“How long has Wisteria Hill been abandoned?” I asked.
“Years,” Roma said, driving around the remains of a dead skunk and closing up her window at the same time. “Must be close to twenty-five.”
I stared at her, incredulous. “Twenty-five years? But why? Why would Everett let his home deteriorate for twenty-five years?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Roma slowed and put on her blinker for the turn into the lane out to the old house. “To be fair, the place wasn’t really abandoned in the beginning.”
I put a hand on the dash as we bounced over the rutted dirt drive. “Everett closed the house after his mother died, didn’t he?” I asked.
“Yes, he did,” Roma said. “He closed off all but one section at the back. He had a caretaker who lived in it and took care of things, and, I’m guessing, looked after the cats.”
We pulled into a open area then, in front of the house, and I couldn’t help staring, just the way I had the first time I’d stumbled on the estate in the spring. The old house looked neglected. It looked . . . lonely. The windows had been boarded over. The right end of the verandah sagged. The yard was even more of a tangle of overgrown grass and weeds, prickly rosebushes, and saplings about kneehigh, new trees taking root as the forest slowly spread out. I thought about the remnants of the English country garden in the backyard. Someone had clearly cared about Wisteria Hill at one time. “What happened?” I said softly. “How could . . .” I let the end of the sentence trail off.
Roma sighed. “I truly don’t know. No one does.” She studied the house. “George and Clara Anderson took care of the place. They’re related to Everett’s secretary, Lita, somehow. Then they decided they wanted to move to Michigan to be closer to their daughter and grandkids. It was before I came back, but not by a lot.”
She reached into the backseat for her ball cap and pulled it on. “Everett spent most of his time in Minneapolis and just came home for weekends. When George and Clara left everyone thought he’d hire someone new. But he didn’t. He moved his business and himself back here, but he left the house empty. If he even comes out here, no one’s seen him.”
“How could Everett leave the cats out here to fend for themselves?” It was clear to me that Everett was an intense, hardheaded businessman, but I would never have said he was cruel.
“He didn’t,” Roma said. “No one knew there were any cats out here.” She reached over the seat again, this time for a dark canvas backpack. Then she opened the car door and got out. So did I. She glanced over at the house, then looked at me over the roof of the car. “The Andersons took four cats with them when they moved. Clara was the kind of person who would carry a bug outside rather than squish it.”
Like Ami,
I thought.
“She wouldn’t have left a cat behind. Second week I was back here someone brought in an injured cat—attacked by something, probably a coyote. It was Desmond.” Roma popped the trunk.
“I didn’t know Desmond was feral,” I said, as I helped her take two large animal cages and a couple of blankets out of the trunk.
“What? Did you think he was just cranky?” Roma said, giving me a sideways grin.
“I didn’t even think he was cranky.”
Desmond was Roma’s cat. Or, more accurately, he was the animal clinic’s version of a guard dog. Sleek and black, Desmond had only one eye and was missing part of an ear. Even though he wasn’t a particularly big cat, his appearance and his demeanor made him seem larger and decidedly imposing. I’d seen him glare a barking golden retriever under a clinic chair. But he’d also sat companionably beside me in the waiting room while Owen and Hercules were being neutered.
“It never occurred to me that Desmond was a Wisteria Hill cat.”
Roma tucked the blankets under one arm and picked up one of the cages with her other hand. I grabbed the remaining cage. She started for the house and I followed.
“Des was almost full-grown when Marcus brought him in. He’s learned to tolerate people, but he hasn’t gotten close to anyone—not the way Hercules and Owen are close to you, although he does seem to like you better than pretty much anyone else.”
I stopped. “Marcus?”
Roma looked back over her shoulder. “Uh-huh. Marcus Gordon. The detective who’s working on the Easton case.” She started around the house to the backyard and I hurried to catch up with her. “Even hurt, Desmond was wild,” she continued. “He clawed the back of both of Marcus’s hands and caught the side of his face, as well.” She smiled. “You weren’t my first two-legged patient, Kathleen.”
