The Big Kitty (17 page)

“But you were there when your father was still alive. I hear that’s when she stopped using those stairs.”

This turn in the conversation had him definitely uneasy. He tried to take a sip of his beer, but stopped when he saw how his hand was shaking.

“Ada at least tried to clean up the places where she usually went,” Sunny told him. “But there was thick dust on those stairs. Years of it.”

“Just what are you saying?” Gordie demanded, his fists clenched on the table.

Impulse control issues,
Sunny thought, remembering Will’s list of tweaker tip-offs.
Let’s see if I get a reaction if I start circling around Ron Shays.

“I’m saying it could be dangerous for an old woman to have something worth a lot of money, when there’s criminal stuff going on around her. What do you think?” Sunny stared Gordie right in the eye. He looked as if she’d morphed from Dracula’s daughter to the Prince of Darkness himself.

But before he said anything, angry voices rose over the crowd noise and the music. Sunny turned to see a big, beefy guy in a hooded sweatshirt with a mullet and a healthy beer gut shove a skinny guy whose beard didn’t hide the acne scars on his face. Screaming like a banshee, Skinny launched a roundhouse right. Fatso ducked the wild swing, then slammed the other guy into the bar. Skinny
came back with a bottle in his hand, smashing it against a bar stool.

Somebody ran past their table as people started to intervene.

Sunny turned back to Gordie to find a changed man.

Staring pale faced at the fighters, he muttered, “I know those guys, and they’re bad news.” Still staring, he bolted up from his seat. His hip jostled the unsteady table, and Sunny’s wineglass fell over.

Before she could grab it—or him—Gordie was out the door. Sunny had never seen him move so fast.

A second later, Will Price entered, his expression hard, his right hand hovering beside the pistol at his hip. He came right over to where Sunny was still sitting. “I saw Gordie run out and heard sounds of a fight when the door opened. Everything okay?”

Behind him, except for the thumping country music, the place had gone dead silent. When Sunny looked over at the bar, the crowd had gotten a bit smaller, as if several people had preferred not to be seen by a representative of the local law.

So much for my undercover career,
Sunny thought.

“I’m fine,” she said, wiping at her lap as red wine began to dribble onto her jeans. “Nothing a wash won’t fix.”

She tilted the rickety table so the wine went the other way. Of course, that sent the glass rolling, too. Sunny grabbed it, then stared. “What the—?”

A lumpy mass sat in the bottom of the glass, stained the same color as the wine. At first she thought it might be past-due sediment, or maybe a drowned creature. Yuck.
But as she brought it closer, she saw that the lump was made up of a bunch of smaller globs, some kind of melting capsules …

Capsules that were supposed to have dissolved in her drink.

Will’s eyes went
wide as he took in the gooey mass of pills in the glass. He whipped out a handkerchief, wrapped the glass up, then pulled Sunny to her feet. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital. Who knows what this stuff is.”

Sunny resisted. “I didn’t drink any of it. There are two guys you’ll want to talk to. They were fighting—”

She stopped, looking around at the crowd. Somehow, Fatso and Skinny had disappeared.

“Gordie got spooked when he saw them, but they’re all gone now.”

Will turned to the crowd. “Anybody know the guys who were fighting?”

“What guys?” Jasmine the barmaid tried to give Will a sexy smile, but the effect was a bit ruined by her missing front tooth. None of the other patrons said a word.

Will’s face got stony as he scanned the boozy wall of silence lined up in front of the bar. “And I suppose you have no idea how that broken glass happened to wind up on the floor over there?”

Jasmine peered over the cheap plywood bar, her cleavage dangerously straining her little tank top. “Somebody musta got careless and dropped a bottle.” She bustled out with a broom and pan. “Thanks for pointing that out, Constable.”

As the barmaid straightened up with her load, Will approached her, looking at the shards of glass in the pan. “Where’s the top of the bottle?”

If he got hold of that, he might get some fingerprints,
Sunny realized.

But Jasmine looked around, making a big show of puzzlement. “I dunno.”

Sunny’s shoulders fell. Skinny probably took it with him.

