2 CATastrophe (2 page)

James Miller was due for a haircut around 1pm, and I decided to head him off at the pass. I stopped by the salon he’d written down, but he’d already finished and gone on to his next errand, which was a laundromat.

The laundromat was a self-service selection of washer and dryers that looked like they’d been new in the 1950s, though I did notice that the prices had been maintained even if the equipment had not. James was there in his baggie clothing, sitting and reading a magazine while he waited.

I cursed my luck. While I didn’t have a lot to go on at the moment, I’d hoped to sniff some of his clothes to see if there had been any lure in his clothing that would have attracted cats. Most pets either have to be trained to walk along with someone or the human has something they want. As the man from Wild About Cats had pointed out, training a cat to walk with someone is nearly impossible. The most likely source for following would be the smell of something that the cat would want.

However, the problem that I ran up against here, besides the fact that all my potential evidence was in the spin cycle, was why would only one cat want to follow him if that were truly the case? Wouldn’t tens or even hundreds of cats smell and want catnip or any other treat that might have been smeared on Miller? The odds of one particular cat following him were slim to none.

Of course, I was neglecting the most obvious choice which was that he was just bat-shit crazy. However, standing there, doing his laundry, he looked quite sane. Or what I imagine sane to look like. I wasn’t a good judge of what normal people looked like.

My own family hadn’t left me with many role models in terms of normal. My sister had disappeared from our home, our city, and our lives one day years ago, and the impact that it had on our family was permanent. There had been a statewide search for my sister, Susan, and all the publicity that a search like that entails.

They’d never found her, and the effect on my family had twisted each of us in our own way. My mother never left her house except on the more dire conditions. To her the outside world is to be feared and avoided at all costs. My father drank himself to an early death, and my remaining brother left home, never looking back. As for me, I found ways to make myself less visible in public.

I don’t dress stylishly or even well. I keep my grass tallish, and I allow my house to look a little worn down. Susan had been the type of beauty who had immediately attracted the attention of everyone, a fact that I felt made her an easy target for kidnappers. I vowed that would never happen to me. I would never be the center of attention.  I wanted to be the opposite of Susan to keep me safe and protected. It worked for the most part, but with my new profession of talking to animals, I had to put myself out there.

So I could understand a man who didn’t bother to care what he looked like or how good it made him look to others. I had to wonder how others perceived me. I had begun to think more about that after meeting Detective Sheila Green, who had worked with me, and sometimes against me, in a previous case. She’d flirted with me, at one point telling me that I’d be cute if I cleaned myself up more. It had made me wonder if my camouflage was effective or if it made me stand out more against others.

The last time I’d worked with the police, I’d ended up in a situation where my hair, which I kept unfashionably long, had been cut. Now I was sporting what could pass for a regular hairstyle, but given the circumstances, Green never commented on its effect on my appearance.

James Miller stood out among the people in the laundromat today. He wanted to be seen. I could see a difference just in the way he dressed and acted.

“Griff, what are you doing here?” Miller asked me. “Have you had any luck with the cat today?”

I eyed him suspiciously. Was he going to tell me that he’d seen the cat, even though I had not? “No, I didn’t. Did you see the cat today?”

James shook his head. He looked truly disappointed. “I think your presence might have spooked him off. I was hoping that might happen. I don’t care if you get to the bottom of this little mystery. I’d be fine with the whole thing just ending. Just tell him to leave me alone, and I’ll be fine with the matter.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to tell Miller that if you don’t get to the root of a problem, it can pop back up any time or can reappear in another way.  I was just glad that he hadn’t thought that he’d seen it today. His reticence about his personal life had made me wonder what he was hiding.

Without the evidence of the smells that might lure a cat, I half-heartedly tailed Miller through the rest of his errands, but no felonious felines appeared on our path. Following someone was really outside of what I normally do. I was feeling more like a private eye, and less like a pet communicator who worked from the comfort of his sofa. I wasn’t sure that this was a role I wanted to play. I decided to call it a day and went home to spend some time with my own pets.

The following day was not much better. I found a new business that did custom framing as Miller took in some photos to be framed and spent an hour buying nothing at Whole Foods. The grocery most definitely would not have let a street cat shop in their store, so we were safe there. As I wandered around the organic produce, I wondered why Miller was so upset by this cat tail. I knew it was a bad pun, but my mind did strange things when I had hours to kill. I’d come up with a half-dozen plays on words, each one more groan-worthy than the last, by the time he left the grocery.

Miller had headed back to a theater on Adams Street downtown to pick up some tickets for a play when I thought I finally saw the cat. An orange tabby circled around two of the homeless people sitting on the street outside the theater. I have to confess that I was spending all of my time staring at the people and nearly missed the cat entirely.

One of my own quirks stemming from my sister’s disappearance is to check out the homeless women when I see them. It’s not because I’m hoping for a date, but I do it out of habit. My mother had always had a firm resolve that my sister had escaped and was making her way back to our family as best she could. Since I thought of her as a daring adventuress who would do anything to escape the clutches of a kidnapper, sleeping on the street was one of the things I imagined Susan might do. Over the years, I’ve grown to accept that she’s never coming home, but habits, once formed, are extremely hard to break.

