by Неизвестный
The guy behind me snorted.
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m familiar with basic male anatomy, and I see your point. Girl or boy, the cat still needs to be fixed.”
She gave me a grin that bordered on pure evil. “Why do you keep saying fixed? Is your cat broken?”
The guy behind me could no longer control his laughter.
“Listen, I’ve had a rough morning,” I said to Natasha. “How much do I pay you to deliver the deluxe spa treatment, or whatever you call it, to this cat?”
“It’s actually cheaper for males,” she said. “But I do have some concerns. Are you absolutely sure this is your cat?”
“No,” I admitted. “Let’s check the tag on the collar.”
She hugged the gray cat and stared at me as though I was the worst human on the planet. I reached out and checked the tag on the collar. I found my father’s address and phone number, but there was no name for the cat. My father, in his usual eccentric way, had listed its name as THE CAT.
I felt a sudden sense of solidarity with the cat. My father had given both me and my sister play-on-word names, his never-ending personal prank on us both. The cat deserved better. I stared into his green eyes, and the name popped into my head as though sent there by the cat himself. It was the perfect name.
“Jeffrey,” I said. “Put his name down as Jeffrey. Jeffrey Blue.”
The newly-christened Jeffrey Blue stared back at me with wide green eyes, as if to say, please don’t make me have this deluxe spa treatment, which may or may not involve me getting fixed, which I’m guessing is not a good thing.
I assured Natasha that I was running an errand for my father’s girlfriend, with a cat I had only met once before. She warmed up and told me it wasn’t that uncommon for people to mistake male cats for females before things started to pop out. Natasha told me to take a seat while she brought him back to the veterinarian for a preliminary exam.
She backed away with him in her arms, and Jeffrey meowed as if to say, Where am I being taken? Hey, there are cats in cages back here! Help! Get me outta here!
Natasha disappeared into the back with Jeffrey, and I understood, for the first time, how those mothers must feel when their kids go off to their first day of school. I’d only been Jeffrey’s guardian for less than an hour, but I was feeling some very parental concerns.
Poor Jeffrey. I heard him meow pitifully in the other room, and I got the urge to barge into the back and rescue him. Jeffrey and I had been through so much together, from the discovery of the body to our little heart-to-heart in the car ride over, and now he was on a cold examination table.
A big hand gently patted my shoulder. “There, there,” the man who’d been chuckling said. “You’re having a rough morning, aren’t you?”
At the touch of human kindness, I nearly fell apart but didn’t.
“I’ll be okay,” I said with a stoic lift of my chin. “It’s Jeffrey I’m worried about. Between you and me, he’s been working too many hours prowling the neighborhood. Plus up until today, he thought he was a girl kitty.”
The man walked over to the waiting room’s water cooler.
“Sounds rough,” he said. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“Better make it a double,” I said as I took a seat.
“A double.” He grinned, as though my asking for a double water was the most delightful thing he’d heard all week. He was tall, mid-thirties like me, and had plenty of dark hair, wavy on top and trimmed around his face in a thick yet tidy beard. If I’d known the man was so ruggedly handsome, I might have turned around at the first chuckle.
He filled two waxed paper cups to the top and sat on the end chair, leaving one empty chair between us. He smelled as good as he looked, which, I thought, was really nice for his wife, whoever she was. A man that attractive had to have been snapped up by someone. His left hand probably bore a wedding band. I leaned forward as I accepted my water, trying to get a peek, but he seemed to be aware of my investigation and tucked the hand into a coat pocket. His jacket was the shabby army-surplus type favored by teens carefully cultivating an appearance of not caring about their appearance. Paired with the green jacket were equally tattered jeans, frayed at the knees. He appeared to be a drifter, one of the temporary workers employed at the local furniture factory. My interest in his ring finger faded.
“I’m Logan,” he said, passing me the cup of water in lieu of a handshake.
