Tales of the Witch (16 page)

“Why, that’s just what he is! Aren’t you clever? Yes, and devoted to his profession. I’ve often wished that I could’ve learned to be a veterinarian when I was young. To take such expert care of little kitties like he does. He told me he was sure I was doing the right thing.”

“Well, that depends on what’s wrong, don’t you think? Ah, what is wrong?” He was keenly aware how brave he was to ask that question. What if it was one of those terrifying female things?

“Nothing to worry about, dear, I just don’t feel quite right. Dr. Sams says I probably just need a vacation. And you know, as soon as he said that, I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I went somewhere. I do love Long Island, but the pictures of Hawaii looked so heavenly.” She shivered with pleasure, sending her powdered flesh into gelatinous waves.

She touched the back of his hand. “If you’ll just keep my little picture safe for me so that I can go away with peace of mind. Please, B.J.? I couldn’t rest at night, even in Hawaii, if I had to worry about it.”

He gazed helplessly into eyes as blue and untainted as a country brook, where lurked a bottomless supply of trust for all those who occupied her rose-tinted world. Namely him, her cats, and now, it seemed, this Dr. Sams. And evidently a television pitchman who’d told her to sail to Hawaii. He sighed.

“You’re sure you’ve got nothing a—uh—people doctor should check out? You’re not really ill?”

“Noooooh! And it’s going to be so much fun. And, oh, yes. I’ll need some money.”

He steeled himself, hoping he wouldn’t have to advance her a loan from his own limp pockets, but knowing very well that he’d help her if necessary. “How much?”

A giggle lurked behind the frown she now produced for his benefit. She was trying to look as if she were thinking carefully, a process he’d been attempting to teach her for years. “About—two hundred dollars?”

He blinked. “This cruise costs only two hundred dollars?”

“Don’t be silly.” Now she giggled out loud. “I already paid for the cruise out of my household savings. It took all I had, though, and I’d like just a bit more. I want to bring back presents. For my friends, to make up for leaving the sweet dears behind.”

Two hundred dollars to buy guilt presents for cats, he thought, groaning to himself, but relieved. It could’ve been worse. He wrote the check from her account. He’d been handling Mrs. Bachrach’s financial affairs since her husband, a moderately successful antiques dealer, had died eight years ago. She received a modest income from her husband’s investments, but because her needs almost completely involved a slavish devotion to her feline ‘friends’ and few extravagances, she managed fairly well.

“You take such good care of me, B.J.” She stood and gave him a fond peck on the cheek, leaving behind a fuchsia smear.

B.J. ushered her out of the brokerage firm to the bank in the same building, making sure she had no difficulty cashing the check, and put her safely into a taxi. As he waved farewell, he shivered in the freshening April breeze and wondered where he could stow that big package—which was probably only a blown-up photo of her favorite cat.

In the end, he took it home and shoved it under his bed. His wife hardly heard his explanations, and the whole matter was forgotten by bedtime.

Eight days later, B.J. arrived at work in time to hear his secretary receiving the news by telephone that Mrs. Bachrach had died in her sleep off the coast of Oahu. The ship’s doctor posthumously diagnosed her trouble as an enlarged heart that had finally stopped. Her body was being shipped home by air. Even after sharing a weepy lunch with his secretary, who’d liked the elderly lady as much as he had, the picture in his possession eluded his thoughts until a few nights later.

B.J.’s wife, Joyce, reminded him of it over the dinner she’d thrown together after a long fruitless day of staring at the typewriter. Joyce, a short pallid blonde with protuberant bones, was a novelist-to-be.

“You can be in charge of tomorrow night’s dinner, if you think you can do better on our budget,” she snarled as she watched her husband poke at the green coated pasta with a fork.

In all fairness to Joyce, B.J. had begun the evening with the news that things at his office had progressed…or rather, declined…to the disastrous point where B.J. and Joyce must soon file for personal bankruptcy. His income had been failing to cover more than a fraction of his base pay for too long. That morning, his manager had declared that by the end of the month, B.J. must repay the now astronomical total of sums the firm had been steadily advancing him against future earnings. Unless B.J. could come up with some amazingly profitable new accounts in record time… B.J.’s silence when he reached that point in his speech revealed how hopeless he felt his prospects were.

