One for the Money

1

You don’t look like no ‘tectives on TV, Granny, Ben had announced at his first opportunity to comment on my new career. He’d stuck one pudgy digit up his nose and pointed another one at me accusingly. None o’ them gots white hair.

Stick around for a few seasons, kid. They will, I’d answered.

What the hell. I was used to skepticism. Any veteran mother that isn’t has her goddamned ears stuffed with kumquats.

Swearing was a habit I’d picked up when Fred was alive. One day I got the impression that Fred hadn’t been listening to me for a while. Say, twenty years. So I thought I’d try a little verbal variety to see if he’d notice. At first, it was just an experiment. Then, you know, it became a challenge; tomorrow he’ll notice, I’d think. There toward the end, though, I didn’t want him to break his record. But I didn’t cheat. And Fred Caliban went to his grave believing I was the same sweet girl he’d married. Since I’d never actually been sweet, either, except in Fred’s imagination, you can see how alert he was.

It’s no wonder I’d wanted a change when Fred died. See, I had this epiphany in the women’s john at McAlpin’s Department store in downtown Cincinnati. But that’s another story — maybe I’ll tell you when I know you better. What I wanted was THE change, but I figured I’d better make my own change, since Mother Nature, like most mothers I know, was overextended and running behind.

I loved my kids as much as the next mother, but three kids and thirty-eight years of marriage didn’t seem like much to show for more than half a century. Oh, the kids came out okay, I guess, even though now that they were grown up and could tell me what to do they could be regular pains in the ass. Sharon was a successful stockbroker who had negotiated a merger with a male stockbroker as practical as she was, and they had produced one child, Benjamin, the hair color critic. As the oldest of my offspring, Sharon claimed the privileges of seniority when it came to giving me advice. My second child Jason was some kind of business executive on his third marriage and his fourth kid. You might’ve thought his own mistakes disqualified him from telling other people what to do, but he was Sharon’s ally. Then there was Franny, my favorite, who was off somewhere attending school. I lost track the fourth time she switched colleges and majors. She was the original boomerang kid: she always came home to her mother when she couldn’t think of anything else to do. The myth of the eternal return, which Franny had tried to explain to me when she was an anthropology major at Michigan, was no myth as far as I was concerned.

Then there was my better half, Fred, as dull and familiar as the Council on Dental Therapeutics statement on the Crest toothpaste tube. My generation of women didn’t think much about divorce once the initial postwar flurry died down. We didn’t expect marriage to be different with anybody else short of Rock Hudson, who was even less available than we knew. It never occurred to us to live on our own. With what? Besides, the women’s magazines were crammed with advertisements featuring lonely spinsters of thirty whose lives had been ruined because of halitosis or body odor; we were supposed to be lucky.

So with Fred gone I’d wanted a big change, and I’m not talking facelift and hair color. I wanted a new career. I’d read those articles about looking at your housekeeping skills from the perspective of work experience — accounting, management, personnel supervision, maintenance. I reassessed all my skills and surveyed the reading I’d been doing for the past twenty years. That’s how I came up with the idea of Cat Caliban Investigations, a private inquiry agency.

Hell, I’d investigated things all my adult life. Who left the freezer door open so all the ice cream melted. Who left their new purple T-shirt in the washer so that everybody’s underwear turned lavender. Who drew stripes on the cat with Marks-a-Lot. Why couldn’t Fred ever think of anything to give me for my birthday.

Besides, it was the 1980s, for crissakes; women were doing all kinds of jobs.

Not that I expected to be an overnight success in the private investigation business. I figured on a training period, and anticipated a cash flow problem. I’d talked it over with my friend Louella, who had taken up real estate after her husband Art died. Louella had found me a little apartment complex to buy, four units in pink brick, a square little box of a building with an add-on office, a greenish-brown lawn, and two medium-sized spruce trees to match. Good rental history. Solid investment. I threw a yard sale at my three-story house in Wyoming — a neighborhood full of nuclear families, middle managers, and Suburbans — packed up the leftovers, and moved to Northside. Carved over the doorway in white limestone was somebody’s idea of a classy name: The Patagonia Arms. Needless to say, after I moved in, it became known among my friends as the Catatonia Arms.

