Cat on the Scent

            “Yes.” Miranda wanted to say that was probably the point. “Will you be all right until then?”

            “Of course I will. You were a dear to tend to me.”

            “I wasn’t tending to you. I was enjoying your company.”

            19

            “Bite her leg,” Mrs. Murphy ordered Tucker.

            “I will not. That will get me in trouble. You get away with everything.”

            “No, I don’t.”

            “You bite her, then.”

            “Cats scratch. Dogs bite.”

            “Bull.”

            Pewter piped up. “Nothing’s going to work. Forget it.”

            They looked out the truck window forlornly as Harry passed Rose Hill, Tally Urquhart’s place.

            “Bite her!”

            “We’ll go off the road.” Tucker bared her fangs at Mrs. Murphy.

            “My, what big teeth you have, Grandma.” Mrs. Murphy burst out laughing, joined by Pewter.

            “I hate you.” Tucker laid her ears against her pretty face.

            “What’s going on here?” Harry, eyes on the road, grumbled. “If you all can’t behave I’m not taking you out again.”

            “She told me to bite you.” Tucker indicated Mrs. Murphy by inclining her head.

            A lightning-fast paw struck the dog on the nose. A bead of blood appeared.

            “Oo-oo-oo,” the little dog cried.

            “Dammit, Murphy.” Harry pulled off the road onto the old farm service road of Rose Hill. She stopped, checked the dog, opened the glove compartment for a tissue and held it to the long nose. “You play too rough.”

            “Tough.” The tiger thought the rhyme funny. Pewter had to laugh, too.

            “Bunch of mean cats,” Tucker whined.

            “Play it for all it’s worth, bubblebutt.” Mrs. Murphy stepped on Tucker’s back, then stepped on Harry’s lap.

            The driver’s-side window, halfway open, was her goal. She soared through it off Harry’s lap.

            “Mrs. Murphy!” Harry shouted.

            The cat sat outside by the driver’s door, her lustrous green eyes cast up at her mother’s livid visage. “I’ve got something to show you.”

            “Good idea.” Pewter stepped on the dog, then on Harry’s lap, and then she, too, jumped out of the truck, although not as gracefully as Mrs. Murphy.

            “You don’t know where I’m going.”

            “Yes I do.” Pewter loped down the grassy lane.

            “Don’t go without me. Oh, don’t you dare go without me,” the dog howled.

            “Jesus.” Harry opened the door, struggling out with the dog in her arms. The corgi was heavy.

            Before Harry’s feet hit the ground Tucker wiggled free, landed, and rolled. She hopped to her feet, shook her head, and tore after the cats.

            “Tucker, you come back here!” Harry called. “I don’t believe them.”

            She ran after them. Little good that did, as all three barreled on, out of reach but clearly in sight. The cats didn’t deviate or dash off the lane as usual. Harry watched, cursed, then hopped into her truck and followed them at fifteen miles an hour.

            In ten minutes Tally Urquhart’s stone cottages and the huge stone hay barn came into view.

            Harry pulled into the middle of the buildings, cut the motor, and got out just as the cats pushed open the barn door a crack and flattened themselves to get inside. She beheld two paws—one tiger, one gray—sticking through the slight gap in the door. It was as though they were waving at her to follow.

            Tucker put her sore nose in the door and pushed. She, too, squeezed inside.

            “They’re trying to drive me crazy,” Harry said out loud. “Really, this is an orchestrated plan to send me round the bend.”

            She walked to the door, rolled it back with a heave, and blinked.

            “Holy shit.”

            “You got that right,” Mrs. Murphy catcalled.

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            20

            Warm spring light flooded the barn, illuminating Rick Shaw’s face as he stood under the wing of the Cessna. Behind him a young woman dusted for fingerprints.

            Not a drop of blood marred the shiny surface of the airplane or the cockpit, although there were muddy paw prints on the wings and the cockpit. No dings, dents, or smears of oil hinted at foul play.

            The wheels of the small plane were blocked. In fact, everything was in order. The gas tank was almost full. They could have crawled up into the Cessna to cruise through creamy clouds on this, a gorgeous day.