Clawful Reflections

  Clawful Reflections

  A Wonder Cats Mystery Book 10

  Harper Lin

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  CLAWFUL REFLECTIONS Copyright © 2019 by Harper Lin.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  www.harperlin.com

  Contents

  1. Mrs. Kitt

  2. Rudimentary

  3. Devil Worshipper

  4. Love Handles

  5. St. Joseph Hospital

  6. Man Without a Face

  7. Animal Rescue

  8. Smashing Mirrors

  9. No Admittance

  10. Battlefield

  11. Facial Deformity

  12. Rearranged

  13. Internal Petrification of Organs

  14. Playing Detective

  15. Smell of Sulfur

  16. Vial of Salt

  17. Black Magic

  18. Shesha

  19. Reflection

  20. A Mirror Infected

  21. Fallen

  22. Say His Name

  23. Gray Aliens

  24. Motley Crew

  25. Black Plague

  26. Hiding

  27. Bigfoot

  28. All Smiles

  About the Author

  A Note From Harper

  Excerpt from “Granny’s Got a Gun”

  1

  Mrs. Kitt

  “Someone’s coming to the door,” Treacle told me as he slinked along the windowsill, pushing the curtains aside. His ears perked up as his green eyes widened with curiosity.

  “At this hour?” I cringed. “It’s not even seven o’clock in the morning. I thought only lunatics like us who had to go to work were up at this hour.”

  Just then the doorbell rang, and there was a knock that followed.

  “Who is it?” I whispered to my cat, who had taken a seat on the sill.

  “I don’t know,” Treacle replied.

  “Should I answer it?” I asked nervously. It wasn’t often that strangers came to my house. “Are they holding pamphlets or a clipboard?”

  “No. It’s just one older lady, and she’s in pajamas. I think she’s from next door.”

  I was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, but my feet were bare, and my hair was still wet from the shower. I padded over to the door and looked through the peephole to see a rather distraught Mrs. Kitt.

  “It is the neighbor,” I whispered as I slipped the chain out of the slot and turned my dead bolt. I opened the door and put on my friendliest face. I’m afraid it came off more like a grimace. “Hi, Mrs. Kitt.”

  “Hello, honey. I’m so sorry to bother you.” She held her hands nervously in front of her. Her early-morning ensemble was pink flannel pajama pants with gray smiling cats on them and a matching button-down top that was covered by a baggy hoodie with a zipper up the front. Mrs. Kitt wore her hair cut short and dyed a soft auburn color. This morning it was pressed on one side and poofy on the other.

  “No, please. Is everything all right?” I hoped there wasn’t some issue that required her to use my phone, fridge, or shower. My house was a disaster because I’d been working longer hours. Sometimes I didn’t make it to the bedroom before I shed my clothes to flop down in front of the television. I also finished one, maybe two, pints of ice cream in the bathroom. The empty containers were there to prove it.

  “Well, I’m watching the Lourdeses’ cats while they are on vacation.” She pointed toward her house. “They’ve gone to Europe for a second honeymoon. Can you believe that?” Mrs. Kitt clapped her hands together, hunching her shoulders and batting her eyes as if it were all so romantic.

  “The Lourdeses?” I tilted my head to the right.

  “They are on the other side of my house.” She nodded.

  “Oh, yes.” I didn’t know their last name was Lourdes. I always referred to them as the “babe couple.” They were constantly within arm’s reach of each other, pawing and kissing, and they called each other babe…loudly…while they did yard work or unloaded groceries or walked to the mailbox. Weird. They were sort of like my cousin Bea and her husband, Jake, if their public displays of affection were to be injected with steroids.

  “Well, I thought I had enough cat food to get me to the end of the week, but it appears I’ve run out, and I have to go to work. Can you spare a can?” Mrs. Kitt acted as if she were requesting a kidney.

  “My gosh, of course I can. Just a second.”

  “She’s going to invite you to one of her snake-handling services. The cat food was just a way to get you to open the door.” Treacle licked his paw.

  “Very funny,” I replied telepathically as I grabbed three cans of cat food. “Don’t make me give her your favorite salmon-flavored Fancy Feast.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  I held the cans close to me as I strolled back to the door. Treacle peeked from behind the curtain to see if I was indeed giving away his favorite flavor. I mouthed the word chicken to which he whipped his tail.

  I’d had the ability to communicate telepathically with animals since as far back as I could remember. It was my gift. The only time I ever felt it was a curse was when I went to the zoo when I was a teenager. No one would believe how noisy and rude birds are. I’d have expected it in the monkey house. However, they surprised me by shouting encouragement to each other and the people who came to visit them. It was quite uplifting. Tony Robbins didn’t encourage as well as monkeys. But the beautifully colored cockatoos and parrots flitting back and forth like elegant, vibrant pieces of tissue paper would put drunken sailors to shame. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. Needless to say, I didn’t go to the zoo anymore.

  “Here you go, Mrs. Kitt. Will three be enough?”

