“No way,” I said. “I’m going to sleep in that office tonight and every night until they find out who did this, and until we get the apartment back in shape.”
Billy nodded and walked toward the entrance to the bedroom, where he could pack up some clothes to take to my house. But before he left the living room, he stopped and turned toward me.
“Addy,” he said, “there’s something I should tell you.”
“What?” I asked.
“Last night, before the fire, something woke me up.”
“What?” I asked again. “Did you hear people talking, or a car outside the house?”
Billy hesitated. “No,” he said, “it was the piano. Someone was playing the piano.”
“What?” I asked for the third time. “Who?”
“I don’t know. But I heard the piano, just a few notes. The sound woke me out of a deep sleep, and then I heard it again. I got up and came in here to see who it was, thinking maybe Michelle had come over. But when I got here, there was no one. The piano was just sitting there. And then a few seconds later I heard a crash and that burning rag came flying through the window.” He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe what had happened.
“The flames moved so fast,” he said apologetically. “The curtains caught fire. I tried to pull them down and stomp on them, but it didn’t work. The fire just kept spreading. I ran into the kitchen and grabbed the fire extinguisher, but by the time I got back here half the room was up in flames, so I grabbed my cell and called 911 while I ran upstairs to get the cats.”
Billy hesitated again before continuing. “And it was weird, Addy, someone had opened all the doors upstairs and let the cats out of their rooms. All ten of them were in the hall near their carriers. I think that’s why I was able to save them all.” We were both silent for a moment, remembering the hours that had followed that call: the sirens, the chaos, the worry about the animals still locked in the Cat House. The terrible fear that comes with loss.
I was still holding my copy of Crime and Punishment. I patted my pocket subtly, feeling for the key. It was still there.
“That’s strange,” I said. “Maybe some jokester snuck into the house before lighting the place on fire. It doesn’t really make sense. But if he–or she–comes back, I’ll be waiting.”
o0o
The Jane S. Dooley Cat Shelter was established in 1863 by an elderly Pineville resident who had inherited her father’s fortune and had no close relatives on whom to bequeath it. She had been married as a young woman, but her husband died of a terrible fever and she never re-married or had children. According to local legend, Jane used to stroll up and down Main Street on warm summer days, delighting the town’s children by handing out candy. She started a women’s book club at the tiny town library and gave generously to neighbors in need. But her passion was animals, especially cats, and when she died at the ripe old age of ninety-seven, she left her entire fortune, including the large Victorian house she had called home all her life, in a trust for the establishment of a sheltering home for cats.
The residents of Pineville, mourning their elderly neighbor, founded the cat shelter that Jane had envisioned. And no one had ever had a problem with the arrangement until Doris Nelson moved next door and began her insidious campaign to close the shelter down. Of course, Doris was the first person I wanted to blame as flames threatened to devour Jane Dooley’s house. I had demanded that Dave Miller, a local policeman who was keeping neighbors away from the fire and whom I knew I could trust, knock on Doris’s door to find out if she was home. But Doris, it turned out, was visiting relatives in Boston. She couldn’t have started the fire.
The alarm clock I had placed on the floor of the office glowed in the darkness. 1:04 a.m. The office was cold, and I was huddled on the floor in my sleeping bag, wide awake. October nights can be frigid in Vermont, but I didn’t like to turn up the heat. I was dressed in a sweat shirt and sweat pants inside the sleeping bag.
I had spent the evening working in the office, sorting through the paperwork that would be required to file a claim with the shelter’s insurance company. At 10:30 p.m., I had attempted to turn in because my eyes were hurting and I could no longer concentrate. I pulled on my jacket and went outside to do a final check of the Cat House. All twenty residents were sleeping on cat beds in the specially-designed windowsills, nibbling at the kibble that had been left out in bowls, or chasing each other around the floor in the dark. When I left, I made sure the door was locked, and then I paused next to the shed that backed up to the fence just outside the entrance. The moon was almost full, and the back of the shed was in shadow. It was there, behind the shed, that I had found Jocko on that terrible night.
