An Unthymely Death (7 page)

“Khat?” I called anxiously. “Khat, is that you?” And then, when I heard a familiar, throaty meow and some urgent scratching on the other side of the door, I cried, “Khat, it
is
you! What are you doing in this house, you bad kitty? You come out this minute, do you hear? This is
not
your house. You don’t belong here.”

If you think I’m in the habit of lecturing delinquent cats through the locked doors of other people’s houses, you’re wrong. But in this case, I felt completely justified. And what’s more, I felt equally justified in giving the door a very firm shove with my shoulder.

That did it. The old door opened with a shriek of rusty hinges, and I stumbled inside. The back entry was dark and so full of ancient dust that I had to sneeze. But there was Khat, winding himself around my ankles, butting his head against my calves, and meowing imperiously as if to demand, “What took you so long? I expected you two days ago!”

I bent over, scooped him up in my arms, and snuggled my cheek against his dusty fur. He might have been a bit lighter for having missed out on Lila’s French fries and cream gravy for the last few days, but not noticeably so. He allowed me to caress and croon to him for a moment, and then jumped out of my arms, landing lightly on the floor. With a peremptory crook in his tail, as if to beckon me to follow him, he made for the dark stairway at the end of the hall.

That was when I heard it. A low, distraught moan, almost inaudible. Khat meowed again, more loudly, and again I heard the moan.

“Is somebody here?” I called. I fumbled for the wall switch beside the stairs and a bare bulb came on. “Do you need help? Where
are
you?”

“Mrrrow!” said Khat, and raised his paw as if to point.

That was how I found her. The narrow stairway to the second floor had collapsed, and the new owner of the old Gillis house—a heavyset woman in her mid fifties—had fallen through, all the way into the crawl space under the house. She was half-sitting, half-lying on the dirt, pinned down by a heavy wooden beam.

It took only a few minutes for the Pecan Springs Fire Department to answer my phone call, and by the time a couple of burly firemen had dug the victim out and hoisted her up, EMS was there to take her to the hospital.

Later, I learned that the woman’s name was Ivy O’Toole, and that she had recently purchased the old house with the intention of fixing it up. But on Tuesday afternoon, as Ivy carried a big load of books up the stairs, the rotten wood had given way beneath her. Her injuries weren’t terribly serious—a concussion, several cracked ribs, a broken ankle, and dehydration—but she was convinced that she would have died if it hadn’t been for Khat.

“It wasn’t just that he kept me company the whole time,” she said when Hark, Khat, and I went to visit her in the hospital, “although that by itself was enormously cheering. He’s a very companionable creature with a remarkable vocal range. It’s almost as if he’s talking to you.” She turned to me. “But if you hadn’t come looking for him, China, I have no idea how long it would have been before someone came looking for
me.
” She gave a rueful laugh. “Weeks, probably. I don’t know a soul in Pecan Springs.”

“Look pretty,” Hark said cheerily, and snapped a photo of Ivy sitting up in her hospital bed with Khat K’o Kung in her arms. Hark was pleased because a dinky little lost-cat story had developed into a much more satisfying cat-saves-human-life story, and was now front and center on Page One, under the banner headline, THE KHAT WHO BECAME A HERO.

When the
Enterprise
hit the streets the next morning, Khat was an instant celebrity. A day or so later, a television crew from Austin came to interview Ivy and me and shoot some footage of Khat, who assumed an air of imperial dignity, scarcely condescending to glance at the camera. For the occasion, Ivy gave him a new red-velvet cat collar, hung with a gold medallion that said HERO KITTY. Lila Jennings dispatched a plate of freshly fried French fries and some cream gravy, topped with half a jelly doughnut. Junior Cavette drove over on his motorbike to deliver a fresh catfish, Vivian Baxter brought an entire family of catnip mice, and even Mr. Cowan sent something—a half bushel of zucchini. I was just happy to have Khat K’o Kung back where he belonged, as sleek and inscrutable as ever, basking in the morning sunshine on the shop’s front windowsill.

There was only one thing wrong. Janet hadn’t had time to drive to San Antonio to look for the bocconcini, so she bought two pounds of mozzarella at Cavette’s and cut it into cubes before she marinated it in basil vinegar with lemon juice, chopped fresh basil, and dried red pepper. Nobody seemed to notice the difference, although one of the Friends did ask about all those little red flecks sticking to the cheese.

“Looks like red paint,” she said, poking it doubtfully with her fork. “Is it for decoration, or are we supposed to eat it?”

I won’t tell you what Janet said.

THE ROSEMARY CAPER

COMPARED to my former life as a Houston criminal defense attorney, where every day was a battleground and every encounter a combat, my life in Pecan Springs flows as smoothly as that sweet sorghum molasses they make over in East Texas. But every now and then there’s a hitch in our git-along, as we say around here, and something happens to remind me that ugliness happens in even the prettiest places.

One Tuesday morning last month, for instance, when Pansy Pride came into the store, distraught. Pansy is the president of our local herb club, the Myra Merryweather Herb Guild, which is named for the energetic lady who organized the Guild back in the ’30s and whose memory is still much loved today. Pansy is a short, bouncy woman with short gray curls. She wasn’t bouncy that morning, though. She was wringing her hands.

“China, something awful has happened!” she cried. “You’ve got to help!”

I went to the hospitality shelf, poured a cup of just-brewed lavender-mint tea, handed Pansy a ginger cookie, and told her to calm down. She was so panicked that getting the story was like teasing a pecan out of a smashed shell. But when I finally pried the details out of her, I had to agree. Something definitely troubling had happened.

That morning, Pansy had gone over to the Guild House, where the club has its office and holds meetings. She didn’t notice anything unusual until she went up to the second-floor library. Most of the books aren’t in the least remarkable—donated cookbooks, herbals, and gardening how-to. But the Guild owns one crown jewel:
Myra Merryweather’s Cookery Book,
published in 1920. A book dealer in Houston appraised it for ten thousand dollars, because the author herself, a well-known Southern herbalist, had written notes in the margin.

“And
that’s
the book that’s missing!” Pansy wailed. “Myra’s
Cookery Book
has been stolen!”

I frowned. “I thought the book was kept in the Guild’s safety-deposit box at the bank.”