The Big Kitty (25 page)

Probably afraid that if he threw anything out, the lottery ticket would be hidden in it somewhere,
she thought. She flexed her hands, trying to get used to the feel of the heavy rubber gloves Will had insisted they wear … along with face masks.

They stood in the living room, a glare of sunlight coming in through the window that had lost its drapes.

“This has to be where our man outside saw the flashlight,”
Will said. “So we know the intruder was in here somewhere.”

“Well, we know this is one of the rooms she used,” Sunny pointed out. “It would seem reasonable to search in places she frequented. Ada said she’d lost the ticket. She didn’t say she’d hidden it and forgotten where the damn thing was.” The possibilities involved in that theory made her shudder. “Imagine checking under the liner in the litter box.”

Shadow circled around the room, making little grumbling noises. Sunny watched him, fascinated. Was he looking for the other cats who used to live here? Was he just responding to the way Gordie had rearranged things in this once-familiar room? Or had Shadow forgotten about Ada’s death—was he looking for his former mistress amid the mess?

The cat kept sniffing around Ada’s chair and acting generally unhappy.

Will watched him for a moment, then said, “You know, people who spend a lot of time in meth labs hang around some pretty unpleasant-smelling chemicals. Could our furry friend be reacting to that?”

“How do we know it’s not just Gordie’s smell, since he was setting up the lab himself?”

“We don’t,” Will admitted. “But I’m betting Shadow’s responding to the freshest scent.”

He got down on one knee. “The chair’s been moved,” he announced. “You can see the indentations the legs left in the rug.” He looked at the slightly shaggy upholstery and shook his head. “Nothing here that would take a print.”

Examining the table next to the chair, though, he got a
little more hopeful. “The dust is disturbed where someone might have picked the table up or shifted it.” He pointed, keeping his finger carefully above the surface. “Whether there are prints, smudges—or if the guy wore gloves like us—I’ll leave that up to the lab people.”

“It makes sense,” Sunny said, peering around the pieces of furniture. “Ada spent a lot of time here. Do you think we should have a look?” She pointed at the chair cushion.

“I don’t think it would hurt. As I said, there are no prints here.” Will pulled the cushion loose to reveal a comb, several hard candy wrappers, an emery board, and a catnip mouse that had all gotten tucked down the seams. No lottery ticket, though.

“I’ll take a look for any marks in the kitchen,” Will said. “That’s the only other place the intruder could have gotten to in the amount of time he was here.”

Standing alone in the dusty living room, Sunny tried to imagine what it would be like to live here, with her life bounded by the few little areas that Ada had struggled to keep clean. The living room chair and the TV. The kitchen. She’d use the stairs in the back to get to the cellar if she needed anything from there. The kitchen door, for bringing in food supplies. Maybe the pantry area could do with a search.

Sunny glanced over toward the front door. Would Ada ever come and go that way? She walked over to the foyer and the little odds-and-ends table that stood beside the door. It was just the place to pick up a purse or car keys before going out—or perhaps to rest a bag when coming back from shopping.

A thick layer of dust covered the surface of the table,
however, so it was clear that nothing had rested there for a while. A row of three small, impractical drawers stretched under the tabletop—pretty, but you couldn’t fit much in them. Two held buttons, spare keys, change—the sort of stuff that gets emptied out of pockets. The middle one, though … Sunny’s heart almost stopped when she saw the lottery logo printed on the back of the paper. Fingers trembling, she turned it over …

And snorted at herself. Oh, it was a lottery ticket, all right. But it was dated about a week before Ada died.

“Did you find something?” Will was back in the room, looking eagerly at the ticket Sunny held.

“Not unless lightning struck twice,” she told him, pointing out the date. “Bad enough to be searching for a winning ticket when there might be a year’s worth of losers lying around the house, too.”

She bent down to pat Shadow, who stood beside the table, looking up at her.

*

Shadow watched as
Sunny waved the piece of paper in front of the Big Male. Were they going to play with it? If they let it go and it floated down, there might be some pouncing games they could play.

The male—Will, he seemed to be called—shifted his feet, and Shadow sidled away. He was very aware of feet after what he’d smelled around the chair, and even though his side felt much better, remembered soreness seemed to stiffen his gait.

