Nine Deadly Lives

by Livia J. Washburn

  “I parked at the end of the street after the meeting,” Dave said when he saw the confused look on my face. “I was worried there would be trouble. I thought I saw some movement a few minutes ago, so I drove a little closer, and when I saw the flashlight go on inside the house I put on the siren and pulled up.” He looked at Jimmy. “So, who do we have here? Jimmy Carbunkle?”

  The boy, who was shaking now, continued to sob. Dave stopped me with a gentle hand when I reached down to pick up the lighter that Jimmy had dropped. “Evidence,” he said, and I left it where it was.

  “As for you, young man, it looks like I’ll be giving you a ride down to the station.”

  Jimmy wiped his eyes with one arm and started to hiccup.

  “Wait,” I said. “Before you go…” I turned toward Jimmy, who refused to look at me. “Jimmy, tell me why you did this. Why would you want to hurt the shelter and the cats we keep here? I know your father doesn’t like Dooley very much, but why would you get involved?”

  Jimmy sniffed and stared at the floor. Dave and I waited. Finally, the boy said, “Mom and Dad keep arguing about this place. Dad says he wants to get rid of it because that new lady, Miss Nelson, promised to help him get re-elected if he did. My mom was really upset. She said she was tired of my dad pan…pan…”

  “Pandering,” I said softly.

  Jimmy hiccupped again. “Yes, pandering to people who he likes and who can help him, or something like that. She said she knew that my dad was in love with Miss Nelson and she was sick of it all and going to leave him. She’s said she would leave him before, but this time, I think she meant it.”

  “But why would you try to burn down the shelter?” I asked.

  “Dad said some bad things about Billy, about how he was a poor role model for the kids in the town anyway, and how he played with some kind of crazy band on the weekends. He made jokes about his hair and his makeup and stuff. I just wanted it all to go away. I wanted it to stop, for everything to go back to the way it was before Miss Nelson and Billy moved here. I figured since Billy was out of the house on the weekends I could just…just…” his voice faded.

  “I think you’d better save the rest until we call your father and he meets us at the station,” Dave said. “Let’s go.” He led Jimmy down the walkway toward his patrol car. Just before they reached the sidewalk, Jimmy turned back to look at me.

  “I didn’t know there were cats in the house,” he said. “I thought they were all out back. I didn’t know. I never meant to hurt them. I’m sorry!” And he started to cry again. Dave put a firm hand on his shoulder and opened the back door of the squad car before ushering Jimmy inside. They drove off into the night.

  It wasn’t until after they were gone that it occurred to me: if Jimmy hadn’t known there were cats upstairs, he hadn’t been the one who let them out of their rooms.

  o0o

  A week had passed since Jimmy made a full confession. Ann Carbunkle had packed her bags and left her husband, who had been keeping a very low profile. The local paper printed at least twenty letters to the editor calling for the mayor’s resignation–not because his son had been implicated in a crime, or even because of the whispers that he had been having an affair, but because an investigation had unearthed a conspiracy to close down the shelter between the mayor and the town’s police chief and fire inspector.

  Still, our problems weren’t over. The insurance company had agreed to review our claim, but the appeal process was going to take months. We had to repair the main building so that Billy could move back in and there could be 24-hour supervision at the shelter, a town requirement. Our volunteers had put up donation boxes in every store they could think of and were brainstorming about organizing fundraising events. But I couldn’t think of any way we could get the money we needed in the short time we had to save the building and the shelter.

  I had continued to sleep on the floor of the office so we would be complying with the town’s 24-hour requirement. I just didn’t feel right making Billy do it. But my back was beginning to hurt, winter was getting closer, and I knew I couldn’t sleep there forever. I lay awake in my sleeping bag late almost every night trying to come up with a solution. But as the days wore on and no answer presented itself, I began, in my exhaustion, to consider whether it might be best to focus my energies on finding homes for our remaining cats and preparing to close down—at least, temporarily.

