Memories of the conversations with my cat – 16

As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some months ago.

Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.

For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits I will run the series again from Episode 1

These are the memories of our time together…

Character development

This is Chester, he thinks he is an expert on people

He has meandered in checking out what I’m doing, or maybe he’s here because the room is cooler.

He gives me the ‘What are you doing’ look.

It doesn’t matter how many times I’m a writer, it’s like talking to a brick wall.

I say I’m working on developing a new character.

Name?

I’m thinking of John.

A shake of the head and the eyes roll. Can you be a little more inventive, like, well, Chester?

Predictable. How about Xavier?

Would you call your kid Xavier? He’s going to have a very rough time of it at school. Unless this character has a tortured soul.

Good point. How about William?

Bill, that’s what you get in the mail. Another shake of the head. You’re not very good at this, are you?

Apparently not. Haven’t you got some mice to catch?

He yawns, then curls up on the seat. Wake me when you’ve got some better ideas.

Maybe not. I’ve come up with a name, Daniel, and I don’t care what he thinks.

For now.

The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt – Episode 34

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

When I woke the next morning, it was to the sound of voices in the front of the house. One of the voices was my mothers. The other I had trouble placing, and I initially thought it was Benderby, calling in on the way to work.

When I threw on some clothes and came out, still a little bleary-eyed, I found it was the Sherriff. It seemed, all of a sudden, my mother had become the most popular girl in town.

The thing is, I knew little of the history of what went on in my mother’s time in a city where she had been born, raised, and remained. Married and divorced her high school sweetheart, there was talk of her being one of the popular girls at school, coincidentally the same school I went to, and there was evidence everywhere of her there.

I had not lived up to the family name.

Not that she expected me too, nor did she acknowledge those wild and hazy days where she had not been weighed down by a useless drunken husband, and struggle to pay the bills, hold onto the house, and both work and be a mother. Life had not gone the way she had expected.

But curiously those times were also those of Sherriff Johnson, in the same grade, along with Benderby, a few years ahead, and both Boggs’ mother and father who were contemporaries along with others including Nadia and Vince’s mother. They had been friends once until she married Cossatino and she ‘changed’.

Now they were an ocean apart on the social or any scale.

“Ah, Sam. How are you now?”

“Better. I’ll be more careful next time. Got any leads on who it was?”

“Ghosts. We have a few. Some of them are Cossatino’s, the others Benderby. Pity no one is willing to name names.”

“I didn’t see them, Sherriff. They wore masks.”

“Of course.”

“Is there anything more about the Frobisher case?”

“You seem very interested in police matters Sam.”

“He was an antique dealer, according to the papers, and there’s a lot of talk going around about the infamous treasure maps and you can’t help but put two and two together. Especially when Rico is related to Boggs whose father was the one responsible for creating those treasure maps. You think Rico was trying to get some answers out of him?”

“Hardly the sort of thing that any sane man would kill for, don’t you think?”

I doubted he would tell me if he knew anything, but he had taken more interest in what I was saying. It was stuff he’d know, or at least should know, since he had been the one to investigate Boggs’ father’s disappearance.

“Who said Rico was sane. He was a terrifying sort of guy when he lost his temper which I’ve seen him do in front of Boggs. But you have to agree, Rico had to know about Boggs’ father’s role in creating the maps for the Cossatino’s.”

The sheriff shook his head.

“Those are not the sort of rumors you want to be spreading around town, not unless you want an army of Cossatino’s layers on your doorstep. They are just that, rumors. Nothing was ever proven, and there was no evidence that the Cossatino’s had anything to do with Boggs’ father’s disappearance.”

“And Rico?”

“Rico is a harmless fool who talks big and that’s all. He did his time for running a map scam that he claims was run by Boggs senior. No one could prove it so he copped it sweet. Now, he should know better. But I will say this, Frobisher was not here to see Rico, but Benderby. Benderby apparently had some old coins he’s scooped up off the ocean floor on a dive and thought they might be worth something. Frobisher took them to be assessed and valued but got no further than Rico’s boat. And the coins are now missing.”

