I was sitting on the couch staring at Mr Whiskers, who had been asleep on my lap long enough for both of my legs to lose circulation. His orange fur looked particularly disheveled today, which probably meant he’d been rolling around somewhere he shouldn’t have been. There were several reasonable explanations for this. Mr Whiskers is a cat, after all. Looking slightly disreputable is practically part of the job. Still, I found myself inspecting him like a detective examining evidence. Maybe he’d gotten into something. Maybe Pandora had brushed him earlier and somehow made things worse. Maybe it was just normal shedding. The rational part of my brain suggested I stop investigating the cat’s grooming habits and enjoy the fact that he was asleep. Unfortunately, the rational part of my brain has never had much authority around here.
That’s when I noticed Pandora’s phone sitting on the coffee table, still connected to the charger. The screen lit up every few seconds with notifications. None of them looked urgent from where I was sitting, and obviously I wasn’t going to start reading her messages, but their mere existence was apparently enough to activate whatever defective surveillance equipment lives inside my head. Who was messaging her this much? Work? Friends? Some group chat I’d forgotten about? Then my brain supplied another possibility: John Mercer. I immediately looked across the room at John, who was sitting on the other end of the couch staring at his own phone. That proved absolutely nothing, which naturally made it seem extremely suspicious.
John lives here, so there was nothing unusual about him sitting in our living room. There was also nothing unusual about him checking his phone. Yet suddenly I was wondering whether he and Pandora had been texting each other about something. They’re friends. Of course they text. Normal people would have reached that conclusion and moved on with their day. I instead started wondering whether Karen knew anything about it, which made even less sense because Karen lives across the hall and has no responsibility whatsoever to brief me on Pandora’s communications. Somehow, within about thirty seconds, I had transformed two people owning phones into the beginnings of an organized conspiracy.
Then Pandora walked into the room, picked up her phone, looked at the notifications and smiled.
That smile bothered me.
Not because there was anything objectively suspicious about it. It was just a smile. I’ve seen Pandora smile thousands of times. But this particular smile suddenly seemed to contain information I didn’t possess, which is apparently all my brain requires before opening an investigation. “Anything interesting?” I asked, attempting the sort of casual tone normally used by people who are absolutely not interrogating their girlfriends. Pandora glanced at me. “Just some messages.” Then she walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water.
Just some messages.
That was exactly the sort of thing someone with just some messages would say. It was also exactly the sort of thing someone hiding an enormous secret would say. This was going to be difficult.
I looked at John again. He was still staring at his phone. “What?” he asked without looking up. Apparently I had been staring at him long enough for him to notice. “Nothing,” I said. John finally looked at me, studied my face for about two seconds, and returned to his phone. Somehow that made things worse. Either he genuinely didn’t know anything, or John Mercer had developed an astonishing ability to withstand interrogation despite the fact that no interrogation had actually occurred.
Mr Whiskers woke up, stretched across my legs and looked toward the kitchen. His ears rotated slightly when Pandora opened a cabinet. I watched him carefully. Cats supposedly have excellent hearing. Perhaps he had noticed something I hadn’t. Maybe he’d heard conversations between Pandora and John while I was gone. Maybe the notifications meant something to him. Then Mr Whiskers jumped off my lap and walked toward the kitchen.
Interesting.
He was following Pandora.
Of course, Pandora was standing next to the cabinet where we keep the cat treats, but I wasn’t going to let an obvious explanation interfere with a promising lead.
My thoughts drifted to Mrs Jenkins next door. She’d mentioned recently that Pandora seemed unusually busy. At the time, I’d assumed she meant work, because Pandora had been juggling several things lately. But Mrs Jenkins has a remarkable ability to notice details about everyone in the building, including details nobody has asked her to notice. If Pandora really were hiding something, there was an excellent chance Mrs Jenkins had already observed it, categorized it and developed at least three theories about it.
Then I remembered Karen mentioning that Pandora had seemed preoccupied lately. That was two people who had noticed something. Technically one of them was Mrs Jenkins, which probably should count as half a witness because she notices everything, but still. There was a pattern forming.
Pandora returned from the kitchen carrying her water. Mr Whiskers followed directly behind her.
There it was again.
I watched them cross the room together. Pandora sat beside me. Mr Whiskers jumped onto the couch and settled between us as though deliberately establishing a buffer zone. Pandora looked at me. “Why are you staring at the cat?”
“I’m not.”
“You absolutely are.”
I looked away.
That exchange should have ended the investigation. Instead, I started thinking about how attentive Pandora had been lately. She’d asked about my schedule several times. She’d wanted to know when I’d be home. She’d asked whether I had plans for the weekend. At the time, I had interpreted all of this as normal relationship behavior. Now, however, I was beginning to wonder whether she had been collecting information.
Why did she need my schedule?
Why did she care when I’d be home?
Why had she asked what I was doing Saturday afternoon?
There were plenty of innocent explanations, including the extremely obvious possibility that my girlfriend wanted to spend time with me, but that seemed almost too convenient.
I glanced toward John again. He caught me looking this time. “Seriously,” he said, “what are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“That’s usually when the problems start.”
I ignored him because this investigation was beginning to produce results.
A few days earlier, Pandora and John had spent nearly twenty minutes talking in the kitchen. I hadn’t paid attention at the time because adults are occasionally allowed to communicate without submitting transcripts to me. But now the conversation seemed potentially significant. What had they discussed? Why the kitchen? Why twenty minutes? Why hadn’t either of them briefed me afterward?
Then I remembered something even more troubling: Karen had stopped by later that same evening.
Three people.
Pandora. John. Karen.
I could practically see the lines connecting them.
Mr Whiskers sneezed.
Four.
I immediately realized how ridiculous that was and mentally removed the cat from the organizational chart.
Then another thought occurred to me. What if Pandora wasn’t hiding something from me? What if she was hiding something for me?
That changed everything.
Maybe the questions about my schedule weren’t surveillance. Maybe they were planning. Maybe the conversations with John and Karen weren’t secret meetings. Maybe Pandora was organizing something and needed their help. A surprise? A dinner? Some elaborate plan that required knowing exactly where I would be?
Suddenly all the evidence fit.
Unfortunately, it fit almost too well.
I looked at Pandora. She was scrolling through her phone again with the faintest smile on her face. John was pretending not to pay attention to me. Mr Whiskers was sitting between us washing one paw with the serene confidence of an animal who had absolutely no concerns about household espionage.
I narrowed my eyes.
Pandora noticed.
“What now?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She stared at me for a moment.
Then she looked at John.
John looked at Pandora.
They both smiled.
There.
That was a signal.
I knew it.
Or they were laughing at me.
Actually, now that I thought about it, that was considerably more likely.
Still, I wasn’t closing the investigation yet. Pandora was definitely hiding something. I just had absolutely no evidence of what it was, why she was hiding it, whether John or Karen had anything to do with it, or whether Mr Whiskers had somehow become involved.
Mr Whiskers looked up at me.
I looked back at him.
He slowly blinked.
Great.
Now the cat was sending signals too.