Cat of the Century (19 page)

“I’ll start looking.” Shirley glanced out the window. “Is it ever going to end?” The snow was falling faster, thicker. “It’s snowed most of the last two weeks. The sun has peeped out, what, twice?”

“If that.” Harry turned the collar up on her old Barbour coat. “You take care. Best to Dick.” She named Shirley’s husband, then stopped, her hand on the doorknob. “Enrique okay?”

“Enough time has passed, but you know those two were so close. It’s so hard to lose your partner. I don’t know what I’d do without Dick.” She leaned over the counter, her lovely scarf touching the top of it. “Then I remind myself that we’ve been lucky to have had decades together. What about these poor kids whose husbands or wives never come back from Iraq or Afghanistan?”

“I think about that, too, Shirley. I guess I’ve reached the age where I realize how strong most people are, but I wish they didn’t have to find out.” She waved, opened the door, and made a dash for the car.

Inez woke up when Harry opened the door. “I must have nodded off.”

“Good thing. I was in there forever.” She started the motor, then drove sixty yards to pull into another parking place in front of Terri Kincaid’s store. “You can stay here if you want.”

“I want to see the guinea hens, after all you said about them.”

Harry sheepishly replied, “I did go on. You know, Terri gives me hives, but she finds the best stuff. Expensive.”

“The best usually is.” Inez opened the door, carefully stepping out.

Tucker remained asleep, Erno at her side, but Pewter, braving the snow on her precious pate, ran out. Mrs. Murphy followed.

Harry hurried around to take Inez by her elbow. The distance to the sidewalk protected by the overhang was short, but it was slick. Healthy
though Inez was, Harry assumed her bones were more brittle than her own. She didn’t want her to risk a fall.

“I hate this stuff.”
Pewter shook her back paws, toes splayed out.

Terri looked up, saw the humans, and hurried from behind the counter to open the door.

The cats skedaddled in.

Once certain Inez was through the door, Harry raised her voice. “You two come back here this instant.”

“Come and get us,”
Pewter trilled.

Terri started after Pewter.

Harry called out, “You’ll inflame her. I ignore her. She’ll come round. I know, I know, Tucker broke a vase, but cats are nimble.”

Terri shrugged. “Hey, it’s one way to sell something.”

Inez chuckled. “Hang in there, Terri, business will pick up. Came to see your guinea hens.” Harry’s eyes followed the cats, together now, tails straight up.

Terri, a true retailer, enthused, “You’ll love them. Look at how accurate they are.” She pointed to the display, which was clever—a tiny hay bale and small hand-carved cows within two-foot-high white fencing. The beautiful porcelain hens were in a little yard, real cracked corn scattered on the piece of green carpet, which actually did resemble grass.

“They really are delightful.” Inez studied the almost life-size ceramic hens with a deep clear glaze.

The artist had correctly painted the black-and-white feathers; the head was a tad stylized but appealing. There were various sizes and color variations, for those desiring more decoration than accuracy.

Harry hated to admit it: She was in love with these guinea hens. However, Harry watched her money and was having a hard time justifying spending $75 on a small hen or $150 for a large one.

She tore herself away from the hens to look at the lovely plates, bowls, and mugs from Provence. The colors—some dark mustard, others cherry—set off the dinnerware. Each item was hand-painted and therefore individual, yet they were of a piece so all fit together.

Terri, secretly hoping the cats would break something, returned to
the counter and cash register to check a price she’d forgotten to put on a large bowl, one with a painted background of white magnolias. When Inez walked toward the counter, Terri said, “Thank you for calling me. I should have said that when you walked in.”

Inez had called Terri the evening when they’d received the vituperative emails from Mariah, after speaking to Liz.

“You know how Terri gets,” Liz had said. “She’ll hear this through the pipeline—probably tomorrow—pitch a fit, and fall in it.”

“True,” Inez had replied.

“I’ll call her now. Give me twenty minutes, but then will you call, too? You’re so good at calming people down.” Liz paused. “Maybe because you calm animals.”

