“Since I’m up, I guess I’ll go get ready,” I informed him, thanking my lucky stars when he didn’t follow me into the bathroom. I was able to take a shower without any added drama.
The hot water pounded my skin, slowly bringing me back to life. By the time I finished my own grooming rituals, I found myself in a much better mood.
“Good to see you’ve finally woken up,” Octo-Cat said with an approving nod. “What time do we head into the office?”
“We? No, no, no. There’s no way I can justify taking you into the firm.”
“But I was there yesterday,” he argued with a child-like pout.
“For the will reading.”
“Well, just have another will reading then. Besides, if I’m there, I can help suss out the killer.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared him down without blinking. “You’re not coming.”
He ran toward the door, calling to me in a sing-song voice. “Too bad you can’t stop me.”
Oh, what a brat. Leave it to Octo-Cat to always want to be at the center of all the action. He was really quite outgoing as far as cats were concerned. If I had any chance of leaving him at home, then I needed to come up with something important for him to do here—or at least something I could trick him into thinking was important.
What was that saying about curiosity and cats again? I was banking on it being true.
“I’m only going to work because I haven’t got a choice in the matter,” I informed him. “You, however, do. And it would be much better if you stayed here and did some research into our case.”
He flicked his tail, but otherwise looked intrigued. Score one for clichéd old sayings. “Oh? Well, what did you have in mind?”
If I took too long to think, Octo-Cat would figure me out so I went with the first thing that popped into my mind. “Research. On the Internet.”
“I can’t type,” he said with a scowl. “Or read, for that matter.”
“Can’t read?” I don’t know why I was surprised. Most cats didn’t talk. Maybe I’d just assumed that Octo-Cat could do all things like my very own super kitty sidekick.
He abandoned the door and joined me in the living room. “Until I met you, I had no idea humans had such a complex system of communication,” he explained. “Your different sounds mean different things! I always thought it was just about emotion, but you actually seem to assign noises to various objects and concepts. It’s fascinating.”
“Right back at you, cat.” It still hadn’t ceased to amaze me that Octo-Cat thought of humans as just another animal. In his mind, cats were the most intellectually superior species on the planet, which seemed laughable to me. Were humans otherwise deluded about their place in the animal kingdom? It sure made me wonder.
I’d been wondering something else, too, and decided to ask Octo-Cat about it. “So, you’re not speaking English?”
He twitched his whiskers in confusion. “What’s English? Is that your word for human? Because no, I’m not speaking human. You’re speaking cat.”
“I’m not speaking cat, though.” At least I was pretty sure I wasn’t speaking in a series of meows, purrs, and growls.
“And yet somehow we understand each other.” Octo-Cat looked bored, even though I found the intricacies of our communication amazingly interesting. Maybe at the end of the day curiosity killed the human, too.
We sat in companionable silence as we both puzzled over this, one of us more than the other.
At last I said, “I suppose that’s another mystery we’ll have to figure out. You know, once we solve the more pressing murder mystery.”
“There’s no mystery about it,” he informed me, his eyes flashing with untold knowledge. “It’s magic.”
“Magic?” I laughed at this notion. “You believe in magic?”
“You don’t?” He looked authentically surprised at this.
How much did we humans not know about the rest of the world? I was beginning to think it was substantial. I’d look into this all later. Right now, I needed to focus on distracting him so that I could slip away to the office, unaccompanied.
“Okay, so that’s what you can do for me,” I told him, reaching forward to grab the remote from the coffee table. “I’ll leave the TV on for you and you can learn to read human.”
“Eww, why?”
“So you can help me with the research, of course.”
“Are you going to learn cat?” he shot back.
“Sure, you can give me some lessons once I’m home from work.” I agreed primarily to avoid an argument but had to admit, the idea of learning such an uncharted new language did excite me.
The TV flickered to life at the press of the button and immediately our eyes darted to the screen. After a bit of channel surfing, I settled on one of the kids’ channels where a caramel-skinned little girl and her monkey talked directly to the viewer. I pressed a series of buttons, at last reaching the option to enable subtitles.
Octo-Cat meowed right back at the screen, immediately enamored of the program. I watched with him for a few minutes, then managed to slip out undetected just as I’d hoped.
I’d be painfully early to the office that day, but maybe that would be to my benefit. Little by little, a plan began to form in my mind.
Yes, today would be a productive day when it came to solving Ethel Fulton’s murder. If all went according to plan, I might even be able to discover the culprit before returning home in the evening.
CHAPTER NINE
On my way to the office, I stopped by the local coffee shop to order lattes for the partners and all the associates. Even though I couldn’t really afford it, I needed an excuse to talk to everyone and see what I could learn about the will reading and Ethel Fulton’s purported cause of death.
Thankfully, no matter how much Nan wanted me to be a fully functional adult, she would still step in whenever I couldn’t make rent. Generally my pocket money went toward books or community college courses or online webinars, but I figured Octo-Cat’s and my mystery would keep me too busy to spend much time on recreational learning for the next few days.
I’d read enough police procedural novels by this point to know it took a fair bit of work to identify a killer. Surely in the real world, many cases proved to be open and shut, but I doubted Ethel’s would turn out that way.
For starters, all of my evidence was based on hearsay… from a cat.
And even though I believed him, I couldn’t exactly use his word to justify myself to others. Octo-Cat had also given me just enough to legitimize his claims of murder, but not enough to guide my questioning when talking to anyone else.
All of this meant I’d need to keep myself casual and conversational while trying to glean information from my boss and coworkers. The surprise coffee delivery would be my way in, but I’d need to rely on my wits to learn anything of actual value.
Oh boy, I definitely had my work cut out for me.
Thanks to my rude awakening that morning, I reached work a full hour before my normal start time. Only two other cars stood in the parking lot— Mr. Fulton’s and Bethany’s. So much for all the extra lattes. I just hoped I’d be able to secretly warm them in the microwave later without anyone noticing.
Trying not to show my disappointment, I floated into the office with my oversized tray of coffees and a bright smile on my face.
“Good morning,” I sang, passing by the front desk where I normally sat to greet any visitors who happened to drop by the firm.
Only silence greeted me.
“Hello?” I called, knowing for a fact I’d seen their cars. As I moved down the hall toward Mr. Fulton’s office, I flicked on the overhead lights.
“Mr. Fulton?”
The door opened abruptly, causing me to jump back. Thank goodness the hot coffees didn’t spill down my front or I’d have found myself in the hospital with a wicked work injury a second day in a row.