Cat on the Scent

            “What’s that supposed to mean?”

            “Nothing.” Mrs. Murphy raised her tail straight up, sashaying toward the house as Blair backed out. Mrs. Murphy thought the baritone perfect, not too deep, yet velvety.

            “Only one hundred Turbos made for the U.S. market each year,” Blair said as he straightened out the wheel.

            Pewter waddled toward the house. She gave the $110,000 internal-combustion machine barely a look. “Don’t go so fast,” she chided her cohort.

            To torment her, the tiger cat bounded gracefully onto the screened-in porch, pawing open the unlatched screen door.

            “I hate her,” Pewter muttered.

            “Me, too.” Tucker walked alongside the gray cat. “The biggest show-off since P.T. Barnum.”

            “I heard that.”

            “We don’t care,” Tucker replied.

            “You’re bored.” Mrs. Murphy ducked through the doggie door in the kitchen.

            “Did she say I was boring?”

            “No, Pewter, she said we were bored.”

            “Nothing ever happens in May.”

            Mrs. Murphy stuck her head out the magnetic-flap door. “Blair Bainbridge bought a Porsche Turbo. I count that as an important event.”

            Pewter and Tucker, walking more briskly, reached the screen door. The corgi sat while the cat opened it.

            “That doesn’t count.” Pewter flung open the door.

            Mrs. Murphy ducked back into the kitchen. Pewter dashed through the animal door first.

            “What would you like to happen?” Mrs. Murphy inquired.

            “A meat truck turns over in front of the post office.” Tucker wagged her nonexistent tail.

            “Remember the Halloween when the human head turned up in a pumpkin?” Pewter’s pupils widened.

            “Yech!” Mrs. Murphy recalled the grisly event that happened a few years back.

            “Yech? I found it. You didn’t.”

            “I don’t like to think about it.” Mrs. Murphy fastidiously licked the sides of her front paws, then swept them over her face.

            She noticed the side of the barn facing north, the broad, flat side where the paint was peeling. A painted ad for Coca-Cola, black background underneath, peeled out in parts.

            “Funny.”

            “What?” Pewter leaned over to groom her friend, whom she loved even though Mrs. Murphy often irritated her.

            “How the past is bursting through—all around us. That old Coke sign—bet it was painted on the barn in the 1920s or ‘30s. The past bursts through the present.”

            “Dead and gone,” Tucker laconically said.

            “The past is never dead.”

            “Well, maybe not for you. You have nine lives.”

            “Ha-ha.” Mrs. Murphy turned her nose up.

            “I bet the past wasn’t as boring as today,” Pewter moaned.

            “Things will pick up,” Tucker advised.

            Truer words were never spoken.

            3

            Blair glided down Route 250 toward Greenwood at 60 miles an hour. He was only in second gear and the tachometer wasn’t even close to the red zone.

            Harry couldn’t believe the surge of power or the handling. They hit 0 to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds. The balance of the car astounded her. The old farm Misfit blurred by, then Mirador (Misfit’s big sister), then Blair downshifted, turned right, and headed back toward the Greenwood school, the road snaking and the car sweeping around each sharp curve without a shudder, a roll, or a skid.

            “Don’t you love it?” Blair laughed out loud.

            She sighed. “Deep love.”

            A short stretch of flat land beckoned. He smoothly shifted. The speedometer glided past 100, then Blair expertly down-shifted as a curve rolled off to the right.

            Unfortunately, Sheriff Rick Shaw was rolling, too, right out of Sir H. Vane-Tempest’s driveway. He hit the siren and snapped on the whirling lights.

            “Damn,” Blair whispered.

            “What’s he doing out here in the boonies? He ought to be on Route 29.” Harry glanced in the rearview mirror.

            “Is it Rick or Cynthia?” Blair squinted at the distant object, which was fast approaching.

            “Rick. Cynthia doesn’t wear her hat in the squad car.”

            “That makes sense. Turn your head and the brim hits the window.”

            “Rick’s balding, remember.”

            “There is that.” Blair half smiled as he pulled over. The Porsche stopped as smooth as silk. He lowered the window and reached in the side pocket of the door for the relevant papers as Rick lumbered up.

            “As I live and breathe, Blair Bainbridge.” Rick bent over. “And our esteemed postmistress. License, please,” he sang out.