How to Catch a Cat

by Rebecca M. Hale

  “What do you think, Isabella?”

  As a rule, Ayala generally didn’t like cats. He certainly didn’t spend a lot of time talking to them.

  He was more of a bird person.

  The previous captain of the San Carlos had left behind a parrot in his stateroom. Ayala had been happy to let the bird stay on board. He named him Petey and warned the chef’s niece that her felines would be evicted from the ship if they harmed his parrot.

  The feline propensity for parrot-eating wasn’t Ayala’s only complaint about the furry creatures. He also blamed cats for his constant allergies.

  Squinting toward the bow, he scowled at Rupert’s fluffy orange and white lump, snoozing in the sun.

  “Flea-bitten freeloader.”

  But despite all this feline animosity, the captain made an exception for Isabella.

  After checking to make sure no one was looking, he reached over and stroked her orange-tipped ears. “Don’t you agree, Issy? There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  Isabella tilted her head, purring at the gentle rub.

  “Mrao.”

  —

  AYALA RETURNED HIS attention to the ocean and the rocky shoreline off the ship’s starboard side.

  He did have one concern about his new command: finding their intended destination.

  The captain wasn’t altogether convinced of the accuracy of the intel he’d received for the current mission. Gaspar Portola and his men had been in pretty bad shape by the time they arrived in Monterey after their disastrous land expedition. The enormous bay Portola had described sounded like the delusions of a madman.

  “Crazy fool,” Ayala muttered. If a bay that large existed off this coast, it would have been sighted long before now.

  He’d scoured every map he could get his hands on. The closest landmark was Drakes Bay by Point Reyes. Likely, that’s what Portola’s men had seen.

  “I think Gaspar has sent us on a wild-goose chase.”

  Isabella stared up at Ayala, her eyes the clear blue of the ocean. The expression on her tiny pixie face conveyed a level of confidence that far surpassed that of the captain.

  “Mrao.”

  —

  IF THIS RUN up the coast was a fool’s errand, Ayala didn’t much mind.

  It had been a good time to get away from Mexico City, he thought as Petey landed on his shoulder and began preening his feathers.

  Due to the nature of his employment, Ayala was often away from home for months at a time. During one of his recent extended absences, his wife, a glamorous opera singer, had started an affair with a young actor.

  The revelation was hardly a surprise to Ayala. He and his wife had been growing apart for several years.

  She had met up with him in San Blas right before the San Carlos departed. It was a last (but unenthusiastic) attempt at reconciliation. The unhappy couple had taken a walk in a local park to discuss the state of their relationship.

  The tense situation went from bad to worse when they happened upon an exotic lizard. Ayala plucked a berry from a nearby tree and offered it to the sharp-toothed creature. Instead of eating the fruit, the beast took off a chunk of the captain’s left big toe.

  After the blood, the screaming, and the partial amputation, Ayala and the opera singer decided to formally end their marriage.

  Being Catholic, divorce wasn’t an option, but he had readily agreed to an annulment. He had no desire to keep her tied to him—or to compete with the actor.

  With the marriage officially over, all Ayala wanted to do was escape it, to match a physical distance to the emotional one he’d already achieved.

  He stomped his foot in agitation, startling the parrot, who flew off chattering in affront.

  Ayala scowled. The foot injury was affecting his sea legs. He planted his left foot and, despite the pain, pressed down against the deck.

  That blasted woman had brought him nothing but bad luck.

  Chapter 8

  IN THE KITCHEN

  ONE LEVEL BELOW the main deck, the ship’s chef looked up at the ceiling, and frowned at an odd grinding sound that he’d been hearing ever since they left San Blas.

  Oscar, his niece, and her two cats had followed Captain Ayala over from his previous boat just days before the new one’s departure. It had been an abrupt and hastily planned transfer.

  He was still getting used to the cooking facilities in the galley of the San Carlos. The previous chef had left the place in complete disarray. Pots and pans had been strewn haphazardly across the floor. Many of the glasses and plates had been broken beyond use. The provisions were completely depleted.

  Oscar and his niece had spent every waking hour trying to restock the pantries and put things in order before the ship started its trip up the coast.

  It had been a scramble, but the work had paid off. The long narrow kitchen was now fully functional, a warm inviting room, comfortably dusted with flour and spatters of chicken grease.

  The same could be said for the chef working at the counter.

  Oscar wore a dingy gray apron strapped over his short rounded shoulders and tied across his plump middle. He bent over a wooden counter in front of a skinned and partially dismembered chicken, slicing off pieces and parts and tossing them into a round metal bowl.

  The ship’s captain had requested a special dinner that evening. Ayala anticipated that they would dock that night at their trip’s northern terminus, most likely Point Reyes. Instead of the staple of soupy gruel that was served for most onboard meals, the captain had asked the chef to prepare his signature dish, fried chicken.

  Oscar had picked up a dozen hens during a brief stop in Monterey the day before. Most of the birds would remain—alive—in the ship’s chicken coop as an ongoing source of eggs, but he had culled a few from the herd to sacrifice for the evening’s celebratory dinner.

  Glancing once more up at the ceiling, Oscar wiped his hands on a dish towel.

