“It's been a good five years since I've seen her. She lives in that orange adobe place down the street.”
My eyes bugged out. “That place? Every time I go by, there are cats everywhere. On the fences, on the porch, in the yard… that place is just creepin' with cats!”
“Very well put,” he laughed.
“And she wants to be called Kitty?” I shook my head. “I think she's more like crazy.”
Hudson gave a little nod. “She's definitely someone who could use a little help.”
I snorted.
And that, I thought, was the end of that.
After the Kitty Queen left, Hudson invited me to watch him develop some pictures in his darkroom. Now, if it had been a school day, I might have gone. But it was Saturday, and it was beautiful outside. Flowers were blooming, birds were chirping, there were little puffer-belly clouds all across the sky. And the air smelled sweet—like pine resin and honeysuckle and… sawdust. I love the smell of sawdust. Don't ask me why, I just do.
Anyway, the point is, I didn't feel like being cooped up in a dark little room with stinky developer and a bare red safety bulb. I wanted to go do something. And normally I would have ridden over to Marissa's house, only Marissa had been kidnapped by her parents for a weekend of “family love and reacquaintance” in Las Vegas, of all places.
So instead I headed over to the Pup Parlor to see if I could get my friend Holly to break away from her chores. But as I was cruising up Broadway, clicking along the sidewalk past the Heavenly Hotel, this lady I know named Gina—or Madame Nashira, as she's called by her clients—steps out of the lobby.
“Sammy,” she sings. “How are you, girl?”
“Great,” I tell her. “How about you?” I size up all her scarves and bracelets and her mountain of shellacked hair. “You going to work?”
“Yup,” she says. “The House of Astrology awaits.” She grins and adds, “Got a birth chart to finish—some classy lady's paying me double to do a rush job.”
“Cool,” I tell her, ‘cause even though I don't believe in all that stuff, Gina makes it seem interesting. I mean, listening to her talk about the twelve houses of the zodiac, and conversions into sidereal time, and all the other stuff she jabbers on about when she's telling you what she does as a fortune-teller, well, it almost makes you believe that she really is a star scientist.
Anyway, she says, “Don't be a stranger, girlfriend. Stop by and see me sometime.” And she's hurrying off, tippy-tap-tapping her way down to Main Street in her spiky high heels, when all of a sudden she turns and says, “You're an Aries, aren't you?”
For a second I just stare, but finally I nod and shrug like, Yeah, so what?
She tippy-tap-taps back to me, then tilts my chin up and looks deep into my eyes. “And you have a birthday coming up real soon, don't you?”
I break free of her and shrug again, saying, “Yeah. Tomorrow,” as I toe at microscopic rocks with my high-top.
“Tomorrow! Well, hey. I know you think it's bogus, but you ought to let me do your birth chart. I promised it to you way back in what? September? Let me give it to you for your birthday. All I need is a birth certificate.” She laughs. “You got one of those, right? Everybody's got one of those.”
I shake my head. “Well, actually, no.”
“Well, your mom does, right? She's got to. So get it from her. Then come in and see me.” She starts walking down the street, calling, “It'll be fun!”
So I head up to the Pup Parlor, trying to shake off the thought of my birthday. And when I jingle through the door, I call out “Hi, Vera. Hi, Meg!” to Holly's guardians. “Is Holly around?”
Meg was combing out a cairn terrier, and Vera was busy soaping down a golden retriever. Both of them said, “Sammy!” and then Vera added, “Holly's out back, dumping the trash.”
“Probably peeking in on that carnival next door,” Meg said.
Vera blasted on the water sprayer, calling, “Go on back and see!”
“Thanks!”
I went through the grooming room, turned left at the register, and made my way past pet carriers and stacks of towels to the back door. And sure enough, there was Holly, crouched behind the bumper of a long white van, peeking in Slammin' Dave's back door, a big plastic garbage bag at her side.
“Hey!” I whispered when I got up close.
She jumped a little, then laughed. “You should never have gotten me started on this.”
I laughed, too. “I know. But how can you not watch?”
There were guys pumping iron over to one side and bodies smacking onto mats on another. The guy with the cat hood was there, talking to a man wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. Slammin' Dave was coaching two wrestlers in the ring. One had a good-sized gut hanging over tight black wrestling shorts. The other guy was in skimpy red shorts and had the biggest outie I'd ever seen. I swear, it looked like a little fleshy toilet plunger, without the stick. Both of them were wearing tall black wrestling shoes, knee pads, and elbow pads.
