Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We're In Trouble! (The Toad Witch Mysteries Book 2) (18 page)

Gus sighed and hung his head. I didn’t even have to try to hear him thinking that the full moon couldn’t come soon enough.

Just then, the doorbell rang. “Police. Open up.”

Gus looked at me, confused. “Did you call animal control on the cats?”

“Of course not!” I protested. It hadn’t actually occurred to me that I could. But I tucked it away in my head as an idea to think about.

Chapter 33

I
opened the door to Officer Brand and his female partner, Officer Chen.

Officer Brand was pretty cute. He reminded me of Gus’s brother, all muscles and dimples. Officer Chen looked like she was being dragged around on a door-to-door against her will. She looked pissed and bored and ready to shoot someone.

I smiled at them. “Can I help you, Officers?”

Officer Brand held out a photo. “Have you seen this young man?”

Curious, Gus looked over my shoulder. It was a picture of J.J.

“Isn’t that the clerk at the Trading Post?” Gus asked.

“Yes, it is.” Officer Chen said, glaring at us. “We have reason to believe he was last seen here.”

Gus looked at her, confused. “Here? Why would he be here? And what do you mean, ‘last seen’—is he dead?”

“God, no,” said Officer Brand. “At least, we hope not. His family reported him missing.”

“I haven’t seen him,” Gus said. “Mara?”

Ugh.
What was I going to say? I couldn’t very well tell them I thought he had been turned into a rat. But when in doubt, go with the truth, right? Or at least, all the truth fit for human consumption.

“Yeah, I saw him. He stopped by, looking for something he lost and I gave him a ride into town. Is that when he went missing?”

“What was he looking for?” Officer Chen asked.

Crap. What was I going to tell them? J.J. misplaced his pot farm? If they found it, he’d go to jail. And they’d probably toss me in as well, since it’s somewhere on my property.

“A…” I was going to say a necklace he bought for his sister, but what if he didn’t have a sister? What could he possibly be looking for? I caught a glimpse of Gus’s colorful Band-Aids, out of the corner of my eye. “Comic book. He borrowed a comic book from a friend of his and lost it.”

“Why would he have lost it here?” Gus asked. “He doesn’t hang out here.”

I tried to think ‘
shut up’
at Gus as hard as I could. “He said he went to the little cemetery in the woods to pay his respects to Aunt Tillie and was wondering if he dropped it on the path.”

Well, that was close enough to the truth, right?

“You said you drove him into town?” Officer Brand asked, writing on his notepad.

I nodded. “I dropped him off in front of the pharmacy.”

“Which way did he go?” Officer Chen asked.

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know? You dropped him off, right?” she said, giving me the cop equivalent of the evil eye.

“Yeah, but then I saw his boyfriend,” I jerked my thumb at Gus, “coming out of the diner and I got so distracted, I didn’t even notice J.J. getting out of the car. Much less which direction he went.”

“How can you not notice someone getting out of your car?” Officer Chen asked, still giving me the stink eye.

Gus looked at me, annoyed. “She does that. It’s this weird hyper-focused thing she does. It’s a total pain in the ass. I can be in the middle of a conversation with her and then I realize she’s focused on something else and hasn’t heard a thing. It’s like,
bam
, Mara’s not only left the building, she’s no longer on the planet.”

Officer Chen rolled her eyes, clearly not impressed with my observational skills. “So, when
did
you notice the young man had gotten out of your car?”

“Another Officer came up and told me I was in a no-parking zone. I was about to tell him I was just dropping J.J. off, when I noticed he wasn’t in the car. I figured he must have hopped out while I was glaring at Forrest.”

“Seriously? Is that any way to behave?” Gus asked.

“I’m sorry. He may be your boyfriend, but I don’t like him.”

Officer Brand handed me a card. “If you remember anything else, or if the young man contacts you, please let us know. His family is worried about him.”

As I closed the door after the officers, a god-awful ruckus started upstairs—thumps, screams, growls, thuds and screeches.

“Oh, fuck!” Gus hollered over the din. “Why didn’t you put the dogs outside?”

“Because I wasn’t really leaving! Why’d you let the cats out?”

“I didn’t!”

The Dobes came galloping down the stairs and into the kitchen, clearly freaked out, the cats riding them like demented jockeys.

