by Mollie Hunt
“She’s not telling,” I said. “Is it tempura vegetables?”
“Nope,” Carol snickered. “It will be just a few more minutes. Seleia, could you help Candy with a few finishing touches? And Gene and Simon, we need to move the table and gather some chairs.”
Seleia was up and at her great-grandmother’s side in a flash.
“At your service, Carol,” Gene mumbled. He glanced at his wife, then followed Simon and Carol into the dining area.
That left my daughter and me alone. Carol had done it on purpose, of course—curse her intervening nature! For a moment, we sat in awkward silence.
“Are you really okay, Mother?” Lisa finally asked with what seemed like genuine concern.
“Yes, really. It was only a slight concussion, just a few headaches.”
“So it’s all over now?”
I nodded.
“And it was that Thorpe woman who killed all those people? Your friend, Simon, had nothing to do with it?”
“Pretty much.”
“But why? Why would she do something like that?”
I shrugged. “Because she’s crazy?”
“Mum,” Lisa burst out. “I’m serious. I worry about you. I know I don’t say it very often but I love you.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” I stammered, caught off guard by her candor. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be flippant. I suppose it’s my way of dealing with a horrible situation. But Tulsa Thorpe does have serious mental problems. She’s a true sociopath—the deaths she caused didn’t bother her one bit. They were a means to an end, hurting Simon.”
“I don’t understand how she could get away with... what was it? four murders and a car bomb. She did set the bomb in your Toyota, didn’t she?”
“Apparently so. I don’t think she meant to kill me then, just scare me and confuse the police.”
“And they never suspected a thing.”
“No motive. At least not until she revealed herself as Simon’s long-lost daughter. Simon didn’t have a clue. Crystal had kept her birth a secret.”
“But going after the people her father loved,” Lisa mused. “Who does that?”
“Crazy people,” we both exclaimed at exactly the same time.
I looked at my daughter and she at me and we both collapsed laughing. It was healthy and honest, and I felt like maybe some of our walls were coming down.
“Soup’s on,” Seleia called from the kitchen.
Lisa and I rose and, putting our arms around each other, made for the table.
“Is it soup?” I called to Carol.
“Nope,” she called back. “You lose.”
* * *
I could never have guessed the dinner fare because before that night, I hadn’t known it existed. Squashleekotato Roast, the vegetarian equivalent to Turducken, entailed a sweet potato wrapped in kale leaves and leeks, encased in quinoa stuffing with roasted red peppers, baked in a banana squash. When cut in rounds, it made a beautiful and colorful plate. There had been a mixed greens salad, cranberry chutney, and several side dishes, only a few of which I could name.
Dinner had been perfect and we were back in the living room, nibbling pumpkin pie a la mode and sipping Japanese tea from Japanese cups. Gene had built up the fire, and its warmth was making me sleepy but in a good way. Conversation had turned hither and yon, all subjects innocent and interesting and as far as possible from the forbidden trio: sex, politics, and Tulsa Thorpe-Holt-Bird. We had finally settled on a discussion of television mysteries with Carol and Candy acting as the experts.
Carol was telling about her friend who had landed a part as an extra in a popular series that was being filmed in Portland.
“Grandma, you’ll never guess!” Seleia interrupted.
I took a bite of my pie, waiting for the punch line.
“They’re making the pilot for a new TV show right here in town, and you’re going to love what it is! McCaffrey & Jack, from the book series by Angela T. Moore. I’ve read them all,” she added proudly.
“Isn’t Jack a cat?” asked Lisa.
“He sure is. But he’s a detective too. McCaffrey is the real P.I., but Jack helps him solve all his cases.”
I had also read the series with its cozy but complex story lines. “That’s a big part for a cat if they stay true to the books.”
“Yeah,” said Seleia. “They’ll need to have at least two, maybe even three.” She turned to Carol. “That’s how they do it with animal stars, you know.”
“You’re absolutely right, dear,” Carol replied. “They try to get exact lookalikes so each animal doesn’t have to work the long hours the actors do.”
“Hey,” Seleia exclaimed, “maybe you should try out Big Red for the part. He’s a red tabby, just like Jack.”
I laughed. “Red? You mean the cat who hides every time someone crosses the room?”
“Oh, yeah,” Seleia said, disappointed. “I guess not. I just thought it would be fun to have a famous cat in the family.”
“Besides, in the books, Jack is a longhair and Big Red is a shorthair.”
She paused, then her face re-lit. “Fur extensions?” she giggled.
“But cats need a cat wrangler,” Seleia continued. “You’d be perfect for the job, Grandmother!”
“I appreciate your confidence, but I don’t know anything about cat handling for television. Don’t you need to train the cats yourself? They must have to respond to basic commands, mustn’t they?”
“I’m not sure how it’s done,” Carol said thoughtfully. Turning to Candy, she added, “We should look into that.”
Candy nodded solemnly, as if taking on an important assignment.
“But you know about cats,” Seleia pressed. “I think you’d be great at it.”
“Well, thanks,” I said with a smile.
