What the Cat Saw (2 page)

Nela noted house numbers. She was getting close. She came around a curve. Her eyes widened at a majestic home high on a ridge, a Georgian mansion built of limestone with no houses visible on either side, the grounds stretching to woods. Nela slowed. Surely not…Chloe had clearly written of a garage apartment.

Nela stopped at stone pillars that marked the entrance and scrabbled through Chloe’s notes.

Even with the disclaimer, the message reflected Chloe’s unquenchable cheer.

Nela pressed the accelerator. Names bounced in her mind like errant Ping-Pong balls…Grant, Webster, Jugs…as she chugged onto the winding road. If delivery trucks actually came this way, their roofs would scrape low-hanging tree limbs. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, Nela felt sure that FedEx, UPS, and any other delivery service would swing through the stone pillars into the main drive. Tradesmen entrances had gone the way of horse-drawn buggies, milk bottles, and typewriters.

As the lane curved out of the woods, she gazed at the back of the magnificent house. A rose garden that would be spectacular in summer spread beneath steps leading up to a paved terrace. Lights blazed from huge windows, emphasizing the gathering winter darkness that leached light and color from the dormant garden. Lights also gleamed from lantern-topped stone pillars near the massive garages Chloe had described as new. Almost lost in the gloom was an old wooden two-door garage with a second-floor apartment. The windows were dark.

Nela coasted to a stop. She put the car in park but left the motor
running while she pulled up the garage door. The Bug fit with room to spare next to the Mercedes coupe. She glanced at the elegant car as she retrieved her suitcase. Very sporty. It would be interesting to see Miss Grant’s apartment. It would be odd to stay in the apartment of a woman whom she’d never met. But ten days would speed past.

And then?

Nela shook away any thought of the future. For now, she was hungry and looking forward to pizza with anchovies and taking sanctuary in a dead woman’s home.
Miss Grant, wherever you are, thank you.

She didn’t take time to put on Chloe’s coat, which surely would hang to her knees. She stepped out of the garage and lowered the overhead door. Pulling her suitcase, carrying Chloe’s coat over one arm, she hurried to the wooden stairs, the sharp wind ruffling her hair, penetrating her thin cotton blouse and slacks.

On the landing, she fumbled in her purse until she found the ribbon-tagged key, unlocked the door. Stepping inside, she flicked a switch. She was pleasantly surprised. Despite January gloom beyond the windows, the room was crisp and bright, lemon-painted walls with an undertone of orange, vivid Rothko matted prints, blond Danish modern furniture, the sofa and chairs upholstered with peonies splashed against a pale purple background. A waist-high blond wood bookcase extended several feet into the room to the right of the door.

Her gaze stopped at car keys lying there next to a Coach bag. Had the purse belonged to Miss Grant? Certainly Chloe had never owned a Coach bag and, if she had, she wouldn’t have left it carelessly in an empty apartment. Nela shrugged away the presence of the purse. The contents of the apartment were none of her business.

As for Miss Grant, she wasn’t the person Nela had imagined. When Chloe wrote,
Too bad about Miss Grant
, Nela knew she’d been guilty of stereotyping. Miss Grant was dead so she was old. Until she’d read Chloe’s note, Nela had pictured a plump elderly woman, perhaps with white curls and a sweet smile. This apartment had not belonged to an old woman.

So much for preconceived ideas. Nela closed the door behind her. She set the suitcase down and turned to explore the rest of the apartment. She took two steps, then, breath gone, pulse pounding, stared across the room. She reached out to grip the back of a chair, willing herself to stay upright. She began to tremble, defenses gone, memory flooding, not hot, but cold and dark and drear.

The cat’s huge round eyes seemed to grow larger and larger.

Lost in the intensity of the cat’s gaze, she was no longer in a strange apartment half a continent from home. Instead, numb and aching, she was at Bill’s house with Bill’s mother, face etched in pain, eyes red-rimmed, and his sobbing sisters and all of his huge and happy family, which had gathered in sorrow. Bill’s brother Mike spoke in a dull monotone:
He was on patrol…stepped on an IED
…

Unbearable images had burned inside. She had turned away, dropped into a chair in the corner of the room. Bill’s cat was lying on the piano bench, looking at her. Splotches of white marked Big Man’s round black face.

Big Man stared with mesmerizing green eyes. “…
He’s gone…dead…yesterday…legs blown away…blood splashing…”

Through the next frozen week, Big Man’s thoughts recurred like the drumbeat of a dirge. But, of course, they were her thoughts, too hideous to face and so they came to her reflected from the cat Bill loved.

The next week an emaciated feral cat confronted her in the alley
behind the apartment house. Gaunt, ribs showing, the cat whirled toward her, threat in every tense line. She looked into pale yellow eyes. “…
starving…That’s my rat…Get out of my way…”

Rat? She’d jerked around and seen a flash of gray fur near the Dumpster. Back in her apartment, she’d tried to quell her quick breaths. Her mind had been jumbled, that’s all. She’d seen a desperate cat and known there was garbage and of course there might be rats. She had not read the cat’s thoughts.

Of course she hadn’t.

