Mew is for Murder Read online

  “Honest, officer, it wasn’t my fault,” said the stranger.

  “And that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead?” I asked, on automatic, as my mind took in the unbleary vision before me.

  “What?” The smile faded, the sapphire eyes seemed to dim. I was being a fool.

  “Sorry. Once a lit major, always a lit major. It’s from an Elizabethan—an old—play,” I stuttered out my explanation. Not the time to be a nerdy English major again. “I was just asking because I got a gig today, with Ralph out. Got to cover Marc Starr out in Worcester.”

  “Isn’t he a little past it?” No way this stranger was as drunk as Ralph; those eyes were sharp and focused. Maybe a little smug, but oh so blue.

  “Definitely.” I laughed in response. “But a story is a story.”

  “Uh, Theda, this is my buddy Connor, Connor Davis.” Ralph reinserted himself between us, patting my back a little more than necessary as he clambered back onto his stool. “He’s pretty new in town, but we keep running into each other at the same shows so when he called last night…” I raised my glass in understanding. “Connor, this is Theda.”

  “From the silent screen to the club scene, huh?” He saluted back and I felt some energy returning to tired bones. Although the two weren’t eating—“Why ruin a good buzz?” asked Ralph—they sat and made me laugh as I finished my meal, though I barely tasted that good pepper sauce at all. I even relaxed enough to tell them about my morning. As I did, I saw Ralph’s face screwing up, like he was about to pop. I talked about the scene at the house, the woman lying there, but when I started to move away, to the nice cop who’d helped me out, his frustration broke through.

  “Did the cats, did they…you know?”

  “No, Ralph.” I saw what he’d been trying to suppress. “The cats did not eat her face.” Despite my answer, he smothered a chuckle at my words and beamed with glee, which I ignored. “I’m not saying they wouldn’t have if they’d been locked in with her body for a few days, but they weren’t and they didn’t. Those cats knew something was wrong, though. It’s because of them that I went in there.”

  All thoughts of the friendly detective disrupted, I thought, then, of the animal control officer. Those lush, gorgeous beasts had probably been rounded up for the pound by now. Or maybe they wouldn’t have gotten over there so fast: despite the detective’s assertion that there had been no foul play, one of his uniformed colleagues had been unrolling crime scene tape all over the porch when I left.

  “I should go check on them tomorrow.” I was thinking aloud.

  “Is that safe? I could go with you,” said Connor, and I couldn’t help smiling.

  “Oh, they won’t hurt me.” I tried to match the jokey tone he and Ralph had been sharing. “Not if I stay on my feet and keep moving.”

  They were making a night of it, the second in a row I gathered, but once my dinner was done I felt the weight of the day crashing down.

  “If you need any help with the cats, you let me know,” said Connor as I rose to leave. We’d exchanged numbers during one of Ralph’s frequent bathroom breaks. Was my luck with men changing? “Happy to come by.”

  Despite my fatigue, I nearly skipped home. As I crawled into bed—my proper bed tonight—I anticipated some nice dreams. A small thud nearly roused me as I drifted off, and the last thing I remembered was the brush of warm fur settling in beneath my chin and the quiet rumble of a purr.

  Chapter Four

  The next morning I awoke with fur in my mouth and a more rested feeling than I’d had in a long while. Both of which reminded me that this was a day to take care of cat business before more human needs.

  After I checked the Mail to make sure my Starr story had run, it was time to start my day. A call to my regular vet was a bit of a downer. No, I had to tell her answering service, a sweet-natured older woman named Annie. I hadn’t gotten another cat. I was just fostering one and I needed a sore leg checked out. I heard the sinking in Annie’s voice and knew I’d disappointed her. She wanted me to be happy, just like she wanted everyone to be, ideally with the warm companionship of a spayed or neutered pet. But I had to pay attention to my own internal clock. There would be a right time, and that time was not yet.

