The Cat Between Read online

  Min-Min, a big white shorthair with green eyes, stood on his hind legs and patted Gerry’s thigh. Deaf, he rarely mewed. He was elderly and a bit overweight, probably arthritic, so she picked him up and put him in her lap. With one hand she caressed his fur. He began a faint purr. With the other hand she made notes.

  The course would rely heavily on French artists of the latter half of the nineteenth century. France had been the cultural centre of Europe at that time. Artists came from all over the world to study there. That was one of the ways Asian art influenced the Impressionists. And then some artists travelled to Asia themselves and were influenced there.

  Gerry sighed. It was going to be a complicated and pleasurable task to collate all the material and present it. She’d pulled out her own art history notes and text books, not so out of date, as she’d graduated less than five years ago.

  That reminded her: her twenty-sixth birthday was coming up—February 19—in about a month. What a change-filled year twenty-five had been! She’d moved from Toronto, the biggest city in Canada, to a village, population 5,000, in the province of Quebec; went from renting an apartment to owning a large house; and from zero pets to almost twenty!

  She pulled a book towards her. An overview of art history, it would serve as her guide. She began.

  Her growling stomach reminded her to eat. The morning had passed. She stretched. Sunlight made the backyard snow glisten. She dressed and thought about going for a walk. The phone rang. It was Cathy.

  “I’m next door, Gerry, with Blaise. We visited Graymalkin. He’s still unconscious but stable.”

  “That’s good news, isn’t it? How’s Blaise?”

  “Tired but hopeful. Gerry, the vet said you mustn’t let your cats outside at dawn or dusk and definitely not at night. Whatever wild animal did this might be living in the area.”

  “What the—?” Gerry broke off and stared out at her backyard.

  “Gerry? Gerry?” She heard Cathy’s voice from a distance.

  “Gotta go, Cathy. Tell you later.” Gerry put on her boots and grabbed her jacket. She also grabbed a broom and rushed outside.

  Bounding across her yard was what looked like a wolf.

  Gerry stood in the parking pad at the side of the house, within reach of the door if she had to make a quick retreat. The wolf trotted from tree to tree, sniffing. It ran down to the shore, lifted one front paw and looked uncertainly at the ice. Turning, it caught sight of Gerry and headed towards her, mouth open, looking hungry.

  A blond wolf? Gerry thought. She pointed the broom at the beast. “Back!” she ordered it. It sat in the snow and scratched one ear with a hind paw. Its tongue lolled. It rolled in the snow, making a vulpine snow angel.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Gerry leaned the broom next to the kitchen door. The wolf jumped up and shook, its tail wagging hopefully, its enormous ears almost fully retracted. It smiled and wiggled closer; then, bum in the air, the front portion of its body bowed. Gerry went inside the tiny kitchen porch and retrieved a handful of cat kibble from the large sack kept there. She flung a morsel at the beast and it snapped it out of the air. By now it was only a few feet away. Gerry threw again. It missed and snuffled on the icy asphalt. Then it sat and offered a paw. Gerry gravely shook hands and fed it again. “Now what?” she wondered aloud.

  “Harriet!” was heard from afar. The cry was repeated. “Harriet! Harriet!” A young man, dressed in black ski pants and a red ski jacket, ran by the driveway, saw Gerry and doubled back. “Harriet! Have you been mooching?” The dog cringed and wagged her way over to him.

  “Is she yours?” Gerry asked. The dog jumped, her paws on his chest. He nodded. White blond, the dog had the tightly curled tail of a husky but the large pricked ears of a German shepherd. Her back, the tip of her tail and the edges of her ears were all highlighted a delicate fox-red. Her nose was pink and black and her eyes a pale brown. Gerry added, “She’s gorgeous. Is she a husky?”

  Her owner was nice-looking too, she thought. Tallish, medium build; dark eyes and hair. Gerry realized she’d been staring and turned to look at the dog. The man was speaking. “A husky something cross. I thought she’d stick around if I was outside but evidently, no. I’ll have to get a chain and stake her.”

  “Where do you live?”