  “Where did we put the cleaver?” He pulled open a drawer and squinted inside. “Bah, I can’t find anything in this kitchen.”

  Oscar’s gruff exterior didn’t fool his niece, who sat on a nearby stool, reading a book. Without looking up from the page, she pointed at a cupboard halfway down the galley’s length.

  “You hung it on a rack, inside the third door down.”

  Grumbling, Oscar hobbled to the indicated cupboard and pulled it open.

  “Should never have agreed to leave the old ship,” he said, waving the cleaver in the air.

  The niece smiled to herself. Her uncle’s last kitchen had been meticulously organized—but in a cryptic categorization scheme known only to him. She had never been able to understand his bizarre sorting system.

  At least now she could locate all of the basic cooking tools.

  That is, until he started moving things around.

  —

  THE NIECE RESUMED her reading as Rupert wandered into the kitchen, the orange tip of his tail poked inquisitively into the air.

  He rubbed his head and shoulders against the niece’s shin, his stomach rumbling an inquiry about the night’s dinner.

  At the sight of the chicken operation laid out on the counter, he licked his lips with anticipation.

  Question answered.

  If fried chicken was on the menu, this cat was staying in the kitchen to supervise.

  Rupert gazed up at the heavy iron pots mounted to the wall behind the stove. These would be called into service later that evening when the ship reached its destination. Fried chicken needed calm waters for the final step of its preparation—Rupert knew this as an expert on the matter.

  Point Reyes or the protected bay, if in fact it existed, would be far more amenable to cooking than the open ocean.

  In the meantime, Oscar struggled to maintain his balance against the ship’s constant rolling while using the meat cleaver on the chicken remains. Every so often, a splash of salt water sprayed against the kitchen’s half-open window, evidence of the rocking waves. To furthe
r complicate matters, the chef’s hands were slick from the various juices that had oozed out of the meat.

  Sniffing loudly, Rupert left the niece’s stool and crept toward the kitchen counter. He might just need to take a peek at the carcass . . .

  Whack. The cleaver slammed down on the wooden surface.

  Thump. Another piece of meat landed in the bowl.

  Whiskers twitching, Rupert crouched on the floor beside Oscar’s feet. His back haunches tensed, preparing to jump up onto the counter for a closer inspection.

  The cat’s movements went unnoticed by the niece, who had reached a particularly gripping plot twist in her book.

  Out of the corner of one eye, Oscar spied the cat about to leap.

  “Scat!”

  The chef shifted his weight to block Rupert from invading his workspace, but the quick movement, combined with another steep roll from a passing wave, caused him to lose his grip on the knife.

  Rupert froze in place as the cleaver slipped out of Oscar’s fingers, flew up into the air, and tumbled to the ground—its blade landing inches away from the cat’s furry white paws.

  The niece gasped in horror. Oscar pursed his lips.

  “Out,” he commanded tersely. He pulled the cleaver from the floorboard and turned to the sink.

  “I don’t have any recipes for diced cat.”

  —

  LEAVING HER BOOK on the stool, the niece scooped up Rupert and carried him toward the kitchen’s exit.

  “That’s the second fright you’ve given me today,” she scolded, gently rubbing the soft crown on the top of his head.

  Rupert didn’t struggle to break from her grasp, but his gaze remained fixed on the kitchen counter.

  “One-track mind,” the niece said with a sigh. “Let’s go find Isabella.”

  The niece headed out of the galley and turned left on the main corridor that ran down the center of the ship’s interior. She’d last seen her other cat on deck, assisting Captain Ayala.

  As she walked toward the steps at the far end of the hallway, a voice called out from an open room opposite the kitchen.

  “Howdy ho, there, neighbor!”

  Rupert peeped out a protest at the niece’s instinctive squeeze of his stomach.

  She closed her eyes and muttered darkly, “Hello, Father Monty.”

  Chapter 9

  FROM THE CHAPEL

  FATHER VINCENT SANTA Maria Montgomery Carmichael strode briskly into the corridor and flagged down the niece.

  “Hello, there. Hello!”

  The curly haired priest had been yet another last-minute appointment in the scramble to fill the abandoned ship’s positions at San Blas.

  The last religious counselor to serve the San Carlos had reportedly left the church altogether following his departure from the ship.

  No one was quite sure where the Spanish navy had found Father Carmichael. His religious résumé was a bit of a mystery. Some thought he’d been pulled from one of the smaller vessels in the South Atlantic fleet. Others speculated that he’d been brought in from the Mexican countryside.

  On the following two points, however, everyone agreed: he didn’t appear to have much religious experience—and the five-word moniker was far too much of a mouthful for regular conversation.

  His name had quickly been shortened to Father Monty.

  —

  THE NEW PRIEST’S first order of business had been to set up a temporary chapel.

  The room that had originally been designed for that purpose had suffered extensive damage during the changeover in captain and crew. Repairs were scheduled to begin when the San Carlos returned to San Blas.

  Until then, Father Monty was headquartered in an unused space located directly across from the kitchen—a fact that the niece had momentarily forgotten.

