41

Armed with a five year old’s drawing of a cat, Mick made a few house calls to Tim Ritson’s neighbors, and all the houses on the adjoining streets. Some people were sympathetic about old Tim, whereas others didn’t see what the fuss was. “Just get a new cat,” one lady said to Mick. “We lived on a busy wagon road growing up. Had a new cat every week.” A healthy number didn’t even answer their door.

Of the ones that did, some had a healthy suspicion regarding guards and sleuths, and weren’t exactly forthcoming with their answers. Mick quickly learned to adapt his approach to a person. Some folks needed flattery, others preferred a straightforward question or two. For some people, he only needed to show his badge. Door by door, person by person, he worked his way down the street, not learning a great deal about Misty-Bell, but earning precious experience towards his Simple Interrogation skill tree.

Two hours and a lot of questions later, Mick was at the third to last door on the odd-numbered side of Express Street. He gave the guards’ knock, then waited. A few seconds later, a man answered the door. He was tall, skinny as a rake on a diet, and had scratches on his right cheek. The smell that wafted out from behind him was decidedly animal-like, and there were so many cats purring, meowing, and hissing from somewhere within the house that it was like someone was conducting a feline orchestra.

Mick’s gut began tugging at him for his attention now. He decided that he was going to listen to it. This guy knew something; he was sure of it.

Just before he asked about Misty Bell, though, something made him change course. This was another part of him; not his gut, exactly, but some kind of sleuth instinct that he was beginning to form. It told him there was a right and wrong way to go about this, and that hitting this guy head on with cat questions would make him retreat into his shell like a startled tortoise.

“Yes?” said the man.

Mick quickly thought of something to say. Something not related to cats, so that he could leave here without having raised his suspicions. What kind of person did most folks want to get off their doorstep as quickly as possible?

“I’m…uh…collecting for a charity. You’re clearly busy, though. Sorry to bother you, sir.”

“Oh, really? What charity?”

For some reason, Mick couldn’t think of a single charitable cause for a moment. It was as though the cat fumes coming from the house had fogged up his mind.

Finally, he said, “Kids.”

“What kind of kids charity?” asked the man.

“Just in general. You know.”

“So you just…collect gold and give it to some random children, no criteria involved?”

“No charity’s perfect. Anyhow, I’ll be off. Have a good day.”

Mick spent a while scouting for a good place to watch the house, settling on a bench further up the street, out of view of the house’s windows yet with a clear line of sight on the back door, where a cat flap allowed easy entry and exit from the home to anything cat sized and under.

If this guy does have Misty-Bell, he thought, I can’t get him for stealing. Not if the cats can come and go as they please.

Not much really happened for a good while after that. This was a quiet street, after all. Oh, cats came and went from the house. Lots of them. A menagerie of cats, if that was the right word for it, though Mick half suspected a better term might be pride. Or was that lions? At any rate, there were ginger ones, fully black ones, even black and white ones. None of them were Misty-Bell, though. He was certain about that much, at least.

Maybe I’m wrong about this guy. Maybe he just has a lot of cats. I could be sitting out here all night, only to find out I’m wrong.

A couple of times, he almost stood up to leave. Each time, though, something inside made him sit back down. As though there was an invisible thread keeping him there, weak and thin, and he just wasn’t ready to snip it yet.

Besides, the longer he went without success, the surer he was this was right. Because, saints alive, this man had a lot of cats. Mick lost count after seeing fourteen unique felines leave or enter that one home. No wonder it smelled so bad.

As the day wound on and the sky slowly darkened, be begun to feel the pinch of such a long stakeout. He was hungry, thirsty, and he badly needed to both go for a run to stretch his legs, and to have a nice, long lie down.

Thinking now was as good a time as any, he used his Stakeout Stamina ability from his Observation skill tree. His fatigue left him instantly. His bones were still a bit achy but it was bearable now, and his concentration felt like it had just been treated to a big mug of coffee. Freshly invigorated through his ability use, he vowed to carry on his watch for as long as it took.