Jocko. He had been a handsome, scarred, gray-and-white tom cat when he appeared in the driveway a few days after I started my job at the shelter. He was huge–twenty pounds–and tough judging by his ears, which were all chewed up, and by the scar on his upper lip that turned his expression into a permanent scowl. It was clear that he had been living on the street for a long time. But he must have decided that he’d had enough, because he marched straight up to the office door and strolled inside that day. And he proceeded, over the next two years, to become the shelter mascot and the most beloved feline on the property. He spent his days lounging in the office and his evenings sleeping peacefully on Billy’s bed after I convinced the Board of Directors to let me hire Billy and move him into the apartment.
Jocko was protective of the cats who arrived at the office hungry, scared and in search of a new home. He nudged and groomed young kittens if they cried. Every morning when I arrived at work, Jocko left Billy’s apartment, jumped up and unlatched the door from the hallway, sauntered into the office, and sat down in front of me, hoping to be petted.
Jocko was wearing a collar with a tag when he showed up, but no one in town claimed ownership, even though neighbors reported spotting the big cat roaming the streets near the shelter for years. The tag he wore was fancier than normal cat tags–it was thick and heart-shaped and made of silver. So I was sure he must have belonged to someone. But whenever I tried to remove the collar so I could look more closely at the tag, Jocko hissed, bared his teeth, and unsheathed his claws–behavior he never exhibited at any other time. So, the collar remained around Jocko’s neck until the tragic events of July 4th.
It was 6:30 a.m. and raining when Jocko raced past my legs and out the door when I arrived at the office to do some work I had planned to finish on the holiday. He ran down the driveway and behind the shed, and before I could get to him I heard something that sounded like a terrified dog yelping. The next thing I knew, I was frozen in horror, because a coyote had emerged from behind the shed. The animal ran right past me up the driveway toward the street, and I raced behind the shed, calling Jocko’s name. I found him lying on his side in the dirt behind the shed with blood seeping out of his neck. Next to him was a tiny white kitten, not more than a few weeks old, cowering against the shed, untouched. I realized in an instant what had happened: Jocko had attacked the coyote to save the kitten. I fell to my knees and begged Jocko to hold on so I could get him to the emergency vet. But he took a few last breaths, heaved a sigh, and died right there in my arms.
The death of any cat breaks my heart, but I had never taken a loss as badly as I took Jocko’s. Billy found me sobbing with the cat in my arms, and we buried him later that day in the yard in front of the Cat House. Before we laid him in his grave inside his favorite bed, I took off the collar that he’d never let me touch. As I fingered the tag, I noticed that it had a seam and might even open like a locket, but I didn’t have the heart to look more closely in my grief. The next day, I bought a small gold box and locked the collar inside it. I never told anyone about the box, which I placed in the bottom drawer of my desk at the office, or about the key, which I taped inside the cover of one of my favorite books, Crime and Punishment. I then stored the book on the bookshelf in Billy’s apartment so I would have access to the key
if I ever decided to open the box.
After the fire I realized how close I had come to never being able to find out what was inside the cat tag. So after Billy went to my house, I removed the key from my pocket, pulled the box from the drawer, and opened it.
The box was empty.
Sleep continued to elude me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fire, about the fact that Billy could have been killed, about the cats who had been helpless upstairs, about Mayor Henry’s visit. I went over and over our conversation with the mayor in my head, trying to pick out anything that would indicate he was responsible. And finally, when my thoughts had raced in circles for so long that they had to land somewhere, I thought about Jocko’s empty box, which was now sitting on the floor next to the alarm clock. Twenty minutes had passed since I’d last looked at the clock.
And that’s when I heard it.
Plink, plink, plink.
At first it was one note, then two, then a slow crescendo as someone ran his or her fingers up the piano keys. I grabbed the flashlight and struggled up and out of my sleeping bag. Trying to control my ragged breath, I crept on my tip-toes through the door that led to the hallway and made my way toward the apartment. The door to the living room was open, even though I was certain I had closed it after Billy left. I clicked off the flashlight and moved quietly toward the doorway, guided by a sliver of moonlight shining through it.