  He pointed along the road in the direction of the church. “I’m renting the little farmhouse behind St. Anne’s. I’m a ski instructor and Lovering is handy for the ski hills around here.” He mentioned a couple Gerry (not a skier) had been vaguely aware of.

  She found she was tongue-tied and awkwardly patted the dog. “Harriet the husky,” she said. The dog licked her hand and sniffed her pockets.

  “Well, thank you for finding her,” the man said uncertainly.

  Gerry snapped out of her daze and introduced herself. “Gerry Coneybear. Artist. My house.” She took a deep breath and laughed—too loudly, she thought. “I’ve got nineteen cats.” Idiot, she called herself silently. You don’t say that to someone you’ve just met.

  He replied. “Thibeault. Jean-Louis. Pleased to meet you.” He grinned. “Only one pet. So far. Come on, Harriet. See you, Gerry.” He snapped a leash on Harriet. As they walked away, Gerry wondered if she should have told him about the attack on Graymalkin. Nah. A big dog like that would be fine.

  After lunch she decided not to waste the sunny day by staying inside. “I can work tonight,” she told Bob as she put on a sweater and light jacket. “Sorry, buddy.” She edged out the kitchen door, using her foot to keep him from following her. She unlocked the shed and stepped inside.

  “I’ve got to organize this place this spring,” she murmured, stepping over sacks of birdseed and manure in the little front room used for plant-related activities. “And repair it.”

  In the main area of the shed, lots of tools and unwanted furniture were dumped on one side while her woodpile dominated the other. A blue tarp sagged from above where, on Christmas Eve, a tree had made a hole in the shed’s roof, the same tree that had dented her car. It was darker than usual inside, as one of the windows, broken a few weeks earlier, was boarded up. That reminded her of the plywood she’d removed from the window of the house next door. She guiltily made a promise to fix it after her walk. She found her snowshoes and took them outside.

  She shivered in the sub-zero weather, wearing only a thin jacket, but knew she’d soon be sweating. The snowshoes were the wide heavy old-fashioned ones made of wood and some kind of animal rawhide. She looked down at her feet. Kind of gross, really, the rawhide, but clever. She clumped down the road.

  When she passed Andrew’s house and the bit of field next to that, she turned right. This road doubled as a back driveway into Cathy’s B&B and as the main driveway to a farmhouse far from the main road, perched on a slight rise among what Gerry had been told used to be cow pastures.

  The driveway had been cleared as far as Cathy’s property line, but after that there was snow for Gerry to play on. She swung her legs out and around and was soon trotting toward the farmhouse.

  The family that owned it used it as a three-season cottage, so she didn’t feel she was trespassing when she crossed the lawn in front of the empty house, swung left and headed into the trees. The path, made by snowmobilers (and bless their noisy hearts, Gerry thought, for compacting the trail), showed evidence cross-country skiers also were using it. She paused and listened.

  Chickadees chirped and fluttered in pine trees. A hidden squirrel angrily warned Gerry to back off. She looked at what she at first thought was a squirrel’s nest just above her head. But no squirrel would nest that close to the ground, would it?

  On closer inspection, she realized the roundish tangle of twigs had been made by the tree, originating from a single area on one branch. She reached up and touched it. “Strange,” she murmured. She continued through the woods across the train tracks and into the deeper woods.

 
There was the sugar shack where she’d gotten skunked last fall. She kept on past it and climbed the steeply sloping path that wound through giant maples. “Sweet trees,” she said. She wondered if there would be sugaring off this spring. She remembered one perfect day from her early childhood.

  It must have been the Easter weekend. After searching with her father for eggs hidden outside at The Maples where there was little snow left on the lawn, they’d gone inside where her mother and Aunt Maggie had been preparing blueberry pancakes with maple syrup. Then they’d all walked up to the sugar bush, Gerry being given rides on her father’s shoulders when she tired.

  Between the trees some snow remained. Uncle Geoff had been working collecting the sap, assisted by a skinny Andrew, barely out of his teens. Shortly, a young couple, each holding a small boy, had joined them. Gerry drew in her breath sharply at this memory. Her cousin Margaret and Doug, her then husband! With James and Geoff Jr. And David not yet born, she supposed.

