She was angry and starting to ramble, Kurt thought. He wanted to shout oorah when she got back to the reporter’s accusation. “What I’d ask people to remember is that every one of the dogs who has been brought in has something in common with that Doberman. They didn’t ask to fight, but that’s the life they were handed. Just like that boy who didn’t ask to steal. We’re going to do our best to give these guys a second chance. A bit of support to do it is all we’re asking. Because that’s what everybody deserves, isn’t it? A second chance.”
Checkmate, Kelsey.
It was the reporter’s turn to fidget. She asked a few more questions before wrapping up, one about the location, which Kelsey wouldn’t disclose, and another about the number of dogs the shelter was taking. Thirty-seven. Kelsey divulged the number as if it were no different from the variety of flavors of ice cream. Like she had no idea what she was getting herself into.
When the interview was over, Kurt replayed it twice, trying not to fixate on Kelsey’s sculpted face and translucent expressions but doing it anyway. When he was finished, he headed to the counter and the cute barista. The little voice that had gotten him through everything so far screamed at him to ask for her number. To keep on the safer course.
Instead, he asked to borrow her phone.
He was half surprised when he remembered the number after not dialing it for so long. “Rob,” he said when his mentor answered on the third ring, “it’s me. Tommy Sintras… You got somewhere else you can send him?”
When Rob said yes but asked why, Kurt was nearly as surprised to hear his reply spoken aloud as Rob sounded. “Because I’m coming back up. I’ll take it. I’ll take the job.”
Chapter 5
The thing about a desolate 114-year-old mansion was that there was more work and cleaning to do than could possibly be done. Kelsey was the first to admit she wasn’t a neat freak. Her clothes often went from the dryer to slung over a chair until she was ready to fold or hang them. She went on cleaning binges only when it was obvious the effort would show. She was often guilty of using the clean dishes in the dishwasher before unloading them. Still, she was accustomed to a level of, well, newness she wouldn’t get here.
The plumbing worked—reluctantly—but the water needed to run a full minute before the reddish tint went away. The bases of the sink faucets were corroded with rust, and the handles required two hands to turn. The faucet in the best condition was in the guest bathroom, up a set of beautiful, winding hardwood stairs, of which about a third had boards that were precariously loose and needed to be hammered tight.
The toilets flushed and didn’t leak, but the bowls were stained from the rust in the water. The thought of using them was about as appealing as using a porta-potty. Then there were the showers and tubs in the upstairs bathrooms. Even after Patrick’s bleach attack, the lingering mold spots had convinced Kelsey to use the outside hose if one of the dogs needed a bath.
That covered the plumbing. The electricity worked, but the way the lights dimmed when voices were raised or doors were shut unnerved her. The paint—which was most likely lead-based—was peeling off many of the walls and windows. Sheets of wallpaper were coming off the walls too. And thank goodness it was mid-September, because the air-conditioning system that had been installed in the late eighties didn’t seem to be cooling any longer. She and Patrick had managed to pry open more than half of the original windows, and Kelsey was fairly certain at least one or two of them were now stuck open permanently.
In the kitchen cabinets and pantry and along the basement shelves, they’d found more rodent droppings than she could count. While she was normally a live-and-let-live kind of girl, she and Patrick had stopped at the Home Depot and loaded up on traps. She shuddered at the thought of having to deal with what was caught, but she wouldn’t consider poisons that might hurt the dogs or other animals, and sharing the mansion with rodents while rehabbing the dogs simply wasn’t sanitary.
So, the other night before leaving, when her muscles were screaming from the exhaustion of the long, demanding day of scouring the house, she and Patrick had carefully placed traps inside cabinets and along shelves where Mr. Longtail couldn’t wander upon them while skulking around the house.
And skulking he was. You’d think a cat who hadn’t had much human company in the last eight months would be grateful for the commotion. He wasn’t. He followed them around indoors and out—using his cat door—while hissing and twitching his long tail. She kept bracing for him to attack her ankles, but so far he hadn’t.
And he didn’t seem to care about his lack of hunting ability. With that much pent-up frustration, the house should be mouse-free. As Kelsey checked the traps to see what might’ve been caught overnight, he followed along, twitching his tail.
Even braced for it, she let out a loud gasp when she encountered the first victim in the pantry at the back of a shelf. It was thankfully very dead. She shot Mr. Longtail a glance after grabbing a bag to dispose of it, trap and all. “I should let you examine this up close. It’s a mouse. If you’ve forgotten, you’re a cat. You’re supposed to be keeping the house free of them. And I hope to have this place mouse-free and looking better when my parents come check it out later this week.”
Even as exhausted as she’d been last night, Kelsey had forced herself to go to her parents’ house and tell them the news about an hour before an expanded version of the story ran a second time on the evening news.
