The Big Kitty (2 page)

Sunny had been surprised that Ollie had even remembered her, much less offered her a job. Maybe he just wanted someone around who’d spent time in the big city. Sometimes he’d talk to her about New York—the traffic, neighborhoods, Broadway shows he’d seen, expensive restaurants where he’d dined. He never gave away much about his business there, though.

And, Sunny was glad to say, he never told her she was the sweetest thing in the MAX office.

She thought she’d be writing promotional copy for the travel agency, and there was some of that. Mostly, though, she tended the website, arranged accommodations and sightseeing opportunities for prospective tourists, and dealt with the rare drop-in customer.

The operation struck her as a little underhanded—Ollie had a “select list” of B&Bs, tour operators, and local destinations that gave him kickbacks. But there were occasions, like tonight, when Sunny felt she was actually doing a good deed and helping people. Besides, it wasn’t as if there were that many other ways to earn a living in a town the size of Kittery Harbor, and she didn’t want to leech off her retired father.

The thought of Dad made her frown as the e-storm finally quieted down on her computer. He was responsible for getting his own dinner tonight, and he still wasn’t reconciled to the realities of a post–heart attack diet. Even worse, there were too many accommodating widowed neighbor ladies who’d be only too glad to cook him a nice, tasty, artery-clogging meal.

Their cooking’s probably why they
are
widow ladies,
she thought sourly.

Would things have been different if Mom were still around? Unlikely. Dad had spent much of his working life on the road instead of at home, trucking rock salt all over New England. Sunny suspected that it was decades of diner cuisine which had finally caught up with him, not home cooking. And anyway, Mom’s cooking had ceased to be a factor almost fifteen years ago, when Sunny was just finishing
exam hell for her first semester at Boston University. In a cruelly ironic twist, while Dad was out delivering a load of road-clearing salt to Boston, Mom had gone off the road in Kittery Harbor, just before Sunny was to come home for the holidays, another fatal accident victim of what became known as the Christmas ice storm.

Sunny pushed away her wandering thoughts when she heard a tapping at the door. She rose from behind her desk to see a birdlike woman waving energetically at her through the glass.

Sunny unlocked the door and the woman bustled inside. “You’re Mike Coolidge’s daughter, aren’t you?” she asked, standing so close she almost poked Sunny in the face with her oversized nose. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Ada Spruance, and I need help.”

Sunny had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from saying something stupid. Ada Spruance certainly
did
need help. Standing face-to-face with her, Sunny didn’t need the faint whiff of cat pee that emanated from the woman’s clothes to remind her that Ada was famous—or infamous—around town as the local Cat Lady.

Sunny shifted a little to put some distance between herself and Ada. Maybe she was wrong about the cat pee. Maybe it was a dab of very spoiled cologne.

Yeah, right,
her cynical reporter alter ego responded.

“Your boss, Mr. Barnstable, has been around a lot lately, suggesting ways to assist me with my financial problems,” Ada said.

That got Sunny’s attention. Ollie the Barnacle turning up in response to money troubles was not exactly a charitable reaction. More like a shark attracted to blood in the water.

“The problem is, all of his suggestions involve selling my house. But I thought maybe I could bring in some extra money by setting my place up as a bed and breakfast.” Ada smiled hopefully. “What would I have to do to get listed with you?”

You’d probably have to start with a fumigator—and then maybe an exorcist,
Sunny’s hard-edged inner voice chimed in. Ada’s big barn of a house with its scaly paint job served as a hostel for too many cats to count. She lived right around the corner from the home Sunny had grown up in, and though Ada had always taken in a few strays even back then, these days it was apparently something else. From what Sunny had heard, both Ada and her pets drove the nearby householders crazy. Sunny had witnessed her own dad curse his dotty neighbor up and down whenever he detected cat pee on the prized rosebushes her mom had planted around the house decades ago.

