Midnight Paws

by Jessica Beck

  Downstairs, I checked his water bowl, and saw that it was nearly full. He clearly wasn’t thirsty.

  “How about a snack?” I asked. In some ways, having a cat and a baby were remarkably similar. Like a small child, a cat couldn’t convey the reason for its unease, and it was sometimes a matter of guessing until the right answer appeared.

  Shadow had no interest in a snack for the second time that day, an event that was becoming more and more disturbing to me. In the echoes of the moonlight coming in through the kitchen window, it was clear how my pawed friend had gotten his name. He seemed to come in and out of focus as clouds raced across the sky, showing the moonlight for a moment, and then hiding it again.

  “What is it?” I asked him. “How can I help?”

  Shadow sniffed the air twice, sneezed once, and then curled up on the countertop and promptly fell fast asleep.

  Cats.

  I started back to bed when the clouds vanished and Midnight suddenly appeared at my feet.

  “Mewrwer,” he said, as if he had been expecting me all along. I suddenly realized that Midnight hadn’t appeared on the second level of our house since he’d shown back up as a ghost. Was there something about his spectral state that kept him close to the ground? He clearly wasn’t afraid of heights, in this life or the next. Hadn’t I seen him on the bookcase with Shadow earlier?

  Shadow.

  It suddenly all made sense. When he’d realized that Midnight needed me, he’d woken me up and then he’d lured me downstairs. Only then, once his job was accomplished, had he fallen fast asleep again.

  “What is it? What’s going on?”

  Midnight headed for the living room, and I followed. Shadow would be just fine right where he was.

  Midnight made it to the front door before I could say, “Hang on one second, Mister, I’m not going outside.”

  He paused and looked at me questioningly, as if to ask why the delay.

  “If you think I’m going to parade down Main Street in the middle of the night in my robe and my slippers, you’ve lost your feline mind. Whatever is so urgent is still going to have to wait until I get dressed.”

  “Phhht,” he said, clearly showing his disapproval for the delay.

  I didn’t wait for any more of an answer than that. I raced upstairs, got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt as quickly as I could, and then I slipped on my Converse tennis shoes before I headed back downstairs. As I left my room, I grabbed my wallet and my keys as I threw on my jacket, unsure where my ghostly cat was taking me this time.

  “I should have at least brought my flashlight with me,” I said as I followed my ghost cat down the sidewalk. The day had been chilly enough, but at this time of morning, it was downright frigid. We were clearly heading back to Memories and Dreams, though I had no earthly idea why.

  “Midnight, is there any chance that we could both get into my car and I could just drive us to the shop?” I asked him, knowing how crazy the idea would have been even had he still been alive. My cats hated riding in a car, any car, and they would fight to the bitter end to avoid it if at all possible. Our yearly trips to the vet had always been experiences that should have involved hazard pay for me, and heavy sedation for them.

  As expected, Midnight didn’t believe that my suggestion merited any comment.

  We were close to the shop when I noticed something odd inside.

  There was a light moving around among the aisles.

  Someone was inside Memories and Dreams.

  I reached into my pocket for my cell phone when I suddenly realized that it was still on my dresser at home.

  What could I do to stop whoever was inside? I could always scream, but I doubted anyone would be able to hear me. I could probably run for help, but by the time I got back, it would most likely be too late to do any good.

  There was a long line of cars parked for the night on the street, and I had a sudden thought. Rocking each one in turn, I quickly set off every alarm along Main Street.

  Whoever was inside had to have heard the racket I was making, and I braced myself for a confrontation as soon as they ran outside.

  I was still waiting out in front, even after the light inside the shop vanished, when the police came, sirens blaring and lights flashing.

  Of course.

  Leading the way was my old pal, Sheriff Adam Kent.

  He stopped his patrol car right in front of me, and for a split second, I worried about Midnight darting in front of him. That particular concern was long past now, but I still couldn’t help feeling overprotective towards my cat, ghost or no ghost.

  The car security systems were still blaring when Sheriff Kent got out of his car, and over the sound of the alarms, he yelled, “Christy, I’m trying to cut you some slack given what you’ve gone through lately, but have you flat out lost your mind?”

  “Someone broke into my shop,” I said.

  He looked at me with an arched eyebrow, and then the sheriff motioned to one of his men.

  As he approached, the chief asked, “Do you have the keys?”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the new key Lincoln had given me the day before. “This will get you in the front door.”

  The sheriff took the key from me and gave it to one of his men. “Take somebody with you and go check it out.”

  The officer did as he was told, with one of the other patrolmen following close behind.

  “This is too much,” the sheriff said as the alarms started to die, one by one. They were either shut off by their owners from their windows above the street, or the timers on the alarms simply ran out.

  “I’m sorry, but I didn’t know what else to do,” I explained lamely as I kept watching the storefront.

  “You could try calling me on the phone next time,” he suggested.