  “Oh, thank you so much.” Mrs. Kitt took the cans. “Yes. This is plenty. When I go to the store, I’ll replace these for you.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I waved my hand in front of me. “I’ve got plenty. It’s not going to put me in the poorhouse.”

  “Well, thank you again, dear. Tell your aunt Astrid I said hello.” She waved and hurried back to her property. I shut the door and looked at Treacle again.

  “I think that is the longest conversation I’ve ever had with that woman.” I shrugged as I went back to the bathroom to dry my hair and finish getting ready for work. “Usually I just wave and run in the house.”

  As I held my head upside down, with the hairdryer aimed at my hair, Treacle came into the bathroom.

  “Did you know the babe couple had cats?” I shouted above the noise.

  “Yes. They stay inside.” Treacle sniffed the air before flopping down on the floor. “I think there are only two of them.”

  I shut off the dryer and flipped my hair up and over my head before I tied it back in a ponytail. It was important to keep it out of my face at work. Especially since my family’s coffee shop got such a nice write-up in the local paper.

  The Wonder Falls Gazette said that the Brew-Ha-Ha Café put a spell on the neighborhood with its creative desserts and specialty hot teas. It was a rather appropriate choice of words since the Greenstones, my aunt Astrid, my cousin Bea, and myself, were indeed all witches. But no one in the town was aware. It was a secret we’d done pretty well keeping. Especially since the town of Wonder Falls had had more than its fa
ir share of paranormal incidents. There were places that seemed to be beacons for this kind of activity. Some places you couldn’t walk outside your house without catching a fuzzy glimpse of Bigfoot or looking out your window to see an unidentified flying object. Wonder Falls was like that. But that didn’t make it any less our home.

  “Are you ready? I think it is supposed to be a nice day outside,” I said as I stroked Treacle’s smooth black fur. His green eyes winked lazily as his purring motor started up.

  “I smell rain.”

  “Are you kidding? It looked sunny to me.” I scooped the cat into my arms and carried him to the front door. I grabbed my keys, opened the door, and stepped outside. Treacle wasted no time hopping down and giving my legs a good rubbing with his head. While I was locking up, I saw Mrs. Kitt hurrying to the house on the other side of hers with the cans in her hand. She’d changed into a long skirt and a boxy T-shirt. Her hair was still lopsided, but perhaps that was her signature look.

  “I see Bea coming. Are you coming to the café with me, or are you going to conquer the neighborhood first?”

  Treacle looked around, his nose twitching as he continued to sniff the air.

  “I think I’ll see what’s happening. I’ll meet you at the café later,” he said as he quickly turned and trotted off, slinking between a couple of thick bushes and out of view.

  As usual, I telepathically yelled for him to be careful and be home before dark so I wouldn’t worry. My own thoughts sounded like my aunt Astrid when she said the same thing to Bea and me when we went out as teenagers.

  I hurried across the street, where I waved to my cousin as she closed the door to her house and hurried across her porch. Before she made it down the front steps of her house, Jake yanked the door open and trotted out in his pajama bottoms and no shirt.

  He slipped his arms around Bea, quickly giving her a kiss on the lips and a squeeze goodbye.

  “She’s just going to work down the street! She’s not joining the Foreign Legion!” I shouted at them, smirking. It took me two seconds to regret my decision to yell. Jake charged at me, scooping me in his arms and swinging me around in a circle.

  “Cath! I haven’t seen you in so long!” He was practically screaming for all the neighborhood to hear.

  “Would you put me down? Someone’s going to call the cops on you. How will that look? Wonder Falls’s chief detective taken into custody for displaying spastic behavior toward his cousin-in-law.”

  “Good morning, Cath. You are always such a ray of sunshine.” Jake finally set me down. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t hide my smile.

  “You are the only one who can get her to smile before eight o’clock, Jake,” Bea said as she caught up to us.

  “That wasn’t a smile. It was a scowl. You of all people should know the difference,” I replied, shaking my head.

  Jake gave Bea one more kiss before heading back to the house and slamming the front door shut.

  “Hey, do you know the Lourdeses?” I asked as we headed in the direction of the café.

  “Turk and Renee?” she asked.

  “His name is Turk? Turk Lourdes?” There was no hiding my snarkiness. “Why am I shocked yet not shocked?”

  “I know them enough to wave and say hi,” Bea said. “They are an adorable couple.”

  “Couple of what?” I asked.

  “Very funny. Why do you ask?” Bea swung her purse over her shoulder. She was the complete opposite of me, wearing a pretty skirt that came to her ankles and a sweater with big yellow flowers on it.

  “Oh, Mrs. Kitt is watching their cats and ran out of cat food this morning. She asked to borrow a couple cans until she can get to the store. I just didn’t know the real names of those people.” I cleared my throat.

  “What did you think their name was?”

  I explained my nickname to Bea, who chuckled and shook her head.

  “Cath, I really don’t know how Tom puts up with you. He’s such a romantic, and you are such a…”

  “Careful, cousin. I’m an expert at sarcasm, and I’m not afraid to use it.” I put up my fists like I was going to fight.

