“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said. “But you’re probably right. Luck had nothing to do with it. Shawn has told me before how people are always dropping off dogs and cats in the dead of night. I could never do what he and Allison do. I’d be too furious with the people who’d abandoned the animals to think straight.”

“Not everyone believes that cats are the most wonderful creatures on earth,” Candace said.

“Wonderful? That reminds me.” I took my phone from my jeans pocket and pulled up the live feed on my personal “cat cam.” I laughed out loud at what I saw going on in my living room across town. My three cats, Chablis, Syrah and Merlot, were tearing apart a roll of toilet paper. Syrah was sitting like a king in his own special shredded pile. I handed the phone to Candace. “Check this out.”

Her blue eyes widened, and she grinned. “I think they want you to know exactly how mad they are that you left them alone all night.”

“This shredding thing is nothing new. I might have to put a child safety lock on the bathroom cabinet. Both Syrah and Merlot can open anything, though. They’d figure it out eventually.”

Candace handed the phone back. “Knowing your cats, I’d place bets on that. But exactly why did you volunteer for night duty here? I know you’re a sweetheart and when Shawn asked you couldn’t say no-just like I couldn’t say no to keeping you company-but you’ve never done this before, have you?” She stood as the wonderful aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the office. The pot was sputtering and beckoning now.

“No, but with Allison driving to Clemson a couple days a week for classes, she needs her sleep. And leaving the kittens at the vet was too expensive. Contributions to the shelter are way down.”

“I forgot about her starting school,” Candace said. “What’s she studying, again?”

“Preveterinary medicine.” I took the cup of steaming brew that Candace offered. “In a few years they won’t need to pay the vet. She’ll be the vet.”

“Wow. She’ll make a great veterinarian,” Candace said, sounding wistful.

I’d met Candace last year during the murder investigation, and ever since, we’d become closer and closer friends. In some ways I felt motherly, but really more like her good friend. Despite our twenty-year age difference, we seemed alike in many ways. She was obsessed with becoming a better cop, and I was obsessed with my cats and my one-woman job. There’d been a time when my old job had consumed me, so I guess I understood Candace on that level. I’d traveled the world buying fabric for a large company, but that hectic life was over. I’d met John, the financial adviser for said company, and when he was ready to retire to go fishing and sit by the lake, I discovered I wanted to return to my first love-the simplicity and peace of handwork. If only we’d had more time sitting together looking out on Mercy Lake. If only.

Knowing that Candace wanted desperately to go back to school herself and become a crime-scene investigator or even an FBI forensics expert, I decided that talking about Allison’s new venture wouldn’t work. Since Candace helped her mother with her bills, money was tight and the topic of school made her depressed. Time to change the subject.

“Cards?” I said.

“Double solitaire?”

“Sure, just don’t injure my hands when you slap down those cards. I have kittens to feed,” I said.

“So you want an advantage? Guess I have to go along with that this one time,” she answered with a smile.

We sipped coffee, chatted and played cards for the next several hours, stopping for the scheduled tube feedings. Candace was too afraid to even pick up the kittens, saying she was scared she might injure one. Both of us handling them probably wasn’t a good idea, anyway.

Snug had finally tucked one leg close to his body and went blissfully to sleep while Candace and I kept each other awake. But at four a.m., both of us were having a hard time keeping our eyes open, much less shuffling the cards. The only thing that helped me stay halfway alert was the tarantula that Shawn kept in the glass case across the room. I don’t mind spiders, but a big hairy one that might climb out of that tank and wander my way gave me the creeps.

We both started when Candace’s phone jangled “Sweet Thing,” a Keith Urban song she adored.

“Must be the job calling at this hour,” she mumbled before she answered. But she didn’t even get to say hello before I heard a frantic female voice on the other end. Candace listened, rolled her eyes, listened some more. Finally she said, “Robin, calm yourself. I understand this is important to you, so I assume you’ve called the station?”

Robin’s voice bordered on shrieky when she started up again. I heard Candace inhale deeply and let the air out slowly. After she listened again for several seconds, she said, “What you were told is true. The night-duty crew has the whole town to cover, and if they say they can’t get there-”

More agitation spewed from Candace’s phone, and she held it away from her ear. After she let Robin go on for another fifteen seconds or so, Candace said, “How’s this? I’ll come by a little after six. That’s as soon as I can get there. We’ll have plenty of time to figure this out before little Jack leaves for school.”

When Robin spoke this time, she must have been relieved by this offer, because I couldn’t hear her response. Seconds later, Candace closed her phone.

“You could leave now if someone needs you,” I said. “I’ve got a handle on the kittens.”

She held up one finger, her jaw tight. “First off, the last thing I want to do is deal with this now.” Another finger went up. “Second problem. I don’t have a ride because a certain someone by the name of Jillian Hart wouldn’t let me do the driving tonight.”

“Oh. I forgot about that,” I said. Candace drove like she and Danica Patrick were sisters, so I do the driving when we go anywhere together. “Who’s Robin?”

“Robin is the most overprotective mother in Mercy. Don’t get me wrong; she’s got a great heart and loves her boy, but I guess since I’m the only female on the police force, they turned her over to me after all the 911 calls.”

“I’m not following,” I said.

“Robin was calling 911 for everything from Jack’s splinters to when he’d come down with the flu. So now, instead of calling 911, she calls me.”

“Everything is okay, then?” I said.

“It’s no emergency, but since you insisted on doing the driving, I’ll let you go with me to her place when we leave here. Then you can see for yourself.”

I could hardly refuse, considering that Candace had agreed to stay up all night before her day off to keep me company here. “Can I have a hint what this is about?”

“We’re gonna see a woman about a cow.”

The drive to Robin’s house took longer than I thought, considering that every destination I knew of in Mercy was about five minutes from every other destination I knew of in Mercy. But we traveled over a country road I was unfamiliar with. The sunrise in front of us was muted by a flimsy fog, so no sunglasses were required. Candace kept me on a mostly southeastward track away from Mercy. Since I’d moved to South Carolina from Houston only a little more than a year ago, I shouldn’t have been surprised that there were rural parts of town I’d never explored.

Shawn had arrived from home to take over kitten duty at six a.m. on the dot, but the man was cranky and there had been little conversation. If he lived inside the shelter he’d probably be even more of a grouch. Everyone needed their sleep, Shawn included. He said he had a new volunteer, a tech who worked for the veterinarian, Dr. Jensen. She would handle the next night shift. Allison would take over for the weekend and beyond since her spring break was coming up next week. I felt a little sad that I wouldn’t be seeing the kittens again for a while. I could already tell them apart and had named each one before the dawn broke: Binky, who tried to suck the thin feeding tube; Pokey, whose little paws moved in slow-motion; Sleepy, the one who didn’t like waking up; and Lovebug, the one who enjoyed nestling into my palm the most. Their beautiful mackerel tabby mother, whom Shawn called Clara after his grandmother, was precious and lovable. But she was weaker than her offspring, and when she wouldn’t eat on her own, I’d had to give her a bottle of watered-down baby-food meat.