man’s cheek. The flesh was cold, frozen solid, and he was not just dead but very dead. If there were such a classification as very dead, Murray Michaels would be in that group, along with mummies from Egypt and those cadavers that are plasticized for scientific display.
His face showed no bruising or marks, and no blood was visible on the surrounding snow. I carefully brushed away some of the snow around his neck, jerking my hand back when I touched something unexpected. It was just the collar of his shirt. I shook my head at myself for being jumpy before leaning in to examine some dark purple lines on his neck.
Behind me, a man yelled, “Hey, lady! Get away from there!”
Chapter 4
I whirled around, and something dark came at me. I jumped back, raising my arms in a defensive posture against what, a split-second later, I realized was just the top hat tumbling off my head.
The man yelled again, “What’s going on?”
He stood on the walkway, only fifteen feet away. He wore a blue uniform and looked familiar. I couldn’t recall his name, but I assumed I must have met him through my father. He was reaching under his dark vest, about to pull something from a pocket or holster.
“Don’t you dare shoot me,” I said.
“Why would I shoot you?” He made eye contact with me briefly before shifting his gaze to the frozen face I stood beside.
The man in blue’s jaw lowered slowly, his eyes bugging out at the same speed, as though all his facial features were attached to one control switch. He fumbled the object he’d been reaching for, which wasn’t a gun at all. It was just a phone, and he dropped it in the snow. With a mild curse, he got down on his knees, which were bare. Despite the winter weather, the man wore knee-length shorts with a dark stripe on the outside seam.
Being the daughter of a police officer, I should have known better and recognized the man’s uniform as that of the US Postal Service, but I’d been so shocked by the discovery of the frozen head. The mail carrier continued to fumble his phone, chasing it clumsily through the snow.
Without looking up, he asked, “Lady, is that who I think it is?”
I looked directly at the head, just to be certain.
“Yes, I believe it’s Murray Michaels. I just saw him two weeks ago, when my father threw a party. Mr. Michaels came over to complain about the noise.”
I stared at the lifeless face, searching for some clue in the fuzzy memory of our last interaction. Mr. Michaels had been cranky that night, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary for the grumpy loner who never said anything nice to a neighbor, unless he was trying to get a bargain at a yard sale. That night, my father had asked him to come in, but he declined, to nobody’s surprise.
“Well?” the mail carrier said.
“I should have invited him to the party,” I said with sadness. “We could have been nicer.”
“I’m calling the police,” the mail carrier said, locking his eyes on mine. “That is, assuming my phone still works.”
He didn’t look down at his phone. He stood motionless on the walkway, blocking the exit route to my car.
A minute passed, and neither of us budged.
“Go ahead and call,” I said.
His blue eyes stayed coolly locked on mine. “Maybe you should make the call. Go ahead.”
A terrifying thought blossomed in the back of my mind. What if this man had yelled at me to step away because he knew the body was there? What if he was the killer?
The fair-haired mailman was a big guy—tall, with a surprisingly husky figure for someone who walked all day. By comparison, I was much smaller and weaker. My best option was to run. If I stayed, I would need a weapon, but the pointiest thing within reach was the snowman’s nose, down by my feet, and I didn’t think a carrot would do much for defense, even when frozen.
“You look twitchy,” the mail carrier said. “How do I know you’re not dangerous?” A bead of sweat rolled out of his sandy-blond hair and ran down the side of his round face.
I replied, “You’re the one who looks nervous. You’re sweating all over the place.”
He pulled out a kerchief and mopped his brow. “Lady, this is normal,” he said. “I run hot.”
“That would explain the shorts,” I said.
Something pulled on my jeans. The young cat, who didn’t sense the gravity of the situation, had reached through the lattices of the pet carrier’s door and snagged the leg of my jeans with sharp claws.
The mail carrier’s jaw dropped. His eyes bulged again, this time at the plastic pet carrier.
He demanded, “What are you doing to that poor cat?”
I picked up the carrier. “We have a vet appointment.”
“Isn’t that Mr. Day’s cat?”
“Good eye. It certainly
is. Mr. Finnegan Day is my father.”
He gave me a sidelong look. “And what’s your name?”
“Stormy.”
