by Hearn, Shari
“Yes. Except for the Flanders; they’re gone on vacation. And Dill’s house.”
“The guy who grows and sells the catnip to Walter?”
Gertie nodded. “Lives around the bend. Surly SOB. Always dreaming up new ways to make a buck, then he’ll lose it all in some poker game. He has a record, so it’s not easy for him to find a real job.”
She added that Dill lived a quarter mile further, along the bayou, and that he kept odd hours. We decided to go pay him a visit.
* * * * *
Dill’s house was more on the “shacky” side, his wood porch missing a few boards. His porch swing dangled on one chain, one side of it lifting upward, the other side resting on the porch. From far away it looked like a sneer. Gertie had knocked on Dill’s front door several times, but he didn’t answer, which was odd because there was a truck in the driveway and an older airboat parked on the beach.
“Do you feel we’re being watched?” I whispered to Gertie.
“Kind of.”
We both turned around. A pair of eyes stared at us a few yards away. Cat’s eyes. Correction. Cat eye.
“Is that the same one-eyed cat?” I asked.
Gertie nodded. “You’d think Sinful would be full of one-eyed cats, but, no, she’s the only one. She gives me the creeps, always popping up in weird places.” Gertie made shooing motions with her hand. “You go back home, Lula Mae. Midge wouldn’t want you out here so far away from home.”
I glanced around and noticed Lula Mae wasn’t the only cat watching us.
“Two more are in the tree,” I said, pointing to an oak tree, where a grey and white cat and a tiger cat sat a few branches apart. “Maybe they come here for the catnip.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they whacked Buffy themselves and buried her body out here,” Gertie whispered. I shot her a look. “Well, they kind of remind me of little cat Mafioso. I told Midge, ‘you’d better lock your door when you sleep at night or your one-eyed cat might kill you.’ She didn’t take very kindly to my advice.”
“The cat keeps looking back at that shed. You stay here and keep knocking; I’m going to go take a look. Maybe one of the missing cats got stuck inside.”
The door was warped and not hung properly, so even with the door closed there was a gap at the bottom big enough for a medium-sized cat to fit through. After a few tugs I was able to open the door. The inside was dark, but I had noticed electrical wiring extending from the house to the shed, so there had to be a light somewhere. I felt along the wall next to the door and found a switch and flipped it on.
My pulse quickened. I stepped further into the shed, gazing at a shelving unit filled with small, plastic bottles, the kind that were stolen from the SLS shipment. I picked one of them up and saw that a label reading Gigglesoup had been affixed to it.
Damn. Dill had to be the guy behind the stolen nip bottles, and, no doubt, the same one who roughed up Vivvy and vandalized the SLS’ and Stinky Labatt’s stills. He was probably trying to get rid of the competition so he could have a market for his moonshine.
I turned toward another shelf and noticed boxes filled with the same cellophane catnip bags he had sold to Walter. But it was what I saw wedged in between a pile of bags that caught my notice. Cat collars. About seven of them. I grabbed at the pile.
My heart sunk when I saw it. A camo collar that I had bought for Merlin just last week. With a silver tag and Merlin stenciled into it, along with my phone number.
I stormed out of the shed, ready for blood but also aware that Gertie was still on the guy’s porch. I slid my pistol out of my waistband and rounded the corner of his house.
“I wouldn’t try anything if I were you.”
Dill had his left arm around Gertie’s chest holding her up, while his right hand held a gun to her head. She was out cold.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Merlin
“Someone let me out of here!”
Mr. Whiskers paced in his two-by-four-foot wire cage.
“No one can hear you. No one knows we’re here,” Buffy told him as she cowered in the corner of her cage, situated next to mine. Seeing her like that was killing me. She had been catnapped yesterday, her cage one of seven containing imprisoned cats from Sinful. No, make that eight, including mine.
I was brought here last night, shoved in a wire cage with a bowl of water and stale kibble. I had no idea where “here” was, just some cabin on some godforsaken, stinky swamp island.