There was a moment of silence, then Carol took off about seeing a film crew downtown. The warmth from the fire, the good food and family was doing more to melt away the cold brought on by Tulsa’s mental cruelty than any anti-anxiety drug. I felt almost whole again, almost ready to get back out there in the real world. But what was next for me? I really wanted to do something new.
I thought about cat-handling. How does one become a cat handler? Would the new show hire someone local or would they bring one with them from Hollywood or New York or wherever they hail? I laughed as I pictured one of those high director’s chairs with a big yellow tom curled up in it, his name printed in block letters across the back. Knowing cats as I do, I doubted it would be that simple, even with the trained ones. But it would be fun. Maybe I should check it out, I thought surreptitiously. Lynley Cannon, cat-wrangler to the stars...
I felt the warmth of a strong hand on mine. “You seem a million miles away, Lyn,” said Simon.
I smiled up at him. “Just thinking.”
“About cats?”
“In a way. I was wondering about cat wrangling.”
“I agree with Seleia, you’d be great for it.”
“But I have no experience, no friends in the business. I could never get a job like that.
“Could I?”
About the Author
Mollie Hunt lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and a varying number of cats. Like her character, Lynley Cannon, Mollie is a grateful shelter volunteer.
Want more Crazy Cat Lady adventures? Buy the rest of the books in the series for your Kindle:
Cats’ Eyes (Book 1)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HGQFJLG
Copy Cats (Book 2)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TUVJ2V8
Cat’s Cradle, a Crazy Cat Lady Short Story
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E48GKYS
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Thanks so much for reading my cozy cat mystery, Cat’s Paw. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, I always appreciate a review on Amazon or Goodreads.
Cat’s Paw is book three of the Crazy Cat Lady series. I’m now working on book four, Cat Call, and book five, Cat Café, so be
assured that Lynley has not cleaned her last litter box or solved her last murder. Stay up to date at my website:
http://www.lecatts.wordpress.com/
or on Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/MollieHuntCatWriter/
For those of you who aren’t so cat-centric, I’ve also published a non-cat mystery, Placid River Runs Deep. Here is an excerpt:
Prologue
The doe drank in the sounds of the forest: the drone of a blue bottle; the rustle of juncos in the tall firs; the cry of a raven, far off and hollow as the sky itself. All familiar, all correct. With a snort, she lowered her muzzle to the thick moss and grazed.
Scuffing her tiny hooves through the peat, she moved quietly. The summer air blew cool off the river, ruffling her tawny coat. She was content.
Suddenly the velvet head jerked to attention. Something on the wind wasn’t right. She turned her liquid eyes this way and that, ears straining.
Then the wind changed. The danger smell faded.
The danger smell was gone.
Again, delight took her as she nosed through the ferns and wild violets to get at the choicest stems; again she was swept into a sweet, carnal trance, so when her soft lips hit something unexpected, her surprise was acute.
It took only a moment to connect the danger with the thing she touched. Instantly she reared back and sprang away as if her life were in peril.
It wasn’t.
The man stretched out in the damp peat behind the cedar log couldn’t hurt her.
He was stone-cold dead.
1975
Roy Terry sat in his prison cell and fumed. It had all happened so fast. One day he was a normal eighteen-year-old with a normal eighteen-year-old’s life and a normal eighteen-year-old’s dreams; the next, incarceration! And for no short time, either. The judge had handed down a heavy sentence on the boy, tried as an adult seeing he was of age, though barely.
A travesty of justice! Roy thought to himself, part of the wailing litany that cycled relentlessly through his mind since he’d become a compulsory guest of the Washington State Penitentiary. I was just saving my ass! Any normal kid in my spot would have done the same thing.
But that was a lie. His crime had been abhorrent, and Roy himself realized he was nowhere near normal. Never had been and probably never would be. His strange dreams and nightmare fancies, his perverse likes and ominous dislikes, his mind-numbing phobias and villainous pleasures; even his vision of the world, which he knew for a fact to be steadfastly against him, were morbidly unique.
This temperament had made it hard for Roy to find friends. To his mind, most of the kids at school were unworthy of his notice. A few showed a rebellious streak, and he had hung around with them for lack of anything better to do, but sooner or later even the wildest proved too tame for Roy Terry.
Thought they were so tough, he brooded. Cruising the back roads blasting Grand Funk and drinking their dad’s beer because they didn’t have the guts to buy their own. Throw the cans in the river and pelt ’em with rocks till they sink to the murky bottom. What kind of life is that? Roy mused. Where were the kicks? Where the sweet rewards?
Roy’s days of cruising and drinking and pelting cans were behind him now. He was well to be done with them, he thought arrogantly, arrogance being one of the few freedoms that Roy Terry still retained.
Roy pictured the sanctimonious faces of those who had put him where he was. They wouldn’t get away with it. When he got out—and he would get out, someday—he would find them. He would seek them, one by one if he had to search the world over. He wouldn’t rest until they were sorry.
Very sorry.
1.
July 2, 2010
Ember Mackay paced the floor of the small rustic cabin. Every so often she would stop and stare through the open door at the beautiful day she was letting go to waste. She should be outside enjoying the sunshine and fresh country air.
