I knelt and put my hand out so the cats could sniff me. Their rheumy, sad eyes stared up, and the tabby squeaked out a meow. I rested fingers against its face, and he or she rubbed against them. Then I did the same with the orange tiger. Neither made any effort to move. What had that professor done to these poor animals? I bit my lip, fought back tears.

“I called Shawn,” I said, my voice shaky. “Told him to bring crates. But we’ll need a vet for these two. Unless the animal control guy takes them. And where in heck is this Chester person?”

“His wife called me. She said he tried to impound a dog before he came here, and the owner took a shotgun to the dog-catcher wagon’s tires. Chester is being treated for shock at some emergency clinic.”

“Oh. Not a good day in Mercy for anyone,” I said.

“You got that right. Back to these cats. They need the vet, but they didn’t get all stiffened up and die like the professor. So what’s wrong with them?”

I said, “The one I found earlier was dehydrated, but look how skinny the bigger one is. Maybe malnutrition, too?”

Candace stayed in the bathroom entry. “I don’t see any cat food dishes, so maybe you’re right.”

“The meat you talked about could be spoiled or-”

“Do not even mention meat. Can you watch them until Shawn gets here? They don’t look all that mobile, but they could mess up evidence if they decide to get out of the tub,” Candace said.

“You didn’t want to close the door and leave them alone, did you?” I said.

She smiled sadly. “You know me too well. That’s why I brought you inside. See, one of them-don’t know which-was meowing something pitiful. But you’ve fixed that. They feel safer already.”

She left to do her job, and I sat cross- legged on the grimy vinyl floor next to the tub. My fear, the nerves and the panic all gave way to rage. When an animal is mistreated, that speaks to the dark side of human nature. And these two cats-not to mention the fifty or so outside-confirmed what I’d felt about the professor from the minute we’d met. Not a good man. Not good at all.

I took several deep breaths, working hard to quell the anger. Transferring my negative emotions to these helpless cats wouldn’t help them. They needed loving care right now. I leaned over the edge of the tub and stroked the tabby and then the orange guy-probably a male, since most orange cats are boys. He was big enough to be a Maine coon like my Merlot but so thin I couldn’t tell. Maine coons usually weigh in at about twenty pounds, but this one was nowhere near that heavy. I alternated the petting, and soon they were both purring.

Meanwhile, I kept hearing snatches of what Lydia was saying. She does tend to yell. She was saying something about coroner school and a textbook death. But the words that came next made my own spine straighten, made me recall the dead rodents I’d nearly walked on in the field when I was returning to Ruth Schultz’s farm earlier in the day. Her words?

Rat poison.

When I heard “rat poison,” my focus immediately returned to the cats in the bathtub. I swallowed hard. Had they been poisoned, too? Was it only a matter of time before their muscles starting going rigid? And what about the cats outside?

But from what I knew of rat poison, which wasn’t much, it was a blood thinner, not something that would turn a person into a grotesque human sculpture. Bile rose in my throat as the image of the professor with his arched back and stiffened limbs flashed through my mind. Stop. Think about these cats right now. They’re alive. They need help.

Where was that vet? Where was Shawn?

But I couldn’t quit thinking about poison. Maybe there was more than one kind of rat poison and these cats had been harmed with a different substance. They were limp and lethargic. Is that what the kind of blood-thinner rat poison found in the grocery store did to animals before they died?

I bent and looked more closely at them-sure, like that would tell me something-and noticed they both wore thin collars. I lifted the tabby’s chin and saw a white paper tag attached to the buckle. Written in ballpoint ink was TRIXIE.

The orange cat had a similar tag. His said VLAD.

“Hey, Vlad. Hey, Trixie,” I said. “I promise you’ll get help soon.”

When I heard Candace say, “My friend the cat whisperer,” I nearly jumped out of my skin.

I’d been so focused, I hadn’t heard her come back. “You scared me,” I said.

“This is a scary place. Shawn’s here with volunteers, and Dr. Jensen’s not far behind. An officer will bring the vet in here when he arrives.”

I sighed with relief. “Good. I’m even afraid to offer them water. Maybe they’d start-”

“I don’t want to know what might happen. Anyway, there’s no light out back beyond that shed, but the sheriff’s department has arrived with portable halogens. It’ll probably freak out those cats when we turn the lights on, huh?”

“You bet it will. As if they’re not freaked-out enough,” I said.

“Can you help outside? Like I said, the vet will be here any second.”

I stood, my worried stare on my two new friends. “Of course.”

As I followed her back out into the hall, she said, “Please stay on my heels and don’t touch anything.”

“Can’t we go around the shed?” I said. “Maybe there’s a gate or-”

“No gate. To get inside the cat runs, you gotta go through that shed.”

Cat runs. Thoughts of what I’d seen earlier made my anger resurface. The man who did this to them had died a horrible death, and though I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, I was still mad at what he’d done.

When I heard Lydia ’s loud voice, I said, “Is she okay with me… um… participating?”

“Oh, perfectly happy now that she’s checked every nook and cranny to make sure Tom Stewart isn’t here and won’t be called upon to help out,” Candace said. “Why does the county designate someone like her to be in charge of suspicious deaths, anyway? It makes no sense.”

“You think the government is supposed to have common sense?” I said.

“I’d say ‘how true’ except I am part of the government,” she reminded me.

I smiled and said, “But back to Tom. Why would you call in a security expert for something like this?” I said.

“I wouldn’t. But you know Lydia. She believes if Jillian Hart’s around, well, Tom must be lurking, too, ready to jump your bones right in front of her,” Candace said.

A blush warmed both my cheeks. “She is so frickin’ crazy, it’s ridiculous.”

“For now, she’s in charge. Try to ignore her, okay? In her defense, she does seem to have some knowledge about the cause of death.” Candace stopped at the end of the hall, where it made a hard right turn. “We’ll pass quickly through the kitchen and out the back door. Stay right behind me.”

“I’d love to ignore her, but she’s the one-”

“Forget about her, Jillian,” Candace whispered harshly. “Frightened cats need you right now.”

Lydia Monk and Morris Ebeling were in the kitchen, a room that could have traveled through time from the set of Father Knows Best with fifty years of dirt added. The meat that had so upset Candace was spread out on a dirty countertop, and an old-fashioned grinder was clamped to the counter’s edge. Professor VanKleet had obviously been making food for the cats, but in a place the FDA would have shut down in a nanosecond.

A gloved Lydia knelt by the body in the other entrance to the kitchen, the one that led to the living area. She said, “The contractions caused by the strychnine are wearing off, Morris. That’s why the body is relaxing. I told you this was no rigor mortis you were seeing when-” She stopped talking and smiled up at me as if nothing had happened between us earlier. “Glad you’re here to help with the animals, Jillian. Mercy has such concerned citizens. Truly heartwarming.”