“Some of the places will be closed,” I said.

“I’ll find night watchmen. Or break in.”

Something in me cracked, seeing the look of grim determination on his face. I burst out in tears.

“I’m sorry,” I said, as Michael swept me in a comforting embrace. “You’re being so great about this—everyone is. And it’s my fault he’s here and I should have been keeping a better eye out for Kiki and—I can’t believe I’m having hysterics, too, over a stupid stuffed cat.”

My tears mutated into giggles.

“It’s important to Timmy,” Michael said. “And the poor kid has been through a lot. If we can’t bring his mother back, at least we can find Kiki.”

“If you’re game to go driving around the county in search of a stuffed cat, I’m not going to argue with you,” I said. “Let me get my notebook—I left it in the car. Jasper Walker’s address is there.”

“I’ll change into something more likely to inspire confidence in a night watchman,” Michael said.

On my way to the car, I passed by the outdoor section of Spike’s pen. Damn! In our distraction over Kiki, we had left Spike out, which was dangerous. No matter how fierce Spike thought he was, to a fox or a large owl, he’d be easy pickings. We always made a point to take him inside before dark.

“Come here, Spike,” I said. “Time to come inside for dinner.”

Normally the D-word got his attention, but he was off in the far corner of the pen chewing on something.

Something black and fuzzy that was leaking cotton stuffing.

Twenty-Five

“Kiki!” I exclaimed. “Spike, drop it!”

Spike stubbornly refused to drop Kiki. Maybe it was just because I wanted the stuffed toy, or maybe Timmy had spilled enough food on Kiki over the years to make him downright tasty, but Spike had no intention of surrendering his prey. It finally took me, Rob, and Dad to pry the two apart.

“Come on, Rob,” Dad said. “Let’s go put antiseptic on these bites. Meg, did he get you?”

“No,” I said. “But he really did a number on Kiki.”

Back inside, things were still quiet upstairs. I fetched my sewing kit and sat down at the kitchen table to mend Kiki. Rob, Michael, Dad, and Rose Noire gathered around, looking as anxious as the family of a human patient. And after my preliminary examination, I realized that the patient needed more than surgery.

“There’s a good chunk of stuffing missing.”

“I could go out and look for it,” Rob offered.

“No, Spike will have eaten a lot of it, and the rest will be muddy. For that matter, half of what’s still here is pretty nasty. And so’s Kiki—she needs a bath, and then she needs a stuffing donor. Find me a stuffed animal, pronto!”

They all looked at each other and then scattered.

I spread some old newspapers on the kitchen table and began removing the remaining stuffing. The bits that were clean—very few of them—I put in a pile for reuse. The bits that were stained with mud and possibly dog poop went into the trash. Once I had emptied Kiki, I could throw her into the wash and—