by Clea Simon
“She told you this?”
Becca nodded. “She came up and knocked on my door. She – well, she threatened to call animal control on me.”
The officer regarded Becca, her own face growing thoughtful. “That must have made you angry.”
“Well, yes.” Becca stopped herself. “I mean, I was upset, of course. But – she didn’t say anything about me. Did she?”
“I’m really not at liberty to discuss that.” With that, the officer closed his pad and stepped aside. Becca stood as well. She looked like she was about to say something, but just then a deep voice interrupted.
“Excuse us. Coming through.”
Becca stood and stepped to the side, pushing the instrument case behind her to make way as two EMTs, a covered stretcher between them, went past. Becca and the officer who was interviewing her watched them navigate the stair’s turn, but as they made their way across the landing below, Clara could hear the dark-haired young woman start to sob again, with a desperate gasping for breath.
“I should go to her.” Becca reached for the railing.
“So she is a friend.” The officer didn’t block her, not exactly. However, it was clear that he suddenly had more questions for Becca.
“No, like I said, I only met her today at the shop.” While Becca spoke, she kept her eyes on the woman below, who was once again seated on the step, curled forward like a scared hedgehog. “She came in looking for – well, never mind. But she left her violin.”
“Wait, she left something with you?” The pen scratched across the paper.
Becca nodded, remembering. “She and I were chatting, when she saw someone pass by – we were in Central Square. She ran out suddenly, and then I realized she’d left her violin case. I ran out from behind the counter, but she was already gone. So I looked in the case and found a slip of paper with this address on it. My address, and so I left work and came home.”
“Just in time to find a woman you’d never met before opening a door to an apartment that doesn’t have her name on it and revealing a dead man who isn’t the legal owner.”
As Clara looked on, Becca turned white and sat down once more, hard.
“You think she’s involved.” Her voice was breathy, almost as if she were whispering to herself. “And that’s why she was asking me for help.”
“She was asking you for help?” The officer repeated her words, as if making sure of them.
Becca nodded, a dazed look coming over her. “She didn’t tell me the details, but it was easy enough to see that she was scared.”
“Did she mention a roommate or a boyfriend to you?” The officer paused before that last option, and Clara felt the fur along her fur start to rise. The little cat wasn’t sure what the policewoman was implying, but she could sense that he had chosen that order deliberately.
“No.” Becca only looked thoughtful, and once again Clara wished her sister Laurel was there. Laurel could have implanted the idea that perhaps Becca should be careful. Something about this line of questioning felt like a trap to Clara. Almost as if the officer was waiting outside a small hole, hoping for a mouse to emerge. “I don’t think she mentioned a boyfriend.”
“Good girl!” Clara wasn’t sure why this mattered, only she had the feeling the officer had dangled it, like a piece of string, hoping that Becca would go for it.
As it was, the cop simply nodded. “And yet you believed she felt threatened.”
“Yes, she…” Becca bit her lip, and Clara could tell that the cop noticed. “She was asking me for help before she ran out.”
“In what way were you going to help her?” Clara bristled, her tail growing stiff, but Becca only shrugged, her face a blank of confusion.
“We didn’t get to that.” She had gone pale. “I’m sorry.”
“What kind of help do you think she expected, seeing as how you were a total stranger?” The cop’s voice was even, but Clara heard an undertone that set her ears back.
Becca, to her dismay, didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s kind of hard to explain.” Becca looked down the stairs, where the dark-haired girl had been. “Wait, where did she go?”
“I’ve just got a few more questions.” The officer reached out, but Becca was already on the stairs. It didn’t matter. The young woman – and the officer who had been interviewing her – had disappeared.
“Miss, please.” Becca felt a hand on her arm and turned. Not soon enough. On the landing below, a pile of dark hair turned up to reveal a familiar scowl outlined in dark red. The woman from the floor below was standing by another uniformed officer and had broken off to stare up at Becca. Dressed in a creamy blue angora cowl neck that set off her dark hair and lips, she was leaning on the arm of a slightly built man in a dark blazer who looked up, his blue eyes following her gaze.
“There she is.” The brunette’s dark eyes narrowed, her shock turned to scorn. The man beside reacted as well, his smile settling into a grim line. “She’s a troublemaker. I knew it from the start.”
“Wait.” Becca stepped back, nearly stumbling over the case.
“And to top it all off, she thinks she’s a witch!”
Chapter 7.
“This is how it starts.” Harriet sat, regal on her gold velvet pillow, fluffy tail curled around her feet as she glared at her youngest sister. “You had one duty, to keep our person out of trouble, and now this.”
“I didn’t know.” Clara, on the floor, looked up at her sister on the couch. “I’ve been trying.”
“She has been, you know.” Laurel, apparently unfazed, stretched out on the couch beside Harriet, bathing one chocolate-tipped leg. “That’s all she thinks about, Clara the Clown. She can’t help it if she’s clueless about what to do. Or why.”
“Why?” Clara looked from one sister to the other, her desperation growing. “Please, would one of you explain? You must have heard something. What happened?”