His patience was rewarded soon after, when a black and white cat danced gracefully down the back street and toward the house. Mick glanced at the drawing, and thought this might be Misty-Bell, but he needed to be sure. And he needed to earn this surety quickly, before Misty-Bell disappeared through the cat flap.

Activating his Keen Eye ability, his vision strengthened as though he’d lived all his life partially sighted and someone had suddenly slipped a pair of perfectly prescribed spectacles on his nose. Colors came at him brighter, starker, with depths he hadn’t noticed before. The world morphed into a place of sharp light. Hues of color came to him that he hadn’t noticed before. He looked at the drawing and then Misty, Misty and then the drawing.

It was her. By the hair on all the saints’ arses, he was sure it was her.

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The man didn’t answer the door to the first set of Mick’s guard knocks, nor the second. It was only when he made it clear he wasn’t going away with a third set of knocks, that the man gave in. He was wearing a very thin and remarkably short evening gown that showed off his pasty white legs.

“Oh, you. The charity guy.”

“We need to have a chat,” said Mick.

“Look, I’ve nothing against giving to a worthy cause. But yours wasn’t worthy. It wasn’t even a cause. Either that, or you’re terrible at selling it. If you’ll pardon me, a charity needs an angle. You can’t just say ‘kids.’ What about them?”

Mick took out his brass badge and showed it to the man, who peered closely at it.

“That says you’re the head of guards at…Sunhampton? Where the heck’s that?”

“Never you mind. We could be on the moon’s moon, and I’d still be a guard and a sleuth-in training, here on business,” said Mick.

“Huh? What?”

“I have reason to believe you have in your possession a cat belonging to someone else.”

The man crossed his arms. “Do you believe it, or can you prove it?”

The truth was that Mick could prove it alright, but only if he went inside and pointed out Misty-Bell. He couldn’t just walk through the guy’s house, though. He needed a warrant, which would be no problem once he reported his sighting. But by the time he went to the station and came back with the warrant, this guy might have moved all his stolen cats.

Should have gotten the warrant first, Mick scolded himself. It was a sign of inexperience that came at him as stark as a slap in the face. He wouldn’t make this mistake again, though. Nothing wrong with mistakes if you learned from them, of course, but he just wished he hadn’t had to make it now.

No, he was going to have to sort this out right here. He thought about maybe taking a letter out of his pocket and waving it quickly in front of the guy’s face. He could pretend it was a warrant. If he was working a case as a private sleuth, he might get away with that. Since he was here officially, there was no chance.

No, he was going to have to be economical with the truth here if he wanted to get answers, but without tossing it away completely.

“A member of the Full Striding guard and investigator team has been watching your house for a while now, sir,” he said.

So far, so true. Mick, as a guard on the token scheme, was employed by Full Striding in a way. A person could truthfully argue that, couldn’t they? And he had been watching the house for ‘a while’. If the man took this ‘while’ to mean days or weeks, rather than hours, that wasn’t Mick’s problem.

“You’ve been watching me?”

Mick nodded.

The man gripped the door handle. A more hasty guard or sleuth might have seen this as a reason to step up in force, but Mick would never be that kind of person. Sure, this guy was gripping the door handle, but he didn’t look like he was going to try slamming it shut. This was more like an awkward fidgeting.

The man relaxed. “You expect me to believe that the Full Striding guards, budgets being what they are, would waste gold watching me? And why, anyway? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I have reason to believe you’re harboring a feline that doesn’t belong to you. One, possibly more.”

“Is that illegal?”

“There’s a reason I haven’t said stolen, yet, sir,” replied Mick. “A cat shows up at your home, begging for food, no collar or anything. Well, it’s not illegal to feed it, and you’re under no obligation to reunite it with its owner, either.”

“Right. Well, I’ll say goodnight then. Good luck with the kids’ charity. Oh, sorry, that was all crap, wasn’t it?”

Mick cleared his throat as the man was closing the door. “However, sir, cats and dogs are classed as property under Easterly law.”

“I know they are, and don’t get me started on it. It’s a joke. They’re animals, not things.”

