Tanno – Part IV

 ”Oh boy,” I said.

“Yes, indeed,” replied Miss Dixon, as she put the letter back in the envelope and stuck it in her purse. “We can’t go to the authorities about this.”

Tanno was watching us as we read the letter, his tail switching back and forth. As we looked at each other, he growled softly and stalked back into the carrier, turned his back on the opening, and refused to move.

I helped Miss Dixon finish going through the house as much as I was able to, but we didn’t find anything else. Before we left, she packed up the laptop to take along with us. “I know Sarabeth pretty well and I may be able to figure out her password,” she told me. I thought that at least we weren’t leaving it in an empty house that might be broken into again. I scooped up a few more cat toys and a container of kitty treats for Tanno on the way out.

On the way home, Miss Dixon was tense and silent. Finally she burst out, “What are we going to do now?” I just shook my head and sighed – I honestly didn’t know.

When we got home, that question was answered for us. As I let Tanno out of the carrier, I noticed that the message light on my answering machine was blinking, and the number it showed was the number on the letter.

As Tanno disappeared in the miraculous manner of cats, I pushed the button to play the message. It was brief. “If this is in reference to the cat, call me back and leave a message.” A click ended the recording.

I looked at Miss Dixon. “I think we know what we’re doing next.”

I call the number and left a message. “What do you want?” I asked tersely and then hung up.

We decided to eat lunch while we waited. Miss Dixon hurried home to get some potato salad while I put together some sandwiches. When she came back, she had Titania in her arms as well as a bag with the potato salad and some brownies that made me want to skip lunch and go right to dessert. She put Titania down next to Tanno, who had reappeared as soon as the refrigerator door had opened, and said, “She looked so lonely that I decided to bring her back over here with us.”

Titania promptly began winding herself around my ankles ingratiatingly – I was holding a slice of ham at the moment. We sat down to eat with the two cats in attendance.

I had just put a large forkful of Miss Dixon’s homemade potato salad in my mouth (it was so good I didn’t mind waiting on the brownies) when the phone rang. The caller ID identified it as our mystery man, and I almost choked trying to get the mouthful swallowed quickly so I could answer it.

“You have the cat.” He was making a statement, not asking a question. This gave me goosebumps. I could cats in the background again – lots of cats.

“Where is Sarabeth?” I countered.

“Safe. I’ll trade.” He was careful to use as few words as possible. I didn’t say anything.

“If you have the cat, bring it to the abandoned gas station ten miles north of town at eight this evening. She’ll be in the same place by dawn.”

“How do I know I can trust you?” I asked.

His answer was short. “Trade, or I’ll come and get him.”

The phone clicked in my ear, and he was gone.

“I don’t like this,” said Miss Dixon. “What sort of trouble had my family brought to your doorstep?”

I looked over at her. She looked all of her sixty years right now, tired, worried and defeated. I smiled at her and said, “None that I haven’t invited in. Now let’s figure out what we can do to jam up his plans.” We finished eating, although lunch was tasteless now, and started to plan.

We were still discussing options when 7:15 rolled around and we knew we needed to leave. I was trying to get Tanno in the carrier when he took off and then moments later ran back into the room, chasing Titania in front of him. Deftly, he herded her into the carrier and then jumped on top of it, where he sat looking smug. Titania stuck her head out and he batted at it with his paw. She pulled it back in.

“I think he wants to try and trick the man,” remarked Miss Dixon.

I was not quite as sure of Tanno’s intelligence as she was, although he certainly had been amazing up until now. But then, I reasoned, he wasn’t just a cat. He was a cat with wings, which I would have said was impossible two days ago anyway. Why shouldn’t he know what to do?

I shrugged and closed the carrier, and Tanno marched over to the back door and peered up at the knob, waiting. I grabbed my bag, with its usual load of knitting and the multitude of items I might need someday, like a small flashlight, a lighter even though I don’t smoke, and a pocket knife that I almost forgot to take out last time I was at the airport. “Right.” I said, “Let’s go.”

Miss Dixon carried Tanno in her arms and I took the cat carrier, and we tucked everyone in the car. Tanno did the cat-compression thing where they squeeze into places you would never believe possible, and wedged himself mostly under the passenger seat. Miss Dixon put my bag in front of him, with her legs in front of the bag. No one would ever know there was a cat there.  

We set out. I was so nervous I was shaking and Miss Dixon was ashen. When we were half-way there, Miss Dixon said, “I guess we leave the carrier in the building and leave?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say. Maybe we’ll know when we get there.”

Traffic in town was light, and there was no one on the road out of town. We were early, and it was just starting to get dark when we pulled up at the gas station. This had to be the one. It was not only the only abandoned gas station on the road north, it was the only building for about two miles in either direction. We both noted a small side road nearby that we could circle around to and use to hide and watch the gas station if we needed to.

“I don’t like this at all. It’s far too isolated.” Miss Dixon spoke for both of us. It was slightly windy, and the trees were making all sorts of rustling sounds, incidentally covering up any noises a person might make approaching. In the half – light, the decrepit building looked sinister. I eased the car forward until we were out from under the trees and onto an open area of the crumbling tarmac, beside the old gas pumps. I left the engine running. The door to the building was open and it banged against the side of the building in the wind. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

There seemed to be no one there, and finally I told Miss Dixon, “Switch places with me. Then you can drive over near the door and I’ll scoot out with the carrier and put it inside. If there’s someone in there, I can jump back in the car and we’ll run for it.”

She nodded, and turned around and stuck a finger in the front of the carrier. “Titania, I really hate doing this to you, my dear, but I don’t know what else we can do. We have to get Sarabeth back.” She was close to tears.

We switched places with a lot of wiggling and squirming – funny, I didn’t remember it being this hard when I was in high school – and then I pulled the cat carrier to the front and got ready to make the jump. It was truly dark now, and there wasn’t even a moon to brighten things up. Miss Dixon eased the car around. In the light from the headlights, I couldn’t see anything but a lot of trash through the grimy windows of the place. That was somewhat reassuring, anyway. She lined my car door up with the door to the building and I grabbed the carrier and jumped out of the car. I felt Tanno brush past my leg as I did so. He slipped through the door in my shadow and by the time I put the carrier down and glanced around for him, he was gone.

With my heart in my throat, I jumped back through the door and into the car, slamming the car door behind me. Miss Dixon took off, tires squealing as we made our getaway. I felt like the boogeyman was after us, and she looked like she did, too. “Tanno jumped out,” I gasped at her as we bumped back onto the road.

“I thought he would,” she answered, and as soon as we were out of sight around the curve, she turned around and got us back onto the little dirt road that led back to the area of the gas station. Miss Dixon turned off the headlights and crept back in that direction carefully. When we got near the gas station, she parked the car off the side of the road under some trees and we both crept back through a few hundred feet of woody underbrush to a ditch where we could hide and watch the building. I know I found every thorny vine there was – my arms were bleeding from a number of scratches, and from the small noises I heard behind me, I suspected that Miss Dixon had found them too.

We hid ourselves just in time. A car pulled up and moved slowly around the lot as if its driver were looking for something. Finally, it went over to the door of the building and the driver got out. The light came on in the car as he did, and we got a glimpse of him – he was dressed in dark clothing and was pasty-pale and rather small, wearing a baseball cap. He scurried inside, snatched the carrier and leaped back into the car, driving north rather quickly. A small shape slipped out of the door as the car left. It jumped into the air, flapping. Tanno swooped over our heads once and then was off in the same direction as the car.

I looked at Miss Dixon. “I guess he’s following the car for us. Shall we go back to the car and wait so he’ll know where to find us?”

-She Wolf (c)2007