The Cat Between Read online

  “A Brownie uniform?” asked Gerry, remembering only a frequently misplaced white and orange tie, added to whatever clothes she’d worn that day to school.

  “In my day, Brownies wore a brown uniform. A brown long-sleeved shirt, brown skirt, brown knee socks, brown shoes which you had to polish before every meeting, a brown beret and a brown tie.”

  “That’s a bit depressing. Were you supposed to blend in with the earth, or what?”

  Prudence munched a second cookie. “That’s exactly right. Brownies are helpful fairies who do good deeds for people. I don’t remember doing helpful deeds so much as learning housekeeping skills. We did also camp and do orienteering, so it wasn’t completely sexist. I quite liked being in a tent with a group of girls.”

  “I never went to camp. We did field trips out of Toronto to look at birds and habitats—stuff like that. It was fun—for a while. Mrs. Shrike doesn’t seem to be one for good deeds, unless taking in foreign students counts. I imagine she gets paid for that?”

  “I presume so. Anyway, what’s her husband getting knifed got to do with her students?”

  “He was knifed?”

  “Rita said his throat was cut.”

  “I didn’t know that. The bag was zipped up to his throat.” Gerry gulped as she remembered the cold white face and was glad she hadn’t had to see the wound. She stroked little Jay and shivered. “I hope it was fast.”

  Prudence nodded then looked at her pityingly. “You mean I’m back one day and I know more about this murder than you?”

  Gerry made a face. “Cathy didn’t know. Neither did Cece or Bea. And Jean-Louis is an outsider.” She realized as soon as she’d said his name, she’d made a mistake. A slow flush crept from her neck to her cheeks.

  “Rita’s nephew is one of the paramedics who answered the call,” Prudence replied smugly. “Jean-Louis, eh? What’s his family name?”

  “Thibeault,” Gerry replied meekly.

  Prudence considered. “There are Thibeaults here.”

  “I got the impression he’s from north of Montreal. I don’t know why. Maybe because he’s a ski instructor, I assumed he’d be from the Laurentians.”

  “A ski instructor! What’s he doing here?”

  “What do you mean? He’s working at Royal Mountain.”

  “Nothing against Royal Mountain, but it’s small and they usually hire locals to teach there. Huh.”

  Gerry shrugged. “He said he’d teach me cross-country skiing. Here. In the woods.”

  “What’s to teach? You just strap them on and go. You probably have some in the shed. Look in the rafters where the canoe is. You might have to buy boots though.” She had shouted the last sentence as Gerry was up and out the door.

  Bob skittered through the kitchen and eased out after her. “Maybe you should stay inside, Bob, until we know more about this fisher or whatever it is.” Bob had already cleared the asphalt parking pad and was heading onto the road when Gerry caught him. “Are you crazy? You might get run over!” He wriggled so hard, he escaped and charged up the slight rise that led to the house next door.

  Gerry ran after him. He took the driveway that circled the back of the house. She ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape and saw a flicker of coloured lights in an upstairs window. “Bob!” she hissed, not wanting to attract attention if anyone was in the house. Bob disappeared around the far side of the house. She looked up at the window. There. A flicker of red, yellow, green. Almost as if—

  She followed Bob’s little footprints and groaned. Someone, or the wind, had lifted the plywood cover from the broken window. It lay on the snowy ground. She was in time to see Bob’s tail whisk out of sight. “Oh, no, trespassing again,” she muttered. Then she stiffened, one leg on the sill, realizing there might be someone up there where the lights were. Nolan Shrike’s killer, perhaps.

  But Bob!

  “Crap,” she said and climbed through. Broken glass and drifted snow mingled under her feet. I guess the police don’t clean up crime scenes, she thought. I wonder who the owner is now the old lady is dead. A sudden angry meow from upstairs made her run.

  She paused at the top of the stairs. The coloured glow was coming from one of the rooms overlooking the lake. She stepped to the door as Bob shot out of the room, his fluffed tail streaming behind him, looking as though he’d seen a ghost. She looked in.

  A narrow metal bedframe, an old mattress, a small bureau. And, on the floor, unplugged, a string of Christmas lights. Not glowing.