The two cats above her looked at each other. Although neither so much as mewed, Clara suspected they were communicating silently. She could try to join the unspoken conversation, she knew. While she might never have Laurel’s facility with the reading or suggesting of thoughts, she had learned that all three of them shared some basic skills. However, even as she pleaded with her sisters, Clara was using all her energy to focus on her person.
The nasty neighbor had done Becca a small service, distracting the officer enough so that he nodded his assent when Becca asked if she could return to her own apartment – at least until she was needed for more questions.
Grabbing the violin, she’d retreated and, locking the door behind her, pulled out her phone. The first call she had made was to the shop. Clara could almost feel the calming tones the store’s manager was using to reassure Becca.
“Thanks, Elizabeth.” Becca was already breathing easier. “I think I will take the rest of the day. I’ll be in tomorrow, though.”
The next call, Clara suspected, was to Becca’s friend Maddy. Even from the living room, the calico could hear her person relating the horror she had witnessed.
“He was just lying there, Maddy.” Becca’s voice had once again grown reedy with strain. “Call me?”
While Clara waited for a response, Laurel cleared her throat with a discreet feline cough. Having regained her sister’s attention, the sealpoint announced in her most officious tone. “She’s not there, silly. And, since you asked, we didn’t tell you because there was no sense in it.” Even speaking softly, her characteristic Siamese yowl made her displeasure clear. “As is so often the case, these humans argue about nothing – and then violence is done.”
“But you must have heard something.” Clara strained to keep her own voice level and respectful.
“It was loud.” Laurel recoiled in distaste at the memory, her final word stretching into a howl.
“Like when we broke that vase?” Clara was fishing. The “we” was a euphemism. The vase in question had been knock
ed over during one of Laurel’s more acrobatic – but less well judged – leaps.
“No.” Laurel was shutting down. Clara had chosen her example badly.
“Was is it like the time that we upset the teapot?” Desperate to keep her sister talking, the calico reached back to the days when Becca was still brewing Larissa’s foul-smelling blend, which the cats had been eager to get rid of. Clara had not been entirely sure whether the incident had been as accidental as Laurel had implied. The sealpoint rarely angered Harriet enough that the big marmalade would chase her over a table, and Clara suspected that her sister had used her powers of suggestion to urge the clumsier cat to make the leap. The resulting spill had had the unfortunate effect of spreading the noxious brew all over. To the cats’ dismay, the odor lingered for days. “Everybody was in an uproar.”
“No, this was nothing at all like that.” Laurel paused, apparently deep in thought. “There was no … chasing. Just ‘That’s not it.’ ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘No, it’s not.’ As I said, it was all nonsense.”
“There had to be some reason for what happened.” Clara looked from Laurel to Harriet. But the older cat merely plumped herself up, assuming her most officious tone.
“It was as your sister said: nonsense. A stranger came in from the cold, but rather than appreciating the warmth he turned …” A slight growl as Harriet shuddered at a memory that must have disturbed the large cat’s equilibrium. “What happened next door was regrettable.”
Clara got a sudden vision of two figures grappling. Faceless and indistinct, they appeared to be only vaguely human – and vaguely male. She waited, turning after a few moments to Harriet for clarification, but no further details were forthcoming from either of the two other cats and the mental image remained fuzzy. Her sisters, Clara realized, had heard the violence that had resulted in a man’s death, but not what had led to it. Not even how the two men had ended up together in the apartment next door.
“There must have been something – some reason.”
“It was as we said.” Laurel’s tail lashed defensively. “Loud.”
A fight, but not a break-in. The thought flashed through Clara’s mind, even as she did her best to banish her sudden awareness. Neither of her sisters liked to be thought of as inexperienced, simply because they were house cats. They certainly didn’t want to be considered stupid. Clara wasn’t sure what this could mean – or how she could communicate it to Becca. If, that is, she was even interpreting her sisters’ report correctly.
“The loudness started when the two were in the apartment? They had a fight?” Fishing, she did her best to visualize Becca, in a rare moment of pique. For example, when she had arrived home to find the apartment wrecked.
“No.” Laurel drew out the word in a classic Siamese howl. While she liked to complicate every situation in this case, Clara suspected, her sister was telling the truth. “You think we’re too stupid to have heard something like that? Silly girl. Like I said, a lot of loud voices for no reason.”
“As your sister has already stated, the altercation was loud, but it made no scents. At least not initially.” Clara couldn’t tell if Harriet was intentionally mishearing Laurel’s words. Questioning her oldest sister was never easy. “Humans always think that they know everything and that they maintain control. As they are obviously mistaken, whatever they yelled about is inconsequential to our purposes. However, given the circumstances, we have reached a decision.” Harriet shuffled on her pillow, more to recall Clara’s full attention than to get comfortable, the littlest cat realized. Harriet would never have settled in any position that was less than comfortable in the first place, and so Clara sat up, ears alert.
“It has become increasingly apparent that you are failing in your primary duty of watching over our person when she is outside.” Harriet paused, but Clara had enough sense not to argue. If she dug her claws into the carpet a bit, it was only because she felt the need to flex her toes.
