No Cooperation from the Cat (8 page)

“Ah!” Teddy brightened. “Here she is now.”

Cho-Cho strolled into the room with the jaundiced look of someone doing her duty despite her better judgement.

“Come to Daddy, Cho-Cho.” He patted his lap and Cho-Cho circled him a couple of times, not in any hurry to get into it.

“She’s looking awfully well.” Teddy sounded regretful, as though he might have welcomed signs of neglect as an excuse to take her back into his custody.

“She loves it here,” I said. “And we all love her.”

“It makes all the difference,” Evangeline said pointedly, “when they know there’s not someone in the background ill-wishing them. They can tell, you know.”

“Yes.” He nodded resignedly. “Frella just isn’t a pet lover, I’m afraid. If she were…” He let the thought trail off, but I had no trouble following it.

If she were
 … then Cho-Cho would be living happily with them. Not an option, however, when his wife had tried to kill the cat—and would try again if Cho-Cho got too close. I hope he remembered that.

Abruptly, Cho-Cho alerted me. She raised her head and turned it to the far doorway. I followed her gaze to find Jocasta standing there, looking a bit blurry-eyed and still exhausted.

“Good morning, dear,” I said. “Come in.”

“Morning…” She nodded vaguely, then seemed to wish she hadn’t. She groped her way to the nearest chair and sank into it.

“Apologies, apologies,” Teddy babbled. “Can’t stand up for a lady because I’d dislodge the lady in my lap. And I fear I’ve just eaten—literally—the last crumb crust. But I’m sure there’ll be plenty of other choice bits still around.” He was obviously looking forward to sharing in some of them.

“I’m not hungry.” Jocasta dashed his hopes. “Just coffee, I think.” Her eyelids lowered and she swayed. “Maybe not … if it’s too much trouble.”

“None at all.” The only trouble, I suspected, would be in getting her to actually choke down the coffee I had loaded with extra cream and sugar.

“Thank you.” Her eyes were still closed. I took her wavering hand and guided it to close around the cup. “Yes … thank you.” She didn’t even try to lift it to her lips. Oh, well, it was so hot it could do with a bit of cooling down.

Cho-Cho stirred restively under Teddy’s restraining hand. Jocasta needed some active comforting. Teddy was just being self-indulgent.

Evangeline, as usual, had withdrawn from the whole situation. She had this way of simply packing up her mental bags and retreating into some distant and unreachable corner of her mind. The effect is as though she has stood up and walked out of the room, even though her body remains sitting there. And yet … and yet … some quiver of wariness was still emanating from her. She was expecting something else … waiting for it. An uneasy instinct warned me that it was not going to be something pleasant. With Evangeline, it hardly ever was.

The silenced lengthened.

Evangeline wasn’t going to break it. Jocasta didn’t even notice it. And I’d used up just about all the small talk I had where Teddy was concerned.

Unable to get away, Cho-Cho had taken her other route of escape, closing her eyes and going to sleep. She didn’t bother to purr. I couldn’t blame her.

“Well…” Teddy pulled tentatively at Cho-Cho’s ears, but couldn’t tease her eyes open. “Someone’s very tired.”

Or bored. Like the rest of us. Why should she be any different?

“She had a busy day yesterday, supervising the cooking.” I held back a yawn with some difficulty.

“Ah, yes … the cooking.” He looked hopefully from Jocasta to me.

Silence fell again.

The sudden rasp of a key in the lock rang through the room like a shot, making us all jump.

“Startled me.” Teddy gave a nervous apologetic titter.

“Martha,” Evangeline said.

I checked my watch. As I had thought, it was still awfully early for Martha to make an appearance. Especially after the mood she had been in yesterday. But no one else had a key—

“Oh!” I didn’t want to believe who was standing in the doorway, looking faintly embarrassed but determined.

“Jasper.” Evangeline greeted our landlord with some reserve. I knew that she was recalling, as was I, his ultimatum. We hadn’t done anything about it yet. “What a surprise.”

“Surprise?” He frowned. “I rang yesterday and left a message. I said I’d be by this morning with a prospective buyer who wanted to view the property.”

“I wasn’t here yesterday and I’ve heard nothing about this.” Evangeline looked to me. “Have you?”

Numbly, I shook my head.

“Martha—acting up again!” Evangeline’s face was grim. “I’ll sort her out!”

