Fool's Moon, page 11
“Follow us,” she whispered to her brother. “Food makes everyone happy, even humans, so this will be the best time for you to meet her.”
“Are you sure?” he whispered back. “I thought Zuki was going to tell me when.”
“Zuki isn’t the boss of us,” Ophelia replied in a lofty tone. “Just because she’s been here longer doesn’t mean she knows everything.”
“Right, but she saved both our tails tonight, didn’t she?”
Since she couldn’t contradict that fact, Ophelia merely shrugged and lightly leaped down again. Limping only slightly on her sore paws, she made her way to the black-and-white-tiled kitchen, Brandon quietly shadowing her.
After a couple of hours out on the darkened streets, the light streaming from the trio of red balls hanging from the kitchen ceiling made her blink. Ruby was already standing at the little red and silver table, Zuki crouched expectantly at her feet.
Ruby reached for one of two familiar jars sitting there and poured a few little fishy-smelling squares onto a tiny blue pottery plate she’d pulled from a cabinet, which she set on the floor. “Here you go, Ophelia.”
Not waiting to be asked a second time, the cat made a dash for the saucer and began crunching treats. Ruby, meanwhile, pulled a couple of the usual bone-shaped snacks from the second jar and tossed them, one at a time, toward Zuki’s open jaws.
“Good catch,” she praised the canine as Zuki plopped to the floor and began her own crunching. “Now, let’s see what’s in the fridge for me.”
Leaving the jars behind, Ruby went over to the big white cold box where she kept most of the human food. While her back was turned, Ophelia swallowed her last crumb and glanced back over her furry shoulder toward the doorway. She could just see Brandon’s nose and his glowing eyes watching them from around the door jamb. Feeling a little guilty that she’d munched down all the snacks without offering to share, she gestured him into the room.
“Sit by the plate and pretend you’re me,” she hissed. “Maybe she’ll pour out some more treats.”
While Brandon took her spot, she slipped behind the large, squat urn in the corner of the kitchen next to a tall cabinet. That blue-glazed pot was home to an enticing plant with a fat belly half-buried in dirt and dozens of skinny long green leaves sprouting from its pointy top and dangling almost to the ground.
A ponytail palm, she’d heard Ruby call it. Only the fact that Ruby had rudely doused her with water the one time she’d sniffed at the plant kept her from taking a nibble each time she walked past it. As it was, she couldn’t resist giving its leaves a quick bat before she crouched behind it to see how the human would react.
Zuki, meanwhile, had finished off her crunchy bones and noticed that the black cat sitting near her was not the same feline that had been there a moment ago. Rolling her brown eyes, she muttered, “I know humans aren’t very observant, but I think Ruby will figure out you’re a different cat.”
Brandon didn’t have a chance to reply to that, however. Ruby turned from the refrigerator, a small yogurt container in one hand, and smiled as she caught sight of a black cat sitting beside the plate.
“Ophelia, you’re such a little Greedy Gus. You just had your snack, and now you want more.” Shaking her head, she set down the yogurt on the table and reached for the treat jar. “All right, just a couple more, but that’s it. I don’t want you getting fat.”
Brandon got to his paws and, as she set out the promised two more, gave her denim-clad leg a quick rub by way of thanks. While he crunched away, she put aside the jar and gave him a pat in return, running her hand down his sleek back.
“Such a sweet girl,” she observed in a fond voice, only to break off with a gasp. “Wh—What happened to your tail? Half of it is gone!”
Just as swiftly, the momentary panic that filled her voice was replaced by suspicion.
“Wait, your pink collar is missing, too. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say you got a little bigger since I left earlier this evening. So what’s going on here?”
Pushing her glasses firmly into place, Ruby rose and stared at the black cat at her feet. Right color, she told herself. But, unless she’d gone blind or crazy, definitely not the same feline she’d left behind.