The bronze cat was facing backwards, spraying on Apollo’s head.

Meanwhile, the white cat was biting into Aramis’s neck, doing his best imitation of a furry Dracula.

It was simultaneously funny, scary and bizarre. Gus and I both looked at each other like:
this can’t really be happening!
And in that instant, I knew Gus had finally forgiven me and things were going to be all right.

I turned and followed them into the kitchen, yelling for the dogs to halt. They skidded to a stop, whimpering. Both dogs had bloody gashes, and they were looking at me to save them.

I turned the water on in the kitchen sink, and with the spray attachment, I hosed the cats down. But they weren’t about to relinquish their hold, water or no water.

“Knock it off!” I yelled at the cats. “Before I send you to a wild animal rescue.”

They glared at me, with a look that clearly said: “You've got to be kidding. You have
no
leverage over us. None at all. We will do as we please.”

I turned on the water full blast, and hosed down the demonic baby leopards again, until they slowly jumped off the dogs—giving me a slit-eyed cat look that left no doubt they were complying because they were
choosing
to comply, not because I had anything to do with it.

I quickly shoved the dogs into the mudroom, blocking them in with my body and tossed a pair of gardening gloves to Gus. “Grab those cats and put them away!”

“Patience, woman. I’m getting them.” He put the gloves on and bent to grab hold of the hissing, biting, scratching, Ginsu-clawed cat-nadoes. Bright swaths of blood appeared on his arms, above the gloves. I could tell he was trying not to scream in pain.

Just then, the front doorbell started ringing again.

“What the hell?! Are the cops back?” Gus snapped.

“How should I know?” I asked, frustrated.

“Maybe you can start by answering the door.”

The bell rang again and the Dobies turned into barking, snarling fiends. They shoved their way past me, knocking me to the ground, and setting the cats into new paroxysms of torture-induction.

Gus screamed as the bronze kitten sank its fangs into his arm, while the white one raked him with its hind legs.

“For the love of the Gods, would you get the door before these two kill me?” Gus hollered as he picked up the cats—who were making sounds I’d never heard a cat make.

He hustled them upstairs to his room, hissing with pain at every new injury they inflicted, leaving a trail of blood in his wake, while I got up from the floor and limped after the dogs. 

Chapter 34

I
pushed through the Dobes and opened the door to find Paul standing there.

“Your timing sucks,” I snapped. “What do you want?” 

He looked completely taken aback. “I’m here to pick you up.”

“What for?!”

“Are you kidding me? You forgot?!”

I looked at him, exasperated. With everything that had been going on today, I didn’t have the patience for guessing games. And I really needed to check on Gus.

“The 3-D ultrasound? Remember?”

I closed my eyes.
Crap.
I had totally forgotten.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s been a rough day. No caffeine. Cats gone wild. Too much stress. I’m a little cranky.”

“I’m sure I’ve been part of the stress,” Paul said. “I want to apologize for that. Wait. What do you mean,
Cats Gone Wild
? What do topless cats have to do with anything? Or is that code for something else?”

I laughed. “You’ve been watching too many cable commercials. Come in, sit down, I’ll tell you all about it in a minute. I have to go check on Gus.”

I stood back so he could enter. The Dobes immediately switched personas from ferocious guard puppies to laughing, smiling, leg-rubbing,
‘pet me’
fools. And this time, instead of being paralyzed with anxiety, Paul walked right in and started playing with them.

*     *     *

I left Paul with the Dobes and ran upstairs to check on Gus. The cats were yowling in his bedroom. The knob was turning like a possessed thing, but the door stayed closed. Gus must have locked it. I walked down the hall and found him in the bathroom, staring at his bleeding arms. I glanced at the trashcan, where two empty Neosporin tubes and empty Band-Aid boxes were getting cozy with each other.

“Need help?” I asked.

“I need a third hand. The Band-Aids keep sliding on the Neosporin and smearing it off my skin.”

“You’re lucky you don’t need stitches,” I said. The gashes and bites on his arms were angry, the skin around them pink and inflamed. “Are you allergic to cats?”

“I don’t think so,” Gus said. “Why?”

“Your arms look like my back did, when I got tested for allergies. A few stitches on that big gash may not be a bad idea.”

