Six Cats a Slayin' Page 7

  “I’ll be in the den if you need me.” I left them to get on with it and went back to my book.

  Frank found me in the den two hours later, sound asleep on the couch. Once I’d finished the book, I had thought about getting the next one in the series. The couch had felt too comfortable, though, and before long I had dozed off.

  Frank grinned as I sat up and blinked at him. “Sorry to disturb you, Charlie, but I want you to have a look at everything before Sean and I pack up and go home.”

  “I didn’t mean to nap this long. I’m glad you woke me up. I don’t know why I was so sleepy.” I yawned and got off the couch.

  As we passed by the living room, I stuck my head in to see that, while I napped, Haskell and Stewart had finished. There was no sign of them downstairs, and the kittens were now installed in their new corral. They were sleeping, and Diesel kept watch nearby. He chirped softly when he saw me, then went back to his vigil.

  I followed Frank outside, and he led me to the street to get the full view. While we waited, Sean flipped the switch to turn on the lights. The effect wasn’t the same, of course, in broad daylight, but I could see that the lights would be beautiful at night. Frank had created a simple forest scene with a few trees topped by stars and the words Merry Christmas strung across them. One star was larger than the rest, and I took it to be the North Star. The lights were set along the wall between the second and third floors.

  They had also strung lights over the shrubbery, and I imagined that, in the dark of night, they would twinkle like stardust. Overall a simple but attractive effect, nothing overpowering, unlike what some of my neighbors chose to do.

  I turned to Frank and smiled. “Perfect.”

  He looked relieved. “You said you wanted simple, not extravagant.”

  “That’s what you’ve provided,” I said. “Tasteful and lovely. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, Charlie,” he said. “Now, I’d better pack my tools so I can get Sean back to Alex. He’s really worried about her.”

  “I am, too,” I said. “I’ve talked to her, but until she’s willing to accept help, I’m not sure what else anyone can do.” We started for the garage, where Sean stood waiting for us.

  “Laura was planning to talk to her,” Frank said in an undertone as we neared Sean.

  “Thanks for helping with this, son,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

  Sean shrugged. “Glad to do it, Dad. Feels good to be outside doing something physical, to tell you the truth. It’s going to seem more like Christmas with the house decorated.”

  “Yes, it will. This will be the best Christmas we’ve had in a long time. Having Rosie and Charlie now makes it even more special,” I said.

  “I hope so,” Sean said. “Look, I really need to get back home and check on Alex. Are you ready to go, Frank?”

  “Soon as we get my tools back in the trunk,” Frank said. “If you’ll put the ladder back in the garage, I’ll pack the rest away.”

  Sean nodded, and after thanking them both again, I went back into the house. I decided I might call Laura later this afternoon to find out how things had gone with Alex today.

  I heard sounds coming from the direction of the kitchen. I headed there, hoping to find Haskell and Stewart. I wanted to thank them for their hard work and for transporting the kittens downstairs and installing them in their new habitat while I was napping.

  Stewart had his head in the fridge, and Haskell occupied his usual place at the table. “There’s some chicken salad left from the other night,” Stewart said over his shoulder. “Oh, hi, Charlie, just foraging for lunch. Have you eaten yet?”

  “No, I haven’t,” I replied. A glance at the clock informed me that it was almost one. “I was sound asleep in the den until Frank came and woke me up.”

  “Are they finished with the lights?” Haskell said.

  “Yes, and they’ve done an excellent job,” I replied. “I wanted to thank you both again for building that corral for the kittens and for toting everything back downstairs again. I’m so embarrassed that I slept through it all.”

  Haskell grinned. “Stewart looked in on you, but we decided not to wake you. You were sawing some serious logs.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said. “Look, why don’t you two go out to lunch, on me, if you’re feeling up to it. It’s the least I can do. Anywhere you like.”

  Stewart shut the fridge. “Sounds good to me. How about the steakhouse?” He looked at Haskell. “I’m in the mood for a big, juicy steak and a baked potato stuffed with butter, sour cream, and cheese. My cholesterol can take an occasional hit.”

  “Works for me,” Haskell said. “Why don’t you come with us, Charlie?”

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll stay here with Diesel and the kittens. Y’all go on and enjoy yourselves.” I pulled out my wallet and handed them four twenties.

  “If you’re sure you won’t come,” Stewart said, “I guess we’ll head out. Be back in a couple hours.”

  Haskell followed him out the door into the garage, and soon I heard Stewart’s car backing out.

  I walked back to the living room. Diesel lay stretched out on his side, but he sat up when he heard me enter. The kittens had woken and started to play. They looked secure in their pen. The frames stood about seven feet high. I didn’t think even Ramses would try to climb that high to escape.

  “Time for lunch,” I told Diesel after a glance assured me that the kittens had enough water and dry food to last them awhile. Diesel meowed and started for the door.

  I was about to follow him when I heard loud voices outside. I moved over to the window and looked out, trying to locate the source of the noise.

