Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen (25 page)

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says, and sort of waves it off.

“Are you saying you believe me?”

He nods. “You think I've forgotten the Christmas parade?”

“Thank you!” I could barely believe my ears—it all seemed too … easy

Then he says, “Could I have a word with you? Alone?”

So I hop off the porch and have a little powwow with ol' Borschie right there in the middle of Hudson's walkway. And to my surprise he doesn't lecture me about leaving bruised and bloodied bodies on the lovely town-center lawn. What he says is, “I don't want you to worry about El Gato.”

“Dave talked to you about him? Did he show you the picture?”

“Yes,” he says, but it's a kind of hesitant yes. “And tomorrow will be El Gato's last day at Slammin' Dave's.”

“Great! So who is he? Some parolee or something?”

He starts to say something but stops himself. “Sammy, it's police business and I can't really discuss it with you, but I want you to know that things are being taken care of and you have no reason to be worried.”

“So he
is
a criminal! We knew it! The guy is so creepy. Have you talked to him? Well, you must have, right? If you're investigating him?”

“Sammy, Sammy, Sammy…just do me a favor— please,
please
stay out of it. And make sure Holly does the same. I haven't been able to talk to her in person, but give her the message, would you?”

“Sure. Oh, she'll be so happy to know El Gato's gonna
be out of there. He must've pooped his pants when he saw the picture. He did see the picture, right?”

Officer Borsch puts his finger in front of his mouth like, Shhh, then gives me a closed smile and says, “Police business, right?”

“Right.”

He says, “Okay then,” and starts to walk away, but then stops and turns. “What was the brawl with Heather about, anyway?”

I shrug. “She tried to steal my lucky horseshoe.”

“Your lucky horseshoe,” he says like,
Uh-huh.
Then he does the most surprising thing I've ever known Officer Borsch to do. He winks and says, “Well, unlucky her, huh?” then turns and walks away.

When I got back to the porch, Casey said, “He seemed pretty cool.”

My jaw was still dangling. “You don't understand! Officer Borsch is… unreasonable! Grumpy! Bullheaded!”

Casey shrugged. “Didn't seem that way to me.”

“Wow,” I mumbled, taking the horseshoe out of my pocket. “First school, then Heather, now Officer Borsch?” I looked at Casey. “I'm beginning to think this thing
is
lucky.”

“What is that?” Hudson asked, and when I showed it to him, he said, “Ah. A horseshoe amulet.”

“Amulet?” I asked.

“A charm. Thought to be inscribed with a magic incantation to protect its owner from evil.” He grinned. “A lucky horseshoe.” He handed it back and said, “Where'd you get it?”

I hitched a thumb at Casey. “From him.”

“Ah…,” Hudson said again. And again he was looking a little too pleased for comfort.

So real fast I asked Casey, “Where'd
you
get it, anyway?”

He shifted in his seat. “Uh…”

He looked real uncomfortable, so I said, “It's not like I
care
where it came from. I'm just interested. Have you had it for a long time?”

He shook his head.

“Did you
find
it?”

He looked kind of sheepish, then nodded. “Last month. At the Renaissance Faire. I found it on the ground in the jousting arena.”

I'd been to that Renaissance Faire. And even though I hadn't
wanted
to go, Marissa had dragged me along. And I'm glad she did, too. It was amazing! It was like being transported to a different place, a different time. Everyone talked in accents and acted like they were from Merry Olde England. It was a place where if you found a horseshoe, you could almost believe that it
was
magical.

Now Hudson could tell that Casey was sort of embarrassed, and great guy that he is, he tried to make him feel better by saying, “My understanding is that a horseshoe isn't lucky unless it
is
found.”

“Yeah,” I said, lacing it back on my shoe. “And I'm glad that's where it came from. That place was fun.”

So Casey was okay about having given me something he'd found in the dirt. And after we finished our brownies, I helped Hudson carry things back inside. And when
I was sure Casey couldn't hear, I whispered, “Can you give him a ride out to Sisquane? Otherwise he's going to want to walk me home.”

“Got it,” Hudson said.

So we all piled into Hudson's car, and off we went to Sisquane. And when we got to Casey's house and he was getting out of the car, I said, “Oh! I almost forgot!”

“What?”

“That song is awesome!”

He grinned. “Told you.”

So everything was, you know, cool. Only as Casey was thanking Hudson for the ride home, I saw the front door to his house open. “Uh-oh,” I said, sort of slouching in my seat. Mr. Acosta had stepped outside and he was not looking too happy.

Casey glanced over his shoulder and said, “Don't worry about him. Dad's cool. When he hears what happened, he'll understand.”

Only then we saw his
mother
step out beside him.

I slouched even farther, and Casey said, “Oh boy. This is gonna be fun….”

Hudson said, “Would you like me to speak with them?”

Casey shook his head. “No way. The best thing you can do is get out of here. But thanks again for the ride.” Then he looked at me and said, “See you tomorrow.”

He was already gone by the time I thought to lend him the horseshoe.

Hudson gave me a ride home, too. He didn't say anything more than, “He seems like a fine young man” about Casey, which was a relief. Most grown-ups would quiz you from here to the moon, but Hudson's not like most grown-ups.

Which is probably why I like him so much.

Anyway, we were getting near the Highrise when he said, “By the way, Miss Kitty came over today.”

“Oh yeah?”

“It seems she's missing another cat.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “She was in tears. She's been to the pound, the Humane Society, the police….”

Then I had a thought. “You think someone has a big rat infestation?”

He shrugged. “Why
steal
cats? There are always plenty at the pound.”

So he dropped me off, but the whole way up the fire escape his voice kind of echoed around in my head.
Why steal cats? There are always plenty at the pound….

