Burning September

by Melissa Simonson

  Kyle gave me a static snort of derision. “Who cares if she’s pretty? Karen Stone doesn’t cover crime very often, and when she does, it’s typically because there’s compelling evidence to support the suspect being unjustly accused. The last case she covered was two years ago, the Sandra O’Reilly investigation.”

  “Who?”

  “Mother of three, a housewife, accused of murder. Husband in the Air Force. She’d been arrested for poisoning him with arsenic. Did a few years in prison before her attorney had the labs re-run. There’d been contamination; it turned out she didn’t do it. The verdict was appealed; the judge called it an egregious error unlike anything he’d ever seen. She could probably sue the state for damages now. Sandra O’Reilly’s a civil attorney’s wet dream.”

  “And Karen Stone wants to talk to me?” I wasn’t the center of this murder trial galaxy. That was Caroline, trussed up in her scrubs for the criminally insane, locked away at Breakthrough. She’d make for a more sympathetic picture with her (phony) sad, smart eyes, slight shoulders, pointed elbows, knobby knees that she drew into her chest while she sat on that couch in the lobby. Surely Karen Stone could weasel her way in for an interview.

  “Clearly.” His chair creaked. Probably leaning back, staring up at the ceiling, figuring out how to celebrate his victory that evening. “This is great news. Damn, I’m good. Aren’t you thrilled you got me instead of a public defender?”

  I smiled, but kept it from being obvious in my voice. “Would a public defender have as huge an ego?”

  “It’s well deserved, if you ask me. Not that I’m discounting your efforts. You get a lot of the credit too, with your press conference performance.”

  “How kind of you.”

  “Let me off the phone, I’m going to call her people. I’ll get back to you when I can.”

  ***

  I watched Karen Stone videos on YouTube that night, hoping to get a better idea of who she was. I saw her eviscerate two probably-guilty alternative murder suspects in cases of which someone else had already been convicted, chop a police department chief down to size, and give a tongue lashing to a reluctant witness who had let an innocent man rot in jail for ten years before finally coming forward. Throughout every clip, she was calm and poised, like she had liquid Valium for blood, her voice crisp and clear.

  I shut my laptop, knowing I’d sound like a consummate doofus alongside Karen Stone, my frequent umms and stammering, the way my tongue sometimes felt too large for my mouth.

  I had an eleven a.m. appointment the day after next.

  ***

  An envelope had been jammed against my front door when I got home from school, juggling my keys and a travel mug of coffee. I let it fall to the floor as I pushed inside, unloading my backpack, dropping my keys in the dish by the door. It still felt odd being home so early, not having to take the bus and count out exact change for the fare.

  I stooped to pick up the lumpy envelope. It jingled as I slit the tab with my index finger, and I wondered what new surprise Caroline had sent. She hadn’t mentioned anything, and it was unlike her not to claim credit.

  I blinked a few times, not comprehending the presence of the item that fell out. It didn’t make sense that Nicholas’s collar, the one I’d made him, the one with a nazar dangling from it, would be inside. Had it fallen off? Was this some good Samaritan returning it?

  Closing my fingers around the collar, I called for Nicholas. It hadn’t taken him long to learn his name, and while he didn’t always come running, he usually answered with a lazy meow, a pigeon-like trill, at least some rustling to prove he was near.

  But there was nothing.

  I looked in his usual hiding spots. The top of the fridge, behind a cabinet in the entertainment center, underneath beds, but he wasn’t anywhere. I let him outside whenever he wanted, but he’d always come back each night. He wasn’t stupid; he knew where the regular meals came from, and I distinctly remembered ushering him inside the previous evening. He’d been there, right on the couch beside me watching TV, wearing an expression of bored curiosity.

  After a slower, methodical search of the condo, I could only conclude he was missing. Something cold and hard as iron gripped my heart. Another one of Caroline’s predictions had come true. It wasn’t a tomato to the face, but I would have preferred that.