“Sounds to me like there’s going to be another treasure hunt.”

There’d been another some years before fuelled by news an authentic treasure map had been found, showing the location of Captain Markaby’s plunder stashed away for another day somewhere on our shores.

It all ended with Boggs senior’s disappearance.

“It might, but we can only hope what happened to the father in the last one, doesn’t happen to the son in this one. It’s why I called in. Your mother tells me you have some influence on young Boggs. Please tell him to stop stirring the pot with this notion he has the real map. He doesn’t. No one does. The plain truth is, there isn’t one. Someone needs to get through to him before something really bad happens to him. He’s already had one close shave. I’ll deal with the Cossatino’s and the Benderby’s. I expect you to deal with Boggs. Am I clear?”

Put to me in that authoritarian voice, it was very clear. But to Boggs, it was going to be like a red rag to a bull.

I nodded and went back to my room.

How did I manage to get in the middle of this mess?

The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt – Episode 33

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

Whilst Boggs took the time to get over his assault, I went back to my job at Benderby’s because there was no reason not to. Benderby himself had checked several times on how I was, and I was beginning to think he called just to see my mother.

And the notion of those two together was not painting a pretty picture, knowing who he was. But we were being treated better than we had and that was a good thing, or so my mother said. She too was surprised at Benderby’s interest, but she was not writing anything into it. She had a different perception of him that most others had.

I was careful to avoid Alex, not that it was difficult because he was rarely in the warehouse office, or anywhere on the factory site most days, except for a few hours in the morning, and to close up at night. No one else seemed to miss his presence, but I was a little more suspicious as to what he was doing with the rest of his time, to the extent that once I went looking for him.

The only conclusion I’d come to, now that he had his own map, it had to have something to do with the treasure.

Getting a version of the treasure map to Alex via Nadia had been a logistical nightmare, and constantly fraught with the expectation that Alex might think he was being set up. The fact it was Nadia doing it was not lost on me and I realized later we had played right into her, and her family’s, hands in fitting the ongoing feud between the families. Nor was it lost on me the enthusiasm which she showed in carrying out the plan.

If it wasn’t for the fact both Boggs and I benefited from it, I would have had second thoughts about employing her. And Boggs was right, a girl like that could never like a boy like me. She would always be the province of the likes of Alex Benderby, and I told myself that it was going to be business only from now on.

She set up the meeting with Alex and arranged for me to be nearby to witness the transaction, though what her reason was for that I had no idea and I really didn’t want to be there. For some reason, I didn’t like the idea of Nadia getting close to Alex, but it was necessary, she decided, in order to sell the story.

She had cajoled him into believing firstly his map was the real map mainly because she had used her feminine wiles on Boogs, talking him into showing her the real map, and, then, while he was away for a few minutes, she had copied it.

Then it was a matter of keeping the map a secret because firstly it would ruin the rapport she supposedly had with Boggs should they need him again, and as far as she was aware, Vince thought he also had the real map and which Boggs said was not, and to mess with Vince would immediately make him suspicious about the authenticity of his map and that would be the last thing Alex would want.

It was a treat to see how manipulable Alex was when she was making offers she knew she’d never keep. Or at least not in front of me. I didn’t expect that I meant very much to her and watching her with Alex was much like how she handled me, so I guess we were all manipulable in her hands. She was a Cossatino, and in that regard, no end of trouble.

With Alex handled, she left him with so much promise and so little substance I was surprised he fell for it. But, there again, even in school, Alex wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box. I think the notion that he could pull off the treasure hunt might just get the monkey on his back his father had put there many years before.

Then there was Nadia.

Seeing her in action put her in a different light. Whilst those midnight rendezvous at the motel may have given me a sense of false bravado, seeing her with Alex, and playing her games, I had to wonder if my feelings were just an infatuation. Did I like Nadia all that much? I guess I must a little, to be feeling angry when Alex touched her.

