Nancy J. Bailey - Furry Murder 01 - My Best Cat (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Tracy Pringle

Friday Night

He was supposed to be out picking up the pizza.  He’d been gone over an hour.  Where the hell was he? 

I paced back and forth around the hotel room.  I kept checking my watch.  It was a little silver watch with Italian charms in the band.  The charms were ones I had selected from a cat show vendor.  My initials were on them, and the Jungle Cats logo that I had made up through a special order.  I had ordered another charm bracelet for Baloo to wear as a collar.  I had seen a lady with one on her Chihuahua once in a shopping mall.  Nobody in cats had these bracelets as collars yet.  I was going to lead the way in the current cat show trends.

I was getting hungry.  Where the hell was Jack with that pizza?  He was always running off to do some errand or other – get ice for the room.  Gas up the car.  Pick up cat food.  When he came back, he absolutely was not going to leave this room again tonight. 
Period.

Baloo
hunkered in his Tokyo cage, reaching out through the bars for the TV cable.  Whenever I looked in his direction, he squalled at me. 

“Shut up!”  I said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Wesley Taft

Friday Night

I lay flat on my stomach on the floor with a big flashlight in my hand.  The beam made a line below the bleachers, sliced now and then by the steel rods supporting them.  SuMe was nowhere in sight.  I pointed the beam into the far corner, searching, then edged it slowly along the wall.  There!  A reflection – two points of light.  Her eyes, shining back out at me.  Thank God.  I was imagining the worst – a hole, an uncovered grate, an opening to outside or who knew where.  But she was there, huddled in the far reaches of her black sanctuary.

“
SuMe,” I called.  “SuMe kitty.  Kitty kitty.”

Max had gone back to the hotel to let the dog out. 
Reva always traveled with us to all the shows and though she had a bladder of iron, I was sure she must be getting bored and lonely.

“Can I help you?”

I turned and looked to see a pair of high top sneakers.  They belonged to a skinny redheaded woman in a black leather jacket.  She had the sleeves rolled up around her elbows.  She wore a badge on the front of the jacket.  Security.

“Hi,” I said.  “My kitty is under here.  She’s been in there all evening.”

Her face, which had been tight and suspicious, immediately softened to a look of concern.  It even made her sort of pretty, in a boyish sense.

“Oh no,” she said.  “That is a problem.”

Her eyes flickered quickly over the bleachers and I could tell she was reading the situation perfectly. 

“Yes,” I said.  “I’m sure the show committee never thought about this!  We can’t roll these out.  It will scare her.  She might get hurt or rolled over by one of those big beams.”

“Right.”  She strolled up one side, looking up and down the wall.  “Can you tell whereabouts she is?”

“Yes I can see her.  She’s up against the wall.”

“Nobody is going to be able to crawl through and under these damn things either,” she said.

“Nope.
  Not even a skinny little thing like you would fit in there.”

She sighed.  “Well, she’s got to get hungry or thirsty at some point.  She’ll come out.”

“It could be days.”

“We could call a vet to
tranq her…  Shoot her with a dart maybe.”

I gasped. 
“Oh no!  He might hit her in the eye or give her too high a dosage or-“

“Okay, I understand.  Well what do you want to do?”

“If you don’t mind, I will just stay here.”

“I don’t mind at all.  I’ll be right back.”  She walked away.

I had some cartons of moist cat food with me, SuMe’s favorite brand and beef, her favorite flavor.  She was funny that way.  Most cats seemed to prefer chicken or liver.  But SuMe loved beef.  I peeled the foil top off of one of them.  I tried to do it loudly so that she could hear.  “Look SuMe, snackies!  And it’s your favorite!  Come on, honey!”

“Here you go,
”  a girl’s voice said.  I looked up and the security guard was back.  She had a thick tan blanket that she held out toward me.

“Oh, thank you so much!”  I took it gratefully.

“My name’s Kim.  My shift is over, there’s a guy working midnights but frankly, I think all he does is sleep.  I’ll tell him you’re here.  He won’t disturb you.”

“Thank you,” I said again.

“Goodnight.”

She turned and walked away.  I wrapped the blanket around myself and peered under the bleachers into the dark.  I had a sudden flashback to my last stint in community theatre, waiting backstage to step out into the lights and take my bow.  We had done
Godspell in the spring, a musical about the last days of Jesus.  The show was very emotional and Max and I had fought constantly for the duration. 

“You’re spending too much time away from home!” he’d said.

I couldn’t explain it adequately, that I needed to do this, to be someone else for awhile, just to keep my sanity.  The whole business of Rusty’s abduction had nearly killed me.  I was afraid it would tear Max and me apart.  I thought time away from him then might be a good thing.

I was given the part of Judas Iscariot, which was perhaps the most important role in the show.  It was weird because it was a dual role, combined with John the Baptist, so I was playing the parts of both good and evil.  But there was nothing like standing out on stage in the lights, singing the song to herald the coming of Christ.  I was not a religious person, but to hurl my voice to the rafters, singing, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” caused goose bumps to crawl up my arms.

I had always wanted to be in “Cats.”  That was my dream.  I didn’t have any particular role in mind; I would gladly have taken any part, just to wear the costume and sing the songs.  I’d even sing backup.  But “Cats” was by far too huge an endeavor for our little troupe. 

Godspell
had sort of the same energy in some ways.  There was lots of physical stuff, dancing and singing.  The story was magnetic too – and I adored my dual roles.  Sometimes rehearsals jumped around, so I’d be John one minute, and Judas the next.

Maybe it was the fact that I was dealing with evil in the world, in reality, which caused me to burst into tears during
unexpected times at rehearsals.  Roxanne was evil.  There was just no question in my mind about that.