He nodded knowingly, as though he’d gotten the confirmation he was looking for. He finally used his phone, jabbing the screen while his face reddened.
“Congratulations, lady,” he said to me, holding the receiver of the phone below his double chin. “You’ve just incriminated yourself. This is my route, my street. Mr. Day’s daughter is named Sunny. You got the name wrong, you criminal.”
“Sunny is my sister. There are two of us.”
His eyes twitched, but he didn’t soften his glare. He spoke into his phone. “Hello? I need to report a homicide, as well as a suspect.”
I objected, “Suspect? I’m a witness, same as you.”
His nostrils flared, and he kept talking. “Yes, the suspect is a medium-sized white woman. She was wearing a top hat when I arrived at the scene, but she’s taken it off now. She’s also kidnapping a cat.” He paused before adding, “No, I haven’t been drinking.”
I took one more look at Mr. Michaels. This time, I caught details I hadn’t noticed before, including the narrow crescent of one eyeball, visible through relaxed-looking eyelids. He seemed to be on the verge of waking up. My stomach lurched. I pitched forward and tossed up that morning’s muffin and coffee.
The mail carrier kept talking on the phone, describing the scene and giving dispatch the address.
Now that I was lighter by the weight of one modest breakfast, the urge to run away hit me hard. My vehicle was nearby.
My father always taught me to be safe, and if my instincts told me to run, I should run, and never mind the possibility of being rude or hurting someone’s feelings. He always talked about how some attacks happen partly because the victim is too polite to bolt, and while he wanted me to be a polite person in general, it ought to never put me in danger.
I ran to my car and opened the door. To my surprise, I still had the pet carrier in one hand. I placed it on the passenger seat as I scrambled in. A minute later, I was driving, on the run, but from what?
The cat meowed, demanding to be let out of cat prison.
I turned the car left and then right, my mind a swirl of paranoia, panic, and bizarre thoughts. I didn’t want to believe a person in Misty Falls had been murdered, so my imagination offered up alternative possibilities. What if Mr. Michaels had been hiding in the snowman to play a prank on someone? What if he’d climbed in there and then had a heart attack? Or fallen asleep and froze to death?
No, that was crazy. I’d heard of people going through major personality changes in their older years, but I couldn’t imagine a shift that dramatic, transforming a cranky man into a prankster.
The cat meowed again.
“I know,” I said. “Today has turned out horrible.”
I kept driving, my eyes on the road but my mind elsewhere. Who would kill Mr. Michaels? After his brief appearance at my father’s party, there’d been some discussion of the man. He’d been squabbling recently with my father over the property line, which was part of a battle that had been carrying on for the better part of two decades. Pam had mentioned Murray Michaels becoming, in her words, an old nuisance. She said he’d been stirring up trouble with some of the downtown businesses, causing problems at several places, from the costume rental shop to Ruby’s Treasure Trove. He hadn’t been into my gift shop that I could recall, so I didn’t know what the fuss had been. She also mentioned him seeing a woman, a scandalously young woman who worked at the Olive Grove. An old friend of mine worked at the same cafe, so I could ask her about it, or pass the information along to the police.
The cat meowed again, sounding even less impressed about the interior of the pet carrier.
“Did you see anything?” I asked. “Did you see this young woman Mr. Michaels was wooing? I think Pam said she was a blonde.”
There was no answer, but it felt good to talk, even if it was to an animal. The cat meowed plaintively.
“What about you? Do you have an alibi? Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts?”
The cat reached one paw through the gated door and swatted air.
I’m innocent, the cat meowed. I have an alibi, I swear!
I let out a small laugh, feeling better as I imagined what the cat could be saying.
Look at my sweet little gray face! Do I look like a criminal to you?
“If it wasn’t you, that doesn’t mean you weren’t the brains behind the operation. Maybe it was all the neighborhood cats, working as a group. Wasn’t Mr. Michaels notorious for yelling at you cats? He never grew anything in his garden, but he didn’t appreciate anyone else digging in there.”
The cat meowed again.
“You’re right. He wasn’t the most enjoyable person on the block.”
Another meow.
“No, I wouldn’t say he was a bad person. Just cranky and ornery, and that’s no crime. In fact, some people might say the same things about me because I keep to myself.”
The cat didn’t meow but seemed to be listening.
