“Maybe I better go see her tomorrow,” says Pop. “There can be lots of things—see if he left a will, if he owes any taxes, if he has property that has to be taken care of or sold. You can’t tell.”
“Kate said he was a miser. Maybe he left her a million. Say, that’d be great!”
“Don’t be a dope!” Pop snaps, and he really sounds angry, so I pipe down.
The next morning Pop tells me to go over and see how Kate is. “The way she feels about people, I don’t like to just barge in. I’ll come by in ten minutes, like I was picking you up to go to a movie or something.”
I saunter round the corner onto Third Avenue and stop short. There are two newspaper cars pulled up in front of Kate’s building, one red and one black, and a sizable knot of people gathered on the sidewalk. I move in among them.
“That crazy cat lady ... he musta been a nut too ... left her about a million ... a lotta rich cats, how d’ya like that....”
So I guess he did leave her money, and all of a sudden I see it isn’t “great.” It’s going to be trouble. I push through the people and go upstairs without anyone stopping me. When I open Kate’s door, old stray tomcat shoots out. He’s leaving, and I can see why.
Kate’s room is tiny, and it looks like it’s filled with a mob. Maybe it’s only half a dozen guys, but the photographers are pushing around trying to get shots and the reporters are jabbering.
Orange kitten sticks his head out of the box. Then out he comes, into the sea of feet. I drop him back in and try to get across to Kate. She’s pretty well backed into a corner and looking ready to jump out the window. She has her arms folded in front of her, each hand clenching the other elbow, as if to hold herself together. A reporter with a bunch of scratch paper in his hand is crowding her.
“Miss Carmichael”—funny, I never even knew her last name before—“I just want to ask one or two questions. Could you tell us when you last saw your brother?”