  I found it across the street at Gerry Albritton’s house. Gerry and a man stood on her walk, only a couple of feet from the sidewalk, yelling and gesturing at each other. I couldn’t make out the words, but from the tone I could tell that they were arguing. While I watched, the man whirled and headed for a car parked on the street in front of the next house. Gerry shot him the finger before she turned and stomped her way up the walk.

  As he was getting in the car, the man turned in my direction, and I got a clear look at his face. He was familiar, but it took me a minute to place him. He was Billy Albritton, the city councilman—the man who told Melba he didn’t know Gerry Albritton.

  TEN

  Over the weekend I thought about the argument I had witnessed. Billy Albritton had obviously lied to Melba about his knowing my neighbor. Surely he wouldn’t engage in a loud argument with a woman he didn’t know, particularly an argument that the neighbors could overhear. I thought about the cause for their quarrel. I could come up with any number of lurid reasons for it. One, for example, was that she was the first wife he had never gotten around to divorcing, and now she was threatening to expose him to his current wife and the town council.

  I reckoned, however, that if Billy Albritton had been married before, Melba probably knew about it even though he was a good ten years older than either of us and had finished high school when we were still in elementary school. Melba collected information like some people collected stamps or coins. Luckily for the rest of us, she never used her knowledge in a malicious way; otherwise she probably would have been murdered for blackmail years ago.

  I decided to wait until Monday, when I would see Melba at work, to tell her what I had observed across the street. For the rest of the weekend, I wanted to spend as little time as possible thinking about anything to do with my new neighbor. Her Christmas party loomed closer—this coming Tuesday, in fact. I dreaded it, but part of me was also curious to see what kind of party she threw. I had a feeling it would be memorable, one way or another.

  On Monday morning, however, Melba did not come to work. At first puzzled by her absence, I finally remembered that she had planned to take the day off for her annual “well woman” checkup with her doctor. Di
esel had come with me to work this morning, and I enjoyed having him with me again. I worked steadily until lunchtime, enjoying the end-of-semester quiet with no one else in the office. The graduate students would be back soon enough.

  Diesel and I drove home for lunch, and as we approached our block, I saw that three large vans were parked in front of Gerry Albritton’s house. Each van sported the logo of a local landscaping company, and I could see several men and women working in Gerry’s front yard. This was an odd time of year to have landscaping work done, I thought. I realized, however, as I turned into my driveway, that the workers weren’t engaged in the usual type of gardening work. Instead, they were busily installing Christmas decorations.

  Given the amount of people at work in the yard, I suspected that the result would turn out to be a lavish display. They were still hard at it when I returned to work, without Diesel, after lunch. By the time I came home, later than usual from having run a couple of errands after work, they were gone. After I parked the car in the garage, I walked back outside and down the driveway to get a closer look at the landscapers’ handiwork.

  My first reaction was that I was glad I wouldn’t be paying Gerry’s electric bill. The second was that I wished I had blackout curtains on my bedroom windows since my bedroom faced the street. The glare from this display would be intolerable when I tried to go to sleep.

  The walk to the front door bisected the yard evenly. The right section contained a mixture of inflatable elves, a couple of reindeer, and a toy shop strung about with lights. The left featured a stable with the Three Wise Men, the manger, a cradle, and figures kneeling beside it. I supposed they thought camels and a stray donkey or two would have made the scene too crowded. I wondered if the baby in the cradle was an inflatable, since the other figures all were. The landscapers had festooned the front of the house with enough lights to decorate half the houses on the block in a more tasteful fashion. If the effect Gerry was going for was gaudy and over-the-top, she had achieved it, and then some.

  Shaking my head at the excess, I turned and walked back up the driveway and into the house. I awaited the coming of nightfall with a mixture of dread and curiosity, because only with the darkness would the true extent of the awfulness be apparent. Traffic would be terrible because the gawkers would come. I knew word of the display would spread rapidly, and half the town would drive down our street to see it. If Gerry had wanted to annoy her neighbors to distraction, she was going to succeed.

  After greeting Azalea, I moved on to the living room to see how Diesel and the kittens were doing. I found them all napping, no doubt reserving their energy for play later on. Cats were crepuscular creatures, I knew, most active at dawn and dusk. They weren’t nocturnal, as many often thought they were. Diesel woke, sat up, and yawned. I reached down to rub his head, and he regarded me sleepily.

  He followed me back into the kitchen, where we both sniffed appreciatively at the results of Azalea’s labors at the stove and the oven.

  “Smells great,” I said. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Baked chicken, mashed potatoes, English peas with carrots, and caramel cake for dessert,” Azalea replied. “I’ll leave everything on the stove. Chicken should be ready in twenty minutes.”

  I thanked her, and she nodded.

  “Have you seen what they’ve been putting up across the street at Gerry Albritton’s house?” I asked.

  “Haven’t had the time,” she responded. “What have they done?”

  I gave her a description, and when I had finished, she shook her head. “Lord have mercy. I’m thankful I don’t have to look at it. Why some people got to show off like that I just don’t understand.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “All this excess is beyond me. I’m not sure what point people are trying to make when they go so far overboard.”

  “I guess they reckon it’s pretty,” Azalea said, though her expression revealed her doubts about this.

