3.

I got to see a lot of Cincinnati in the next day and a half, most of it covered with snow and ice. Every shelter assured me that they hadn’t taken in any cats in the past two days, or at least not one with a white spot over its eye, and every shelter did its damnedest to convince me I’d be just as happy with one of the cats currently in residence. Even after I explained that I was a detective looking for a particular missing cat, they ascertained that I myself didn’t own one and began the sales pitch all over again. One of them, after studying the photos, explained how I could take this geriatric, wildly overweight tabby home with me and apply a little dye to its left eyebrow and no one would know the difference.

It was dark when I got home, which means the cat had been missing for maybe thirty-one or thirty-two hours, which probably meant it had found a new home or lost a tussle with the kind of dog that could eat Marlowe for breakfast. At any rate, I was out of ideas and probably close to being out of work as well.

As a kid I’d dreamed of coming home to a loving wife, who’d rush to the door, throw her arms around me, and tell me how much she’d missed me, even though I’d only been gone for a few hours. When my marriage broke up, I occasionally daydreamed about coming home and being greeted by a loving dog that couldn’t stop wagging his tail or jumping up and down from the sheer joy of being in my presence once again.

I opened the door and trudged in. Marlowe was sleeping on the couch. He opened one eye.

“I’m home,” I announced.

He gave me a look that said, Fine, just keep off my couch and closed his eye again.

I took off the galoshes, kicked them into a closet, tossed the coat in after it, and went to the kitchen to pop open a Bud. That was when I discovered that we were out of beer. (I say “we” because I always put a little in a dish for Marlowe, who seemed to like it even better than I do.)

I turned on the TV, hoping that TCM was showing All Through the Night or one of my other favorite Bogey movies when there was a pounding at the door. My first thought was that it was Mrs. Pepperidge and she was firing me, but then I figured there was no way she could find my apartment, or that having found it she’d soil her hands by knocking at the door, so I got up, walked over, opened it, and found myself confronting Mrs. Cominsky, my landlady, who reminded me of Comiskey Park where the White Sox used to play, though she was even broader around the hips than the stadium was.

“What can I do you for?” I said.

“You’re tracking slush and mud all through my foyer”—which she pronounced “foy-yay,” though I’d swear she never made it past her sophomore year in high school—“and my staircase. I’ve warned you about this before, Mr. Paxton.”

“So you have, Mrs. Cominsky,” I said. “But until I learn to fly, I have to use the front entrance and the stairs.”

She stared at me for a long moment. “So are you at least catching a gang of killers?”

“Actually, I’m trying to catch a cat.”

“In here?” she bellowed. “You know my rules. I bent them for that mutt there”—she pointed at Marlowe, who opened his eyes when she yelled, curled his lip at her, and went right back to sleep—“but no cats.”

“The cat’s not here, Mrs. Cominsky,” I explained.

“You’re sure?” she said dubiously, looking around the living room.

“He’s out there somewhere,” I said, waving my arm in a gesture that took in half the continent.

“Cats are a dime a dozen,” she said. “Someone’s actually paying you to find one?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Damn,” she said. “It’s chilly standing out in the hallway here.”

She looked at me expectantly. I tried to remember if I was up to date on the rent payments.

“Won’t you come in?” I said.

“If you insist,” she said, brushing by me.

I think she was still looking for the cat. Marlowe opened his eyes again, stared at her, growled a couple of times, and turned to me. If she sits down on me, his expression seemed to say, I’m gonna give her a bite to remember.

“When’s the last time you vacuumed this carpet?” she said.

“It’s not a carpet, it’s a rug,” I said. “And it’s got more miles on it than my car.”

“Stop avoiding the question.”

I shrugged. “Been a long time, I guess.”

“Maybe I’ll do it for you,” she said. “After all, it’s really my carpet.”

“Rug,” I said.

“Whatever,” she replied with a shrug of her own. “Where’s your vacuum?”

“I left it in my other suit.”

“You don’t have another suit,” she growled.

“I don’t have a vacuum either.”