By the time I got home, there were a couple of phone calls I wanted to make. Questions I wanted to ask.
Trouble is, I didn't want to have to
answer
a bunch of questions about why I was
asking
the questions, and Grams would be sure to want to know.

But—lucky me—there was a note on the kitchen table:
Off to the market. Back soon. Love, Grams.

I looked up the number for the Humane Society and dialed it quick. Holly was still there, so I asked her, “How many cats do you guys have there?”

“Uh, I think four,” she told me. “And no, Zippy's not one of them.”

“How many do you guys
usually
have there?”

“I don't know. It varies.”

“More than four? Less than four?”

She hesitated, then asked, “Are you on to something?”

“I don't know. But can you find out?”

“Hang on.”

So I waited, and a few minutes later she was back, saying, “Overall it's less than it used to be.”

“Used to be, when?”

“She said three months ago they used to have at least ten, all the time. Sometimes up to twenty.”

“Wow.” My brain was racing, trying to figure out what to ask next. Finally I said, “What do the cats you have now have in common?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are they mangy? Are they ugly? Are they old? Is there a reason people
wouldn't
want them?

“Uh, let me go look at them again.”

When she came back, she said, “One of them's pretty old, but the other three are cute.”

“Cute as in small?”

“Yeah, one of them's still kind of a kitten.”

“Are they females?”

“God, Sammy, what's it matter?”

“I don't know—I'm just trying to figure this out.”

“Well, hold on, okay?”

“Fine.”

Forever later she came back, saying, “They're all females except the kitten.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? That's it? What are you thinking?”

“I'm thinking that I'm going to call the pound.”

“Sammy!”

“I've got to call before they close. I'll talk to you later, okay? And thanks!”

So I called the pound, and after a bunch of back-and-forthing with the lady on the other end, I found out that the pound had only three cats, that they were all kind of scrawny females.

“Is that all?” I asked. “I mean, is that usual?”

“We've got lots of
dogs
if you want a good selection.”

“No. I want to know if you used to have more cats. Like, let's say six months ago?”

“Look, it's a
good
thing we don't have more of them. We used to have to destroy a lot more because nobody wanted them.”

“So what's changed? Does someone come in to get cats? Like a repeat customer or something?”

“We do have people who rescue animals, sure. There's
one woman in particular. Actually, she came in for two today.”

“Is she…does she go by Miss Kitty?”

“Why, yes!”

All of a sudden I felt terrible about hating the Psycho Kitty Queen. Here she had a whole plantation of cats, and why? Because she couldn't stand the thought of them getting gassed.

But I made myself focus on why I was calling. “I'm sorry for all the questions, but I'm trying to figure something out.”

She laughed, but it wasn't a mean laugh. “Obviously.”

“Are there other people who come in regularly?”

“Not really.” Then she added, “Well, there was a fella who used to come in, but I haven't seen him in a while.”

“A while as in… a month? Three months? Four?”

“Maybe four? He was another one who hated to see them destroyed. He didn't keep them himself, though. He found them homes.”

“Can you tell me what he looked like?”

“I'm sorry, but you haven't told me why you're asking all this. And I don't know if I should give you that information.”

“Okay, then just tell me this—was he about forty, with a husky build and a blond buzz cut?”

There was a moment of silence on the other end, and it was enough to make my heart start pounding.

And then, there it was, her voice in my ear, “Why… why, yes!”

* * * 

That night when I went to bed, I lay there in the dark, trying to make sense of the pieces shuffling around in my head. Dead cats. Missing cats. Rescued cats. Returned cats. And I tried to fit them together with the people involved. The Psycho Kitty. El Gato. The Bulldog. Tornado Tony, Tiny, T.J.

Did they have
anything
to do with each other?

Things had made a lot more sense when I'd thought the Bulldog
was
El Gato. But now he was just a guy I'd followed across town. A guy with a twitching gym bag who had disappeared down an alley. Had he done that because he'd noticed me following him? Was he the one who'd called me? Was there any connection between him and the Kojo Buffet?

And who had taken down the Zippy flyers? Was it the same person who'd called me? I should have asked Officer Borsch about the flyers when I'd seen him at Hudson's, but I'd been too wrapped up in what had happened with Heather to think about it.

Maybe I was trying to take pieces of different puzzles and force them together. Maybe it was like El Gato
not
being the Bulldog. I'd tried to connect them when they didn't belong together.

Or maybe I was just obsessing about El Gato and the Bulldog and cats because I was trying to avoid thinking about Casey and Heather and the whole Acosta mess. I mean, what kind of trouble was Casey in right now? I could practically hear his parents: You went with
her
instead of helping your
sister?
Where are your priorities?
What were you
thinking?
Candi and Heather were sure to whip the whole thing into a frothy frenzy—especially if Mrs. Acosta was jealous of my mom.

Like I needed
that
thrown into an already unfactorable equation.

Anyway, I saw no solution to the Acosta problem, so I went back to puzzling about cats. In my gut it felt like there had to be a connection—that it all fit together somehow. But where were the border pieces? The edges. The anchor. I needed something to build on!

But wait! Maybe this was like one of those shaped puzzles, where there are no straight edges. Maybe the pieces formed some
thing.
Maybe they all fit together in the shape of a cat!

Okay, I was losing it. So I cuddled up with Dorito on the couch and just stroked him gently from head to tail, over and over. I was so glad to have him back. So glad he was safe and sound and not dead in some Dumpster somewhere…

The next thing I knew it was morning and Grams was shaking me gently, going, “Samantha? Samantha, wake up!”

“Huh? Huh? Oh!” My heart was pounding in my chest. I sat up quick and tried to catch my breath.