Story Excerpt

The Case of the Lost Busker

by David Ira Cleary

The calico cat had big eyes and a big problem. “I’ve lost my human,” she said, nervously lapping at the bowl of lactose-free milk I’d set out for her. Nervously looking at me, trying, like everyone does, not to stare at the notch in my ear and the scar above my eye.

I looked at her. One of her eyes was green, the other yellow. “That’s usually not my bailiwick,” I said.

“Bailiwick?” she echoed. She had clean gums and all her teeth. “I thought you were Marius the Private I. The Cat Who Finds Cats.”

“At your service,” I said. “Yes, I find cats. Deadbeat Toms. Lost kittens. Reclusive furballs.” I licked off a speck of lint from my right paw. “But finding humans, not so much.”

“But why not?”

It was an impertinent question. I didn’t need to justify myself to a stranger. But then she bumped the milk bowl a little too hard with her nose, spilling milk on the carpet, and as she started apologizing, I felt a wave of pity. “In my experience, if humans disappear, they usually don’t want to be found.”

“But my human loved me.”

“I’m sure he did. But maybe he loved someone–or something else–more.”

“He wasn’t like that!”

I licked my paw. “What was he like, then?”

So she told me the story. It was a familiar one. A kitten finds a man who had lost his job and partner. The man is inspired by the kitten to find a new lease on life. Then the kitten grows up, becomes a cat. And something goes wrong.

She pulled out a black and white photo from her little leather pawbag. Dustin Murphy was a busker, played guitar on the street. The picture showed him, a big guy with a goofy mustache, and her, Krystal, sitting on Murphy’s lap while he played. They slept in a hotel when they had the money. When they didn’t they slept on the street. “The shelter would take me but not him,” she said. “And two mornings ago, when I came back to our corner, he was gone.”

“You went to the cops?”

“They said I had to wait seventy-two hours to file a missing persons report. But I could tell they weren’t taking me seriously.”

Because you smell of neediness and the cops could sense it, too, I thought, but didn’t say. I’d seen this before: some humans wanted to be gone.

“So you’ll help me?” she asked finally.

I’d rather nap than engage in a pointless exercise. How to break it to her gently?

It was then that my colleague and human Traci Wu came in with a towel for the spilled milk. I thought the calico would cringe as she neared her, but she did the opposite, rubbing her cheek against Traci’s knuckles as she worked. I’m usually an analytical cat, but I took this as a sign. “So these are my terms,” I said. I asked for my standard retainer, a hundred bucks, and she blinked her acceptance.

I pulled out my stash of nip. I touched the green to my tongue, then passed the cedarwood container to her.

She shook her head. She was a cat who preferred her milk straight.

 

Traci Wu helped me put up fliers. We used a recent color picture. Dustin’s eyes gray, his lips pink and full, his long brindle hair, what there was left of it, tied in a ponytail. His balding pate would have benefited from a hat. His mustache brown and gold. We also attached a scent patch–some hairs from Dustin’s armpit, some lint from his pockets, a swatch of fabric from a T-shirt. Krystal was a cat who collected her person’s smells. There was a reward. Five dollars or a pound of Purina fish treats. The number of my answering service.

Then I went to take a nap.