Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 14 - Murder in a Casbah of Cats (7 page)

I looked around, searching for Hercules, although I had torn the place apart minutes earlier. Still puzzled, I replaced the poker and climbed the stairs to my room.

On the third floor, I looked into the cats’ rooms. A dozen or so lay sleeping around. No Hercules.

I stared at the menagerie of cats. I’d seen a lot bizarre sights in my life, but nothing like this. No telling how much Skylar J. Watkins spent on those cats.

While I’d had Cat only a few days and AB for a couple of months, I had been around cats on my
grand-père
’s farm. They were independent creatures. One evening when I was helping Grand-père Moise milk the cows and his cats were all sitting around patiently waiting their turn for a spray of milk, he laughed and told me that cats have always believed that the sole purpose of humans on earth was to provide food and shelter for them. Oh yes, he added. And they expect you to throw in a frequent rubbing and scratching also.

He was joking, of course, but if he were standing at my side right now observing all those pampered cats, he might be laughing out of the other side of his mouth.

Eddie had not replied, so I sat at my laptop, figuring I would see what I could find.

When I started with Blevins Security, I hired in at the entry-level job, skips and traces. For some reason I liked the work. It was my third job after graduating from UT.

I started out teaching English at Madison High, in Austin, but parents, football, and ambitious administrators proved too much for me. I simply wanted to teach kids, but kids didn’t want to learn and parents didn’t want to displease the kids and administrators didn’t want to displease anyone.

Then I sold insurance for even a shorter time. I hated it.

Blevins Security was next.

And I guess you could say I blossomed there. I was familiar with computers and within a couple of years had discovered enough sites that, for a nominal fee, I could find 90 percent of those individuals I sought.

Soon, we gained the reputation in and about Austin as the agency to retain for skips and traces. The job was fine with me. I’m no strong-arm joker or gun toter, although I do have a snub-nosed .38 at my apartment.

So, I punched in “Bill Collins” on a search engine and came back with 7,555,000 hits. I added “Austin, Texas,” and narrowed the list down to a mere 358,000 hits.

Leaning back and stretching my arms, I prudently decided I would wait for Eddie.

I wandered out on the balcony. Despite the shade cast by the porch, it was still hot. What little breeze there was did nothing but take your breath away. At the end of the balcony, I peered down at the swimming pool. Karla sat in the shade of the tall hedge reading a book.

She glanced up. When she spotted me, she waved. “The water’s great. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

I waved back. “Later.”

Back in my room, I pulled a soft drink from the refrigerator and downed half. Slipping in at my desk, I pulled out my note cards and jotted down the details of information I had picked up that morning.

A yawn caught me by surprise. I stretched my arms, glanced at the bed, and decided to take a nap. Just then, I noticed the door was not closed. I frowned, swearing I had shut it. “Probably not, Tony,” I muttered, tapping it shut with the toe of my running shoe.

I’ve always believed boredom created more stress that just about any emotion, maybe with a couple of exceptions, one being the main course on an alligator’s menu and the other a bull’s-eye for two killers up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Those, I have to admit, were a tad more stressful than boredom.

Still, I was tired from doing nothing, or at least, very little of nothing. I plopped down on the bed.

Moments later, I was asleep.

I dreamed of cats, all kinds of cats, and they blurred into the library, and into that library came a man who I knew was Herbert Adam Watkins III.

Next thing, he was on the floor, and then Karla came down the stairs in her white terry-cloth robe, and in slow motion, I took her proffered hand, and we headed for the swimming pool leaving the poor guy bleeding on the library floor.

Her hand tickled my arm.

I brushed at it, and then she laid it on my chest. I pushed her arm away and jerked awake.

When I looked down, two large black spiders with legs at least ten feet long were bouncing on my chest.

They say levitation is only a magician’s trick, but I have news for whoever “they” is. I levitated from that bed, flailing my arms and legs and screaming manically. I hit the floor running, not stopping until I reached the door.