  “I would have done it this time, but I didn’t think to bring it with me.”

  “What were you doing out here in the first place? It’s a little late for a stroll around town, and you aren’t exactly wearing jogging clothes.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I said simply. It was true, I suppose, in its own way. One of the most skilled ways of telling the truth was to confess only part of it. My own favorite method of lying was to tell the truth so unconvincingly that nobody believed me, but I wasn’t about to push it by admitting to the sheriff that my ghost cat had led me there.

  The officers came out a few minutes later, sparing me any need to further dig myself into a hole.

  “Whoever was in there before is long gone now,” one of them said as he handed me back my key.

  “So, someone was actually inside earlier?” Sheriff Kent looked surprised to learn that the break-in hadn’t just been in my imagination.

  “They kicked in the back door and came in through that way,” the patrolman admitted. He turned to me and added, “We put some plywood over the opening, so it should be okay for tonight, but I’d have someone look at it first thing in the morning if I were you.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  The deputy nodded, and the sheriff said, “Go on, then. It’s time for your patrols.”

  They left as quickly as they’d come, albeit without lights and sirens this time.

  The sheriff stood with me in the street, clearly wanting to say something. All I wanted to do was get out of the cold and go inside the shop so I could see if anything valuable had been taken. It had to have been a real treasure to tempt a thief. Something else occurred to me. What if it had been the murderer returning to the scene of the crime? What could have lured him back, given what the stakes would be if he was caught there?

  If it had been the killer, I only wished that I knew what he’d been after. At least I took some comfort in the fact that I might have run him off before he found whatever it was that he’d been looking for.

  “Listen, I wanted to apologize
about being a little on edge with you earlier today,” Sheriff Kent finally said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t mean to upset you, or Marybeth, either. That wasn’t the real me at all. I’m sorry.”

  How could I hold a grudge against him after he said that? “I understand, Sheriff. You must be under a lot of pressure, and in the end, you were just trying to do your job,” I said.

  “True, but I could have been a lot more diplomatic about it,” he admitted. “We’re not used to the level of trouble we’ve been having around here lately. I’m getting some heat from the city council to bring in the state police, and it’s been wearing on me. Honestly, I’m a pretty good guy once you get to know me.”

  “Why haven’t you asked anyone else for help?” I asked, realizing as I said it how it must have sounded to him.

  He ran a hand through his hair as he said, “If I do that, I don’t have a chance of winning the next election. I’ve run on a campaign promise that I’m the man for the job. If I have to go running to Asheville or Charlotte or even Raleigh for help, where does that leave me?”

  “It’s okay to need a hand every now and then,” I said.

  “Not everyone around here thinks so. Would you like a ride back to the house?”

  “No, thanks. I’m going inside the shop to see how bad it is.”

  “I’m hoping it’s not too rough in there. I’m willing to wager you scared him off before he could do much damage.” The sheriff actually smiled as he added, “I’ve got to hand it to you. That trick with the car alarms was some pretty quick thinking.”

  “What can I say? Sometimes you have to use what you’ve got,” I said.

  The sheriff nodded, and then he drove away, leaving me standing there in the middle of Main Street looking around for a ghost cat that clearly wasn’t there.

  There was only one place he could be, but I suddenly wasn’t all that interested in going inside the shop to find him.

  I walked over to the door, put my hand on the knob, and then slowly turned it.

  Whether I liked it or not, I was going to have to get used to being back inside Memories and Dreams.

  “Midnight,” I called out as I walked through the door. Having his presence near me would make what I had to do next a little easier, but of course, he was nowhere to be found. Had he served his purpose in warning me of the intruder in the shop? What forces guided him now? In almost every way, his actions and behavior were exactly as they’d been before, but it was almost as though he’d gained something in crossing over the line to the other side, an awareness of his surroundings that exceeded what he’d been capable of in the past.

  Another thought came into my mind, unbidden and unwelcome.

  Where exactly did he go when he disappeared?

  All of a sudden, I realized that I didn’t want to think about that.

  I turned on every light in the place after deadbolting the door behind me, but there was still something eerie about the antique linen dresses hanging in a row and the naked mannequins lined up like soldiers against one wall. Their stark appearances made them even creepier than if they’d been dressed, and I promised myself that the first thing I would do would be to fully clothe each and every one of them, no matter how that might look to passersby.

  I was going to have to do something to make the place less creepy if I was going to get any work done at all. I spotted the old jukebox in the corner under some tattered blankets, and realized that some music was in order to calm my nerves. Pulling everything off the top of the jukebox, I plugged it in, praying that it would play.

  I punched B-14, and the Glenn Miller Orchestra suddenly began to play. As “Moonlight Serenade” filled the night air, I suddenly felt more at ease in my surroundings, despite everything that had happened there.

