Chez Stinky (11 page)

Water was gushing everywhere. Kat opened the door and ran down the stairs to the closet that had water-related devices in it. Standing naked and dripping water everywhere, she paused and pondered the various knobs and levers that worked the well, pressure tank, and hot water heater. Something must turn the water off, but she wasn’t sure what. Noticing a switch with a yellowed piece of paper labeled ‘well,’ she flipped the lever. The sound of rushing water upstairs subsided and Kat looked down to see Lori, Linus, and Chelsey standing in a circle around her. Chelsey had her head tilted to one side, as if to ask, “Why are you dripping all over my basement?”

Kat started to shiver as she stood naked in front of the curious canine audience. She shook her head.
How dumb is it to feel embarrassed about being naked in front of a dog? They’re DOGS.
Lori helped out by slurping some water off her thigh. “Thanks, Lori. Maybe I’ll go upstairs now. Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”

Being careful to close the gate to the basement behind her, Kat returned to the bathroom and picked up the shower head and the knob. In her haste to deal with the water, Kat hadn’t closed the bathroom door, and Murphee had disappeared. That probably wasn’t good, given all the other animals around that Murphee didn’t know and probably wouldn’t like. Ignoring that issue for the moment, Kat examined the knob. Some tiny but vitally important plastic part had broken off and the knob clearly wasn’t going to work again. She dropped it in the sink and turned the shower head around in her hands. She discovered that the ring that was supposed to hold it to the pipe was cracked and the inside of the nozzle was coated with what could only be described as crud. No wonder it didn’t work. She toweled herself off and put on some clean clothes so she could focus on the problem, rather than the cold and her nudity. In the kitchen, she found a butter knife and began chipping away corrosion and other drek from the shower nozzle.

A feline shriek came from the bedroom. The noise evolved into sonic layers of hissing, squalling, and screeching that made it sound like at least one of the cats might be dying. Jumping up, Kat ran to the bedroom and found Murphee and another cat (maybe Dolly Mae?) rolling on the floor, making gruesome noises that seemed impossible for such small animals to generate.

Running back to the bathroom, she grabbed one of the soaked towels and threw it on the swirling pile of felines. The two cats separated and Dolly Mae scurried away from Kat. Murphee went to hide under the bed. Grabbing Murphee, Kat took the unhappy feline and the shower head back to the bathroom and slammed the door.

Most of the crud was out of the nozzle, so Kat attempted to screw it back onto the pipe. It promptly fell off and clattered into the bathtub again. Clearly, she was going to have to find some tools somewhere to turn the water back off in the shower, much less turn
on
the water to the house. Fixing the shower needed to happen sooner rather than later. A spider scampered across the floor. Kat reached over, picked up one of her Keds, and whomped the frisky arachnid.
Don’t mess with me.

A phone rang and Kat followed the sound to the kitchen and picked up the handset on the harvest-gold rotary-dial wall phone. “Hello.”

“Kat? Is that you? You sound odd. This is Larry Lowell.”

“Hi, Larry. I’ve had a long day, and I’m tired. Plus, I think this phone was manufactured before I was born. Possibly by Alexander Graham Bell himself. And if it’s like most things here, it probably doesn’t work right.”

“Have you been having difficulties? I’m sorry to hear that. I tried calling you at the Enchanted Moose, but they said you had checked out. So I tried this number.”

“Yes. I’m staying here now, but it’s more complicated than I thought it would be. You probably don’t want to know the details.”

Larry cleared his throat slightly. “I’m calling to see if you’ve considered the idea of having dinner. Would tomorrow evening work for you?”

The idea of not cooking food on the scary stove at Chez Stinky, even for one night, held a lot of appeal for Kat. “Yes, I’d like that, but I need to get the shower fixed. Also, Bud seems to have left a large hole in the wall here. Do you know if he’s coming back to repair it?”

“I’m sorry, but I have not heard from Mr. Fowler. I’ll make reservations and give you a call tomorrow.”

“Okay, I guess I have to call Bud. Talk to you tomorrow.”

Kat hung up the phone and considered the possibility that maybe Larry was asking her on a real date. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but she did know it was going to be exceedingly difficult to make herself look pretty without running water.

After the shower debacle, Kat was somewhat afraid to make dinner. It was one thing to get soaked, it was another to potentially set herself on fire. A cold sandwich sounded safer than facing the propane stove which, given the blackened areas on the stove top and around the oven door, clearly had an inflammatory history.

As Kat sat down at the kitchen table with a sandwich, she looked over at the hole in the wall that Bud and his trusty saw Martha had created. A slight scrabbling noise arose from down deep within the cavern behind the drywall. Visions of rodents of every possible size ambled through her mind. Squirrels, possums, rats, mice, shrews. Oh my. The possibilities were many and none of them were appealing. Kat continued to chew her sandwich.
Were bats technically rodents? What about marmots? What the heck is a marmot anyway?
Questions to be asked.

The noise seemed to be getting louder. She didn’t want to act like the totally clichéd image of a woman standing on a chair screaming about a tiny mouse. She may be gutless, but she wasn’t
that
gutless. Time to suck it up and see what lurked in the wall.

She grabbed a flashlight and a chair and brought them over to the wall. After getting up on the chair, she shined the light down into the gap between the drywall and the wood framing of the wall. Peering down, she was greeted by two eyes glowing up at her from below. Kat straightened and shook her head as her mind tried to assimilate what she’d just seen.
What was that?

Kat looked again, moving the light around to see if she could determine a shape. Judging by the ears on the head, it looked like it might be a cat.
Uh oh.

