Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2003

“No, ma’am, I don’t think they do that,” I said. I was half off Remy’s bike.

“Who can’t — do what?” she demanded.

“The fire department. I don’t think they get cats down out of trees anymore.”

“They don’t?” She was horrified. “Good God, then what do they do all day? It’s not like we have a surfeit of fires around here!”

“No, ma’am, I guess not.” I backed up the bike a bit. “But if you wait a little while, the cat will come down by it—”

“Jean? You aren’t asking him to get Sammy out of the tree, are you?”

I spun around too fast and nearly fell off the bike. I can’t lie about Frances, or the fact that she startled me. It was the sound of her voice, or maybe the way she walked across the yard, rustling through the unraked leaves. No, it was more the way she looked up at me, even though she was just about my height. Dressed in a short white wool jacket and pale blue jeans, she was, at first sight, unremarkable. If someone later had asked what word first came to mind on meeting her, I’d have said pale.

Not pale as in lifeless, pale as in light-colored. Light skin, light blue eyes, light hair, and lashes so white you had to be very near to her to see she even had any.

“Strong kid like him,” the other woman snorted, lighting a new cigarette, “no reason he can’t climb up there and get that cat down.”

“Oh, please,” the younger woman said, “I shouldn’t wish him to fall and hurt himself.”

Though she seemed to have no accent, there was an inflection in her speech that my mother would have called affected. But to me, her voice sounded like water lapping against a half-submerged buoy.

She turned to me, extended her hand, and said, “I’m Frances Carter, and this is my neighbor, Jean Pritchard. She’s always telling others how best to look out for me or my cat. Do you have a paper for me?”

Even as I took her hand, it took me several seconds to find my tongue and mutter, “Frances... Carter? I don’t think that you... you’re not on my... list.”

“You’re not our regular boy, are you?” she said, still smiling; apparently I amused her. “The name would be under Sophie Carter. That’s my sister. She recently passed away.” She looked back at the house. “Twenty-three Sanctuary Drive?” Then, with her hand still in mine, she looked at me through her pale lashes.

And I was Smitten. Captured. Caught like a fish, but not with the hook snagged in my mouth, but dragged straight through my heart.

“Can you get the cat out of the tree, or not?” the other woman snarled.

“Jean,” she cautioned the woman with a soft laugh, then looking down where I still held her hand, said, “May I have it back?”

So I got the cat out of the tree. The sycamore tree was not quite old enough to be showing the mottled white and brown bark that comes with age, but it was still large, its trunk a foot in diameter, and at one time it had been pruned, which left a few fist-sized knobs low enough to grab onto. So getting up had been effortless. Not so effortless had been reaching out to Sammy, or Samson, who bolted the moment I touched him. He ran down my arm and across my back, then he leaped onto the ground and up into the bushes at the front of the house.

“I really must call your mother and apologize,” Frances said as she tended to the scratches on my arm. “Sammy’s cut right through this shirt, and your sweatshirt.” Her big fat cat had got me good, but I was doing a pretty heroic job masking my pain. I couldn’t help but wince, though, as I sat at her kitchen table and she applied peroxide to the marks.

“So Danny walked out on you,” Jean was muttering at the kitchen door, cigarette in hand as she turned to watch us. “I told Sophie he was no good.” She walked back our way, surveying the room critically as she did. “Something fishy about him, if you ask me. I told you how his friend came looking for him right after Sophie died?”

“Daniel wasn’t stealing from me, or from Sophie either,” Frances said gently. “I told you, Jean, nothing is missing from the house. Daniel was a drifter and he just...” Her blue eyes met mine. “...drifted away.”

“Well, if you plan to live here year-round, Fran, you’re going to need help. You need...” The older woman’s tiny, piercing eyes fell on me. “What about him?” She gestured with her cigarette hand at me.

Up until then I hadn’t said much. I was just the paper boy. I’d stopped and done a favor, for which I was now paying in blood. But now it seemed my turn to speak up: “Look, this is nothing. I get scratched...” I tried to roll my shirtsleeve down, but Frances, small as she was, was very firm; she pushed my hand away, shaking her head. The light in the kitchen wasn’t very good; in fact, the entire room was pretty dingy: dirty curtains; faded tabletop; and countertops cluttered with dishes, pots and pans, and an assortment of crates and boxes. Someone was either doing a cleanup job in here or the place had just been trashed. “...all the time,” I finished.

“I insist on paying for your damaged clothes,” she said to me.