However, neither of the women looked like they could be in their early 30s and that was being kind. One of them had a shock of gray hair under a knit ski cap, and the other was likely 45 and wore what appeared to be her entire wardrobe, even though June was unseasonably warm for Northern Ohio. Having thought of them as possibly being my sister, I felt empathy for them and dropped money into the cans in front of them.

The actions needed to get money out of my wallet and place it in the can allowed me the time to investigate the cat at close range. The cat could hardly have been called feral. It was well-groomed and one of the women stroked its fur from time to time. It was well-fed and comfortable around people. The cat didn’t wear a collar, but these days most cats and dogs were micro-chipped, so getting lost wasn’t the issue it had once been. The cat’s tail was abnormally long, as long as its entire body and then some. I thought that the cat likely lived around this area and was just out for a stroll, and to be idolized by strangers as all cats think is their due. Even so, I knew of very few cats in general that were so touchy-feely.

The Duchess would never allow me to pet her for very long. I was allowed one, perhaps two strokes along her back, before I got a stare that reminded me that she was no dog and did not wish to be treated like one. Since I spent so much time studying her to help me practice my routine of pretending to actually talk to these pets, I was fairly conversant with her expressions and moods.

I stroked her as well, talking softly to her as I did. Funny how Miller had assumed the orange tabby to be a boy, and I naturally assumed her to be a girl. It made me think about the projections we make on the animals around us. Some experts say that animals don’t feel emotions; we’re merely projecting our own experiences and moods onto the pets. However, having spent so much time in the company of animals, I felt differently. While animals might never be hopeful or optimistic, rather abstract emotions, I feel that animals do have the same basic moods that humans do. They feel happy and sad. They can mourn the loss of an owner or growl in anger. I’m guessing that most of those researchers do not have their own pets.

I watched all the signs of this cat, trying to get a read on its situation. It was cared for. It was relatively happy. It seemed relatively uninterested in Miller, preferring to focus on the two homeless women.

When I looked up, Miller was gone. I checked my schedule and saw that his next stop was only around the corner. I excused myself from the women, which they found odd. I tried the next three places on my list, but he was not at any of those locations either.

Even as I grumbled, I knew that I would continue this work. I had told Miller at the start of this project that I was not a private eye, but he’d offered me enough money that I was willing to play Sam Spade for the amount of the check. While business had been steady over the past few months, it still consisted mostly of people who wanted a single consultation, which did not bring in much cash. I rarely had repeat customers, so a man who was willing to pay me the big bucks to follow him around and talk to cats was someone I could not turn down – even if I wasn’t qualified to tail anyone, even at a slow pace on a city street.

I tried the last place on his list, but he’d already been there as well. I was surprised. I had only been engaged with the women and the cat for maybe five minutes, but that was enough of a head start so that I missed him at every stop along the way.

I decided to call Miller to tell him what had happened and ask about the orange cat I’d spent time with today. The phone went to voicemail, and I left a message for Miller to call me back.

On that note, I decided to call it a day. Large contract or not, this was a hard way to earn a living, and I wanted to spend some time with my own pets for a change.

I’d walked Bruno, a Corgi, until his little legs were tired, and started to plan my dinner. I had spent one of the hours of my client time today deciding what I was having for dinner. I’d opted for an omelet with scallops, salsa, and cheese. I’d just sat down to eat when the phone rang.

“Fitzpatrick speaking,” I said, with some egg still in my mouth. I was offtheclock at this point, and I didn’t particularly care to talk to anyone while my eggs went cold.

“This is Detective Sheila Green. We meet again,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. Even if she hadn’t introduced herself, I would have recognized that voice immediately. Over the course of my business, I’ve had two occasions to deal with the police. In the last case where two Scotties were left without an owner, Sheila Green had been one of the detectives on the case. She had immediately caught my eye when we met. We’d clashed, flirted, and then I stopped.

It wasn’t that I was not attracted to her. I was. She had the most gorgeous set of silver eyes that I’ve ever seen. She had a pretty smile when I didn’t piss her off. Her taste in clothing could be improved. In order to fit in with the other detectives and the working class clientele that she served, her wardrobe consisted mainly of pants suits. However, clothes can be easily changed, whereas personalities cannot.

Yet at the end of the case with the Scotties, she’d given me a copy of the police file on my sister. While she’d meant well, thinking I was curious about all things, I had put the offering in the same category as the mice that The Duchess left on the front porch for me. For someone whose family had built their lives around that disappearance, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was read an impersonal account of her disappearance and any clues therein. At the time of her disappearance, the police had intimated that my thirteen-year-old sister had run away with her first serious boyfriend – even after we found that boyfriend still at home. They’d then switched to the theory that she’d left with another man. They were reluctant to entertain the notion that she’d been forcibly abducted from the home until much later.

