Cat's Claw (17 page)

Our closest neighbors are the Banners, who have a maroon mailbox shaped like a Texas A&M football helmet bearing the words banners for aggies! in large gold letters. Tom and Sylvia are both employed in Pecan Springs, Tom at the university, Sylvia at Ranchers State Bank. In addition to their town jobs, they share the work of a big vegetable garden, Tom maintains a small peach orchard, and Sylvia tends a flock of ten Gulf Coast native sheep, brought to Texas in the late 1500s by the Spanish and bred over the centuries for their fine wool. The best thing about the breed, Sylvia says, is their tolerance for our Texas heat and humidity. She is a talented spinner and weaver and dyes her own fiber from plants she grows or gathers: goldenrod, madder, burdock, clematis, coreopsis, and yarrow—even bark from the osage orange trees and the cochineal bugs she picks off the prickly pear. She’s raised her sheep from lambs and loves them as if they were her children.

I parked my Toyota on the gravel area beside the fence and ducked through the drizzle to the porch. The house was dark, which meant that McQuaid and the kids weren’t yet back from Seguin. However, our elderly basset—Howard Cosell—was on guard as usual, stationed just
inside the kitchen door to make sure that his house was not invaded by burglars, skunks, rats, or other unapproved intruders from the wilderness beyond the stone fence. (I’m sure he would also do his best to defend against mountain lions.) Howard was irritated because his dinner was three hours late, and he told me about it in no uncertain tones. If you’ve ever had an aggravated basset lecture you about his delayed dinner, you know what I’m talking about.

Pumpkin, Caitie’s orange tabby cat, isn’t as vocal as Howard, but he let me know that he wasn’t at all happy with the way his household was being managed. This scruffy, battle-scarred, down-at-the-heels character showed up on our doorstep earlier this year, having already deployed eight of his nine lives in search of a forever home. The fellow immediately clawed his way into Caitie’s soft heart. She adopted him without hesitation—never mind that what I had in mind when she asked for a kitty had been something on the order of a cute, cuddly kitten.

“He’s like me when I came to live here,” she said. “He doesn’t have any family. He doesn’t have a home. He’s lonesome. He needs somebody to take care of him. He needs
me
.” And since this guy had been around the block a time or two and knew an outstanding opportunity when he saw it, he unpacked his bags, powered up his purr, and took up residence on Caitie’s pillow.

The gang showed up as I finished feeding the animals and was brewing myself a cup of tea. Brian thudded into the kitchen, whirled me around twice, announced that he had won the game with a bases-loaded single in the ninth, and then did a celebratory dance around the kitchen table, followed by another bone-crushing hug.

Brian came permanently into my life when he was just ten, and now I have to bend over to give him a hug. Not quite seventeen, he’s two-plus
inches taller than I am and outweighs me by twenty-plus pounds. His craggy face is still unformed, but he has McQuaid’s dark hair and steel-blue eyes. He also has his dad’s interest in sports, although (happily, in my opinion) he doesn’t care much about football. I was delighted when he joined the baseball team. Baseball (again, in my opinion) is a civilized sport, a game of skill and timing. And the players do not try to kill one another.

“You
rock,
” I said, gasping for air, and then pointed out that it was now past nine o’clock and that he’d better rock on upstairs and do his homework.

McQuaid came in, kissed me briefly, reported that Brian had been named the game’s most valuable player, grabbed two ponchos, and went out to help Caitie shut up the chicken coop. Her chickens—three red hens and three white hens—are the dearest loves of her life, next to Pumpkin and the violin my mother gave her. (The rest of us bring up the rear.) Using money that she earned helping me at the shop, Caitie bought the chickens in early summer. She decided to get teenaged pullets rather than baby chicks because she wanted to launch her egg business as soon as possible. Her “girls,” as she calls them, live in the chicken palace that McQuaid constructed.

And I do mean
palace
. The sizeable chicken yard is fenced and covered with wire netting in order to foil enterprising skunks, raccoons, and Pumpkin. The coop has a main floor and a chicken ladder to the loft and the three nest boxes. Caitie requested a box for each girl (with her name on it), but we pointed out that all six girls would not be laying eggs at exactly the same moment and that they ought to be willing to share the nests. So far, though, we haven’t seen any evidence of sharing. We haven’t seen any eggs yet, either. Until—

“It’s an egg!” Caitie cried ecstatically, bursting through the kitchen door, her poncho wet with rain. “Somebody laid an egg, Mom! A real egg! And in a nest, too!”

“An egg?” I asked, in an incredulous tone. “I don’t believe it! Come on, Caitie—you’re foolin’. A really truly egg? In a
nest
?”

“Really truly! The very first one!” She opened her hand and we looked down at the small egg cupped in her palm. It was a little bigger than a golf ball. “Isn’t it
awe
some?” she whispered. Her tone was as hushed as if we were admiring the Hope Diamond.

“I have never seen a more beautiful beginner’s egg in my life,” I said truthfully. “Who laid it? Was it a red hen or a white hen?”

“I don’t know,” she said, stroking it with her fingers. “It’s
brown
, Mom. Why is it brown? I don’t have any brown chickens.”

I know next to nothing about the egg production habits of chickens, but I remembered reading some information that had come with the birds. “The Rhode Island Reds are supposed to lay brown eggs. The other chickens are Leghorns. Their eggs are white. The chicken that laid this egg must have been a Red.”

She looked confused. “Well, okay.” She carefully put the egg in a saucer in the middle of the kitchen table. “I’m going to get my camera and take its picture. And then I’m going to cook it and
eat
it.”