“Well, we are just animals.”

Inez had called Terri, who carried on as expected.

Now Inez said, “No need to thank me. I think we’ve gone over these bizarre and sad events enough.” Inez really hoped Terri had gotten it out of her system. She didn’t want to go over it one more time, nor did she have the patience for Terri’s emotions. Maybe the cold was making her cranky. She didn’t know and, at that exact moment, she didn’t care.

Harry, trying to keep tabs on her two bad cats, had noticed an unusual foot-high fat-bottomed glazed pot, with cork stopper and hardened wax around the stopper’s edge.

She picked it up. “This weighs a ton.”

“Oh.” Dismay played on Terri’s face. “That shouldn’t be out here. I haven’t cleaned it up yet. I’m a bit rattled with … well, you know. Here, let me take it to the back and clean it.”

“Looks clean to me.”

“No. If you’re interested, you should see it at its best.” Terri grabbed it.

The fat-bottomed vase slipped through her hands, smashing to the floor. It cracked in half but didn’t split wide open.

The cats moved closer.

Inside was a plastic bag filled with something.

“Sharp odor.”
Mrs. Murphy sneezed.

“You see,” Terri explained nervously, “they’re shipped from Mexico packed with sand, to make them more stable. Also, more of them would break in transit if they were hollow. And here I am, breaking one.” She knelt down, squeezed the two thick crockery halves together, and walked the vase back into her storage area.

Harry, Inez, and the cats heard water running.

Inez plucked a mustard-colored cup off the shelf, whispering to Harry, “I’d better buy something.”

When Terri returned, she brightened at the sight of a sale, no matter how small. “Good choice.”

“I don’t trust her,”
Pewter remarked.

“Me, neither,”
Mrs. Murphy agreed.

Back in the station wagon, Harry inserted her square key, put her foot on the brake, then hit the start button.

Inez laughed. “Can’t they make cars with keys anymore?”

“Guess not.” Harry smiled. “It’s a great vehicle, truly, but I’m with you—keep it simple.” She checked her rearview mirror after pressing the button for the wiper in the long window over the tailgate. “Think you got everything?”

“Yes. You were smart to hit the grocery store first.”

“I usually wait until Wednesday or Thursday for that, but I haven’t been as organized as I should.”

“I haven’t helped. You and Fair gave up half a day to pick me up, give up your bedroom, move some of your clothes and things around—time-consuming.”

“Inez, don’t give it a second thought. We love having you.”

“You’re a sweetheart.” Inez petted Pewter, ignoring her wet paws.

Mrs. Murphy jumped in the rear to snuggle up to Tucker.

As they drove slowly through the snow, Harry remarked, “Sand.”

“I know. Thought about that, too.”

“Inez, are we jaded? Have we watched too many crime shows?”

“It was awfully white.”

“You know, I’m not saying one word about it. None of my business.”

“Well, if it is cocaine, you’d think she’d have more money.” Inez
breathed deeply. “This country’s duplicity about drugs is really quite horrifying.”

“That it is. Well, let’s hope we have overactive imaginations.” Harry let it go at that.

“Smelled terrible,”
Pewter told them.

Inez stroked her head. “You always have something to say.”

A
n apple-wood fire crackled in the fireplace, the distinct fruitwood odor filling the large upstairs bedroom. Years ago, when Harry had upgraded her heating system, she divided the house into zones. She usually kept the upstairs at fifty degrees. Now that she and Fair had moved up there so Inez could have the master bedroom downstairs, she pushed the thermostat up to sixty-five. Because the original part of the old Federal-style house had been built in the 1830s, every room had a fireplace. With succeeding generations and more-modern technology, indoor bathrooms were created. The people who built the clapboard house—farmers, all—had a marvelous sense of proportion and function but making a huge bathroom with a fireplace had never occurred to those folks. Didn’t occur to Harry, either, although she hated a cold bathroom—hence turning up the thermostat.

At nine-thirty that night, the mercury read thirty degrees and would surely dip into the twenties as the hours wore on.

