Misty Hollow Cat Detective (Darcy Sweet Mystery) (A Smudge the Cat Mystery Book 1) (9 page)

"
Thanks, Smudge.  I appreciate that."

Inside the house, I see Samantha come into the room, the real Samantha, not the one in the picture.  She curls up on the couch with her feet under her, a book in her hand.  Her fingers stroked the S necklace where it rests at her throat.  She looked happy.

Now I understand why Samson took the necklace from Corvin.  I have to say, I was a little impressed with the pipsqueak.

"See you around, kid," I say to him as I jump down from the windowsill and start off toward the park.  I need to see
Corvin again.  There's one more thing I need to do before I can close the book on this mystery.

A cat's work is never done.

***

On the way to the park I take a detour through some of the cleaner back alleys.  Tony isn't the only one who knows where the good stuff can be found.  When I find what I'm looking for I carefully take it in my teeth, avoiding the more fragrant bits of garbage nearby.  I'll probably need a week to get the taste out of my mouth. 
Corvin had better appreciate this.

I spit the object on the ground at the base of
Corvin's tree, then call up to him.  Of course he's there.  Crows are more than happy to stay at home when someone else is doing their work for them.

"Smudge!" he calls to me as he wafts down on a warm breeze.  "Did you get it?  Did you get my shiny?"

"Uh, no," I told him.  I'd rehearsed a whole explanation on the way over here about why I didn't have his necklace, but I decided not to use any of it.  "Look, Corvin, the necklace is gone.  Just forget about it.  I have something better for you."

"Better?  Better?" he cawed, hopping around and flapping his wings crazily.  "It's not better!  I need my sparkly.  Jessamine loves
sparklies!  Loves sparklies!"

He was going to have a seizure or something if I didn't stop him. 
"Corvin.  Corvin!  Look.  Look what I have for you."

He focused his attention on the object I had scrounged for him.  It wasn't much, from the viewpoint of anyone else, but I figured to a crow it would be like finding a little piece of a star that fell to Earth. 
A little toy mirror, pink plastic handle broken in half.  The doll it had belonged to had been in the trash as well but I figured Corvin didn't have any use for a doll.  Just the sparkly.

"What is this?" he asked, suddenly very calm, staring at an image of himself in the reflective surface of the toy.  The mirror part looked like maybe a sticker instead of real glass, with a seam running through it where it had been stuck on
carelessly.  It was no people feather, maybe, but it sparked every time the sunlight angled in it just right.

Corvin
seemed to like it.

Excitedly he spun in a quick, hopping circle,
then flapped his way up into the trees.

"You're welcome!" I called after him.  I had just given up on him coming back when I saw a rustling of leaves in the branches and heard the cawing noises of not one but two crows.

It was Corvin, and he had brought Jessamine with him.  He swooped down and then hesitantly went up to the mirror, nudging it toward her with his beak.  She hopped closer to it, then away again, then back to it, bending low to look into the imitation glass.  Her beak parted, her breath quick, and she began hopping from foot to foot with animated little noises.

"See?  See?" I said to
Corvin, mad at myself for falling into the crow's speech habits.  "She likes it.  How could any girl not like…that?"

He spread his wings wide, his chest puffed out, and it was the happiest I'd ever seen him. 
"Likes it!  Likes it!  Corvin did good.  Jessamine likes it!  Likes me!"

The two of them began dancing around each other with various caws and screeches that I couldn't understand.  It was cute.  So cute, in fact, that I wanted to bite their heads off.

I restrained myself, but it was a close thing.

When another bird came crashing down in the middle of
Corvin and Jessamine it was like war had broken out.  Flapping, shouting, noises that would peel paint off walls.  It was Jessamine's father, and he did not look happy about who his little girl was with.

I figured it was time for me to leave.  Wishing
Corvin good luck, knowing he was going to need it, I turned tail and jetted across the park as fast as I could.

Hey.  A cat can only do so much.

—End—

A cat's work is never done.

People—human beings in general—t
hink their lives are busy.  Rush, rush.  Go here, go there, go back to the first place again.  The person I live with, Darcy Sweet, is a lot more organized with her life but even she gets caught up in too much at once sometimes.  She's always trying to help people in our town of Misty Hollow.  Sometimes, she's the only one they can turn to.

I guess that’s what happens when people know you can talk to ghosts.

Anyway, as hectic as people think their lives are, cats have it worse.  Don't let the nap times fool you.  There's so much stuff a cat does during any given day that it's no wonder we flop down on the couch sometimes.  We need a breather.  Trust me.

All of these thoughts roll through my mind as I run full tilt behind a row of houses on, well, whatever street this is. 
I've kind of lost track of where I am.  The breeze ruffling my black and white fur is brisk and it would have felt good any other day.  This isn't a sprint for fun, though.  Not today.  It's not me chasing a rat or racing home for a dinner of tuna and milk.

I'm kind of running for my life.

The dog's breath is hot on my backside as he leans in and snaps at me again, his irregular and yellowed teeth clamping closed just an inch or so from my tail.  Butch isn't the forgiving kind.  He's the nearly two hundred pounds of snarling, black and brown, I'll-kill-you-if-you-take-my-squeaky-toy Mastiff kind.

And yes, you guessed it.  I took his squeaky toy.

So, run it is.

"Hey, Butch," I call back over my shoulder without slowing down.  "You aren't going to stay mad about this, are you?  I mean, it's not good for your heart."

He lunges at me two more times but it works against him, breaking his stride and allowing me to gain some distance.  "I kill you!" he shouts.  "You steal my squeaky toy!"

"Come on, it wasn't eve
n yours!"  I'm past the houses now, heading for the edge of town where birch trees stand tall and widely spaced.  It's a sprint across open ground now, and Butch catches back up to me.  For all my sleek speed the dog has the benefit of size, and a longer stride, and if he catches me now I'm going to be puppy chow.