  Late one night, I was running through the names of the cats in my mind as the light of the returning moon peeked through the blinds. Dave might take Midget, I was saying to myself. Joanne might open her home to one more. I know she loves little Simba.

  And then, I heard it again.

  Plink, plink, plink.

  I thought I might be dreaming in my half-asleep state; but this time, the notes kept coming. Plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, up the piano keyboard and down again. It was 3:00 a.m. I crawled out of my sleeping bag, picked up my flashlight, and walked through the office into the hallway and toward the apartment.

  The door was open again.

  I closed my eyes, shook my head a few times, and looked again. Yes, it was open. And this time, I could still hear the piano. Plink, plink, plink, faster and faster.

  “Billy?” I called out. Silence.

  “Who’s playing this joke on me?” I said in a loud voice as I walked hesitantly into the room. The music stopped, and it took a moment for the beam of my flashlight to find the piano. I thought I saw something move. Was it a shadow from the branch of a tree outside? Or was it the flick of a tail? I walked over to the piano, but the window was closed and no one was there. Then, I stopped dead in my tracks. Something was lying across the piano keys.

  Jocko’s collar.

  I stood motionless for a moment, barely able to breathe. Finally, I moved forward and picked up the collar. It was time. I opened the locket, and something small and shiny glinted in the beam of light.

  It wasn’t until the diamond was appraised two days later that I was able to announce that the Jane S. Dooley Sheltering Home for Cats had been saved.

  o0o

  Here are the two things I’ve never told anyone. The first one is this: before I placed Crime and Punishment on the new bookshelf Eric built when the apartment was fully renovated, something fell from the middle pages onto the floor. It was an old photograph of Jane S. Dooley. When I looked closely at the picture I noticed she was wearing something around her neck. It was a thick, heart-shaped locket, probably silver.

  The second thing is this: when I left the apartment on the night I found the diamond, I paused at the door and looked back into the room. I swept the beam of my flashlight from one wall to the other, letting it rest first on the piano and then on the floor. And there, for the first time, I saw something in the soot that I had never noticed before. There were paw prints leading from the door to the piano and back.

  And then, I recalled that on the night of the fire, I had also seen paw prints–on the staircase leading to the upstairs rooms.

  Both times, the paw prints were gone by the next morning.

  About the Author—Faye Rapoport DesPres

  Faye Rapoport DesPres is a lifelong writer whose fiction, nonfiction, reviews, interviews, and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary journals and magazines, including Ascent, BOXY Magazine, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Eleven Eleven, Fourth Genre, Into the Arts, Superstition Review, and the Writer’s Chronicle. She earned her MFA at the Solstice Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College. Her first book, a personal essay collection/memoir titled Message From A Blue Jay, was published by Buddhapuss Ink in 2014. Faye lives in Massachusetts with her husband and rescued cats, and is an Adjunct Professor of English at Lasell College.

  The Calico

  Brandy Herr

  Will Larry's new cat be a blessing…or a curse?

  The popular superstition says that you will have terrible luck if a black cat crosses your path. But for me, that wasn’t the case. What brought about my
downfall was a calico.

  It began late on a Monday evening. Earlier that afternoon, my wife of twelve years had stormed out the door, carrying a hastily packed suitcase, screaming at me for not listening to her…or something.

  That night, I found myself sitting alone in my ragged recliner, staring blankly at the television, tuned to some program about dysfunctional marriages. In my left hand was an empty glass. In my right hand, I held an almost empty bottle of whiskey. I decided to bypass the frivolity of mixing it with cola this time and simply get straight to the point.

  I had just finished the last of the bottle when I heard the distinct, “Mew!” come from the front porch. I rolled my eyes and ignored the call, desperately attempting to extract just one more drop from the dry bottle. “Darn neighbor cats,” I thought. “Probably that stupid tomcat. I should go out there and show it the underside of my boot.”