Using her elbow to push a clump of blackberry canes out of her way, she gestured for me to go around her. “That encounter with Desmond would have put anyone else off of cats,” Roma said. “But not Marcus. In fact, he’s the helper who had to cancel today.”
Roma set down the cage she’d been carrying just in front of a large outbuilding. It was bigger than a garage, but not quite as large as a barn.
“What was this building?” I asked. “It’s too small to have been a barn.”
“It was the carriage house. Now it’s where the cats live.” She took the backpack from me, set it on the grass and opened the top.
“What happens in the wintertime?”
Roma pulled out a couple of sections of newspaper and set them on top of one of the cages. “We take care of the cats all winter, just the way we do the rest of the year.” She stood up and looked around the unkempt yard. “It took six weeks before I’d figured out how many cats there were in the colony. There were nine—a tom, three females and five kittens. It took four attempts to collect them all for neutering.”
“I don’t understand why you brought them back here.” I was already sweating a bit in my long pants and sleeves.
“Because they’re feral,” Roma said. “They’re not used to people and they don’t adapt well to living with them.” She held up a hand. “I know, I know. Owen and Hercules are different and I can’t completely explain that. In fact, I’m not even sure they were part of this colony. And as for Desmond, I don’t think he was feral. I think he was someone’s pet that was abandoned.”
“Is there a difference?”
Roma nodded. “An abandoned cat—a stray—will eventually form a relationship with you if you start feeding it. A feral cat will learn to trust you and depend on you if you feed it, but it will always be skittish.”
Roma crouched down and began to fold the newspaper so it would fit on the bottom of the two cages. “With caretakers the cats do quite well in the colony—the family—that they’ve formed.”
I bent beside her and took the other section of newspaper, folding it the way she had. “What do you mean by ‘caretakers’?”
“Pretty much what it sounds like,” she said. “Like I said, we trapped and neutered all the cats and made sure they were healthy. Of the original nine, one was too ill to return here and one of the kittens died several months later.”
“So there are seven cats now.” I set the folded paper on the bottom of the cage the way Roma had done with hers.
“That’s right. We have a feeding station set up. Volunteers come out once a day to feed the cats. In the wintertime Harry keeps the road plowed.” She brushed off her hands and stood up. I did the same.
“How do the cats stay warm all winter?” I asked.
“We have shelters for them—cat houses, if you will. They’re made from plastic storage bins, insulated and with straw inside for warmth. Rebecca built three of them for us.”
That didn’t surprise me at all.
Roma rooted around in her backpack again and pulled out a can of tuna and a fork.
“Are you making lunch?” I asked with a grin.
“Sure,” Roma said, standing up and grabbing a cage with her free hand. “As long as you can climb in here.”
I picked up the other cage and followed her across the grass to a shaded space close to the front of the carriage house.
“So if all the cats are neutered, why are we here?”
Roma set her cat trap down near the base of a maple tree. “Marcus was out here yesterday and noticed that Lucy—one of the older cats—is limping. Based on his description, I think her leg may be broken.” She took the cage I was holding and set it several feet away from the other one.
I pulled at the neck of my T-shirt. “But how are you going to trap just one cat?”
Roma popped the top on the can of tuna. “That’s why we’re using more than one trap. And Lucy is the . . . boldest of the cats. I’m hoping she’ll come out first.”
“Out?”
She pointed at the carriage house. “See that hole just to the side of the doorframe?”
The wood had rotted or broken away, leaving a small, jagged opening to the right of the carriage house doors.
“The cats go back and forth through that hole. We use the door. The feeding station is inside. That’s also where the cats sleep.”
I nodded. “So the tuna goes in the trap and when the cat steps inside to get it—”
“—she steps on the trigger mechanism and the door drops down,” Roma finished for me. She pressed on the trigger plate and the door fell onto her arm. “And we cross our fingers we have the right cat.”
“Pretty simple.”
“Uh-huh. But I swear before we’d finished catching all the cats to be neutered, a couple of them had pretty much figured it all out.” She adjusted the newspaper slightly. “The only way I could get one of the females was to bring out a chicken breast I’d roasted with rosemary and garlic, and believe it or not she tried to grab the chicken with a paw and pull it out.”