There was no mistaking it—the memory of this particular scent had been reinforced with severe pain. The
one who had kicked him so badly had been here. That was a bad two-legs, and smells like that always seemed to be connected to bad things. Shadow shifted uncomfortably as he watched Sunny and Will talk.

Even though he’d lived here, and the other smells were familiar, he wanted to leave this place. It made him nervous.

*

They went upstairs
to check Ada’s bedroom. Gordie had apparently put in his most serious search efforts here. The closet stood empty and so did the dresser, the clothes bundled into those ubiquitous garbage bags and piled on the unmade bed.

“I wonder if he checked the pockets,” Will said, poking at the emptied contents of one bag.

A small jewelry box stood on the dresser. Sunny picked up the top to find the interior almost empty, although slots for rings showed impressions of use.

“I didn’t look very closely when I found Ada,” Sunny admitted. “Was she wearing jewelry when she died?”

Will shook his head, looking into the box. “Probably either she or Gordie was pawning stuff.”

He pointed at several faded family photographs with brighter edges scattered across the bleached wood top. “Those were probably in silver frames. Pawned, too, I bet.”

Sunny turned away, not wanting to look at these relics of a miserable, lonely life. “Let’s go downstairs.”

They ended in the kitchen, following Sunny’s notion of walking in Ada’s footsteps. The cans that had filled the cabinets were still on the counter. The shelves themselves
were empty, lined with adhesive plastic sheets—still sticking on, but faded.

“My mom told me that they used to have special shelf paper that was supposed to get switched out once a year,” Sunny said. “Her mom used to slip a dollar under the paper as a reward for whoever changed it.” She tapped the faded floral pattern. “Nothing like that here.”

One drawer revealed knives, forks, spoons, and a can opener. The other held a tape measure, a handwritten phone book, and a lot of nondescript junk. Sunny peered at the cabinets under the sink. One held cleaning products. The other was full of pots and pans. “You think a ticket could have fallen down here?”

“I’m beginning to wonder if one of the cats ate it,” Will told her.

“The only other place I could imagine her going was the pantry.” Sunny started for the narrow, shelf-lined hall that led to the cellar door.

Shadow suddenly appeared underfoot, meowing at her.

“What?” Sunny took a step. Shadow butted his head against her shin. Taken aback—literally—she retreated a step, and Shadow butted the other shin.

“People talk about herding cats when they want to describe a hopeless job,” Will said with a laugh. “But here we’ve got a cat herding you.”

*

Shadow glared up
at Sunny, her face disappearing as memory put another set of features on them—the Old One–Dead One–Gone One, in her familiar housecoat, her mouth open in shock, her eyes wide with fear.

He’d been sleeping in the pantry, caught unawares as she was flung past him, the screech of the door as it tore open drowning out her weak cry as she went down, down, down.

Shadow leaped from stair to stair after her, though he knew he was too small to be of help. The door above banged shut behind him, cutting off the light from the kitchen. That didn’t matter to a cat’s eyes, though. He could see clearly enough that the Old One was no more.

Then that Other One came running down the stairs, the noxious stench on him like the stink that rose from the Old One’s son, only a hundred times more poisonous …

No! He would not let it happen again!

Seeing Sunny by that deadly door, and the male behind her, Shadow couldn’t help himself. Even though they didn’t smell the same, dread overcame him.

He would force her back, pushing, crying out warnings, using his claws if he had to.

She would not die here!

*

“This is silly,”
Sunny muttered, feeling her cheeks getting warm. She retraced her steps into the pantry, but couldn’t concentrate on checking the shelves with all the noise Shadow was making. “What is your problem, cat?”

Shadow walked back and forth in front of her as if he were on sentry duty, his tail lashing around, unhappy sounds coming from deep in his throat.

“Maybe he doesn’t like being trapped in that little space,” Will suggested.

“He’s not trapped,” Sunny said impatiently. “He wormed
his way in ahead of me.” She advanced on Shadow, trying to shoo him aside. He stretched up to press the pads of his forepaws above her knee, pushing her back.