About a week after the move, I’d been shampooing a layer of cigarette smoke and beer off the forest-green wall-to-wall in the living room when I’d caught a glimpse of Herb Munch, Fred’s best pal, standing out front. He was shaking his head over the signs — the one for the Patagonia Arms, and the one in the yard for the two vacant apartments. Herb looks like a tall Jack Nicholson with glasses and all the angles and edges blunted, but he don’t have Jack’s stature. Sophie and Sadie were perched on the windowsill like bookends, glaring at old Herb, their tails whipping back and forth like streamers in a snow squall. They’d never liked Herb, either. He had the bad manners to ignore them. I hoped their little brother, Sidney, was lurking by the front door playing attack cat. I had never agreed with Herb Munch about anything, from the pennant race to Fred’s funeral arrangements.

A yelp of pain announced that I had been right about Sidney; when I opened the door, he was stuck to Herb’s ankle like a little black burr to a coyote’s coat. He had his teeth sunk into Herb’s argyle socks.

Why, Herbert! What a pleasant surprise!

Get him off me! Herb bellowed, hopping on one leg and waving the other. Sidney was flapping around like a flagpole sitter in a high wind, but he was damned if he was going to let go.

You don’t have to shout. My goodness! He’s only doing his job. I detached Sidney, claw by claw, from Herb’s pant leg, and bussed him on the nose. Good kitty! Good boy! Next week Mother will explain the difference between bill collectors, Mormon missionaries, and friendly visitors. This was for Herb’s benefit; I didn’t consider him a friendly visitor, and we all knew it. You see, Herb, he needs encouragement.

He needs drowning, Herb muttered. He stalked past me, flung himself into a chair, and rubbed his ankle.

Do come in, Herb, and make yourself comfortable.

You didn’t even tell me you were moving. He sulked. I heard it from Dave up at the bank.

Men can never take a hint, have you noticed? Now if a woman discovers that someone has moved and sent change-of-address cards to everybody from the dry cleaners to TV Guide, does she come around and accuse that person of oversight? Subtlety and perceptiveness are secondary sex characteristics, take it from me.

That so, I said. Noncommittal.

When did you decide to do all this, anyway? And who did you talk to about it? Translation: why didn’t you talk to me? I’m worried about you, Catherine. You just don’t have the experience to manage real estate, and as for a detective agency —. He gestured vaguely, as if it were hardly worth discussing, which it wasn’t. He spoke sadly, as if he were giving me bad news that wouldn’t have occurred to me.

I talked to Louella Simmons about the real estate, the reference librarian and the ghost of Dame Agatha about the career change, and the cats about both. You’re the first wet blanket. Do me a favor, Herb. Don’t worry about me.

Louella Simmons doesn’t know shit about real estate, excuse my French.

Your damned French is excused. Louella has a realtor’s license and a gold jacket.

Hell, any flea-brained housewife can get those things, Cat.

I tried withering him with a look since I hadn’t started my karate lessons yet.

And where did you get the idea that you could be a detective? Have you been taking a correspondence course? Private investigation takes years of training. Can you fire a gun? Can you pick a lock?

Nancy Drew had less training than I have. I’ve been reading detective novels for years. I can pick up the skills I don’t have.

Oh, yeah, when? When you’re looking down the barrel of a gun?

Herb was beginning to get on my nerves. He prided himself on his sense of the dramatic.

I don’t understand you, Catherine. Fred left you well off. Not rich, maybe, but well off. At your age, you should be relaxing, taking life easy.

If I took life any damn easier than I have the last ten years, I’d be dead, for crissake. You don’t understand me, Herb. Fine. I don’t expect you to. I like it that way. The day you understand me, I’ll shoot myself. Now, why don’t you just go away, and let me get on with my goddamn life.

I was already restraining Sidney, who sensed the opportunity for a reprise in the air.

Fred must be turning over in his grave, was Herb’s parting shot.

I doubted it. If Fred turned over in his grave, it would be to say, What was that, Cat? Did you say something?