When I turned back, the two fuzzy black spiders were still on the bed. Now, their legs weren’t really ten feet long, but those huge beasts each looked the size of a coffee cup. I shivered, hastily checking my arm and chest to see if I’d been bitten.

If there are any PETA folks out there, too bad. I yanked off my running shoe and squashed those suckers to pulp and pulled the comforter off the bed.

Henry rushed in. “What happened?”

He saw the crumpled comforter on the floor.

“What…”

I pointed at the bed with my shoe. “Spiders. Two of them. As big as your hand.”

He frowned.

“Don’t believe me, huh?” I opened the comforter. “Take a look.”

His eyes grew wide, and he uttered a surprised curse. “I’ll take your word for it. You sure messed them up. But…” He looked
around the room, seeing the French doors were closed. “How did they get in here? We spray the rooms every month.”

I shook my head. “Beats me. I’m just wondering if there are any others.”

And for the next thirty minutes, we inspected every nook and cranny of the room, turning up no other creepy little chelicerate arthropods.

When we finished the search, Henry looked at me earnestly. “You want to change rooms?” He glanced around, the expression on his beardless face apprehensive. “I don’t know if I could sleep in here.”

“That’s all right. But, if some of their pals show up tonight, you’ll find me out on the lawn in the morning.”

After he left with the comforter, I plopped down at the desk, my thoughts going back to the rock through my window. Could the rock and the spiders be connected? If so, why? What was going on around here, for someone to try to drive me off?

I decided to pay Karla a visit. After all, she was the first one to warn me not to take the job.

She answered at the first knock on her door. A look of surprise flickered over her face. “Mr. Boudreaux. I didn’t expect you.” She was wearing white shorts and a white blouse, a tennis outfit, I guessed.

“Call me Tony, OK? How was the swim?”

A smile dimpled her cheeks. “Refreshing.” She paused. “Can I help you?”

“You mind if we talk?”

She hesitated.

I sensed she was reluctant to have me in her room. “We can talk out here in the hall if you want.”

Her eyes twinkled in amusement. “That’s all right. I trust you. Come on in.” She turned on her heel and crossed the room to a couch in front of a panel of windows. I followed, leaving the door open. When she sat, she spotted the open door. With a mischievous gleam in her eyes, she said, “Oh, you don’t trust me, is that it?”

My ears burned. “Call it PI-client rules of engagement, OK?” It was an inane reply but the only one I could think of.

I sat in a chair next to the couch.

She drew her tanned legs up under her. “Now, what is it you want to talk about?”

“The other day you asked me not to take the job. Why?”

Her smile faded, then reasserted itself on her lips. “Oh, I don’t know. This place is crazy at times. You looked like a nice guy, and I just hated to see you bored out of your skull for the next two weeks, that’s all.”

I hid my skepticism. Hers was one of those throwaway excuses. “I appreciate that, but I had the feeling there was more to it.”

She played innocent. “Oh, what do you think my reasons were?”

Remembering what Edna had said about her and Kevin, I took a shot. “Oh, maybe you were afraid I’d stop Kevin from slipping into your room.”

Her eyes grew wide, and her jaw hit the floor. “How—How did you…I mean…”

Old southern chivalry forbade me to tell her everyone in the house knew about her romantic interludes. “Look, what you do is
none of my business as long as the cats are OK.” I shook my head in disbelief. “I can’t believe I just said that about the cats.”

“Crazy, isn’t it.” She paused. “To be honest, that’s what I did think. Skylar knows I have Kevin come in, but she never says anything. I just figured she might have told you to keep him out if he showed up.”

“Hey, you know how us older folks are. We worry about you kids. But no. She didn’t mention a thing about him. She seems like a nice person.”

“Oh, she is. You never see her angry or anything. Once, Henry accidentally dropped an ironstone china ewer and bowl. It had a Persian floral pattern. It shattered into a thousand pieces. It cost almost twenty-five hundred dollars.”