“Be that as it may. A gentleman has reported his cat missing. Therefore, anyone who has the cat in their home is effectively harboring missing goods. Note that I still haven’t said stolen. Not yet. But a denial over having those goods might change the way this whole situation is interpreted.”

The man eyed Mick. His expression was of utter seriousness, though Mick found it difficult to take it as such, being more focused on the very, very thin and revealing nightgown that man had chosen to answer the door in.

“Striding guard budgets really are bad, though, aren’t they? I’m always reading about it in the Chronicle. Let’s say there was a house with missing cats in it. Whether they’re classed as property or not, cats aren’t worth much. No chance they’d allocate more than one guard to watching a house with a bloody…suspected cat inside. One person can’t watch a house forever.”

“A person can’t stay in their house forever, either,” said Mick. “And you might not know this, sir, but some sleuths, detectives, and investigators earn an ability that lets them watch a place for a long, long time. Much longer than a regular person could. Let’s quit messing around, shall we? If you’ve innocently invited a missing cat into your home, I would just advise that you let me in to take a look at it. If it’s the one I’m looking for, then I’ll be taking her with me. No harm. No foul. A mistake can happen to anyone. But they best not keep happening.”

“Let me see that badge again.”

“Here.”

The man sighed. “You had better come in.”

Before leaving Full Striding that evening for the last commuter cart, Mick went for a quick drink with Lill at the Hand and Cuff. She had been working on her Deduction skill tree all day, tagging along with her mentor on a couple of burglaries. She’d worked so hard she hadn’t eaten all day, so while Mick contented himself with a beer, she ordered battered cod and fried potatoes with a side of onion rings.

“Have a couple of my fried potatoes,” said Lill, when they were at their table. “Go on. Just a couple. I hate eating alone.”

“Honestly, I would. But when I took Misty-Bell back to Mr. Ritson’s house, he’d made a stew. Wouldn’t let me leave until I had a bowl. Gave me a mug of ale, too.”

“What a monster.”

“I know. This job, eh?”

“He must have been happy, though,” said Lill.

Mick nodded. “It was almost embarrassing. Wouldn’t stop thanking me. He tried to slip me a few gold, you know.”

“Should have taken it.”

“What?”

“What’s the problem? Just take it and don’t say anything. Buy yourself a new cologne.”

“Lill…your mother is the chief inspector.”

“So?”

“Anyhow, even accepting the stew and beer was borderline, but I was starving. So I had some, and then left him and Misty-Bell to it. He was going to read to her, he said. She enjoys the Tales of the Necromancer’s Butler. I checked my token text on the way to see you, and I’ve made good progress on my deduction and interrogation skill trees. I think I can’t be all that far off.”

“Way to go. My Deduction’s coming along, too. And you know what? I deduce that it’s your turn to buy beers.”

“Same again?”

“Please. Oh – what happened to the cat thief?”

“That’s the thing,” said Mick. “He isn’t a cat thief. No law in the world against feeding cats that aren’t yours, and the cat flap meant they could come and go as they wanted. He hadn’t stolen a thing.”

“Then why wasn’t Misty-Bell going home?”

“She was. Only, Tim Ritson doesn’t have a cat flap, and he’s been out looking for her morning, noon, and night. Every time she got home, the house was empty, the doors locked. So she went back to our cat thief friend’s house.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t a thief. Not technically.”

“Well, yeah.”

“So what now, then?”

Mick decided to take up Lill’s offer, and grabbed a fried potato from her plate. He tried to get the biggest one, one covered in mayonnaise, but she speared it with her fork first. Defeated but not deterred, he settled for the second biggest.

“Three of the cats were his, so no problem there. He doesn’t want to stop feeding strays. The guy just loves cats, and fair enough. There’s enough of ‘em without a home in Striding. Only from now on, before he decides to adopt one, he’s going to check in with the guards and the cat shelter. See if they’ve been reported missing.”

“So that’s that, then,” said Lill. “Fancy seeing a show at the Aud tonight?”

“Can’t. Sorry. Need to get the last commuter carriage. Another time?”

“You know where I am.”