Two Tall Tails (6 page)

I shook my head.

“No,” Rose said.

Elvis cocked his head to one side and crinkled his nose, which I decided to interpret as him not having seen the ball, either.

“My mom got it for Molly, and now it's disappeared,” Katie said.

“We'll check the yard,” Rose said. “And I know sometimes Molly plays with Matilda in Tom's backyard. “The ball could have ended up over here.”

Elvis immediately jumped down from his perch and started down the veranda steps. When he reached the grass, he stopped, looked over his shoulder at Rose and meowed loudly.

Rose got to her feet. “And as Elvis has just pointed out, there's no time like the present.” She followed the cat across the yard. “Let's check the flowerbeds first,” I heard her say.

Katie watched them and grinned. “Sometimes I'd almost swear your cat knows what we're saying.”

“Rose says he's smarter than some people she knows.”

Katie's grin got a little wider and she nodded. “You know, I believe that.”

I didn't add that the cat also seemed to be able to tell when someone was lying. Of course, being a cat, he only demonstrated that skill when he felt like it.

We watched Rose and her furry sidekick make their way to the far end of the yard. She was checking out the wild rosebushes while he walked along the top of the rock wall sniffing the ground almost as though he were trying to sniff out a clue.

Katie rested a hand on her baby bump. “I've always wondered, why did you name Elvis, Elvis?”

“That wasn't me,” I said, getting to my feet and moving off the veranda to join her. “Sam named him.” Sam was Sam Newman, owner of The Black Bear Pub and my late father's best friend. “He claims the cat is a fan of the King.”

“Hey, me too,” Katie said.

Katie told me all about Molly's upcoming role as a daisy in the Spring Fling concert at the four-year-old's preschool while Rose and Elvis checked the yard. There was no sign of Molly's ball.

“Thanks for looking,” Katie said.

Elvis bobbed his head and made a soft murp sound, almost as though he was saying, “You're welcome.”

The next morning right after he'd had his breakfast, Elvis went to the door, meowed insistently and looked over his shoulder at me. Translation: “I want to go out.”

I let him into the hall and he moved purposefully toward the back door, almost as though he was going back out to look for Molly's ball again. I shook my head. Elvis was a very smart cat, but not that smart. I opened the back door for him. “We're leaving in a little while,” I said.

A soft “Mrrr” was the only answer I got.

A half an hour later I was back at the door. Elvis was sitting on one of the wicker chairs. When he lifted his head, I realized there were two burdocks stuck in the fur just below his left ear. The cat had come home once before with the prickly things stuck to his tail. It had taken an hour, an entire can of sardines and a lot of grumbling on both our parts to get them out.

I sighed softly. We were going to be late getting to the shop.

Elvis shook his head as though he was trying to shake the burdocks away. Then he lifted a paw and swatted at one of them.

“No, no, don't do that,” I said. “Stay there.” I held up a hand, feeling a little foolish because, well, I was talking to a cat.

However, Elvis seemed to understand. He dropped his paw and made a sound a lot like a sigh.

I went back to the apartment and got two sardines from the can in the refrigerator, along with the wide-toothed comb I used on Elvis when something got knotted in his fur, the gardening gloves my brother Liam had given me as a joke and a little peanut butter, just in case.

The cat hadn't move from the chair on the veranda. I crouched down next to him and set the plate holding the little fish on the seat cushion.

Elvis craned his neck to check out the plate of fish, whiskers twitching.

“How did you get those things in your fur?” I asked, reaching out to stroke the top of his head.

“Mrr,” the cat said, looking—it seemed to me—just a little sheepish.

“Poking your nose in somewhere it shouldn't have been?” I raised an eyebrow and he ducked his head almost as though he was embarrassed. He really was a beautiful animal. The long scar that cut diagonally across his nose gave him a kind of rakish, devil-may-care look that made just about every visitor to the shop want to stop and stroke his sleek black fur and fuss over him a little.

