“I don’t know. She seemed pretty open-minded to me. You heard what she said about her grandmother.”
“We surprised her. We’ll see how she feels after she’s had a moment to consider it.”
Clarence grinned, showing a little fang. “You know, it’s always possible that there’s no bad guy here. Maybe she was cooking meth in her shed.”
His gleeful tone made me roll my eyes. “Really? You think so?” I sat down at the kitchen table after pulling a chair out for him.
Clarence hopped up and eyed me intently before sitting. “I guess not. Your neighborhood doesn’t have a Breaking Bad flavor. It’s more Leave It to Beaver meets The Brady Bunch.”
“With you living here? Try I Love Lucy.” I rolled my shoulders, working out the kinks. Getting used to a physical body again was proving eventful. “Enough with the sitcoms. We need some intel, and since neither of us has an inside man with the fire department or the police, we need some more local sources.” I leveled him with a stare. “Sylvie’s off the table for now.”
“Sure, sure,” he agreed—much too readily. “What are you thinking, boss?”
“I’m thinking the recently dead. Maybe there was a witness.” I tilted my head. “Anyone besides Bobby still hanging around?”
Clarence would know, since ghosts appeared to him whether they actively wanted to be seen or not.
“Word of your disinterest in engaging with the spirit world has gotten ’round.” Clarence flattened his ears and poked out his nose. “And by word, I mean not nice words.”
“Who, me?” I asked. My former rep had been as a polite, escort-your-soul-with-kindness sort of death. But I was retired. Couldn’t a man get some peace in his golden years?
“You’ve developed a post-retirement reputation.” Clarence sniffed.
I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t sneeze on the table.”
His ears flattened again. “I wasn’t going to. I’m trying to be nice, but since you’re being such a cat hater, I’ll just say it. You’ve got the rep of an ornery, mean old fart. There, I said it. A cat-hating, unhelpful meanie.”
The unhelpful part certainly hit home, primarily because I wanted all of those pesky ghosts to leave me alone. If my life was a lawn, I was that guy hollering for the kids to get off it.
Leaning back in my chair, I crossed my arms. “Not the reputation I had as a soul collector, but I’ll take it now.”
Clarence waggled his kitty eyebrows. It was unsettling to see, even more so than a talking cat whose mouth never moved. “You sure you were so beloved before?”
“Yes, actually. Okay, Clarence. I’ll try to be more helpful. Not because I want to clean up my reputation, but because solving Bobby’s murder is the right thing to do.”
“What about the cat-hating bit? You gonna fix that? Give a clever kitty some extra fish for dinner, maybe?”
His request got exactly the attention it deserved. “So, again, any souls in the area? Besides Bobby. Preferably one who’s more intact than Bobby.”
Clarence looked as shifty as a cat could look. His gaze darted to the corner of the kitchen ceiling. With a sigh, I couldn’t help imagining how bad a poker player he must have been in his human days.
“Are you developing other friendships? Or perhaps hiding some especially persistent spirits? Spirits, like Bobby, to whom you’ve made certain promises.”
He whistled. A whistling bobcat in my kitchen, and he didn’t think I’d find that suspicious. “Spill it. And no negotiating.” When he hesitated, I reminded him that he’d requested my involvement. “Time to do your bit for this investigation.”
Apparently, the moral dilemma hadn’t occurred to him, because he looked baffled.
“It’s called a conflict of interest, Clarence. Look it up.”
“What am I? An attorney?” A little grousing and grumbling and he finally said, “Ginny. She might have been hanging around and seen something. She’s grounded at the end of the street.”
“Uh-huh. And where exactly did you meet Ginny?”
“Hmmm.” His whiskers twitched, and he tripped my finely tuned trouble alarm. Or rather he increased the trouble quotient. With Clarence there was always a baseline of mischief.
Resigned, I asked, “In the house?”
His whiskers practically vibrated, and then his confession came out in a rush: “Yes, in the house. And yes, she might have had a look. And yes, she finds you quite attractive. And yes, she’ll be coming by again around nine.”
“Nine?” Nine was when I had my nightly soak. My neck heated up. “You invited a peeping . . . ah . . .”
“Tomasina?” Clarence supplied in the most helpful of tones.
“You’re getting two days of dry kibble for this. I am not a peep show for your little ghost girlfriends.” I shouldn’t be surprised. He was an opportunist, and he’d simply found a way to cash in on a beneficial situation. One that involved me bare and in my tub . . . but I still shouldn’t be surprised.
Why a ghost would want to catch me in the buff was a more pertinent question. And what exactly was Clarence getting out of it by keeping his trap shut?
A nasty thought occurred. “Is she here now?”
“No.” Clarence took one look at my face and said with as earnest a face as a bearded cat could muster, “I swear, she’s not.”
Because my ghost-possessed bobcat ward was the only one of the two of us who could see, hear, smell, and touch ghosts regardless of whether they wanted to be seen, I had to rely on him. That made my eye twitch more than Bobby’s intermittent visitations.
“How do we get in touch with Ginny?”
“Well”—his whiskers twitched—“you usually take a bath around nine, so . . .”
An uncomfortable feeling inched up my spine. “Clarence, you’ve managed to taint one of life’s greatest pleasures and make it feel dirty.”
“Life’s greatest pleasures are dirty, boss. You just haven’t figured that out yet.”
I refrained from arguing, because what was the point? Clarence might be inhabiting a cat’s body, but he was a human letch under all the fur.
“Right. Looks like I
