“Didn’t he?”
Again I was disappointed by his lack of fervor.
“That’s why I asked: Haveyou had any luck changing his mind?”
“Me? Um…” His eyes darted to Zack, and I could see them narrowing as he focused his mental powers on my human. Good, at least he was trying hard—very hard—to make Zack… do something that he would normally never, ever do… I frowned. Now, wait a minute, I thought. Something fishy was going on here, something…
And then I got it. The awful truth. Stevie wasn’t trying to dissuade Zack from picking up that knife and using it to end Barbara Vale’s life. He was willing him to go ahead and do it!
36
The Attack
“Stevie! Stop!” I yelled.
“Huh?” he said, as if waking from a trance. “What’s that?”
“You’re trying to kill Barbara!”
“I’m doing nothing of the kind,” he said, indignant. Then his lips contorted into a wide, toothy grin. “Zack is.”
“But why?” was all I could think to say.
He shrugged.“You’re smart. You figure it out.”
My eyes widened.“You killed Lucy Knicx. And Jamie Burrow!”
He casually studied his paw nails.“Technically Norbert McIlroy did. Though it’s safe to say I lent him a paw.”
The horror of my partner’s betrayal had me reeling, and I nearly plummeted to my death—well, that’s probably exaggerating slightly. Cats don’t easily plummet to their death, certainly not from a mere 15 feet up. I was just about to repeat my earlier ‘But why!’ when a brain wave made me see the light. Lucy Knicx. Jamie Burrow. Stevie’s comments about how they kept dropping by the house all the time. The eternal fear of any cat that his male human takes in a female human and that the days of wine and roses are about to come to an end…
“You didn’t want Lucy or Jamie to take over the run of the house,” I said slowly.
Stevie frowned darkly.“Or Barbara, for that matter,” he said, confirming I’d hit pay dirt. “Ever since she got the blue belle understudy part, Sam hasn’t been able to remove her from the presbytery with a stick.”
“But Sam is a priest,” I said. “He’ll never marry.”
“Sam is wavering,” Stevie said softly. “All this female attention has had him reconsider his vows. Another couple of months and he would have chucked the church and gone and gotten married to one of these… groupies.” He spat out the last word.
“But Barbara is all right,” I said. “She’s a great human. Just ask Dana.”
He shrugged.“Better safe than sorry. Besides, I don’t want Dana for a roomie. She’ll corner the market on kibble and cuddles and I’ll be left fighting for leftovers. No, thank you very much. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a Father Sam groupie to eliminate.” And he returned to his perch next to the spotlight, and resumed his mental treatment of Zack.
“No, Stevie!” I cried. “Don’t do it!”
“Who’s gonna stop me?” he scoffed. “You?”
At this moment Zack and Barbara stepped onto the stage. Show time.
“I think he’s on to us,” said Barbara, taking Zack’s lapel in a firm grip.
“Are you sure?” said Zack, after a significant pause.
Barbara gave an unconvincing sob that sounded like a dinosaur removing its foot from a primeval swamp.
“That sucks,” said Zack, desperately searching for the prompter. “That means we’ll, um, have to, um, whack the sucker.”
I was pretty sure this wasn’t the way Father Sam had written the scene, but that’s show business. No one respects the script.
Barbara hesitated. Her cue had been‘Take him out!’, and she was clearly at a loss how to respond to Zack’s improv.
“Whack the sucker?” she finally said, though with reluctance. “Are you nuts?”
“Nuts about you!” cried Zack. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the little turd come between me and a pretty piece of pecan pie. Um, that’s not right,” he mumbled.
“No! Jack!” cried Barbara.
“I know, I know,” Zack muttered. “He won’t come between me and, and… Between me and…” His voice trailed off, as he desperately tried to remember his line. Then he got it, and his face lit up. “Between me and… you! Barbara!”
Barbara closed her eyes. As things were going, it seemed more likely that she’d kill Zack than the other way around.
“No, Jack!” she cried once again, a steely note in her voice. “Don’t go!” But the expression on her face belied her words.
Her cry galvanized me into action. I knew what was next, and I could already see Zack’s hand steal into his pocket to get a firm grip on the knife handle. So I did the only thing I could think of: I dealt Stevie a hearty smack on the head and, not expecting this, he dropped down to the stage like a ton of bricks. Or rather one brick. Unlike me, Stevie is a lightweight.
On stage, Zack had taken out the knife, and held it out behind Barbara’s back, in full view of the audience, which collectively gasped in shocked surprise. When one attends the performance of a murder mystery play, one obviously expects a murder, and Zack was about to give the public its money’s worth of blood and gore.
Stevie landed deftly on all fours, but his landing platform, unlike mine, wasn’t Mayor McCrady’s soft hairpiece, but Barbara Vale’s bare back. Digging in his claws to prevent his further descent, Stevie finally got his wish and drew Vale blood. The bone-chilling scream that next rent the air, had the audience once again rocket back in their chairs, cries of anguish andhorror on their lips, for Barbara didn’t stint on volume.
“You idiot!” she screamed, and, swinging her purse like a hammer, she let it come down hard on Zack’s head, for she had automatically jumped to the conclusion Zack must have nicked her with that big, shiny knife of his.
Stevie, rightly deducing he wasn’t wanted on the scene at this particular moment, quickly made good his escape.
“Ouch!” Zack yelled, as Barbara’s purse impacted on his head. He dropped the knife.
Now, when a knife drops to the floor, it usually makes a clanking sound. This particular knife, though, hit the floor with its pointy end, and simply bounced back up, before landing on its hilt, bouncing a few more times and then coming to rest, tired of all these theatrical shenanigans.
I had seen the knife bounce and I had seen it plunk down, and I sat back on my high perch above the stage with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, grabbing onto one of the spotlights to keep me from keeling over and plunging into the abyss.
For I’d just realized that this was not the kind of knife that slays ten in a murdering frenzy. This was a stage knife, and what was more, made of rubber. No way could Zack have done any harm to Barbara, even if he’d wanted to. At most he could have smudged her dress.
“What—what—what—” I stammered, as I stared before me with unseeing eyes. “W-w-what theheck is going on?”
37
Agent Tom
It was at this moment that I became aware I wasn’t alone up there. The air to my left suddenly seemed to shimmer, like it does on a hot summer’s day, and even before a bright flash popped and she appeared out of nowhere, I knew I was in the presence of Dana. She had a vague smile on her lips.
“Hello, Tom,” she said.
Then the same thing happened again, but this time to my right. A loud pop, and there he sat, cool as dammit and grinning gaily: Stevie. He actually looked more like the old Stevie I’d come to know and, well, yes, almost love.
I shook my head, dazed and confused. What was going on here?
On stage, meanwhile, the murder mystery had turned into a farce, with Barbara chasing Zack around the set, using all manner of props to hurl at him. The audience members were now rolling in the aisles, laughing their collective heads off. I don’t know how Father Sam would feel about all this, and frankly, I didn’t care. What I wanted to know was…