Stepping down from the chair, Kat sat down to ponder her options. Clearly, the cat couldn’t get back up to the hole. Maybe it was Tripod. Given that he had only three legs, it might be more difficult for him to extricate himself. And it wasn’t like she could throw down a rope for him.

She’d been putting it off, but it was obviously time to call Bud and ask about the hole. Maybe in the process of repairing it, he could remove the cat. She picked up the phone and dialed his number.

“Hi! You’ve reached Bud. I’ve gone huntin’ and I’ll call you back once I got something in my freezer. Leave me a message!”

Kat sighed. “Hi, Bud, this is Kat Stevens. I was wondering when you’d be able to come back to my house and fix the hole in my wall. Thanks.”

That failed. Now what?

Maybe the lawyer had cat-extracting tools. It was a long shot, but why not? She called Larry and had a nice chat with his answering machine. It must be a hot night in Alpine Grove. Maybe he had another date. That might be a fun topic of conversation for tomorrow night.

The only other local number she had was Cindy’s. Kat felt a little funny about calling her, since the dog walker had so obviously wanted to leave Chez Stinky and never return. But the poor kitty in the wall couldn’t stay there forever.

“Cindy? Hello, this is Kat Stevens over at Abigail Goodman’s house.”

Cindy paused for a moment before saying, “Oh, hi. How are you? Are the dogs okay?”

“Yes, they’re fine. Thanks for asking. But I do have a little problem with a cat.”

“I’m a dog person. I don’t know much about cats.”

Kat rolled her eyes. She was becoming less and less fond of this woman. “Yes, I know you walk dogs, but I was hoping you might have some tools. One of the cats here seems to be in a wall.”

Cindy somewhat unsuccessfully suppressed a snicker. “Are you serious? In a wall? How did it get there?”

“I don’t know how he got in there. The handyman guy—Bud—cut a hole in the wall to remove the thing…animal…varmint…whatever it was, out of the wall, so it wouldn’t smell anymore. But he didn’t patch the hole back up. I think a cat got curious and fell down there. It might be Tripod, since I haven’t seen him anywhere. The poor little guy might be hungry by now. He’s been scratching on the drywall, but he can’t seem to get up and out of there. It’s a long way up from where he is.”

“Well, Tripod is missing a back leg, so I guess that would be tough. But the thing is, I can’t leave right now. I’m here with my kid, and I can’t leave him alone. And I can’t fix stuff anyway. I break stuff. Ask my brother Joel. He’s always saying I’m mechanically declined since I can’t even get my can opener to work half the time. I call him when I break things. Hey, I can call him! He can help you.”

Kat wasn’t sure how she felt about having Cindy’s grumpy brother dragged into this, but she didn’t have many other options. “Okay, if you think he won’t mind. That would be great.”

“I’ll call him and send him over!”

Kat hung up the phone and leaned back in the chair. This evening was likely to be supremely awkward: dealing with a mildly stupid and definitely embarrassing situation, and making small talk with a surly guy she hardly knew.

A few minutes later Joel called Kat to make sure his sister wasn’t pulling some type of stunt or playing a trick on him.

“So you
really
have a cat in the wall of your house?” he asked.

“Yes. I really do. It would be great if you have a saw or something, so you can help me get him out.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“If you happen to have pliers and any plumbing fixtures handy, that would be great too.”

“You also have a plumbing problem?”

Kat had to admit that although her first impression of him hadn’t been that great, Joel certainly had a marvelous phone voice. Deep and resonant, his voice sounded like he should be on talk radio. She could listen to this guy talk all day. Or all night. “Yes. I had to turn off the water to the house because the shower self-destructed today. The knob broke off and the shower head exploded. It hasn’t been a great day.”

Joel agreed and promised to bring lots of tools and supplies. Kat ran upstairs to the bathroom, looked at herself in the mirror, gasped, and rummaged around frantically for her brush. The term ‘bad hair day’ didn’t begin to describe the catastrophe on her head. As Kat attempted to wrestle her unruly locks into a somewhat more respectable French braid, she had to admit that the day had been just as hard on her emotions as it had been on her hair.

A knock came from the door and Kat ran to answer it. She had done what she could with her hair, but as the mirror had suggested, she was still looking bedraggled after the events of the day. As she opened the door, she found Joel standing on the blue-carpeted stair landing holding a large red toolbox. He looked far different than he had the other day.

Wow, he certainly cleaned up nicely.
Like almost every male Kat had seen in Alpine Grove, Joel was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. But instead of looking like he’d just rolled off the wrong side of an uncomfortable camp bunk, today he looked like he’d walked out of an ad for Stetson cologne.

Kat gawked at him for a moment too long before saying, “Hi, Joel, thanks for coming over so quickly. I appreciate it. Please come in.”

Joel smiled and walked by her. “Okay, so where’s the cat? I’ve gotta see this.”

Kat felt a blush rise to her cheeks. Joel had shaved and had an amused twinkle in his eye. When he smiled, he was downright cute.
Yowza.
”Um, the hole in the wall is over here. The cat is down at the bottom of the wall. I think it’s the three-legged cat, Tripod, so he probably can’t climb up to get out. I’m not sure a four-footed cat could, either.”

Kat climbed up on the chair and shined the light down behind the drywall so Joel could take a look. At 6-foot-1, Joel was tall enough that he could peer down into the hole and see without the aid of the chair. As they looked down the hole, they brushed shoulders, and Kat flinched slightly at the contact. It had been a long time since she had behaved like a dorky teenager mooning over a cute guy. Hopefully, he didn’t realize how attractive she thought he was. She really needed to get out more. Too much time alone here in the woods and she’d turn into some kind of bizarre hermit.