Cat's-Paw, Inc. Read online

  Cat's-Paw, Incorporated

  by

  L. L. Thrasher

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2012 by Linda L. Baty (L. L. Thrasher)

  ISBN 978-0-9855948-4-8

  Hardcover Edition Published by Write Way Books

  Copyright © 1991 by Linda Thrasher Baty

  Kindle eBook Cover Image copyright © Myotis/Shutterstock.com or oriontrail/Shutterstock.com (blue bullethole)

  Image Modifications by Julie Elaine Neil

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locales, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  072414

  DEDICATION

  In Memory of Gregory Walton Thrasher

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Other Books by L. L. Thrasher

  Chapter One

  Someone was trying to take my gun away.

  I grabbed the hand and Carrie said, “Ow. Damn it, let go.” I let go and was asleep again before the .38 cleared the holster.

  The next time I woke up, someone was poking me in the shoulder. I rolled over and pried one eye open just enough to see Carrie's husband standing beside the couch. He looked mad. I closed my eye.

  “If you ever come in here again and pass out dead drunk with that damn gun on, I'm going to beat the hell out of you,” he said.

  My head hurt too much to snicker rudely so I said, “I won't do it again, Tom,” and rolled back onto my side.

  “Zachariah?” He sounded contrite. Maybe he thought he'd scared me. “I just don't want the baby to get it.”

  “She couldn't get it.” I listened to him walk away and went back to sleep.

  The next time I woke up, I was lying on my back and Melissa was sitting on my chest, stark naked. I stuck the tip of my finger in her bellybutton and jiggled it. She giggled and hit me across the face with a turquoise swimming suit.

  “Am I supposed to put this on you? Where's your mother?”

  “I'm peeling eggs.” Carrie's voice came through the archway leading from the heavily draped family room into the kitchen. The sunlight streaming through the opening was painfully bright. I closed my eyes but it didn't help much and my rib cage was being used as a trampoline so I swung my legs over the edge of the couch and sat up, standing Melissa on the floor and pressing the heels of both hands against my forehead as my brain slammed into my skull.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Sit,” Melissa said, with the identical intonation.

  “Don't repeat what Uncle Zachariah says, Missy. Uncle Zachariah is no gentleman and you're a little lady.” Carrie was standing in the archway, wearing a white maternity top and bright pink shorts that seemed to be shimmering in the sunshine. After a brief squint at her, I said to Melissa, “Listen to your mother. You'll have your sex-role stereotypes down pat before your second birthday.” I shielded my eyes with my hand and glanced at Carrie again. “Can't you dress her? My head hurts.”

  “I'm peeling eggs.” There was a definite lack of sympathy in her voice. She turned and clattered, much too loudly, across the kitchen tile. I stuffed Melissa's plump little body into the swimming suit with no noticeable assistance from her. She padded off toward the kitchen, turning at the door to say her version of “Uncle Zachariah,” which sounded like a tape being played backward.

  With a little help from the arm of the couch I made it to my feet and turned toward her, eyes half-closed against the light. “What, babycakes?”

  She patted the shiny fabric stretched over her belly. “Piddy?” she asked.

  “Very pretty. In a few years you'll be breaking all the little boys' hearts.” There was a distinct snort from the kitchen. “I'm in favor of sex-role stereotypes,” I said, too loudly. Waves of pain bounced across the top of my skull.

  “All you macho types are.” Carrie was back in the shaft of light.

  “Slip your shoes off, cookie, and you'll be barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen. Is there any coffee?”

  There was a pause, about as pregnant as Carrie, then she said she'd make some. Melissa and I followed her into the yellow and white country kitchen, which reeked of hard-boiled eggs. I opened the screen door for Melissa and watched her bellyflop into three inches of water in a wading pool.

  “If you plan to yell at me, do it quietly, okay?”

  Carrie didn't answer. She was making coffee and a lot of unnecessary noise. I walked carefully down the hall and up the stairs, trying to keep my head on an even keel. I rummaged around on the top shelf of the linen closet where Carrie stashed my shaving kit and anything else I left lying around her house. The only clothes I could find were a pair of shorts that had once been Levi's button-fly jeans and an old blue T-shirt with BIGGER IS TOO BETTER printed in darker blue across the front. No socks and no underwear but better than wearing the clothes I had slept in.

  I looked into the bathroom off the hall. The tub was littered with decapitated torsos and an assortment of arms and legs. Four round pink babydoll heads were lined up on the rim, staring at me. I went through Tom and Carrie's bedroom and checked the floor of their shower. A loofah sponge and a pink disposable razor. If I didn't step on the razor and cut a toe off, I'd be all right.

  I brushed the taste of last night's tequila from my mouth, showered without cutting myself, and shaved, cutting myself only twice. Barefoot and splendidly attired in two shades of faded blue, I followed the smell of coffee back to the kitchen.

