You Only Live Nine Times, page 9
"I saw Tommy arguing with Daisy that night." Rachel admitted this reluctantly and kept her voice low, even though there were no other customers in the store.
Natalie raised an eyebrow, the gesture accentuating the fine lines at the corners of her eyes. "Interesting timing, isn't it?"
"Are you suggesting—" Rachel began.
"I'm not suggesting anything," Natalie clarified quickly. "Just noting that coincidences make me curious. Occupational hazard of being an investigative journalist."
As the women continued their discussion, Scarlett abandoned her spot in the front window entirely, the lure of gossip proving stronger even than the warmth of her sunbeam. She seated herself at the edge of the café area, her tail wrapped primly around her paws, the white tip twitching occasionally with interest.
Hot Mike shifted his weight, the soft jingle of his collar tags nearly imperceptible as he inched closer to the trio of cats. “Marc Gottsegen lives next door to Natalie and me,” he confided. “I heard him talking to Daisy on the phone last week. It sounded like they were arguing about something.”
“Samkhat also said she saw Marc and Daisy arguing last week,” Vashti corroborated.
“Somebody at the party had that same weird smell Daisy did,” Homer said. “But there were too many people for me to tell who it was.”
“You always think you smell something weird.” Scarlett’s tone was dismissive. “Remember how you got all riled up last month, saying Rachel had some fatal disease, and it turned out she was just trying that new face cream made with sheep placenta?”
Above them, the humans continued their conversation, oblivious to the discussion happening at their feet. The scent of coffee grew stronger as Rachel brewed a fresh pot, the rich aroma filling the café area.
"I can't believe how quickly word spread." Griselda shook her head. "Half of Sabrosa's customers last night were talking about it. Death by natural causes shouldn't be gossip fodder."
"People can't resist a mystery," Natalie replied. "Young, healthy woman dies suddenly? It breaks the narrative we all tell ourselves about being safe."
Rachel nodded, thinking of her own shattered sense of security. Title Wave had always felt like a safe place, a peaceful sanctuary after the upheaval of her break-up with Henry. Now, whenever the bell above the door jingled, she couldn't help glancing toward the spot where Daisy had been found.
Griselda looked at her watch and stood up. "I should get to Sabrosa. Pre-dinner prep starts soon." She drained the last of her coffee and set the cup down with a soft clink. "Thanks for the coffee, mamí."
"Anytime," Rachel replied, taking the empty cup. Their fingers brushed in a small moment of human connection. "And thanks for stopping by."
Griselda smiled gently, her dark eyes full of understanding. The bell jingled softly as she exited, a flash of blinding sunlight dazzling the store before the door swung shut behind her.
Natalie stayed behind, absently stroking Hot Mike's head. His fur was smooth beneath her fingers, the contact comforting both woman and dog. "Are you really okay, Rachel?" she asked once they were alone, her accent softening the words.
Rachel sighed, leaning against the counter. “I don't know. I keep thinking about that night, wondering if there was something I missed. Some sign Daisy was in trouble."
"Don't do that to yourself." Natalie’s eyes were kind but serious. "Second-guessing doesn't help anyone, least of all you."
"But what if she came here for help?" The question that had been haunting Rachel since Saturday morning finally escaped her lips.
Natalie reached across the counter to grasp Rachel's hand, her palm warm and lightly calloused. "Listen to me. There’s no way you could have known what was happening with Daisy, and nothing you could have done for her."
Rachel nodded, not entirely convinced but grateful for the support.
Natalie finished her coffee and departed with Hot Mike (“Call me if you need to,” she said on her way out the door), and Rachel was left alone with her cats and her thoughts. She watched as Vashti crossed the store to curl up in her favorite armchair, her white fur almost translucent where the sun hit it directly. Scarlett returned to her sun puddle in the window display, arranging herself among the books. Homer rubbed his head on Rachel's legs, his black fur silky against her skin.
