Olivia had hoped the movers would arrive on Monday morning. And they might have if the moving van hadn’t experienced engine problems. She received the call shortly before noon, telling her they would not be arriving until after three that afternoon. It would give them less than two hours to unload before sunset. Olivia was not happy.
Two hours before the movers’ arrival, Olivia decided she might as well go to town and buy some groceries. This way, she wouldn’t have to go tomorrow, and she could stay home and concentrate on unpacking and settling into her new home.
After grabbing her purse and cellphone from the kitchen counter, she exited through the side door and headed toward her driveway off the back alley, where she had parked her car. When she reached her vehicle a few moments later, she found something sitting on its roof, looking at her—a black cat with white-tipped ears.
“Well, hello,” Olivia greeted the feline. “I hope you haven’t scratched my new car.”
The cat meowed, stood up, and then leapt down to the driveway.
Olivia moved closer to the vehicle and inspected the area where the cat had been sitting while he walked between her feet, purring and rubbing against her ankles.
Standing on tiptoes, she ran her fingertips over the paint and was relieved to find no scratch marks. While still on tiptoes, she looked down at the cat weaving between her feet and rubbing against her.
“So you want to make friends?” No longer on her tiptoes, Olivia leaned down to pet the cat, but he ran under the car, out of her reach.
“Playing hard to get?” Olivia said with a chuckle as she knelt and peeked under the car. “You really can’t stay under there. I need to go.” The cat, now lying under the car, his tail swishing back and forth, made no attempt to move. Instead, he let out a meow. “Come on, you don’t want me to run you over, do you?”
When the cat refused to budge, Olivia stood up, fished her car keys out of her purse, and opened the passenger door. She tossed her purse inside the car, onto the passenger seat and then slammed the door shut, assuming the sound of the door would scare the cat away and out from under her car. It did not.
“Seriously?” Olivia muttered, now circling the car, trying to figure out the best way to get the cat to move. “Come on, kitty. I think you belong to the Marlows, and I don’t want to run over my neighbor’s cat on my first week in the neighborhood.” She slapped her hand along the car a few times, making a loud sound and hoping that would scare the cat. Yet he refused to come out from under the car.
Once again, Olivia leaned down, this time getting on her knees and crawling partway under the car toward the cat, all the while saying, “Go on, shoo, go on…” Something attached to the underside of her car caught her attention. Olivia’s eyes widened. At that moment, she thought she was going to die.
She didn’t die, but she managed to get out from under the vehicle, and she knew she needed to call the police before something happened. But then she realized she had put her cellphone in her purse, and that purse currently sat in the car with the door closed. She could not risk reopening the door. She had been lucky the first time.
Without hesitation, Olivia ran from her driveway, down the side of her house, to the sidewalk, and then up the street to the front door of Marlow House.
Walt sat in the parlor, writing notes for his book, when he heard the doorbell ring, followed by pounding. Since Danielle was still in town with Lily, and Joanne was off today, Walt knew the door would not answer itself. The person seemed rather anxious for someone to answer, considering the relentless pounding, followed by another ring and more pounding.
Curious, Walt dropped the pad of paper and pen he had been using onto a nearby table and stood. He made his way to the front door; all the while, the pounding and intermittent ringing of the doorbell continued.
Before answering, he looked through the peephole and found their new neighbor, Olivia Davis, on the front porch, frantically slamming both of her fists against the door.
When Walt opened the door, the unhinged neighbor, primed to knock, involuntarily fell forward and might have landed on the floor, had Walt’s telekinetic powers not pushed her back onto her feet, steadying her. Olivia seemed oblivious to the fact she had almost fallen, or that something had intervened.
Visibly relieved to see Walt, Olivia grabbed hold of his wrists. “It’s a bomb! You need to call the police!”
Walt and Olivia stood together in one of the upstairs bedrooms of Marlow House, looking out its south-facing window at Olivia’s backyard and glimpsed what they could of her driveway off the alleyway. Joe and Brian had been the ones who initially answered the call, and the fact they showed up instead of someone more skilled in handling explosives told Walt they didn’t take his call seriously.
“Olivia Davis from next door is here. She’s quite upset and insists someone has put a bomb under her car,” Walt had told them.
After they had arrived, Joe had said it would probably be best if they both wait at Marlow House until they checked it out, to which Olivia was more than happy to comply.
If the situation weren’t so serious, Walt might have laughed at the way Brian and Joe approached the vehicle with no apparent concern, only to see them race from it seconds after peeking under the car. Brian wasted no time whipping out his phone and placing a call. He then made a second call to Walt and said, “She was right. It’s a bomb. We need to clear the neighborhood.”
