“Give me a break. It’s not like you had anything else to do.” Unless he’d broken his promise to only use my backup credit card for background checks. Now that I’d canceled my other credit card, the card I’d given him was the only one I had.
And Clarence probably knew that. My trouble alarm was ringing, loud and clear.
Wide, innocent feline eyes stared back at me.
“I’m checking my charges tonight. Actually, I’m checking my charges every night until I get a new credit card.”
He plopped down in front of my fancy wireless printer. “You’re so cheap. Why can’t I have a little fun?” He extended and retracted his claws a few times. “My kitty fingers are exhausted and my claws ache. You owe me some porn for my pain and suffering. Just a little. An hour. Watching an hour of porn is almost like not watching porn at all.”
“Stop. Every time you start bargaining with me, I feel like I need to scrub the resulting images from my brain. The least you could do is come up with something I might actually agree to.”
“An egg for dinner.”
That had been too easy. Worried there was a trap I’d missed, I agreed.
“Benedict, with hollandaise sauce.”
“I have no idea how to make that.”
“Hm.” He flexed his claws, kneading the air repeatedly. “My poor claws. I think I’m developing early onset kitty arthritis.”
I crossed my arms. “Spit it out. What do you want?”
“I bet Sylvie makes a mean hollandaise sauce.” His beard quivered.
“Fine, one eggs Benedict with hollandaise sauce cooked by Sylvie, assuming she cooks eggs Benedict.”
His beard quivered a little more. “Two eggs.”
“Fine. Two eggs and you leave my credit card alone long enough to let me cancel the thing.”
His quivering beard gave way to a full-body chuckle. Which was all kinds of wrong. As Clarence’s ghostly human self gave voice to his amusement, his physical bobcat self rolled over on his back and wallowed with his feet waving in the air.
“All right. Enough.”
A few more wriggles and Clarence rolled to his feet. “I knew you had a thing for her. It was the cookies, wasn’t it?”
“No clue what you mean.” The cookies definitely helped.
“You know. The woman smells like vanilla and sugar, like fresh-baked pastries. Like the best cookies ever. That has to appeal to your wholesome soul on some deeper level. And she brought over those sugar cookies, the ones you claimed made your stomach smile.” He plopped down on his haunches and started to groom his right front paw. He paused. “They were delicious.” Then resumed bathing his foot.
The “mystery” of the vanishing cookies was solved. As was the question of whether bobcats could eat pastries with no deleterious effects.
“Yeah, so what did you dig up on the neighbors?” I rested my hip against the desk. It might take a while to pry all the information out of him.
Clarence’s supposed “homework” had been to pull backgrounds on all the neighbors who appeared on Ginny’s list.
Clarence gave his paw a last lick then settled back squarely on his haunches. “I’ll tell you if you guarantee me immunity for past bad acts, including all credit card transactions, but also any other related illegal activities.”
“What have you done?”
“Are you familiar with the term ‘hacking’?”
With a sigh, I settled into my desk chair. This just kept getting worse. What did I do to deserve a burden like Clarence? Here was yet another reason to catch myself up on technology. Clarence wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be dependent upon.
“I am familiar with the term, but I didn’t know you possessed that particular skill set.”
He lifted a paw and flexed his claws. “With these digits? No. Hunting and pecking the few keys here and there is hard enough, and it’s not within my current skill set. Not that I couldn’t learn if I wanted to. Unlike you, I try to keep current. But it hasn’t been a priority, given the thriving supply chain.”
Thank goodness for small favors. Wait—thriving supply chain? “What exactly did you do, Clarence?”
“Ah, so, I might have used your credit card to purchase some credits that I bounced around a bit and then eventually used to purchase some highly illegal services, including, but perhaps not limited to, retrieval of credit card and phone records.” He gave me his mournful look, the one that made him look demented. “I still get my eggs Benedict, right?”
“Are you planning to use my card again?”
He shook his head with substantial vigor.
“I suppose you’re still getting your eggs, then.”
“About your credit card . . . It might be best if you don’t use it again either.”
And there was my eye twitch, back with a vengeance. “I swear, Clarence, I’ve had a perpetual headache since you came to live with me.”
“You sure it’s me, boss?” When I glared at him, he said, “Hey, I’m not the only change in your life. The big guys in charge made you human again around the time I was assigned to you. Just consider, maybe that stress you’re toting around isn’t about me. Maybe it’s being human again.” He sighed. “I mean, how long’s it been since you got laid? You’ve been a soul collector over half a century. That’s a long time to go with no body—and no tail.”
My glare must have finally penetrated, because he stopped talking. “If you’re done talking about my sex life?”
“Your lack of sex life, more like. Yeah, yeah. Falling on deaf ears and all, but it would do you a world of good to . . . Right, never mind. So, I have good news.”
“I would hope so, since it’s possible your illegal shenanigans will get me put in jail and you in a zoo.”
His jaw fell open. “A zoo?”
“You’re a wild animal, Clarence. Did you not think that through?” I tapped the desk. “Come on, what