“Oh! Oh, dear! Oh, I’m sorry—” Jocasta came to reluctant life. “I talked to him. But I forgot. I’m so sorry.”

I remembered then that I’d heard the telephone ring late yesterday afternoon, just when Martha had nearly dropped a tray of cookies she was pulling from the oven and I had rushed to help her. It had stopped after three rings and I had assumed that it was one of those automatic calls insistent on selling us something—but not if we didn’t leap to answer the phone within the obligatory three rings. It had never occurred to me that Jocasta might have picked up her extension and taken the call.

And then forgotten to pass on the message.

“In any case, I did my part,” Jasper said stiffly. “Have you, um, made any alternative arrangements yet?”

“We’ve hardly had time,” Evangeline said coldly. “You sprang this on us rather suddenly, you know. We have the right to expect a reasonable amount of time to make our arrangement.”

“How are Juanita and Beau?” I tried to inject a more social note into the proceedings by asking about his grandparents, our old colleagues. “We haven’t seen them for ages.”

“Oh—fine. Fine.” He blanched and looked at me as though I had just threatened him in some way.

“Good.” I tried a disarming smile. It isn’t often anyone makes me feel I’m more dangerous than Evangeline. “We must get together sometime. Soon.”

“Yes. Right. I’ll tell them.” His gaze implored me not to tell them anything.

Poor Jasper, caught in the middle, not wanting to upset his grandparents by evicting their old friends, yet not wanting us in residence here, either. Docklands had been in a slump when he moved us into the penthouse in a partially completed building because he’d sold the St. John’s Wood house we had been renting out from under us. It had been intended as a stopgap measure, but we got involved in other things and stayed on. Then Docklands started booming and prices said good-bye to the roof and headed for the stratosphere. Naturally, he wanted to cash in on it, but we were still in situ. Now, in a few short weeks, the market had veered and was beginning a descent—and he wanted even more to unload it. Poor Jasper. The life of a landlord wasn’t an easy one.

“May I come in now?” The voice from the doorway behind him seemed to send an icy chill through the room.

“Oh, God! Edytha!” Jocasta looked up and screamed.

“But you’re in Ibiza!”

“Not anymore. I got word that I was needed here, so I came immediately.”

Chapter Eight

The woman eddied into the room, head high, multiple scarves and draperies fluttering around her as she moved. She didn’t quite elbow Jasper out of her way, but he stumbled awkwardly as she passed him. She was good, I’ll give her that. She crossed the room in a way that almost made you believe she was floating, and stopped in front of Jocasta.

“So! What have you to say for yourself?” she demanded. “Why have you upset Banquo?”

“I haven’t upset him.” Even just sitting in a chair at the table, Jocasta gave the impression of cowering in a corner. “I haven’t even seen him.”

“Precisely!” Edytha’s head snapped up and down in an emphatic nod that did rather more to disperse the ethereal image she tried to create than she would have liked. “We agreed that you would meet with Banquo when he got back and break the news about Melisande to him gently and explain what had happened.”

“
I
didn’t agree.” Jocasta set her chin stubbornly. “And I can’t explain anything. I don’t understand what happened myself.” I noticed she didn’t mention anything about bringing Banquo’s everlasting loathing down on her head if she gave him the bad news.

“That’s beside the point,” Edytha said sternly. “It was your duty…”

She began covering the same arguments the others had covered before her and I stopped listening. We’d heard it before, from all the other members of Banquo’s crew. And now we knew what they hadn’t mentioned—the secretly planned photo session.

A different wave of déjà vu swept over me as I studied Edytha. Bemusedly, I tried to count the number of scarves and bits and pieces she was wearing. I hadn’t seen a costume like that since I played an innocent country girl who had just arrived in the big city and been taken under the protective wing of an older woman who turned out to be a female Fagin intent on training me to be a shoplifter in
She Lifted His Heart
.

“You two know each other?” Jasper stared at them, completely bewildered. “I, er, I’m not sure— Don’t you want to view the premises? I, er—” Pulling himself together, he frowned at his watch portentously. “There
are
other interested buyers—”

“Forget it, Jasper,” Evangeline advised, coming out of her trance. “She’s not interested, she never was. You’ve been had.”

“You … you mean…” Jasper spluttered. “I’ve been wasting my time?”

