I picked up my phone and navigated to my camera app, but Charles pushed his laptop lid down with a click.
“No, you won’t,” he said, keeping his hand firmly on the laptop as he waited for me to back down. Ugh, he was so irritating sometimes. “Whoever took Octo-Cat will definitely recognize you and probably Nan, too.”
“So, what?” I demanded, stomping my foot like the overdramatic teenager I once was. “I’m just supposed to do nothing?”
A smile lit up his handsome features, putting me at ease. “I didn’t say that. I’ll go and check things out myself.”
I couldn’t help but smile. I loved how he’d taken real ownership in this case, too. “Great, let’s go,” I said, reaching toward the laptop so I could snag a photo of those addresses.
Charles held up an index finger and wagged it at me. “No, Angie. You’re not coming. Trust me with this, okay? I want him back just as much as you do. I’m not going to mess this up. But I do have a court appointment this afternoon, so I’m not going to be able to check out these leads until after work.”
I hung my head and tried really hard not to sigh. I knew he was right, but it didn’t make the waiting any easier. “Thank you,” I murmured at last with great difficulty.
“You’re welcome,” Charles said. “Now, c’mon, let me take you back home. Maybe Pringle will have discovered something helpful while we were gone.”
One could only hope…
Of course, Pringle hadn’t found anything worthwhile in my absence and neither had Nan.
“I wonder what Ethel would have thought of all this hullabaloo if she were still alive to see it,” Nan drawled over dinner that evening. She’d busied herself by cooking up a storm in the kitchen, so dinner was a strange yet satisfying combination of dim sum, gnocchi, and empanadas.
“You would never kill me to get to my fortune,” Nan asked as she bit into a steamy dumpling and trained a wary eye on me. “Would you?”
I dropped my fork and stared at her, slack-jawed. Luckily, I’d just swallowed a mouthful of pasta, otherwise it would have fallen straight down onto the table. The things my nan said sometimes!
“Kidding,” she sang with a merry little titter. “Still, though. Poor Ethel. Betrayed by those she loved most, both in life and in death. She only wanted her beloved feline companion to live out the rest of his days in comfort, but that, too, has created difficulty. The old broad just couldn’t win.”
She shrugged and took another bite, chewing thoughtfully as we sat in silence. I understood why we were talking about the late Ethel Fulton, but it still made me tremendously sad—especially since in some ways, I was living her life now, or at least in her house. To think, even though Ethel had died with lots of money, it was clear she’d been missing something important in life.
Like love, family, respect.
Nan said nothing more about it, but the woman I’d seen only at her funeral last year remained solidly at the front of mind. I owed it to her to make sure her cat maintained his lavish lifestyle, that he was brought home safe and sound. So what if other people didn’t exactly understand.
I did, and this was my job. It was also something I cared deeply about and would fight to put right again.
Octo-Cat was coming home, no matter what it took.
Thankfully, updates from Charles started coming in via text shortly after we’d finished dinner. He messaged after each visit he made to one of Ethel’s heirs. At first his messages came relatively close together since he was visiting those who lived in our own Glendale, but eventually they became fewer and farther between.
I lay in bed with my phone beside me, eagerly awaiting each one.
Until I fell asleep.
I dreamt of the early days with Octo-Cat, back when we lived in that tiny rental he hated and were still finding our way around each other. I revisited all my favorite memories—like giving him his very own iPad and eating grilled shrimp together, the day the paperwork came in and I officially adopted him. We’d lived through so many important moments together and had so many more that were yet to come.
We’d caught killers and thieves. We could catch a catnapper, too.
The happy memories quickly gave way to the scary ones. To high-speed car chases and ominous staircases, visiting a friend in maximum security and staring straight into the eyes of someone who wanted me dead.
A bang sounded from across the room, and I jumped into a sitting position before I’d even had the chance to fully wake up. The image of a shiny pistol flashed behind my eyelids. I’d been threatened by a gun more than once this past year, and—
BANG!
It was coming from the other side of my closed door.
No, it was my closed door.
Someone was knocking on it as if their very life depended on me answering and answering fast.
“Nan?” I called as I padded hesitantly over.
“Open up! Open up!” a familiar squeaky voice shouted. “There’s been a development.”
I flung the door open, and in came Pringle.
He clambered right up onto my bed, blinking hard when I flipped the light switch on. “Ahh, I’m blinded by the light,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “Doesn’t that thing have a dimmer?”
“Sorry.” I switched off the overhead and turned on my bedside lamp. As I came closer, I noticed that he had a piece of white paper with small colorful blocks pasted on one side.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked, pointing.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Someone just slipped this under the front door. I came running, but I wasn’t fast enough to see the person’s face. Definitely a human, though. Definitely a human. Here. Take it.”
My hands shook as I took the paper from Pringle’s outstretched paws.
“It’s a ransom note,” I said in disbelief as I looked over the hasty arrangement of letters that had clearly been cut out from a magazine. “Why go to all this trouble? Why not just type what they wanted to say?”
“Clearly somebody has a flair for the dramatic,” Pringle said, baring his teeth and rolling his eyes. “So, what’s it say? Huh? Huh?”
I moved the paper closer to the light and read, “You don’t belong here. Give up the house, or I kill the cat.”
I gasped and dropped the letter as if I’d been burned.
“No way, no way, no way!” Pringle shouted as he jumped on my bed. “Nobody threatens Octavius and gets away with it. What do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” I answered with a sob. “They didn’t give us any directions or tell us a place to send our response.”
I’d give them the house if that’s what it took, but how? I felt more helpless than ever as I stared into Pringle’s dark eyes, praying he had the answer.
Chapter Twelve
“C’mon,” I told my raccoon accomplice after several moments of tense silence passed between us. “Let’s go get you some Fancy Feast.”
I took a picture of the ransom note with my phone and forwarded it to both Charles and Nan, then headed for the pantry to prepare a late-night snack for both me and Pringle. I’d already made it about halfway down the stairs when I realized he wasn’t following me.
Instead, Pringle stood at the top of the narrow stairway with giant, glistening tears in his dark eyes. “Fancy Feast? For me?” he crooned.
I smiled at the sweet but bizarre forest creature. “I can also throw in some Evian if that helps to sweeten the deal.”
Pringle scampered down the stairs as fast as his four feet could carry him and attached himself to my leg in what I assumed was a grateful hug. “This is the best day of my life,” he whispered into my plaid pajama pants. “The very best day.”
“Just wait until you meet Octavius,” I said with a chuckle, picturing the scene unfold—the look of unadulterated joy on Pringle’s face, the likely irritation on my cat’s. “I have a feeling he’s going to love you,” I said anyway. It was true; once Octo-Cat got past the raccoon’s enthusiasm, he’d love having someone in his life who appreciated him as much as he appreciated himself.