  “I was going to say skeptic. You need to open your heart a little more.” Bea gently nudged me with her elbow. “You guys have been dating for a while. I’m not trying to butt into your business, but I thought things would have progressed a little further by now.”

  “You mean like wedding bells?” I looked at her curiously.

  “I don’t know, Cath. I can’t say I’m not always hoping. You know, helping you pick out wedding colors and your dress and, of course, my maid-of-honor dress. Tom would certainly make a good husband.”

  Bea was a hopeless romantic. I knew her heart was in the right place, but it was hard for me to tell her that things with Tom weren’t sailing so smoothly.

  “I care about him. A lot. And I think he’s so handsome and funny.”

  “So, what’s holding you back?”

  “If I knew, Bea, I’d have gotten rid of whatever it was a long time ago.” I smiled, eager to change the subject. “That Mrs. Kitt is a character, isn’t she?”

  We walked the rest of the way to the café and saw the lights inside were already on. Aunt Astrid was inside getting things in order.

  “I think Mom would have a heart attack if you and I showed up earlier than her.” Bea chuckled.

  “We’d have to bring our sleeping bags and just spend the night. I swear she was probably already here half an hour after we closed last night,” I replied. “I wonder what she knows about Mrs. Kitt. Mrs. Kitt told me, ‘Say hi to your aunt for me.’ I didn’t know she knew Aunt Astrid. Of course she’s only lived next door to me for seven years.”

  “Yeah, hardly enough time to get to know someone,” Bea teased.

  When we finally got to the café and Aunt Astrid let us in, I was surprised at what she had to say about Mrs. Kitt.

  2

  Rudimentary

  “Oh, yes. I really should give her a call,” Aunt Astrid said after I told her about my visitor. “She’s a clairvoyant.”

  “Really?” I nearly choked on my coffee as I started to chuckle. “I’d never have pegged her as clairvoyant. I guess I expect everyone with a ‘gift’ to look as good as us.” I wrinkled my face and crossed my eyes.

  It was Aunt Astrid’s turn to laugh as she flipped her long silver hair. She had a boho style that made her look like a modern-day gypsy. That wasn’t far from the truth since she regularly did psychic readings for the folks in town. But her real gift was her ability to see multiple dimensions at once. People often thought she was staring into space or maybe daydreaming when, in reality, she was seeing what we couldn’t. Things on different planes shifted and moved without us ever noticing. But she saw it all. Her gift also caused her to walk slowly and maneuver herself around as if she’d had a couple drinks.

  “She’s a sweet older lady,” Bea said in Mrs. Kitt’s defense.

  “I didn’t say she wasn’t,” I protested.

  “She’s just a trendsetter. Someone who marches to the beat of their own drum,” Bea continued.

  “Hey, I like her,” I continued. “She’s a neighbor who, in seven years, has only bothered me once. Today. That’s a wonderful person if ever I knew one. Plus, it’s usually the empaths who are the cockeyed, wobbly weirdos. She’s just a plain old clairvoyant.”

  It only took a second for Bea to turn around and stick her tongue out at me. Of course, she was an empath. Her amazing ability to absorb people’s pain and heal them was something so great she had to eventually tell Jake that she came from a family of witches and had this gift. If he was nervous about it, or us, he never showed it.

  “Actually, Cath is right,” Aunt Astrid interrupted as she took her seat at her usual table for two at the end of the counter where she worked on the financial books while Bea and I got the café ready to open.

  “That I’m a cockeyed, wobbly weirdo? Thanks, Mom.” Bea huffed.

  “In addition to that,
” Aunt Astrid said, “Mrs. Kitt’s abilities are rudimentary at best. Every once in a while, she can help someone find their keys or locate a lost dog. But that is the extent of it. She told me she has no desire to hone her skill.”

  “Well, you can’t blame her for that,” I said. “It’s a lot of responsibility. And she’s obviously not that organized if she forgot to buy cat food for the neighbors’ cats she’s babysitting. Have you ever talked to the Lourdeses?”

  My aunt mentioned seeing them once or twice, but she never had a reason to speak to them.

  “Cath thinks they are too affectionate,” Bea teased as she filled the giant silver coffee pot with water.

  “Hey, there is a time and place for kissy-face, and it isn’t in the middle of the driveway with all the world gawking at you. Plus, a guy named Turk ought to be out there washing his car or cutting the grass. You know, doing manly things. Not chasing after his wife, carrying grocery bags. ‘Hold the door for me, babe.’ ‘Oh, I sure will, babe.’ It’s creepy.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Of all the things you’ve seen in life, that is what creeps you out?” Bea asked.

  “Yes. Yes, it is,” I replied as I stuffed more napkins into the dispensers.

  “What does Tom think of that?” Aunt Astrid asked.

  I felt my cheeks heat up, and I shook my head as I avoided looking at Bea or my aunt.

  “I was just asking her that on the way over here,” Bea said.

  “Tom and I are in a place where we are just sort of taking in the view. We don’t know what direction to go in, and so we are just standing still for a bit. You know, to catch our breath, get our bearings.”