“Milk, Clarence. I need milk for my coffee.” I waited for him to step away from the fridge door.
He looked at me quizzically. “You don’t usually drink your coffee light.”
“It’s a milk sort of a day. Move along.” I nudged him with my foot so I could open the door.
Once I’d dosed my coffee with a solid dollop of milk, I took a drink and tried to think like a rational human being instead of a deranged lunatic.
No joy.
Either Operation Distract began now, or I was going to dropkick the perverted, needy furball across the living room. Enmeshing myself in the messiness of humanity was looking less distressing with each passing minute.
“How ’bout a scratch under the chin? Do a kitty right. Come on.”
Drop. Kick.
I sighed. I’d never forgive myself if I booted him, no matter how much Clarence deserved a hard kick to his nether regions.
“So who were these disreputable characters that Bobby had business dealings with? Because it seems as if he believes they’re the ones who offed him.”
Clarence stopped crisscrossing in front of me and pinned me with one of his sharp feline gazes. “You wanna help her, don’t you? She’s one hot babe, especially in that tight, little pink number. The way it hugs her t—”
“Stop.”
“I was just gonna say ta-tas. That’s not even a dirty word. Or directly to do with your sex life.”
One hard look and he grumbled out an apology.
“Who are these bad men that Bobby worked for? Maybe we should start there. If we can quietly solve Bobby’s murder and then give the cops a solid tip, Sylvie should be safe. Problem solved.” And Clarence couldn’t use me having sex with Sylvie as some twisted carrot to keep Bobby hanging around our house.
“He can’t remember. Death fugue.”
“That’s not how it works, Clarence, and you know it. A fugue doesn’t impact life memories. That’s why it’s called death fugue.” I sighed. There was another possibility. “He might have Swiss-cheese memory if he went wrong while becoming a ghost.”
Clarence shrugged, which in his cat form looked like he was ducking his head.
Which meant that I needed to talk to the ghost himself. Wonderful.
I took a breath, steeling myself for the step I was about to take. The step that dropped me off a very steep cliff. “Bobby! Hello, Bobby. It’s Geoff. It’s time you and I spoke.”
“Uh, boss, he told me before that he couldn’t remember who he was working for, just that they were bad guys,” Clarence said. “So, maybe they killed him, maybe they didn’t, he can’t remember. But he does know they were dangerous people.”
The “boss” comment threw me for a loop. So much so that when Bobby arrived, he startled me.
Geoff. Geoff’s gonna sleep with my wife?
The barely visible, faded, and flickering image of a man in his early to mid-forties appeared in the corner of my living room. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was addressing the question to a space near my left kneecap.
Following Bobby’s gaze, I found Clarence shaking his head. He caught me watching him and stopped, his eyes wide and innocent. He slowly squeezed them shut and then opened them in what I’d come to recognize as a purely feline expression of satisfaction.
Of course he was happy. He thought he’d made progress in his plan to pimp me out. He was completely incorrigible and also confused. Even if there was anything in my life of that nature to share, I most certainly wouldn’t share it with Clarence. There would be no vicarious living through me.
“No, Bobby,” I told the faded image in the corner. “I’m not going to sleep with your wife.” The ghost’s image flickered at a more rapid rate, a sure sign of some extreme emotion, so I added, “But she’s beautiful, your ex. Sylvie’s a lovely woman. Exceptionally so.” The flickering continued, so I muddled along. “I mean, I’d love to have sex with your ex, it’s just . . . it’s not necessary.”
A delicately cleared throat was the first sign that I wasn’t alone in my living room. I pivoted toward the sound.
“Your front door was wide open, and when I tapped on the storm door, you didn’t respond. I brought a housewarming gift.” Sylvie lifted a plate of cookies and watched me with intent interest. “Ah, are you talking to my ex-husband’s ghost?”
6
Red peppers and scalding water never made my face burn so bright.
The poor woman, her ex-husband dead no more than a few weeks, and she walked in on me not only appearing to talk to him, but also declaring my intention of not having sex with her. It was mortifying—for both of us.
Two public declarations regarding my sexual intentions in one day. In my world, that was two too many. Contrary to the evidence, I wasn’t sex-obsessed. I spent too much time with a talking bobcat who had the hormonal urges of a teenager, but he was the sex-obsessed one.
And since when could a cat, regardless of how clever, work a childproofed door? I was going to have a nice chat with that saleslady about how childproofed my front door was. I distinctly remembered shutting it firmly and the latch catching.
When I emerged from my haze of horrific embarrassment, I found her grinning. “Bobby did tend to have that effect on people.”
“What effect?” And what a stupid question. Get it together, man.
“Excited, inappropriate utterances.” Her brown eyes twinkled back at me, demonstrating an amusement I was sure I wouldn’t share in her place.
I blinked dumbly back at her.
“You were saying, before I broke into your house . . . something about it not being necessary for you to have sex with me?” That fetching little dimple that I’d noticed before peeked out and then disappeared.
A throbbing behind my left eye distracted me briefly. “Ah, yes, apologies for—”
Her chuckle interrupted me, and like that, the pain was gone. She waved a hand dismissively. “I blame Bobby.”
“No, please