“What did she do?”

“Henry came unglued. My aunt spent her time trying to calm him down, you know, to make him feel better.”

Suppressing a grimace as I remembered Edna’s remark about Skylar Watkins reprimanding Gadrate over the condition of the house, I replied. “Decent of her.”

Karla nodded emphatically. “She’s a jewel. She’s always been like that.”

“Easy to get along with, huh?”

“Oh yeah.”

I played the innocent. “I must have misunderstood then.”

“Misunderstood? What?”

I shrugged it off. “Nothing. I thought I understood someone to say that Skylar jumped all over Gadrate about the condition of the house a few years ago. Like I say, I misunderstood.”

She shook her head adamantly. “You must have. Skylar isn’t that kind of person.” She continued shaking her head, her short
blonde hair bobbing behind. “She wouldn’t jump on anyone. Not at all.”

Was someone lying? If so, who? And why?

I drew a deep breath and, figuring it was time to change the subject, glanced around the spacious room that was decorated in feminine shades.

The fireplace was white brick, the walls pale pink. Probably the decorator called it baby pink, or cherry-blossom pink, and even perhaps brink pink, but to me it was pale pink. “Nice room. You’ve lived here since…” I hesitated, feeling awkward in the direction I was taking the conversation.

A sad smile played over her heart-shaped face. “Since my parents were killed? Yeah. Skylar has been wonderful.” She paused, dropping into a reflective mood. “I should tell her more often, but sometimes…I don’t know. But I should.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. We’re all guilty of the same thing.”

She looked at me gratefully. “Thanks for understanding. And, yes, Dorothy and I’ve been here a long time.”

I hesitated, but the murder of her grandfather kept nagging at me. “Were you and your sister here when your grandfather was killed?”

Her brow knit. She looked at me in surprise. “How did you know about that?”

With an amiable grin, I said, “No big deal. I was out wandering around the grounds…”

She interrupted good-naturedly, “You mean you were bored, don’t you?”

I pointed a finger at her. “You got it. Bored. Anyway, I was wandering around the grounds, and I ran into Frank eating his lunch at the gazebo out back. We just talked. I had heard about
the case through the grapevine, and when he mentioned your grandfather, we got to talking.” I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a PI and naturally nosy.”

Her smile remained fixed on her lips, but her eyes clouded over as she relived those years. “Yeah, we were here. My folks were killed in a car wreck when I was ten. Dot, that’s my sister, she was twelve. Mawmaw Watkins was a sweet woman, but she was more interested in her bridge clubs and stuff like that than grandkids. Skylar never forgot birthdays and holidays. She adopted us.”

“She ever marry?”

Karla pursed her lips and shook her head. “No. I asked her once, and she said she’d never run across the right guy.” She looked me up and down appraisingly. “You might be the right one,” she said, half-joking, half-serious.

I leaned back and held up my hands in defense. “Hey, been there, done that, and failed miserably.” I gestured to the beautifully appointed room about us. “Besides, that would be like matching a broken-down plow horse with a Thoroughbred.”

She giggled. “Now who’s beating who up?”

“Just speaking the truth.”

“Well,” she said, eyeing me once again with a sultry gleam, “I don’t know about that.”

Henry stopped at the open door and peered inside. He held a spray can in his hand. His hairless face registered surprise that he quickly covered. “You need anything, Miss Karla?”

She looked at me. I shook my head. “No, Henry. Thank you.”

He came into the room and handed me the spray can. “Here. Wasp spray, but it’s for spiders too.”

“Thanks, Henry.”

After he left, Karla asked about the spiders. Sheepishly, I told her of the experience. She shivered and hastily surveyed her room.
“I don’t think I could ever sleep in here again if that happened to me.”

“Sure you could,” I said. “Now, back to what we were talking about. The night your grandfather was killed. How old were you then, eleven, twelve?”