  The mewing graduated steadily to loud, plaintive meowing, and I became convinced the cat was not about to leave anytime soon. I heaved a sigh as I pushed my body up out of the armchair, then trudged to the door, determined to put an end to the racket one way or another. I flung open the door, my foot at the ready, but I paused in mid-kick.

  Sitting on the doormat, looking up at me, was not the mangy old tomcat that constantly yowled outside my bedroom window, always looking for another cat in heat. Instead, I looked down to see a beautiful little calico cat. The brown and black splotches contrasted brilliantly against her snow-white backdrop of fur. What stopped me cold, however, was her piercing gaze. She stared knowingly at me, looking deep into me, with bright, emerald green eyes. I didn’t know what else to do, so I stepped lamely to the side, holding the door open as the cat walked casually inside the house.

  The calico followed me into the kitchen and jumped onto the table, watching me expectantly. “You hungry, girl?” I asked. “Sorry, I don’t have much in the way of cat food around here, but, wait… Francine did always take a liking to tuna. Maybe I can find some of her stockpile in the pantry.”

  I dug through the shelves and finally came up with one dusty, slightly dented can. I used the handheld can opener, and then dumped its contents into a dish. The cat stared at me, blinked once slowly, and then licked her lips in thanks before diving head first into the bowl and devouring the food. I watched her eat, still somehow mesmerized.

  When she finished, making sure to leave a few morsels of food behind so as not to appear desperate and pathetic—as proud cats are so prone to do—she jumped off the table and sauntered into the living room, with me following. I lowered myself back down into my recliner, while she curled up neatly on the couch, her eyes on the television. I wasn’t all that invested in the TV program anyway, so I switched it over to the nature channel so she could marvel at her brethren.

  Looking at her sitting comfortably on the couch, I couldn’t help but laugh, in spite of the earlier events of the day. Francine had always wanted a cat, sometimes even begged me for one, but I wasn’t interested. “It would give me someone to talk to, someone to listen to me when you’re too busy watching your sports,” she would plead.

  “Francine,” I would tell her, “if I wanted to invite something into my home that pukes up hairballs and poops in a box, we might as well have your mother move in!”

  With that, she would usually curl her lip in a disgusted look, give a haughty sniff, then turn on her heel and storm from the room.

  “Look at that!” I said to myself from the recliner. “It took Francine leaving for me to finally give her what she wanted. If she could see this now, she would have a fit!” Then I was suddenly struck with a thought. “That’s it! That’s what I’ll call you. New Francine! That’s a nice bit of karma for that broad. I like getting the last laugh!”

  On that thought, I chuckled again and leaned back in the chair. New Francine slept soundly on the couch. Lulled by the soothing voice of the documentary narrator, I soon fell into a deep sleep myself.

  o0o

  The sun made its way through the blinds at 7:30 the next morning and shone directly into my eyes. I woke up groggily, wiping the drool off my chin and shoulder, and stood slowly, stretching off the stiffness from a night spent sleeping in a chair. My throat felt like sandpaper, and my stomach was gurgling sickly from the hangover that was only just starting to rear its ugly head. I knew I needed something in my system to stave off the worst of its effects, so I trudged into the kitchen to start the coffeepot and pop in a couple of pieces of toast.

  While I waited for the toaster to release my breakfast, I heard a faint and unusual sound from below. Wap, wap, wap, wap. I looked down in surprise, and then smiled when I discovered the source of the noise. The little calico cat had followed me into the kitchen and discovered the twist-tie from the bread bag, which she was now batting enthusiastically around the floor.

  “You like twist-ties, huh?” I said to her. “Here, how about this?”

  I pulled open the nearby junk drawer and grabbed a fistful of the twist-ties that Francine liked to collect for God-only-knew what reason. I held my hand in the air above the little cat and opened my fist, letting the small bands float down in a rainbow of colors around her, much to her obvious delight. New Francine went crazy, batting at everything that moved and hopping in a circle, determined to hit all of them.