Peeking into the room, I looked toward the piano, but no one appeared to be there. The piano sat silent in the empty room, which was cast in a bluish light by the moon. I walked into the apartment and over to the bay window, listening for footsteps or any other sound, and keeping my flashlight off. Nothing. No one. Confused, I stared out the window.
Something moved behind the bushes near the street, and suddenly I saw what looked like a human being running down the street, away from the house. I dashed into the foyer, unbolted the front door, and raced down the walkway to the sidewalk, forgetting that it was freezing outside and my feet were bare. Staring in the direction that I had seen the person running, I saw nothing but darkness past the streetlamp on the corner.
Whoever it was had disappeared.
o0o
Two weeks later on a Thursday night, the meeting of the town council was a mob scene. Every seat in the Town Hall meeting room was taken, and men, women, and children were lined up along the walls and milling around the hallway just outside the double doors. Mayor Henry rapped his wooden gavel hard against the podium in a vain attempt to quiet the angry crowd. His wife, Anne, was sitting in the front row with their two children, twelve-year-old Jimmy and ten-year-old Janine. She stared straight ahead, and the children hung their heads and looked at the floor.
The mayor had just announced that the Jane Dooley house was condemned. The insurance company had mysteriously turned down our initial claim, saying they suspected that the fire had been a ploy to get money for the shelter by collecting on the policy. I was outraged at this implication, which, in any case, made no sense. But to make matters worse, the mayor had decided that because there were no other locations in town suitable for a cat shelter, the shelter would have to be shut down. Rumors had been circulating for days that this was his plan, and supporters of the shelter had vowed to pack the meeting and make their feelings known.
“What about the cats?” someone yelled from the middle of the crowd.
“They’ll be sent to shelters in nearby towns,” the mayor said, “and if any are left without a place to go, they’ll have to be put down.”
There was an angry roar from the crowd. I was shaking with rage, and Billy and Joanne Watkins, one of our most loyal volunteers, each pulled at one of my arms as I stood at a microphone stand that had been placed in front of the audience, shouting.
“What do you mean, condemned?” I shouted. “One room has smoke and fire damage. The rest of the building is sound. What are you talking about? You’ll harm one hair on one cat over my dead body!”
“According to the town inspector–” the mayor began, but his comments were drowned out by more shouts from the crowd.
Billy dragged me back to my seat on the end of the seventh row, where I collapsed into my chair, uncertain if I would be able to stop the angry tears that were springing to my eyes. I couldn’t believe what was happening.
“Who set the fire?” someone yelled from the crowd, and the question was echoed by a chorus of other voices. “They need to be held responsible!”
“And who got into the house and let the cats out from their upstairs rooms?” Someone shouted from the back of the room. “Who knew that the fire was going to be set?”
The mayor banged his gavel on the podium again until the noise had subsided just enough for him to say, “The police have not found a suspect in the fire. It is the assumption of the insurance company that someone involved with the shelter did the deed to make money, which would explain why the cats were let out.” Anything he said after that was drowned out by angry objections.
o0o
Back at the shelter an hour after the meeting, at least twenty volunteers gathered under the outside light that hung above the door of the Cat House. They were wrapped in jackets, gloves, and hats. Everyone was still angry.
“There’s no way we’re going to let this happen,” Joanne said.
“It’s crazy, anyway,” said Emily Leblanc, owner of the local breakfast spot, Toffee Coffee, and a long-time volunteer at the shelter. “Why shut the whole place down even if the house is condemned? The Cat House is still fine, and we could always rebuild.”