“Of course you are.” I swigged down half the water, which was warmer than I expected and slid down easily.
“Interesting,” he said. “You don’t know your cat’s name, but you know mine.”
“You look like a Logan,” I explained. “All woodsy and stuff, like logs.”
His blue eyes twinkled with amusement as he waited for me to introduce myself. But the idea of having to repeat and explain my name seemed like more needless aggravation, and Logan was probably just passing through town, so I pretended not to notice him waiting for my name. I pulled out my phone to check messages.
I tipped back the rest of my water just as I saw my self-portrait with the snowman was online and getting comments from my friends. I nearly spat out the water but managed to choke it down.
My Portland friends were saying complimentary things:
What a dapper new boyfriend you have!
Looks like life in Misty Falls is treating you well.
Great to see your beautiful smile!
I hovered my thumb over the button to delete the photo but paused. Yes, it was macabre that I had taken a photo of myself with the snow-covered body, but it was also a great alibi, in case I came under suspicion. I wouldn’t have posted the photo online if I were the killer. Or would I?
A new message popped up from my real estate agent, Samantha Sweet, whose use of exclamation points brought her blond perkiness to her online communications.
Samantha: Thank you so much for meeting with me this morning! Very insightful! I will have some exciting new opportunities for you to look at within two weeks! In the meantime, I have found you the perfect tenant for your rental!
I wrote back: Send me the tenant’s contact details and I’ll set up an interview.
While I waited for her response, I did some math in my head. I’d been planning to move over to the rental side for a few months while I renovated my side of the duplex, but if I got a tenant in immediately, the cash flow would more than compensate me for having to live with construction mess. This would mean going back to my original plan. Since buying the place, I’d changed my mind a few times, mainly because looking for a tenant had been disheartening. Between the troll-like fellow who showed up in a graphic T-shirt that boasted of his lovemaking prowess, and the pale girl who inquired how many days a week she could have her death metal band over to practice, I worried I’d never find someone I could share a wall with.
Samantha replied: I’ve already interviewed the tenant and done a credit check! He’s a very busy man, and he’s looking at a few places, so we need to move fast! Should I show him the place tonight? He’s a lawyer!
A lawyer? That did warrant some exclamation points. He sounded like someone who wouldn’t grow his own smoking herbs or be late with the rent check.
I returned her message: Go ahead and show him the place.
She texted back within seconds: I’m so happy! When I meet him tonight for the in-person showing, I’ll try to close the deal on the spot if that’s okay with you! He’s ready to move in right away. You won’t regret this!
My body tensed at her assurance I wouldn’t regret this. It was all part of her sales technique, just the post-deal, feel-good stuff anyone with good training does, but it rubbed me the wrong way. A deal that offers itself up too easily should be thoroughly scrutinized. It’s only human nature, a survival instinct, to be wary of anything that appears too good to be true. That was why, in my former career, I would often put an unreasonable clause or two into the first draft of an agreement. It gave the other party some
thing to strike out, so they felt they were in control.
Samantha’s offer to get me a tenant seemed too easy, and thus suspicious. But the money would help with cash flow for the upgrades, and, in light of the events of the day, it would be a relief to have one thing in my life taken care of by a professional.
I wrote back: Go ahead. If you think he’s the one, make the deal.
I put my phone away and glanced over at Logan, who still appealed to my eyes, despite his scruffiness. He’d become engrossed by something on his phone, so he didn’t see me scoping him out. His beat-up jacket had holes in the elbows, but it was spotlessly clean. He had the clothing of a working-class man, yet his body language didn’t fit. He didn’t cross his legs in a feminine manner the way I had, yet he didn’t have the space-taking, wide-kneed body language I associated with the transient men employed by the local furniture factory. I wondered if he was on the run or undercover.
He saw something on his phone that excited him. “Yes!” He fist-pumped the air. “I got it.”
A minute passed, and in the absence of an explanation, my curiosity grew until finally I asked, “Good news? You got a job?”