  Our chat did provide some interesting information, however. Rachel, my vet, was working at the shelter this morning, Annie said. The animal control officer had called her to help out because they’d brought in eighteen cats of various ages found in a house in Cambridge. The cats would be put in isolation for a few days, Annie told me, until the cops found out if there was a will or a next of kin determining their fate. In the meantime, Rachel and any other vets on call would be busy giving them blood tests and routine care, just in case they ended up in the adoption center when their quarantine was up.

  I left a message to let me know when I could bring the kitten in and looked around for the little beast. She was the picture of relaxation, stretched out in the sun on the back of the sofa like a starlet at St. Tropez. Her injured leg hadn’t seemed to deter her from climbing up to one of James’ favorite spots.

  “Don’t get too used to this, kitty. It’s all temporary,” I called out to her. She didn’t respond, except to extend her pink and white toes in a yawning stretch.

  I grabbed my keys and headed out. I’d swing by the shelter later, but clearly all the other cats were in the system already and I’d have to trust that they’d be looked after as well as they could be for now. Reasoning that I’d want my car later, I drove the few blocks to what I’d begun thinking of as Lillian’s house. The crime-scene tape wasn’t visible from up front, but I parked on the street anyway and made my way quietly around the back. Just one day had passed and the aging gingerbread looked saggier by years, the peeling paint sadder somehow and the windows, without their watchful cats, dead and cold. Belying the trend toward gentrification that seemed to perk up a different block each week, this house had become a husk overnight, slipping from a picturesque bit of local color to a decrepit old building without its owner and shorn of its feline inhabitants. I trod gently up the walk. Respect, if not outright nerves, was making me careful.

  Crash! Someone else didn’t share my concerns, and the muffled expletive that soon followed let me know that no remaining cat had made that noise. Thud! What sounded like a box full of papers hit the floor and shook some paint flakes off the porch’s sagging overhang. The house was not as deserted as it had first appeared.

  “Anybody there?” I called in. Asking the obvious seemed like a good chance to alert any looters or neighborhood kids that it was time to hightail it home. “Hello?”

  “Come on in,” a female voice called back from deep inside, and then started coughing from the dust. “You’re not with the cops, are you?”

  “No, I’m a neighbor. Were the cops here again today?” I slowly crossed the porch and turned left into the sitting room. That’s where the noise was coming from, and besides, I didn’t necessarily want to linger in the kitchen.

  “Oh yeah, they took the tape off,” said a voice from behind a high-backed chair and what looked to be a solid column of newspapers. “Not that that would have stopped me from coming in.” The voice stood and revealed itself to be emanating from a twenty-something woman in a Clash tee shirt and matronly kerchief. The few strands that poked above the bandana were of light magenta, appropriately clashing with both the orange shirt and the red kerchief. A welcome bright spot in the too-still house, she held a dustpan and brush in one hand and started to reach out the other. The slight shock on my face must have made her think better of the move and she paused, wiping her hand on her denim-clad thigh instead.

  “You’re from the coffeehouse!” Beneath the grime, I recognized that smile, not to mention the hair.

  “French roast, keep it coming in the morning. Skim latte if you come by after noon.”

  “I don’t think we’ve ever been properly introduced.” I reached out my hand, not caring about her griminess. “Theda Krakow.”
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  She took it, with a grip amazingly strong for her size. “Like the film star? Cool. I’m Violet. Violet Hayes.”

  I couldn’t resist the smile that came over me. “You play the guitar?”

  “Just like Jimi.” A wide grin split her face as well. “How’d you guess?”

  “Reporter’s intuition. What brings you here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing. I’m a fixture at Lillian’s,” she started and told me how she’d been helping the old woman out for the last eighteen months. She’d been coming by after her shift at least twice a week ever since Lillian had posted that notice in the coffeehouse, the one asking for volunteers for her “feline haven.”

  “She spelled it Feline Heaven on her flyer, but I think that was, what do you call it? A bit of wishful thinking on her part,” Violet remembered. “She was getting on in years, but she was still incredibly independent. Sharp as a tack. Just slow and stiff going up and down the stairs. Between the number of litter boxes and her visits to her son, she just needed a hand keeping it all together.”