“That's Ronnie Reaper in black and The Blitz in red,” Holly whispered.
Ronnie Reaper dragged The Blitz along, spun him around, then lifted him up and dropped him so The Blitz's stomach squashed across his knee.
Holly cringed, “Oowww,” as The Blitz collapsed onto the mat.
Slammin' Dave pulled Ronnie Reaper back, and when The Blitz straightened up, I was sure his outie would have been plunged to an innie, but there it was, poking way out.
I whispered, “I always thought pro wrestling was so bogus, but man, they are really hurting each other.”
Holly nodded. “Meg and Vera call it a carnival—which it kind of is—but they won't even give it a chance.”
Just then Slammin' Dave comes charging toward us, saying, “How many times do I have to tell you? This is not a peep show!”
“Hey!” I call as he's shutting the door in our faces. “I'm thinking about signing up!”
He hesitates, and looks me over. “You?”
“Yeah!” I flex a biceps at him. “I've got potential, don't you think?”
He snickers.
“C'mon!” I flex a little harder and turn from side to side like a body builder. “I may be scrawny, but I'm tough. And Holly here's a real gymnast. She does flips and stuff like you wouldn't believe.”
Holly looks at me like, I do? but Dave doesn't seem to notice. Instead, he stops scowling and actually opens the door a little wider.
“Besides,” I tell him, “everyone's always saying how bogus pro wrestling is, but I tell them you're for real.”
Now he's grinning. “You do, huh?”
“Yeah! So come on. Don't close the door.”
All of a sudden the guy in the cat mask is standing behind him. “We're ready,” he says to Slammin' Dave. His voice is low and raspy, which is kind of creepy right there. But then he looks at me, and I about freak. He's got cat eyes—yellowish gold with long black pupils. And I know he's just wearing a pair of those wacky contact lenses you can buy for parties and stuff, but the whole package of him in his cat hood and those eyes is giving me chills.
“Well,” Slammin' Dave says to us. “We do need the ventilation, so as long as you're interested in the sport, and not just gawking…”
“We'll be cool,” I tell him. “And don't worry, we won't put up bleachers or anything.”
He laughs and wags a finger at me. “Start pumping some iron—someday we'll put that spunk of yours to good use.” Then he props the door all the way open and heads back inside.
The cat guy, though, doesn't follow him right away. He waits until Dave's out of earshot, then steps toward me and whispers, “Go away!”
“Dave said we could stay.”
He glances over his shoulder, then says between his teeth, “Curiosity kills the cat, so scat!”
Now, I'm not big on being bossed around. Especially not by potbellied cat dudes. So I lean forward a little and—just because it seems like a good way to get my point across to this guy—I bare
my teeth and let out a low, doggy growl.
He doesn't say a word. He just squints his cat eyes at me, then follows Slammin' Dave back to the ring.
“Wow,” Holly whispers. “That guy's got issues.”
“No kidding.”
Anyway, we keep watching for a little while, and we get totally into the way The Blitz and Ronnie Reaper are going at it in the ring. Holly and I even try a couple of moves that they're practicing on each other. One's a block, and the other's this slick twisteroo-hammer-hold-make-'em-bite-the-mat move. It takes us a couple of tries to get that one, but when we do, Holly and I both go, “Oh, that's cool! Let me try it again.”
So we're in the middle of twisting each other around when the guy in the white T-shirt and jeans comes out with some trash.
He sees Holly and says, “Hey, chiquita. What's shakin'?”
“Hey, Tony,” she says back. “We're just watching.” “Looks like you girls are preppin' for the big leagues.” Holly and I both kind of blush, but he doesn't make a big deal out of it. He throws the trash bags into Slammin' Dave's bin and says, “So when you gonna get your old ladies to hire me? I'm quick. I'm cheap. Lots of people around here use me.” He takes her trash sack and flings it on top of his heap. “Let Tornado Tony do your work— you girls should be at the mall.”
Holly laughs. “Thanks, but we do fine on our own.” “Don't you even want to know my rates?” Holly shakes her head. “It's never gonna happen, Tony.”
“Hey, I don't believe in never, so expect me to keep trying.” Then he nods and says, “Cha-cha, girls,” and goes back inside.