Sadie, my pepper-and-salt tabby, had the last word. She strolled to the door, turned her back on it, dug her claws in the carpet, and buried the departed Herb like a turd in a litter box. The curse of kitty disdain.

Who the hell was Herb Munch to tell me how to run my life? My own kids were bad enough. Whatever possessed me, they wanted to know, to buy rental property in Northside, a working-class neighborhood known for its condemned houses and Goodwill store? Property values hadn’t increased there since the great Dutch elm disease plague. The only people who were willing to move into the neighborhood and fix up their houses were yuppie lesbians, and even they were buying on the Urban Homesteading plan. Surely I wasn’t planning to live there! Four blocks from the army-navy surplus store and the second-hand refrigerator store, and five blocks from Park’s Chili? And I was planning to start a what? What did I know about detective work? Did I realize how dangerous it was? I would probably get blown away on my first case.

Fine, I’d said. Then you can contest my will on the basis of insanity.

Franny, as usual, was the exception.

I think it’s a gas, Mom, she’d said on the phone, calling collect from Albuquerque. I’ll trade in the monogrammed hankies I bought for a semi-automatic for your birthday.

That’s okay, Fran. Detectives still use hankies — you know, to pick up murder weapons without smudging the fingerprints. I knew the kinds of places Franny shopped. When the kids were growing up, I’d found a use for all their presents so that I wouldn’t hurt their feelings. But a handprint ashtray was one thing; a deep-discounted Saturday night special was another. Some sacrifices I was not prepared to make.

And another thing, why does everybody make such an issue of my age? I’m young for a detective. Look at Jane Marple. Look at Maude Silver. Look at Mrs. Pollifax, for crissakes.

I stand five-feet-one in my Adidas, but nobody would ever mistake me for Miss Petite America. Eating is one of the pleasures of life, in my book, and it was one of the few pleasures available to me when Fred was alive. I conceded, however, that Mrs. Pollifax made a more appropriate role model for me than some of the rest — hence the prospective karate lessons.

Meanwhile, I’d already gone out and bought a working girl’s wardrobe, with dark color pantsuits like V.I. Warshawski wears. Standing in the dressing room at Shillito’s, I shrugged my shoulders up and down and swung my arms around to make sure there was enough room for a shoulder holster in case I ever learned how to use a gun. There would be, as soon as I dropped ten pounds at the Y. I drew the line at silk blouses, though; they seemed so impractical. V.I. was always getting hers bloodied up and ripped to shreds, and at thirty-five bucks apiece I couldn’t see the point. Maybe cheapness was an attitude that came with raising three kids.

Kevin, my tenant, agreed to take shooting lessons with me. My friend Mabel had been worried about this facet of my new career. To tell the truth, it worried me a little, too.

The only weapon you know how to shoot is your mouth, Cat. How you going to be a detective if you don’t know anything about guns?

Miss Marple never fired a shot, I’d said.

"Yeah, but this is no rural English town out of the 1930s. This is the eighties. The twenty-first century is just around the corner. Plus, this is the city, like they say on TV. And on TV these days, the guy without the gun gets wasted."

So I’d told her about the lessons.

You’re taking shooting lessons with a fairy?

Sometimes I swear I thought Mabel’s consciousness hadn’t budged since 1951. It was like the sixties had happened in somebody else’s lifetime, not hers. I’d been trying to reprogram her for seven years, but it was an uphill battle. She’d spent too many hours bending over a steam iron, and it had affected her gray matter.

What does his sexual orientation have to do with it? I want to take a class with him, not go to bed with him.

This was too deep for Mabel.

Kevin O’Neill had come with the apartment building when I bought it. He was Louella’s pièce de resistance: a quiet tenant with a steady job as a bartender, a man who always paid his rent on time.

And, she’d enthused, he’s a fabulous cook!

He’d seemed nice enough when I met him. Average height, slender, reddish-blonde wavy hair, a faint sprinkling of freckles, and smoky blue eyes. But the cats, little emotional beggars that they are, got to know him before I did.

