mother clutches at her chest and I think she might pass out. But she rallies, as she always does. “How are you set for money?” she asks.
“Great,” I lie. “I’ve got a job now.”
“Really? That’s wonderful.” This is said with a forced tone of fake delight since my mother’s idea of a perfect life is to marry a wealthy doctor or lawyer (though the doctor is imminently better) and never work again. She never understood my desire to continue working after I married David. “What kind of job is it?” she asks.
“I’ve gone to work with Izzy, as his assistant.”
Her expression turns to puzzlement. “Izzy? But isn’t he a coroner or something like that?”
“Yes, he’s the medical examiner.”
“But that means he works with dead bodies, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, he does, Mom. So do I now.”
Mom’s shoulders sink and she looks at me with a woeful expression. This news is irrefutable proof that I have fallen about as low as I can go on her ladder of success. “Oh, Mattie,” she says with a tone of sadness I might expect if I’d told her I was living on skid row. “Has it really come to this?”
“It’s a good job, Mom. I like it. Granted, it’s not for everyone, but it suits me just fine right now.” Then I think of something that might sway her opinion. “Plus, I’ll get to see all kinds of interesting diseases and disorders. I’ll be able to see how they affect the body in a way I never could when I was nursing.”
I see a gleam in her eye. “You’d tell me if you saw something…worrisome, right?” she asks. Coming from anyone else, I might think the question reflected a fear that some pestilence or plague of community-wide, if not global, proportions might pop up one day. But in my mother, it’s merely a sign of her excitement over finding a new source for symptom and disease information she can use to expand her repertoire.
“Of course I would, Mom,” I assure her, winning a smile of approval.
“Do you have a phone yet? You need to have a way to keep me informed.” She hesitates a second and seems to realize her comment needs something more. “Informed about how you’re doing,” she adds.
I flash on the cell phone Izzy gave me earlier. It’s in my purse, along with the slip of paper that has the number on it. But frankly, the past two months without a phone have been rather enjoyable, the only downside to it all being that I have to drive to get my takeout rather than having it delivered. I know that if I give my mother the number, she’ll be calling me several times a day to share her latest crop of symptoms.
“Not yet, Mom. But when I get one, you’ll be the first to know.” And in saying that, I am abiding by Relationship Rule #9: Try to Avoid the Truth When You Know It Will Hurt.
One hour later I pull up in front of the cottage, my car laden with $136 worth of cat supplies. I have four kinds of cat food, a cat bed, a dozen cat toys, cat vitamins, cat grooming supplies and a cat collar big enough for four kittens. I also have three large containers of cat litter: one that is guaranteed to clump for easy cleaning, one that’s a bunch of blue and white crystals, and the other the ordinary clay kind. I’ve gone all out on the litter box, getting one of those huge, elaborate gizmos that looks like a feline apartment building. It has a top on it and a door so the kitten can do his business in private. The pimply-faced kid at the pet store assured me it’s the cream of the litter box crop.
I set it up, put down some food and water, and give the kitten—whom I’ve decided to name Rubbish in honor of where I found him—the run of the place. I toss twenty dollars’ worth of cat toys down in front of him, but after a few curious sniffs, he sticks up both his nose and his tail at them. Hungry, I head for the kitchen and nuke a can of chicken noodle soup. I’m standing by the sink eating it when I hear an odd thumping noise, like a screen door banging in the wind. Thump-ump. And again. Thump-ump.
Curious, I set my soup down and head out to the living room to look around. I wait for the sound to come again and am about to give up when I hear it—thump-ump—coming from the bathroom. I walk in and see Rubbish pawing at the door to the cabinet beneath the sink. He opens it an inch or so but lacks the strength and coordination to squeeze through to the inside. Instead, he keeps bashing his head against the door just as it closes. Thump-ump.
As soon as Rubbish sees me, he sits down and meows. I walk over and open the cabinet door, then laugh as he bounds inside. “You think this is something special, eh?” I say to him. He ignores me and starts sniffing around like he’s looking for something. Did I have a mouse in there, perhaps?
I kneel down in front of the cabinet and look inside. There is a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner, a bar of soap, a couple rolls of toilet paper, and a box of forty tampons. I push everything around to make sure there are no critters hiding in there, then shrug and stand back up. Rubbish continues to sniff, then zeroes in on the box of tampons. I’d torn the top off the box for easy access and the outside wrappers on the individual tampons are made out of some kind of crinkly paper that rattles when Rubbish swats at it. He seems to like this and does it again.
I head back to the kitchen to finish my soup and by the time I’m ready to leave, Rubbish has fished one of the tampons out of the box and is batting it around the bathroom floor in a game of kitten soccer. I spend twenty dollars on cat toys and all the little beast wants to play with is a twenty-five-cent tampon.
Watching the kitten is entertaining, but I have places to go and things to do. Before Hurley shows up and has a chance to question me, I want to talk to David. Because one way or the other, I have to find out if my husband is a killer.
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