No Cooperation from the Cat (25 page)

“Him again! That man has got to go!”

“My sentiments exactly,” Evangeline chimed in.

“Then
do
something!”

They both turned to look at me.

“Now wait a minute—” I began.

“There’s no use expecting her to do anything,” Evangeline said. “She’s useless!”

“Thank you, Evangeline. It’s so nice to be appreciated.”

“Can you keep it quiet in here?” Mick was back. “Banquo can’t concentrate with all this noise.”

“Oh, really?” Martha’s tone was dangerously sweet. “Do forgive us.” I braced myself.

“That’s all right,” Mick said generously. “Just watch it.”

I noticed Tom backing unobtrusively towards the far corner. He might not know Martha well, but unlike Mick, he could recognise an explosive situation when he saw it.

“Don’t worry, we will.” Martha’s voice oozed syrup. Even Evangeline began to look uneasy. “We wouldn’t dream of upsetting your precious boy. Is there anything else we can do? Anything else at all that he might want?”

“Uh, yeah, now that you mention it.” Mick was still recklessly oblivious. “He wants a pot of hot coffee and a lot of sandwiches. Oh, and Jocasta wants a glass of cold milk and a couple of aspirins.”

Martha froze, nostrils flaring dangerously.

“Don’t bother saying ‘please’,” Evangeline said. “We serfs don’t expect such niceties.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Mick said impatiently. “Please, thank you, you’re welcome—and all that stuff. Just get a move on, will you? Before the lord and master sets the bitches on you.”

The lord and master wasn’t the one we had to worry about right now.

To my relief, Martha moved to the fridge first, although she flipped on the coffeemaker as she passed, and began pouring cold milk into our largest glass. I retreated to the bathroom to get Jocasta’s aspirins—and a towel.

The outraged bellow sent me scurrying back to the action, just in time to hear Martha say: “Your hot coffee will be ready in a moment.”

Oh, no, it wouldn’t. I switched off the coffeemaker and rushed to toss the towel over Mick. Cold liquid was one thing, boiling hot could do serious damage. And Martha was too furious to care.

“What’s going on here?” Valeria stormed into the room at hurricane force. “We send you out here to keep them quiet—and now you’re making more noise than any of them!”

She tried unsuccessfully to snatch the towel from Mick’s head. “What are you playing at?”

A muffled snarl came from the folds as he backed away from her. It was indistinct, but definitely uncomplimentary.

“What?” She caught the gist of it. “What did you say to me?” This time she succeeded in wrenching the towel from him.

“Crazies—” He dabbed at a runnel of milk dripping off his chin with the sleeve of his shirt and tried to grab the towel back. “You’re all crazies!”

“It takes one to know one,” Evangeline observed sagely.

I took an involuntary step backwards. The sudden fury that blazed in Mick’s eyes before he masked them again with the towel was wild enough to make me think for a moment that Evangeline had unwittingly stumbled on a truth.

“What’s keeping you?” Now Isolde was in the room, which seemed to shrink and grow airless. “Banquo is waiting!”

“They’re being obstructive,” Valeria snapped. “As usual.”

“They are, are they?” Isolde glared at us, her eyes glittering with the unholy light of someone about to fire some unsatisfactory employee—just before she remembered that we didn’t work for her.

“What’s that?” She changed course abruptly, snatching at the packet I was holding. “Aspirins! Just what our poor boy needs. I fear he’s getting a headache with all this commotion. He’s not used to it.”

“Who is?” Mick was undoubtedly longing for the peace and silence of the wide open spaces.

“They’re for Jocasta,” I said. “She already has a headache. And they’re the last in the packet.”

“All the more reason for Banquo to have them!” She added dismissively, “Jocasta won’t mind.”

That was the awful thing: she probably wouldn’t—or not very much. No sacrifice was too great for her hero. Sometimes I despaired.

As I did now. Isolde had possession of the last of the aspirins. What use was there in trying to fight for Jocasta when she wouldn’t lift a finger to help herself? She didn’t even realise how much she needed help.

With a triumphant toss of their heads, they went back to their precious Banquo. Immediately there was more air and space in the kitchen.

“Are you still here?” Evangeline rounded on Mick, who was taking a few breaths of freedom.

“He’s waiting for the coffee,” Martha said dangerously.