“There’s absolutely no reason to condemn that house,” said Eric Horner, a local handyman who did repairs at the shelter and who had recently built an outdoor enclosure for the cats. “The structure is fine. Heck, most of the house is perfectly fine. This is a conspiracy if I ever saw one, and when we find out who started this and who set that fire, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
I had been sitting in the office, exhausted from my fury, trying to figure out what to say to everyone. When I finally joined the group, Joanne turned to me and said, “If the insurance company won’t pay, we can fix the house ourselves.”
“There’s no way we could raise enough money,” I said. The last few hours had drained my fighting spirit, and the reality of what we were facing had kicked in. “Our operating budget doesn’t include a line item for repairs, and this is a major job. The shelter is barely making ends meet as it is.”
“I’ll give up my salary,” Billy said. He was shivering, and his hands were stuffed in his pockets. Michelle put her arms around him and leaned her head against his chest.
“That’s sweet of you, Billy,” I said, and I was surprised that my voice cracked when I said it. My throat felt tight, and I forced myself to take a deep breath. “But I would never let you do that—and it wouldn’t be enough, anyway. Believe me, I would give up my salary, too.”
A young girl standing in the group started to cry. Her mom, Audrey Benson, leaned down and gave her daughter a hug. “It’s okay, honey,” she said. “Let’s go into the Cat House and visit Pepper.”
The girl sniffed but looked up hopefully. “Can we take Pepper home now, Mom?” she asked.
Audrey looked at me and I smiled weakly. I knew that her family already had three cats. “Yes, sweetie, I think so,” Audrey said. “I think it’s time for Pepper to come home.”
I nodded at Billy. He unlocked the door of the Cat House and followed them inside.
After everyone left, I climbed once again into my sleeping bag in the office and finally let myself cry. Occasionally, I heard the swish of a car as it passed by the house on the street. As always, I’d closed all the window blinds. There was no moon that night, and the room would have been pitch black if not for the red neon numbers on the alarm clock. The first time I looked over at them it was midnight. By 1:00 a.m., I had exhausted myself by crying and my tears had dried. By 2:00 a.m., I was falling asleep.
Plink, plink, plink.
Three no
tes on the piano. My eyes flew open.
Plink, plink. Two more.
I was out of my sleeping bag in seconds, the flashlight in my hand. I crept down the hall toward the living room, and again was surprised that the apartment door was open. When I reached it, I stepped right into the room, sweeping the beam of my flashlight from one wall to the other. Finally, I pointed it toward on the keys on the piano.
Nothing. No one. But then, I heard something: footsteps from somewhere past the foyer. I sighed with relief, thinking Billy must have decided to sleep in his room one last time. I crossed the room and entered the foyer.
The front door to the house was wide open. I must have forgotten to bolt it shut that morning when I’d been arguing with the fire inspector in front of the house. Suddenly on guard, I looked toward Billy’s bedroom on the opposite end of the foyer and saw what looked like a hooded figure moving around in the shadows. I held my breath, hoping whoever it was hadn’t seen or heard me. Then I heard a quiet click and saw a small flame burst to life, illuminating a man who was standing near the bed. It looked like he was holding a rag in one hand.
“Hey! Stop that!” I yelled, turning on my flashlight, and the man dropped the rag and took a few steps out of the room toward me, trying to shade his eyes against the light.
I stared in surprise. The man in the hood–a hooded sweatshirt, it turned out–wasn’t a man at all. He was a twelve-year-old boy named Jimmy Carbunkle.
“Jimmy?” I said in surprise. The boy dropped the lighter and dashed toward the front door, but I caught him by his hood and he slid and fell backward.
“What are you doing here?” I asked while he struggled to break free. “Are you here to...are you the one who…did your father put you up to this? Did you come back to finish the job?”
“Let me go!” Jimmy sobbed as he tried to wriggle out of his sweatshirt. A police siren had started wailing and was getting closer to the house, and by the time Jimmy got the sweatshirt off and broke loose from my grasp, a squad car with revolving lights had pulled onto the curb. Dave Miller, illuminated by the street lamp on the corner, leaped out of the car and raced up the walkway. He stopped short when he saw Jimmy standing at the front door.
Nine Deadly Lives Page 22