Elvis turned his attention again to the plate with the sardines. I reached for the gardening gloves and pulled one of them on to protect my right hand. The left one was healing and I was slowly getting strength and range of motion back, but I didn't dare take the splint off. I was going to have to do this one-handed.

“You have one of those sardines and I'm going to try to work those burdocks out of your fur,” I said.

Elvis bent his head over the little fish and I studied the burdock closest to his ear. It was snagged firmly in his black fur. I felt the ridge of another old wound under my fingers, and wondered, once again, who or what the small cat had tangled with before he'd come to live with me and what the other guy looked like.

Holding the burdock—which was rather like holding on to a tiny cactus ball—between two gloved fingers, I worked carefully to get the fur out of it. As if he understood what I was doing, Elvis stopped eating, head hovering over the plate when I came to an especially stubborn spot.

The second burr was harder to remove, snagged even deeper in the cat's thick black coat. I reached for the peanut butter and smeared a little in Elvis's fur. Bit by bit I managed to work the spiky seedpod loose, and then used the wide-toothed comb to make sure all the tiny bits of the burdock were out. Elvis sat upright, patient and still as if this was something he'd had done before, and when I was finally satisfied, he almost seemed to smile at me before giving the area a good wash with his paw.

I got to my feet, stretched and decided to make a quick circuit around the yard to see if I could spot the burdock plant Elvis had tangled with. The cat climbed up on the railing, looking as though he were supervising as I searched.

I found no sign of the prickly plant. I knew there were burdocks growing behind both Tom and Angie's property. I glanced in that direction in time to see Jason Bates come out of Angie's house. Tom was in his yard, clipping the dead blossoms off his potted geraniums. Jason walked across the grass to the older man and pointed at the copper birdbath on the grass next to the side of Tom's garage. In the pan sat a gleaming silver gazing ball, a gift from Angie after the squirrels had chased away the birds and begun using the birdbath as their personal hot tub.

I couldn't make out what Jason was saying but I could hear his tone: belligerent and angry. Tom leaned heavily on his cane and shook his head. Jason gestured in the direction of the birdbath again. The older man continued to stubbornly shake his head.

Jason strode back across the grass and paced off a distance from Angie's garage to the copper lawn ornament. He stood beside it and said something to Tom. Then he shook his fist at Matilda. The corgi barked loudly at him, pulling at her leash. Tom bent and picked her up. Jason swung around, bumping the birdbath. The silver gazing ball hit the ground, shattering into jagged pieces.

Tom's body went rigid. He said something to Jason that I couldn't catch. I did hear Jason's reply, though. “Screw you, old man,” he shouted. He grabbed the birdbath with one hand and flung it out into the street, then he turned and stalked into the house.

I closed my eyes for a moment and exhaled softly before heading next door. I didn't like the way things were changing on the street, although I had no idea what to do.

Matilda had stopped barking. Tom was stroking her fur, talking softly to her. His hand was shaking.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I'm fine,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. The little dog nuzzled his chin. “But the next time I see that young man, he won't be.”

Katie joined us then, one hand holding on to Molly's little hand, the other on her rounded belly. There were tight lines around her blue eyes. “What was that all about?” she asked.

I glanced at the pieces of the broken gazing ball in the driveway. It was hard to miss the symbolism. It felt as though our neighborhood was splintering into pieces.

“The birdbath.” Tom gestured toward the street but didn't turn to look in that direction. “He said it was encroaching on Angie's property. I told him it wasn't, and it isn't any of his business even if it were. That house belongs to her, not him.”

I shook my head. “I'm sorry,” I said. “Jason's a . . . challenging person.”

Katie looked over at Angie's neat little house. “I can't . . . if he's going to be living here all the time, I don't know if we can stay here.” She glanced down at Molly, who was talking to Matilda.

I didn't know what to say. I reached over and gave Katie's arm what I hoped was a comforting squeeze. How had things gotten so bad so quickly?

Tom looked down at Molly. “Sweetie, could you take Matilda for a walk around the backyard, please?” he said. “She needs to stretch her legs.”