He gave me a broad grin, which took his good looks in a boyish direction, transforming him from handsome to downright adorable. “Even better,” he said. “I’ve rented a great place. It’s half a duplex in West Creek neighborhood. Is that a good area?”
Keeping my expression politely happy, I said, “Congratulations. Yes, it’s a very nice neighborhood.”
His chest puffed and he sat up straighter, evidently proud. “It’s a steal, too. My cousin’s a real estate agent, and she’s got a total eccentric as her client.”
My body grew numb, and my head got a disembodied, floating feeling. “Eccentric? What do you mean?” Part of me was sickly fascinated, wanting to know exactly what people in town were saying about me. “Never mind,” I added. “That’s between you and her, not my business.”
Logan stretched out his arms along the backs of the empty chairs on either side of him, taking up more space by the minute, as though securing a deal on a rental had been the warm air he needed to inflate to full size. Now his knees widened until one was dangerously close to touching mine.
I reached for a nearby pamphlet and pretended to be fascinated by the life cycle of fleas.
“Maybe you know my new landlady,” he said. “If you’re from around here.”
Without looking up from the flea drawing, I said, “I’ve been away for about ten years, so I’m not up on local news and gossip. Sorry.”
“I think everyone in this town must know about this woman. She’s practically famous. She was involved in some technology start-up companies, and she was headed toward becoming very wealthy, like seven figures, but she cracked under the pressure.”
I swallowed hard. He wasn’t far from the truth.
“And this woman is your new landlady?” I folded the flea brochure slowly. As the numbness in my body receded, I felt waves of shock, anger, defensiveness, and finally acceptance. It wasn’t just Samantha Sweet who judged me by my reputation. People in town had talked about me for years, and even if a potential tenant hadn’t heard about me through the grapevine, a quick internet search would reveal plenty. Short of changing my name, I would always need to deal with the repercussions of being Stormy Day. I could fight and make everything worse, or I could kill with kindness.
I set the brochure aside and turned to meet Logan’s blue eyes. “She might be a wonderful landlady if you give her a chance.”
He quirked one dark eyebrow and lifted his phone to show me the screen. “And she might be crazy. My cousin sent me the list of rules for the house. Look. The tenant is responsible for fifty-five percent of the electricity bill. Why not half? Why fifty-five percent?”
I pretended to look, even though I was familiar with the document I’d created. “Maybe the tenant’s square footage is fifty-five percent of the house, and she’s trying to be fair.”
He laughed. “She sounds like one of those uptight Type A ladies. The kind who needs one good night with a real man.”
My eyebrows raised so quickly, I nearly gave myself whiplash. “And you think you’re the man for the job?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe she’ll knock a few bucks off the rent if I do things right.” He leaned toward me, as though asking for a punch in the stomach or at least a verbal response. When he didn’t get either, he added, “I bet you the cost of your cat’s treatment that after one night on my side of the house, Miss Spinster Type A Landlady will start ripping up my rent checks.”
Logan was good at pushing buttons, but he didn’t realize I was onto him. Logan was a lawyer and not the studious type who loved poring over contracts. He was a fighter who relished conflict, loved going head-to-head. He knew exactly who I was and was toying with me. Even now, his breathing was twice as rapid as mine, his pupils dilating to make his blue eyes appear black. I allowed myself the delicious pleasure of knowing he considered me a worthy adversary.
I waved my hand across him and said, “They say you ought to dress for the job you want, not the one you have. If you fancy yourself as a skillful rent boy, you ought to dress in a manner that reveals more assets or implies more class.” I bit my lip and leaned back dramatically. “Or both.”
He was mentally preparing his next missive when our conversation was interrupted by the veterinarian’s assistant returning. I jumped to my feet, feeling light as helium from the rush of my exchange with Logan.