“All it would take with Owen would be one of those glow-in-the-dark yellow catnip chickens.”
Roma grinned. “Is Rebecca still buying those for him?”
“Ami bought him one today,” I said, brushing away a bug that was trying to land on my neck. “But I suspect Rebecca had a hand in that. I came in from the backyard, and Owen was on his back, paws in the air, with a goofy look on his face and the chicken head balanced on his chest.”
She laughed. “Hey, change the chicken head to a carton of mocha chocolate chip ice cream and you’ve just described my typical Friday night.”
Now it was my turn to laugh.
Roma stirred the tuna with the fork, breaking it into small chunks in the can.
“What are the blankets for?” I asked. “I’m guessing they’re not so we can go lie down in the shade.”
“No, they’re to cover the cages because it keeps the cats calmer. But having a couple of blankets to lie on in the shade isn’t such a bad idea.”
I watched as she put a forkful of tuna toward the back of the cage and then made a trail of small tuna bits back to the opening. She repeated the process with the other cage. “Now we wait,” she said, standing up and wiping her hands on her pants.
We backed up all the way to the house and sat on the peeling stairs. I could still see the carriage house and the two traps. Roma leaned against the stair railing and stretched out her legs.
“What’s back behind those trees?” I asked, pointing behind the carriage house.
“More trees,” she said. “And eventually the most beautiful field of wildflowers I promise you’ll ever see—black-eyed Susan, lavender hyssop, evening primrose, milkweed and a lot more I don’t know the names of. Come back out with me again sometime and I’ll take you up there.”
“Is that a bribe?” I asked, leaning my elbows on my knees.
Roma grinned. “I prefer to think of it as offering an incentive.”
“I’d like to come back and help, if I can,” I said, smiling. “But I’m also open to an incentive.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Roma said, shifting a little to the left so she could keep an eye on both the traps and the carriage house door.
“Roma, what would happen to the cats if Everett decided to do something with this property?”
She ran a hand down her throat. “There’s a farm about an hour from here that’s run by a couple who do a lot of work with feral cats. I guess I’d try to send the cats there.”
“The cats would go live on a farm?” I made a face. “When I was six we lived for a while next door to the Bartletts, who had a little black dog named Farley. Farley got hit by a car and they took him to the vet. Mrs. Bartlett said that after Farley got better he was going to live on a farm in the country where he could run around and not have to worry about cars.” I eyed her with suspicion. “This isn’t the same kind of farm, is it?”
Laughing, Roma shook her head. “It’s not. I promise you.” She stretched both legs along the step.
“Did you always want to be a vet?’ I asked.
“Actually, no,” she said. “It was a really good teacher who pointed me in this direction. What about you?”
“I wanted to live in the library from the moment I discovered that’s where they kept the books.”
“Do you miss Boston, Kathleen?”
I pushed my hair back off my sweaty face. “Sometimes I do,” I said. “Especially when I talk to my family, my friends. On the other hand, look at that sky.” There was nothing but endless blue overhead. “Sometimes I’m in my office and the sun is shining through the windows and sparkling on the lake, and I can’t think of a more beautiful place to be working.”
“Wait till January.” She leaned forward then and without shifting her gaze, stretched out an arm and tapped me on the leg. “Look,” she said, “by the door.”
I sat up, leaning left to get a better view. A small calico cat squeezed out through the hole next to the carriage house door.
“Yes!” Roma hissed.
“Is that Lucy?” I asked.
She nodded.
I watched the cat approach the closest cage, taking slow, careful steps and sniffing the air. She was definitely limping.
“C’mon,” Roma whispered. “C’mon.”
Lucy hobbled closer and closer to the cage. Finally she reached the opening. She sniffed the tiny bit of tuna Roma had set there. Then she ate it.
“Good girl,” Roma said, softly.
And then she turned and walked away. Roma groaned. Lucy paused, ears twitching. I held my breath. The little cat looked around, sniffing the air again. She changed direction, toward the other cage.