  Carrie actually poured me a cup. Maybe I was going to get some sympathy after all. I sneaked a peek at her face as she sat down across from me at the glass-topped table by the window. I wasn't going to get any sympathy. I decided to try a neutral topic and asked where Tom was.

  “At the hospital. He's just catching up on some paperwork. He'll be home soon.”

  I hoped he would hurry and save me from his wife. Carrie sighed. My stomach muscles tensed. I decided to parry before she could thrust.

  “I drink less than
anyone I know, including you.”

  Her smile was excessively sweet. “When was the last time you crawled in here at three in the morning and passed out on the couch?”

  Touché.

  “I didn't crawl, I walked. I might have staggered a little but I definitely didn't crawl.” She knew as well as I did that it had been exactly one year ago.

  “April's been gone a long time,” she said.

  “Yeah, time flies. Here it is almost the end of August already.”

  Her eyes flashed blue sparks at me. “You know goddamn well I'm not talking about the goddamn month. It's been three years.”

  Three years, three months, and nine days. I kept track with the obsessiveness of a man in solitary marking time on the wall of his cell. “I'm doing better,” I said. It wasn't much of a defense but it was the only one I had.

  “Better than what? First you were a zombie, then you played town drunk and screwed anyone who'd stand still long enough. This past year you've been about as sociable as Howard Hughes. How about a return to normal? She's gone.”

  “Stand still long enough?”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Howard Hughes is dead anyway.”

  “I know, think about it. And if you aren't going to say anything, just don't talk.”

  Sounded like a good idea to me. I looked out the window. Melissa was sitting on the lawn beside the pool, her skin dappled with sunshine and shade from the juniper tree. She was yanking up fistfuls of grass and tossing them into the air. Her dark hair was flecked with green and so was the water in the pool.

  “You shouldn't go out drinking wearing a gun, anyway,” Carrie said.

  “I don't know why I shouldn't but I didn't anyway, if that makes you feel better. I walked over here from the Honky Tonk. The gun was in the trunk and I didn't want to leave it. I'll be lucky if the car isn't stripped and up on blocks when I go get it. Or stolen.”

  “God, who would want it? You know what your problem is?”

  “Yeah, I have a hangover.”

  “You have a bad case of inertia.”

  “Leave me alone, Carolina.” The use of her given name had been forbidden since high school when she was taunted with that oldie-but-goodie about nothing being finer than being in Carolina. Since their marriage, I'd heard Tom whistle the tune a few thousand times and the looks Carrie gave him had nothing to do with anger, so maybe the name didn't bother her much anymore. At any rate, she ignored my attempt to make her too mad to talk to me.

  “Do you know what I'm talking about?” she asked.

  “Jesus. I took physics. Inertia,” I recited, “the tendency of matter at rest to remain at rest unless acted upon by an external force.”

  “Well, that's you. Matter at rest. And you won't let an external force anywhere near you. Why don't you ask someone out?”

  “I don't remember how.”

  “For crying out loud. Go hang around the Starlight Club in a T-shirt. You won't have to ask.”

  I considered her advice briefly. “Should I wear pants?”

  Carrie's laugh was pure reflex and she tried to stop it with her hands. When she stopped sputtering, I said, “There's another part to inertia. The tendency of matter in motion to continue moving in the same direction unless et cetera. I was moving downhill. I'm better off standing still.”

  “It isn't just women. You don't do anything. You sit out there in a half-finished house feeling sorry for yourself. And getting drunk on your wedding anniversary is just plain pathetic.”

  “I do my job. Which reminds me, I should see if I have any calls.” I put my empty cup in the dishwasher and picked up the receiver of the wall phone. Carrie started talking so I held the hang-up button down with my thumb.

  “Do you remember about a year ago we were over at your house and I was lying down nursing Melissa and I mentioned that your bed was sloshing something awful and you said you needed to burp it?”

  I didn't remember but I nodded anyway.

  “And last week we were there and Melissa was playing on the bed and it was sloshing and you said you needed to burp it?”

  That I remembered so I nodded again.

  “Well, in a whole year you haven't managed to burp your bed.”

  I closed my eyes briefly, in genuine pain. “What the hell is that? Symbolism? My life is an unburped waterbed?”

  “I don't know about symbolism but it's certainly symptomatic.”

  With as much dignity as possible, which wasn't much, I said, “I do not believe that burping my bed will significantly improve my state of mind.”

  I turned to the phone and tapped out my office number. Carrie stood beside me, gripping my upper arm hard in both hands and pressing her forehead against my shoulder. The phone rang six times before it was answered. It was supposed to be picked up on the third ring but I never complained. The operators at the Main Street Answering Service had been known to do some above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty errands for me. Marilyn, whom I knew only by her high-pitched voice, trilled, “Arrow Investigations.”

  “Hi. Anyone want me?”

