Everybody knows McAdenville in December. A million lights, cars lined up for miles, the whole town glowing. I was there in the off season, when Christmas Town looks like any other mill village, except for the string lights still wrapped around the porch posts, waiting on their month.
I was under one of the old two story brick houses for a termite inspection. These houses have stood since the 1800s, and underneath you can tell. No modern block down here. It is stacked stone washed in old lime mortar, laid by hands that are long gone, with insulated pipes and conduit running across a vapor barrier littered with dried leaves.
The other business came to my attention when something back in the stone squeaked. I stopped crawling. It squeaked again. In my line of work you learn to pause before putting your face any closer to a noise you cannot name.
In a thin patch of dirt on the barrier, clear prints. Four rounded toes and a pad. No claw marks. They ran in both directions, so something had been coming and going.
Up high in the foundation, a breach where daylight and a strip of blue sky cut clean through the dark. Snagged on the broken edge, a tuft of soft fur. Something small had been using that gap as a door.
From the corner where the stone met the folds of the vapor barrier came one squeak, then another beside it, then one more. More than one little voice, all from the same spot, and none of them going anywhere.
Three clues. Have you figured it out?
I lowered the beam and let the soft edge of the light reach into the corner. A cream colored face with bright blue eyes looked back at me. Then a second one just like it. Then two little gray tabbies pushed their way up between them.
Kittens. Four of them, piled together against the old stone like the house had been built for their convenience.
The tracks fit a cat. Rounded toes, a pad, no claws showing. The fur at the breach backed it up. But those overlapping little voices, all in one corner and never moving, that is what said babies. Somebody had picked the safest spot under that house to start a family. The clues pointed there. The four little faces settled it.
The inspection still needed finishing. That was one job. This was another.
Case closed. The unlisted tenants. No rent, no references, living under a town famous for a million lights, in the one corner those lights never reach.