  Gerry took one scared look around, then retreated after Bob, who had already exited the house by the time she scrambled out over the windowsill. She caught up with him as he entered the thicket separating the two houses. “Okay, Bob. You go that way. I’m not struggling through all those burrs. I’m taking the road.”

  They met back at Gerry’s house. Gerry took a quick peek in the shed, pulled down an old pair of wooden skis and poles from the rafters, and stuck them in the snow next to the kitchen door. “Prudence, Prudence, when I was outside, the Christmas lights in the empty house next door were flickering, but when I got into the room they were unplugged!”

  Prudence looked up from the grocery list she was making. “What lights? And why would you go into that place again?”

  “Bob zoomed in, ran upstairs, gave a terrible meow and zoomed right back out. I was in there for two minutes.”

  “He probably accidentally unplugged the lights. Maybe he got a shock. Do you want tomatoes?”

  “What? No. Yes. I suppose so. But who plugged them in in the first place? Eh? Eh?”

  Prudence looked at Gerry with a wrinkled brow. “You’re not getting a bee in your bonnet about the house next door, are you?” she asked suspiciously. “Because I’ve had enough murder to last me a lifetime.”

  “Blame him.” Gerry pointed at Bob now innocuously crouched in front of the tub of kibble under the kitchen table. “He’s led me there twice. And I can make my own grocery list, thank you very much.” She snatched it off the counter and read: milk, cream, butter, cheese, ham, croissants, bread, chicken, broccoli, pasta, sauce, cat litter x 3, cat tins x 19, kibble—large. “Oh. Apparently I can’t make my own list. Do I really need all that? Cripes. Thank you, Prudence. As usual, you restore order where there is chaos.”

  “You’re welcome. You’ll learn. Oh, I almost forgot.” She rummaged in her purse. “Coffee. And a cocoa stick. From St. Lucia.” She beamed. “I had a wonderful, uneventful, warm time. Thank you for sending me.”

  “Aw,” Gerry said. “You deserve it, Prudence. A cocoa stick. ‘Makes cocoa tea,’” she read. “Good thing it comes with instructions. Thank you. I should drive you home. But you drive.”

  Gerry was tired. It was the end (almost) of a long week. The weather had warmed and that meant snow—lots of snow. She’d struggled to work on Tuesday, heard the kids’ efforts at comparing one history painting to another, and struggled home. Wednesday she hunkered down, feeding the fire and planning the next bit of The Cake-Jumping Cats of Dibble, even giving thought to a possible conclusion.

  This morning she’d had to shovel out behind her car herself—the Hudsons were late. She wondered if the driveway would be cleared when she got home. She waved at an excited Andrew when he climbed into a taxi for the airport, picked up Prudence, then drove to Lovering to do her errands. She dropped off an ad at the Lovering Herald for more students for the drawing lessons she would soon resume teaching at home and picked up the groceries Prudence had listed.

  She’d been almost out of cat food and had herself been living off of canned beans and packets of soup mix, crackers and peanut butter without really noticing. The driveway was still not cleared when she got home. As usual, after unpacking her groceries and shouting goodbye to Prudence, she had to rush off to the college, but the slushy roads made even a little speeding impossible and she was taking her coat off as the last students tric
kled in.

  Almost two hours later she thought, time to wrap it up and clicked the remote. Delacroix’s The Death of Sardanapalus appeared. “Now, this may look like just another boring history painting—” Some of the class, those who were paying attention, snickered. “It was done in 1827. In terms of the techniques used to present the subject matter, it’s pretty revolutionary for its time.” She drew a line diagonally across the painting from the upper left to the lower right. “See how light along this line pulls the eye to the centre where the two or three distraught female figures are struggling? And the gorgeous red fabric flowing off the bed onto the floor? It’s a terrible scene and the painter has used colour and light to render it, to express emotion.” She added, “And it’s huge—twelve-and-a-half feet by sixteen feet. Contrast in size and treatment to this one.” She clicked.

  “Chassériau’s The Toilet of Esther done in 1841. Yes, very funny.” More snickers had been heard. “Toilet refers to the act of personal grooming as well as an actual toilet, which I don’t think they had back then. This tiny painting—eighteen by fourteen inches—is appropriately sized, don’t you think? It’s an intimate subject. How cool the skin looks, refreshed. The opposite to what we saw in the Delacroix. But similar in that light takes the central position in the work. We hardly see the figures of the servants to Esther’s left and right.” She put down the clicker and sighed. “Any questions?”