Joyce, eyes hot with bitter tears, had said, “Correct me if I’m wrong, you stupid jerk, but doesn’t filing for bankruptcy mean you can never work as a stockbroker again?”

B.J. felt tears creep into his own eyes as he had to nod, yes.

“And of course,” Joyce’s tone was now leaden with sarcasm, “you have absolutely no clue how to work at any other profession. Right? RIGHT?!”

Again, B.J. could only nod.

Joyce’s thoughts appeared to choke her for some moments. Then she managed to ask, “And that stupid stock market research newsletter you waste your working hours writing every day? The one you promised was going to make you famous and us rich. How many subscriptions have you gotten for that?”

B.J. hurriedly shoveled a largish amount of pasta into his mouth and struggled to smile as he chewed. And chewed. After he swallowed, he said, “Honey, you know yourself how tough it is to launch yourself as a writer. It’s the same in getting recognition as a stock market expert.”

“Expert, my butt! You can’t even scrape together enough money to buy us decent food. Renee, down the hall, eats better than we do, and she makes minimum wage.”

“Renee works in a restaurant. She brings leftovers home in her handbag. Maybe if you got a part time job—”

She interrupted venomously. “Maybe that stupid cat picture upstairs is worth some money. SHE isn’t coming back for it. Even if we could find a buyer, the proceeds would probably cover only a fast food meal, but anything’s better than starving.”

She screwed up her mouth at him, making a kissing noise, and whined, “One last meal before being thrown out on the street, huh, please, B.J.?” She threw her fork at him.

B.J. recoiled. “I forgot all about that.” He stared at his wife, suddenly anxious. “You haven’t touched it, have you?”

“Who has the time? I work longer hours than you do, and I don’t have a secretary to help me. Even with her help you’ve failed because you wasted time catering to old bags like Naomi Bachrach. It should be a relief to you that she finally kicked off. Honestly, B.J., my dream means nothing to you. How are we going to live until I make it big?!” She let out a sob.

“I take it this means you still refuse to get a paying job,” he began stiffly, but Joyce had already moved on to her next thought, which was, “Wonder what that picture is, exactly?”

Joyce rushed upstairs. B.J. sprinted anxiously behind. On her knees, scrabbling under the unkempt bedclothes, panting as she tugged out the heavy parcel, Joyce ripped away the wrapping. B.J. hovered, arms outstretched as if to protect the painting from his wife…until he saw what it was.

Joyce sucked in her breath.

B.J. whimpered, “My God.”

She lurched to her feet and dropped it onto the bed.

He gasped. “I’m glad we didn’t look before. I would never have slept, knowing what it was!”

“What is it, though?” breathed Joyce.

“It looks like a collage of oil sketches. Not a proper painting, but studies. Elaborate sketches of different poses for…it looks like…the Mona Lisa! He probably picked the one he liked, then painted her that way, full size, on a separate canvas. Artists do that a lot.”

“Is it real?”

“Why would Mrs. Bachrach bother with something like this if it weren’t real? In fact, she probably never bought this. She only cared about cats, she wouldn’t have bought anything unless it had a cat in it. I bet it belonged to her husband. He was an antiques dealer.”

“Oh, what do you know. Good ol’ B.J., expert bullshit artist and time waster,” Joyce sneered.

B.J.’s excitement cooled. “Doesn’t matter what I think, anyway. It isn’t ours. It goes into her estate.”

Joyce studied her husband. After a minute, she stalked out of the bedroom, returning to her cold dinner. They said nothing to each other for the rest of the night.

Two bleak weeks passed, and then B.J. received a visit from a neatly groomed young man, a lawyer, the executor of Mrs. Bachrach’s estate. He was the youngest son of her deceased husband’s best friend, as it turned out, and, like B.J., remembered the old lady fondly.

“Do you know who inherits it all?” he said, after introductions and some tender sentiments had produced a companionable atmosphere. “Some ‘Sams’ character who runs a cat hospital out in Queens.”

“The vet?” B.J. was at first startled, although on reflection, it didn’t seem so odd. “She did admire his work. I remember her saying she wished she’d been a vet like him.”

“He’s a vet, all right,” growled the freckled young man, whose name was Brian McKee. “A veteran of the correspondence school for con artists and conscienceless rats.”

B.J. blinked.

