“Thanks to Dame Wiggins and her escapist ways, we probably saved some cats today. I never would have found out what was going on if not for her,” I said.

I arrived home close to midnight, and after I disabled the alarm, I took Dame Wiggins and her family into the house through the door below the deck. This entrance led to the basement game room, which had an attached unfurnished bedroom. I set up my foster cats with fresh water, food and a disposable litter box. This “basement apartment” had a fully stocked pantry and a bathroom-for the guests that so far I hadn’t had yet.

There was a guest room upstairs, but John had made sure we’d finished the basement for the grandchildren my late husband hoped to have. I couldn’t have kids, but John did have his daughter Kara from his first marriage. She’d never even got a chance to visit us in South Carolina. The last time I’d seen her was at John’s funeral in Houston, where she still lived. We had never been close, and John’s death hadn’t changed that. How I wished that were different.

“Dame Wiggins,” I said before I went upstairs, “I bequeath this empty room to you and promise to bring a comfy quilt after I visit with my friends upstairs.” I opened the crate for her and then left, closing the bedroom door behind me.

I’d also closed the door to the upstairs so three curious friends wouldn’t come down to check out what I was doing. Syrah, Chablis and Merlot might not appreciate feline visitors, although I’d occasionally kept a few lost cats and they hadn’t minded too much. But kittens? Nope, I’d never brought home kittens, so I had no idea how they would respond.

I climbed the stairs and opened the door, leaving it ajar now that Dame Wiggins was safely sequestered. Cats hate closed doors.

When I flipped on the kitchen lights, three loving feline faces stared up at me-and they had been waiting with a gift.

A dead mouse lay in front of them.

Syrah tapped the lifeless body toward me, as proud as punch. Sheesh. Another dead body. Tiny but still dead. But it wasn’t like they hadn’t made offerings like this before.

I said, “I’ve eaten, thanks. But nice work, you three.” I recalled the stalking behavior I’d witnessed on the cat cam. They’d been chasing bigger prey than spiders in my absence. I took a wide path around the poor dead thing-didn’t want to hurt the cats’ feelings and dispose of their prize too soon. That might seem ungrateful.

Once we were all in the living room and far from the dead animal, I sat on the floor and bestowed plenty of love on my best friends. But my cats were less interested in petting and playing than they were in sniffing me from head to toe. Merlot even put his Swiffer duster paws on my chest and met me nose to nose. He recognized the scent of a foreign cat and wanted to drink it in completely.

A few minutes later, they grew tired of me. After all, I hardly ever came in through the basement, so I was sure they felt something must be explored down there. And I was also sure they were hoping there would be other invaders that needed to be stalked, trapped and killed.

As they hurried down the stairs, I followed as far as the kitchen, ready to dispose of the dead mouse. I pulled a few paper towels off the roll, realizing I felt more compassion for this creature than for the professor. Did that make me a good recruit for animal activism? No, not yet, I decided, as I headed out the back door for the trash can to dispose of the mouse. Whoever released or captured those cats today had probably tackled more barbed wire in their pursuits than I ever wanted to see again.

Right before I lifted the trash can’s lid, I had a thought.

I could call an exterminator tomorrow. I’d seen a dead spider earlier today, and now this mouse. Just the kind of things exterminators live for. Not that I actually wanted to exterminate anything. No, I wanted an expert opinion.

As I’d waited those ten minutes in the professor’s disgusting living room earlier, I’d thought about his note taking, the way he fed half the animals dry food and the other half that repulsive concoction from the jar. Was that why he was on sabbatical? To develop some new kind of cat food?

But before he could complete whatever he was doing with the meat on the counter or the red mixture in the jar, the professor had died. The question remained-had he been done in by his stupidity or by another’s hand?

Maybe someone not quite as nice as Ruth Schultz got angry about cats wandering on their property. A few cats had managed to escape from the professor’s prison and ended up with her, after all. Could someone else have tracked down the professor and decided to gather all the cats and dispose of them at the same time they got rid of the source of the problem-the instigating professor?

That could mean the missing cats were victims, too. Now they were who knew where, maybe some as sick as the gray, or the orange cat and the tabby Dr. Jensen took away. Though it wasn’t my business to investigate anything aside from how well certain fabrics complemented one another, I felt compelled to help in any way possible. Cats were involved. Lots of cats. Since Mercy has experts on everything from quilting thread to coffee beans, why not rodent poisons-and, sadly, possible cat poisons?

Yes. I needed to talk to an expert first thing tomorrow. And with that thought I pushed down the little voice that said, “What are you getting yourself into now, Jillian?”

I finally got to sleep at a reasonably normal time on Friday night and woke up the following morning feeling almost myself again. First thing, I contacted Rufus Bowen, the owner of What’s Bugging You? The choice of an exterminator was easy, considering only one company was listed in the thin Mercy yellow pages.

I tried questioning him over the phone, but Rufus cut me off, said he knew where I lived and would stop by on his way to an appointment. Then he hung up.

He knew where I lived? Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Everyone knew everything about everyone in Mercy.

When I answered the front door a half hour later, my gaze was drawn past his tall, broad and muscled body. I was looking at his truck parked in my driveway. A giant cockroach does catch your eye, and this one was painted on the side of the pickup. The customizing was beautifully done, but I still stifled a “yuck.” Spiders and mice I could handle. Cockroaches made me shudder.

Syrah and Merlot entered the foyer when I greeted Rufus. One whiff and they hightailed it to parts unknown. Since cats have a sense of smell hundreds of times more acute than that of humans, I figured they probably detected the “odor-free” chemicals clinging to Rufus Bowen. All I smelled was perspiration.

Chablis didn’t bother to show her face, unusual since she enjoys greeting visitors. She’d been downstairs when I went to feed Dame Wiggins early this morning, and my educated guess was that she was still there, parked outside the bedroom door.

“So you got yourself a vermin problem?” Rufus said.

“Not exactly,” I said. “Can we talk for a minute?”

He glanced at his watch. “Sure, but I don’t do snakes if that’s-”

“No snakes. Come into the kitchen.”

I led him through the living room, and when we sat at the kitchen counter he removed his Atlanta Braves baseball cap to reveal thinning, greasy brown hair.

“Would you like coffee? Or sweet tea?” I asked.

“No, ma’am. I just need to know the problem.”

“Here’s the deal. My cats killed a mouse yesterday, which got me thinking that exterminators would probably know plenty about any chemicals that kill animals.”

“You’d be correct, ma’am. But are you saying there’s more than one mouse hanging around your house?” His glance swept the kitchen floor. He was doing a “Candace.” Looking for evidence of infestation.