“Okay then,” I told the open window. “I’m just gonna crack open the back door here and go mind my own business….”
I fully expected to be stuck listening to numerous conspiracy theories while we waited—and was baffled when the cat sauntered right in and headbutted me in the calf.
“He likes you,” Boswell observed dryly.
The cat’s purr was so loud it drowned out the sound of the old refrigerator motor.
“Well?” Boswell said. “Grab him.”
As a rule, I don’t manhandle strange cats, but this one seemed friendly enough. I reached down and scooped him up—or at least I tried. But he arched into an impossible shape andslipped through my arms like a greased weasel. And then he turned around and bonked me in the calf again.
“Not like that,” Boswell said. “Like this.” He squatted down and tried to grab the cat by the scruff, and it eluded him easily, then bonked me again. Boswell snapped, “You’re in the way, give me some room.”
I retreated to the kitchen, and the cat followed along and wound himself through my feet in a graceful figure eight, keeping pace with me exactly.
“He must be attuned to psychics,” Boswell said.
A slanting shaft of sun fell across my arm, showing off the tiny green flakes stuck to the wool of my blazer. “No,” I said, “he’s attuned to catnip.”
“Either way. If he’s willing to follow you, just lead him to my van and I’ll take it from there.”
Whatever it took to get Boswell down to HP and wash my hands of this assignment for good. I backed into the kitchen and the cat matched me step for step, slithering elaborate circles around my feet all the way. We made it through the dining room and down the hall. But when I passed the bedroom door, the purr ground to a halt, along with the sinuous tango through my legs. The cat froze and its pupils went wide. Then it arched, dancing sideways, and its tail bushed out to three times its normal size.
Great. Simon could see the woman, too. I glanced through the bedroom door. No dark, screaming blur was currently streaking through, but apparently she’d left a residue, and the cat was having none of it. While Boswell croonedencouragement that it totally ignored, it turned tail and bolted back down the hall.
“Simon, wait!” Boswell chased the cat into the hallway.
I sighed and hurried after them. The cat had paused in the middle of the hall, licking a front paw as if nothing in particular was happening. I knew it was just feigning nonchalance. Veronica’s cats would do the same just after they’d puked on some expensive couch cushion or important mail.
Boswell was not in the best of shape, and the quick sprint left him red-faced and panting. And right as he reached the cat, it dashed off into the kitchen. I cleared the threshold just in time to see it slip out the back window.
“I’m not leaving without Simon!” Boswell wailed.
Jesus H. Christ. I shoved through the back door and out onto the porch. It was your typical Chicago courtyard building construction, a wooden structure that zig-zagged up the back of the building in lieu of a fire escape. The paint outside was weathered, but thankfully the wood was still sound as I thundered down after the cat, taking the stairs two by two.
I was really moving. So much so that I nearly pulled a Wile E. Coyote when a door swung open on the second floor. I backpedaled and lurched around it, just as the cat cleared the bottom step, darted across the alley, and disappeared into a tangle of weedy, neglected bushes.
Seriously, the neighbor chose that very moment to open the door? I turned around to “thank” him, only to find I was already annoyed from the last time we’d tangled. It was Murray Haskel, the terrible tipper.
“Why are you still here?” he demanded.
And in my experience, people are only that leery when they’ve got something to hide.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WHILE BOSWELL HUFFED and puffed down the last flight of stairs calling after his cat, I craned my neck to see what Murray Haskel was trying to cover up. You never know what kinds of weird shit folks are into—anything from S&M to worthless beanie baby collections that take up half the house. But from what I could tell, Haskel’s kitchen looked pretty normal.
And while I scoped out the world inside, he was scanning the alley. “He’s not out there. Is he?”
“Who—Boswell?”
Haskel craned his neck to check the stairwell, then lowered his voice and said, “Zachary Sledge.”
Well…now I wanted to talk to this guy for sure. “Your former upstairs neighbor. I thought he moved away.”
“He did.”
And yet, Haskel was still worried about him. “You can wait around for Sledge to come back, or you can take this opportunity to tell me what you know.”
