Nine Lives: A Lily Dale Mystery (2 page)

There’s just one more place for her to check: the hidden compartment under the second to the bottom tread on an old servant’s staircase that leads to nowhere. The top was boarded over years ago, probably when the house was transformed to apartments.

This is where Sam always left little gifts for her. He’d send her an e-mail or text telling her to check “our spot,” and when she did, she’d find something sweet: a box of her favorite chocolates, a book she’d been wanting to read, a piece of jewelry . . .

“I wanted to give you that pendant for Christmas,” he told her, near the end, and she didn’t have to ask what he meant.

She thinks about the pendant they’d found browsing in a jewelry store last spring, when they’d spent a glorious sunny Saturday in quaint Port Jefferson. Max was exhilarated by the ferry ride across the Long Island Sound, and Sam was still healthy then, not a care in the world other than the hefty price tag on the delicate blue tourmaline pendant. He said the gemstone matched her eyes exactly and wanted to buy it for her on the spot, but she wouldn’t let him.

“That’s a crazy amount of money to spend on a piece of jewelry, Sam. We have a million other things we need to buy right now.”

“Maybe right now,” he agreed, before adding with his dark eyes twinkling, “but you just wait. The necklace was meant to be yours, and it will be—when you least expect it.”

In December, near the end, he told her he’d planned on buying it for her for Christmas. “I really . . . wanted you to have it.” His voice was weak, his pale face clenched in pain.

“Next Christmas,” she said fervently, clasping his hand. “You can get it for me next Christmas.”

But she knew. They both knew. There would be no
next Christmas
for Sam—or even
this Christmas.
He passed away just a few days before.

The necklace was meant to be yours, and it will be—when you least expect it.

Those words haunt her now as she opens the stairway compartment. It’s empty, of course. She knew it would be. She checked it countless times since Sam passed away, hoping irrationally that she might discover some forgotten gift he’d left there for her—the tourmaline pendant, perhaps. But there are no miracles even today, the last day.

She closes the hinged stair tread and walks slowly to the door. As she steps over the threshold for the final time, she remembers how Sam carried her in the opposite direction a decade ago, champagne-giddy and tripping over the train of her wedding gown.

Oh, Sam. I never thought I’d be leaving here without you. I never thought we’d be leaving here at all.

She wipes her eyes, locks the door, and leaves the keys under the mat for the new owner.

As she crosses the grass to the waiting car, its passenger seat stacked high with everything that wouldn’t fit into the trunk, Max waves at her from the back seat.

When she sees the tears that have slid past the frames of his glasses to trickle down his little boy cheeks, a monstrous sob wells in her throat.

No. No, she can’t let herself cry in front of her son. She has to stay strong for him, for Sam. She promised.

She pastes on a smile, jauntily jangling the car keys as she slides behind the wheel.

“Here we go,” she says gaily, as if they’ve just lowered the lap bar on a ride at Disney World. “All set?”

For a moment, there’s only silence from the back seat.

Then Max pipes up: “Yes.”

Just one word—one tiny, tremendously brave word.

“Good.” She turns the ignition key with a trembling hand, shifts the car, and presses the gas pedal.

Too late, she realizes that she forgot to take one last look at the house before it fell away in the rearview mirror.

The drive across New York State was surprisingly pleasant, carrying Bella and Max past majestic mountains, endless acres of farms and pastures, old industrial cities, and picturesque villages.

Seven hours into the journey, though, she detects a faint rattling sound coming from the engine. It isn’t steady, but every once in a while, it kicks in. Maybe she should get the car checked out at a service station—and pray it’s nothing she can’t afford to fix.

Which is pretty much everything.

Who cares about a car? Who cares about things? All that matters is the people you love.

People? There’s only one person left who matters in Bella’s world.

And I’m going to make sure he has a cozy, happy home again,
she vows fiercely.

She swallows hard and clears her throat. “Should we find a place to spend the night now, Max?”

Surprised, he asks, “We’re already in Ohio?”

“No, I thought we’d stop earlier than we planned. I can’t wait to camp out. How about you?”

She packed sleeping bags and the two-man tent she and Sam used only once, when they discovered they hated camping.

But this is a fresh start. Maybe it’ll be better this time around.

Come on. Nothing is better without Sam.

“I guess,” Max says. “I wish we could sleep inside, though.”

So do I.

But she can’t even afford a budget motel. Not with gas prices as high as they are and the car acting up. She doesn’t have a choice about the camping—or the fresh start—so she might as well make the best of things for Max’s sake.

And really, after what she’s been through, this is nothing. Camping out? Driving halfway across the country to visit Maleficent with a messy kid and all their worldly belongings on board?

I’ve totally got this.

Or does she? The sky, now rapidly gathering purple-black clouds, was sunny and blue until five minutes ago. She’d expected it to stay that way until dusk, which—this far west and on the cusp the summer solstice—shouldn’t descend until after nine o’clock. But she recognizes an impending thunderstorm when she sees one.

“How are we going to camp if it rains, Mommy?” Max wants to know.