  A horror unlike any I’d ever experienced, save for Caroline’s arrest, swept cold fingers of fear through my hair. My veins must have splintered, the way my blood turned to ice.

  I called Kyle as I made a more frantic search, expanding the perimeter to outside the confines of the condo.

  “He’s gone,” I said over Kyle’s hello. “Nicholas is gone, and someone put his collar in an envelope and stuck it in the doorjamb. I can’t find him. You know how vocal he is, he’d hear me calling and play Marco Polo with me—”

  “Wait, wait. Slow down. What happened?”

  “Caroline’s right, as fucking usual.” A note of hysteria wove around my tone like a boa constrictor. “She told me to be careful after the press conference, that something bad might happen, and it has. It so has. I can’t find him anywhere.”

  “You think someone took the cat?”

  “He wouldn’t have left on his own, I make sure I only give him the beef Friskies he likes now, so he’d have no reason to leave. He couldn’t have taken off his collar. I made sure he couldn’t.”

  “Calm down. I’m sure he’s fine. I can reschedule a meeting if you want me to—”

  “I want you to.”

  “Okay. Give me a half hour.”

  ***

  He’d only needed twenty-two minutes of the quoted half hour. His Audi pulled up the curb, and I rose to greet him, abandoning the plate and knife I’d been banging together while I waited for Kyle’s arrival. A few neighbors had shot me alarmed looks as I sat on my stoop, rapping the knife on the plate, but Nicholas knew what it sounded like when I busted open his can of food. Anytime he heard that noise, he came running.

  I was at his car just as he got out.

  “No sign of him?” He looked at me from over the hood.

  “No.”

  He shrugged out of his suit jacket and tossed it on the passenger’s seat. “Let’s go inside. Show me that envelope.”

  I led the way through my open front door. Kyle followed and examined the envelope, turning it over in his hand, looking inside the flap.

  “Just the collar inside? No note?”

  I shook my head. “Should I call the police?”

  “And tell them what?” He flapped the envelope. “Someone found the collar your cat lost and returned it to you? That’s not a crime.”

  “That’s not what happened.” I whipped it out of his hand and let it flutter to the floor. “I know he had it on last night. I saw him this morning, and he was wearing it. There’s no way for him to get outside unless I let him, and I didn’t when I left for school. He was here, inside. Wearing the collar.”

  “I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m saying you can’t complain to the police about an envelope with a collar. They’d look at you like you’re crazy. There’s no threatening note, no evidence of anything.” He sighed, eyes wandering around the living room. “You’re sure he couldn’t get it off?” He caught sight of my murderous glare and held up a hand to quell my rising objections. “Kat, he’s a stray. It’s possible he left on his own. Cats are like Houdini. They can wriggle into and out of the smallest places. A friend of mine had a cat that ate through at least two collars a month, could ring a doorbell and open doors with his paws.”

  “I know he was here when I left this morning. How do you propose he got out, he used Jedi force? I don’t leave the door unlocked, windows open, nothing like that.”

  “I don’t know.” He headed through to the kitchen, toward the sliding glass door that led to the back garden. “You tried calling him?” he asked, stepping into the yard.

  “Ever since I got home an hour ago.” I watched his gaze thread thr
ough flowers, moldering picket fences, shrubs that rustled in the light breeze but didn’t produce my cat. “Caroline told me to be careful. That something might happen because of the press conference. She was right.” I wrung my hands together so hard the knuckles popped.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here. We’re not exactly sure what happened.” He threw the screen into place. “Keep this open so you can hear him, in case he comes back.”

  I nodded mutely, my mind conjuring horrible Technicolor images of all the horrible things that could have happened, or were currently happening, to my poor little cat. He was still a baby, he couldn’t protect himself. That was my job.

  “Are you crying?”

  I slapped at my eyes. My fingers were wet when I withdrew them. “I guess.” I felt bad when I found him wearing an alarmed expression. I’d always thought that was a myth, men hating to see women cry.

