“Rise and shine,” Amy sang out the next morning as she breezed into through the living room and stopped right in front of me with her hands clasped before her. “Good morning, Mr. Moss. Want some breakfast?”
I yawned and stretched, lifting my butt in the air to lengthen my spine, and rid it of any kinks I may have developed during the night. Normally, I wandered the house while the others slept, but this time I seemed to have slept straight through the night. What can I say? Travel takes a lot out of me.
I sure did like waking up to Amy’s heavenly face and the promise of fresh-made breakfast. I offered her my best smile, then sniffed the air and cried out, “Did you make bacon? I smell bacon. Please tell me there’s bacon.”
She laughed and nodded, which was all the encouragement I needed to hop off the couch and race toward the source of the food.
“I cooked your eggs runny, how you like them,” Amy called after me.
I found Kaye siting at the kitchen table looking particularly sullen. “Don’t talk to me. It’s still too early,” she mumbled as she nursed a mug of coffee close to her face. “Why do they have to start estate sales so early in the mornings? The stuff will still be there in a few hours. What’s the rush?”
Amy scratched my head, then placed a plate of breakfast in front of me. “It’s not so bad,” she consoled Kaye. “A new day means new possibilities. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even find something we want to buy.”
Loved her enthusiasm, but completely disagreed with the assertion. Neither Kaye nor Amy had any money. And what good would antique furniture do me for the next three years while I was stuck in fur and unable to access my funds? None, that was what.
I lapped up my egg yolk as my two companions discussed an online message board where members listed estate sales happening around the general Atlanta area.
“Well, Mason was right about at least one thing,” Amy said as she blew on her coffee. “There are at least a hundred of these things. Where do we even start?”
“Close your eyes and point?” I suggested with a shrug.
Kaye grabbed her phone and began to click around. “Let me see if our perp operates under any kind of pattern.”
Amy picked up her fork and began to eat in silence while Kaye studied the case files Mason had sent to her email. “It’s been fairly random,” she said. “They can’t locate a source that explains the order, rhyme, or reason for which sales our guy targets. The team at HQ has already combed all the online listings and even partnered with the local auction and estate companies to try to make sense of it. But they’ve gotten nowhere.”
I gobbled up another slice of bacon, then said, “So, like I said, close your eyes and point. There. Decision made.”
Kaye pursed her lips. “Seems like we might have to do it that way.”
“Hey, maybe we’ll get lucky,” Amy offered with a half-hearted smile.
Ultimately, we decided to hit as many sales as we could, starting with the one closest to our apartment safehouse and working our way out.
And it took a while to hit on anything worthwhile. Serves them right for not listening to my idea to close your eyes and point.
Parking quickly proved to be an issue, so Amy took over, allowing Kaye and I to hop out as needed while she hung back and circled the block a few times. Inside the sales, everyone stared at the crazy lady with the cat perched atop her shoulder—little did they know they’d only gotten half of that assumption right, seeing as I’m not really a cat. But they did give us our space, and for that, we were both grateful. It helped us to move in and out more quickly.
Our luck changed on both counts when we hit the fourth sale of the morning.
A hand-written sign pointed us toward an open parking garage.
“Finally, I get to come in, too,” Amy exclaimed with glee.
A smiling young woman greeted us as soon as we stepped off the elevator. “Hello. Welcome. Oh, you brought your kitty, I see.”
She reached out her fingers so that I could sniff them. I hated when people did that, but it was just one of those things I had to put up with if I wanted to remain on the case and out of prison.
“Anyway,” she said when I refused to acknowledge her outstretched hand. “Anything behind the closed doors is off-limits. Everything else is up for grabs. Feel free to search through drawers or peek in cabinets and bring us an offer for whatever sparks your interest.”
Kaye and Amy mumbled their thanks, and in we went. So far, our strategy had been to take a quick tour through each place, reaching out toward any magic that may be present. Amy sensed it the same way I could, and as a full-blooded witch, Kaye was the best of all of us.
It didn’t take long for us to feel that telltale tug toward one of the bedrooms. As soon as we walked through the doorway, we all stiffened and let out a collective gasp.
“Oh, my,” Kaye said. “Something went down in here.”
She plucked me off her shoulder and set me on a nearby folding table. I tiptoed through a bunch of ugly glass clown figurines, struggling to pinpoint what Kaye already sensed.
One of the clowns stared right at me with terrifying, lifelike eyes.
“What is this freaky thing?” I hissed, dropping low so that my belly pressed against the table. Unwilling to be gawked at by a porcelain clown, I swatted the figurine so that it slipped off the table and onto the carpeted floor below.
“Moss, bad,” Amy scolded.
Meh. I ignored her.
The rug looked plush; the figurine hadn’t broken from its fall. My goal had been to break the thing’s stare, but now that I realized how much fun it was to knock things over…
I reached out a paw and smacked another over the edge. This one bounced when it fell over.
I chuckled under my breath, the hunt for magic forgotten as I reached my paw out and nudged yet another clown into the carpeted abyss.
“Moss O’Malley,” Kaye hissed. “Knock it off!”
“Sorry,” I said with a laugh, but even as I apologized, I reached out and tagged another figurine, so it went flying.
Kaye jerked me back up into her arms and settled me on her shoulder again. “You quit behaving like a cat this instant.”
“Well, you did say to knock it off, and I hate to disappoint,” I pointed out with a devilish grin. Also, she was kind of giving me whiplash with this whole “act like a cat” decree followed by the directive to not act “too much like a cat.” Yeesh. Could she just make up her mind one way or the other please?
“Pardon me,” Kaye said to the woman who had greeted us at the entrance. She now stood waiting for us in the hallway. As if there weren’t other shoppers to tend to.
“Do you maintain a log of who purchases what?” Kaye asked pleasantly.
The lady stared blankly at us for a moment before shaking her head. “No. Even if they pay with a card, I don’t keep any info past the point of transaction.” She narrowed her eyes and glanced between Kaye and Amy. “Why do you need to know?”
“We were just wondering,” Amy said brightly. “Thanks for letting us wander around. You have a lot of good stuff here, but nothing for us, I’m afraid. Best of luck with your sale.”
With that, we rushed out of the apartment and toward the elevators. “We’ve got to hurry to the next sale,” Kaye said. “Hopefully, he’s driving around like we are and we’re catching up. Something in that room was jinxed, but it’s not there now. It’s been purchased.”
Pulling out her phone, she began typing as we rode the elevator down. I held on to her shoulder with my claws, trying and failing to cling to her shirt rather than her flesh.
Amy disentangled me and cradled me in her arms while Kaye informed her superiors of our discovery.
We were closing in on our target.
He was definitely in Atlanta.
And the day was young. We just might catch him yet.