He shook his head. “If the Band-Aids don’t work, I have super-glue in my bedroom.”

I rolled my eyes. I knew super-glue was a viable alternative to stitches, but I had a hard time wrapping my head around using it, after a lifetime of being told not to get it on my skin. “Move over.”

Gus moved aside and I dug around in the medicine cabinet until I found giant gauze pads and tape, as well as hydrogen peroxide, the last tube of Neosporin, and a box of butterfly bandages.

“Hold your arms over the sink,” I said, opening the bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

“Are you kidding me? That’s going to hurt!”

“It is not. If you want pain, I can pull out the rubbing alcohol.”

Gus narrowed his eyes, but complied. “You are a cruel and unusual woman.”

“And that’s why you love me,” I said, pouring the hydrogen peroxide over his arms. It fizzled and bubbled, cleaning out whatever infection had set into his wounds. A lot of people don’t like hydrogen peroxide, but it was the most effective thing I had found to clear up cuts that were bordering on infections. I dried his arms off, then squeezed the Neosporin on a cotton swab and started applying it to Gus’s wounds.

“Who was at the door? Was it the cops again?”

 “Nope. Just Paul.”

“Figures. His timing sucks.”

“That’s what I told him.”

“That was so weird about J.J., wasn’t it?”

I nodded.

“You know, it’s just you and me, now,” he said. “You can tell me what’s going on.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, applying fresh Band-Aids.

“I know you know something about that kid. Cough it up.”

I sighed. “I think he may have gotten turned into a rat.” Okay, that sounded crazy even to me.

“I’m sorry,” Gus said. “What did you say? I think I may have gone deaf in that ear.”

I made a face. “You heard me. I don’t think he got out of the SUV, I think he got turned into a rat.”

“Seriously? That’s… crazy talk. People can’t physically turn into animals.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. I have a rat in my room and it’s either J.J. or J.J.’s pet. I can’t decide.”

Gus howled with laughter. “This I have to see.”

“Hold on. Let me finish.” I fastened the gauze pads around his arms with tape. “There.”

By the time I was done, Gus looked like he had morphed into a very colorful, Son of the Mummy.

*     *     *

In my bedroom, Gus and I both stared at the rat. It twitched its whiskers at us, then grabbed a piece of lettuce and started gnawing on it.

“I named him Gronwy of Rattenshire, just in case it’s not J.J. Maybe he slipped out of the car and left the rat behind.”

“That gets my vote. Although turning into a rat would be way cooler.”

“The problem is, ever since then, no one’s seen J.J. Not his co-workers, not his neighbors, he hasn’t returned home. So… I don’t know.”

Gus leaned closer and held out a finger for Gronwy to sniff through the bars.

“Careful. He got a little bite-y when I gave him a bath.”

“Are you even supposed to give rats baths?”

I stopped to think. “I don’t know. But he was pretty smelly—kinda like J.J.—so I did.”

“Hmmm. I don’t think it’s J.J.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he’s straight, right? When a pretty girl gives a straight guy a bath, he’s not thinking about defensive biting. His brain is somewhere else, entirely.”

“You may have a point. But it may not work the same way when that brain is shrunk down to rat-sized.” I opened the cage and Gronwy ran up my arm and hid in my hair, chattering at Gus.

Gus tried to grab him by the tail, and Gronwy turned and promptly bit his thumb.

“Ow! What the hell?! I get enough of that from the cats.”

“At least the dogs don’t bite you,” I said. “So it’s not like you’re pissing off the
entire
animal kingdom.”

The clock radio went off, playing—of all things—Michael Jackson singing
Ben
. A song about a rat.

“What kind of radio station are you listening to?” Gus asked. “Show tunes from the last century? Oldies-R-Us? Top 100 Hits From The Crypt Keeper?”

“Don’t look at me. I have no control over the radio.” I pointed at the unplugged cord that was sitting, curled up, on the dresser. “It plays whatever and whenever it wants. I can’t do a thing about it.”

As
Ben
finished,
Bad Moon Rising
by Creedence Clearwater Revival started.

Gus picked up the clock radio and examined it. “That’s just weird. Not as weird as J.J. being a rat, but still…”

“I know. I unplugged it before Misrule, but it still keeps playing.” I picked Gronwy up off my shoulder and returned him to his cage.