“You know, Mr. Paxton . . .”

“Eli,” I corrected her.

“Eli,” she said. “I put up with a lot from you. Any given day you’re late on the rent, you keep a mutt that acts as if the floor will gobble his feet if he ever gets off the furniture, and from what I read in the papers you’re always getting shot at.”

“Not always,” I said. “Once, maybe twice a year.” I paused. “Three times at most.”

“And what am I going to do if you get killed while you’re behind in the rent?”

“You’ll inherit Marlowe,” I said, who woke up at the sound of his name just enough to bare his teeth and then went back to sleep.

She sighed. “You’re hopeless, Mr. Paxton. I like all my other tenants. They talk to me. They invite me in to visit. I don’t feel as if I have to shower when I leave their apartments. They don’t know all the crooks in town, and get shot at, and then have the temerity to tell me that someone’s paying them to look for a cat, for God’s sake.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said, vaguely wondering if there was a college football game on the TV.

“And the way you live!” she continued. “I’m not a knife, you know.”

“A knife?” I repeated, frowning.

“You know—someone who doesn’t know the score.”

“I think you mean a naïf,” I said.

“Whatever. Anyway, I read detective stories too. I know Lord Peter Wimsey doesn’t live like this, and neither does Philo Vance.”

“They’re the new kids on the block,” I said. “They work for higher fees.”

She just stared at me for a long moment and finally said: “Get a life, Mr. Paxton! Get a life!”

I was going to tell her I’d love one and ask where they were selling them, but she’d walked back out and slammed the door behind her. Hell, I didn’t even get a chance to remind her that Columbo was even more rumpled than I was.

Marlowe woke up when he heard the door and gave me a glare that said he wasn’t leaving the couch and wasn’t into sharing. I decided to go out for a snack and a beer, then remembered what the weather was like, went to the kitchen, opened a can of roast beef hash, decided I could live without the fried eggs that accompany it if it meant I didn’t have to cook, and took a spoon and began eating it out of the can, which was probably the one thing in the universe that could get Marlowe to relinquish his couch, remind me that we were the Two Musketeers, and wait impatiently while I emptied a third of the can into his food bowl.

After we’d eaten, and both had to do without beer, we made our way back to the TV. ESPN was showing wrestling, poker, hockey, and high school football, and TCM had run through its store of old mystery series and was having a Bette Davis festival, so I wound up watching a bunch of steroid monsters hit each other with folding chairs and brag about who they were going to rassle (I never once heard any of them say “wrestle”) next week, and finally Marlowe and I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up they were showing woman’s golf from somewhere on the far side of the world. I turned off the TV, considered heating up some coffee, decided that Marlowe looked decidedly restless, and figured I’d better take him for a walk before we gave Mrs. Cominsky something else to bitch about.

The weather was above freezing—it never stays cold for too long in Cincinnati—and that meant everything was melting, and five minutes later I brought a very wet dog back into the apartment.

I was drying him off with a towel, and he was showing me how very much he resented it, when the phone rang, so I walked over and picked it up.

“Mr. Paxton?” said a female voice.

“Yeah?” I replied.

“This is the Wilkinson Animal Shelter.” Pause. “You were here yesterday, looking for a cat?”

“That’s right.”

“I believe we may have the one you were looking for,” continued the voice. “Mackerel tabby, female, white spot above the left eye?”

“Sure as hell sounds like her,” I said. “I’ll be right over.” Then I corrected myself. “Well, as soon as I can. You’re about twenty, maybe thirty minutes north and west of me.”

“She’s not going anywhere.”

I hung up the phone, left Marlowe sulking in a corner of the living room, and went down to my car. The roads were much more navigable, and even though the shelter was northwest of the city I made it in just over twenty minutes.

I pulled into their parking lot, was greeting by a chorus of barking from the runs in the back, and walked into the office.

“Hello, Mr. Paxton,” said a gray-haired woman, the same one I’d seen the day before. “I believe we may be in luck, if you can identify the cat.”

“I’ve never seen her in my life,” I said. “Let’s just see if she matches the photos.”