I had to remind myself that I could never live in her world, that her first and last instinct would always be to lie and manipulate. She was, after all, a Cossatino, and leopards, as they say, never changed their spots. She might want to escape from her family, but saying it and doing it were two entirely different things,

I doubted her father, no matter how much he liked or hated her, should ever let her go, simply because as a beautiful woman, she could do so much for the family business.

Whether she wanted to or not.

I left once he agreed, and before she did anything with him. Clearly, Alex was expecting them to work as a team, but she had declined on account of her father, who was as mad as a hatter, and might just start killing Benderby’s if he found out she was working with him.

Best to leave well alone and appear to go their separate ways.

Until the treasure was found.

I didn’t hear from Boggs for a week. I’d decided that I was going to leave him alone until he called or sent a text. Boggs and idle time were a bad mix so I knew when I next heard from him, he would have formulated a half-baked grandiose plan for us to go on our treasure hunt.

And I was busy working out how I was going to tell him he had to take a step back and watch and wait till the Benderby’s and the Cossatino’s had launched their campaigns. It wouldn’t take long. Both sons of self-made men, Alex and Vince had a lot to prove to their fathers, and there was no doubt they were going to use the lost treasure as the means of getting back into favor.

That brought a problem to the table, not immediately, but down the road, when neither would be able to find it. Their first port of call would be Boggs, the one who had supplied them with ‘faulty’ maps. It would never be their fault, that they were too stupid to realize they were being played, or, even if it was the right map, still couldn’t follow the instructions.

But even I had that problem. I’d seen quite a few variations with notations, diagrams and cryptic messages. I was not sure how they were going to fare. Perhaps he had been thinking of just that because I received a text message, asking me to come over the next morning.

As Sherlock Holmes would say, ‘the game’s afoot’.

The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt – Episode 31

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

Was she insinuating that Alex Benderby killed Jacob Stravinsky?

“Alex is a bully but he’s not a murderer,” I said, and wondering, at the same time, if he had finally graduated to a full-blown bad guy.

“He wouldn’t do it. Like his old man, they get others to do their dirty work. I’m sure the significance of Alex being out on his father’s boat was not lost on you. You asked the questions, and now that I’ve thought about it, it’s possible those divers could have planted the body on Rico’s boat.”

It’s one thing to come up with theories, but it was entirely another to suddenly realize they might be true. Until this point, I was happy to let Boggs have his dream that one day we might uncover a treasure trove, thinking that it was more fiction than the truth. It made a good story, one of hope for a person who had had very little of it in the past.

Now, it was becoming horribly true. What might amount to proof there might be treasure buried somewhere along this coast, an expert being interrogated and then killed, and a pair of what could only be described as gangsters about to start fighting over the spoils and not afraid of killing anyone who got in their way, these were omens, omens not to be ignored.

“Then don’t you think this is far too dangerous to get involved in? Look what happened to Boggs and I. We got off lightly if what you say is true. I’m surprised if this Stravinsky is dead, then why isn’t Boggs? He had the map, there’s no doubt Vice would assume he had made a copy. What to stop him from doing the same to Boggs and Benderby did for Stravinsky?”

“Vince is not a clever as Alex. Vince will never take over the Cossatino clan. Alex, on the other hand, is the next generation of Benderby thugs. But I suspect the older Benderby doesn’t know what’s going on. Not yet anyway.”

My bottle of beer was empty. Now I think I needed something stronger. A lot stronger.

There was a knock on the door, which caught us both by surprise.

Are you expecting anyone?” I asked, and in the next second suspected it might be Vince, and I’d been led down the garden path to a place where I really didn’t want to be.

“No.” She went over to the door and peered through the peephole.

“Damn,” she muttered.

Another, more demanding, knock.

She turned to look at me, “It’s Vince and my father. I didn’t ask them to come here, and no, I didn’t tell them anything, whatever you might be thinking.”

All I was thinking right then was the coincidence of their arrival and being very afraid.

She opened the door.