The little girl's eyes lit up and she looked at her mother. Katie nodded.

Tom set the corgi on the ground and handed Molly the leash. She took it in both of her hands. He patted the dog's head and slipped her a treat. “Good girl,” he said.

Molly headed for the backyard, the smile on her face showing how proud she was to be doing such an important job. Once she'd disappeared around the side of the house, Tom looked at Katie. “Tell Sarah what you told me,” he said, his gaze flicking across the driveway for a moment. “About the carpet.”

Katie chewed the edge of her bottom lip and cleared her throat. “Angie had new carpeting put in her spare bedroom a couple of weeks ago.”

I nodded. I remembered seeing the carpet installer's van in Angie's driveway one morning when I was leaving for the shop.

The young mother leaned sideways and waved at Molly as she came past the end of the house, walking in a wide circle in the backyard, both hands still clutching Matilda's leash. “I asked her about it because we've been thinking about putting carpet in the baby's room.” She put her other hand protectively over her abdomen. “She took me upstairs to show me what the carpet looked like, and when we were coming back down, she told me that they even fixed the place on the stairs where the runner was loose.”

Once again Tom's gaze moved to the house next door before coming back to Katie. “It doesn't make sense that Angie fell on a loose edge just after it was repaired,” he said.

“The carpet on the stairs was fine the day I was there,” Katie added.

Tom and Katie were suggesting that Jason was behind Angie's fall. Was it possible?

“People don't always do a good job when they fix something,” I said, feeling a little odd to be defending Jason.

“And other people can undo good jobs,” Tom said, the set of his jaw telling me that he had already made up his mind.

The sun had gone behind a cloud, and I suddenly felt a chill. I folded my arms over my chest. “I don't like Jason,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “but do you really think he would go that far? For what reason?”

“Money,” Tom said. He smoothed a hand over his hair. “Angie asked me to recommend a lawyer when she redid her will. Jason and another niece are Angie's only relatives, and she told me that they would split her estate when she's gone. He can't seem to keep a job. If something happens to Angie, he won't have to.”

“It just seems so . . . extreme,” I said.

I looked at Katie, who was twisting her wedding ring around her finger. “I don't know what to think,” she said, narrowing her blue eyes. “But I know what I saw and there was nothing wrong with the carpet on the stairs.”

“That young man is bone lazy,” Tom said. “He acts like an honest day's work is beneath him, and he has a nasty streak—we've all seen it.”

Katie nodded.

The old man's lips were pulled into a tight, pale line. “He bumped my birdbath on purpose. He wanted to break the gazing ball.” His eyes shifted over to the jagged pieces littering the driveway. “He wanted me to see that my friendship with Angie doesn't matter.”

“But it does matter,” I said. “When Angie comes—”

He shook his head. “No. Don't tell me that once Angie comes home, everything will be fine.” He pointed at the house. His Scottish burr was getting more pronounced. “He's not going anywhere, Sarah. If we don't stick up for ourselves, that pillock is going to bully us all into hiding inside with the curtains drawn.”

I exhaled softly. “Please, Tom, promise me you won't do something you'll regret.”

He almost smiled. “I promise you that anything I do,
I
won't regret.”

There wasn't anything else to say. I helped Tom pick up the pieces of the shattered gazing ball. Thankfully it seemed to have broken into large pieces for the most part. I put them in the garbage can, swallowing down the sour taste at the back of my throat as I remembered the day Angie had given it to the old man. Katie swept the driveway with Tom's push broom, and I used a leaf rake to get the last few small broken bits of glass out of the grass. I had a spiteful urge to leave the few pieces that weren't on Tom's property right where they were, but I pushed the feeling away and cleaned up everything. I didn't want Matilda, or Molly or Elvis, to get cut.

“Let me take that,” I said to Tom, gesturing at the copper birdbath. “I think I know someone who might be able to fix it.” Cleveland, one of the trash pickers I regularly bought from for the store, had repaired a metal railing for me. I had a feeling he'd be able to get the dent out of the birdbath.