“What name does she answer to?”

“Her name’s Fluffy,” I replied.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, walking into a room on the left side of the building. When she opened the door I heard maybe a dozen cats start meowing, and a moment later she emerged carrying a cat who seemed to be the one in the photos.

“It sure looks like her,” I said.

“And you say she’s from the east side of the city?”

I nodded. “The Grandin Road area, just south of Hyde Park—or maybe it’s part of Hyde Park for all I know.”

“It’s very odd,” she said. “You say she’s been missing for two days?”

“Right.”

“It’s totally unheard of for a cat to come this far in such a short time.”

“Maybe she hopped into the back of a truck for shelter,” I suggested. “Or perhaps somebody picked her up, thought better of it, and turned her loose somewhere around here.”

Her face said each was as unlikely as the other.

“What the hell,” I said. “As long as we found her, it’s not my job to worry about how she got here.” I stared at the cat for a moment. “Let’s assume it’s her,” I continued. “But if it’s not . . . ?”

“Then it means that she is local, and it would be best to bring her back here rather than dropping her off at Silverman’s.”

“Silverman’s?” I asked.

“The closest shelter to the area she comes from.”

“Okay,” I said. “Do I have to pay you or sign something?”

She shook her head. “We’re always happy to help the police, as well as return a loved pet to her home. Perhaps you’d like to make a donation?”

“I’ll tell the grateful owner to,” I replied quickly.

She reached beneath the counter and pulled out what looked like a cardboard box with windows and a handle. “You won’t want her loose in the car while you’re driving.”

“The owner will take care of the donation,” I repeated, “but I’ll pay for the box.”

“Five dollars,” she said. “We don’t make a profit on them.”

I thanked her and paid her. Then she opened the box, put the cat in it and closed it, and a couple of minutes later I was on my way to the Pepperidge house. The cat yowled continuously, and I got the distinct impression that she was objecting to my car or my driving or both.

But none of her yowls could depress me. I was too busy doing my math: fifteen hundred in the kick, four hundred for two days’ work (or maybe six hundred if getting the cat in the morning counted as a day), and a thousand-dollar bonus for finding her. That would take care of the transmission, pay a couple of months’ rent, and maybe even buy a small display ad in the yellow pages.

I was feeling pretty good when I pulled into the Pepperidge driveway, climbed out of the car, grabbed the box by its handle, and walked up to the front door. There was only one cop car still there, and a uniformed cop opened the door before I could ring the buzzer.

“Get the boss lady down here,” I said. “I’ve got her cat.”

He ushered me into the kitchen, where I couldn’t drip on any wildly expensive carpeting, told me to wait there, and went off to get Mrs. Pepperidge. I put the crate on a granite counter and waited.

She rushed into the kitchen half a minute later.

“Here she is, Mrs. Pepperidge,” I said, opening the box and letting the cat step out to the counter. “Your adorable Fluffy.”

She frowned and stepped forward.

“Where is it?” she demanded harshly.

“It’s right here,” I said, indicating the cat.

She swiped her arm across the counter, knocking the cat, which uttered a surprised yowl, to the floor.

“Where is it?” she said again.

“Isn’t that your cat?” I asked, not totally disappointed since it meant I was still on salary.

“Of course it’s my cat!”

“Then—?” I began.

“Where’s the goddamned collar?”

“Ma’am, the cat wasn’t wearing any collar.”

She glared at me for a long minute, then turned to the cop.

“Officer, arrest this man.”

“For what, ma’am?” asked the surprised cop.

“Theft.”

“But he returned your cat,” said the cop. “If that’s not her—”

“Just arrest the son of a bitch!” she screamed.

“But—”

“I am not without influence in this town,” she bellowed. “If I have to go to your superiors, it’ll go as hard with you as with this thieving bastard here.”

“Let me just check with headquarters, Mrs. Pepperidge, ma’am,” said the cop, pulling out his cell phone.

And forty seconds later I was taken into custody, given my very own cell in the Cincinnati jail, and charged with a felony.