  “She had a son?” I thought of this grand old house—and all those incarcerated cats—and started dreaming.

  “He’s not well.” Violet was shaking her head. “Emotional problems. He had some kind of breakdown when he went away to college and has been living out near Amherst ever since. I don’t know the details, but Lillian went to visit him pretty regularly, and recently things had gotten worse with him. Another breakdown and he ran away or something.”

  “Do the cops know about this?” I was thinking of the detective, Bill, and his partner, rummaging through the mess of papers in search of a next of kin. Legally, this son sounded like it. But Violet heard my question differently.

  “Oh, he’s never really been violent. I mean, not really. And I don’t think he’d do anything to hurt his mom. I mean, he’s just a little out of it, most of the time, you know?”

  I told her about Bill and the other detective looking for a contact, and she relaxed a bit. “That neighbor, the woman, she doesn’t like him,” she explained. “Lillian brought Dougie—that’s the son—up for a weekend a month or two ago. There was some problem with his group home. And that Wright bitch was close to calling the cops on him. All he was doing was singing. Sitting on a lawn chair and singing.”

  Having had my own run-in with that particular neighbor, I didn’t ask the obvious, like, how loud, what time of night, and which particular lyrics. I’m a live-and-let-live type at heart, and I figure it takes all kinds.

  “Who lives on the other side?” I asked her. We’d been acting like this Ms. Wright owned the neighborhood.

  “That’s a rental building, about a dozen units. Everyone there minds their own business. And the building behind hers is owned by the university. It’s offices, mainly, so nobody is there after five. This would be a great neighborhood, really, if it weren’t for some people.” Who those some were was clear. “Lillian used to let kids come in and play with the kittens, when she had them. She taught them all how to pick them up and how to be gentle with them so they’d purr and the momma cats wouldn’t get upset. She was a total asset to the neighborhood. To me, as well.”

  She paused, her round, pink face beginning to wrinkle up beneath its colorful topping. “I’m going to miss her. Who’d do this to her?” Her voice was growing louder. Anger was preferable to tears. “Who, and why?”

  “So you don’t think it was an accident?” I didn’t tell her of my own instinct that foul play was involved. I wanted to hear what she said. “The cops seemed to think that she tripped and fell.”

  “The cops. Tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dumber? They think she’d tripped over her own cats. They did not know Lillian.” She grabbed a box off the floor and threw it on the chair. A few paint chips fell from a ceiling that sagged ominously. “Lillian was slow, but she was steady.” She ripped the top flaps open and a puff of dust went flying with the dry, old tape. “Lillian shoveled her walk all through the winter. The sidewalk, too, until I took over.” She reached in and pulled out a pile of ledgers. The thump they made on the end table as she dropped them only accented her determination. “Lillian was a dancer when she was younger. Did she tell you that?” She whipped the top book open with a thud and leafed through its pages. “She taught yoga until the arthritis got her.” My mind wanted to remind Violet that people age, that even formerly lithe legs can become unsteady. I didn’t have the heart. She slammed the book shut and grabbed the next one.

  “And Lillian wore one of those one-touch medic-alert panic buttons around her neck.” My mind went blank. “Her son saw the ad and wouldn’t shut up until she bought one. You know, the ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’ ad?”

  She leaned on the books and her voice grew slow and low, as if she was swearing an oath of blood on them. “Lillian would not have tripped. Lillian would not have fallen over her cats. But if, a big if—” she looked up at me, her eyes blazing. “If she had, she would’ve finally used that damned necklace. She’d have pressed the damned button and waited for the damned ambulance to get here.

  “Someone killed my friend Lillian.” I had no breath to respond to the fury in her eyes. “Something here is going to tell me why. And I’m going to find out who.”