  Jerry Pinsky waved at her. “Yes, Jerry?”

  “Do we have homework this weekend?”

  “Your homework consists of reading the section on symbolism in painting—” There commenced the noise of twenty people rising. Gerry raised her voice. “And—” Groans erupted as they realized she wasn’t done. “And noting two ways symbolism was used in the nineteenth century. With examples. Two pages, minimum.”

  She beckoned Jerry to her as the rest of the class dispersed. He looked glum. “Why’d you ask about homework, Jerry? You got a big weekend planned?”

  “Going skiing, Miss. At Royal Mountain. Three days. Me and my friends rented a chalet.”

  Gerry grinned. She could imagine what kind of shape he’d be in by Monday morning. What with all the “skiing.” “I suggest you do the reading and make notes tonight. Then all you have to do next week is put it together.”

  “Good plan. If I do it.”

  “I know one of the instructors there, a Mr. Thibeault.”

  “I can ski, Miss. I won’t be taking lessons.”

  “Oh. Okay, then. Have fun.”

  She shrugged into her coat and slogged through snow to her car to begin the ritual: wipe snow off the driver’s door with her mitten, get in, start the car, retrieve the small broom from the trunk, clean off the car, stomp snow off her boots and finally get behind the wheel.

  The staff parking lot was near a circular driveway where a steady stream of cars entered and hovered until they picked up their kids. Gerry noticed one monster car, taking up almost two car lengths, waiting and waiting. Mrs. Shrike. When the two girls finally arrived and opened the car doors, Gerry heard a stream of abusive language. She assumed abusive from the tone as the words were indecipherable. Except for two that hung in the air long after the Cadillac’s doors had slammed shut and it had been angrily driven off. They were “Kill you!”

  10

  Gerry thought about those words all the long slow drive home. There had been an accident on the highway and three lanes had to merge into one. It was almost six when she got home.

  She let herself into the kitchen expecting to find Prudence gone and a horde of famished cats. Prudence was gone but instead of hungry cats she found sleepy ones and a note. “When I saw you were late, I fed the cats and phoned Charlie for a lift home. Your supper is in the fridge. 400 degrees for twenty minutes. P.”

  Gerry looked in the fridge. Four tin-foil-covered pie plates were neatly stacked. She took one out and peeled back the foil. A quarter of a chicken, roasted; a baked potato, quartered; and a cup of broccoli, already cooked. A can of a popular BBQ chicken restaurant’s gravy stood on the stove. Prudence is showing me how it’s done, she thought.

  Gerry turned on the oven and phoned Prudence. “You, you are the best! I just got in. Thanks, Prudence.”

  “All right, all right. It was easy. I just roasted everything but the broccoli while I was doing other stuff. Driving bad?”

  “An accident. Terrible. Two cars and a truck. What are you doing this weekend?”

  “Well, tomorrow I have another client in the morning. Then I’m going to visit Mother.”

  “Visit Mother” was code for consulting a medium named Mrs. Smith. Prudence had been seeing her about once a month for years. She added, “You want to come?”

  “Aah.” Gerry was taken aback. She had consulted Mrs. Smith in the past, but only when things were getting weird. They weren’t weird now, were they? “Ah, no, I don’t think so, Prudence. Thanks for asking me though.”

  “Okay. I just thought you might like to ask if any tall dark ski instructors were going to impact your life.”

  “Hah hah. He’s not that tall. And no, I’m not curious. Does Mrs. Smith do romantic consulting?”

  “All the time. That and contacting dead or missing people. So, I’ll see you Monday at 8:30.”

  By now wonderful smells were seeping from the oven and cats were likewise beginning to oil their ways chicken-ward. Gerry heated up the gravy and sat at the table in the living room with a sigh of anticipation.

  After she ate she felt she deserved a reward so reached for her pile of drawings and texts for her cake-jumping cat book. “Now, where was I?” she asked Jay, who was stalking a tray of paper clips. “And down you go.”