Instead, I bound up
onto the first tree I come to and scamper up the bark and into the branches.  No squirrel jokes, all right?  You do what you have to when your life is on the line.  My heart is hammering and my breathing so hard I'm almost hyperventilating and my tail won't stop twitching, but the dog is down there and I'm up here.  Score one for the cat.

Butch makes a good effort at jumping up after me, but dogs aren't built for climbing trees.  Eventually he just snarls and huffs and starts pacing back and forth under me, his dark brown eyes glaring, his lips curled back from his teeth.

"Ah, come on, Butch," I call down, licking my paw, trying to pretend like I wasn't terrified.  "It was just a rubber ball.  I'll get you another one."

"Nobody
touch my squeaky toy!" he barks up at me in his broken tough-dog way of speaking.  He punctuates each word by jumping up to hammer his front paws against the tree trunk like he means to knock it down.  Scary thing is, I think he could have done it.  "Want back my squeaky toy!"

"It was yours not!" 
Scrunching up my face, I clear my throat and try that again.  "I mean, it wasn't yours.  It belonged to the kid next door, and you know it."

"Mine!" he shouts, with enough force that his breath ruffles my fur. 
"Mine, mine, mine!"

"Not yours," I say in a sing-song voice.  Hey, he can't get me up here.  I can afford to be a little cocky.  "I can't deny it was cool and all, but the kid really missed his ball.  I'll bet if you offered to play with him he'd share it with you."

"No!" he huffs.  "Mine!"

"Aren't you supposed to be on a leash?" I tease him, knowing I never would have dared do that if I wasn't fifteen feet up in the air.

"Kill you!  Mine!"

Not the greatest conversationalist, but he knows what he wants.  Obviously he's not going to let this go no matter what I say.  Guess I'd better get comfortable.  This is going to be a long day.  It's only mid-morning, too, and I really had a list of other things to—

"Butch," a soft cat voice says from down below, "is that any way for a big, strong dog like you to act?"

I'd know that voice anywhere.  I can't believe she's here, but then I suppose nothing she does should surprise me anymore. 
Twistypaws is a beautiful gray cat with just a hint of white at the tips of her ears.  I've been dating her for a while now and every day is better than the last.  It just keeps getting better.  I really didn't expect her to calmly saunter up to an angry pile of fur on four legs, though.  That's new.

I felt
cold iron grip my heart.  Any second, I was sure, butch would turn on Twist and chomp her to bits.  Plans raced through my head.  I had to help her.  Could I jump on his head from here?  Claw his eyes out before he hurt her?  It would be a long fall, and if I missed I might break every bone in my body, but I'm sure I could do it.

I tensed to spring and set my claws.  My back arched.  I sucked in a breath to scream the most vicious cat
howl that had ever been heard in the history of cats.  Then, in the next instant, all of that fizzled away and I was left staring in disbelief as Butch hung his head and sat back on his haunches.

"No," he muttered.  "Not a good dog thing.
  Butch is bad dog."

Twist looked up at me where I sat in the branches, and winked.

"What are you doing?" I called down to her, still wondering if I should jump on Butch's head just in case…

She shushed me with a little hissing whisper.  Then she turned back to Butch.  "Now, what do you say to Smudge?"

The dog shook his head briskly, his jowls flapping.  He didn't want to.

"Come on," Twist prompted.  "What do we say?"

Whining, the dog sort of looked up at me.  "Sorry.  Butch bad dog."

"Oh yeah, you are."

"Smudge!" Twist scolded me.  "You're not a bad dog, Butch.  You're a good dog.  You just get…excited sometimes."

"Squeaky toy," Butch lamented with a bob of his head.

"Right."  She came closer to the dog, no fear at all.  "Didn't Smudge promise you a new one?"

That seemed to make Butch brighten.  His ears perked up a little. 
"New toy?"

She purred at him.  "That's the spirit.  We'll get you a new toy. 
A nice rubber bone to chew on.  Hmm?  How does that sound?  Sound good?  Yes it does.  Yes it does.  Who's a good dog?  Who's a good dog?"

Butch got more and more animated with every word Twist
said in that sing-song voice, jumping up on his feet and bouncing and letting his tongue loll out of his mouth.

"Okay, go home now, Butch.  Go home.  Good dog," she said as Butch turned in a few circles and then bounded away, back the direction he'd chased me
from.  "Good dog!"

I looked down at her in amazement. 
Did that really just happen?

She
turns her crystal blue eyes on me, a look of complete innocence in them.  "What?"

"Are you insane?" I ask
her.  "That dog is a killer."

"Not every dog is bad, you know."

I can't believe she just said that.  "Yes, they are."

"Not all of them."

"Yes," I repeat, "they are."

She shakes her head at me
, like she thinks there's a lot I don't know.  But then she smiles at me with her eyes and I couldn’t care less what I don't know.  I know she loves me.  That's enough.

"You know," she says, "you could come down from that tree now."

"Oh.  Right."  I stand up, balancing on the branch, ready to jump down, but then I stop.  My tail twitches mischievously.  "Wait.  What's in it for me?"

"A job," she answers.

"Um.  Not what I had in mind."

"Someone needs your help Smudge."  She starts pacing, and just from the way she moves I can tell this is serious.  "I have a job for you to do."

"Okay," I say, still holding out, "but I don't think that's going to be enough to get me out of this nice, comfortable tree."  The branch under my feet sways in a sudden wind and I snick my claws in to hold on.  I actually wouldn't mind getting out of here right now, but there's something else I want, too.

She laughs
at my antics, the sound of a soft sigh.  "Fine.  If you come down, there might be a kiss in it for you."