The Big Kitty (8 page)

“I understand you’re doing a story for the
Harbor Crier
,” Veronica said.

Still smiling, Sunny nodded. She hadn’t mentioned exactly what the story was about, and she wasn’t about to open her mouth now. Sometimes letting an interviewee take the lead could result in more interesting revelations than the tightest interrogation.

“As you know, this is an older homeowners’ association,” Veronica began.

The neighborhood had been developed a good fifty years before, starting with the construction of what folks in town still called the New Stores.

“Over the years, the association has had its responsibilities eroded as the township took over various services like street lighting and some of the formerly private roads. I’m afraid this also led to a certain … withering … of our regulatory ability.”

“That must have come as something of a shock when you joined the board.” Sunny did her best to sound sympathetic. She had to wonder how the Yarboroughs had bought an expensive house and sunk big bucks into this extension without being aware of the growing cat menagerie just blocks away. Didn’t they ever drive around the neighborhood? Aloud, she asked, “Is that part of the problem you faced with Ada Spruance?”

For just a moment, the mask of gracious living fell away from Veronica Yarborough’s face, exposing the frosty,
ruthless woman who had conquered her little empire. “If I’d had my way, we’d have surrounded the Spruance place with a twenty-foot-tall fence and prayed for rain.” With an effort, she moderated her tone. “Not to speak ill of the dead, of course, but that woman had no right to be operating a—a shelter for stray cats in the middle of a residential neighborhood.”

From Veronica’s tone, Ada might as well have been running a cathouse instead of a cat shelter.

“And the board has been very lax,” Veronica complained. “I’ve recommended punitive action—levying fines, for example. But even your father—despite his personal problems with Mrs. Spruance—wouldn’t live up to his responsibilities, I’m sorry to say.”

Good for Dad,
Sunny thought. Except for a sprinkling of newcomers, most of the houses in the neighborhood were still owned by the “original settlers,” as they called themselves, or by their children. While Sunny could feel a little impatience when that close-knit feeling exhibited itself negatively as clannishness, she also shared their background. This was her home, and it was the Spruances’, too. Ada and Gordon Spruance—Gordon Senior—had bought their house as newlyweds. They’d raised a family, and Ada had grown old there.
And maybe a little odd, too,
Sunny privately admitted. But Ada had been a part of the community for decades. Where did Veronica Yarborough come off trying to change that?

“Perhaps Mrs. Spruance would have taken her lottery winnings and moved out, cats and all,” Sunny suggested.

“More likely, she’d have thrown the money away on kitty caviar and lawyers to harass the association.” Veronica
moodily sipped her water. “The crazy old woman told me often enough that she intended to stay in that house until the day she died.”

“Well, that is what happened, isn’t it?” Sunny said brightly.

Veronica took another sip as she considered the implications. “There’s a son, isn’t there? Although he hasn’t lived on the property in some time.”

Sunny stayed silent, letting Veronica think aloud. “It might be possible to require him to make repairs—at least to paint the place. Certainly the board couldn’t argue with that. The son might have roots in the community, but he’s moved out. And the man has a criminal record, for heaven’s sake. We might even be able to levy fines for noncompliance, make it too expensive to keep the property—”

“I understand Oliver Barnstable has already made an offer on it,” Sunny said.

Veronica actually looked pleased. “The house could end up in worse hands. He’s one of the more forward-thinking people in this town. The right sort of renovations could bring a much more suitable family into the neighborhood.”

Yeah, you would think that,
Sunny thought as she rose. “Well, I don’t want to take up too much of your Sunday afternoon.”

Veronica looked disconcerted. “I thought you were going to interview me.”

“First meetings are generally for background.” Sunny lied easily. “I think I have enough to start with. I’ll be in touch if I have more questions later.”

Frankly, Sunny had already heard enough from Veronica Yarborough. The woman hadn’t just declared war on Ada,
she’d shown herself equally willing to carry on the war to the next generation, harassing Gordie. The homeowners’ association president definitely had a strong motive. Ada Spruance with a six-million-dollar war chest would have been a definite threat to Veronica’s plans to make this part of Kittery Harbor safe for “more suitable” residents.