Lily and Danielle were just about ready to pay their bill at Lucy’s Diner when their husbands walked in unexpectedly. Connor and their new neighbor were with them.
“What are you guys doing here?” Lily asked when they walked up to the table, Connor in Ian’s arms.
“Scooch over,” Ian told his wife as he handed her their son. “The bomb squad is at Olivia’s house.”
“Bomb squad?” Danielle squeaked as she moved down the bench, making room for Olivia, while Walt dragged a chair from an empty table and placed it at the end of the booth.
“Someone put a bomb under Olivia’s car, and they’re trying to remove it,” Ian explained as he sat down, his son wiggling between him and Lily. Connor tried to reach his mother’s abandoned lunch plate.
Lily shook her head in disbelief while absently handing her son a french fry from her plate. “I’m not sure what I’m more confused about. The fact someone put a bomb on our neighbor’s car, or that Frederickport has a bomb squad.”
“I have no idea if it is an actual bomb squad, or if they’re from Frederickport,” Ian admitted. “But Brian and Joe are there, and according to Walt, they’re staying back while the professionals do what they do.”
Danielle looked at Walt. “You were over there?”
Walt shook his head and then explained what had happened. When he finished the telling, Lily and Danielle looked to Olivia, who had not spoken a word since arriving and seemed unnaturally pale.
“Are you okay?” Danielle asked her neighbor.
Olivia gave a pitiful shrug. “I don’t know. I move all the way to Oregon, foolishly believing returning to my childhood home will somehow give me the new beginning I need. Right before I get here, a woman who is supposed to be my new boss is murdered on my street. A neighbor, a woman I have never met before, insists I was with the murdered woman an hour before she was killed. Someone puts a bomb on my car, and my movers are supposed to get here in less than two hours, and who knows if I will even have a house in two hours? And if my house is still there, but the police aren’t finished, how much is it going to cost me to pay the movers to stick around after three?”
Before anyone could respond to Olivia’s emotional rant, Walt’s cellphone rang. He glanced at his phone before answering. “What’s going on, Brian?”
Everyone at the table fell silent and waited for Walt to finish his phone call.
“We can go home,” Walt announced after he ended his call. He looked at Olivia and added, “Your house is still there, so is your car. And it’s not three yet, so we can get you back before the movers arrive.”
“What happened?” Danielle asked.
Walt looked at Danielle. “It was a bomb wired to go off when Olivia turned on the ignition.”
“Oh my god, someone really was trying to kill me!” Olivia gasped.
“While it was a bomb, and they wired it to explode when you turned on the ignition, whoever our bomber is, he’s a novice, according to Brian. It wouldn’t have gone off. In fact, it wouldn’t have worked at all, because the bomber didn’t have the wiring right,” Walt explained.
“I thought you said he had it wired to explode when she turned on the car?” Danielle asked.
“Yes, they could tell what the intent was. How it was supposed to go off,” Walt said.
Ian had driven his car to Lucy’s Diner, as it had the car seat for Connor. When they drove back home, Lily drove her car with Walt and Danielle while Olivia went with Ian and Connor. When they got back to Beach Drive, the street was no longer blocked off. Minutes after Ian dropped Olivia at her house, the moving van arrived early.
Lily pulled up to the front of Marlow House and let Walt and Danielle off before pulling into her driveway across the street.
“There was something I didn’t tell you at the diner,” Walt told Danielle as the two made their way up the walkway to the front door of Marlow House.
“What’s that?”
“The only reason Olivia saw the bomb, she was looking under the car, trying to get a cat to move. That cat was Max.”
“Max was there?” Danielle stood on the front porch with Walt as he unlocked the door.
“Yes. Only black cat with white-tipped ears I know. And I’m curious to find out what he might have seen before Olivia came outside.” Walt opened the front door and stepped to one side, letting his wife enter first.
Danielle started to walk inside but paused a moment and turned to Walt. “You think he might have seen the bomber?”
“I’m thinking it’s possible. Perhaps he saw someone fooling with her car. He was curious and went to investigate. He obviously didn’t know it was a bomb, or he would have come to me instead of sticking around. I doubt he even understands what a bomb is. And when Olivia came out to leave, Max was still there, sitting on top of her car. Maybe he went under the car because he wanted her to see what someone had put there. Max isn’t stupid. And while dogs are often credited with saving their humans, cats are fully capable of doing the same. We both know Max is.”