  “The good thing is, she waited until only a few days before Christmas to have it all put up,” I said. “Hopefully it will all be coming down the day after.”

  Azalea nodded and turned back to the stove. I headed upstairs, Diesel beside me, to change out of my work clothes. At home, unless I was entertaining company, I preferred much more casual attire, usually sweatpants and a loose T-shirt. I wouldn’t win any points for sartorial splendor, but I was comfortable.

  After my delicious dinner I spent a quiet evening in the den. Diesel went back and forth between the den and the living room while I read. I had resisted the urge to look out the window at the horror across the street until I was ready to go to bed. I took one long look before I shut the blinds and pulled the curtains. They dimmed the glare considerably, but my bedroom was nowhere near as dark as I preferred when I slept.

  The double-glazed windows helped with the noise from traffic on the street. During my nightly phone call with Helen Louise, we briefly discussed the party tomorrow night. I didn’t have to tell her about the installation across the street. She saw it for herself when she drove home from the bistro after work.

  Overwhelming was her word. “I really like what Frank and Sean did for your house, but I have to say I don’t think most people will even notice it. They’ll be too awestruck by what’s across the street from you.”

  “Gerry’s welcome to the attention, if that’s what she wants,” I said.

  “I imagine that’s exactly what she does want.” Helen Louise chuckled. “Not everyone on your block has decorated outside, but those who have are more in line with your style. Her house will definitely stand out.”

  We chatted a few minutes more before we ended the call. I settled down to sleep. I tried to keep my mind clear of anything to do with Gerry Albritton and her decorations and was eventually able to drift off.

  The next morning, I awoke around seven, half an hour later than usual, feeling refreshed. I had slept soundly, and whatever my dreams, I didn’t recall them. The coffee was ready when I went downstairs. Diesel went straight to the living room. I prepared my cup and had a few sips before going to feed the kittens and clean their litter boxes.

  With all that done, I went to fetch the newspaper. The sun was on its way up. I grabbed the paper and started to turn to go back into the house. Then I looked across the street at Gerry Albritton’s house, not quite sure that I was seeing clearly.

  I blinked and took several steps down the walk to get a closer look. No, I wasn’t imagining things, I decided. During the night, vandals had wrecked Gerry’s decorations.

  ELEVEN

  After the first shock of the mess in Gerry Albritton’s yard began to wear off, I began to see that the decorations weren’t wrecked so much as they were dismantled. The figures lay deflated on the dormant grass, and the lights hung drunkenly from a few spots on the façade.

  No wonder I hadn’t heard anything, I mused. Nothing was smashed or destroyed, as far as I could tell. But why not? This was not the work of typical vandals.

  Maybe the person behind this wanted to delay the party or cause Gerry to cancel it. I suspected that neither of these would happen, that the party would go ahead as planned tonight.

  I wondered whether I should go over and knock on the door to inform Gerry of what had happened. I couldn’t see any signs that she or any other occupants of the house had stirred. The time couldn’t be more than about seven fifteen or seven twenty. I stood, indecisive, for about thirty seconds, and then it occurred to me that I really wasn’t dressed to go knocking on a woman’s door at this hour. Especially not the door of Gerry Albritton. She might well misinterpret my attire—bathrobe over the shorts and shirt I slept in—as something I did not in the least intend.

  No, better to call. Safer to converse with Gerry from a distance. I turned and walked back into the house. I had barely shut the front door, however, when I heard a scream of what sounded like outrage from the direction of Gerry�
�s house. I moved into the living room to look out the front window. Sure enough, Gerry stood in the middle of her yard, surveying the damage.

  I wouldn’t mind playing the good neighbor and going out to talk to her, but I wasn’t going to do it without being properly dressed. I hurried upstairs to change. Diesel seemed happy to be keeping an eye on the kittens, so I didn’t have to worry about him.

  Three or four minutes later I hurried down the walk and across the street. Gerry had a cell phone clamped to her ear and was speaking rapidly into it. I could see that a couple of neighbors must have heard the commotion and were in their yards, discreetly trying to see what was going on.

  “. . . get here within the hour and fix this mess.” Gerry listened briefly. “I’ll give you a bonus if you have everything set up again by noon.” She listened again, then said “Fine” and ended the call.

  Gerry wore a short, bright yellow, silken-looking robe that clung to her figure. She eyed me as if I were the enemy.

  “Morning,” I said. “So sorry about all this. Do you have any idea who’s responsible?” My breath misted in the chill air.

  “I can think of several candidates.” She scowled. “Did you hear or see anything last night?”

  “No, not a thing. I was sound asleep by eleven, I think, and didn’t get up until about half an hour ago.”

  Gerry shook her head. “I guess I ought to be grateful they didn’t actually destroy anything. All they did was let the air out of the inflatables and pull the lights down. It could have been much worse.”

  I nodded. “Yes, but it’s a bit strange, don’t you think? Vandals usually are much more destructive.”

  “Who knows?” she replied. “Maybe they got scared off before they could do any worse damage.”

  “Possibly.” I suspected, though, that she had a good idea why the damage wasn’t more severe.

  “Maybe it was an extreme kind of prank,” I said.