  I began to calm down as I tidied up the shop where the intruder had been, restoring the place to its former orderly chaos. Cora had been able to lay her hands on anything at a moment’s notice, and while I was nowhere near that proficient yet, I hadn’t lied to the sheriff. I had a good, working knowledge of Memories and Dreams, and before long, I was going to know it all myself.

  I walked past the jewelry cases, expecting to see them ransacked as well, but I was surprised to see that they were all undisturbed. How had the intruder missed some of the shop’s most valuable possessions? The pieces we offered were small, easy to carry, and they couldn’t be that hard to sell on the open market. And yet every single piece of jewelry—with the exception of what I’d taken for myself—was exactly where it had been before.

  How odd.

  As I kept working, I found myself moving between the jukebox and the shop’s need for straightening. Whoever had owned the old music maker had an affinity for Big Band music, a trait that I shared.

  By the time morning’s first light peeked through into the windows, I had the place fit and ready for business. Taking an old piece of cardboard, I made a not for sale sign and propped it on the jukebox. My silent partners might not have approved of the move, but they really weren’t in any position to complain, not if they followed the rules Cora had outlined for them.

  As I’d worked, I’d tried to figure out exactly what the thief had been after, but in the end, I was no closer to discovering it than when I’d started. I was surprised when I’d made my inventory list of valuables to realize that nothing of any consequence was gone.

  Was I missing something, or had the robberies both been completely unsuccessful? At least that would explain the return visit I’d just had.

  I looked around the room for the thousandth time, trying to figure out what it could be that was so valuable that it was worth taking two lives for. One thing I hadn’t spotted in my search had been Cora’s famous notebook. For the longest time, no one knew exactly what she jotted down in her black and white composition book, but I’d peeked into it once when she’d stepped away from the shop, and I had been startled to find the most scurrilous gossip about folks from town that I could have imagined. I wanted to ask her about it a dozen times, but it was a difficult subject to bring up, since I’d been snooping where I shouldn’t have been when I’d spotted the notebook.

  I gave up for the moment, suddenly glad that I’d taken Cora’s deal. I’d have plenty of time to figure it out, as long as I could keep the thief from breaking in again. The first thing I was going to do after having the back door fixed was to get a more sophisticated alarm system. The installer might think it strange that I’d spend good money guarding what some folks thought of as junk, but something inside clearly held real value to someone.

  I reached into my pocket for my new key so I could lock up when I realized that on my way over here, I’d grabbed the same jacket I’d worn the day before. Still inside was the box I’d chosen at Midnight’s request, but there was something odd about it when I touched it.

  The box was broken from the earlier drop, split in two in a place where there had been no seam before, and as I gently pried the two pieces apart, I saw that there was a folded scrap of newspaper inside, dated the week before.

  In block letters, written with a heavy hand, it said,

  THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE.

  What was that supposed to mean? Had it been written to Cora? I realized from the moment I’d seen it that she hadn’t been its author. I knew Cora’s block lettering on sight, and this most emphatically was not it. What did it mean, though? What was it Cora’s last chance at? Was she supposed to do something the author wanted her to do? There just wasn’t enough information, but one thing was certain: it was a threat, clear and simple.

  The only problem was that I didn’t have the slightest hint of an idea what it might be about. I tucked the newspaper back where I’d found it and fit the pieces back together at well. I could see the seam clearly now, but from an ordinary glance, I doubted that anyone else would be able to tell that the box had a secret compartment, now breached.
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  Chapter 5

  For now, though, I had more pressing matters at hand.

  I was starving.

  But there was something else I needed to do before I ate. If Marybeth found out what had happened from someone else before I had the chance to tell her myself, I would never hear the end of it. Despite the time of morning, I decided I had to at least try to give her a call.

  I just hoped that she was out of bed.

  “Did I wake you?” I asked Marybeth when she finally picked up on the eighth ring.

  “No, as a matter of fact, I was just on my way out the door. Where are you, by the way? I’ve got to be in Boone first thing this morning, and on my way past your door a little earlier, I saw that you were already gone.”

  “Somebody broke into the shop this morning,” I said, declining to mention how I’d found out about it in the first place. It was something I didn’t want to get into with her, especially so early in the morning.

  “That’s terrible. Why didn’t you wake me up? I would have come with you.”

  I was about to answer when I saw Kelly Madigan bang on the front door of Memories and Dreams. “Aren’t you open yet?”

  I pointed to the sign, and then said, “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be back later,” she said as Marybeth asked me over the phone, “What are you sorry about?”

  “I wasn’t talking to you. A customer wanted to get into the shop.”

  “You didn’t unlock your door for them, did you?”

  “Not until I’ve had something to eat first. Anyway, the reason I didn’t knock on your door this morning is that I didn’t see any point in both of us losing sleep,” I said.

  “As much as I appreciate the gesture, the next time something like this happens, wake me up, okay?”

  “I sincerely hope that it never comes up again,” I said. “I was going to invite you to join me for breakfast, but if you’re heading to Boone, you don’t have time, do you?”