“What are you cats so worried about?” asked Tux, a black-and-white shorthair I had met once or twice before in town. “It’s just the aliens come to take us back to our home planet.”
Tux was a UFO nut who believed cats descended from an ancient race of alien felines, and that someday we’d all be taken away from our human handlers and returned to that big cat condo in the sky.
“Are you crazy? He’s selling us to a laboratory! We’re going to be experimented on!”
Tux calmly licked his paws. “We’re going to the Lynx constellation, you moron. Where sweet cream flows like rivers, and tuna falls from the skies.”
Of course, I knew Mr. Whiskers was right. Dill bragged to someone on the phone during the boat ride, saying he had caught another one he was going to sell. Said a guy was going to pick us all up later today. But, still, I had to have hope.
“The SFL will get word to the SLS,” I said to Buffy. “We’ll be rescued, I just know it.”
Buffy nodded. Suddenly, her ears twitched. “Someone’s coming.” Along with having the prettiest amber eyes of any cat I knew, Buffy also had the best hearing of any cat in Sinful.
Soon, we could all hear a voice, a couple voices actually, getting closer. Female.
“Fortune!” I screamed. It was her voice; I just knew it was. “Fortune saw my clues and is coming to rescue us! We’re saved! We’re saved!” I wiggled my cat butt and lifted my front paws in the air. “Go Fortune, go Fortune, go Fortune.” But my happy dance was short-lived.
The door to the cabin opened. It was Fortune alright, along with Gertie. They were tied together back to back with a chain and walking sideways. Dill shoved them into the room and they fell on a ratty old sofa situated against one wall.
“Hey, cats, look what I brought you.”
Fortune looked over at me. “Merlin?”
Gertie swung her head around and scanned the cages.
Fury crossed Fortune’s face and she swung her legs around, kicking Dill in the ankle.
“You bitch,” he screamed, kicking her back. He stuck his gun to Gertie’s head. “You try that again and the old lady gets one right through her skull.”
He pulled the gun away and stepped back. “The cats I’m selling to a lab. Just one of my many new business ventures. I haven’t decided yet what to do with you two.” He shook his head, then kicked at the open door. “Damn! You couldn’t have kept your noses out of my business? Whatever happens, it’s your own damn fault!”
“Look, bud,” I said, “whatever’s going on with you, it’s not worth a murder conviction.”
“What the hell do you know about what’s going on with me?” He pointed his gun at Fortune. “Now, I have a still to go tend to. Seems the Sinful Ladies Society lost their equipment to vandals. Lucky there’s someone like me ready to step in. I’ll be gone awhile, so you just sit there and get comfortable.”
“I would be a bit more comfortable if I didn’t have someone tied to the back of me,” Gertie told him. “Kind of hard for an old woman like me to sit on the sofa sideways.”
“Don’t give me that ‘old-lady’ BS. You fought like a devil before I was able to clock you.” He brought his hand up to his face and stroked his blackened eye.
“Hey, buddy?” Gertie said as Dill opened the door to leave. Though her arms were bound to her side by the chain, she managed to flip him the bird, a supreme insult to humans.
He sneered at her and stormed out, slamming the door shut behind him.
“Well, we’re in the eye of the shitstorm
, aren’t we?” Gertie said.
“I have a backup gun strapped to the inside of my left ankle,” Fortune told her.
“Well, nice to know that now. You couldn’t have used it earlier?”
Fortune shook her head. “I never was in a position to pull it out.”
“Can you reach it now?”
“I’m going to give it a try. Roll over a little bit so I can bend my leg in.”
Gertie grunted as she tried to turn inward toward the sofa, allowing Fortune’s left side to be accessible. “Some help on your end would be nice.”
Fortune swung her body to the right, and now rested on Gertie’s back.
“You’re crushing me,” Gertie whimpered.
Mr. Whiskers butted his head against the cage. “Dear God, these two are hopeless.”