Will looked mad enough to spit. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a buck, which he dropped on top of the mess in the pan. “For the lady’s glass,” he told Jasmine, gesturing with the handkerchief-wrapped wineglass in his other hand. He came back to Sunny. “Let’s get out of here.”

She followed him back to his patrol car, where he carefully stowed the glass. “I have to go in and get that analyzed.” He looked at her with worried eyes. “You’re sure you didn’t drink any of it?”

Sunny gave him a crooked smile. “It wasn’t exactly the most appetizing vintage.”

Will relaxed a little. “That’s good.” Then he switched
to superserious mode. “What’d you ask Gordie that made him decide to spike your drink?”

“I don’t see how he could’ve,” she objected. “The glass was sitting right between us while we talked.”

She stopped for a second. “Of course, I turned away for a couple of seconds when the fight broke out.”

“What were you talking about when that happened?” Will asked.

“The conversation was just beginning to get interesting,” Sunny said. “I raised the possibility that his mom’s death wasn’t an accident, and he really got bent out of shape.”

“And you wonder why he tried to poison you?” Will demanded.

“Not
that
kind of bent out of shape,” she tried to explain. “More like he was dealing with an idea he didn’t want to think about. And he seemed seriously scared when he saw the two guys go at it.” She went back over the series of events. “Besides,” she continued, “he knocked my drink over. I can’t see how that would help him much if he really wanted to poison me.”

“I think we might be able to file that under ‘Henchmen, Fumbling,’” Will told her. “It sounds as if the fight was staged to distract you while the pills got into your drink.”

“But nobody knew I was going to be there,” Sunny protested.

From the look on his face, Will didn’t want to think about that right now. “Can you describe the two guys?”

She tried to replay the fight again. “One was fat—big beer gut, but he was wide, too. Brown hair in a mullet, unshaven. Dark eyes, I guess. He was wearing jeans and
a T-shirt with some kind of beer logo on the chest—I didn’t really see—and a hoodie over that. The other one was smaller—skinnier—with lighter hair that really needed to be cut. He had a full beard that was darker than his hair, and he had acne scars.” She paused. “Most of the time he had his back to me. He had jeans and a tight T-shirt, and I think he may have had a tattoo on his arm—his right arm. That’s the hand he used to wave the bottle around.”

Will jotted down the descriptions. “Okay. Why don’t you go get into your car, and I’ll see you home.”

“I don’t—” Sunny began in annoyance, but then her voice faded as the significance of what Will was saying sank in. “You think someone’s been following me?”

Will scowled. “Let’s call it a possibility.” His words came out very grudgingly. He tore off a piece of paper and scribbled on it. “This is my cell number. I’ll try to rustle up one from Semple, too. Whenever you have to go somewhere, give us a call.”

“And if I go potty, whom should I announce that to?” she asked sweetly, her frown now matching his.

For a second his eyes snapped, but when he spoke his voice was quiet, almost mild. “I just think it’s a good idea that the good guys know where you’re going to be,” he said.

Sunny shivered, positive she was thinking the same thing he was.

Because, apparently, the bad guys will.

*

Shadow lay very
still, trying to ignore the waves of pain coming from his side. He’d been hurt before—worse than
this, even. Usually the thing to do was to find a good hiding place where he could heal up.

This time was very different.

He closed his eyes, but found himself reliving the events that had brought him here.

He’d been out foraging, roaming the part of town where the two-legs weren’t so careful about wrapping up their trash. They often tossed out food, and on the street any chance to eat was a good one.

Shadow found some salty things that he licked, but he kept on, looking for meat. If he didn’t find it in the trash, well, perhaps a nice fat mouse would come looking for a meal, too … and end up becoming one instead.

He was crossing a street when he stopped, sniffing the air. It wasn’t food. Just for a second, he thought he caught a trace of Sunny.

Sunny was gone. The Old One had tossed him out just like the trash lining these streets. Shadow had his pride—he knew where he wasn’t wanted. Best not even to think of it—

A door on one of the buildings flew open, releasing a wail of noise into the street. Shadow flinched. The two-legs could be so loud sometimes!

