THE CAB PULLED up in front of the turreted Victorian mansion, and Eleanora Duncan emerged from the backseat. She plucked cash from her wallet to press through the opened window. The driver snatched away the bills and the taxi rolled off, leaving her standing in a cloud of exhaust fumes.
She coughed, waving a gloved hand before her, thinking that between good old pollution and the cigar-smoking board members at the committee meetings she was forever attending, her poor lungs wouldn’t last to blow out eighty-one candles on her birthday cake.
She hobbled up the porch steps, pulling off her gloves and stuffing them into her purse. As she reached the front door, she found it ajar.
Heavens to Betsy! She’d only been away for an hour to take her seat on the county hospital board. Had Zelma lost her mind? Eleanora could hardly believe her longtime housekeeper would leave the house accessible to any common thief.
Or worse still, she mused, what if the cat had gotten out?
As if on cue, Lady Godiva’s whiskered face peered around the jamb. Before Eleanora could shove the cat back inside, the feline slipped through the door. She brushed past Eleanora’s ankles and took off without a moment’s hesitation.
“Lady!” Eleanora called to her precious baby. “Sweetheart, come back here this minute!” She frowned, watching her prized Persian scoot down the porch steps toward the street.
“Bad girl!” Eleanora scolded in a voice two octaves higher than normal. “You know you’re not allowed to roam the neighborhood.” She pressed blue-veined hands together, thinking of the things her baby could pick up outdoors: the ticks, the fleas, a dirty tom’s wanton interest.
“Zelma!” she hollered as she hurried through the door and ducked her head into the foyer. “Zelma? Where the devil are you?”
Damned if the woman wasn’t deaf as well as blind, she thought of the housekeeper who’d been with her longer than her husband and son, both of whom had passed two years before, God rest their souls.
Well, Eleanora couldn’t wait for Zelma to appear. She turned around in the doorframe and caught sight of Lady Godiva there on the cobblestone path, sniffing at the bordering begonias. “Lady!” she called out again and hooked her purse on the doorknob. Her low heels tapped on the porch floor as she made her way after the cat, her arthritic hips slowing her gait.
She was but a few yards away when the copper-hued Persian lifted her head, tail twitching. Eleanora reached out her arms, smiling hesitantly.
“Come here, precious. Come to Mommy.”
She was almost near enough to bend and scoop up Lady when a butterfly swooped down from the sky, fluttering enticingly, and the cat plunged off the curb and into the road.
“Lady Godiva, no!” Eleanora frantically scanned the street right and left, sighing when she saw no traffic. “Please, come back, pretty girl. Oh, for Pete’s sake.”
By then, she was breathing hard, her silk blouse uncomfortably warm against her skin. She pressed her palm to the rough bark of an oak tree and leaned against it.
Up the block, a car engine coughed to life, but Eleanora ignored it. Her attention was solely on Lady, who’d stopped to clean herself right there in the middle of the gravel-strewn road.
“Eleanora, hello there!” a familiar voice called out.
Eleanora momentarily shifted her gaze away from Lady to see a sweat-suited Helen Evans walking toward her up the sidewalk. But she neither answered nor waved.
Instead, she took in a deep breath and stepped into the street.
The squeal of tires filled her ears, and she froze like a deer caught in headlights as a car came out of nowhere and bore down on her.
“Eleanora!”
A hand snatched at her, dragging her from harm’s way just as the car screeched past, kicking up so much gravel and dust in its wake that it seemed to disappear in a puff of smoke like a magician’s grand finale.
She clung to her rescuer, her heart pounding in her ears and pumping the blood far too quickly through her veins. Eleanora shuddered, looking up into the gently lined face framed by gray.
“Oh, God, Helen,” she got out despite the dryness of her mouth, clinging to the woman’s arms for strength. “I think somebody’s trying to kill me.”