Bellingham Mysteries 3: Black Cat Ink by Nicole Kimberling

forward and lose his grip.
    The kitten was away, boinging down across the great room clearly intent on some new misadventure. Peter rubbed his chest and tried to ignore the fact that Nick was smirking at him.
    “I’m going to move this painting to the studio. And I should probably get most of this other stuff out of here too.” Nick indicated the objects that lined the shallow shelves with a wave. “I think the more fragile pieces will be safer there.”
    He helped Nick maneuver De Kamp’s canvas into the guest room, understanding for the first time why De Kamp had designed the house with ten-foot doorways. Then they collected the small fortune of art objects, paintings, and miniatures and secured them as well. When they returned to the great room, Peter saw that the kitten had found a way to get up on the ledge and was stalking along, attacking the dust bunnies that had been accumulating behind one of the larger paintings.
    Nick regarded her levelly and remarked, “I somehow knew she’d find a way up there.”
    Peter repatriated the kitten to the floor. “What about this carpet?”
    “I figure since she’s already thrown up on it a couple of times, it might as well stay where it is,” Nick said.
    “She—” Peter stopped himself from arguing their tiny houseguest’s case, opting for a simpler approach. “I’m really sorry.”
    Nick shrugged, his expression softening for the first time. “It’s all right. She’s just a baby. And it’s just a carpet. I also decided to give her an interim name so that I’d have something to yell apart from No .”
    “What are you calling her?” Peter picked up the shoelace and attempted to engage the kitten’s attention.
    “Guerilla Girl.”
    “That’s not a very ladylike name.”
    “She’s not a very ladylike cat. And anyway, I call her Gigi for short.”
    “Why are you calling her Gorilla Girl? ’Cause she’s a little monkey?” Peter pulled the shoelace again, but not fast enough. Gigi had it in her maw and was viciously assaulting it with all four limbs.
    “It’s guerilla, like the Central American freedom fighter. The Guerilla Girls are a feminist pop-artist collective. This is one of their T-shirts.” Nick straightened so that Peter could read his shirt.
    In large letters it read DO WOMEN HAVE TO BE NAKED TO GET INTO THE MET. MUSEUM?
    It featured a recumbent woman wearing a gorilla mask, and noted, in smaller text, that although less than 5 percent of the artists in the Modern Art section were women, they accounted for 85 percent of the nudes.
    While Peter didn’t know if the kitten had any strong political feelings, feminist or otherwise, he couldn’t deny that Gigi was a pretty cute name.
    Plus it had the advantage of giving him an excuse to perform his Maurice Chevalier impression. He picked up the kitten and began to croon, “Thank heaven for lee-ttle girls, for lee-ttle girls get bigger every day.”
    Nick raised an eyebrow. “That’s the gayest, most old-man move I’ve ever seen you make.”
    “Singing?”
    “Singing a song from Gigi .”
    “I’d have gone for Lady Gaga, but this cat doesn’t really have that much of a ‘Poker Face.’” Peter let the squirming creature go, and she moved immediately to reengage her mortal enemy, the shoelace.
    Nick nodded. “She knows what she wants and goes to any length to get it. Kind of like you.”
    Peter couldn’t tell if that had been meant to be a compliment. Then again, he also couldn’t tell if Nick liked the cat, so he said, “Thanks… I think.”
    “It’s not like I haven’t benefited from the frank and open single-mindedness of your pursuit.”
    “Don’t make me laugh.”
    “It’s true. I would have never had the guts to walk up to you and ask you out cold,” Nick said. “I would have overthought it and choked.”
    “Was it because you were covered in blood when we met? Because I would have overlooked that, given the circumstances.”
    “You think I’m being condescending,