Vince barged in almost pushing the door into his sister and stopped when he saw me. At a more sedate speed, Giuliano Cossatino, Nadia’s father came into the room, and also stopped when he saw me.

There was no mistaking the malice on Vince’s face. Nadia was right. He was all muscle and no brain.

The older Cossatino spoke first. “I see you have a new friend, though I would have thought you’d have better taste in men.”

“Your days of telling me what I can do and not do were over the moment you sent me away.”

“And yet you come back, slinking about like a thief in the night. Your mother was most upset when you didn’t tell her.”

“The fact I have to, as you call it, slink back, should tell you a lot.”

“That you’re still the idiotic child you were before you went away.”

OK, now I was in the middle of a domestic family standoff. I was waiting for the order for Vince to throw me out, quite possibly over the balcony for good measure.

“I should leave,” I said standing, “and let you two work it out.”

Vince took another step forward and was now only two paces away. I’d have to go through him to leave.

“Stay,” Cossatino said. “I have nothing against you. Yet.”

“If you’re thinking this is anything but reminiscing about the old days, Mr Cossatino, then you’d be wrong. There’s nothing between your daughter and I but air. And,” mustering more bravado than I felt, “call your attack dog off.”

“Or what?”

“You don’t want to find out.” Where was this coming from? I was saying the words, but they were not my words.

“I hardly think…”

“That’s probably your biggest fault,” Nadia said, in a tone that suggested she was rapidly losing patience with her father.

It was clear to me now, she had a hard time of it as a child, not unlike the rest of us, but for different reasons. The bullying didn’t have to happen at school, but I could see why she had been like she was back then.

“You never gave me any attention except to treat e like garbage, no, worse than garbage. I can see nothing has changed.” Then she switched her attention to Vince. “And look at you, daddy’s little attack dog, as Sam says. I’d start worrying Vince, because one day someone’s going to beat the crap out of you, and then you’ll be nothing, just like me.”

Vince only had one expression, so it was difficult to tell if he was worried or not.

Back to her father, “Why are you here?”

I doubt anyone had spoken to him like Nadia just did, and he looked angry. If I hadn’t been there, I was not sure what would have happened to her.

“Your mother would like to see you.”

“You tell her to grow a backbone first, then when she does, I’ll think about it. Now get out of my room, or I’ll call the sheriff. At least he’s not in your back pocket.”

She picked up her phone and made ready to call.

A flick of his head got Vince to back up to the door and open it.

“You will regret this, young lady.”

“And don’t you forget I know where the skeletons are buried, so I’d leave now before some of them start rattling.”

A look of suffused anger flashed across his face, and he took a step forward. I was not sure what to expect, but Nadia did take a step back. She knew what he was capable of.

“We need to talk. Don’t make me wait too long or there’ll be consequences.”

A glare at me, another for his daughter along with a shake of his head, then he left closing the door quietly after him.

I sat down before I fell down. Nadia visibly wilted.

“I’m sorry about that. You might have thought twice about threatening Vince. You know he’ll come after you now.”

“Let him. I always thought you were close to your father.”

“Daddy’s girl I was not. Daddy’s biggest disappointment, maybe.”

“You didn’t ask him to come?”

“No.”

“But he didn’t come here to ask you to visit your mother. It sounded like a last-minute invention.”

“It was. My real mother is dead, and my stepmother was the reason why I was sent away. Among other things. No. He was here to tell me to get closer to Alex. It means only one thing. This treasure hunt is about to get very, very ugly.”

The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt – Episode 32

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

The scene was set.

Boggs and I had been browbeaten, and he had, willingly he said, given up the real map. I was beginning to think Boggs had no idea what the real map was, there were so many different variations of it.

Vince was on the warpath.

Nadia was muddying the waters.

The Benderby’s were being their usual menacing selves.

A man had been killed and finished up being on Rico’s boat, and Rico had been arrested. Had Benderby put it there, or was Rico the perpetrator? Rico wanted the map for the Benderby’s but hadn’t got it from Boggs, which given how menacing he was, should have been a no brainer.

Unless he really cared about Boggs.

