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A frown creased her forehead. Aunt Lacy has delicate features and gorgeous peaches-and-cream skin. Her short hair is a pretty shade of brown a bit darker than my own. Our features look quite a bit alike overall, which gives me hope that I’ll age as gracefully as her. At fifty-five, Aunt Lacy can easily pass for forty.
“I don’t know what your mother would think of you skulking about in bushes and associating with known criminals,” she said with a genteel scowl.
“First of all, I do not skulk in bushes.” At least, not very often. “And second, no one has ever proved Mr. Russo is a criminal.”
Pink tinted her cheeks a becoming shade.
“Perhaps, but my sister is probably rolling in her grave at the very idea of you being in the same room with some of these people you call clients.”
Fortunately Aunt Lacy was in too big a hurry to pursue the topic any further. She patted her pockets, located her keys and settled for shaking her head.
“All right, Dee. You’re a grown woman and you have to follow your own path. Trudy will be back in about fifteen minutes. I have to run.”
And of course she meant that literally. Aunt Lacy is big on running. She enters races. She practically lives in jogging outfits. What she lacks in speed she makes up for in determination and endurance. I waved her off and headed for the workroom, where a partially assembled arrangement sat waiting on the counter.
The shop is always slow at this time of day, so I changed the radio station until I found one that suited me better and started singing along. I was doing a little dance around the table in time to a classic rock song when a young voice penetrated both the radio and my off-key singing.
“Hey! Lady, do you work here?”
I stopped moving and looked up from the fern I was tucking into place. Only I had to look down to find the originator of the question. A kid of about seven or eight stood there. He was a skinny little boy in a bright red T-shirt, navy shorts and dirty tennis shoes. His sandy brown hair needed combing and there were beads of sweat on his shiny red face. He had the most gorgeous chocolate-brown eyes I’ve ever seen. I would have killed for the thick black lashes that framed them. This kid was going to be a real heartbreaker in a few years.
At the moment those expressive eyes were regarding me with an extremely adult expression.
“Sorry,” I apologized, snapping off the music. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I’m not surprised.”
That made me blink. “You’re kind of young for sarcasm, aren’t you?”
“I’m ten.”
I’d guessed younger, but then I haven’t had a lot of dealings with kids other than my infant niece since I’d stopped babysitting and started dating around age fifteen. The boy was watching me closely, so I tried for a sage nod.
“Ten’s a good age. Can I help you with something?”
His expression said he doubted it, but his head bobbed.
“I’m looking for D.B. Hayes.”
Not what I’d expected. My mouth fell open, so I filled it with a question. “Why?”
“I want to hire him,” the kid explained as if I were a moron. “There’s a little sign out front that says he works here. The phone book listed this address, but this place is filled with flowers. Did he move?”
Now, the sign out front next to the door is on the small side, but do you know how much a sign costs? Besides, this is my aunt’s shop and that means she gets the big billing. But geesh. Who needs to be patronized by a ten-year-old?
“D.B. Hayes is a private investigator,” I explained to him.
“I know. That’s why I want to hire him.”
“You want to hire a private investigator?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice.
He shuffled his feet and looked down at his scuffed tennis shoes. His body was so tense, it made my muscles ache to look at him.
“I have to find Mr. Sam,” the boy said. “See, he’s old and I was supposed to keep an eye on him so he didn’t get out and wander away, like he does sometimes, but I was playing a game and I forgot to check the screen door after my mom left.”
He got it all out in one long breath, and I wondered what sort of people would make a little kid like this responsible for some old man with Alzheimer’s. The boy was far too young for that sort of responsibility.
“If he gets hit by a car or attacked by dogs, it’ll be all my fault.”
I put down the fern and tried frantically to think of something comforting to offer. “I don’t think you have to worry about him getting attacked by dogs.”
He looked up at me, then gave a nod as if that wasn’t a perfectly stupid thing to say.
“I guess so. He chases old man Roble’s Doberman all the time. But if I don’t find Mr. Sam before my mom gets home, she’s going to be awful upset.”
“I’ll tell you what, why don’t we call the police and…”
“No!” Panic filled his expression. “I want to hire D.B. Hayes! I can pay him.”
He reached in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled wad of grungy dollar bills.
“I’ve got forty-two dollars saved to buy the Glimmer Man game. It’s coming out next month, but this is more important. Do you think it’s enough to find Mr. Sam?”
The kid was so pathetically earnest, I wanted to hug him and promise everything would be all right. “Look, I’ll tell you what we…”
“I mean, he’s just a cat. Anything could happen to him.”