Natasha laid some papers on the counter between us. “Jeffrey’s all checked in,” she said. “His bachelor urges will soon be curbed. You’ll still see the external appearance of his furry boy-parts after the surgery, but it’s only skin that’ll shrivel up because the insides have been scooped out.”
Behind me, Logan said, “Ouch.” I heard a chair squeak and imagined him crossing his legs in sympathy for the cat.
Natasha collected payment from me, and I filled in the paperwork for the cat’s day surgery. I was signing the bottom of the form when the front door opened behind me. Someone came in, noisily stomping snow off heavy boots. It was another man, by the sound of him. He cleared his throat.
I turned to find a man bearing his Italian father’s black hair and brown eyes, and his Mexican mother’s bronze coloring. I knew his heritage and much more because I’d practically grown up with the guy. Officer Tony Milano had gone straight to the police academy after college and become my father’s protégé not long after that. He’d acted like a protective older brother to me and my sister, except for when he hadn’t.
“Tony Baloney,” I said, using the nickname I knew he hated. “You’ve got a little something in your hair at the sides. Is that snow? It’s really white, or is that gray? My mistake. That’s not snow at all.”
“Very funny,” he said with no sign of mirth. “Get in my car. Now.”
Logan, who’d been leafing through a cat magazine, got to his feet, looking concerned. “Is everything okay?”
Tony gave him a withering look. “Go about your business, citizen.”
Logan stuck out his chest. “Citizen? I’m an attorney.”
Tony snorted derisively. “Not with that beard, you aren’t.”
He took me by the elbow and firmly escorted me toward the door of the vet clinic. The air around him was cold, his hand like ice on my arm, even through my jacket.
On my way out, I gave Logan a quick wink. “See you around.”
Logan said, “Do you need a lawyer? I can come with if you’re being taken in for questioning.” He held out a business card.
I didn’t take the card. It was only Tony, and I could handle him fine on my own. However, as Tony jerked my arm and dragged me toward his car, I wondered if I hadn’t misjudged the situation.
Chapter 6
Ctenocephalides felis, also known as the common cat flea, has no wings, so it must use its legs to jump a staggering two hundred times its height to find a new host.
> You’d think Officer Tony Milano would have appreciated some fun flea facts to brighten his day, but he did not. He barely acknowledged me as I described how newly-hatched fleas have only seven days to find a home or die. “And they can’t exactly peruse the rental ads in the newspaper,” I said.
He held open the passenger door of an unmarked police car. “Enough with the fun facts about fleas.”
“You admit my facts are fun?”
“Get in the car, and stop talking about fleas. You’re making my skin crawl.”
I climbed in, buckled my belt, and tried to wait without fidgeting. From the grim set of his mouth to the unwavering edge of his voice, I could tell he was in the darkest of moods. He had good reason to be, considering that morning’s events, yet his rigid manner bothered me, the way a scab you’re not supposed to touch begs to be picked at, itching the more you try to ignore it. I wanted him to smile. I needed him to smile at me, the urge coming from somewhere deep and primal.
He slid into the driver’s side. I immediately picked at his sore mood, saying in an upbeat, singsong tone, “Surprise, Tony Baloney. I’m back in town.”
“So it would appear,” he said. “I knew you were back. I heard all about it even before this morning.”
“Did you hear the juicy rumor I was practically a big-city billionaire before I had a nervous breakdown?”
“What happens outside of this town doesn’t concern me,” he said, avoiding my question.
I glanced around the vehicle looking for any personal items of Tony’s but found none. The vehicle wasn’t marked, but had a steel and plastic barrier between us and the empty rear seat. The piercing scent of Pine-Sol wafted up from the back.
Tony hadn’t started the engine yet. He checked his hair in the rearview mirror. “Never turn forty, Stormy. Your hair gets scared about the next milestone and turns white.”
“I think it might be your two children doing that. Dad always blamed me and my sister for his white hairs.”
“Three children,” he corrected. “The baby should be sleeping through the night soon.”