Whatever his motivation, he had been taken off the playing field for now.

Boggs had told me he had given a version of the map, presumably not one that was in mass production, to Vince and therefore the Cossatino’s. And, no doubt he was going to do the same for the Benderby’s, just to keep them away from us. I was going to remind him he should do that.

He said he still had the real map. The others would be occupied elsewhere.

It stood to reason that if they both had a treasure map; they would leave us alone. I think Boggs had miscalculated. If we were about to start a search of our own, surely that would alert both our rivals that we’d tricked them.

And the consequences of that were unthinkable.

He called me when he was about to be released from the hospital, so I called a taxi and went to get him. He didn’t look very good, but then it all added to the selling of the map. He said he hadn’t given in too easily, and Vince seemed smug.

Vince would if he thought he was putting one over the Benderby’s and in particular, Alex, the old school rival.

I waited until we were out of the hospital to speak about treasure matters.

“You know you’re going to have to give Alex a copy of the map, a different map, to the one you gave Vince.”

“Why?”

“Because Vince is going to run it in his face. You know what Vince is like.”

He did. He’s just felt the full effect of Vince’s temper.

“And what if Alex then tried to one-up Vince?”

Good point. “We’re going to have to do it in some manner than makes him believe it’s in his best interests the keep quiet about it.”

He shook his head. “Perhaps I should have thought more about the problems this was going to cause. Jesus, how did we get to be so lucky as to have people like Alex and Vince in our lives?”

How lucky indeed. Then I considered my original plan, to get Nadia to give it to Rico who would then pass it on to Alex. Of course, in that scenario, there would be no doubt Rico would make a copy and do his own digging, but that was a small price to pay.

“We can use Nadia.”

He gave me one of his sidelong looks that told me he suspected something in my manner. “What haven’t you told me?”

“Nothing.”

“Between you and Nadia. I would never have guessed it, but I could feel in back there in the hospital. She likes you.”

“It’s a nice thought, but don’t forget who we are, Boggs, and that’s scum beneath their feet. She;s only getting close because she wants something.”

“Like?”

“The map. For Alex. She told me she was in a bind.”

“And you believed her?”

“No. Alex and Nadia have a thing. It’s most likely Alex’s idea to get close and grab the map for him. This thing you say she had for me might work in our favor. Have you got another original version of the map?”

“I’ve got about five.”

“Then how do you know which is the original?”

“It has the word original down the bottom. None of the others have, and there were no copies of the original.”

He said it so convincingly I nearly believed it. My worst fears had been realized. Boggs had no idea which or any of the maps were real. Having just one, and having the word original on it, did not make it the definitive map.

It was not something I was going to talk about now. He was convinced. When we didn’t find anything, then I would say, I told you so.

For now, I would let him have his moment.

As for Alex, “Find me a different copy for Alex and I’ll get Nadia to pass it on. With instructions not to tell anyone where he got it from. I’m not sure what we’re going to do about Vince, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

“Then, once we’ve done that, we’ll sit back and watch them lead us to the nearest point where the treasure should be. Each of those maps, in fact, all of them focus on a certain part of the coastline, albeit changed immeasurably from then to now, but I have been researching old maps over the last hundred years, and I believe I know the broad area it covers. There’s been a lot of changes, including the fact two streams or rivers have all but disappeared, and there was once a lake. There will be parts of the path we can check for ourselves without worrying them. They will have to do some research first, and that’s where we have some advantage. All of the maps have different physical locations that are the penultimate on to the prize. Only we have a complete map.”

He sounded convinced, but I was skeptical. But I had to admire Boggs’s father’s ingenuity in making what might be a scam seem like the real deal. Certainly, he had made all of the bogus maps, but it seemed a little far-fetched since hearing it was the Cossatino’s who had him create a bunch of fakes. I was surprised Vince thought there was a real map given his family’s involvement with the scam.

But, then, Vince was a fool.

Or not, but that was not the highest of priorities. Boggs had to get home and rest.

Doctor’s orders.