“They’re working on it!” I snapped at him. Though, to be honest, they did look pathetic.
“Okay, I’m lifting my left leg up,” Fortune said, straining, and working her fingers against the tight chain toward the gun in her ankle holster. But even I could see it was hopeless. The tip of her fingers and the gun were a couple of inches apart.
Gertie groaned. “Hurry, Fortune, I think my organs are getting crushed.”
Fortune grunted, her fingers and ankle closing the gap. “I can feel the gun.”
“You almost have it, Fortune!” I yelled.
My fellow captives began meowing words of encouragement as she grunted again, her fingertips now able to grasp the gun’s handle. “I have it.” Her face reddened as she twisted her body to pull the gun out of the holster.
“Go, Fortune!” Puff Ball, the angora, cheered.
And then…
“Cramp!” Gertie screamed. “I have a cramp in my leg.” Her leg jerked backward.
“Gertie, no, don’t!”
Gertie’s leg collided into Fortune’s hand, knocking the gun to the floor. As she flailed her leg about, her foot struck the gun and it went sailing under the shelf where our cages were stacked.
“Dear Lord, could they be any dumber!” Mr. Whiskers yelled. “We’re all going to die!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fortune
My backup gun sailed across the floor and under the shelving holding the cages.
“Oh… oh… that’s better.” Gertie straightened her leg. “Cramp all gone.”
The caged cats were all meowing at us, some hissing and spitting.
“What’s with the cats?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Gertie.” I tried not to let loose the curse words that were begging to leap out of my mouth. “Maybe it has something to do with you kicking my gun under the shelf during your leg cramp hissy.”
“No need to get snarky. Do you think we can crawl over there and kick it out?”
“Do we have a choice?”
And the choice wasn’t a good one. The two of us had to drop together from the sofa to the floor, and one of us had “old knees.” I knew Gertie wanted to scream in pain as our knees bent and we fell out of the sofa.
“You okay?”
“Hmmmmph,” was all she could muster.
We were lying on the floor now, my body pointed toward the shelving unit. With the side of my head flat on the ground, I could see the gun, but the shelves were deep, and the first shelf was just about four inches above the floor. I wasn’t sure my leg would fit under it.
“I see it. I’m going to scooch over there. Follow me.”
“I’m chained to you, Fortune, where else am I going to go?”
Like a crippled inchworm we scooted across the floor, our legs banging into one another on the downstroke. Finally, we reached the shelf. I tried to stick my foot beneath it.
No go. “Damn!”
“My legs are skinnier; let me try.”
I helped swing Gertie into position. I held my breath, not able to see if she was having success. “Well?”
“My leg’s under there, but just barely.” And then… “I feel it. I feel the gun.”
“Good. Kick it out.”
I heard a grunt, then, “Uh-oh.”
CHAPTER NINE
Merlin
Uh-oh did not sound like a good word combination.
“My leg is stuck,” Gertie said.
“Unbelievable!” Mr. Whiskers yelled, switching his tail.
“Then un-stick it, Gertie,” Fortune said.
“Well, thank you, Fortune. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Puff Ball groaned. “If my Brittany had come to save us, we would have been rescued by now.”
I had had enough. “But your Brittany didn’t. And you know why? She’s too busy cheating on her husband with anything on two legs!”
“How dare you!” Puff Ball hissed. “Pierre’s her masseuse! And yes, she does need a massage every afternoon!”
Soon we were all hurling nasty barbs at one another.
“Stop! Stop!” Buffy screamed. “We have to stick together. We’re acting like dogs. We have to put our heads together and help them help us.”
The doorknob was turning.
“Oh, crap!” Fortune whispered. “We have company.”
The door opened.
An angel appeared. Okay, maybe not an angel. She was better than an angel. And she was packing heat.
“Ida Belle!” Gertie cried out.
“Dear Lord,” she said, surveying the scene. “I knew you two couldn’t stay out of it.”
“Dill is right outside,” Fortune whispered.
