Page 5 of Whiskers on Kittens

“You absolutely may. Once the children are on the road, we can talk more about her stay at the prison, which you can compare with her report. And Kelsie? You need not write an entire book on your stay. Simply leave a note where you wish for me to expand, and I will take on the burden for you. You should be using your time on more important things.” Before I could protest over the prison system’s importance, the angel raised her hand to stop me. “Yes, it is important, but the lives of those kittens are more important. The prisoners have earned their punishments, and while inhumane comparatively, you have done the work needed to resolve that issue. You need not beat the dead horse nor the jail wardens over it. Allow me the honor of handling the extended edition on your behalf. You need not do your best on this case, for I will do my best on your behalf.”

I could work with that. “You’ll have the relatively sparse document requiring angelic elaboration by morning, Your Honor.”

“Excellent. Drive safely. Do your best to keep her out of trouble, Officer Dannell. Don’t beat yourself up over it if you can’t. Try to enjoy the ride.”

A better woman would have warned the cop I lived in the heart of Logan Square in one of the greystone homes most counted as a mansion. Like most of the greystones, it was in the townhome style, although mine was more than twice the size of most, took up a corner lot, and boasted a yard.

I had rewarded myself with the property upon my first successful high-end negotiation, choosing Chicago to be the home of my heart. I’d grown up in a townhome similar in a different part of the city, albeit on a far smaller scale. While my parents still loved the old place, it could barely fit two people let alone the three we’d crammed in during my youth.

I hired landscapers to keep the property immaculate, and once a month, they put up with me helping, as I enjoyed caring for living things. During planting season, I made a party of it, keeping my team busy for a week while we redid the main garden, which included a healthy stock of vegetables.

They’d even taught me how to harvest my bounty, and when my bounty proved plentiful, they helped me get it into the hands of the needy. My garden tended to shower me with an abundance of produce. I blamed the landscapers, sharing with them when I could get them to accept my offerings.

I almost pitied the cop when he parked in my garage. The neighboring greystone had perished, gutted by a fire and allowed to decay to the point it had become dangerous. The instant it had gone on sale, I had purchased the lot, salvaged the stone I could, shored the surviving sections of the building, and converted half of it into a garage for four cars while turning the rest into a guest home.

I’d rebuilt the damned thing using the old stones, maintaining the original look and feel of the second and third stories while installing the garage doors on the ground floor. I’d even paid a fortune for special garage doors hosting a thin veneer of the original stone to maintain as much of the classic look as possible.

He killed the engine of his cruiser, parked between my one vehicular indulgence and my everyday vehicle. Drawing a deep breath, he removed the keys, shook his head, and opened his door. “I’ve been down this street at least a thousand times, and I had no idea this was a garage.”

I beamed at the comment, which had been my intent all along. “The original home had been destroyed in a fire, and the heritage folks had a fit because it was damaged beyond salvaging. Inside, the fire had gotten so intense some of the support stones inside literally melted. It was a mess. My house is actually next door, but when this came up for sale because the insurance company opted to pay out a set fund rather than rebuild, the owners bailed. I bought it, had a chat with the heritage folks, informed them I wanted a garage, and that I would use a veneering door system to preserve the general look and feel of greystones if they looked the other way while I dismantled, rebuilt it from scratch, and used the surviving exterior stones for the build. It’s not an exact match, but it’s close enough the heritage folks literally sobbed when they saw what I’d done to the place.”

I had ended up with a gross, wet shirt and the eternal gratitude of numerous heritage societies, which meant whenever I wanted to do work on one of my properties, they just gave me the permit after confirming I would do my best to maintain the exterior.

“Who owns the Acura?”

I got out of the cruiser, hopped over to my cranberry red beauty of an everyday car, and gave her a loving pat on the hood. “She’s mine. This is my regular car. She was cheap, she’s good on mileage, she’s a manual, and she’s a pretty fun drive. She gets full points for general comfort.” I then crossed around to my blue sporty beast, and I gave her a kiss on her roof. “This is my Lexus LC. I went dealership crawling wanting something fun, and I tested something from every dealership in Chicago. Lexus took me seriously when I told them I was testing the best the city had to offer, gave me a salesperson who treated me like I knew something about cars, and said they could have the color I wanted shipped in the next day as they had had one in Detroit. They gave me a decent price for her, and sure enough, we closed the deal the next day. You have a choice to make. We can take that cruiser, which is not winning points for comfort, the Acura, or the Lexus. I will be adding you to my insurance should we be taking one of my babies, and I’ll even let you modify her for the lights and sirens if necessary.”