  She tried to remember any impression of the couple. Had they been happy at that time? What had Doug looked like? How had Margaret seemed? But her mind drew a blank. She supposed she’d been too busy flitting from tree to tree, lifting the lids of the maple sap buckets to inspect the levels inside and informing her male relatives when she’d found one brimming full of the clear liquid.

  Of her Aunt Mary, she had no recollection. Perhaps the family’s primitive fun in the sugar bush had been beneath her aunt. She remembered the steamy interior of the shack and the sweet odour of boiling sap. She remembered Uncle Geoff pouring some syrup onto clean snow and using maple twigs to make impromptu lollipops for the kids. And the adults. And that was all.

  She left the sugar bush as she reached the top of the hill and entered the stand of pine planted by her late uncle. “Hello, Uncle Geoff,” she said softly, and kept going.

  The sky clouded over and it began to snow. Her way continued: now down, now up, but mostly straight. She could turn around and go home the way she’d come or she could make a left and continue; make a big circle for a really long walk. The fact that there was a restaurant on the highway where the path through the woods ended, and that they had hot chocolate gave her a third choice. She kept going towards the hot chocolate.

  The path climbed again, followed alongside a small frozen creek that widened into a stream that deepened to run through a ravine. Water rushed beneath the stream’s frozen surface, bubbling up here and there and making a pleasant sound. She paused and listened for a moment, absorbing the peace of the woodland scene in the falling snow. She heard a snowmobile’s motor and prepared to step off the path. But it never got as far as where she was. She heard a second machine—its sound coming from a different direction—but it too never came near her.

  She became aware of the sound of cars on the highway and suddenly she didn’t want to leave the quiet of the woods. She turned around and retraced her steps.

  She’d just reached the train tracks and had paused, catching her breath, when she heard another snowmobile coming fast, seemingly from behind her. She stepped over one rail so she stood between the tracks, backing away from the trail.

  The roar of the snowmobile increased as it sped up the incline to where she waited. The driver paused, gave her a look, made a hard left and zoomed away alongside the tracks towards the centre of Lovering.

  As he’d been wearing a dark blue suit and a black helmet with the tinted visor down, Gerry had no idea who it had been, except that he was large and probably male. It would have been nice if he’d at least waved. Or nodded. She shrugged and made her way home.

  Light snow had covered her car and driveway, and the sun was setting, turning a white sky first silver and then a dark grey. It was cat supper and Gerry coffee time so she hurried inside.

  After the beasts were satiated and a hazelnut vanilla latte was foaming in a bowl, she checked her phone answering machine. One message: Cathy, inviting her to supper. “No charge, dear,” her friend, an excellent chef and caterer said. “I’m just lonely. Come as you are.”

  A sweaty Gerry decided coming as she was would be inappropriate and enjoyed a quick bath before changing into jeans and sweater. The sweater she would have preferred to wear was in the garbage so this one—an old red Christmas sweater, complete with Santa Claus driving his team and sleigh up and over a cute snow-covered cottage with Ho Ho Ho coming out of his mouth—would have to do. If I spill food on it, it certainly won’t show, she thought. She rummaged for a bottle of wine and set off.

  The snow had stopped. The cold crisp night enveloped her. She inhaled appreciatively. As someone who had spent most of her life in Toronto, she enjoyed the Quebec countryside—its fresh air, its space. She looked up at stars in a clear sky.

  She walked up Cathy’s main driveway. As usual, when entertaining, Cathy had her front rooms illuminated, and the big old house looked welcoming, like a lady spreading her skirts on a sofa, patting the space beside her and saying “Come and get comfy and we’ll have a nice long chat.” Gerry exhaled and rang the bell.

  “Gerry!” Cathy kissed her and took her coat while Gerry kicked off her boots. “Thanks for coming. I really got used to having someone around when Markie was here and now the house feels—kind of empty.”

  Cathy’s sister had visited after Christmas, helped distract Cathy from the fact that someone had been murdered in her basement. And Markie meeting Gerry’s cousin Andrew and them hitting it off meant that Markie had delayed returning to her home in Arizona.

