The Scariest Tail (A Wonder Cats Mystery Book 4)

by Harper Lin

  Knock. Knock.

  I looked at my passenger window and saw Blake staring right back at me. I never saw him smile, but I swear he had a devious glint in his eye that made it clear he was enjoying my embarrassment.

  Without asking, he opened the door and climbed in. I really hoped my car didn’t smell.

  For a second, I didn’t say anything as my mind raced for a plausible explanation for why I was in Prestwick a few houses down and around the corner from the Roys’ house. I got lost? I was in the neighborhood?

  “Funny seeing you here,” Blake said.

  “Yeah, well, I felt bad.” It wasn’t a complete lie. I did feel bad for Lisa Roy. How did a person make that phone call to her parents or to his parents and tell them what had happened? How did she put into words that the person she loved with all her heart was in such a dark, lonely place that he took his own life? And worse than that, how did she admit she hadn’t seen it coming?

  There wasn’t a person alive who wouldn’t somehow find a way to blame herself for this kind of tragedy.

  Lisa Roy would be permanently crippled from then on, and no doctor, not even Bea, would be able to fix it. That kind of injury never healed.

  I felt tears sting my eyes, and as I looked at Blake, my cheeks turned red. I rolled my eyes as if to say I knew my excuse sounded corny, but for a second, I saw compassion in his eyes.

  Clearing my throat, I looked back at the Roy house. “So, what are you doing here? Follow-up questions?” I asked, mentally pulling myself together.

  Blake looked at the house through the windshield for a moment. “Sort of. I had a gut feeling that I should stop by and just observe.” He looked back at me. “I didn’t think I’d have a partner to pass the time.”

  Okay, yes, I felt a little jitter in my stomach when he said that, and it was impossible to stop the corners of my lips from curling up at the edges.

  To keep it light, I told Blake that Jake was a bit under the weather, careful not to tell him that his partner had fallen into the house after nearly having his head torn apart from the inside out.

  He looked worried. “Maybe I should check up on him. I’ll follow you to your aunt’s house.”

  “Oh, no.” I said, waving my hands in front of me. “It was probably something he ate. My taco salad or something.” I chuckled nervously. “Bea will take good care of him.”

  “Yeah, well, all the same, I think—”

  Before Blake could finish his sentence, a strange truck pulled into the Roy driveway. It was an old, rusty blue pickup that belonged in the neighborhood about as much as my Dodge Neon. And when the man hopped out of the cab, he didn’t act as if he were a concerned member of the family. He began marching toward the front door as if he were heading off to war.

  But before he could make it to the middle of the driveway, the front door opened. An older man in his late fifties, wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, stood there holding a shotgun. He didn’t aim it or even cock it, but he just stood there.

  “Oh my gosh,” I whispered.

  Blake and I sat there frozen just like the man in the driveway had frozen.

  “I just want to talk to Lisa!” the man shouted. His blond hair was messy, and he was wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans.

  “She’s got nothing to say to you!” the older man shouted back. “Now you just get in your car and get out of here!”

  The blond man hesitated for a moment. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Blake was slowly reaching for the door handle with one hand and his sidearm with the other.

  Thankfully, the man in the driveway thought better of whatever it was he’d been planning. He took two steps backward then turned and got back into his truck. With a loud rev of his engine and squealing of his tires, the man peeled out of the Roys’ driveway and headed in our direction.

  Both Blake and I immediately ducked down in our seats, our faces nearly colliding as we hovered over the gearshift between the seats.

  I held my breath, sure I smelled like stale coffee. I looked at Blake, who at first was looking over my head and out the window. His eyes were a really pretty brown that looked like carved wood. Not hard but… deep. But when they met mine, I quickly looked away as though I were a spazzy teenager. Smooth, Cath. Real smooth.

  Finally, those few seconds, which seemed more like ten uncomfortable minutes, passed by along with the noisy truck, and Blake and I both sat up.

  “Well, what the heck was that all about?” I asked. I got no answer.