Holly eyes Slammin' Dave's trash bin, which is now overflowing. “I'd better not leave that there,” she says, more to herself than to me. “Vera'd have a fit.”
I follow her over to the Pup Parlor trash bin, asking, “So, do you think you'll have any time to cruise around today?”
“Maybe.” Her trash-bin lid won't stay propped open, so I hold it up while she hefts the sack. And she's in the middle of swinging it into the bin when all of a sudden she stops and moves some papers aside. Then she gasps. It's a weird gasp, too. With a little squeak to it. So I look inside the trash bin to see what she's so wideeyed and gaspy about, and in a heartbeat my eyes are popping and I let out a little squeak, too.
And in my gut I just know.
We've found Snowball.
It was the ugliest dead thing I'd ever seen. The top lip was curled back in a sneer. The eyes were glazed open, and the fur was matted and gooey-looking. This cat looked like it had been slimed by a giant snail, then tossed off the Empire State Building.
“Ohhhh,” Holly says. “Poor thing”
“Tell me that's not a Zodiac collar on him,” I whisper.
Holly looks at me with disgust. “The poor thing's dead and you're worried about fleas?”
“No! It's just that…” I reach in and check the collar. “Rats!”
“Sammy, what's with you?”
So I give her a quick rundown of my morning with Hudson and the Kitty Queen, and when I'm all done, she looks back at the cat and says, “And you think that's Snowball?”
“Green eyes, fluffy black fur—well, before it got wet anyway—and a Zodiac collar.”
“But… what happened to him? And how'd he get in our trash bin?”
We look around. With a big vacant lot straight ahead and Wesler Street to the right, the back side of the Pup Parlor was wide open.
“Anyone could've dumped him here,” Holly whispers.
“Yeah,” I said. And for some reason it seemed kind of spooky. Like if someone could dump a cat, they could also dump, you know, a body.
“So what do you want to do?” Holly asks.
I thought about it a minute. “I guess I should find out if it really is Snowball.”
“You want to go get that cat lady?”
I shook my head. “Believe me, you don't want her coming here. She hates dogs.”
Holly hesitates, then asks, “So you're thinking about taking it to her?”
“It's probably the easiest thing to do.” I shrug. “Wanna come?”
She shrugs back. “Sure. You want me to get a Hefty bag or something?”
“Yeah. And some rubber gloves.”
Of course, the minute Meg and Vera find out what's going on, they've got to check out the cat and talk about everything we've just talked about. But we finally get the cat in a Hefty sack and head out.
The cool thing about Holly is, she's tough. Well, except when it comes to animals, then she's like butter. But stuff like being too cold, or bugs, or scrapes and bruises, she doesn't let faze her. She also has her own skateboard, so we made good time carrying the Ugliest Dead Thing Ever across town.
When I turned onto Cypress Street, Holly asked, “Are you stopping in at Hudson's?”
“Good idea!” I called back. “We could use reinforcements!”
“You're not really afraid of her, are you?”
“Afraid? No. But she's strange, Holly. You'll see what I mean.”
Hudson didn't answer his door, though. Then I remembered he was going to develop pictures, so I went around back and knocked on his darkroom door.
No answer.
So I pulled up the garage door and peeked inside.
His car was gone.
“You want to wait for him?” Holly asked.
“Nah.” I shifted the Ugliest Dead Thing Ever under my other arm. “Let's go.”
So we took off again, and when we got to the orange adobe house, I said, “This is it.”
The grass was dry and patchy, and the shrubs had long branches shooting out everywhere. Like Pippi Long-stocking hair, only green.
And of course, there were cats. I noticed three right away, but as we made our way up the walkway, more cats appeared. From under bushes, from around the house, from under the porch, they were all coming toward us, staring at us.
“Wow,” Holly said, picking up her board. “This is creepy.”
Then I heard the Kitty Queen's voice calling, “What do you want?” from behind the screen door.
“Uh… I think we found Snowball,” I called back.
The screen door whipped open and Kitty pounced onto the porch. “What? Where?” she demanded. A sleek white cat and a calico followed her out of the house, and behind them came a string of kittens.
“Um…” Two more cats came down a walkway on the left side of the house. I held the Hefty sack out. “I… I'm not positive, but… but it fits the description.” I put down the bag and started backing up.
The Kitty Queen came down the porch steps, squinting at us. “Are you telling me Snowball's in that bag?”
“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!”