Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay, Babette Jongh [book club books txt] 📗

the evenings—the Big Easy was only an hour drive from Magnolia Bay—but today was his last full day to work on the estate. He’d use it to get the pool ready for Sean’s visit next weekend.

Quinn rolled out of bed and padded into the kitchen, yawning and regretting his foolish decision to stay up late and watch a stupid movie he couldn’t even remember.

With a fresh cup of coffee and a slice of the delicious cake brought by his delicious almost-neighbor, he sat in the canvas stadium chair by the pool. Exchanging his coffee cup for the legal pad he’d put on top of an overturned Home Depot bucket, he made a list.

1. Clean the pool filter.

2. Turn on the pump. (And hope to God it works.)

3. Shock the pool with chemicals.

4. Say bye-bye to the tadpoles and frogs.

5. Clean the filter again.

The shrubbery at the fence line shook. With steady determination, a large animal climbed up through the branches. Quinn set his legal pad aside and sipped his cooling, too-weak coffee. Yesterday’s brew had been too strong. After a year of single life, he hadn’t mastered the fine art of coffee making.

A cat’s head popped up from the foliage, followed by the rest of its body. The hedge trembled as the cat scrabbled for balance on the topmost branches. The thing was huge. With its buff-colored long hair and tail-less backside, the cat looked more like a miniature polar bear than a feline. It spied Quinn and leaped down onto the leaf clutter on Quinn’s side of the fence. It landed with a loud murf, and sauntered over. Purring like Quinn’s Harley, the enormous cat rubbed against Quinn’s jeans leg.

“Hey, cat.” He stroked the cat’s big head. Its fluffy, cashmere-soft fur didn’t feel like regular cat hair. “Are you some fancy breed, or what?”

The cat hopped up onto Quinn’s lap. “Murf.”

“Nice to meet you, Murf.”

The cat sniffed Quinn’s coffee mug, then stuck its nose right in and tried a couple of laps.

“Fine, go ahead.” The strange-looking feline could have the tepid brew. “I’m done anyway.”

Given permission, the overly puffy feline changed its mind. It hopped down to crouch at the pool’s edge and lap at the green water. When Quinn opened his toolbox and took the cover off the pool pump, the cat inspected everything—the toolbox, its contents, the upturned pump cover, the pleated filter. “You haven’t heard that line about curiosity killing the cat?”

Purring loudly, it climbed into the toolbox and sniffed around. Apparently finding everything satisfactory, the cat sat in the box. Perched on the jumble of hard-edged hammers, wood-cutting tools, screwdrivers and other tools, it stopped purring and stared at Quinn with unblinking gold eyes.

“That can’t be a comfortable place to sit.” But Quinn didn’t mind the company. He dragged the hose over and cleaned the filter, spraying water into the accordion pleats. A few droplets hit the cat; it hissed and leaped out of the box.

Quinn chuckled. “Sorry about that.”

The cat gave a disgruntled murf and moved to the splash-free zone of Quinn’s stadium chair. Quinn put the filter back in, fastened the lid, made sure the switches were all set correctly, then turned the pump on.

Nothing.

He went into the pool house and rechecked the breakers.

No problem there.

Hands on hips, Quinn studied the situation. “Guess I’ll have to take the motor apart.” Kneeling, he reached into his tool box for a socket wrench—

A dripping-wet socket wrench.

A dripping-wet socket wrench that smelled of cat piss.

Quinn rose up with a roar and lobbed the wrench in the cat’s general direction. As Quinn had expected, the wrench landed a good five feet away from the cat. But the clatter of metal bouncing on concrete scared the feline, who shot straight up into the air, then hit the ground running.

Straight into the pool with a mighty splash.

Eyes wide, lips pulled back in a grimace of fear, the cat struggled to the pool’s edge and scrabbled at the algae-slick tiles. It yowled a bone-chilling feline scream, then fell back into the pool and went under.

“Griff?” Abby called from the other side of the hedge. “Griffin? Where are you? Here, kitty, kitty.”

The cat came up sputtering, splashing, and moaning in fear before it sank again.

“Griffin?” Abby’s voice sounded panicked. “Kitty, kitty?”

“Dammit,” Quinn muttered. He grabbed the pool net and chased the cat along the pool’s edge. “Your damn cat’s over here,” he yelled. “It fell in the pool.”

Finally he managed to get the pool net underneath the cat, but when he lifted it out of the water, the long handle bowed under the cat’s weight. The damn thing had to weigh forty pounds, at least. Moaning, the cat splayed its big feet out to the far sides of the net and tried to stand. The net wobbled and tilted. The cat screamed and clawed, spinning the net upside down, where the stupid pisser hung by its claws. “Be still, stupid cat!”

Quinn maneuvered the quivering net with its shivering, yowling, hanging-upside-down cargo out of the pool.

Abby ran around the corner of the house when the net’s pole bent completely in half, bouncing the cat’s noggin on the concrete while it clung to the pool net. Panting, Abby skidded to a stop, her barn boots scattering clods of who-knew-what on the patio. “Oh, no… Oh my God… What happened? Is he okay?”

“I’d guess not,” Quinn said with some sarcasm. “Damn thing has a death wish, looks like.”

With his claws tangled in the damaged pool net, the bedraggled cat whirled and moaned until the netting tore, setting him free. Like a rock from a slingshot, he ran to the chain-link fence and tried to push through the unyielding metal mesh to the other side.

“Come here, baby.” Abby followed in a crouching run, unsuccessfully grabbing for the panicked cat who bounced off the chain-link fence time after time in an effort to push through. Cutoff shorts showed off Abby’s long shapely legs, but Quinn tried not to notice. “Griff, stop,” Abby whined. “You’ll hurt yourself.