I didn’t quite have myself in hand, and I couldn’t see the connection between home invasions and getting kittens. “Wouldn’t a Doberman be more to the point?”
“No, because Clark’s allergic to cats,” Oakleigh snapped.
She was still bristling because The Help was plonked on her sofa, playing with her baby animals. The odd part was that I bristled right back at her, even though she was a client, and Julian was out of line.
So this is what nepotism tastes like, I thought. I found I didn’t mind the flavor.
“Oakleigh,” I said, sharp enough to reclaim her attention. “How allergic? Touch-a-cat-and-die allergic? Or cat dander makes him sneezy?”
“How would I know? I never saw him go around cats. He was allergic,” Oakleigh said, as if she were speaking to someone who was very, very slow. “He didn’t carry an EpiPen or anything. He did say being around cats made him miserable, so when he kept breaking in and ruining all my things, I got some.”
“What’s been ruined, other than the obvious?” I asked, glancing at the wedding portrait. I was skeptical that Clark had been in the house at all. I wouldn’t put it past Oakleigh to ruin her own things, hoping to make Clark look bad.
Oakleigh flushed. “It’s crazy. I got my hair cut, and when I came back, the Picasso sketch was missing. I thought maybe he’d done it before, when he emptied the safe, and I hadn’t noticed. I changed the security code anyway, and I went out to dinner. When I got home, the alarm was still set, but half my shoes were in the bathtub. The shower was running. Nothing suede survived. That’s when I found my sketch in the liquor cabinet. I changed the code again, and then yesterday, I went to pick up a ton of dry cleaning. I’d forgotten about it in all the chaos, and there was a pet shop next door. I went in and bought these kittens. While I was gone he—” She faltered, and her voice dropped to an outraged whisper. “I really, really think he peed into my makeup case. It’s made me crazy, wondering what else he may have peed in. I keep throwing out food, and I’m carrying my toothbrush in my purse now. So this morning, I went to Pilates, and while I was gone, he came and scratched my face out and rehung our portrait, and I don’t know what else yet. I’m scared to even look around. I’d left the dry cleaning draped over the banister. It was mostly his suits and his dress shirts. He must have grabbed it on the way out.”
“He would have seen the kittens,” I said, watching them tussling in Julian’s lap. “Why would he take clothes?”
“Well, the clothes were all still sealed up in those plastic bags. They looked fresh cleaned,” Oakleigh said. It was an interesting choice of words, to say they looked clean instead of simply saying that they were. She stared at the floor, and added, truculent. “Maybe he thought he’d better take them before they got all dandered up.”
I quirked an eyebrow up. “You meant for him to take them.”
“I didn’t say that,” Oakleigh said, now so disingenuous she might as well be scrubbing a toe against the floor.
Julian shot me a puzzled look, but I was as adrift as he was. I noticed his navy-blue pants were already showing white cat hair. I kept Henry brushed because so many of my clothes were black, and I still had to use a tape roller every time I left the house. But Blackie’s fur didn’t really show against the navy, I noticed, and then I understood. Oakleigh had picked these charming dander factories for their colors.
“You ran the kittens through his clothes,” I said, surprised. Julian looked surprised, too. “You ran the white kitten in and out the sleeves of his pale dress shirts. And then the dark one, you ran him through the suits. How many times?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Kittens are silly,” Oakleigh said. “Can I help it if they like to play tunnels?”
“Holy crap,” Julian said.
“And then you bagged the clothes back up and hung them where he’d see them, and you trotted off to Pilates.”
“I didn’t say that. But he shouldn’t have been messing with my things.” Her voice was prim and not without pride.
Now I believed that Clark was breaking in. People in contentious divorces blame their spouses for rain and hangnails and the chlamydia they know damn well they’ve gone and outsourced all on their own. But they don’t lay elaborate kitten traps for the ex if they are the one doing the sabotage.