The Cat in the Hatbox

Chapter 6

"Well, I doubt she locked herself in the closet," Ed said. Everyone stared at him, mouths agape. He went on hurriedly, "She looks like a smart cat, but I don't think she could have reached up and turned that little knob that locks the door."

"Well, she was in the closet, and it was locked," Zelda said. She glared at Ed.

"I do not doubt you, Ms. Terwilliger; I'm just stating a fact."

She made an 'hmph' sound, but her glare softened, just the tiniest bit. "It sounded like you doubted me," she said. "And, please, don't call me Ms. Terwilliger. I'm just Zelda. That's my stage name."

"Stage name?"

"Yeah, stage name. I'm the drummer for Tin Can Alley, a grunge band that plays clubs along the east coast."

"Tin Pan Alley?" Ed asked. "What's a grunge band?"

Zelda's glare turned into a kind of 'down-your-nose' look that is normally reserved for the really clueless. "Not Tin Pan Alley; Tin Can Alley. And, a grunge band is kind of a cross between heavy metal and punk, you know, like Nirvana."

Ed looked at her, his brown brow furrowed. The other three also looked confused. Zelda made a snorting sound.

"None of you have any idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Well," Ed said. "I know that nirvana is a Buddhist term that means freedom from suffering, or something like that."

She laughed. "I don't know anything about Buddhism, but Nirvana was a grunge band from the 90s, one of the most famous in fact. They brought grunge, which had been just scattered groups playing clubs in Seattle, Washington, into the mainstream. Anyway, I play the drums for Tin Can Alley. It doesn't like pay much, but it's better than the job I used to have. I was a mortuary cosmetologist. That's like, you know, the person who puts the makeup on stiffs after they get embalmed."

Ed held his hands up in surrender. "Okay, so you're a drummer in a band, and you no longer use your family name. I can work with that. If it's not music from the 60s and 70s I don't know much about it. What I'd like you to do, though, is to walk me through what happened Friday."

"The whole day?"

Ed sighed. He couldn't get over how difficult it seemed to be for some people to understand simple communication. She had to know he was concerned about what had happened to her aunt, so Zelda should have been able to intuit from that that he was mainly interested in the events at PVC after her arrival. Either she didn't understand that simple fact, or she was doing another thing people did that infuriated him—asking a question that she didn't really need the answer to. His curiosity, though, had invested him in the case, so he couldn't let his frustration show. He took a deep breath.

"No, just from the time you arrived here at PVC," he said, keeping his tone as pleasant as possible.

Zelda cocked her head to one side and narrowed her eyes while absently running her fingers through the hair on Petunia's stomach The cat, lolling on its back with its paws waving, glared at Ed as if upset that he was distracting Zelda from her main job, which was keeping it happy.

"Okay," Zelda finally said. "I got it. So, here's what happened. I was s'posed to come see Aunt Bea Thursday night, but, like, Tin Can Alley had a gig at Rockslide . . . that's this club up in Bowie . . . anyway, so like I called her and told her I couldn't make it, so she like told me to come for breakfast Friday."