After all, who knows how many more chances I’ll have? Next summer I may be too sick to come to the river.
Next summer I may be dead....
Whenever her mind circled back to this terrifying reflection, which it did with the regularity of a heartbeat, she would shake her fine head of mink hair and chastise herself for jumping the gun. The tests wouldn’t be back before next week. She would just have to wait. It was the hardest thing she had ever had to do.
The last ten days had been like something out of a made-for-television docudrama. Up until then, she’d figured the tiredness and vague body aches she’d been experiencing were nothing to worry about. All in her mind, more than one doctor had suggested. Lack of exercise, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, iron-poor blood, and PMS had also been proposed by both friends and physicians.
She wasn’t sure why she had decided to consult a hepatologist, but Dr. Connor had taken her complaints seriously. Before she knew it, she was strapped into the plastic arm chair with a vampire in gray scrubs expertly extracting her blood. Within hours they had a diagnosis: a common virus known to create all sorts ambiguous symptoms including that telltale dullness and pain. Finally she had an answer.
Okay, she had said, much relieved to know her distress wasn’t psychosomatic. How do we fix it?
That was when the nightmare began.
“I’m sorry, Ember,” Dr. Connor had replied as sympathetically as he could without skewing the truth. “There are some promising studies being done, but at this time there is no cure for hepatitis C. We can treat the symptoms individually but unless the virus clears by itself early on, which yours didn’t, the disease becomes chronic.”
In that moment, Ember’s world did a flip-flop. To live out her days feeling like a sick puppy was something she had never considered. She was only thirty-seven; what would the exhaustion, nausea, and general malaise be like when she was old and feeble?
No sooner had she begun to absorb the bad news when the doctor continued. “Your symptoms are only part of the problem, however. Unfortunately this form of hepatitis is the leading cause of liver damage, cirrhosis, and liver cancer.”
Oh great! Not only was her illness incurable—it was going to get worse. Not enough that she would suffer for the rest of her life; now he was saying that her life might not last that much longer.
The hepatologist had ordered a battery of tests including an ultrasound and a liver biopsy. This would show the condition of her liver, and if damage had begun, how far it had progressed.
How far gone, in other words. Cirrhosis of the liver had no good outcome. It was either transplant or death. Or both. She’d seen a friend change from an active, vibrant woman to an invalid in less than a year. Horrible pain, suffering, and mental confusion that led to an inevitable end. By the time she died, it was a mercy.
And now the same thing might be happening to Ember.
A tinkling bar of Pachelbel’s Canon insinuated itself into her deliberations. Rats! she said to herself. I thought I turned that thing off! She was in no mood for phone calls. Getting away from the day-to-day distractions had been the whole point of coming to the cabin. No one at work knew where she was; she had taken great pains to make sure of that. But cell phones trespassed anyplace with willing reception, even the secluded Placid River in lower Washington State.
Placid River—her family’s summer getaway. Ember had been coming since she was a child. Kool-Aid and fried chicken; bright mornings and long, sun-washed afternoons. Swimming in the frigid mountain waters until she came out shivering, then going back in one more time. Those were days of pleasures no more complicated than picking blackberries, catching crawfish, or watching the evening shadows climb the forested hilltops until the sun winked out and the bats began to soar. Her grandmother had taught her to appreciate the Brown Myotis bats. They ate mosquitoes, sometimes more than their body weight in one night. Thus they were friends.
Placid River had been a place of joy for Ember when she was a child, then as she grew older, a place of tranquility. Now it was to be a place of refuge w
here she could sort out her mind. She had to think. She had to decide. But how could she make life-altering decisions when she was constantly interrupted by phone calls?
The little phone was unsympathetic, enthusiastically blaring its tinny summons. With a sigh, Ember found her purse on the oak rocker and rummaged for the offending instrument. Flipping it open, she glanced at the glowing blue readout to see who was cutting in on her private time.
“Hello, Aunt Syl,” she said into the diminutive unit, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice.
“Emmy, dear,” her aunt began, using the nickname Ember had been tagged with when she was a baby. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Ember said defensively. “How are the cats?” she added in a softer tone.
“Muffy and Little are fine. Harry’s fine too but unhappy that he’s not allowed outside.”
“He’ll get over it. It’s only for a few days. I miss them already. I probably should have brought them with me.”
“Well, maybe next time, though three cats in that tiny cabin might be pushing it, dear.”
The voice paused, then asked hesitantly, “Have you heard anything yet?”
“About the biopsy? No, Syl,” Ember replied flatly. “The pathology report won’t be back until next week. I thought I told you that.”
Ember tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice. She loved Aunt Sylvia, her father’s sister—and all the more because both her parents as well as the grandmother who had raised her were gone now—but the elderly woman had very little clue when it came to life in the modern world. Having had no children of her own, she had never quite learned the lesson of live-and-let-live, and was always poking into Ember’s most private affairs, opinions at the ready, whether invited or not.
“You did, dear,” Syl declared, “but it just seems like something so important could be sped up a bit. This is the twenty-first century, after all.”