  “I can see that,” Gerry agreed. “I got used to having Prudence around.” She didn’t add that she’d also breathed a sigh of relief when Prudence had left for her vacation. An only child, Gerry was comfortable with solitude, needed it for her work.

  Again as usual, Cathy seated her by the fire in the genteel, shabby living room and brought her a gin and tonic. Gerry smacked her lips. Charles, slumbering on the warm tiles of the hearth, had acknowledged her presence by opening one eye. She petted him, he sighed and closed it. “So?”

  “So,” Cathy replied, “the cat is still in a coma, but seems stable. Blaise is all right. I guess at his age, you’ve seen so much death, you become philosophical.”

  “And the expense?”

  “It’ll be a lot but, as Blaise says, he has no other dependants.”

  “Mm. I’ve figured out that this spring when my cats mostly all need their shots, I could be spending about three thousand at the vet’s.”

  “Good grief!” Cathy seemed stunned. “Maybe you can work out a payment plan.”

  “If the auction of my Borduas is successful, I could clear a quarter of a million, maybe more. But it’s already been delayed once. I don’t know what they’re waiting for.”

  “A quarter of a million! Good God!” This time Cathy really was stunned into silence. She brought a bowl of chips and one of dip from a sideboard. Charles struggled to roll from his side to his ample belly. He stared as Gerry transferred each chip from the large bowl to the smaller and from there into her mouth. She flung him a naked chip and he crawled toward it. Cathy looked fondly at this activity.

  “Charles loves the snow. Today he—” But whatever the prince had done in or on the snow that day was fated to be known only to Charles and his owner, for at that moment, the doorbell rang. Cathy rose. “My other guest,” she said, looking over her shoulder with an arch expression. Charles, refusing to be distracted from his mission, stayed fixated on Gerry.

  Gerry sat up. She heard a male voice. Could Cathy have an admirer?

  “Gerry, have you met Jean-Louis? You have?” Cathy seemed a bit disappointed.

  Jean-Louis and Gerry nodded and smiled as Cathy mixed him a drink. “Over my dog,” he said and raised his glass, sitting next to Gerry on the sofa. “Santé!”

  “I just need to check something in the kitchen,” Cathy murmured. Charles stayed with the guests, inching his way closer to the chip bow
l.

  “I didn’t know anyone else was coming,” said Gerry, self-consciously smoothing the Christmas sweater. This man certainly was handsome in his black turtleneck jersey and blue jeans. And his cologne was nice too.

  “Me neither,” he agreed, helping himself to a handful of chips. “My appetite increases as the temperature decreases.”

  “I know, right?” She helped herself likewise.

  “Self-preservation. The body knows it should store fat.”

  By now Charles had crawled completely under the clear glass coffee table and his nose was positioned on the bit of carpet separating Gerry and Jean-Louis’s feet. Unnerved by Jean-Louis’s mention of the word “fat,” and wondering if she should remove the bulky sweater, a large chip, well dipped in the delicious onion and sour cream concoction, dropped from Gerry’s fingers. Trying to intercept it, Charles lurched upwards and banged his head sharply on the underneath of the table. He gobbled the chip before lapping dip off the carpet with a rather dazed look on his face.

  Gerry and Jean-Louis looked at the dog. “Concussed?” Gerry asked.

  “Definitely,” he replied. Charles had a hurt look on his face. They were giggling and snorting when Cathy returned.

  “Well, you two seem to be getting along,” she commented smugly. And Gerry realized Cathy was matchmaking.

  5

  “Let’s take this party into the kitchen! It’s pizza night!” Cathy led the way to the back of the house.

  As they passed the wide oak staircase, Jean-Louis said admiringly, “This is a lovely old building. If I weren’t renting, I’d stay here.”

  “I’ve never had a boarder,” Cathy rejoined. “Just short-term guests. Not that I’d mind,” she added flirtatiously over her shoulder. She sat them at the kitchen table upon which a plethora of pizza toppings had been spread out.