And now that threat was gone.

*

His belly low,
Shadow advanced to the top of the coffee table, moving each paw as silently as possible. Not that the prey he was stalking was going anywhere. The thick book sat at the far end of the table, near where the Old One sat dozing.

A change in breathing made Shadow lift his head up.
The new Old One,
he corrected himself. This one was male, and much quicker to anger than the old Old One … the dead Old One.

But this Old One just made a couple of lip-smacking noises and sighed, drifting into deeper sleep.

Shadow resumed his project. He’d never really considered why things fell. There were times when he’d fallen, sometimes twisting desperately in midair to land on his feet. But why was that? Why didn’t things stay as they were instead of tumbling down?

He got both his forepaws on the spine of the book, braced himself, pushed—and pushed again.

*

Sunny came home
just in time to see Shadow shove the thick book off the living room coffee table. He leaned
over the edge as if fascinated by the falling object, letting out an odd meow of pleasure—more like a “Yow!”

Between that and the loud thump of the book hitting the floor, Mike Coolidge jerked awake. “Damned cat!”

Before he could say or do anything more, Shadow dodged backward, not afraid of Sunny’s father but with a practiced wariness that made Sunny wonder about Shadow’s history. As a stray, the cat had more than likely encountered the nasty side of human nature in the past.

Too bad I never had a chance to talk with Ada about Shadow before she died,
Sunny said to herself.
But then, I thought I had all the time in the world to ask her questions.

Shadow launched himself into a long leap, hitting the floor on the bounce and landing at Sunny’s feet, where he immediately started twining around her ankles.

She laughed, and Mike directed a sour look both at her and the cat. “Made me lose my place,” he grumbled. “Not that you care, with how he’s sucking up to you, Sunny.”

*

Shadow approached the
New One—Sunny, she seemed to be called—and worked his way around her ankles, inhaling deeply, enjoying some of the new smells she brought into the house. He inhaled a hint of wax and fragrant wood smoke.

Much better than the last time she’d come in, reeking of the Dead One’s house—and the Dead One’s stinking son, whose unwashed clothing had been bad enough, but who also radiated traces of anger and fear. And beneath
that, another odor, not only unpleasant but threatening. It wasn’t just the stench of death; in his wanderings, Shadow had smelled plenty of dead things.

No, this smell was something deadly—toxic—that had led Shadow to name him the Stinky One.

The next afternoon,
Sunny sat on one of the wharves in the harbor, eating lunch and staring at the sunlight on little rippling waves. Otherwise, there wasn’t much of a wonderful panorama to enjoy. Seavey’s Island and the naval shipyard blocked her view of deeper water. The town had installed benches at the head of each wharf for any footsore tourists enjoying the quaintness of the old downtown buildings. On a Monday, these piers were pretty much empty except for a few outdoor lunchers like Sunny, alone with her thoughts.

Shipbuilding made up an important piece of local history. Back in 1777, the sloop
Ranger
had been launched in these waters, sailing out under the command of John Paul Jones and into naval history.

Maybe that’s my problem,
Sunny thought.
I love this
town, but I always thought of it as a place to come from, not a place to live. Dad is forever trying to get me to go out and meet people, but my friends—my real friends—have all left Kittery Harbor. To the people who stayed, I’m more a New Yorker than a local girl now.

She tossed the last crust from her sandwich onto the water, and a seagull wheeled to pounce on it.

I’ve been in a funk since I found out I was stuck up here—no,
she corrected herself,
even before.

As soon as she’d heard about her dad’s heart attack, she’d headed back to Kittery Harbor immediately, using up her vacation time and then applying for a leave of absence. Taking care of her father had been the first priority, of course. But Sunny had also thought it might be a good idea to put some distance between herself and the editor she’d been dating—the married editor. Although Randall had been separated from his wife for more than a year before Sunny started going out with him, he was obviously very conflicted on the idea of a divorce. Sunny believed both of them had to figure out exactly what their feelings were, and this would be an excellent opportunity to do that.