  Blake pulled his notebook from his pocket and began to scribble some things down.

  “What are you writing?”

  Still no reply.

  “Let me guess. Official police business, ma’am. Nothing to see here,” I said in as deep and as serious a voice as I could muster.

  Surprisingly, Blake smirked. “Make and model of the car, license plate number, and description of the driver.” His voice had dropped a level lower. I guess that was his serious detective voice.

  I nodded. Looking out the front windshield, I saw the front door of the Roy home was again closed tight. The entire street was quiet once more.

  “I’m going to run this through the criminal database and see if we have any information on our truck-driving friend.” Blake folded his notebook up and tucked it back into his inside jacket pocket. “Perhaps Mrs. Roy left out a few details.”

  I didn’t say anything as Blake climbed out of my car. But I wondered what he would have thought of me if I’d told him the truth about my life. People kept secrets for all kinds of reasons, and not all of them were sinister. Sometimes a lie by omission was just easier.

  Before shutting the door, he leaned back inside. “Tell Jake I’ll call him and fill him in on what I find.” Without waiting for a response, he slammed the door shut and got into his own car. Turning over the engine, he slowly and quietly drove away in the same direction the truck had gone.

  “Okay, Mr. Bossy Britches,” I mumbled. I went in the opposite direction, heading back the way I came, and thankfully I only got turned around one time on the way out of Prestwick. It seemed as if it were a lot easier to get out of that neighborhood than it was to get in.

  What the Cat Dragged In

  I swung by the Brew-Ha-Ha. Kevin was already there, and everything looked normal, so I quickly made my way back to Aunt Astrid’s house.

  When I stepped in the door, I smelled strong black coffee and heard Bea and her mom chatting away in the kitchen. Before I could ask what they were talking about, I heard Jake’s voice. He sounded tired but otherwise like himself.

  I smiled at them as I walked into the kitchen. “Boy, you sure are a drama queen,” I teased. Jake was sitting on the davenport sofa in front of the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. I walked over to him and leaned in to ruffle his hair, which was already a mess. His eyes looked a little dark underneath, but they twinkled, and his smile was genuine.

  Both Marshmallow and Peanut Butter were perched on each armrest as if they were furry guardians of the temple.

  “Yeah?” Jake asked. “Bea told me you were at home making homemade chicken soup, so I thought I better get my butt out of bed quick.”

  I clicked my tongue and put my hands on my hips, looking Jake up and down. “Really? You’re obviously not that sick.”

  Jake laughed and rubbed his head.

  I went to the counter and poured myself a cup of coffee while Aunt Astrid cut me a slice of thick white bread she had baked herself. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was, and that made me remember someone else who might have been hungry too.

  “Treacle!” I shouted in my head. No sooner had I called to him than I heard a scratching at the door.

  “Well, look who the cat dragged in,” I said as the pitch-black feline snaked his way inside the house. He rubbed his sides along the door in order to remind other alley cats that this house was indeed his, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of that joke?” he asked me as if he we
re an annoyed teenager.

  I looked into his bright-green eyes. “No.”

  He let out a terse meow as if he’d ended the conversation once and for all. With slow steps, he walked over to where Jake was sitting and sat back on his haunches. With his tail whipping back and forth, he measured the distance from the floor to the headrest. Then Treacle leapt elegantly and silently onto the chair and took his spot behind Jake’s head.

  With a quick show of affection, Treacle rubbed Jake’s head with his own, and his purring machine was going at full speed.

  There was so much good energy in the house with the entire family together that I believed Jake would find he had healed more quickly than ever before.

  “So, seriously, Jake. How are you feeling?” I set my coffee cup down on a stack of books so I could remove another stack on the end of the bench at the long kitchen table.

  “I feel like I drank too much but didn’t taste a drop.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’ll be ready to go back to wo—”

  “Go back to where?” Bea interrupted. “Back to bed? Yes, you’ll be ready to go back to bed in just a little while.”

  “Blake and I are partners, and partners show up for work.”