My mouth dropped open again. “A cat?”
The kid nodded solemnly. “D.B. Hayes has to help me find him. My uncle says that’s one of the things detectives do. They find things for people.”
Faced with that adorable, earnest expression, I swallowed several inappropriate responses while he waited in silence for me to say something.
“Let me get this straight,” I stalled. “You want to hire me to find your cat?”
“Not you,” he scoffed. “D.B. Hayes. And it isn’t my cat, he’s my uncle’s cat. I was just watching him.”
Why me?
“Look, I hate to tell you this kid, but I’m D.B. Hayes.”
“No, you aren’t. You work in the flower shop.”
The tone and his assumption stung my pride. I tugged my identification folder from my hip pocket and flipped it open, holding it out for his inspection.
“See,” I told him. “D.B. Hayes. Diana Barbara Hayes.”
The little squirt actually took the folder and examined it, comparing me to my picture. While it wasn’t a particularly flattering picture and my hair was shorter back then, my features were clear enough to satisfy him.
“You don’t look like a private investigator.”
“I get that a lot.” Unfortunately it was true. “That’s what makes me good at my job,” I added, giving him my stock response. “Look, kid…what’s your name anyhow?”
“Mickey.”
“Okay, Mickey,” I said, replacing the folder. “I’d really like to help you out, but I don’t know anything about cats. Your best bet…”
But the kid had come prepared for a brush-off. He whipped out a bent photograph of himself holding an indistinguishable blob of gray fur. He thrust it in my hand before I could finish my suggestion.
“Here’s his picture,” Mickey said in a rush. “His name is Mr. Sam and he’s seventeen. That’s old for a cat. The screen door doesn’t latch so good, so he musta got out between nine and ten this morning. I searched the whole neighborhood, but I can’t find him. We live right near the park, so I bet he went there to chase birds or something, but I can’t search the whole park by myself. And I have to get home before my mom finds out I’m not at the pool with Ray and his mom. See, my mom’s kinda nervous on account of my dad getting killed. Mom’s been under a lot of stress.”
That put the brakes on my objections and captured my full and complete attention. “Your dad was killed?”
He nodded gravely. “That’s why you have to find Mr. Sam. I don’t want my mom to cry anymore. She’ll be real upset when she finds out he’s gone. I was supposed to watch him.”
I had so many questions jamming my brain, I couldn’t decide what to ask first. Unfortunately the kid moved a lot faster than my thought processes. He plopped the wad of crumpled bills on the work counter and sprinted for the front of the shop before I could blink.
“Hey! Wait!”
“You can keep the picture,” Mickey tossed over his shoulder.
“Wait! Mickey! Wait! What’s your last name?”
I chased him out the front door, but he was already astride a fancy red bike.
“Where do you live? I need more information!”
“I gotta go!” he shouted. “I’m late! Keep Mr. Sam when you find him. I’ll come back tomorrow to get him.”
The bike turned the corner and sped off down the sidewalk.
I started to run after him before I remembered that I was alone in the store. I couldn’t leave until Trudy returned.
Blast! How humiliating to be caught flat by a ten-year-old kid. Since standing there wasn’t going to do much good and the afternoon heat was sucking my lungs dry, I returned to the chill air inside the store. I stared at the grungy heap of crumpled dollar bills sitting on the counter in the back room. Now what was I supposed to do?
I’m a dog person. I don’t even like cats.
Chapter Two
Finding a gray cat is not like looking for a needle in a haystack. It is the haystack. The world is full of gray cats—at least, Lakewood Park was on this particular day.
There were dozens of small parks in and around town, not to mention the valley, a system of parks that twisted around a good portion of Cuyahoga County. But using my deductive abilities, I took the direction the kid had headed and his comment about the pool and chose Lakewood over Madison Park, since they were the only two that had pools nearby.
Searching for a cat is a job for Animal Control, not a private investigator, but the kid had hooked me with those sad eyes. And I admit the whole bit about his father being killed had dangled a carrot I couldn’t resist. It could have been a traffic accident. Heck, it probably had been a traffic accident. But I wanted more information.
Besides, the kid had given up a Glimmer Man game—whatever that was—to hire a detective to find his uncle’s old cat so his mom wouldn’t cry anymore. Heck. I didn’t have any choice. Not when he’d paid up front.
I had no intention of keeping his money, of course. I’d locked it away in my aunt’s desk drawer and I’d give it back to him as soon as he picked up his cat. And hopefully one of the two beasts I’d managed to catch would turn out to be Mr. Sam.