“We do have portable lights and sirens.” The cop joined me and prowled around my Lexus. “My name’s Asher. You can call me Ash, or if you find my name to your general dislike, you can call me Easton. I usually go by Easton among those who actually like me and Asher among those who want to irritate me.”

“If you would like to change your name, I can help you with the paperwork, and I won’t even charge you for it. Your name was a gift, and as an adult, you have the right of refusal. You are under no obligation to keep the name that was gifted to you. If the expense of the name change is an obstacle, I’ll pay for it, but you’ll have to come give my babies a wash once a week for three months while I relax, sip a beer, and enjoy the scenery.”

Many had no idea they could change their name, how it was done, or how much it cost. I hadn’t minded the name I’d been gifted at birth, but I made a point of helping those who hated their name and wanted to be free from it, no matter what their reason for their unhappiness was.

“My mother would cry.”

“You can buy her tissues.”

He raised a brow, made another pass around my Lexus, and eyed me with interest. “You’d actually let me drive this?”

“Sure. And if you break it, I won’t even make you buy it, but I’m going to smack you around if you cry over it for more than twenty minutes. She’s definitely worth twenty minutes worth of tears, but that’s it. You start getting smacked around at twenty-one minutes.”

He huffed, and then he laughed. “I’ll talk to the boss and see if using this can be legalized.”

“I’m confident of my abilities to get the car legalized for our job on this case. You leave that to me. You’re on the hook for the lights and sirens if you want them, however. Would you like to spend some time meeting her or do you want to come inside while I grab my bag and work stuff? The work stuff will take a few minutes; I’m sure all of my devices are dead since I left them off the chargers when I headed off to prison for my evaluation.”

He abandoned the Lexus. “I’ll come inside. If we’re going to be doing this, I need to know what you really bring to the table beyond a disconcerting number of degrees and certifications. To have the number you do, you must spend the vast majority of your time studying.”

He was about to get the shock of his life along with some education on the robust nature of my virus, which helped trim off a few hours of sleep a night. On average, I got six, and after six, I became excessively bouncy and prone to causing even more trouble. For the sake of the world, I could not afford to get more than six hours a night of sleep. “I started working on my first degree at sixteen, and I doubled up on them once I turned twenty. That helped. I took on a great deal of student debt, but I paid it all off in record time. I used all the smaller job earnings to pay off my debts, and then I bought the house with my first big job. Until the Acura, I drove junkers.” I left through the garage door, backed up enough to give the device space, and closed it once the cop was clear to show off the veneer. “This is my guest house because I really do not like having guests in my turf. There’s a nice walkway in the back that makes it easy to get back and forth. I usually check on the faucets and everything inside the guest house when I get home, so I use that more often than not. I’ll call my house sitter to keep an eye on everything while I’m gone.”

“I would say that’s sensible, but is there anything sensible about a property this large here?”

“This area hasn’t always been gentrified, and the owners had gotten the property on the cheap. I’m not sure why they built a mansion on the end lot, but they did, and when it went on the market, I wasted no time snapping it up. The guest house is also oversized for the area. Gentrification has raised the prices by a lot, but the neighborhood itself is pretty safe. There are a lot of powerhouses around here, including some vampires, who prefer their streets nice, quiet, and safe. I’m the most normal thing living on my street.”

Gesturing for him to follow me, I took him to the sidewalk and pointed at the home beside my guest house. “I actually paid for that family to live elsewhere during the renovation after the fire. They had some damage to their home, too, and I handled the repairs. They couldn’t afford the restoration work, and I could. That one has been passed down from father to son since it was built. Polish family, quite nice people. Unbeknownst to them, once I had the keys, I took care of the interior renovations, too. I told them I was going to spruce up their paint and replace the wallpaper since it was trivial to add it in. Instead, I had everything redone. When they asked me why the floors no longer squeaked, let’s just say I pretended like I had no idea what they were talking about.”

“Let me get this straight. By day, you’re altruistic. By night, you’re a troublemaker to counter your altruistic ways.”

I grinned. “That sounds about right.” I pointed at the next greystone in the line, in the Romanesque Revival style much like mine. “My guest house is the weird one of the lot. All of them except this one are Romanesque. It’s Baroque Revival, which is part of why the historic society pitched a fit.”