  He reached out like I was some feral jungle cat with a thorn in the paw. Hesitant and leery, fingers slightly curling into his palm, lest I bite them off.

  What the hell is he doing, I wondered, but I didn’t have to wonder for long, because the part of my brain that was Caroline said he wants to hug you, dumbass.

  It awkward at first, the semi-hug that turned into a real one, and when I’d started to get used to it, he’d broken away.

  “It’ll be okay. I can walk around with you for a bit, help you look for him. There’s a meeting I can’t miss, but when I’m done for the day, I can come back.”

  “Do you think he’ll come home?”

  He waffled with what to say, I could tell, I could read his face like newspaper. He didn’t want to let me down, but he didn’t want to give false hope. A typical lawyer. No promises, no predictions. Only a vague quote about odds and a four-hundred-dollar price tag.

  Was he charging Professor Rasmussen for all the times he saw me?

  His heavy hand squeezed my shoulder. “I don’t know. I hope so. But he’s so cute, I don’t think he’ll be on the streets for long. If he doesn’t come back, I’d bet some family took him in. Strays hang out in the same places, they have their rounds to make, suckers to beg food from. He’ll be fine.”

  I knew he was sugarcoating, but I savored it like hard candy.

  ***

  Kyle came back at seven that evening, walked through my open front door like he owned the place, but I didn’t mind. I like that he was comfortable enough around me to do so.

  He didn’t have to ask if Nicholas had graced me with his presence, the look on my face said it all. He just settled in for a long stay, rolling up his sleeves next to me on the couch.

  I bit into my thumbnail, staring at the blue veins on the insides of his elbows. “Do you ever wear normal clothes? T-shirts, jeans?”

  “When I haven’t been working, yes. Do you ever wear fancy clothes?”

  “Never.”

  “Never? Not even at prom?”

  “I didn’t go to prom. Caroline told me it was lame anyway, but I think she only said that because nobody asked me.” I chewed on the side of my tongue, jabbing my forehead with a finger to stave off the beginnings of a headache. “We went to the beach instead, sat on a lifeguard tower so the cops wouldn’t see us and kick us out. We saw a bunch of people, marine biologists I guess, doing something to a whale. They had a boat, a ton of netting. Looked like they were trying to help it back into deeper waters. I felt so bad for him. He didn’t know what the hell they were doing to him.” The ship had been far off, but not so far that I couldn’t hear the whale’s bowel-shaking groans. “I still wonder what happened to it sometimes.”

  “They saved him, I bet. He went off to sire a hundred more whales, eat barrels of shrimp.”

  “Is that what whales eat?”

  “I don’t know. Just a guess.”

  “Do you really care that much about Nicholas, or are you just trying to inflate your billable hours?”

  “You think I’m on the clock right now?”

  I shrugged, staring at that photo of me above the fireplace, wishing I knew what I’d been thinking when Caroline took the picture.

  “Well, I’m not. I’ve never sent off a bill for spending time with you.” He sounded so wounded, I peeled my gaze off Burning September. “And I like Nicholas, want him found as much as you do.”

  I pressed my lips together for a moment, avoiding his eyes. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You don’t have to thank me.”

  “Well I’m thanking you anyway.”

  We stayed like that for a while until he made a wildly transparent attempt to get my mind off my cat, coaxing me into a tarot lesson. What do wands mean, what the hell is a pentacle, are trump cards like aces in a normal deck? What’s your favorite card, which one do you hate, which one have you drawn most often? Why do you do it, is it a real hobby, or is it just to pass time? Has anything ever come true from your readings, why yes and no questions, do the people at the fair have to supply the question for you?

  “When’s your birthday?” I asked, having covered all of his questions and then some.

  “June 14th.”

  My mind drifted back to that long-ago day when I first met him, when I’d drawn the King of Swords and he’d magically appeared. If I were an old biddy at the fair, I may have been taken aback by the coincidence and lauded Caroline with praise and a huge tip. “Gemini. You’re a sword. All air signs are swords. I’m a Libra, so sword is my suit, too.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Swords are analytical, intelligent. They’re rational, rely more on logic than feelings.”

