Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen (4 page)

“Well, I… I really hope it's
not
Snowball, but…”

She snatched the sack and opened it, glaring at me the whole time. Then she turned the dead cat out onto the ground and wailed, “Noooo!”

All of a sudden I felt terrible. “Are you sure it's him? Maybe it's just a cat that—”

“Of course I'm sure!” she wailed. The cats surrounding us had quit staring at me and were now twitching their noses around Snowball. Miss Kitty said, “Ebony, Biscuit, get inside! Shoo, kitties, shoo! You, too, Moonie, Jeepers…inside!”

Now, the amazing thing is, one by one, every single cat turned and padded away. They didn't streak off or even hurry along, either. They walked. And as they walked, they kept turning their heads to look over their shoulders. Not at Snowball or the Kitty Queen.

No, at
me.

It was creepy, let me tell you. It was like they were thinking that
I
had killed their friend, and they were
going to figure out a way to get me back.

The Kitty Queen had been inspecting Snowball, and now she snapped, “Where'd you find him?”

“In a… in a trash can,” I said.

“In a
trash
can?”

“Uh-huh.” The cats were all gone, but I was still feeling a little freaked out.

“Where?” She was checking out his neck. His back. His flank.

“Um…” I looked at Holly, trying to figure out exactly how much I
didn't
want to say. “In an alley by Broadway. Off Wesler.”

She was prying open his mouth now. “By that hideous hotel?”

She was calling the Heavenly hideous? Had she looked in a mirror lately? But I just bit my tongue and said, “Yeah. Right around there.”

She pulled something out of Snowball's mouth, then turned to squint at us. “And why were you looking in trash cans back there?”

She was really unnerving Holly, so I said, “Holly works over there. She was just taking out the trash and happened to notice him.”

The Kitty Queen looked at Holly with a sneer. “I doubt you work at the Heavenly. Or that wrestling place. And you're too young to work at the bank.” Her eyes flashed. “Unless…” She stood up and crept in on Holly. “Unless you work at that nasty Pup Parlor!”

“It's not nasty!” Holly said. “It's—”

“Evil!” she shouted, pouncing forward. Then she
wagged something in Holly's face and screeched, “Do you know what this is?”

We both jumped back, but she pounced again. “DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS?”

“No!” Holly cried.

“It's the ear of a dog!” She wagged it again. “You see it? Huh? This is what killed my kitty!”

I said, “But—” but she turned and pounced
my
way, screeching, “But nothing!”

“Hey!” I shouted, trying to stand my ground. “It's not
our
fault!”

“If it weren't for
you
, my cat would probably still be alive!”

She was staring me down again, but boy, I wasn't going to let her win this time. I stared right back, saying, “How can you say that? We didn't have anything to do with this!”

“You expect me to believe that?” She pointed at Holly but still locked eyes with me.
“She
pampers killers! She washes them, she dries them, she puts little bows on them. She fools the general public into believing that they're cuddly, friendly companions when what they are is kitty killers!”

“You're crazy, you know that?” Her eyes flared when I said that, and it flashed through my brain that maybe she was actually possessed. She sure looked like it! But I tried not to act scared as I said, “You don't even know that's part of a dog's ear. You can't tell anything from that! It's way too small. Maybe it was another cat! Ever think of that? Maybe some tomcat killed him!”

“Maybe some
dog
killed him,” she said, keeping her
eyes locked on mine as she lifted the piece of ear between our faces.

Now, even with my eyes on hers, I could see the tattered tan hide, crusted in blood. That was plenty gross to begin with, but then she started rubbing it between her fingers, saying, “This feels like dog…” She brought it closer to her face and her nose twitched. “It smells like dog…” Then very slowly, she brought it to her lips and
licked
it. “And girl, it
tastes like
dog.”

“Eeeew,”
I said, and turned away. How could anyone win a stare-down against that?

Before she can gloat, though, a voice behind me says, “Sammy?”

I spin around. “Officer Borsch!”

“Took you long enough,” the Kitty Queen snaps.

“I just got on shift, ma'am.” He sizes up the situation. Me. Holly. Kitty-the-Dog-Licker. The dead cat. Then he lets out a deep sigh and says, “Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be more complicated than a simple missing cat?”

“There's no such thing as a simple missing cat!” the Dog Licker says down her nose at him. “And because of all your attention to my last two reports”—she points to Snowball—
“this is
what I have to face today!”

“I'm sorry for your loss, ma'am, but—”

“Oh, you don't give a hoot! There's a dog out there, and he's mauling my kitties! I expect you to find him, catch him, and destroy him!”

Officer Borsch hikes up his gun belt and nods. “We are doing the best we—”

“Oh, let me guess,” she says. “You've got your
canine
patrol on the case, right?”

Officer Borsch takes a deep breath, then goes over and stands by Snowball, looking down at him. “Who found him?”

So I tell him the story about Holly taking out the trash, and when I'm done he
hmms
and makes little sucking noises through his teeth. Then finally he lets out a weary sigh and says, “None of that gives me much to work with.”

The Dog Licker wags the piece of ear in his face. “Well, this should!”

“What's that?”

“A
dog
ear! I pried it out of my poor kitty's mouth.”

Officer Borsch squints at the fragment of fur. “A dog ear? Ma'am, how can you be so sure …”

“Don't ask,” I whisper to him. “You don't want to know.”