The bell above the door announced the arrival of new customers—a pair of women browsing the stacks with the unhurried air of locals rather than tourists. Rachel recognized one of them; she came in every couple of weeks to pick up a new legal thriller. The other woman was unfamiliar—petite with honey-blonde hair pulled back in a practical ponytail, wearing sensible shoes and a lanyard with an ID badge from Coacoochee General Hospital tucked into her purse.
As Rachel reorganized the café counter, their conversation drifted toward her.
"I work in cardiology," the hospital worker was saying. Her voice was low, but it nevertheless carried in the quiet store. "Twenty-six-year-olds don't just drop dead from heart failure."
"But the medical examiner said—"
"Natural causes, I know. But in someone that young? With no warning signs?" She shook her head. "In my twelve years at Coacoochee General, we've had maybe two cases of sudden cardiac death in people under thirty. Both had documented congenital conditions."
"You think it was something else?"
"I'm not saying that. It’s just…" The woman selected a paperback from the shelf. "Unusual. Very unusual."
Rachel's eyes drifted to the front door, to the spot just outside where Daisy had been found. What had she been doing there so late at night? Had she come seeking Rachel's help? And, if so, what kind of help had she needed?
There was no way of knowing now. The one person who could have told her was gone. Rachel reached down to stroke Homer's back, finding comfort in the warmth of his fur amid all the unsettling questions that seemed to have no answers.
Sneaking out of the apartment to use the secret cat door was always a risky proposition. Those risks were actually heightened when Rachel was out and Nadia was minding the shop—as she was now, having insisted on giving Rachel the afternoon off to relax with a novel and a cup of tea over at Beachy Beans.
Rachel never left home without first confirming that all three cats were safely tucked away upstairs. (She’d once nearly exhausted the patience of a waiting cabbie because Vashti was snoozing invisibly under a pile of laundry in the back of a closet, too zonked out to hear Rachel’s increasingly frantic calls of “Vashti? Vashti, where are you?!?”) So if Nadia were to catch them skulking around the back storeroom while Rachel not only wasn’t working, but wasn’t even at home, it was hard to imagine how she would account for this anomaly without launching a thorough investigation into potential escape routes.
Nothing good could come of that.
Nevertheless, the series of clipped meows from Samkhat—deafening from Homer’s perspective, barely audible from Vashti’s—meant she was waiting for them outside. All three cats were anxious to learn whether Samkhat had seen or heard anything of interest out in the wider realm of Coacoochee—perhaps something about the strange circumstances surrounding Daisy’s death that hadn’t yet been hashed over by chattering humans at Title Wave’s café counter.
A whole group of them had come in the previous morning for coffee, following the sunrise memorial for Daisy that Tommy had put together at Coacoochee Beach. It was like an inverse version of the celebratory gathering in that very same space for Danny Elliott only six days earlier. Rachel had thought the cats’ antics might be unseemly for such a somber occasion, and she’d left them upstairs until the store had opened for regular business a few hours later. People had been speaking in such hushed tones that even Homer, eavesdropping from upstairs, hadn’t been able to make out anything interesting—except to note Tommy’s conspicuous absence.
Homer and Vashti now debated whether it was worth waking Scarlett, who was sacked out in Rachel’s favorite armchair, all four paws in the air and blissfully unaware of Samkhat’s cries. Her paws twitched occasionally, and her whiskers fluttered with each breath.
“Let her sleep,” Vashti finally decreed. She could tell by the satisfied expression on Scarlett’s face that she was in the midst of a pleasant dream. Besides, they’d heard Rachel earlier in the afternoon on the phone, inviting what had sounded like a veritable army of human adolescents to visit the store tomorrow after closing. She’d been struck by some kind of inspiration—an idea she’d had to re-enliven Title Wave after the sad events of the past week. Best to let Scarlett enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasted.
As it happened, at that precise moment Scarlett was dreaming that Brock Winfield had shrunk down to the size of a mouse. She was batting him from paw to paw with a pitiless playfulness, while Brock shrieked and cowered before her perfectly manicured claws.