“Sorry!” Edytha wasn’t, not for a minute. “But it was necessary. The others told me of your appalling treatment of them—” She divided an accusing glare among us. “I knew I had to gain entrance by other means.”

“You tricked me!” Jasper looked thoroughly disillusioned. I could almost sympathise. He’d thought he had a wealthy, if slightly eccentric, prospect for the quick sale of the penthouse. One who’d just returned from foreign climes and hadn’t yet realised the property market was tottering. Furthermore, it would have been a direct sale without any estate agents stepping in to take a share of the proceeds. He should have known it was too good to be true.

“It was necessary,” Edytha said again. Her eyes were colder than the ice-blue crystals around her neck.

“Now—” She turned back to Jocasta but, while she had been distracted, Jocasta had slipped away. We heard a bolt shoot home in the distance.

“Come back here!” Edytha surged towards the sound.

“
What
on earth is going on here?”

I hadn’t heard Martha come in. She looked around, her frown deepening as she saw Teddy.

“Where’s Jocasta?”

“She ran away!” Edytha snarled, a tigress robbed of her prey.

“Ran away—where?” Martha was startled. “We have work to do.”

“Who are you?” Scenting fresh prey, Edytha whirled on her.

“Who are
you
?” Martha countered, her mood visibly worsening. “Mother, who is this—this—
person
? What is she doing here?”

“Jasper brought her in.” I disclaimed any responsibility.

“She told me she wanted to inspect the premises with a view to making an offer.” Jasper had a grievance of his own. “But it was a lie. She tricked me!”

“Offer? View? Premises?” Martha advanced on Jasper dangerously. “What does this mean?”

“Um, er…” He groped desperately for an answer, but knew he was on the wrong foot. All four of them, in fact.

“You’re trying to sell this place out from underneath Mother!” She’d already arrived at the correct answer herself. That’s my girl!

“It’s not that bad,” Jasper defended. “A couple of the people who are interested want it for a buy-to-let. Trixie and Evangeline could stay on here. They’d just be paying the rent to someone else instead of me.”

Oh, yes—and how much would that rent go up?

“You’re despicable!” Martha snapped.

“I’m only trying to make an honest profit,” Jasper said, in an uncanny echo of the shoplifting Fagin defending herself when caught. Her rationale had been that the profit was honest, only her way of achieving it was slightly suspect.

“
Faugh!
” Martha turned from him in disgust. “We’ll see about that!” The atmosphere was getting to Cho-Cho. She opened her eyes and looked around, as close to irritation as her normally placid nature allowed. Then she leapt to the floor, shook herself, and stalked off in search of a more peaceful spot.

Teddy looked down at his empty lap, then around at the rest of us, as though suddenly aware that he no longer had a viable role to play.

“Perhaps I should be getting along myself,” he said. “This seems to be another bad time…” He let the thought trail off, plainly beginning to suspect that there were nothing
but
bad times around this establishment.

“Perhaps you should.” Evangeline showed sudden animation.

“Um … er…” Teddy pushed back his chair. “Yes … well…” On his feet, he looked towards me, but I managed to avoid his eye. I wasn’t about to urge him to stay longer, nor to invite him to return soon.

“Well, good-bye then…” At last, he was heading for the door. “Er … see you soon…”

“Not if I see you first!” Evangeline muttered. Thank heavens he was out of earshot. We heard the door close behind him.

“And now—” Evangeline turned her attention to the other intruder.

“Yes!” Martha swung around, for once of the same mind as Evangeline. It was a frightening sight. At least, it frightened me.

“Yes!” Edytha was made of sterner stuff—steel beneath the fluttering draperies, I would suspect.

In the pregnant silence—and I didn’t want to see what it would whelp—a tiny head poked around the corner and looked to see if the coast was clear yet. She inspected the martial stance of the women squared off against each other and then met my eye questioningly. I shrugged. Her guess was as good as mine.

The doorbell shrilled abruptly and we all jumped.

“Teddy must have forgotten something,” I said.

“That would be his story!” Evangeline snapped.

“He might have.” I just hoped it wasn’t Cho-Cho.

“Any excuse!” She was not to be mollified and I wasn’t feeling too good about it myself.

The bell shrilled peremptorily again, demanding instant attention. A bit too forceful for Teddy—unless his hand had slipped.