Aloud, Sunny tried to be more diplomatic. “I think you’d face more of a job than many of the people we represent.” How to put it delicately? “Some travelers are allergic to house pets. Those that aren’t might be willing to deal with a dog, or a cat, maybe two, but …”

Ada nodded. “I have more than that around the house,” she said with massive understatement, then sighed, her hands fluttering. “It’s just … I really need to bring some more money in, and—”

She broke off. “You’ve been very kind. Not like some of the people who live in this town.” Ada hesitated for a moment. “Could I rely upon your kindness just a little more? I have this other problem, and I—I realize I have no one to discuss it with. The new neighbors think I’m
some sort of mental case, and the old-timers, well, they don’t speak with me anymore. I need some advice—some help—and it seems as though I have no one I can trust.”

The image of Ada sitting alone in her house with only the cats for company made Sunny regret her uncharitable thoughts. “What’s the trouble?” she asked.

Ada gave her an embarrassed smile. “It seems I’ve misplaced a lottery ticket …”

You start to sympathize with people, and this is what you get,
Sunny’s inner reporter scolded. She tried not to roll her eyes at this offbeat turn in the conversation. Before Ada could explain any more, they were interrupted by a hand slapping at the door.

Sunny looked over to find a guy wearing muddy jeans and the kind of undershirt known in some circles as a “wifebeater,” teetering under an enormous bag of … dry cat food?

“Mr. Judson in the store orders in bulk for me, and once a week my son picks up our supplies,” Ada explained, noticing the look of confusion on Sunny’s face.

It took Sunny a moment to recognize the guy under the cat food as Ada’s son, Gordie Spruance. As a kid, she remembered a somewhat more mainstream Ada hopping like a sparrow around her big, slow-moving, egg-shaped son. Gordie was about five years older and had about fifty pounds on Sunny back then—and he’d had a tendency toward bullying that Sunny had curbed with a sharp knee where he’d least expected it.

Well, he’s lost weight,
she found herself thinking.
Maybe a little too much.

The arms and chest revealed under the straps of his un-dershirt
were more stringy than scrawny. He’d inherited his mother’s oversized nose, but the skin of his face seemed pulled overly tight to cover that hooter. And the inflamed acne would have been more at home on a teenager’s cheeks than those of a guy pushing forty.

Gordie edged the door open with his foot. “Ma,” he called, drawing out the word to end with a bit of a whine. After that one word, and without waiting for a response, he turned to a rusty tan pickup parked down the block and manhandled his heavy load toward the tarp-covered truck bed.

As he moved to wrestle the big bag into place, a low, long gray form came slinking out of the darkness and started twining around Gordie’s ankles.

Ada started in surprise at the sight of the cat. “Shadow! What are you doing all the way over here?”

She gave Sunny the sort of look parents might use while describing a rambunctious child. “Ever since he turned up at the house, I’ve called him that because of his color. He’s a bit of a traveler. I never know where I’ll run into him around town.”

Sunny said nothing, watching Gordie aim a surreptitious kick at the cat as soon as his mother wasn’t looking. Shadow, however, seemed to expect the move. The cat dodged without even seeming to try, prowling off as Gordie, thrown off balance, staggered around under the weight of the industrial-sized feed package.

“Careful, Gordie,” Ada called, having completely missed the reason behind why her son was dancing down the street trying not to lose his load or his footing.

The huge bag of cat food looked to weigh almost as
much as Gordie did, but after a brief struggle he managed to get his unwieldy burden stowed away in the pickup.

Ada Spruance stood in silence as her son shuffled toward the front of the truck, jerking his head at her in a “come on” gesture. But as Gordie stood with his back turned, putting his key in the lock, words came in a rush from the Cat Lady. “I’ve been playing that Powerball lottery ever since they picked it up for Maine,” she said, “twice a week for years now, the same six numbers. I need someone to help find my lost ticket.”

Sunny’s dad threw an occasional dollar at the lottery—usually when the prize got into the nine-figure bracket—and he was always losing his tickets, too. Sunny forced herself not to sigh. A deep inhale didn’t seem like a good idea with the Cat Lady standing so close by.

“I didn’t even realize I had a winner until I was spreading some old newspaper around the litter boxes today,” she explained. “When I realized those were my numbers, I started looking. I have to find it quickly, you see. Two weeks from tomorrow, a year will have gone by,” Ada continued, “and after that, the ticket’s no good anymore. So I’ve got to turn it up soon.” She shot a pleading glance at Sunny.