  “But I’m a Gemini. I’m two-faced. Does that make me a paradox?”

  “I think it just makes you a pain in the ass.”

  ***

  It was nearing midnight when I finally locked my arms above my head, arching my back in a stretch, and let out something between a gasp of surprise and a shriek of terror.

  “Oh my God,” I said between my fingers, having clapped a hand to my mouth. “He’s back!”

  Nicholas sat in the foyer, velvet nose shining in the dimmed lights, jade eyes blinking in that bored way which was his custom. He must have waltzed through the threshold of the door when I was busy explaining the tarot suits.

  “Jesus.” Kyle laughed, getting to his feet. “Hey, is that a collar?”

  I took two long strides, scooped Nicholas into my arms. It was a collar, the same black as he was, matte against glossy fur. The only reason it was even noticeable was because of the yellow charm hanging from it. A winky face emoticon, so cheerful and bright, but when I flipped it over, I felt anything but relief.

  31B, Canal Street had been inscribed on the back. My address.

  Kyle moved in closer to read it. “Does anyone know you’ve got a cat?”

  “No.” I clutched Nicholas tighter to my chest. “I don’t even really talk to the neighbors. We’re not friendly.”

  “Not friendly, like they’re enemies?”

  “Not friendly, like, I would never ask them if I could borrow a cup of sugar. But we’re not rude to each other, either. We’ll say hello if we pass them on the sidewalk, but I don’t even know their names.” Nicholas struggled in my arms, but I wouldn’t let him go. “Someone picked him up, took off his collar, and had him long enough to put this new one on him. I mean, right? That’s what had to have happened?”

  He opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything for several seconds until finally, he shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea what happened.”

  I thrust Nicholas into his arms. “Then you have to keep him. He can’t stay here. I can’t have him live here after this.”

  He juggled the cat’s pedaling paws, shifting him over his shoulder. “Don’t you think you might be overreacting—”

  “No. Can’t you please take him? Just for a little while?”

  “Aren’t you more worried about yourself, if you think someone bent on doing you harm knows where you live?”

  I hadn’t c
onsidered that, but it didn’t make a difference. I had deadbolts and chains, a schedule that kept me out of the house for long stretches, kitchen knives I could wield. I stood a chance; a kitten didn’t.

  “I’m not worried about myself. Look, I don’t have anyone else who could babysit him for me. I wouldn’t ask you if I did. It won’t be forever, he’s a good boy, he never sprays anywhere or ruins furniture. I can give you his laser light, all the cat food, the litter—”

  “I’m not saying no.” He stroked Nicholas’s spine, earning himself a lick of approval. “Of course I’ll take him. But if it’s safety you’re concerned with, I think your own might top the list.”

  Fuck that, I thought, eyes narrowing as I stared through the open window. Fear wasn’t an honored visitor, I wouldn’t make up the guest bedroom, make sure it had clean towels and soft sheets. I wouldn’t welcome it under my skin, give it a home in my brain, let it fester and feed off the panic in my blood. Caroline wouldn’t. Caroline would stay up late at night, wait in the dark for the doorknob to rattle with a knife in her hand and murderous intentions.

  ***

  I helped Kyle load the cat necessities into his car, giving a constant stream of instructions, the most important one being don’t let Nicholas outside for any reason. He listened mutely, though I knew he had his own list of precautions.

  He shut the passenger’s side door, turning to look at me, nodding in the appropriate places, until I fell silent.

  “Don’t open the door for anyone.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Keep it locked, keep the windows locked, too. Blinds drawn at all times. Might not be a bad idea to keep the TV on at night, let people think you’re awake. Call if you need anything, and if you see anything suspicious, you need to make a note of it. Make sure you keep a log, and write down this cat business, too. If anything more happens, we’ll need to notify the police.”