“I’ll stop hiding when summer comes, maybe, or I might move again. I don’t really fit in here. I feel like a puzzle piece from another puzzle.”
The cat reached a gray paw through the door and waved it, as if to tell me to keep going.
“You know, I shouldn’t speak ill of the deceased, but Mr. Michaels should have moved, or tried something. He didn’t fit in, either. I think he had a girlfriend once. Or maybe it was a sister.”
I went quiet, imagining a younger version of the man, opening the door of his house for a lady visitor. In my earliest childhood memories, he’d have been around the same age I currently was. Thinking about him being my age made me empathize with him more than I ever had.
The sudden clarity of the tragedy hit me like a solid blow to the backs of the knees, emotionally buckling me.
I had to stop the car, put on the parking brake, and focus on breathing.
Mr. Michaels wasn’t just part of the Misty Falls scenery, that scowling curmudgeon every small town has, always complaining about lineups at the post office or the need for more traffic lights. He was a person, with bills and taxes and plans for the future. He suffered from gout but was grateful his health wasn’t worse. He had a television but no cable. He loved old Western novels, re-reading the same ones until they were falling apart. Maybe he had upcoming plans for Christmas, or maybe he didn’t. Now he was gone.
The postcard view in front of me, of snow-peaked mountains framing in colorful streets, blurred as my eyes filled with tears.
Mr. Michaels wouldn’t be getting any more second chances.
A car honked. The traffic light in front of me was green. I thought I’d pulled over to the side of the road, but I was in the middle of an intersection. I raised my hand in an apology wave and stepped on the gas.
The veterinary clinic was up ahead. I’d driven there on autopilot, the list-making, organized part of my brain still working despite my lack of awareness. I pulled into an empty parking space and turned off the engine.
I grabbed some tissues from the glove box to clean up my face. Sirens blared nearby. Were they coming to nab me for leaving the crime scene? I instinctively hunched over, hiding as the police car drove past. I kept my head down, my face near the front of the pet carrier.
The cat seized this opportunity to reach through the lattices and smack me on the nose for wrongful incarceration.
Chapter 5
The Calico Veterinary Clinic was warm inside and held a pungent symphony of aromas. The heaviest of the odors was food-like, either canned beef stew from a staff member’s lunch being microwaved, or top-quality pet food. The scent made me the opposite of hungry. Hitting me second was a mix of antiseptic and cleaning fluids, which was neither good nor bad. Finally, there was a floral air freshener, mixed in with a person’s perfume or cologne.
The powerful smells were very effective in bringing this moment into focus and pushing th
e snowman to the back of my mind.
Across the counter, an apple-cheeked woman with unnaturally red hair greeted me. She had an inch of blond roots showing underneath the primary shade, and her natural hair was blond, straight, and thick. Her name tag, affixed to a teal smock she wore over a black turtleneck, read Natasha.
Natasha cooed at the cat, “Hello, good looking. What a lovely Russian Blue you are.” She flicked her eyes to me. “What can we do for you?”
“The appointment should be under Bochenek or Day. I’m here to get this cat fixed.”
Natasha chirped back, “Fixed? Why? Is your cat broken?”
“Not that I know of.”
She laughed. “Of course I knew what you meant. Just a little veterinary humor to lighten the mood for Miss Kitty.”
“I’m sure Miss Kitty appreciates the playful banter before you drug her and rip out her reproductive organs.”
Natasha held her finger to her lips. “Shh. Not in front of the patient.”
Someone behind me chuckled in a low, masculine voice. The man’s laugh seemed to be teasing me. I didn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of rattling me, though, so I didn’t turn around.
Natasha leaned down to look into the cage, frowning.
“This is not going to work,” she said.
I let out a heavy sigh. “Now what?”
“We can’t do the spaying procedure you requested. This cat is a male.”
“No, she can’t be.”
The guy behind me chuckled again. I started to turn my head but stopped myself.
Natasha opened the pet carrier door. The cat sprang out and into her arms. While the cat swatted her crayon-red hair, she pointed the animal’s back end at me. “See those?” she asked.
I was too surprised to do more than murmur, “Yes.”
Natasha explained, “Female cats don’t have these parts back here. Are you familiar at all with basic male anatomy?”