“No, he went back to his boat. I’ve been watching awhile.”
“I was going for my ankle gun and Gertie kicked it under the shelf.”
“I had a leg cramp!” Gertie snapped.
Ida Belle tucked her gun in the waistband of her pants and rushed over to Gertie and Fortune, gingerly lowering herself to the floor. “That’s some strong chain he tied around you. We’ll need bolt cutters to cut through the padlock.”
“He has the key in his jeans pocket,” Fortune said. “Can you help get Gertie’s leg unstuck so she can kick my gun out?”
Ida Belle lowered her body flat against the ground and peered under the shelves. “Oh, boy, your foot is right against the gun. It looks like a bolt is caught in your Capri cuff. Maybe I can pull at your pants and rip it.”
“How’d you know to follow Dill?” Fortune asked as Ida Belle reached under the shelf.
“It was that crazy cat of Midge’s. The one-eyed one. Breakfast bingo was a huge snore, so during the discussion on gangrene I snuck out and saw Lula Mae standing outside the senior center. She looked in distress, so I followed her all the way back to my house. Then she started down the street toward the bayou, so I got in my car and followed her all the way to the Renover’s place on Lonely Oak Road. That’s where I saw your Caddy.”
“We went to return the cat collar we found,” Gertie said.
“Yeah, Mrs. Renover said you were going to do some investigating on your own, so I figured you’d be knocking on neighbors’ doors. When I went to check Dill’s place I saw your purse in the grass, and then I did some snooping in his shed. I remembered his daddy used to have a still out here, called it ‘Camp Gigglesoup,’ so I borrowed the Renover’s boat and here I am.”
Puff Ball smashed his face against his cage. “That’s nice and all, lady, but could you stop yapping for a minute and let us out?”
“Shhh,” Buffy hissed at him.
Ida Belle pulled herself into a seated position. “I think I’m going to have to remove all the cat cages and move the shelf to get you unstuck.”
“I don’t think we have time for that,” Gertie said. “Dill could come back any minute.”
“Don’t worry, I heard him on the phone saying he was taking the boat back to his place.”
Dill appeared at the door. “And then he remembered he left the boat key inside the cabin.”
Mr. Whiskers banged his head against his cage. “Could this get any worse?”
Ida Belle cursed under her breath.
“I have a gun pointed to your back, old lady, so do as I say. I want you to take that gun out of your waistband slow-like and toss it back to me.”
Puff Ball and some of the other cats began to wail.
“Shush!” I shouted. “We can’t let this be the end. We have to create a diversion!”
I flung myself against my cage toward Fortune and the others. My fellow captives followed suit. Now, here’s what was supposed to happen: Dill was supposed to come closer to the cages to investigate. Fortune was supposed to wrap her legs around him and trip him. He was supposed to knock his head on the floor and die. Wonderful plan.
If only the execution of it didn’t suck eggs.
CHAPTER TEN
Fortune
Crap! This was not how I was going to die. I’d survived being shot at in Oman. I’d narrowly missed being harpooned off the waters of Malaysia. I’d outrun a pack of rottweilers in Somalia. There was no way I was going to let a yahoo in Sinful do me in because Gertie couldn’t get her pant leg unstuck.
“I said, toss me your weapon nice and slow, old lady,” Dill demanded of Ida Belle.
I turned my head, my mouth a few inches from Gertie’s ear. “Gertie,” I whispered. “Whatever it takes. You have to get your leg unstuck and slide my gun out. I am not dying in Sinful!”
She turned her head so she could speak in my ear and cursed a blue streak. Then, “What do you think I’ve been trying to do?”
Was that a rip I heard?
Ida Belle slid her weapon toward Dill as the cats began to cause a ruckus, meowing, hissing and banging against the sides of their cages.
“What the hell? Shut up!” Dill yelled at them, moving closer toward us to inspect the cat cages. Any closer and I could wrap my legs around him and bring him down.
That’s right, you yahoo, come to Fortune.