Wondering if JoJo could have snuck in somehow to play a joke on her while she was gone at class, Ruby glanced from the strange cat to Zuki. The pit bull obviously knew something was amiss, for she wore the patented doggie look of guilt that Ruby knew translated to Sorry, please don’t be mad at me, Mom. And then she heard a small mew that did not come from the cat before her.
Something black and furry was crouched beneath the cascade of narrow green leaves spilling from the ponytail palm in the kitchen’s far corner.
“Ophelia?”
Then, when the fuzzy black form unfurled itself to reveal a familiar, small black cat with a pink collar and long black tail, Ruby dragged her gaze from her pet to the cat sitting at her feet. Definitely a second black cat … and this one larger and collar-free with a distinctive bobbed tail.
“Brandon? OMG! Ophelia, is this your missing bother?”
She didn’t expect a reply, of course, but Ophelia gave a loud, high-pitched yow that she had no choice but to take as a yes.
“I don’t believe it,” she exclaimed and bent to pick up the purring beast.
He was as soft as Ophelia, but beefier, and his purr was less the gentle buzz of his sister and more a throaty rumble. And unlike Ophelia, who could be reserved, this new boy had no problem snuggling into her arms as she pulled out a chair and sat at the dinette with him perched in her lap.
“Well, Zuki, you’ve got some ’splaining to do,” she informed the pit bull in a playful tone, invoking the old ’50s sitcom tagline. “Where in the world did this boy come from? Did he climb in over the wall or something?”
Zuki gave a few quick barks that might have been an explanation. Unfortunately, Ruby didn’t speak dog, so the story behind Brandon’s sudden appearance at the Botanica would likely always remain a mystery. Which left only the most important question … what to do with him?
“Rosa will kill me if she comes home and finds two cats here,” she told Ophelia, who had run over to the table where she and Brandon sat.
Ophelia appeared unconcerned by this announcement. Brandon, meanwhile, squirmed out of her grasp, knocking her glasses slightly askew in the process before jumping from her lap to join his sister on the floor. Ophelia gave him a mock swat of one paw, and then the two tumbled together in playful battle, rolling and kicking their way across the black linoleum.
Ruby shoved her glasses back into place and groaned.
“Ugh, what am I going to do?” she asked Zuki, who was woofing along as color commentator to this round of big time cat wrestling. “I can’t send the poor thing to the shelter, and I sure can’t put him back out onto the streets. Though he does look in pretty good shape for a cat that’s been on his own for a month. He must have been sweet-talking someone into feeding him all this time. Maybe he’ll leave on his own?”
She said the last in a hopeful tone. Watching the two cats interact, however, she doubted that the boy kitty would leave of his own volition. It was obvious that he and Ophelia were BFFs. Mentally, she threw up her hands.
“What’s the old saying, ask for forgiveness, not permission? Ophelia, show your brother where the food and water and kitty box all are, and we’ll deal with Rosa when the time comes. I need to finish up some stuff online and then get to bed.”
First finding a spoon to go with her yogurt, she made a quick detour into the shop to grab her backpack. She checked the front door a final time before closing the door between the Botanica and hallway. She usually let Zuki and Ophelia have the run of the place at night, relatively confident that they wouldn’t damage anything in the shop. But with another cat added to the mix, she didn’t want to risk the merchandise … at least, not the first night. A broken statue or gnawed candle would not help endear the kitties to Rosa.
A small crash in the kitchen, which was tumbling cats bumping into the pie safe, confirmed the wisdom of that decision.
“C’mon, Zuki,” she called. “Beddy-bye.”
With the pit bull at her heels, she headed up the narrow built-in staircase leading to the second floor where Rosa and she each had a bedroom. Rosa’s, of course, was the larger of the two. Ruby had never actually been inside her half sister’s bedroom before, though she’d caught a glimpse of it when she had first moved in a year ago.
From what little she’d seen, the design style could best be described as “minimalist on steroids”—empty white walls, bare wooden floor, a Mission-style single bed with white linens, and a matching chest of drawers, atop which sat a single large conch shell. She was pretty sure that Rosa had a personal altar set against the wall whose view was blocked by the door. But said door had been locked ever since her half sister’s departure weeks earlier. Even if she’d been tempted to snoop, she couldn’t.