  “It’s not like Francine’s going to be here to yell at me for not using twist-ties anymore! Might as well get some use out of those ridiculous things,” I said to myself as I spun the newly opened bread and placed it on the counter, tucking the open end at the bottom.

  The next two days passed without much incident. New Francine and I were getting used to each other, learning the boundaries and setting up our own routine. I actually managed to scavenge a few more cans of tuna, which meant I didn’t have to leave the house to go to the store for a while, and that made me happy.

  Early that Thursday afternoon, I was sitting in the recliner with New Francine on my lap when the doorbell rang. I groaned as I pulled myself to a standing position, New Francine sliding gracefully to the floor. I continued to grumble to myself as I made my way to the front of the house and flung open the door. “What do you want?” I snarled.

  “Hi, Daddy!” cried the beautiful nineteen-year-old blonde as she threw herself into my arms and planted a kiss onto my cheek. She pulled back quickly in disgust. “Ugh, Dad, gross! Toothbrushes. Ever heard of them? They’re not expensive.”

  I chuckled with astonishment and joy, ignoring the insult. “Candice! What are you doing here?”

  Candice pushed past me into the living room. “Aunt Charlotte called. She said Francine left and you were having a rough time. I’m on Spring Break now, and I had some spare time, so I thought I would come spend a few days with you and see how you’re doing! I have to leave on Sunday to get back to school, but Aunt Charlotte will be here then to stay with you. She can’t get here any earlier than that; her cat sitter isn’t available until then.”

  I rolled my eyes. The only thing that could dampen a spontaneous visit from my daughter was the thought of my nosy spinster sister invading my house and ordering me around. She had been hinting, and not very subtly, about wanting to move in here, since there wasn’t much room for her and her seventeen cats at her tiny rental home. “She’ll take any opportunity she can to weasel her way in here, won’t she?” I thought to myself as I watched Candice float around the kitchen, picking up discarded beer bottles and microwaveable dinner containers.

  “Oh, my God, Dad, when did you last clean this place? Here, why don’t you run upstairs and get a shower, and for the love of God brush your teeth! I’ll stay down here and tidy up. It’ll make you feel better!”

  Candice had a point, so I made my way up the stairs to the sound of her cleaning and dusting below. I turned on the bathroom faucet, and in a few seconds I was stepping into a steaming shower. She was right: I was already starting to feel better.

  Candice had always been a sore spot between Francine and me. The two of them neve
r quite got along. Francine, for some reason, did not like to think about the fact that she was the second wife, and Candice was a constant reminder of the life I lived before her. Francine always tried to create excuses for why Candice couldn’t visit, but she was my daughter, and God help the person who tries to stand in the way of me seeing my daughter.

  I stood under the water until I felt the first hint of cold rain down. I reluctantly turned the faucet off and stepped out of the tub, making my way over to the sink. I wiped a streak through the fog on the bathroom mirror and took a close look at my face, releasing a sigh at what I saw.

  Dark brown eyes, bloodshot from all the beer and whiskey I had been consuming as of late. Dark brown hair, with more gray at the temples than I remembered. Still no crows’ feet yet—thank God for small favors. But the dark stubble on my chin and the deep frown lines flanking my lips made me appear much older than my forty-two years.

  I grabbed at my toothpaste and toothbrush and scrubbed as hard as I could at the layer of grime coating my teeth. Once I got all I could, I spread foam across my face and carefully shaved with my dull razor. After patting my face dry with a towel and slapping on some aftershave, I took another look into the newly fog-free mirror. I offered up a tiny smile to see a small glimpse of the young man I once was, before Francine and I started going downhill. “You clean up rather nicely, old guy,” I whispered to myself.

  I finished drying off and pulled a t-shirt over my head, the first clean shirt I had worn since Monday. Stepping into a fresh pair of sweatpants, I padded barefoot down the stairs to the kitchen, where I found Candice sitting at the table, petting the calico.

  Candice turned as she heard my approach. “Look at you, Daddy! Looking good!” she squealed.