It was interesting how generous and kind the cast became, I am sure in part due to the spiritual messages our characters were sending.  There wasn’t any fighting backstage, which was very unusual.  Community theatre is usually akin to the cat fancy in terms of rampant ego.

I had begun spending longer and longer evenings with the show group, much to Max’s frustration.  The other cast members and I would go out at night after rehearsal and sing karaoke.  I’d stumble home at 3 am, smelling of bars and smoke and liquor.  Max would jump out of bed and say, “Well, hope you had fun tonight, because you’re not having any more now!”

He’d go sleep on the couch.

His unpleasant reaction only increased my reluctance to go home at night.  It all cumulated during the last night of the last show, when we sang our last song before a tearful audience, and I realized that it was over.

And Max had not even come to see us.

When we did the group hugs as the curtain closed, everyone in tears, I felt a kinship to the group, and deep gratitude, but a sense of closure.  The Godspell chapter was over and had served its purpose.  It was time to go home.

When I walked in that night, Max’s suitcase was packed and he was standing with his back to me, looking out the window.

“I’m leaving you,” he said.

“Oh Max, no!”

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said.  But when he turned to look at me, I saw his face was wet with tears.  And I knew he wouldn’t go.

“I just miss Rusty,” he said.  “I miss us.”

And now he had left me.  I was sure it was his way of showing me what it was like, to mull it over alone, to feel really isolated in a time of crisis.  I didn’t blame him, really.  But tit for tat was never constructive.  And Max did have a tendency to be a bit of a drama queen.  At times it was funny and exciting when he reacted emotionally to things, but at a time like this, it was pretty awful.

Now
SuMe was lost in the dark shadows beneath the bleachers, waiting for – waiting for what?  I leaned down again and peered into the darkness, but there was nothing to see.

I wished I hadn’t quit smoking.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Andrew Gilbert

Friday Night

I sat in the hotel room by the window that night, and for the first time in six months, I lit up a cigarette.  I heard Dennis’s familiar step in the hallway, his toes dragging a bit.  The door opened. Hotsy was lying on the back of the chair adjacent to me.  She blinked her oversized eyes at Dennis, then closed them to slits again.  The Somali kittens were curled on the pillow, exhausted from the day’s events.  They barely stirred.  I did not turn away from the window.  Dennis went to the mirror and I heard him flicking his hands through his hair.

“Hey,” he said.

I didn’t answer, just kept smoking, watching the red taillights of cars moving in pairs up the long hill below.

Dennis
lay a hand on my shoulder.  “I’m sorry about today.”

“Huh?”  I turned. 
“Oh, yeah.  Me too.”

“
Jeesh, here I thought you were so pensive about me.  What else is going on?”

I didn’t want to mention Roxanne. 
“Nothing much.”

“Nothing much?
  You’re smoking!  What’s that about?  I thought you quit!”

“I did.”

Dennis stroked my back, rubbed my shoulders.  “No will power, huh?  Wow.  You are tense.  Relax, wouldja?”  He gave my back a slap.  “Hey, I’m gonna jump in the shower.”

He got up and I heard his knuckles crack as he stretched his arms above his head.  He yawned loudly and then I heard his clothes hit the floor, and the bathroom door shut.  The faucet screeched
, the water applauded for him into the tub.

I took another deep drag on my cigarette and kept watching the lights.

Chapter Thirty

Ginny
Robards

Pensive

I never understood how other women could slide in and out of relationships, or be promiscuous, or see more than one man at a time.  Women are supposed to be emotional creatures.  We’re like cats that way.  We need to be choosy about who we give our affections to.

I never dated again after Jimmy.  He had just taken too much out of me.  His eating habits had stayed with me, however, and I gained thirty pounds in that first year.  It became too difficult to work and take care of cats and diet as well, and the weight just wouldn’t come off.  So after awhile I quit worrying about it.  Before long it was fifty and then sixty pounds.  I threw the bathroom scales in the dumpster by our apartment parking lot.

Liesl
and I immersed ourselves in the cat fancy and were content with that lifestyle.  It seemed neither of us needed a man.  We had each other, and we had our Persians.

Leisl
had taken to going out at night for long walks.  At home near the apartment, it didn’t bother me so much, but on cat show weekends it made me nervous.  Now she was off again, and I lay propped up in the bed with my book, Eidel curled up under the covers next to me.  I tried hard to concentrate on the story, but couldn’t.

After her first cat,
Muffy, had died, Liesl developed a morbid obsession with death.  She started dressing in dark clothing and wearing black eyeliner.  I didn’t find it at all attractive or appropriate for a twelve-year-old, but understood she was grieving and just expressing herself.  Throughout her teenage years, she became more and more withdrawn from her peers.  Instead, she spent all her spare time at the library, poring over books about law.  I thought she’d become a lawyer someday for sure.  She asked me questions incessantly, about everything having to do with justice and the legal system.  Had I ever gotten a speeding ticket?  Had I ever been in jail?  She even wanted to know if I had ever spray painted graffiti anywhere!  She had a very inquisitive mind.  She never seemed disappointed to find my life was generally very uninteresting, but she never ran out of things to ask.

Now she was in her thirties and seemed to have no social life at all.  It was difficult to imagine
Liesl having a tryst with a boyfriend, but stranger things have happened.  I didn’t bother her with a lot of prying questions.  She had always been a very private person, preferring to be the one gathering information rather than providing it.

It was actually romantic to think of her having a rendezvous with someone.  I thought about the movie, “The Sound of Music”, the scene with
Liesl and Rolfe in the garden at night when she sneaked out to meet him.  How beautifully she could dance, how her toes pointed.  How beautifully she could sing.  How Maria later urged her to, “Wait a year or two.”

Ah, the passion, the pain of youth.  I finally closed my eyes, with the music playing in my head.