“Shadow!” Sunny said sharply and regretted it a second later as the cat jumped away from her.

Then he did something really weird. Turning in midair, Shadow launched himself at the cellar door. It sprang open with an unearthly screech, but Shadow didn’t go tumbling down. Somehow, he used the door’s resistance to bounce himself back, landing almost at Sunny’s feet. He looked up at her, making a low, unhappy, moaning noise.

Sunny stopped in her tracks. “All the time he’s lived here, that door has been painted shut.”

Will stood beside her, making Shadow crouch and lash his tail, his noises becoming bloodcurdling. Frowning, he said, “So the cat couldn’t have known it would open—unless …”

Sunny looked from Shadow to Will, her throat getting a little tight. “You know, ever since he came to us, he’s been obsessed with pushing things.”

Taking her arm, Will pulled Sunny back from the spitting cat.

Shadow calmed down and followed them to the living room, where Sunny knelt down and stroked him.

Will joined her. “Wow, little guy,” he said, offering a hand to be sniffed. “It’s really a shame you don’t talk. Because I think you were an eyewitness to a murder.”

“Shadow, come on
now.” Sunny tried to sound stern, but even she noticed the desperate note creeping into her voice. “We’ve got to go.”

“Dumb cat,” Will muttered. “This is the way we came in, and he was fine.”

That was the problem. They’d entered the house through the open cellar doors and up the stairs into the pantry. That was their only route out, but Shadow pitched a fit every time Sunny tried to go through the door leading down to the basement.

“How are we going to do this?” she asked, watching the cat get more and more upset.

Will frowned, studying the situation. “I think we’ll have to be ungentlemanly,” he finally said.

“What do you mean?”

He grinned. “Ladies last.”

When Will headed down the narrow pantry, Shadow didn’t have a problem at all.

“Apparently, it’s only seeing you come down here first that sets him off.” Will gave one good shove, and the door stiffly swung open, the accompanying shriek piercing Sunny’s eardrums.

He went down a couple of steps, then turned back. “C’mon, Shadow.”

Shadow trotted to the open door and climbed down into the cellar. Will turned to block the stairway while still holding the door open, and Sunny hurried through.

Holding tightly onto the banister—she didn’t want to follow Ada’s unfortunate example—Sunny quickly made her way downstairs, then up and out the cellar doors.

“We don’t have much to show for an afternoon,” she said as she joined Will out in the backyard.

“Potential fingerprints on that living room table,” he pointed out.

“And piles of clothes with pockets to go through,” she added with a laugh.

“I don’t know if Nesbit would authorize overtime to do that,” Will deadpanned. “We may have to shoehorn the job into our copious spare time.”

“There’s not much of that—time in general, I mean.” Sunny frowned. “The eligibility cutoff for that ticket is just a couple of days away.”

“And what?” Will said, “you don’t want to lose your chance of winning millions?”

“I think it may screw up our chances of finding the people who killed Gordie,” Sunny told him. “As for Ada, I’m not so sure. It might not even be the same killer. We still have folks who had fights with Ada. You eliminated the Ellsworths, but not the Towles.” Although she liked them, she had to admit they had a motive. “Or Veronica Yarborough,” she added.

Will looked at her. “So you’re suggesting two different murderers, with completely different motives? That’s kind of messy.”

“Sort of like life,” Sunny replied. “Sometimes it doesn’t tie up in a nice, neat way.” She frowned. “The problem is, we’ve been playing defense since everything started happening around me, watching out for crazy drug dealers. The other suspects have sort of faded into the background. That’s the other thing about the ticket. It messes up all the motives.”

“So when it expires, that will go away,” Will said.

“And so will the drug dealers,” Sunny said gloomily. “The hope of cashing that in is the only thing that’s keeping them around.”

They were both silent, lost in their own unpleasant thoughts, all the way home. At the last minute, Sunny offered Will a lunch of leftover stew, only to be politely declined. He dropped her and Shadow off—Shadow following Sunny out of the pickup without any fuss—and drove away.

“Hey, Dad,” Sunny called as she came inside, Shadow charging ahead. “What do you think of leftovers for lunch?”