“It’s not a
really
big winner,” she went on. “I’m not sure what it’s worth anymore—something like six or eight million dollars.”

Well, that shut
up the snarky voice in the back of Sunny’s head. She stood there, stunned, as the Cat Lady bustled toward the door after her son.

But Sunny managed to get her wits together and sprint to the door before Ada Spruance got into the cab of Gordie’s pickup.

“If you’d like some help, I could … inspect the premises,” she called out.

Ada picked up on the offer under Sunny’s words, and her eyes looked grateful as she nodded. “Yes … yes, that would be very helpful. Do you think you could do it this Saturday?”

Sunny wasn’t exactly filled with delight at the thought of spending her weekend discovering just how many by-products a horde of cats could leave around a house, but
she’d already promised to help, so she nodded. “Saturday should be fine. Would you be up at, say, eight-thirty?” Maybe that way she could still salvage a little personal time for Saturday afternoon.

Ada nodded back and smiled brightly, then boarded the pickup, which started up with a jerk and then roared off as she waved good-bye to Sunny.

Sunny returned to her monitor and spent another half hour making sure her stranded travelers all landed at their respective B&Bs. Then she rose, stretched, turned off the computer, got her coat, doused the lights, and closed the office. Sunny stepped out into full darkness. Although the weather had been remarkably mild, the days were getting noticeably shorter this far into September.

With the front door locked behind her, she shot her usual remorseful glance at the metallic blue Mustang parked at the curb. It had been her first new car, perfect for a single reporter in New York City. But it had rear-wheel drive, which didn’t go well with road conditions in a Maine winter. The proof showed on the driver’s-side fender, seriously banged in and roughly pulled out. Every time she opened the door, metal screeched against metal as if the car were in pain.

For the umpteenth time since coming back to Kittery Harbor, Sunny debated the notion of getting a new set of wheels. The calculations came down to the same disheartening conclusion. With the pittance she was getting from Ollie the Barnacle, she couldn’t afford anything but a used clunker, which would just mean inheriting someone else’s problem.

She got behind the wheel and sat for a moment, frowning.
Sure, finances and hard logic played a part in her decision against replacing her car. But the biggest argument was emotional. If she got rid of the Mustang, she’d be admitting she wasn’t going back to the big city, that she’d accepted being back in Kittery Harbor long term.

Not that there’s all that much to rush back to at this point,
Sunny thought.
No job, a busted relationship with the guy who wound up firing me … Holy crow, what’s that?!

But it wasn’t a crow that leaped onto the hood of her car. It was a cat, a long-bodied, lean gray cat—Ada Spruance’s wanderer … Shadow?

He walked straight up to the windshield, close enough that Sunny could see the tiger stripes hidden in his gray coat, and rested his right forepaw on the glass, as if testing how solid it was.

“Get away from there, you crazy cat!” Sunny raised her arms and began making shooing gestures.

The cat brought down his paw and stood watching her antics as if he’d just found something good on TV.

“Come on now, get off!” Sunny’s temper rose as the cat continued to watch her with infuriating calm. She smacked the glass with her palm, hoping to startle him off.

Shadow raised a paw and smacked back.

He obviously knows I can’t get at him through the windshield,
Sunny thought.
So how the hell do I persuade him to go away?

She put her thumb on the horn button and gave it a healthy blast. Shadow jumped up, but not away. He sat on the hood, giving Sunny a wide-eyed “Did you do that?” sort of look.

So much for that clever plan,
Sunny thought.
I could be here all night, until I get a ticket for disturbing the peace, and
still
not get rid of this dopey animal.

Her windshield wipers were not in the best of shape, and she shuddered to think how they’d look if a cat that size started playing with them. She stuck her key in the ignition and turned it, gunning the gas.

Shadow lay down as if he were preparing to enjoy a nice vibratory massage.

Sunny clicked the engine off. The damned cat was being annoying, but she couldn’t just drive away with him on the hood. Yeah, he’d probably jump off, but what if he ended up under one of her wheels? She wouldn’t want to feel responsible for any part of that.