CHAPTER 35
I drove to where Google told me to go, but, when I arrived, I got quite the fright and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The place was packed with cars and cats and people carrying cats.
I looked up at the massive banner that hung from the roof of the hall, flapping in the cool autumn breeze:Annual Persian Parade 2019. Just my luck. There was only one place I needed to see, and it was inundated with cats. I slung my bag on to my shoulder and climbed out the car. A huge queue had formed outside and I stepped into it and waited. But when I got to the front . . .
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you in unless you have a ticket,” the man at the door said, when I failed to produce such a thing. He looked like a real “cat person.” He was such a stereotype, right down to the T-shirt he was wearing that said,Cats, because people suck.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied flatly. The real reason he thought people sucked was probably due more to his bedside manner as a human, and less to do with humans at large. Because this man had the social graces of an aardvark. He had beady eyes, his shirt was covered in cat hair, he wore thick glasses and, quite frankly, there was a strange smell that seemed to linger on him.
“I lost my ticket.” I tried to put some flirt in my voice; it didn’t work. I fluttered my eyelashes a little, too, hoping that perhaps my feminine wiles would get me in . . .Wait—what was I thinking?This was 2019! Women didn’t do that anymore. How truly un-feminist of me! It didn’t work, anyway; the man was unswayed.
He shook his head. “No ticket, no entry. We have been sold out for months, now.”
“Pleeeease, is there noooooo way I can get in? Pleeeease?” I tried a new approach. Begging. It was undignified and revolting and I hated myself for doing it, but I was desperate.
A few people behind me sounded like they were getting irritated. They looked like they were dying to go in, as if this was the highlight of their entire year. The man looked at me blankly. Still unmoved. Concrete features on his face. Unblinking.
“I guess that’s a hard no, then?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. He didn’t respond. “Okey-dokey, a hard no it is. I get it.” I left the queue, much to the relief of the others.
I turned and looked at the hall.Crap!I needed to get into this place. A potential clue was waiting inside, but the man was still staring at me, as if he knew I was up to something. I started whistling a tune and made my way around to the back of the building, where I found a steel door labeledExit.
I grabbed the handle, but it was locked. There was no way in. I was just about to turn around and leave when a woman burst through the door, looking agitated. She reminded me of the woman in the lift—the one with the brows. She held the door open with her foot and lit a cigarette as if her life depended on how quickly she managed to inhale it. She released the smoke with a huge sigh.
“Hey,” I said, acting casual.
“Hey!” She sounded pissed off.
“Bad day?” I asked.
“Our cat groomer couldn’t make it. The show is in less than an hour.”
“Oh, that’s a pity,” I said, playing along.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She looked like she was on the verge of tears, and that’s when I jumped without thinking. Without even pausing to think about thinking, without even—
“I’m a cat groomer.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked, looking at me suspiciously. “What are you doing out here?”
I rolled my eyes and gestured at her cigarette. “Trying to quit.”
The woman looked down at her cigarette. “Tell me about it.”
“Have you tried vaping?” I asked, adding some more details to my story for authenticity, even though I thought vaping was literally one of the worst things ever to have happened to the world.
“Didn’t work,” she said.
“Me neither. I even did hypnotherapy once,” I said. “I did manage to stop biting my nails, though.” I held my hands up and she smiled at me.
“So, who have you groomed?” she asked.
“Uh . . . Well, last year, I groomed Lady Catterly of Kitashia,” I said, thinking about the car I’d stolen the sticker from.
“Lady Catterly won last year!” She dropped her cigarette and put it out with a stomp of her foot.
Shit. I hadn’t really meant to choose such a high-profile cat. But it was the only cat’s name that I knew.