Both husband and wife cut and split wood throughout the seasons. Splitting a log takes an eye for the grain and a sense of rhythm. Harry loved doing it, and Fair was pretty good at it, too. Little by little over the summer and early fall, they’d filled up the wood house, carefully stacking logs according to type and diameter. Harry’s drive for symmetry often made her husband laugh, but he always appreciated the results.
He even built a smaller wood house for the fruitwoods alone: apple, pear, cherry, peach.

Tonight, as they sat propped up against pillows, each reading a book and enjoying the view out the windows of an inky-black sky with silver dots of stars, they appreciated just why they swung those axes until they felt as if they weighed fifty pounds.

Pewter had made a nest on Fair’s long legs. Mrs. Murphy preferred curling up in Harry’s lap. Tucker sprawled in front of the fire, opening one eye when the wood occasionally hissed.

Pewter started to giggle, which sounded like a fluffy cough.

“You all right, kitty?” Fair stroked her.

“I’m fine.”
She giggled a bit more.
“You look funny in those reading glasses.”

“If you had to wear glasses, they’d be bifocals,”
Mrs. Murphy taunted her.

“You say,”
Pewter sniffed indignantly.

“Girls.” Harry didn’t know what they were saying, but the tone of the kitty conversation was not lost on her.

Neither cat replied. Mrs. Murphy pointedly made another circle on Harry’s lap and dropped down again.

“Can’t find a soft place?”
Pewter raised up one long, long whisker.

“It’s soft.”

“Then why did you get up and circle again?”
Pewter sounded so innocent.

“Felt like it,”
Mrs. Murphy said.

“Ha, you did it because you’re getting old bones. Next thing you know, your fur will fall out in patches.”
Pewter giggled louder.
“Then you’ll be bald. Ha.”

Mrs. Murphy rose, stepped off Harry’s lap, reached over, and gave the fat gray cat a swat.

“Violent, she’s violent. She needs anger-management counseling.”
Pewter pupils enlarged, and her giggling was really loud.

“Hateful!”
Mrs. Murphy raised her not inconsiderable voice.

Fair folded Lord Kinross’s magisterial
The Ottoman Centuries
on his chest. “All right now.”

“She started it,”
Mrs. Murphy grumbled, returning to Harry’s lap.

Harry, reading Rowan Jacobsen’s
Fruitless Fall,
looked up, folded the book, and gently patted Mrs. Murphy with it. “I can do this a lot harder if you don’t settle down.”

The tiger cat narrowed her eyes.
“Why are you reading that book? All it does is upset you. It’s not bedtime reading, and furthermore, Fatso is the problem, not me.”

“Ha.”
Pewter turned her back on Mrs. Murphy.

The two humans looked at each other and laughed.

Fair picked up his book, then laid it down again. “I’ve been thinking about Terri dropping the expensive jar.”

Harry had told him of the day’s events, that being the strangest.

“Yes.”

“Maybe that’s why she’s … what would you say, tightly wound?”

“Meaning she’s a cokehead?”

“Yeah. Then again, it could just be sand. But she is jumpy and a trifle erratic.”

“That’s a lot of people,” Harry ruefully replied.

“Got that right. But I think there have always been a lot of nervous people or gloomy ones—not that she’s particularly gloomy. You know me, I’ve loved history since I was in grade school. Can’t read enough, and what impresses me is how the same basic personalities occur over and over again. Including nervous types.”

“I never thought about it.” Harry was intrigued.

“Well, go back to your bee book.” He laughed.

“To bee or not to bee.”

He rolled his eyes. “Too easy.”

“Then why didn’t you think of it?” She reached over and put her palm on his cheek.

Inez, also in bed with a fire roaring, wasn’t a bit sleepy. Instead of a book, she had her laptop. She liked being able to tap in to the latest veterinary advances. She always checked her email. Her great reputation meant that many equine vets asked her questions. Some of them were not about cases or injuries but about horses of the past. One equine vet in Kentucky asked who had the best mechanical motion, Man o’ War or Citation.