  Gerry gently scooped the playful kitten up into the air and onto the floor, tossing her a catnip mouse someone had left on the table. As Jay rolled from side to side, holding the mouse and raking it with her hind legs, Gerry turned to imaginary cats. The Queen had just stalked from the kitchen in a huff.

  “Whew,” said Max. “You were lucky.”

  “It’s because she likes you, dear,” added Latooth. “She appreciates how you’ve thrown yourself into the project.”

  Languida grinned. “I have, haven’t I? Thrown myself. Perhaps I’ll become an honorary member of the Cake-Jumping Cats of Dibble.”

  “You already are, dear. You already are.”

  Later that day, Queen Atholfass sat sunning herself in a window of the castle that overlooked the cake-jumping course. Her tail lazily flapped up and down. This meant she was thinking.

  She watched Max and Languida introducing the cake-jumping team to the idea of jumping over something. For example, Languida had placed a large stone on a table and was jumping back and forth over it.

  The members of the team yawned and began to groom.

  Max then jumped not only over the rock but the table as well, landing on an embarrassed Lady Ponscomb who’d been observing.

  Members of the team curled up and napped.

  Right, thought the Queen, and hopped off her comfy ledge, stalked downstairs and onto the field. “Wake up,” she hissed at the sleeping would-be cake-jumpers. “Wake up or die.”

  The young cats, hearing their Queen’s angry voice, were all terrified attention.

  “Follow me,” she said, and proceeded to lead the youngsters up and over, around and down, through and to the end of the course. “And that,” she panted, “is how it’s done.”

  Gerry thought a few little sketches, done comic strip–style, would serve this section of the book, and roughed them out.

  The first would include the Queen high up in the castle watching as the team composed itself for a nap and Max squashed Tess.

  The second would show the Queen leading the team around the course. The third—what would the third show? Industrious practice? That was boring. She thought for a moment, then added a bit more to the text.<
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  After that, the club members showed up every day and even began to jump real cakes. Latooth was busy in the kitchen devising perfect confections. Languida was seen with paper and measuring tape muttering about length times width times height. She even tried to measure reluctant club members nose to tail. She began to keep statistics in a little notebook.

  Tess, Lady Ponscomb, worked on an article for the Dibble Gazette, explaining about the club and its goals. Max could most often be seen organizing the young team members in cat calisthenics and practice races, all to build up their endurance.

  Sometimes he forgot himself and ran in tight circles, barking his head off, hysterically happy, herding the cats who would at first stand hissing and arching and fluffing their fur, before eventually losing their collective nerve and, fleeing from their enthusiastic coach, finally jump the course, posting some of their best times, but with disastrous effect on any cakes there.

  Gerry snorted with laughter. “I’m not going to fit all that in a three-inch square.” She roughed out half a page for the concluding illustration of chapter two and went to bed.

  Friday was art history prep day. Gerry felt like a student again, hunched over textbooks making notes. It was a not entirely pleasant feeling. She consoled herself thinking of the salary. She remembered the at least $3,000 she’d need by spring for the cats to visit the vet for just regular checkups. And what if one of them fell really ill or injured themselves, like Graymalkin had?

  She also remembered the painting by Paul-Émile Borduas, once hanging incognito on a wall in her aunt’s home, and now safely at the auction house in Montreal, awaiting sale. That painting was going to cover the expenses of maintaining a big old house like The Maples and Gerry’s nineteen feline wards for years and years. She fretted. What if it was destroyed by fire or stolen? She knew it was insured, but still…

  For three hours she applied herself to symbolism in painting in the nineteenth century with little breaks to stretch, prepare coffee or throw wood on the fire. At lunchtime she made a ham and cheese on a croissant, slathering on the mayo and hot mustard. She grated some of the St. Lucian cocoa stick into a little pot of milk, added sugar and vanilla and heated the mixture. Yum. Like very mild hot chocolate. But next time she’d strain it. She reviewed her work schedule. She couldn’t believe how fast the days were going by. The end of January already. Okay. Today is art history. Saturday: Mug the Bug, two strips. Sunday: hopefully off. Maybe snowshoe or ski if Jean-Louis was around. Monday: more Mug the Bug, another two strips. Then she’d be back to having two weeks of advance strips prepared.