“I’m sure we’ll stay dry in the tent.” She isn’t at all sure about that, and a glance into the rearview mirror reveals that Max isn’t either. He sits pensively wiggling his loose bottom tooth with his thumb.

“I don’t really want to sleep in the tent anymore.”

“It’ll be okay, sweetie. Besides, maybe the storm will pass.” The remark is underscored by a rumble of thunder, and she continues almost without missing a beat, “Then again, maybe it won’t. Let’s look for an exit with a campsite.”

The response is a high-pitched, “I really think we should just get a hotel!”

Oh, Max. Hang in there, kiddo.

“I really wish we could,” she manages to say evenly, “but we just can’t.”

Max wants to know why not and where they’ll camp, and he’s worried about mud and lightning and bears and a host of other potential nature-related calamities that he catalogs for her as she nervously listens to the engine rattle.

Then—
yes!
—she spots a billboard.

Wow. Talk about luck.

“That looks nice, doesn’t it?” She points at the enormous photo of tents pitched on the grassy shore of a sapphire lake beneath a
picture perfect summer sky that has nothing in common with the one looming ahead. “Should we check it out?”

“I guess,” he says gamely.

As they rattle north onto Route 60, she checks the odometer. According to that billboard, the turnoff for the campground is ten miles up the road.

She keeps an eye out for a service station. But the two-lane highway runs through hilly, rural farmland. Pastures, livestock, silos—there are few other cars even traveling this stretch. To occupy Max—and keep him from asking more questions she doesn’t want to answer—she challenges him to count the grazing cows on either side of the road and promises him an ice cream cone for dessert later if he can count twenty.

“Can it be chocolate chip?”

“Sure.”

“Can it be two scoops? With sprinkles?”

“Sure—if you can count twenty-five cows.”

That he accomplishes in short order, noting that most of them are lying down.

“That’s because they know it’s going to rain.”

“How do they know?”

“I guess they’re psychic,” she says absently, checking the odometer and then the mile marker at the side of the highway. Six more to go.

Rattle . . . rattle . . .

“What’s psychic?”

“It’s . . . when you can predict the future.”

“Cows can predict the future?”

She smiles, imagining a Guernsey with a crystal ball. “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way. But some animals can be superintuitive.”

“What’s intuitive?”

“It’s knowing something that you can’t really know.”

“That doesn’t make sense. If you can’t know it, then how do you know it?”

“Because you don’t just rely on your five senses to—” She hits the brakes, spotting something ahead in the road as they round a curve.

The car stops just inches from a small animal. For a moment, she assumes that it’s roadkill—a dead possum or raccoon. Then she realizes that it’s a cat—a gray tabby—and it’s very much alive, staring at the car. She waits for it to scuttle off into the tall purple wildflowers along the narrow shoulder, but it doesn’t move.

“Look, Mom! He followed us all the way here!”

“What?”

“The kitty from home! The one with the candy cane tail!”

Indeed, this cat’s tail is similarly striped, standing straight up and hooked into a curve, and its markings are strikingly similar to the one who showed up on their doorstep yesterday.

“Max, he didn’t follow us. And he was a she, by the way, remember? And this cat isn’t the same—”

“Oh, yeah!” In the rearview mirror, she sees him slap his cheek. “He was a she because she was going to have babies, and she didn’t follow us because she got here first. She’s the leader.
We
followed her.”

Bella can’t help but laugh. “Whatever you say, kiddo. But she—or he—had better move, because she’s going to get hurt if she stays there.”

“I don’t think she wants to move.”

Max is right. The cat just sits calmly staring at the car.

Bella rolls down the window and leans her head out, noticing the chill in the air. Suddenly, the tank top and cut-off denim shorts she donned this morning feel as though they belong to a different season.

“Hey, kitty!” she calls. “You have to get out of the road!”

Nope.

Bella may never have owned a cat, but she knows enough about them to be aware that they like to do things on their own terms. Which is fine when you’re talking about when to use the litter box and whether to eat your kibble. But when it comes to personal safety . . .

“Look out!” she shouts as an eighteen-wheeler comes barreling around a curve in the opposite lane.

The cat doesn’t budge, nor does it blink as the truck hurtles past just a few feet from where it’s sitting.

“Crazy cat,” Bella mutters. She beeps the horn. “Move! You’re going to get run over!”

“No! Don’t run her over, Mom!”

“
I’m
not going to run her over. But somebody else will if she doesn’t get out of the way. Besides, it’s dangerous for us to be stalled in this lane,” she adds, glancing in the rearview mirror. The road is sharply curved behind them. If another car—or, God forbid, a truck—comes along, it might not be able to stop in time.

Frustrated, she honks again.

The cat stays put.

“This is ridiculous,” she grumbles, pulling the car off the road onto the narrow shoulder. She shifts into park, turns on the hazards, and climbs out of the car. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” Max asks worriedly.

“To move our friend. We can’t just leave him there. He’s a sitting duck.”

“He’s not a duck. He’s a cat. And he’s a she, remember?”

She grins, leaving Mr. Literal-Minded securely strapped into the back seat. She darts a look to the left to make sure there are no cars coming before stepping into the road and wonders what she’d do if she did see one. And what would the cat do?

