Death by Cat Lady Conspiracy
Death by Cat Lady Conspiracy
They talk about cat ladies ruling the world.
“So you’re saying your mother was… what now? Let’s start from the beginning.” Detective Tandy studied the woman in front of her for any signs of instability. She found none. The woman, named… Tandy checked her notepad. Sarah. Sarah looked clean, well-dressed, neat, makeup flawless even with a few tears. Her mother, on the other hand, may have been a little cuckoo.
Sarah started over. “My mother was the coordinator of an online group of women called the Boom Boom Cat Lady Club. All boomers. They’ve got some spunk, hence ‘boom boom.’ Other than being over 60, the requirement is that you must have at least one cat.”
“How many women are in this group?” Tandy asked.
“I don’t know… 5? 7? It’s not big… She barely knows how to use the internet. But they do what elderly women do, you know, knit, gossip, talk about recipes. Once a month, they visit a vineyard outside Salem together.”
“I know who did it!” Shane barged into Sarah’s house, waving some paper around, and walked straight to Tandy. “It was that witch, Grenadine. She planned this whole thing, and Mom kept saying how interesting it was how many cats she had.” He slammed the pages on the table.
“Shane, she’s not a witch.” Sarah was instantly annoyed. “Please stop spewing this nonsense.”
Tandy wiped a hand down her face. No marks on the body, no signs of internal distress like a heart attack or aneurysm, no chemical traces. No signs of break-ins, nothing taken. Even a peaceful expression on Ms. Macey’s face, as if she was having a pleasant dream while napping. Murder is only being considered because of the five cats found in the apartment, none of which belonged to Ms. Macey. She wanted to call it a day and finalize it as natural causes. The Cat Lady Club seems an obvious reason for the cats; she was caring for someone else’s pets. But now this…
“Alright, tell me more about… Gwendolyn, was it?” Tandy started penciling in her notepad.
“Grenadine. It’s all there,” Shane said, taking a seat and pointing to the pages. “Messages between Mom and Grenadine. They talk about cat ladies ruling the world. They’re part of the Illuminati.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sarah asked angrily.
“Do I have to explain everything?!”
“You’re just as wackadoodle as Mom!”
“Sarah, it’s alright. Let’s hear it,” Tandy interjected.
Shane organized the pages on the table and pointed to messages he had highlighted. “Here is where it starts, Mom is asking Grenadine why she is interested in the group.”
Tandy read aloud, “GrenMiller32: I heard from Jane Winthrop that you gave her something to look forward to with weekly chats, and she just adores your mission to connect cat ladies under a common goal.
MaryMacey5: Ah, Jane. She is a special cat lady! How do you know each other? And how many cats do you have?
GrenMiller32: Jane and I used to work for the Forest Service together, managing trails and such.
MaryMacey5: Oh how nice!
GrenMiller32: Yes, it was lovely. Even with all of the red tape! Oh, and I have 12 cats.
Tandy paused. “Twelve cats. Uh uh, that is too many cats,” she murmured and then continued reading silently. After a minute she said, “Alright, I don’t get it. I don’t see anything here except for a couple of women talking about tabbies and tortoise shells. How does this tell me Grenadine did it?”
“I can’t believe I have to spell this out.” Now Shane was annoyed. “The ‘common goal’ Grenadine mentions?” Shane said with air quotes, “that is code for the Illuminati. And Jane? Jane doesn’t exist. That is code for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was part of the group centuries ago. It’s their request to join the group. I mean, c’mon. How many ‘Janes’ do you actually know?” he said, adding air quotes and sarcasm.
“None, but—”
“See! None. Red tape obviously means government overreach. I mean, how can you not know that. Then, there are the cats. She has twelve cats. Twelve. That’s a multiple of three, and three is an important number for witches. And we all know that witches were in cahoots with the Illuminati.”
“Oh, do we.” Sarah mumbled, forehead now on the table.
Shane ignored her. “Mom always had 3 cats. Two black and one calico. They were always female because obviously.”
“Obviously,” Tandy said, but Shane didn’t pick up on her sarcasm.
“Yep. Two black cats. Like Odin’s ravens.”
“What now?”
“The calico one, though. That’s the important one. Three colors on the third cat. Grenadine says in there she has six calicos. Six times three is 18. One plus eight is nine. Nine in numerology is associated with leadership and the planet Mars. Mars! The god of war. This is all so clear, honestly.”
Tandy was just about done with this turkey. “Alright, Shane, what is so clear?”
“Oh good grief. You really need to do your own research. It means that Grenadine is our murderer. She was after Mom’s position of Cat Lady General to then start taking over and influencing elections.”
There it is. Done, done, and done. “Alright, thank you, Shane. I got what I need. I’ll take it from here.”
…Later, at the morgue…
“Ms. Macey, you can come on up now,” Grenadine said.
Ms. Macey, still on the examination table, opened her eyes and got up. “It’s about time, I was getting cold. Medical examiner?”
“Asleep at her desk.”
“Are my kids here? Oh good.” Ms. Macey bent to a stroller and patted two black cats on the head.
“The detective thinks your family is bonkers.”
“Who could blame her, poor thing.” Ms. Macey turned herself into a calico cat, jumped in the stroller with the other two. “Now,” she meowed, “let’s go pull some strings.”
Note: This is for the October submission to Fictionistas. The Prompt: Your Victim or Suspect is “A Lady With Too Many Cats” and Your Cause of Death is “Conspiracy Theories” Check the full post here and more stories related to the prompt in the comments here.
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