Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(48)

Then she reminds herself that she has no way of getting there without her car, and that the moment it’s fixed, she and Max will be back on the road to Chicago. The thought fills her with nearly as much dread as she’d felt about leaving Bedford just days ago.

That was home, though. Lily Dale is just . . .

A nice place to visit, despite everything, but . . .

Luther and Odelia are back to discussing cats. “I understand that they can wander,” he says, “but Chance was an indoor cat, right?”

“For the last year or so,” Odelia confirms. “Except when she managed to escape.”

“Did it happen a lot?”

“Often enough—or at least recently enough—for her to be expecting kittens.” Odelia shakes her head. “I always told Leona she needed to get her fixed, because my Gert got pregnant when she was just a kitten herself, before I ever had a chance to spay her. But Leona wouldn’t listen. She was used to barn cats, living out west—you know, letting nature take its course. Then a coyote got one of the neighbors’ cats last summer, and she stopped letting Chance outside.”

“So she got out and got pregnant . . .”

“Right. Again. This is her third litter. Maybe her fourth. But Leona loves having kittens around, and to her credit, she’s always managed to find good homes for every last one of them.”

“That’s great.” Luther patiently steers the conversation back to the topic at hand—a must, Bella has noticed, when you’re dealing with Odelia. “You said earlier that you think the cat got out of the house the night Leona died?”

“She definitely did. She was inside that evening. I saw her from my porch, in her usual spot in the bay window. The next day, after . . . Leona was found . . . I was the first one who came into the house. I needed to find her nephew’s phone number to give to the medical examiner. I was upset, but I do remember that the cat wasn’t around. Normally, when I came over, she’d show up and rub against my legs because she smelled Gert.”

“And you’re sure you didn’t inadvertently let her out when you came in?”

“Positive. She wasn’t here. I filled her bowls and left them outside, because I figured she was hiding back under the porch and would come sniffing around for food. That’s where she usually goes when she gets out.”

“But not this time. I wonder why not.”

“Maybe the pirate kidnapped her,” Bella hears herself suggest, and they turn to look at her, apparently as surprised by the words as she is.

Where the heck did that come from?

“I don’t mean an actual pirate,” she says hastily. “Just . . . that’s what Jiffy called him and—well, if there really was someone here that night, maybe he took the cat along and dumped her out on the way back down toward the interstate.”

Luther is nodding. “That makes sense.”

Does it?

Why would Leona’s murderer—if she was, indeed, murdered—take a cat along in the getaway car?

“All I know,” Odelia says thoughtfully, “is what my guides are telling me: if Chance hadn’t wound up where she did, you and Max wouldn’t have wound up in Lily Dale.”

“What does that have to do with Leona?”

“Maybe nothing,” she tells Bella. “It’s not always about connecting the dots. It’s like the night sky. Remember I mentioned that I’m an astronomy buff?”

Not only that, but she mentioned that she’s the reincarnation of a nineteenth-century astronomer—which might strike Bella as amusing if she were in the mood.

Odelia talks on. “Think about how when you’re in the planetarium, the patterns of the constellations are distinctly outlined. But when you’re outside and the night sky isn’t particularly clear, sometimes all you can see is a little pinprick of light here and there. You don’t know if you’re looking at part of Orion or just a couple of random, unrelated stars.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Maybe we’re trying to connect dots—these little glimmers of fact—that aren’t part of the big picture.”

“Do you mean Leona’s death?”

“Not necessarily. Maybe the cat was there only because you were supposed to come here. Do you see?”

Confused, Bella looks at Luther, who shrugs.

“The message you should take from this is that you need to embrace it,” Odelia tells her firmly.

“Embrace . . . what?”

“Being here. In the Dale.”

“I am embracing it—for the weekend,” she adds pointedly. “But as soon as the car is repaired, you know that I have to . . . Odelia, why are you shaking your head like that?”

“Because everything happens for a reason. There are no coincidences.”

Now isn’t the time to get sidetracked by Odelia’s . . . by her psychobabble or her . . . her words of wisdom, if one chooses that viewpoint.

She takes a deep breath. Focus. “Odelia, you said you had a dream about Leona.”

“Not a dream.”

“A vision, then? What did you see?”

“She was standing in the bathroom brushing her hair, and someone came up behind her, someone she knew. And then . . .” She shakes her head. “And then she was trying to breathe, but she couldn’t, and she was outside, and the wind was blowing, and the water was choppy . . .” She shudders.