“I went to his place to inform him about being her beneficiary. Turned out, he’d been waiting for me. The cruise people had notified him of her death already. She’d left her cats with him and had given his name to the travel agency in case of emergency. Her bequest was intended to finance her cats’ permanent care, to refurbish his hospital, and to establish a fund for any stray cats he might run across. She evidently envisioned him as some sort of General of a Feline Salvation Army. Hmmph! Well, you’ll meet him. He wants all the stocks and whatever else is in her account to be liquidated.”

“He’ll have forms to fill out.”

“He expects that. He said he intends selling everything of hers—her house, furniture…” Brian looked as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “Should’ve seen his ‘hospital.’ Every animal there’ll be lucky to see next Christmas, unless they can survive filth. Her will said she wants her money to be used to help as many ‘unfortunate dears’ as possible—her exact words. Well, if they weren’t unfortunate before, they will be after he takes them in. If he bothers.”

“You seem pretty sure of this,” ventured B.J. uncomfortably. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“Like what? She had no family. Who’s to object?”

After some silence, B.J. asked, remembering the painting, “Did she, uh, leave anything else besides her house, furniture, and uh, stock account?”

“Well, she’d been reputed to possess a small collection of paintings.”

“Wh-what do you mean, reputed?”

“Well, they were listed in her will. But when I went to inspect her house, none could be found. After wasting a few days trying to track them down, I asked Sams if he knew anything about them. He got this peculiar look on his face, so I prodded. He admitted she’d been selling them off one by one and giving him the proceeds. I tell you, if I’d been an heir, I’d have taken him to court so fast—well, let’s just say he didn’t impress me as an upright citizen. Maybe it was the way he grinned while he told me about it. I asked him what he’d spent the money on, obviously it wasn’t on that ramshackle hospital. He told me—snickering, if you can believe it—‘Emergencies.’

Right then, B.J. opened his mouth to tell Brian about the painting in his possession. But Brian chose that same moment to look him in the eye and, after swallowing hard from emotion, say, “She thought you were the best. At our yearly meetings to discuss her will, she always mentioned you, how kind you were, listening to her ramble on over the phone when she was lonely. She knew her business wasn’t profitable enough to get that kind of attention from you. She thought of you as her closest friend, not just her broker.”

He reddened and went on in a lower voice. “I wish I could say the same for myself. I liked her, but I have to admit, when she’d go on and on about all that cat stuff—I cut her off, more often than not. I—I feel partly to blame that she got taken in by that weasel vet. Maybe if I’d listened better, I might’ve figured out Sams’ game. Warned her. It burns me to think of him living the good life with her money. Her house was full of antiques that’ll bring in a good amount. Those cats she loved will never benefit from one penny! Maybe it was a mercy she died not knowing. Well.” He subsided, blinking morosely.

When Brian left, they clasped hands tightly, bonded in mutual hatred of Dr. Sams and affection for poor, kindly, deluded Mrs. Bachrach. It was only some moments later that B.J. realized he hadn’t mentioned the painting in his possession. He sat staring at Brian’s card for some minutes, but eventually only dropped it into his top desk drawer.

That night, after B.J. shared Brian’s news with Joyce, they picked at their watery spaghetti in an atmosphere that had been growing more hostile each day since the uncovering of Mrs. Bachrach’s painting…and of their need to declare bankruptcy.

A few days ago, Joyce had dusted the painting and propped it against the wall where a fireplace would’ve been, if they could’ve afforded an apartment with a fireplace. Its presence in the living room didn’t improve matters. It was with icily polite murmurs that he and Joyce went up to bed—together but separate.

Minutes lengthened into hours. B.J. couldn’t sleep. He tossed and squirmed on his side of the bed, unable to push Brian’s conversation from his mind. He wished he’d asked Brian how many paintings Mrs. Bachrach had owned before selling them. He remembered her calling the one he now had her ‘last little picture.’ He wondered how many thousands of her dollars Dr. Sams had squandered, and what he’d spent them on. Women, probably. Luscious food. Women… Food…

He’d just begun drifting off to sleep, with yowls of starving kitties creeping into his dreams, when a sharp noise from downstairs woke him.

He bolted upright in the bed. After hearing another muted bump, he woke Joyce by clamping her mouth shut with his hand. Her eyes flashed open and she stared up at him in astonished fury. When another thud from downstairs brought knowledge and tension into her gaze, he lifted his hand away.