Chapter 1

Why was the woman whispering?

I had been in the Salzmans’ apartment for about twenty minutes when I finally realized that Mrs. Salzman had whispered to me from the moment I entered. And that I had whispered back. The entire conversation was being conducted in whispers.

I was there to be interviewed for a cat-sitting job. Mrs. Salzman needed someone to visit her lonely feline three mornings a week while she was seeking medical treatment in a neighboring state. In other words, she would be sleeping elsewhere and her cat had to be reassured. The nature of the medical treatment was never mentioned, nor was the whereabouts of Mr. Salzman, if, indeed, he existed at all.

The cat’s name was Abelard.

When the cat’s name was revealed to me, I had a sudden insight that Mrs. Salzman was quite mad . . . that her cat had been surgically altered and the poor woman was caught in a delusion that her cat had been altered for love of Heloise. She was acting out a medieval castration romance. But the thought vanished as quickly as it had emerged; it was only one of my dramaturgical fantasies—an occupational hazard for actresses.

Mrs. Salzman kept whispering to me what a lovely cat he was.

The problem was—where was he?

I couldn’t see him.

“He’s very frightened of people,” Mrs. Salzman said, which was the first rational reason she had presented for this whispering.

Mrs. Salzman lived in a very confused apartment on East Thirty-Seventh Street in Manhattan. The furniture, and there was a lot of it, lined the walls like a military procession. Abelard could be under any one of the pieces.

If I couldn’t see Abelard, maybe I could hear him. Maybe I could hear his movements. Maybe that was another reason she kept whispering . . . so as to be aware of Abelard’s movements.

“I am so happy to be able to deliver Abelard to a real professional cat sitter,” Mrs. Salzman whispered.

I burst out laughing, very loudly. I couldn’t help myself. Mrs. Salzman drew back, shocked, her hand involuntarily smoothing her hair. She was an impeccably dressed woman except for garish green leather shoes.

It was impossible to explain to her why her remark had collapsed me into laughter. But only two hours before I had entered Mrs. Salzman’s Murray Hill apartment, I had been reading a short squib about myself in the neighborhood newspaper Our Town. The anonymous “People” columnist had mentioned me as a neighborhood resident and noted that: “The stately, long-haired, still-beautiful Alice Nestleton is one of our finest little-known actresses . . . little known because of her penchant for obscure roles in obscure off-off-off Broadway plays.”

The anonymous columnist then went on to add: “Alice Nestleton has long been a cult heroine to theater buffs.”

The comment was absurd. Where were these “buffs”? In the supermarket on Third Avenue? I never met them.

Anyway, the whole point about that ludicrous description of me in the newspaper was that it didn’t make me laugh. But it laid the groundwork. And when Mrs. Salzman characterized me two hours later as a “real professional cat sitter,” the cumulative effect made me laugh out loud, heartily, raucously.

Mrs. Salzman quickly forgave my outburst and took me on a brief tour of her convoluted apartment. She pointed out the location of the cat food and the watering can for the plants and the lists of emergency numbers and several other key locations and objects.

There was still no sign of Abelard.

“What kind of cat is Abelard?” I asked.

“A lovely cat,” replied Mrs. Salzman, thinking I was asking about his disposition rather than his breed.

“What color is Abelard?” I persisted.

She paused, cocked her head, and smiled. “Mixed.”

“Mixed what?” My question came out a bit testy.

She ignored that question and led me into one of the hallways. “There are your three envelopes,” she said. They lay on a small elegantly carved French cherrywood table.

“One for each day you’ll be cat sitting next week,” Mrs. Salzman explained. She picked up one of the envelopes and opened it—I could see there was a single hundred-dollar bill inside.

My God! Three envelopes! Three hundred-dollar bills! For three visits of about forty-five minutes each to a cat I hadn’t even seen yet and might never see! Was this woman mad? It was a truly exorbitant rate of pay. Unless of course . . . unless there were problems associated with Abelard that she hadn’t disclosed.

I was about to ask for a modest reduction in pay when Mrs. Salzman suddenly and dramatically put her finger against her lips, urging silence.

Had she heard Abelard? Was the mysterious cat about to emerge from the shadows?

We waited. Mrs. Salzman closed her eyes and seemed to go into an anticipatory trance. What a strange woman she was: gray hair; thin, serious face; tall, with a stoop at the shoulders; the very slightest hint of an Austrian accent clinging to her whispers; an abstracted manner, as if she were very far away.

We waited. And we waited. And we waited. Where the hell was Abelard?

“Maybe we should call him,” I suggested gently.

Mrs. Salzman opened her eyes in horror. I had obviously said the wrong thing.

“He does not like to be called,” she said in a compassionate voice, as if, even though I was a professional cat sitter, I was suffering some kind of mild learning disorder.

“What does Abelard like?” I retorted a bit sarcastically.

The sarcasm passed blithely over Mrs. Salzman’s head. “He likes flowers and fruit and fresh turkey and music and birds . . .” She stopped suddenly in the middle of her hysterical list, a bit self-conscious. She smiled and led me to the door, telling me that Abelard wanted more than an employee—he wanted a friend.

I walked home quickly, thinking about my cats, Bushy and Pancho.

Granted, they were a bit peculiar. Bushy, the Maine coon, was no doubt one of the drollest beasts ever created. And Pancho, my stray rescued from the ASPCA, well, he was borderline psychotic—spending most of all day and all night fleeing from imaginary enemies.

But at least my cats were visible! Not like Abelard. And my cats obviously had a grudging affection for me.

I climbed the stairs quickly. Thinking about Bushy and Pancho always made me miss them fiercely—even though I had been away from the apartment for less than two hours.

“Alice! You’re finally home!”

I stopped suddenly and peered up the badly lit landing toward the voice.

It was Mrs. Oshrin, my neighbor, the retired schoolteacher.

She was standing at the top of the landing. On either side of her was a very dangerous-looking man.

Kidnappers? Rapists? Junkies? Neighborhood derelicts?

I panicked. I turned sharply on the stairs and started to run back down to seek help.

“Alice!” I heard her call out. “Wait! There’s nothing wrong!”

I turned back, confused, still frightened.

“They’re police officers, Alice! They want to see you—not me!”

I waited, tentative.

“It’s all very hush-hush,” Mrs. Oshrin pleaded, as if that was an explanation. There was something about the way she used that very old-fashioned phrase—“hush-hush”—that sent an anticipatory tingle along my spine. But it wasn’t fear.