The two cats crept to the panel in the pantry that concealed the dumbwaiter shaft. Homer's whiskers guided them in the darkness as they made their careful descent, the thick, ancient rope sturdy beneath their paws. The faint scent of paper, dust, and the previous day's delivery of new hardcovers drifted up to meet them, and the muffled sound of Nadia’s voice carried from the front of the store as she spoke with a customer. "Chef Elliott's new cookbook has this incredible mango-habanero salsa recipe,” she was saying. “It's basically foolproof, even for beginners."
They paused once they reached the storeroom, alert for any sign they’d been detected. Then Homer led the way to the ancient cat door, nudging it open with his head. The humid, salty air of Coacoochee washed over them as they slipped into the alley.
Samkhat waited in the shadows, her tortoiseshell fur a patchwork of browns and blacks that melted into the darkness of the cement wall behind her. Her single amber eye gleamed as she greeted them with a gentle nose touch.
“You just missed Stewie,” she said by way of greeting. Her wry tone implied that having missed out on Stewie’s grating conversational style wasn’t much of a loss.
“Ugh.” Vashti’s delicate pink nose wrinkled with distaste. “He passed by our bedroom window yesterday morning and made a ruckus for at least twenty minutes.”
“He was just being a pest.” Under his breath, Homer added a muttered, “One of these days…” He imagined the profound satisfaction of feeling Stewie’s feathers clutched firmly within his claws.
The corner of Samkhat’s mouth twitched with amusement. She knew exactly what Homer was imagining—and also how unlikely it was that even he, with all the prowess of his heightened senses, would ever nab Stewie. "Let's move over to the loading dock,” she said. “It’s got a better vantage point, and I can keep watch while we talk."
Homer and Vashti acknowledged Samkhat’s well-known wariness without saying anything further, and the three cats moved silently along the alley until they reached the loading dock. Homer’s keen nose detected the mingled scents of nearby restaurants—fresh fish from the seafood place over on Jacaranda, and baking bread from the Cuban café on tiny Lantana Lane, one block to the north of Hibiscus Road.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Samkhat told them once they were all settled. She didn’t care much for humans beyond the one or two, like Rachel, who fed her. But she knew her indoor friends felt differently. “How are your humans doing?”
“Rachel’s sadder than she lets on,” Vashti replied. “So is Tommy. At least, I think he is. He hasn’t been around much lately.” Vashti’s green eyes were full of sorrow. “I think he still feels bad because he and Daisy argued at the book signing. That was probably the last time he talked to her.”
Samkhat bowed her head. Even she could appreciate how hurtful it would be to have angry words be the last words you ever got to exchange with someone you cared about. “I overheard Daisy talking to Danny at Sabrosa a few days before she died. She was really upset. She kept saying how she’d ‘betrayed Tommy’ by telling Marc something she shouldn’t have.”
Vashti’s ears swiveled in Samkhat’s direction. “Did she say what it was?”
“I’m not sure. I was hanging around the back door, waiting for one of the bussers to put out the trash for the night.” Samkhat’s expression was mildly contrite, but her tone was pragmatic. “Once he came out I had to follow him, or some other cat would have beaten me to the good scraps.”
Vashti felt a pang as she realized, not for the first time, how much harder her friend’s life was than her own.
“Kotik’s been following Marc Gottsegen around when he gets the chance to slip away from Laurie’s store,” Samkhat added. “He told me the other day that Marc’s been going around trying to track down old issues of Tommy’s magazine.”
“Kotik is following Marc?” Vashti seemed genuinely surprised. “Why would he do that?”
Samkhat rolled her one eye, but said nothing.
“Did you see Tommy at that memorial they had for Daisy yesterday at the beach?” Homer chimed in. Having been deprived of the opportunity to overhear people talking about it, he was curious to know what it had been like.
“Rachel says Tommy’s the one who put it together,” Vashti added. Her tone was admiring; she thought it was a wonderfully kind and thoughtful thing for Tommy to have done.
“Did he?” Samkhat seemed surprised to hear this. But as she thought about it, her one good eye drifting upward as she recalled what she’d seen the day before, she nodded slowly. “I guess that makes sense. He was the first human to make a speech about Daisy. But still…" Her eye fixed on Vashti. “He was acting very strangely.”