  She’d been so shaken by Rupert’s near miss with the meat cleaver that she’d hurried out of the kitchen and turned left on the main corridor without first checking the chapel for signs of the pesky priest.

  She would have taken the long way around to the stairs leading up to the deck if she’d been on the lookout.

  The niece smoothed Rupert’s fur, giving him an apologetic look for her earlier squeeze.

  Father Monty was the most unorthodox religious official the niece had ever met. Among the passengers and crew, she was the most skeptical of his credentials.

  He seemed far too young to be such a senior member of the clergy. There wasn’t a touch of gray in his curly brown hair, and she thought it was fashioned in an odd style, particularly for a priest.

  Monty’s hair was cut short on the sides and long on the top, exaggerating the already pointed shape of his face. The tight curls bounced off his forehead when he walked.

  The hairstyle wasn’t his only eccentricity. Beneath his vestments, Father Monty wore a strange collection of cuff links. He was constantly pulling back the sleeves of his robe to show off the day’s selection.

  This afternoon was no exception.

  The niece picked up her pace, but Monty quickly matched it.

  “What do you think of the frogs?” he asked, holding up his wrist to flash the latest gold piece. “Picked these up at a market in Caracas. I got a great deal. The jeweler was practically giving them away.”

  “They’re very . . . nice,” she replied, stopping only so she could avoid being beamed by the priest’s bobbing wrist.

  This was the problem with ships, she thought with an irritated sigh. There was no way to escape your fellow passengers, other than pushing them overboard—something she had considered doing to Father Monty on more than one occasion during the days since he’d arrived.

  “Hello, Rupert.”

  Monty bent to the cat’s face and tickled his furry chin.

  “I heard your favorite dish is on the menu tonight—fried chicken!”

  The niece shook her head. How had Father Monty found out about the captain’s dinner request or, for that matter, her cat’s food preferences?

  She could hazard a guess.

  Within hours of his arrival, Father Monty had fixed up the new chapel room to hear confessions. He then began encouraging, soliciting, and out-and-out badgering his fellow passengers to schedule penitence appointments.

  Sailors had been traipsing in and out of the curtained confession box for the last couple of days.

  While the niece conceded that this was a legitimate part of Monty’s job, she found his eagerness to listen to the deepest secrets of his new acquaintances off-putting, if not downright suspicious.

  She had refused to participate, but Father Monty wasn’t one to accept no for an answer.

  “I have an opening this afternoon at two,” he said, pumping his thin eyebrows. “In case there’s anything you—or Rupert—need to confess.” He wagged a finger at Rupert’s wobbly blue eyes. “Gluttony is a deadly sin, my furry friend.”

  The niece frowned, puzzling on who would have shared Rupert’s love of fried chicken with the priest during a confession session. She couldn’t imagine her uncle volunteering any information to this nosy man. And as far as she knew, Rupert was incapable of human speech.

  With difficulty, she stepped around Monty and headed toward the stairwell at the end of the corridor. “We’re headed up to the deck. Nice to see you, Father . . .”

  “What a wonderful idea. I think I’ll join you. You know, I’ve never seen this part of the Pacific coast before.”

  His flat-soled shoes slapped against the floorboards as he trotted after her.

  “I hear we’re on a special mission to find the opening to an undiscovered bay. What do you think about that?”

  • • •

  AS THE WOMAN carried her cat down the hallway, chased by the persistent priest, a knot in the wood paneling to one of the chapel walls opened up, revealing a small hole.

  There was a shuffling sound.

  Then a yellowed eye peered out into the room, blinked, and disappeared.

  Chapter 10

  THE BARO
N

  THE NIECE REACHED the top of the stairs and scurried across the deck. Rupert rode in her arms, startled by his person’s fast pace.

  Father Monty followed closely behind, chattering about the benefits of confession.

  “I’ve had many parishioners tell me that it brightens their day. The mere act of sharing one’s sins helps heal a person’s soul. It lifts the spirit, warms the heart . . .”

  But about five steps across the deck, Monty cut off the sales pitch and gave up his pursuit of the niece—at least temporarily. He’d just caught sight of another sought-after confession target.

  “Baron, how nice to see you.” He sidled up to the nobleman standing near the ship’s helm. “Enjoying the view?”

  A silver-haired man with a closely cropped beard and mustache turned to look at the priest.

  “Father Monty. What a surprise,” he said in a tone that conveyed just the opposite.

  —

  THE BARON WAS a special guest on the San Carlos. His passage and VIP status had been directly arranged by the head of the Spanish fleet.

  The Baron was a self-made man. With nothing more than his natural talents for industry and finance—along with a little luck—he’d built a powerful business empire. His vast personal fortune had enabled him to purchase his nobility status, a move that had rankled many who had inherited their titles.

  As crafty as he was competitive, the Baron had read the reports from the earlier land expedition that first sighted the protected bay. He had personally interviewed Governor Portola and several of his men, in an attempt to extract all available details.

  Unlike Captain Ayala, the Baron had no doubt of the bay’s existence.

  He had contributed a hefty sum to the Spanish crown in order to ensure his seat on the San Carlos.

  Now, he was positioned to get his own firsthand look at the rumored harbor—and to assess its potential in person.