He eyes me, then takes another deep breath and goes back to his squad car for a Ziploc. And when he's got the piece of fur bagged, he takes off, saying, “We'll be sure to contact you if we discover anything.”

“You can't just leave!” the Kitty Queen screeches after him. “You have to write a report! You have to—” but Officer Borsch just keeps on trucking. So she takes it out on us. “Well?” she says. “What are you brats hanging around for?”

I snort and grumble, “You're welcome,” and head for the sidewalk. But before we can reach it, that crazy cat woman cranks up a hose and shouts, “Here's the thanks you deserve!” and soaks us with a power nozzle.

“What did you do
that
for?” I scream, charging back at her.

But she just blasts me until Holly drags me away, saying, “Sammy, come on!”

I was soaked from my head clear down to my butt. Water was actually running down my legs, inside my jeans. “Hold up a minute,” I said when we were on the sidewalk and out of reach. I wrung out my hair. I wrung out my shirt.

“Wow. She nailed you!”

“She's psycho!”

“You can say that again.”

So I'd wrung out all the water I could, and we were about to head up Cypress when I spotted a police car cruising toward us. “Don't forget,” I whispered when I saw that it was Officer Borsch, “he can
not
know where I live.”

Officer Borsch powered down the window, then leaned across the seat and called, “Wow. What happened to you?”

“That psycho hosed me down!”

He shook his head and chuckled, then nodded over to Holly. “I remember you now. New Year's. Sisquane. That whole business with the pig.”

Holly nodded and tried to keep a straight face. Not an easy thing, thinking back to how a two-hundred-pound pig had followed the Borschman all over Sisquane.

We'd called it Oinkers in Love.

“Hey,” I said. “Do you really think that piece of fuzz was the tip of a dog's ear? Since when do cats chomp
down on dogs? Don't they just hiss and claw and run up trees when dogs chase them? I mean, it looked more like a mouse ear to me.”

He nodded. “It could be anything.”

“And why'd she call you about her cat, anyway? Why didn't she call the pound, or the Humane Society, or put up lost-and-found posters? This is the third one she's missing? How many does she
have
? They're all over the place!”

He nodded and moved his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip. Like he was shifting around a wad of chew, deciding which, if any, of my questions he was going to answer. Finally he said, “I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, and enough for the neighbors to complain regularly. So you see, I get the joy of dealing with this from both sides of the fence. And why me?” He frowned. “I ask myself that every day.”

Just then a staticky voice came from inside the squad car. Officer Borsch sat up, said, “Ten-four, copy that,” into his radio, then called, “Stay out of trouble!” and zoomed off.

My clothes and hair were still wet when we reached the intersection of Broadway and Main. And since it was about time for me to be getting home anyway, I said bye to Holly and snuck around the Senior Highrise to the fire escape.

Now, if I hadn't been soaked to the spine, I might've gone in the front door. But I didn't want the manager, Mr. Garnucci, to ask me a bunch of questions later. Like why I was so wet coming in and dry going out. Or how
my grandmother happened to have an extra shirt and jeans in my size just lying around the apartment. So up the fire escape I went, to the fifth-floor door, which I've jammed with bubble gum so it doesn't latch.

And as I hurried down the hall to the apartment, I started wondering what kind of cake Grams had baked me. Maybe I'd be able to tell by smell! Yum!

But as I eased open the apartment door and said, “Can I come in?” I discovered that Grams had been up to a whole lot more than baking a cake.

“Mom!” I cried when I saw my mother in the kitchen.

“Surprise!” she said, coming over to give me a hug.

“Wow!” I pulled back and looked at her. “You're really here!”

She laughed. A tinkly, sparkly laugh. Like it had been tapped with fairy dust.

“And oh!” I called to Grams in the kitchen. “That smells wonderful!” I inched a little closer. “I smell chocolate! And candied oranges! And toasted walnuts. And…”

“Stop!” Grams said. She was scrambling around like crazy. “It's supposed to be a surprise.”

“It is!” I laughed, and hugged my mother again.

But after a second she backed away and said, “Samantha, you're soaked! What happened?”

“Oh,” I said. “It's kind of a long story.”

Grams laughed and called from the kitchen, “Prepare yourself, Lana.”

My mom smiled at me like, well? So I shrugged and said, “I was hosed down by a crazy cat lady.”

“For?”

“For returning her dead cat.”

Mom's smile started to fade. “For returning her dead cat?”

But just then, out of nowhere,
my
cat jumps right over my feet, dives under the kitchen table, and pounces on something in the corner.

My mother puts one hand to her heart and catches her breath. “What on earth…?”

“Hey, Dorito,” I say, moving toward my cat. “What'cha got there?”

Now, I can tell he's not just playing with a kitty toy— he's being way too intense. So I crouch beside him, and when he turns to face me, there's something long and skinny sticking out of his mouth. And it's
twitching.
Like some sort of freaky alien tongue.

“That's a
tail
,“ Mom squeaks.

I clamp onto Dorito's muzzle and try to pry his teeth apart, but Grams kneels beside me and says, “It's a mouse, Samantha—just let him have it!”

“But Grams… !” I felt so sorry for the mouse, trapped inside jaws of death, twitching like crazy to get free.

“Oh! Eeeew!” my mom squeals, and believe me, she's looking around for a chair to jump on.

“Samantha,” Grams says gently, “this is what cats do. This is what they're for.”

I frown at her. “This is what they're
for?
You mean you got me Dorito so he could catch mice?”