Ruby’s bedroom was across the narrow hall from her sister’s and alongside the pink-and-aqua-tiled bathroom that, save for a slight difference in tile color, was a mirror image of the downstairs facility. She had the same set of furniture as Rosa, though the comforter on her bed was a swirly pattern of ocean blues. In keeping with the beachy theme, she’d added a sand-colored rag rug to the floor (since, pale as she was, she didn’t spend a whole lot of time at the actual beach). The top of her dark-stained wood dresser was crowded with Florida-kitsch souvenirs she’d found in local thrift stores: old hotel postcards, flamingo figurines, alligator ashtrays, even a radio shaped like an oversized Florida orange.
Her favorite touch, however, was the framed prints—no way could she afford the original oils!—of Highwaymen art that hung on her pale yellow walls. She’d always loved the flamboyant colors of those mid-century Florida landscapes painted by self-taught African-American artists. Decades earlier, those men (and a couple of women) had hawked their canvases on Florida’s tourist byways for a few dollars. Now, their work sold in the high thousands, some even for five figures.
Needless to say, there were no shrines to be found behind her door.
Once in her room, Ruby set the yogurt on her side table and pulled her laptop out of her backpack. Leaving Zuki curled up on the rug, she settled cross-legged atop her bed and fired up the computer.
Her usual routine after class was to pull up that evening’s lecture notes she’d taken and flesh them out while the material was still fresh in her mind. But tonight, A Comparison of the Secondary Characters in the Works of Dickens and Doyle was pretty far down the list of important things. Instead, she opened a web browser and typed three words:
Hilda Givens Obituary.
Eleven
Elderly Palm Beach Socialite Drowns in Pool.
Ruby winced. Even knowing what had happened, it was still a shock to see that blunt headline pop up as the first result in her web search. She clicked the link and was taken to a Palm Beach Herald news article dated a few weeks earlier, along with an accompanying photo of Mrs. Givens.
Following the trend of using vintage photos of the elderly deceased, the black-and-white headshot was of a handsome woman in her early fifties with 1980s-era sky-high permed blond hair and deep dimples. The photo obviously had been taken at a social event, for her jewelry—dangly earrings and a choker necklace—appeared to be diamonds, and what was visible of her gown had lots of lace and tulle. Somehow, seeing the dead woman in her prime made the situation more tragic, though Ruby couldn’t explain why.
Straightening her glasses, she took a deep breath and started reading.
Police are investigating the apparent accidental drowning of a long-time Palm Beach resident Friday morning. Eighty-two-year-old Hilda Givens, wife of the late real estate developer Walter W. Givens, was found unresponsive in the pool of her Poinciana Lane home. According to police, Mrs. Givens’s housekeeper, Luciana Torres, discovered the woman around 6:45 that morning and immediately called 911.
Attempts to resuscitate Mrs. Givens were unsuccessful. She was rushed to St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead a short time later. Her only son, Terrence W. Givens, who lives in the same residence, was not at home at the time of the incident.
So far, the account jibed with what Luciana had told her. Ruby read on.
Mrs. Givens had been a fixture in Palm Beach society ever since her marriage to Walter Givens in 1960. The two were known for both their dazzling parties and their philanthropic endeavors, including a major donation in 1989 to the Care for Kids Foundation that allowed the building of one of the first children’s hospice homes in the Palm Beach area.
Ruby skimmed the rest of the story, which mentioned the death of the old woman’s husband a dozen years earlier and detailed Mrs. Givens’s social life and charitable endeavors before and after. She paused, however, at the news account’s final paragraphs.
The daughter of Sioux City, Iowa, banker Ralph Franklin and wife Rose, Mrs. Givens first met her future husband in Melbourne, Australia, during the 1956 Summer Olympic games. Mrs. Givens, who had attended Mt. Holyoke College, was a member of the 1956 US Women’s swim team. Her specialties were the 100 meter backstroke and the 400 meter freestyle. Mr. Givens was attending the Games as a spectator.