A whole array of smells billowed around him as the release of warm air dissipated. Then his whole snout wrinkled as he detected a particular odor. Was that the Stinky One?

The Stinky One moved very quickly across the street. Shadow followed, curious. The scent grew stronger, and then he heard the familiar rumble of the Stinky One’s car.

Shadow watched in satisfaction as the despised human
hurriedly left. He took a victory lap around the space the car had vacated.

Too bad I didn’t have a chance to let my claws hurry him along.

That little moment of triumph was a mistake. When you wandered the streets, you always had to be wary, on guard against attack. But he was concentrating so much on the Stinky One, he ignored the second blast of noise, the pair of two-legs running into the street.

They were arguing, he could tell that from their voices.

But Shadow didn’t realize how close they were until the Fat One made loud, angry noises.

He never saw the kick the Skinny One sent into his side.

But he felt it as it sent him rolling into the gutter. He wanted to squall his fury, but even taking the breath hurt all over.

Shadow lay there for a while until the first pain faded a little. Then he slowly, awkwardly got to his feet. Standing around hurt on the streets was an invitation to get attacked. He had to find somewhere to hide, somewhere safe—

He inhaled deeply, trying not to mewl as the pain flared again. Was that another trace of Sunny?

It seemed to be connected with the truck he lay under. Shadow went to the tires. They had new smells from things they’d rolled through. But beneath that, they smelled of Sunny’s Place—the place of the boxes!

Painfully, he cast around the big vehicle. It was taller than her car. The doors and windows were high above him. And besides, they were closed.

But this thing had the big flat part in the back. Shadow had visited it while exploring the place of boxes. Of course,
it was much easier to get in there when there were piles of boxes to climb.

Here he saw his only chance was to get onto the trunk of the car parked next to the truck. Shadow circled around the car, trying to ignore the new hurts his exertion brought to life. He spotted a couple of boxes leaned against a light pole nearby. One box was open, filled with rotting food. The other was closed. He could only hope it would take his weight—

Shadow jumped, landed, and jumped again. For an instant, he thought he was going to fall back, his back claws scrabbling against the metal until he managed to pull himself forward.

He made his way across the expanse of the car’s trunk. It sloped down to the right, his uninjured side. That was a good thing. Ahead of him rose the side of the truck, which still rose up higher than his vantage point. He still couldn’t see where he’d end up landing.

Would he be able to make it? Shadow knew he’d only have one chance. Already he felt dizzy and sick.

He backed up until his rear paws almost went off the trunk. Then Shadow ran forward, ignoring the pain screaming from his side. At the last moment, he launched himself, trying not to think of the hard concrete flying by beneath him.

Shadow barely cleared the truck’s side wall. But he was coming down into a place of safety—or so he hoped.

He didn’t land well, stumbling instead of catching himself on all four feet.

Red pain flashed all over him.

Then everything turned black.

*

Nothing exciting happened
when Sunny crossed back over the street to her dad’s pickup. No sniper fire, no garbage truck careening down the street to run her over.

She started the engine and pulled out, feeling a little numb.

All the way home, she keep looking in the rearview mirrors, trying to spot a tail.

Of course, she had one. Will’s police cruiser rolled along behind her.

I hope he’s looking behind him
, she found herself thinking, then shook her head at such foolishness. If someone had been following her, seeing a police car on her trail would probably discourage them.

The lights were still on when she arrived home. Her father was probably still up, watching the late news.

Sunny pulled up in the driveway and got out to wave to Will.

That was when she heard it—a low, mewling moan.

The noise seemed to be coming from the truck bed.

Instead of heading for the door around the front of the pickup, Sunny went to the rear and peeked in.

A furry shape lay sprawled on the metal bed.

“Shadow!” she cried.

She had to climb halfway into the truck to get at the cat.

Usually Shadow was totally aloof, a real “don’t touch me” cat. He darted away if Sunny so much as extended a hand to pet him.

But now he just lay limply, blinking up at her in misery as she gently gathered him up in her arms.