  Chapter Five

  “Are you crazy?” I couldn’t keep my voice from rising. “Have you lost it?” I started listing reasons why this was a very bad idea. One, we weren’t detectives. Two, it could be dangerous. And three, despite what she said—and despite my own piqued instincts—we didn’t even know if there was a murderer to be caught. By the time I’d finished enumerating all these reasons, with significant elaboration and the occasional colorful expletive, I’d paced the crowded room twice and raised a new cloud of dust by hitting at boxes and piles of paper. Violet just kept working, opening boxes, leafing through letters and scrap books, then refiling years of accumulated papers.

  “You can’t investigate what you think is a murder all by yourself.” I’d almost forgotten my own suspicions. “You cannot. You will not do this.” Although I probably only had ten years on her, that decade and our serious difference in height—I was a good six inches taller than Violet—made me feel vaguely protective of her. Someone had to be, I thought. “I’ve got it. Together, we’ll go to the police. You’ll tell them about the panic-button necklace thingy. You’ll tell…” Any other thoughts I had were broken off by a coughing fit, which threatened to choke me as I inhaled the dust and dander of years.

  “No cops. Absolutely not. Hey, c’mon.” She took my arm to lead me out of the dust-filled room. “Now, blow your nose.” She handed me a large, lace-edged hankie, not the style I’d have pegged her with. “Wipe your eyes. Good. Now, it’s no use lecturing me about the police,” she started, when a hideous shriek pierced the air. Half howl, half hiss, it brought us both out the back door in a rush, just in time to see a white and gray blaze zip by low to the ground. A flash of fuchsia and cream, this time human-sized, followed close behind.

  “That animal!” The human said it like it was an insult. I recognized the impeccably turned-out neighbor, but now the front of her silk suit heaved with emotion. “That animal was on my roof, stalking my birdfeeder!”

  “It’s Sibley!” Violet’s glee would have provoked her further had the purple-haired punk not immediately turned to seek the cat in the confines of the dust cloud behind us.

  “I thought those beasts were all taken care of.” The neighbor turned to me instead. “You were here the other day, right? You’re not with animal control, are you?” She looked me up and down, taking in my mussy hair and jeans, and answered her own question. “No, you’re another cat person.”

  “I’m Theda, Theda Krakow, and I’m a journalist.” I struck a pose that I imagined did my namesake proud, and extended my hand.

  “Patricia Wright. Patti. I’m a realtor,” she explained, straightening her jacket. Her voice had dropped half an octave to sound almost smooth, a professional voice. “And I’m a c
oncerned neighbor, as well, but you know that. A journalist? You don’t mean there’s going to be a story about that, about…all this.” She waved one beringed hand in a vague gesture, taking in the decrepit house and overgrown yard. Her tone rising again to a tight squeak. “Or about her—the lady who, who…” Her face was growing white.

  “Who died? Your neighbor Lillian, you mean?” I didn’t really want to help her out, but the look of panic coming over her intrigued me. “No, I was going to write about her cats,” I continued. In front of this woman, I didn’t want to talk about hoarding. She obviously had enough anti-cat feeling as it was.

  “Oh good, then it’s over.” She breathed again. “We don’t want some unnecessary fuss. The accident, whatever, it’s bad for business.” She leaned toward me, speaking now in a conspiratorial hush. “Nobody wants a property where the last owner, well, expired, even in this market. And I’m dying to get this listing.”

  Poor choice of words, I thought, since someone had done just that. But before I could say anything about her neighborly concern, Violet emerged, her arms around a large white cat marked with big gray spots, one placed just so like a cap between his ears. “Here’s Sibley. He’s had a good scare, hasn’t he?” The cat, calm now, had his front paws wrapped around her neck. In a moment he’d be suckling her earlobe.

  “Disgusting.” Wright stepped back. “And dangerous.”

  “Oh, he just likes to watch. Don’t you, Sibley?” Violet stroked the smooth gray saddle that covered most of his back, and sure enough, the cat reached up to mouth her ear, the one without the rings. He closed his eyes and a rumbling purr quickly became audible.

  “Well, he’s not going to stay here. I’m calling those animal control people right now,” said Wright, turning on her heel. Clearly, she’d been upset to leave the house without a cell phone.