Act of God

fair.”
    “Call it client discipline.”
    “I’m being punished?”
    “Yes.”
    Proft simply watched me for a minute, the eyes hungry from whatever he was thinking about. “Very well. It’s nothing I couldn’t have predicted, and had I hired you entirely on my own, I would have had to pay the full freight anyway.” Another sip of coffee. “Besides, what can it cost as a percentage of what I might receive?”
    As much as I can milk it for, I thought.

    After William Proft went back into the pharmacy, I tried Pearl Rivkind’s number again with the same negative result. When I called my answering service, there was no message from her but an “urgent” one from Traci Wickmire. I hung up and dialed the number she’d left.
    “Hel-lo?”
    The trilling voice. “Ms. Wickmire, John Cuddy.”
    “I thought I told you to call me ‘Traci’?”
    “Traci, my answering service said—”
    “I know. Was ‘urgent’ the right word to use?”
    “What?”
    “Was ‘urgent’ the right word. I never dealt with a private investigator before, and even though I’ve used ‘urgent’ as an adjective in articles, I didn’t know if that was the right word to get across what I meant.”
    The upward lilt on the last word. “What did you mean?”
    “Well, I went in to feed Darb’s cat this morning, right?”
    “Yes?”
    “Somebody’s trashed her place.”
    “Trashed it?”
    “I checked the thesaurus in my computer, and I think ‘ransacked’ is the right word, but it sounds kind of funny saying it out loud over the telephone. Maybe you should come see for yourself.”
    “Half an hour.”
    “I’ll be here.”

    “Ransacked” was the word.
    Tigger watched us from under an overturned art book big enough to form a sort of lean-to, the smell of his litter more pervasive than it had been the last time I was there. The place was a mess, but when you looked, the devastation was only partial. For example, the living room had books pulled down and a lot of things upended, but while the cushions were off the couch, nobody had slashed them open or done the couch itself. All the Hummels and animal figurines were intact on their little knickknack shelves, which told me whatever was being searched for had to be bigger than they were. In the kitchen, somebody had gone through the cabinets, tossing stuff from the shelves onto the floor, but the small, opaquely wrapped frozen goods in the freezer hadn’t been torn apart. In the bedroom, the open suitcase was on the floor, whoever it was having rifled through it and scattered its contents around the carpeting. The mail Wickmire had put on the bed also was scattered, but none of it opened. The covers were off the mattress and the mattress off the box springs. The closet and bureaus had heaps of clothing in front of them, but no slashing there, either.
    Wickmire said, “Something, huh?”
    I turned to her. She was wearing the same overlarge flannel shirt, but untorn jeans this time. The strawberry hair shook as she took in the mess.
    I bent down to check through the mail again. “When did this happen, Traci?”
    “Not sure. I came in to feed the cat this morning about eight, and it was like this.”
    “But it was okay last night?”
    When Wickmire didn’t answer, I looked up, and she gave me one of her coy smiles. “Wouldn’t know.”
    The lilt on the last syllable again but the first time she’d tried the faked flirting this visit. “Why not?”
    “I spent the night at a friend’s. I mean, it’s one thing for me to be a neighbor and keep looking after Tigger, and it’s another for the cat to dominate my social life, don’t you think?”
    I was hoping for a charge card bill that hadn’t been in the last batch of mail I’d seen. No luck. “So this could have happened when?”
    “Anytime.”
    “Since yesterday morning?”
    “That’s right. I left Tigger enough food for all day Thursday and all night. But I’m telling you, the smell of that litterbox is starting to put me off more than my allergy.”
    I thought about it. “The litterbox still in the bathroom?”
    “Disgusting, if you ask me.”
    I looked at her.
    She said, “I mean, sitting on the toilet doing your business with the cat squatting next to you doing his? Come on.”
    I moved to the bathroom. Somebody had overturned the litterbox, too, and pawed through it. Or the cat had done the pawing.
    Behind me, Wickmire said, “Oh, great, just great. What am I supposed to do now, clean it