“Forget it!” He flung down the towel and stalked away. “Let them get their own coffee,” he snarled over his shoulder. “I’m going out!”

The slam of the front door echoed down the hallway.

“He’s cracking up,” Evangeline observed with relish.

“He was never a ladies’ man to begin with.” Tom emerged from his corner. “And these particular ladies have been the last straw.”

“Oh, dear.” For once, I wasn’t sure which ladies he meant. Certainly Martha had done her part. “Really, Martha—” I began.

“Don’t worry,” Tom said. “He’ll just walk around for a while until he cools down. He’ll be back.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“I am.” Tom shrugged. “He has nowhere else to go.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Tom knew his colleague, although even he seemed surprised when Mick returned bearing a towering stack of pizzas. Nigel followed behind him with a shorter stack and the bemused expression of one who has unexpectedly been pressed into service. Setting his boxes down beside Mick’s he looked around hopefully for Jocasta.

“I’m not sure who’d like what—” We didn’t see Mick’s ingratiating smile often. “So I got the small size with half-and-half toppings. I thought, that way, there was bound to be something for everybody.”

“I think Banquo prefers pepperoni,” Tom said, sorting through them.

“I’m not bothered about him.” Mick sent Tom a meaningful look, undecipherable to the rest of us, but vaguely unpleasant. “He’ll eat anything.”

“
Meeorreow?
” Suddenly, Cho-Cho was at my feet, lured by the unfamiliar smells seeping from the cardboard boxes. Another one who was ready to eat anything.

“This looks fine.” I pounced on a half-meat, half-seafood feast and quickly flipped a small meatball to Cho-Cho, who disposed of it in two bites and continued looking at me hopefully. I obliged with a chunk of tuna and an anchovy.

“Let her have it all.” Mick was magnanimous. “I got plenty for everybody. She can use it,” he added, assessing her critically, “not much meat on
her
.”

Until that point, I hadn’t realised that he’d been drinking while he was out.

“Shut up, you fool!” Tom snapped, more conscious of our—my—sensibilities where Cho-Cho was concerned.

I quickly set the entire pizza down in front of Cho-Cho and snagged another one for myself. Evangeline had already claimed one of the prized pepperoni, although the other half seemed to have corn, spinach, and several chunks of mince hidden beneath a double-cheese blanket. She and Cho-Cho were now completely lost in their food, equally heedless of the strands of mozzarella and dribbles of tomato sauce trailing down their respective chins.

“Aha! Provisions!” Banquo led the way as the others surged into the kitchen, Jocasta trailing behind them with a woebegone look. “Good man, good man.” He nodded to Mick. “Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You won’t have to,” Mick said. “I’ll always be there, backing you up.”

I didn’t like the look that swirled across the harpies’ faces. It could be interpreted as:
we’ll see about that
.

With a sudden cold chill, I saw that Mick had registered it, too. He frowned, as well he might. They had rid themselves of Melisande—were they now planning to dispose of anyone else who might have too much influence over Banquo?

“Jocasta isn’t looking well,” Nigel murmured in my ear. He had his own priorities to worry about. “They’ll drive her into a nervous breakdown, working her so hard.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” No point in telling him she was a willing victim. He didn’t want to know, even though he was bitterly aware of it.

Tom, I noticed, had retreated to the far end of the table with his untouched pizza and was watching us all with a wary expression. Somehow, that increased my uneasiness. The mood in the room seemed to darken.

The sky was darkening, too, I realised. More rain? How could there be any more left up there? But the wind was also brisker, blowing in a fresh supply from somewhere in the stratosphere. I began to shudder and it took a sheer effort of will to stop.

Only Banquo seemed immune to the atmosphere. He reached for his second pizza and tore into it with gusto, then swallowed and looked up.

“Anything to go with this?” he asked hopefully. “Beer? Chianti? Scotch?”

“Champagne?” a female voice suggested nastily.

“Try water!” Evangeline snapped. If anyone thought they could shame her into sharing what remained of our cache, they could think again.

“Try this—” Nigel was coaxing Jocasta. “You must eat.”

“I’m not hungry … there’s no time … there’s so much to do.” It was a muted wail. “I can’t waste time…”

“Quite right,” Isolde approved. “Time is short. Our deadline looms.”

“So does mine!” Martha snapped.

“Yours—” An expressive shrug gave Isolde’s opinion of anyone else’s unimportant problems.