Surely it would run away—unless it’s injured. Maybe that’s why it’s not moving. Maybe it can’t.

“It’s okay, kitty,” Bella says, hurrying toward it and noticing that it certainly looks like the doorstep cat from yesterday. But gray tabbies are a dime a dozen, she reminds herself. They all look alike: tiger ticking; wide, green eyes; even that M-shaped marking on their furry foreheads, and . . .

And plenty of cats have red collars, too, she decides, noticing that this one happens to be wearing one, just like the doorstep kitty.

“What’s the matter, fella? Are you hurt?” Casting another glance at the highway, reassured to see that it’s still empty behind them, she bends over to give the cat a pat.

No sooner does her hand graze its furry head than it promptly falls backward.

For a moment, she’s certain she’s going to see blood, a broken leg, something, something . . .

She sees
something
all right.

The cat isn’t hurt; she’s purring and rolling languidly onto her back, stretching and arching her neck and then her belly to be rubbed.

“You’re not a fella, are you?” she asks dryly.

This cat, like its candy-cane-tailed counterpart, is decidedly female—and equally pregnant.

* * *

Ten minutes later, the first fat raindrop splats onto the windshield as she turns off Route 60 onto a tree-lined country road.

“Is this where the kitty doctor is, Mom?” Max asks from the back seat.

“Somewhere around here, yes.”

After manhandling the cat off the road and into the back seat, she was glad to see that her phone got Internet reception even in the middle of nowhere. She was going to search for local animal control but then thought better of it. Kill shelters still exist in some areas, and she doesn’t want their pregnant furry friend to end up in one. Instead, she looked up veterinarians, which seemed like the most humane option.

She heard after-hours recordings on the first three numbers she called and wasn’t sure what she’d do if the fourth and final one resulted in the same. But a harried-sounding man picked up.

“Lakeview Animal Hospital.”

“Hi, I . . . I found a pregnant cat in the middle of the road and I—”

“Is she injured?”

“I don’t think so. She wasn’t moving, so I picked her up and she seems—”

“And she’s a stray?”

“She’s wearing a collar, but it doesn’t have identification. I don’t know where—”

“Bring her in. I’ll scan her. Do you know where we are?”

I don’t even know where I am,
Bella thought.

She glances from the road ahead to the ever-darkening western sky through the driver’s side window to the back seat. Somewhere
along the way, the cat wound up curled in her son’s lap, its loud purring punctuated by the occasional rumble of thunder.

Max remains convinced that this is the same cat from their yard back home, and she gave up trying to argue with him. In five-year-old logic, it makes about as much sense that a cat would find its way on foot across the state and wind up precisely in their path—well off the beaten one—as it does that there would be identical pregnant cats living four hundred miles apart.

Bella hits the brakes as the navigational system’s robotic voice announces, “Arriving . . . at . . . destination.”

Looking around for a medical facility, she sees nothing but woods. “Where is it?” she wonders aloud.

“We don’t know,” Max replies, and she notes that somehow, in the space of fifteen minutes, he and the cat seem to have transformed into a “we.”

Off to the side of the road, she spots a tiny wooden sign alongside a barely discernible dirt lane leading through the trees.

After a moment’s hesitation, she turns the car in that direction and they bump-rattle along until they reach a small clapboard structure. It’s not a house, exactly, though it has a pitched roof and a low concrete stoop with a silver wrought iron railing. It’s more like a cross between a cottage and a shed.

Getting out of the car, she notes that the air feels markedly cooler, and the maple leaves overhead are stirring, turning over. She’d better make this quick, then find the campsite before the sky opens up. The service station can wait until morning.

She grabs a hoodie from the front seat. Emblazoned with a New York Yankees logo, it was Sam’s. He left it on the bed before his final trip to the hospital.

Even now, her husband’s familiar scent seems to envelop her as she throws it on.

It’s going to be okay,
she reminds herself.
You’ve got this. One thing at a time: cat, then campsite, then car . . .

She cautiously opens the back door. “Don’t you run away, kitty. We don’t have time to chase you down.”

Lounging across Max’s lap as he strokes her fat, furry belly with its double row of fat pink nipples, the cat offers Bella a languid stare as if to say,
Don’t worry, darling. I wouldn’t dream of it.

No amount of coaxing will get the animal out of the car. Bella is forced to gently drag her across the seat and carry her onto the small porch, trailed by Max.

He tries to open the door for them as she shifts the squirming cat in her arms. “It’s locked.”

“Turn the knob harder. Maybe the other direction.”

He tries. Nope. “What does that sign say, Mommy?”

“It says they closed at five. But there’s a light on in there, and the vet answered the phone when we called. Can you knock, please, sweetie?”

He does, timidly and then louder, at her urging, as the cat somersaults in her arms.

At last, movement from within. A man in a lab coat opens the door. He’s tall, with brown hair, broad shoulders, and brown eyes behind a pair of glasses.

“I . . . I’m Isabella Jordan.” Her voice cracks a bit. “I called a few minutes ago. Are you the person I talked to?”