Of course, Sheila Green would have read all of that in the file. As a police officer, I was sure she had professional curiosity that had made her read every detail. The thought of her intrusion made me want to slink back into myself even more. For days, I had not left the house and I’d begun to let my hair grow out again. I stopped talking to her after that. I had felt that my personal space, the most private catastrophe of my family, had been invaded.

“Hi, slow night and thought you’d call?” I replied, trying to keep things light. I didn’t want her to ask about the file at all.

“Actually, no. I need you to come down here immediately.” She gave me James Miller’s address. That did not bode well. If he could not call me himself, he had either disappeared, which brought back the flood of memories about losing Susan, or he was dead. Given that I’d just seen Miller hours before this call, it had to be death.

“You’re not saying anything, so I’m going to infer that you recognize the address and that this man was your latest pet talking client, yes?”

Her inferences had given me a few seconds to recover from the shock. The case had been odd and quirky, but I’d never have thought that it would lead to murder.

“You’re right. He’s a client of mine.”

“Oh yeah, does he have you talking to his tropical fish or his turtle?” Green asked. She’d never bought my act for a second. She knew that I was a fraud, yet she still seemed to like me. I wasn’t sure I understood how those two things could go together.

I put on my cheeriest voice for her. “I’m talking to a cat that has been following him around.”

Sheila actually laughed. While I knew that she was skeptical of my business venture, she’d never shown open ridicule for it. “You’re finding out from a cat why it was following Miller around Toledo. What – did it take a cab? Or wait, maybe it was like that cat on
Saturday Night Live
that used to drive around? What was its name?”

I confessed that I couldn’t remember either. We were even on the same wavelength for our weird humor, which gave me a pang of regret.

“Ask The Duchess,” she suggested. “Maybe her memory is better than yours.”

I finished chewing my eggs and got down to business. I was surprised to find that I was still a bit miffed about the police file. “So I know you didn’t call just to set up a party at James’ house. What gives?”

She cleared her throat, and her voice went all official on me. I braced myself, knowing that very likely he was dead. “At 6:32 pm this evening, we received a telephone call from one of the neighbors. There had been shouting at the Miller house, and then all of the lights went out. It was still daylight outside, so that wasn’t too strange, but Miller typically kept his outside lights on all day. The neighbor was concerned and called to see if we could investigate the house.

“When we arrived, the doors and windows were locked from the inside. One of the officers investigated, walking from window to window and looking inside. When he got to the kitchen window, it appeared that the body of a man was on the floor. He wasn’t moving. The officer went to the back door, broke out part of the window in the door, and opened it. There was a deadbolt lock as well as a standard lock. He unlocked both and entered.

“When he went to the kitchen, the officer found the body of a man, who we identified as James Miller. He had multiple photo IDs and we made a positive identification based on that. There was no sign of a struggle, despite the reports of shouting. There were no marks or bruises on the body. The front door was locked and dead-bolted from the inside.”

“So no cause of death? You’d only be calling if you thought it was fishy.”

“Not yet. We sent him to the morgue, but it will be a few days before the autopsy is ready. The budget cuts around here have slowed up work.” She paused. “Look, I have to tell you. If we don’t find some kind of evidence that this was murder, I’m going to have to call it as accidental or unknown. I don’t want to do that. I have a feeling that this is a murder, and my instincts are rarely wrong.”

I doubted that, given that she’d given me a police folder regarding my sister. Her gut did not know people. “So now that you’re done telling me about things. I have a question for you. Was there an orange tabby there with Miller? I’d told you that he’d been concerned about being followed by that cat, and I just had a weird –”

“Yeah, that cat is here alright. Is it his?” she interrupted.

“No, it’s not. That might be your first clue that something isn’t as it seems here.”

She paused for a moment. I knew the connection was still good, because I could hear voices in the background talking about the scene. Finally, she said, “I’m going to get shit for this, but would you want to come over and talk to this cat? You obviously know something if your first question is about an animal we found at the scene. Find out if it can tell you something about this case that will help me prove that it’s not accidental?”

I really wasn’t in the mood to see her again, but at the same time, I felt like I owed something to Miller. He’d hired me to find out about the cat, and now I had a chance to do that, even if he was no longer around to hear my report. I agreed, finished the omelet quickly, and drove back to Miller’s home.

The first thing that I noticed was that all of the lights were on outside the house. I guess that whatever had knocked out the lights had been fixed. Green was right. I counted eight different light fixtures all burning bright as I approached the house. It appeared that Miller had not wanted anyone to come to the door without being seen.

A uniformed officer met me at the door. He seemed to know my name and led me into the house. Luckily for me, Miller’s body had already been removed. I had seen a dead body before, and it was not an experience that I wished to renew. The house was much like I’d seen it before. There seemed to be some indications that a fight had broken out. I noticed a chair knocked out of place, indicated by the fact that the chair legs no longer matched the imprints in the carpet. I saw two photos on the wall that were now askew. Miller had been rather fastidious about his home, and I couldn’t see him tolerating those issues for long.