“Don’t you dare shrug off—” Lunging forward in her fury, Martha stumbled against a discarded pile of photographs and sent them tumbling to the floor.

“Oh, dear!” Jocasta darted to help Martha gather up the photographs.

“Don’t—” Tom tried to block her way. “I mean, I’ll do it. I know the way they were sorted—” Too late.

“So do I.” Jocasta riffled through them. “But—these are the rejects. We needn’t bother— Oh, what’s this? I haven’t seen it before. I wouldn’t have put it in the reject pile.”

Sure enough, she was holding a contact sheet of the puppies and their mother. Her reaction was the same as mine.

“These are charming.”

There was a nasty snicker from Mick and a dangerous light in his eyes when I turned to look at him.

“Leave it!” Tom warned, glaring at Mick.

“What is it?” Banquo’s attention was caught. He glanced over and seemed to recognise what Jocasta was holding, despite Tom’s effort to take it. “Oh, those—” He turned away dismissively, identifying competition, so cute they might divert attention from him. “They’re not important.”

“That’s what I mean.” Tom reached for the sheet again and captured a corner of it. “And besides, the focus isn’t right. They won’t reproduce well.”

Mick snickered again.

“You needn’t worry about that.” Jocasta wasn’t letting go. “They can do so much with computer enhancement these days.”

“Not
that
much.” Tom had a firm grip on the contact sheet. “Isolde scribbled all over them.” He tugged at the sheet again but Jocasta wouldn’t let go.

That nasty snicker of Mick’s was getting on my nerves. It hinted at things we didn’t know—things we didn’t want to know. Couldn’t others see it?

It appeared not. The harpies had gone back to placidly stuffing themselves with pizza. Banquo was busy demolishing yet another—could it be his fourth? Martha was too caught up in her own annoyance. Evangeline didn’t care.

Only Cho-Cho met my eyes with an expression that betrayed her own growing unease. She sensed there was something wrong, too. But neither of us knew what it was, or what we could do about it.

There was a sharp ripping sound. Jocasta and Tom stumbled back from each other, each clutching half of the contested contact sheet.

“Now look what you’ve done!” Mick jeered.

Cho-Cho abandoned her pizza—she’d licked the base clean anyway—and moved over to lean against my ankles. I bent and picked her up.

“It’s all right.” Jocasta glanced with satisfaction at the portion of contact sheet she retained. “Tom will have the negatives.”

“I destroyed them,” Tom said.

“It’s all right.” Evangeline had been looking through the rest of the pile of discards and found the three glossy prints I had originally discovered. “These are just perfect to use.”

“Those are mine.” Tom moved towards her. “I’m keeping them to remind me in case anyone ever tries to get me onto some loony expedition again.”

“Which ones have you got?” Mick closed in on her other side and looked over her shoulder. “Ah, yes, they were fattening up nicely at that stage.”

“Shut up!” Tom snarled.

Cho-Cho gave a convulsive shudder and shrank back against me. They say cats can pick up the images in one’s mind and react to them. She was watching Mick in horror, still shivering.

Never mind cats, I was beginning to get a pretty nasty intuitive flash of my own. It couldn’t be …

“Oh, stop all this nonsense!” Martha had her own priorities. “You’ve wasted enough time with these people, Jocasta. You promised me we’d test those cheese nibbles recipes today to decide which one we want to use—and we were going to test whether Rice Krispies were a good alternative to plain potato crisps.”

All three Grace women seemed to explode in snorts and whinnies of contempt and derision. They sounded like a stableful of spooked old nags about to stampede. Mick gave his revolting snicker again.

I toyed with the idea of turning the coffeemaker back on and letting Martha do her worst.

“Banquo needs Jocasta far more than you do!” Isolde stopped whinnying and spoke for them all.

Jocasta seemed to shrivel within herself. She looked from Martha to Banquo and there was no doubt which one was going to win, even though it seemed to be against her sense of fair play.

“Tomorrow—” she began, clearly guilt-stricken.

“We’ll need you tomorrow, too.” Isolde was implacable; the others nodded their heads in agreement. “We must finish this as soon as possible. Time is getting short.”

“Too right,” Mick endorsed. “We’ve got to start getting our supplies lined up for the expedition.”

Again that strangely eloquent silent communication seemed to sweep from cousin to cousin. Banquo excepted, of course.