Like calendar dates circled in red, she remembered other episodes. At the beauty shop, a cuddly white cat turned sea blue eyes toward her. “…
The woman in the third chair’s afraid…The redhead is mean…The skinny woman’s smile is a lie…”
At a beach taco stand, a rangy black tom with a white-tipped tail and a cool, pale gaze. “…
rank beef…People want the baggies from the blue cooler…afraid of police…”
On a neighbor’s front porch swing, an imperious Persian with a malevolent face. “…
I’m the queen…I saw the suitcase…If she boards me, she’ll be sorry…”

Now, a few feet away from her, a lean brown tabby with distinctive black stripes and oversize ears stood in a circle of light from an overhead spot—of course the cat chose that spot seeking warmth from the bulb—and gazed at Nela with mournful eyes. “…
Dead…Dead and gone…She loved me…board rolled on the second step…”

Nela fought a prickle of hysteria. She was tired. Maybe she was crazy. Boards didn’t roll…Unless he meant a skateboard. Skateboards were rolling boards. Was that how a cat would describe a skateboard? Was she losing her mind? Cats and a board that rolled and skateboards. How weird to think of a skateboard on a step. She hadn’t thought of skateboards in years. Bill had done the best ollies
in the neighborhood. His legs were stocky and strong. The IED…Oh God. Maybe it was because the cat had such distinctive black stripes. Bill’s skateboard had been shiny orange with black stripes. She had to corral her mind, make her thoughts orderly. No one saw what was in a cat’s mind. She was making it up. From a board that rolled to skateboards. Maybe she needed to see a doctor. No. This would pass.

The cat gave a sharp chirp, walked across the parquet flooring.

She backed away, came up hard with her back against the front door.

The cat looked up. “…
Hungry…Feed me…We’re both sad…”

With the beauty of movement peculiar to cats, he moved swiftly past her toward the kitchen.

We’re both sad
…

Nela looked after him. Slowly her frantic breathing eased. The cat—he had to be Jugs with ears like those—was not a threat. She was fighting to keep away memories that hurt. It made sense that she’d ascribe sadness to a cat with a dead mistress. Cats needed attention. Maybe he’d let her pet him. As for imagining his thoughts, her mind was playing a trick. Maybe she wasn’t quite crazy. She struggled to remember the professor’s droning voice in Psych 1. What had he said? Then she remembered. Displacement. That’s what she was doing. Displacement. She clung to the word.

It took every fiber of her will but she quieted her quick breaths, moved with deliberation toward the kitchen. Food would help and the welcome distraction of finding her way about in a strange place.

Next to the refrigerator, she spotted a sheet of paper taped to a cabinet door. Chloe had printed, neatly for her:

Jugs stood on his back paws, scratched at the cabinet door.

Now she was able to look at the cat without a sense of dread. They were fellow creatures, both of them hungry, both of them grieving. “All right, Jugs.” As Nela gently opened the door, Jugs dropped to the floor and moved toward his bowl. She emptied a half can into a blue ceramic bowl with
Jugs
painted in white on one side. Nela placed the bowl on newspaper already spread on the floor. She added a scoop of chicken-flavored dry pellets to a yellow bowl with his name in blue. She poured fresh water in a white bowl.

Nela found, as promised, pizza in the fridge. In only a moment, thanks to the microwave, she settled at the kitchen table with two slices of hot crisp anchovy pizza, a small Caesar salad, and a glass of iced tea.

Jugs thumped onto the other end of the table. He made no move to come toward the food. Instead, he settled on his stomach, front paws flat on the table.

Nela studied him gravely as she ate. “You are obviously a privileged character. But you have very good manners. Did Miss Grant allow you to sit on the table when she ate?”

The cat blinked. “…
She was worried…She didn’t know what to do…”

Determinedly, Nela looked away. That was the human condition.
Worry about the rain. Worry about cancer. Worry about war. Worry about money. Worry about…The list could go on and on, big worries and little, everyone had them. Whatever worries had plagued Marian Grant, she was now beyond their reach. Nela felt puzzled. Chloe spoke of Miss Grant as if she’d seen her recently at the office but she’d made no mention of illness. If Marian Grant hadn’t been old or sick, how had she died? Why had she been worried?

Nela finished the second slice. She’d do the dishes and look through the rest of Chloe’s notes. Surely, tucked in somewhere, she’d left directions to her job and explained what she did.

Nela carried Chloe’s folder into the living room. She looked around the room at colorful Rothko prints. Nela’s gaze stopped at a bright red cat bed near the desk. Jugs was curved into a ball, one paw across his face, taking an after-dinner snooze. She was, of course, wide awake. It was almost ten here and darkness pressed against the windows, but her body was still on California time. Oh well, she was in no hurry. No one expected her to do anything until Monday morning.

No one would call who really mattered to her. Not since Bill died…

Nela hurried to the chintz sofa, sank onto one end, opened the folder, looked at a haphazard pile of loose sheets. She began to read the handwritten notes, glad to push away remembrance.

Nela’s stiff shoulders relaxed. It was almost as comforting as pulling up one of her grandmother’s afghans. She and Chloe had grown up on old movies, the free ones on Turner Classic Movies.

Nela felt a spurt of exasperation. What place, Chloe? Nela scanned more tidbits about people.