“What do you mean?”
“Little things,” Samkhat replied. “He kept fidgeting with his tie and his jacket, like he needed something to do with his hands. And he wouldn’t look anybody in the eye. After he gave his big speech about how much he missed Daisy, when nobody was watching him, he looked relieved.”
Vashti and Homer were silent for a moment. Neither of them had ever been to a funeral, but even they knew relief wasn’t an appropriate emotion to express at one.
It was Vashti who eventually broke the silence. “Is that all?” Her voice was cold. “You came all the way over here just to tell us that Tommy seemed sad at a memorial for a human he was friends with, and then relieved when the speech he had to give was over?” Vashti didn’t know why it was happening, but it seemed to her that everybody was suddenly talking about her friend Tommy as if they suspected him of something—and thought she should suspect him, too.
“No, that’s not why I came.” Samkhat spoke with a quiet dignity that instantly made Vashti ashamed of her rudeness. “I came to give you my sympathy.”
Homer sat quietly as he connected Samkhat's report with what they already knew: the mysterious smell he'd detected on Daisy and someone else at the book signing; the argument between Tommy and Daisy; the suspicious behavior at the memorial service; and Marc's sudden interest in tracking down old issues of Tommy’s magazine.
"We need to find out more," Homer finally said. "I think we should—"
His sentence was cut short by the distant sound of the back storeroom door opening. They froze, and Samkhat quickly moved toward the shadows.
"We should go," Vashti said. “We don’t know how long Rachel’s planning to be gone. She could be on her way home already.”
Homer cocked an ear in the general eastward direction of Allamanda Avenue. “I don’t hear her coming yet,” he said. “But if she decides to take a cab home instead of walking, we might not get much of a heads-up. Anyway,” he added, “I think it’s going to rain soon."
Vashti and Samkhat looked up in surprise—the day had seemed perfectly sunny so far. But a quick glance to the east confirmed Homer’s suspicion: a thick mass of black thunderheads was moving quickly in their direction. A moment later the wind picked up, noticeably cooler than the warm breeze that had been gently ruffling their fur until now.
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything else,” Samkhat promised. Vashti quickly touched her nose in farewell and guided Homer back to the cat door in the alley.
Samkhat was anxious to get to her favorite hiding spot beneath the picnic tables on Hibiscus and Eighth before the rain got too bad. But she also wanted to grab a few bites of the kibble Rachel had left for her and hastily gulped down half the bowl. Her stomach full for the moment, the tortie then slipped silently over the edge of the loading dock. She disappeared into the tangle of bougainvillea growing alongside the building just as the first drops began to fall.
Rachel sank deeper into her comfortable chair in a quiet corner of Beachy Beans, one hand rising unconsciously to smooth down the tangle of curls that were even unrulier when it rained. The other hand cradled a steaming mug of Earl Grey. She was grateful for its warmth as the air conditioning, calibrated for Coacoochee's typical sunshine, sent an unexpected chill through the room. The café hummed with gentle activity—the hiss of the espresso machine, the clink of spoons against ceramic, the murmured conversations of locals and tourists alike. From her corner table, Rachel could observe it all while she flipped absentmindedly through the novel in front of her.
The streak of flawless beach weather had finally broken. A sudden squall descended on Coacoochee, turning what had promised to be a postcard-perfect afternoon into something mercurial and moody. The café’s soft amber lighting glowed through its windows, reflecting in the puddles that had begun to form on the sidewalk outside. Rachel watched palm trees bend and sway against the gunmetal sky, their fronds thrashing like the tails of angry cats. Thunder rolled in the distance, a bass note punctuating the percussion of fat raindrops as they struck the awning above the entrance.
Though Sunday and Monday were her usual days off, Nadia had offered to cover the after-lunch shift at Title Wave, giving Rachel an unexpected respite. "I don’t have class on Thursday afternoons, anyway," she’d insisted. "Go. You look like you could use a break." Rachel hadn't argued. After the events of the past week, any moment away from the bookstore felt like coming up for air after too long underwater.