“Or maybe save it for breakfast?” I suggested. “You had supper with Grandma and Grandpa McQuaid, and I know how Grandma loves to cook. Bet you had cake for dessert, didn’t you? You’re probably full right up to here.” I put my hand on the top of her head. She giggled, that sweet little-girl giggle that never fails to pull at my heart.

Caitlin—the daughter of my half brother, Miles—has just turned twelve. She’s small for her age and slender, with pixie-cut dark hair and dark, waiflike eyes. Sad eyes, with good reason. She’s still waking from a
string of horrible nightmares that must have seemed unending in her short life: her mother’s drowning, her father’s murder, her aunt’s death from cancer—more awfulness than any child ought to endure. McQuaid and I have adopted her and are trying to help her build as normal a life as possible. And a few months ago, we were rewarded when she said she wanted to call us Mom and Dad.

“I’m guess I’m sorta pretending,” she admitted. “I know I’ll never have my own mom and dad back. But I’d like it if you’d be Mom and Dad, if that’s okay with you.”

It was okay with us, and the three of us shared a hug to seal the bargain. I’m not a sentimental person by nature, but I don’t mind saying that I had tears in my eyes. I had put off marriage because I valued my independence and wanted to be free of binding, entangling commitments. For a time, I’d had a law career, and then I had the shop, and in both circumstances, I cherished my freedom and autonomy. I had never planned to have children, and even after McQuaid and I moved in together and I became Brian’s mom, I didn’t consider myself a genuinely domesticated person.

Now, a husband, two kids, a dog, a house cat and a shop cat, innumerable lizards, snakes, and spiders (all Brian’s), and six chickens later, I’m still getting used to it. But it’s hard to think back to a time when McQuaid and Brian and I weren’t a family, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle, sharing everything that came along. And now there’s another piece, a sweet and fragile little girl, and much more to share.

Mom and Dad?

Yes, it was okay. It was definitely okay.

“I’ll get my camera,” Caitie said now, and scampered up the stairs. When she first visited our house with her father, she had been enchanted by the round room in the turret—the Magic Tower, she called it. When
she disappeared from the family picnic that afternoon, I found her asleep on the window seat there, my tattered childhood copy of
The Secret Garden
on the floor beside her. So when she came to live with us, the Magic Tower became hers. She chose two shades of pink for the walls and ceiling and she’s hung her drawings of fairies and filled the shelves with the books and stuffed animals she brought from the life she shared with her parents. She spends a lot of time there, playing her violin and reading and looking out the window.

And one memorable afternoon, she put all six of her girls in a bushel basket and carried them up to her room. Judging from the clucking, I’d say that they enjoyed themselves.

Chapter Eight

The Chipotle Chicken was across Blanco Street from Kirk’s Computer Sales and Service, not far from the CTSU campus. From their table at the front window, Sheila and Jack Bartlett could see the shop, which occupied the middle unit in a small strip mall. All three stores in the mall were closed and dark, although the all-night Washateria on the corner of Blanco and Bur Oak was brightly lit and busy—students, mostly.

Sheila and Bartlett didn’t talk much during the meal, both preoccupied with their thoughts. By the time they finished, the misty rain had turned into a drizzle. They left their cars in the Chipotle Chicken lot and walked across the street, where Bartlett used Larry Kirk’s key to let them in the front door. From his investigation into the earlier break-in, Bartlett knew his way around the shop and swiftly deactivated the alarm unit before it could go off, using the code he’d written in his notebook.

“Good move, Jack,” Sheila said. Burglar alarms were a big-dollar headache for the department. Ninety-eight percent of the alarm calls that the police had to answer were triggered by accident or operator error, but each one still had to be checked out by patrol officers.

“Figured that code might come in handy,” Bartlett said with a grin, and flicked on the lights at the front of the store.

The shop was longer than it was wide, with a glass display window across the front. Along both sides of the room were floor-to-ceiling shelves of computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, modems, carrying cases, and accessories—a large inventory, Sheila thought, representing a sizeable investment. A sales counter with a cash register was located about midway to the back of the shops. Above the counter was a sign:

COMPUTER SALES AND REPAIR
HOME AND OFFICE NETWORKING
SPYWARE REMOVAL/VIRUS PROTECTION
AUTOMATED REMOTE BACKUPS
FULL SERVICE TUNE-UPS STARTING AT $99

Behind the counter was a work area with several file cabinets and two desks, each with a computer and a couple of chairs. Along a partition wall near the back of the area was a workbench, a couple of tall stools, and racks and shelves of computers and parts.

As they went through the darkened work area, Sheila said, “Tell me about Timms’ break-in.”

“He came in the back way,” Bartlett said, and opened the door next to the workbench. It led into a storage area that was stacked with empty boxes and assorted computer equipment. In the concrete block wall at the back was another door. Bartlett turned on a light, disarmed the alarm, and pushed the door open. Outside was an empty, asphalted parking area, rain puddles glittering in the blue glare of a mercury vapor lamp at the far end of the strip mall, near the Washateria.

“Timms didn’t set off the alarm back here?” Sheila asked, looking at the keypad beside the back door.

“Beginner’s luck,” Bartlett said. “Apparently, the last guy out that night—the assistant manager, a kid named Palmer—failed to set the alarm. This door is pretty flimsy, and Timms came equipped with a crowbar. Probably took him all of three minutes to pop that lock. If the alarm had been on, our guys would’ve caught him in the building.” He grinned wryly. “If they got here quick enough, that is.”