On a sweltering Saturday in late July, I’d puddled out to the sidewalk to call the cats. I hadn’t seen them for hours, and I thought it was time to check for dehydration. Kevin stuck his head out of the door at Number 2 — across from my apartment on the ground floor.

They’re in here, Mrs. C. Why don’t you join us? I popped some banana bread in the oven a while back, and it’ll be done any second.

The oven? I echoed, aghast. My oven hadn’t seen service since I’d tested it on a tour of the property. Who ate hot food in a heat wave? I went in and stood dripping all over his Persian rug. The apartment smelled like bananas.

Cats have that famous sixth sense. It tells them that someone is going to come to the door half an hour before the bell rings. It tells them which is your last pair of run-less pantyhose. It warns them, from a distance of fifty feet, when their dinner has been doctored with medication or vitamins. And on hot days it locates the only apartment in the neighborhood with air conditioning. Survival of the fittest. Kevin’s window units were working overtime and his apartment felt like a meat locker after the tropical air outside. The cats were sacked out on the sofa, watching the Reds get pounded by the Astros. Nevertheless, they looked totally blissed out, as Franny would say. But totally.

I can’t stay. I just wanted to check on them. They look okay to me, as long as you’re willing to vouch for the fact that they’re still breathing.

The Landlord’s Handbook, which I’d picked up at B. Dalton’s the week I decided to become a real estate mogul, had devoted a whole chapter to landlord-tenant relations. It warned of the dire consequences of intimacy — or even friendliness — between landlord and tenant. It admonished novice landlords to maintain tenant relations on a strictly business level. Breaking banana bread with your tenants was, I suspected, off limits.

Oh, come on, Mrs. C, he said, bustling into the room with a tray of banana bread and two Cokes. Pull up a chair and cool off. If you don’t help me out, I’ll be forced to eat the whole loaf myself and spend the next two weeks exercising to get rid of it.

I had not read The Landlord’s Handbook to the cats. As soon as Kevin sat down on the couch, Sidney climbed into his lap, purring like a jackhammer, and Sophie snuggled up against his thigh. Sadie was too far gone to notice. With a sense of crossing the Rubicon, I sat down.

During the seventh inning stretch, we discussed my plans for Caliban Investigations. By now we were Kev and Cat, Cat and Kev.

I showed him my copy of the Ohio law covering licensure of private investigators.

The ‘good reputation for integrity’ shit I can fake and I haven’t been convicted of a felony or moral turpitude in the last twenty years. So the only problem I see is with the part about two years of experience in ‘investigatory work for a law enforcement or other public agency, et cetera.’ What the hell am I going to do about that?

I wouldn’t worry about that, he said. I’m sure you can always buy your way in in a pinch.

Do you really think so?

Sure. How do you think this state operates anyway?

Two hours later, I left with Kevin’s promise to take shooting lessons with me.

I look on it as acquiring another job skill, Mrs. C. He shrugged, reverting to his preferred form of address.

So as far as my job skills went, I’d covered some of them by signing up for lessons. As for the rest, hell, I had a library card.

2

READING IS THE KEY THAT UNLOCKS EVERY DOOR.

I looked at that poster every damn day in second grade. Skinny little white girl with Shirley Temple curls and a pinafore, and a little white boy with a butch haircut and a mouth like a zero, hands in the air, standing in front of this heavy wooden door like something out of The Seven Voyages of Sinbad. The door was partway open, with rays of light shooting out, and you could see things behind the door — pirates and bears and fairies and knights and princesses and doctors. It made a hell of an impression on me and I took its message to heart.

So what I did was, I made up a list of everything I needed to know about in order to be a detective: forensic psychology, law, ballistics, handwriting analysis, toxicology, accounting, and all the rest. Then I ranked my topics in order of importance. I figured it was more important to know how a gun worked, for example, than how to recognize indigenous plant and animal poisons of North America. And what caused rigor mortis and how long it lasted was more important information, at least in the beginning, than the psycho-sexual roots of multiple personality. But accounting was up there near the top of the list. A business is a business.

Then I took my list down to the public library, and threw myself on the mercy of the reference librarians. Four days a week now for