Not being totally stupid, I’d stopped by a pet store on my way to the park to pick up a few things I figured I was going to need to trap and hold Mr. Sam. Silly me. I should have added bandages, iodine, even tourniquets, to my list of necessities. Blood still trickled down my hand, squishing between my fingers and smearing the steering wheel with sticky residue. I should have remembered that cats come with claws. Nevertheless I had two mostly gray cats that sort of matched the picture Mickey had given me. One of them had better be Mr. Sam.
As far as I’m concerned, one gray cat looks pretty much like another. Even though the first one was a darker gray and had white under his chin and the second one had a patch of white on his belly, either one could be the cat in the picture as far as I could tell. The two nasty-tempered little monsters were in my car yowling at the top of their considerable lungs. They’d been friendly enough when I was petting them and offering them treats, but once I’d put them inside, all hell broke loose.
Sam One was inside the box a stock boy had given me. Since I hadn’t planned on finding more than one cat, I didn’t have a second box, but Sam Two had come willingly into my arms until I’d tried to add him to the same box. Hence all the blood. Sam Two was now crouched on the floorboard in the narrow backseat after tearing strips of skin off my hand.
Driving with a cat loose in the car made me nervous, but I wasn’t about to try picking the beast up a second time. And short of putting him in the trunk, there was no other option. To make matters worse, I’d spotted a third gray cat right before leaving the park. By then my need to help the kid was waning big-time. It was growing late and my stomach was grumbling over the small salad I’d had for lunch, and where would I have put a third cat anyhow? As it was, I was going to have to smuggle the two beasts into my apartment without being seen and I doubted they were going to cooperate.
I debated blowing my diet by stopping for a fast-food hamburger on my way home, but given my luck, Sam Two would prefer fast food to the kitty tuna I’d bought. He’d probably have it eaten before I got it out of the car. He’d certainly eaten the treats I’d offered him as if he’d been starving—which, from the paunch on that cat, was a big, fat lie.
I figured my best bet was to go straight home and change into something more appropriate for tailing someone who lives in the Shaker Heights area. I could get fast food on my way to the assignment. Besides, I needed to call Aunt Lacy and remind her I wanted to borrow her car tonight. I could hardly drive around on the east side of town in an antique VW Beetle painted mostly in primer-gray.
My cell phone rang as I pulled onto Lake Avenue coming out of the park. I dripped a splotch of blood on the seat cover while reaching over to answer the summons. I wouldn’t have bothered except that my cell phone is listed on my business cards and I can’t afford to ignore a possible client.
“D.B. Hayes,” I snapped out, hoping for a red light so I could use a tissue to mop the blood before it stained. Between the rivulets of sweat dripping down my body, the throbbing gouges on my hand and the noise emanating from both cats, I was not in the best of moods.
There was a pause on the other end that made me regret my tone. Then a familiar voice—one that sounded as if the speaker had swallowed gravel shards—spoke in my ear.
“Ms. Hayes, this is Albert Russo.”
I cringed. Clenching the cell phone against my ear, I prayed he wasn’t calling to cancel tonight’s job. The rent was due next week and I’d counted on that money.
“Mr. Russo!” I exclaimed, trying to infuse my voice with enthusiasm. “What can I do for you?”
This time the pause was enough to send my heart in my throat.
“Have I called at a bad time, Ms. Hayes?”
“Of course not.”
Sam Two contradicted me with a plaintive yowl. The sound filled the interior of the car. I grimaced.
“Sorry about the noise, Mr. Russo. I’m transporting a pair of unhappy cats, uh…for a friend.”
What else could I say?
He sniffed. “Nasty creatures, cats.”
I wasn’t about to argue the point. At the moment they didn’t rank high in my esteem either. I only hoped they had all their shots. And why hadn’t I thought of that before I’d gone and picked them up with my bare hands?
“Ms. Hayes, I’m wondering if you could see your way clear to start the assignment a bit earlier this evening than we agreed?” he went on. “It seems my wife made dinner plans with some acquaintances and just communicated this information to me. I’m sorry for the short notice, but she intends to leave the house a little past six. You will need to be in position before then.”
I glanced at the dashboard clock. It was a few minutes past five already. Rush hour. And his address was clear across town in an area I wasn’t familiar with. There was no way I could go home and change clothes and still make it to Shaker Heights before six. I glanced down at my shorts and stained blouse and bit my bottom lip.
“Is your wife going somewhere fancy for dinner?” I asked. If so, I was doomed.
“I believe she mentioned Bergan’s in Legacy Village. Is that a problem, Ms. Hayes?”
His cold tone indicated it had better not be a problem.