  “Partners suffering from mysterious illnesses are no good to anyone,” Bea added.

  Jake shrugged. I thought he just wanted someone to give him permission to stay home, and Bea was happy to oblige.

  “Truthfully,” he started to speak. His eyes popped up from the coffee cup in his hands that he had been looking at. “I’m glad all of you are here. All of you,” he said again, scratching Peanut Butter behind the ears. “There is something I need to tell you.”

  My eyes jumped from Bea to my aunt, back to Bea again, and then to Jake.

  “Last week”—he started to rub the back of his neck as if he were a teenager getting ready to tell his dad he’d put a dent in the station wagon—“Samberg and I were wrapping up a chain of B&Es we had been investigating. Some of the file information was at Blake’s place, so we stopped there. He was going to check on Frank, you know, take him for a walk, make sure he had water, and since I hadn’t seen the dog, I went along with him.” He put his hand down and absently rubbed Marshmallow. It was as though his hands were jittery and needed something to do, or else he might not have been able to get the story out.

  “Frank is a really nice dog. A real nice dog. Yeah.” Jake nodded. “Blake offered me a beer, and we were just chewing the fat about the case and talking shop when suddenly Frank started acting weird. He started to bark at the front door. And growl. It was a deep-down-from-the-gut kind of growl too, the kind that meant he wasn’t playing. And he was standing at the door while he did it.”

  Jake shifted in the davenport, looking like a scared boy.

  “Was the door open?” I asked, wondering if Frank was responding to something he had seen outside.

  “No. It was shut tight and dead-bolted. And there is a screen door, and it was locked. Blake isn’t the kind of guy who leaves a door unlocked. Ever. As a city cop, he’s had some close brushes with some unsavory characters. If they know where you live, they’ll look for any opening, right? That’s how the bad guys operate.”

  I had never heard Jake talk like that. Something had scared him.

  “So, Blake kept apologizing for the dog, saying he didn’t know what was the matter, and finally decided to take him into the back bedroom. As soon as Blake left the room, I heard a knock at the door.”

  Jake had started to sweat. “I got up and unlocked the door, but when I looked out, I didn’t immediately see anyone. It was the voice that got my attention. A kid’s voice. It said, ‘We need to use your phone.’”

  A Hiss

  Jake licked his lips as if he had just lost all the saliva in his mouth.

  I stood up and quickly got him a bottle of water from the fridge. I twisted off the cap and gave it to him.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled without looking at me.

  I felt a cold draft. It might have been my imagination. It might have been exactly that, a cold draft. But just in case it was something else, I went and stood close to my aunt. I knew I wasn’t a child anymore, but I was also one of the few adults in the world who had not just heard the things that go bump in the night but had seen them too. When my gut told me to move, I moved.

  Jake pressed his lips together then reluctantly spoke again. “I looked down and saw two kids standing at the door. Just two little kids who couldn’t have been more than ten years old, standing outside the screen door. A boy and girl. They had on these weird clothes, as if they were all the same color. Like I was looking at a black-and-white movie. Only they weren’t in a movie; they were right in front of me. And they had their heads down as though they were looking at something on the ground or were ready to be scolded. I don’t know.”

  “They wanted to use the phone?” Aunt Astrid asked.

  “That’s what they said, but I don’t really believe that was what they wanted. I think they wanted to just get inside the house.”

  “Why would you think that?” Bea asked. “Why would you think these little kids would just want to get inside?” The idea of sinister children was especially bothersome to Bea, I could tell. Her biological clock was ticking, and the idea that something so innocent could be terrifying would cause fear in her heart.

  “Just call it a gut feeling,” Jake said. “They teach us on the force to always go with that gut feeling. They told us it would save our lives more than our sidearm. If we listen to our gut, we won’t have to use a sidearm. Makes sense, right? I think I’ve only pulled my piece from my holster, what, three times? If that.” He spoke as if he didn’t really want to continue. It was as if he had to relay some very bad news and wished he could just skip it.