According to her son, Mrs. Givens was eliminated early in both her events at the 1956 Games. Additionally, she gave up a spot at the 1960 Games in Rome in order to marry; still, she considered her short tenure as a US Olympian as one of her proudest moments.
“Hey, Zuki, what do you think of this?” she asked aloud. “Mrs. Givens was once a world-class swimmer. Pretty ironic that she died by drowning.”
The pit bull made a little mumbly sound in return and then snuffled back to sleep again.
Ruby frowned. Of course, good swimmers drowned all the time. And, at eighty-two, the woman obviously was no longer an athlete of Olympic caliber. But still …
She scrolled down the article a bit more and found a couple of related links. She clicked on the one that said Givens Drowning Ruled Accidental and began reading aloud.
“‘Palm Beach police said Tuesday that last week’s death of prominent Palm Beach Resident Hilda Givens has been ruled an accidental drowning. Results from the coroner’s autopsy listed a head injury consistent with a fall. Although there were no witnesses, a police investigation concluded that Mrs. Givens, eighty-two, slipped on the pool deck and hit her head before falling into the pool sometime between midnight and 6:45 a.m. when her housekeeper discovered her body. According to the first responders, the victim was wearing a nightgown at the time of her death. A statement made by her son indicates that Mrs. Givens had been prone to sleepwalking in the past, which might explain her presence outside the house at that hour.’”
Sleepwalking. Slipped on the pool deck and hit her head, Ruby silently repeated.
It sounded logical. Old people—heck, young people!—fell all the time. And a wet pool deck was all kinds of hazardous. Neither of the stories mentioned a bathing suit lying about, so it seemed the old woman hadn’t been planning to take a midnight dip. Though, to be fair, she had friends who swam naked in the privacy of their own pools, mostly so they weren’t constantly having to rinse chlorine out of an expensive swimsuit. But Luciana had said that the old woman swam daily, and surely she would have included the whole “sans bathing suit” thing had that been Mrs. Givens’s habit. And she hadn’t mentioned sleepwalking either.
Or maybe the old woman simply had insomnia and liked to enjoy her courtyard at night. Nothing wrong with that. And, apparently, the cops hadn’t found anything suspicious about it.
She skimmed through the rest of the article, which basically was a rehash of the previous one. Halfway through, however, it included quotes from both Luciana and Mrs. Givens’s son.
“We’re all devastated by her loss, of course,” her son, fifty-three-year-old Terrence Givens, told the Palm Beach Herald reporter. “She lived a remarkable life and did much on behalf of numerous local charities. I warned her many times not to swim by herself, but Hilda did things on her own terms.”
The quote from Luciana, however, was far blunter.
“Señora Givens, she had a very strict routine,” stated Luciana Torres, the Givens’ live-in housekeeper who discovered her employer’s body. “She took her swim the same time every morning. I told the police I cannot think why she would be out in the night.”
It seemed that Luciana had her suspicions from the start, Ruby told herself. Still, there was nothing in either account that made the old woman’s death sound anything other than accidental. The housekeeper’s reaction, however, was understandable, for it was obvious she considered Mrs. Givens more than just a boss.
Ruby sighed. She’d lost a college friend in an automobile accident a few years back. Within hours of hearing the news, a group of the dead girl’s mutual friends—including Ruby—had formed a spontaneous grief support group. They’d spent the days before the funeral creating scenarios to explain their friend’s tragic passing as more than a random event.
Maybe some creep was chasing her, and she’d crashed trying to escape.
Maybe someone had walked out onto the road in front of her, and she’d deliberately wrecked rather than run him down.
Maybe she’d witnessed a crime, and the Mob/Government/MS-13 had silenced her.
In the end, however, she and her friends had had to accept the truth—that Madison drank too much that night and climbed into her car before someone could take away her keys, and subsequently plowed into a concrete barrier on the Interstate.