  “Yes, hang on… here it is. A Mr. Jason Finney wants you to call.” She gave me the number, just five digits since all the phones in Mackie start with the same two numbers. I jotted the number on Carrie's wall calendar and asked if he'd mentioned what it was about.

  “Well, no.” Marilyn sounded hesitant. I waited. Mackie is a small town. “You want some gossip?” she asked.

  “Shoot,” I said.

  “Bang,” Marilyn said and giggled. Her giggle was an octave or two higher than her voice and set off a throbbing ache behind my eyes. “Okay,” she said. “My kid hangs out with a kid named Hank Johnston and Hank Johnston has been steady-dating a girl named Jessica Finney. And Jessica Finney ran away from home a couple days ago.”

  Another runaway. Just what I needed. “Thanks, Marilyn. I may not replace you with an answering machine after all.”

  “Where are you going to find a machine that'll accept collect calls from heavy breathers?”

  “You got a point,” I said and told her goodbye. I replaced the receiver and rubbed my cheek against the top of Carrie's head. “You worry too much,” I said. “I'm fine.” She nodded and after a moment she let go of me and went outside.

  I thumbed through the phone book while Finney's line was ringing. A woman answered and asked me to hold on. I found Finney's listing. His address was in Mackie's highest-priced neighborhood, which either meant he could afford me or he was in over his head and couldn't.

  A man said, “Finney here” into my ear. Our conversation was brief. He asked when he could see me in my office. It was almost noon so I suggested one o'clock. He said fine and hung up on me.

  “If I were your kid, I'd run away, too,” I told the dead phone and hung it up.

  I took a bag of nacho-flavored Doritos with me and joined Carrie at the redwood picnic table in the backyard. She had The Oregonian spread all over the table and had the Living section open to the page where Ann Landers and Dear Abby nestled together in sisterly camaraderie. Carrie seemed to be engrossed in other people's problems and I didn't want to talk about mine anyway so I ate the chips and studied her face, an activity that provided me with endless, if somewhat guilty, enjoyment.

  Her naturally straight black hair had been permed into a mass of loose curls that softened the square lines of her face. She had never liked her nose with its distinctive rise at the bridge but a lesser nose would have looked silly with the strong cheekbones and jaw and the wide mouth. Her eyes were downcast but I knew the color well—bright summer-sky blue. The long vertical creases set back in her cheeks were barely visible but would deepen considerably if she smiled. She looked up, not smiling at all, looking a bit offended in fact.

  “Am I crunching too loudly?” I asked.

  “You're staring too loudly.”

  “Oh. I was just thinking how pretty you are.”

  She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “That's sweet, I guess. A bit narci
ssistic perhaps, but sweet.” She went back to reading the paper and I watched my niece, who was trying to empty her pool with a spoon from a toy tea set.

  A few minutes later, Melissa emitted a squeal of glass-shattering intensity as Tom came through the wrought iron gate. He plucked his daughter from the pool for a quick hug, then returned her and walked to the table, fanning the wet fabric of his shirt against his chest. He was in tennis whites and with the pale hair, blue eyes, and deep tan he looked just like a southern California tennis pro, which was exactly what he had been while he was working his way through medical school. He had recently closed his private practice to take a position as a full-time emergency room doctor at Mackie General Hospital.

  He greeted Carrie with “Hello, Yin” and a kiss, greeted me with “Hello, Yang” without a kiss, said “How's tricks, Junior?” to his wife's belly and asked if the fight was over.

  “We didn't fight,” Carrie and I said in perfect unison.

  Tom laughed and Carrie said, “Well, we didn't. I just gave him some good advice.”

  “What advice?”

  “She told me to go home and burp my fucking bed.”

  Tom waggled his eyebrows. “As opposed to your sleeping bed?”

  Carrie and I groaned, again in unison.

  “On that note,” I said, “I think I'll leave.”

  A few minutes later, with my Reeboks on my sockless feet and last night's clothes and my gun strapped into the child carrier behind me, I pedaled down the long driveway on Tom's ten-speed.

  Tom and Carrie's remodeled farmhouse on Franklin Street is the very last house at the west end of Mackie. At the edge of their big lot, Franklin ends in a T-intersection. The cross street is Bunyard Road. Six miles west on Bunyard is my house. To the east, less than three miles away, is downtown Mackie. Somewhere along the way to town Bunyard Road becomes Main Street, a name that retains its original significance since the closest Mackie comes to a shopping mall is Safeway and Payless sharing a big building at the north end of town.

  I slowed at the T-intersection while a blue BMW made a wide left turn onto Franklin. The driver was Carrie's next-door neighbor and my ex-boss, Robert Harkins, Chief of Police. Our eyes met briefly and without warmth. I pedaled on into town, stirring up enough of a breeze to make the ninety-plus temperature seem almost pleasant.