  “‘We need to use the phone. We need to call our mom.’ That was what they said. So I tried to reason that maybe they knew Blake and knew he was a detective and thought this was a safe place to ask for help. But no matter how I tried to convince myself that they were normal children, something inside me was saying shut the door.”

  Jake took another sip of water before continuing. “So, I reached in my pocket and took out my phone, telling them to give me their number, and when I looked at them…”

  “Jake?” Bea waited for him to answer. It was as if he had suddenly changed his mind and didn’t want to talk. “Jake, what is it?”

  He laughed, shaking his head as if he had already given up on the idea that we would believe him and figured he had to be wrong about something or everything.

  But then I saw the tear slip down his cheek from the corner of his eye. I had seen some scary things in my life. Being a witch meant sometimes I had to seek out those scary things. But if I lived to be one hundred years old, I would never see anything as scary as this grown man trembling while he told us a story he was convinced we wouldn’t believe. Something had not just scared him but intentionally set out to terrify him.

  “The dog was going crazy,” he said. “I looked back to see if Blake was there. All I wanted was to see him down the hall or something. I just didn’t want to be alone with these kids at the door. But Blake was still in the back of the house with Frank, who was still barking his head off.”

  He took another deep breath and looked at Bea. There was so much love there. And it seemed to me that Jake was not just looking to her for comfort, but that he needed some real help.

  After all the years on the Wonder Falls Police Department, after all of his studies and training, nothing had prepared him for this. Right then, Bea was his only defense.

  “When I turned back around, they were right at the screen door, looking up at me. They were staring at me. Their eyes were completely black.”

  “I knew it,” I hissed.

  “Jake, why didn’t you say anything sooner?” Bea knelt down in front of him and held his hands.

  He pulled one hand away quickly, wiping his eyes and smiling just a little. “Well, it isn’t like forgetting to pay the gas b
ill or backing into a pole with the car. It’s a bit more out there than what we usually talk about.”

  “Jake.” Aunt Astrid stood up. Her face was serious. “Did they touch you?”

  He shook his head hard. “Touch me? Are you crazy?”

  “What did you do then?” I asked. I wanted to hear that Jake had told them in no uncertain terms that they should get the hell off the porch and never show their ugly faces again or they would risk a night in the tank. I wanted to hear a string of obscenities directed toward these little monsters that would scare them back to whatever dimension they had come from. But I didn’t. What I heard made me tremble.

  “They told me again to let them in. Only, it wasn’t like regular voices. It was like a hiss. And it wasn’t like we’re talking now. It was inside my head.”

  I gasped.

  Jake clenched and unclenched his fists. “And you know what the worst part was?”

  “It gets worse? How can that be?” I asked, my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open.

  “I didn’t even realize that my hand was reaching for the latch to open the door. I was completely oblivious to it. It was like I was being pulled like a puppet.”

  “Oh, Jake. That’s just horrible,” Bea said. I could hear in her voice the compassion for Jake, but underneath that, there was an unmistakable rage. Something had messed with her man. I wasn’t sure who I was more worried for, Jake or those things once Bea got a hold of them.

  “If I had opened that door even a hair, those things would have gotten in. Not just inside Blake’s house but… inside my head.” Then he started to laugh out loud. “I had my phone in my hand. I swear I was about to dial 9-1-1. How would that have looked? Me calling 9-1-1 while I’m at the house of my police partner?”

  I couldn’t help it. That made me laugh out loud.

  “But even though I was going to dial 9-1-1, my hand was shaking so bad, the numbers were all a blur. And those kids just leaned in closer to the screen, staring up at me, quietly whispering for me to let them in.” Jake took both of Bea’s hands in his and held them tightly. “I just thought of you, Bea. All that came to mind was your pretty face. Then I slammed the door shut. You know how it feels when you pull out a splinter or rip off a Band-Aid really fast? It hurts but feels good once it’s done, right? That was how I felt. Like a thick splinter had been pulled from somewhere.”