Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(12)

“I know Chance is her name, but why do you add on ‘the Cat’?”

“Because she’s a cat,” he said reasonably.

“I’m so relieved!” the neighbor tells Bella. “We’ve all been beside ourselves worrying about her.”

Wondering who “we’ve all” entails, she asks her when the owners will return and is met by a long pause.

Then the woman says, “I’m afraid Leona isn’t coming back.”

That explains at least part of the situation. Chance’s owner must have just taken off and abandoned her pet.

A loud clap of thunder explodes so nearby that Bella gasps.

Max opens the car door. “Mommy!”

“It’s okay, sweetie, I’m right here.”

As she hurries down the steps toward the car, Max cries out, “No! Chance the Cat, no!”

The cat has leapt through the open door. Moving with astonishing speed for an expectant mama, she zips past Bella and disappears into a clump of bushes.

“Oh, dear.” The plump, older woman next door emerges from the shadows, standing on the top step of her own porch. Her right foot is in a walking cast.

Max, too, is out of the car, hurrying after the cat. Bella stops him, seeing a flash of lightning in the sky.

“Come on over here,” the woman calls from next door.

“But what about Chance the Cat?”

“Oh, she’s under the porch,” the woman tells him. “She likes it back there. Don’t worry.”

“She’ll be okay,” Bella assures Max and pulls him along as the rain turns to a downpour.

“Hurry—this is going to be a doozy of a storm.” The neighbor waves them up the steps, holding the door open for them.

“What’s a doozy, Mommy?”

Bella opens her mouth to answer her son, but the woman beats her to it. “A doozy is a really big storm.”

“Is it dangerous?” Max asks anxiously.

“No, that would be a humdinger, which is a really, really, really big storm. Don’t worry, we’re not due for one of those for at least a hundred years or so.” She hobbles along, chattering on as she ushers them into a small foyer cluttered with decorative knickknacks. “With a doozy, you have nothing to fear except getting wet. I don’t know about you, but I’m terrified of that. The rain does terrible things to my hair. How about yours?”

Her hair happens to be bright orange, which clashes with her purple cargo pants and the lime-green high-top sneaker on her left foot. Bella notes with interest that she’s also—somewhat fittingly, given the circumstances—wearing red cat-eye glasses and a tiger-striped T-shirt.

After assuring her that his hair is just fine and proudly adding that he’s not afraid of rain, Max asks what happened to her leg.

“Oh, this? I tripped and fell and sprained my ankle.”

“My mom’s a klutz, too.”

The woman bursts out laughing.

“Max! Sorry,” Bella tells the woman. “I’m always calling myself a klutz, and he didn’t mean—”

“Oh, believe you me, he’s a perceptive boy. I’m as clumsy as they come. By the way, my name is Odelia Lauder, and that,” she points at a fat tabby cat dozing in a cushioned basket at the foot of the stairs, “is Gert. Leona’s Chance the Cat is her granddaughter.”

After introducing herself and Max, Bella says, “I’ve noticed that you call her Chance the Cat, and not just Chance. Why is that?”

“I told you, Mommy,” Max says, “it’s because she’s a cat! She isn’t Chance the Dog!”

Odelia laughs. “You’re right about that, Max. And her full name is Chance the Cat, because she was born in the garden in the spring, smack dab in the middle of a bed of Wood Hyacinths that just happened to be in full bloom that day. Those are Leona’s favorite flowers.”

“So why was she named Chance the Cat?” Bella asks, not following the reasoning. “Why not . . . I don’t know, Woody?”

“Oh, Leona doesn’t care for Woody Allen at all.”

Bella blinks. “No, I meant because you said Wood Hyacinths are—”

“But she adores Peter Sellers,” Odelia goes on. “She’s kept in touch with him quite regularly.”

“Isn’t Peter Sellers dead?”

“Oh, yes, for years. Anyway, Being There was her favorite of all his movies, so that’s where it came from.”

Bella’s head is spinning. “That’s where what came from?”

“The name! Chance the Cat!”

Bella, who never saw Being There, is no stranger to Sellers’s Pink Panther movies and can’t help feeling a little like Inspector Clouseau right now. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I just don’t get it.”

“She’s named after Chance the Gardener, Peter Sellers’s character in Being There,” Odelia explains patiently. “Because she was born in a garden. Do you see?”

Bella, who doesn’t see at all, assures her that she does. She gets the feeling that Odelia subscribes to a peculiar brand of logic—one that was apparently shared by Leona. And what about Max? She’s pretty sure her son has never seen a Peter Sellers movie in his life. So why would he have known to call Chance the cat Chance the Cat?