Well, absence hadn’t made Randall’s heart grow fonder. As the situation on the
Standard
got worse and he found his own job threatened, he’d plumped for family values and sent Sunny a severance notice.

Speaking of which,
Sunny thought,
I’d better get back to work before Ollie the Barnacle gets the same idea.

She headed back through the crooked, Colonial era streets and then through the newer, more open part of town, passing city hall and the big brick library. After a
quick glance at her watch, she lengthened her stride along the final long blocks to the New Stores.

Unlocking the door, she stepped into the MAX office and immediately checked the answering machine. Nothing critical there. Sunny settled behind her desk and switched on the computer. A couple of clicks on the mouse, and she’d brought up the project she’d been working on before lunch, marketing copy for the website.

Then she checked her e-mail. The first few items were just routine business. But after them came a string of e-mails from Ken Howell at the
Crier
.

Sunny sat for a moment, looking at her computer monitor.

She tried to concentrate on the marketing copy on the screen. This was supposed to be the good part of her job, the creative work that made up for the website maintenance and listing updates.

But now she had something a hell of a lot more interesting than that to think about. After she’d called him yesterday, Ken had promised to send over the
Crier
’s coverage of the two disputes she’d inquired about.

Sunny sighed, glanced around guiltily—although she knew no one else was in the office—and started downloading the files Ken Howell had e-mailed over. As each one came through, she found herself reading a new installment of a continuing saga to rival a soap opera.

Ada Spruance’s friction with the neighborhood homeowners’ association had essentially boiled down to an offense against Veronica Yarborough’s esthetic sense—and her property values. That didn’t exactly make for a front-page
news story, even for a small weekly like the
Harbor Crier.

Ada’s other disputes, however, were precisely the stuff of small-town newspapers. The first wasn’t a man-bites-dog story, but a dog-bites-cat one. One of Ada’s feline residents had gotten mauled—and ultimately died—after a run-in with a neighbor’s pit bull–Rottweiler mix.

The
Crier
tried to keep an impartial stance, but it was interesting to see how the community’s sympathies had shifted. Initially, folks had been shocked by the attack, and Ada had threatened a lawsuit. But the Towles—Chuck and Leah, the owners of the dog—had a story to tell, too.

Although their dog had caught up with the cat in front of Ada’s house, the chase had begun in the Towles’ backyard. According to them, the cat had climbed over the fence and taunted the dog until he’d broken his tether and taken off in pursuit.

Howell hadn’t sent just the news stories; he’d also sent the impassioned exchanges from the Letters to the Editor section. The situation had only gotten wilder with the second case.

Nate and Isabel Ellsworth ran a free-range chicken operation at the edge of town. They thought they were facing a fox problem—until they installed some video surveillance and discovered it was a cat that was raiding their stock.

When they checked the largest local collection of cats—the Spruance place—they found a chicken foot with their identifying tag on the ankle near the porch.

This pretty much swept Ada off the moral high ground.
Now she was the one with the predatory pet. Tempers ran so high that one local wag wrote to the editor suggesting that the cases be put together and adjudicated on one of those TV legal shows.

As far as Sunny could make out from the accounts, none of the situations ever got to court. Would that have changed if Ada Spruance had received a whopping infusion of lottery money?

She scrolled back through the various stories until she found a quote from the Ellsworths describing the chicken thief. Although they had a hard time telling from the night-vision images, it appeared to be a large black or gray cat.

Sunny bit her lip.
That couldn’t be Shadow—could it?
she thought uneasily, then shook her head. Seemed like every time she saw a cat, she thought of Shadow.

The rattle of the front door opening gave her an instant’s chance to click the computer mouse. By the time Oliver Barnstable stood beside her, the promo copy was back up on the screen.

“Hello, Ollie.” Glancing up at him from her seated position was a bit like watching a partial eclipse. She had to look around his big, round belly to catch a glimpse of his florid face. He was a blazer and khakis kind of guy, with an expensive, wrinkled blue cotton shirt that strained around his overly ample middle.