“Becca must be kept away from controversy, at all costs.”
“But…” The slightest mew escaped, and as Harriet’s eyes widened, Clara risked the rest of her question. “She was worried about that other girl – the one from the shop.”
Harriet appeared to consider her sister’s outbursts, and Clara tilted her ears forward in what her older sister could only see as a respectful move. In truth, she was also anxious for Harriet’s response.
“As I was saying.” Harriet settled back, pulling her round face into her ruff for what she knew was a leonine effect. “You are failing in your primary duty. However–” the glare in those gold eyes warned Clara not to interrupt “– your sister and I believe this may be due to ignorance on your part. Therefore, we have decided it is time for you to know more of our family history.”
That wasn’t the tongue-lashing Clara had been expecting and her ears pricked up in anticipation. Although she wasn’t sure what their history would have to do with her own failings – or with Becca’s recent adventures – she was always eager to hear more about their family and the mother she barely remembered. She’d had clues about their history, of course. There was that picture – Becca called it an engraving – of a cat who looked strikingly like her, seated on the lap of a strangely dressed woman, who resembled Becca, with a less modish haircut. Becca had found it on her computer – the workings of which were strange even to her attentive pet – and had a copy made not long ago.
Becca had been entranced by the picture because of that woman, from what Clara could tell. She had commented on its connection to her own family, without even noting the resemblance between her great-great-great-grandmother’s cat and the youngest of her three pets. That could have been because it was hard to tell in the black-and-white print if the cat depicted had an orange patch over one eye and a dark patch over the other, like Clara herself did, but she got a tingle in the end of her guard hairs when she looked at that print, almost as if someone had come up behind her. Someone she could neither see nor smell. It unnerved her, and yet at the same time Clara couldn’t deny its intrigue. Maybe, she thought, Becca had her own version of that strange tingling. No, she told herself. Humans could be adorable, but they simply weren’t that sharp. If anything at times, it seemed that the ability to read the scrawled symbols that appeared on so many surfaces made her human blind to other things she should see.
“Tell her about the burnings.” Laurel almost purred the word, but Harriet’s ears went back, flat against her head.
“Do not lecture me.” The marmalade was practically hissing. “And it makes no sense to start with those … unfortunate times.”
This time it was Laurel whose eyes narrowed, ears flicking momentarily back. “She needs to hear what can happen.”
“One time.” A sweep of Laurel’s brown-tipped tail, and Harriet paused. “Well, a few times.”
Clara realized she was going to have to speak up. “Please,” she implored her sisters, doing her best to keep her tone respectful. “Whatever you begin with, would you please tell me more?”
Laurel shrugged and went back to washing, as if that one chocolate bootie were all that had ever concerned her.
“Properly, we should begin in the land of two rivers.” Harriet tucked her front paws under her snowy breast, a sure sign that she was settling in for a long story. “For it was there that our great mother first took pity on a hapless noblewoman–”
“She wasn’t a noble woman.” Laurel was still staring at her toes, but Clara suspected that her nonchalance was faked. “She was a slave, tasked with protecting the granary.”
“She was a woman of great discernment.” Harriet’s golden eyes narrowed to slits, and Laurel wisely shut up. “Who had been given an impossible responsibility for a human. Because even then, little sister, humans had the mistaken belief that they were much more capable than they really are.”
“And our great mother?” Clara knew she shouldn’t interrupt, but she had heard Becca end her call.
“Eight millennia and she wants to rush the story.” Laurel was working on her front paws now – and playing up to Harriet.
“I’m sorry.” Clara dipped her head. A wave of fatigue had come over her, and she felt her eyes closed. It must be the warmth of the apartment, the heat from the radiator warming her like the brightest sun…
Chapter 8.
“Stop it!” Clara shook herself awake to find Laurel staring at her, blue eyes unreadable. Harriet, meanwhile, had flopped over on her side, out cold.
“What was that?” Harriet’s paw, beside her head, twitched as the big marmalade began to snore.
“What do you think?” Laurel turned to their sleeping sister and then opted for the brown tip of her own tail instead. “You say you want to learn, but when we try to share the family memories…”
“Is that what that was?” Clara, embarrassed, settled. Tucking her own paws beneath her breast, she studied Harriet, her green eyes growing wide. “Is Harriet in a trance?”
“She’s the oldest.” Laurel shrugged as she continued to groom. It wasn’t exactly an answer, but Clara hunkered down to consider.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You could have warned me.”
“Sometimes, you have to trust.”
“But, you said, that I shouldn’t…” Clara was confused. “How do I know who to trust?”
“We can’t teach you that.” Laurel paused in her grooming to give her sister another inscrutable look, staring so hard her eyes crossed. She was about to say more, Clara was sure, when they felt it – the vibration that announced an imminent arrival. Laurel jumped off the sofa, while Harriet work with a start. Clara, after a moment of indecision, bowed once more to her eldest sister and trotted after Laurel to the apartment’s front door, just as a sharp rap sounded.