Cat Spitting Mad

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  It was late Thursday afternoon, as the two cats pushed on into new canyons and among ragged ridges, that they saw Clyde's yellow antique roadster climbing the winding roads, going slowly, the top down, Clyde peering up the hills, looking for them. Dutifully Joe raced down to where the road ended, causing Clyde to slam on the brakes.

  Leaping onto the warm hood, he scowled through the windshield at Clyde. "The kit come home?" A delicious smell filled the car.

  "Not a sign. I could help you look."

  Joe lifted a paw. "We'll find her."

  "I brought you some supper." Clyde handed over a small bag that smelled unmistakably of Jolly's fried chicken.

  "Very nice. Where's the coleslaw and fries?"

  "Ingrate."

  Taking the white sack in his teeth, Joe had leaped away to join Dulcie. He hadn't told Clyde how despondent he and Dulcie were growing. And there was really nothing Clyde could do to help.

  By Saturday evening the sky was heavy again, and the wind chill. If the kit was already home, slurping up supper and dozing warm and dry before the fire, Clyde would have come back; they'd see his car winding up the hills or hear the horn honking. One more day, they thought, and they'd give up and go home. And on sodden paws they moved higher into the lonely pine woods. They were well up the forested ridges, far beyond their usual hunting grounds, and the afternoon was graying into evening when they heard horses far below, maybe a mile to the north, and the faint voices of women.

  Five minutes later, they heard screams. Terrified, angry, blood-chilling.

  Joe was rigid, listening, his yellow eyes slitted and intent. He turned to look at Dulcie. "Human screams."

  But the screams had stopped, and faintly they heard horses bolting away crashing into branches and sliding on the rocks.

  Hurrying down out of the mountain, and racing north, it was maybe half an hour later when on the rising wind they caught a whiff of blood.

  "Maybe the cougar made a kill," Dulcie whispered, "and frightened the horses, and the women screamed."

  "If the cougar made a kill, we'd hear him crunching bone. It's too quiet." And Joe shouldered her aside.

  But she slipped down the hill beside him, silent in the deepening evening, ready to run. They were just above a narrow bridle trail when a slithery sound stopped them, a swift, slurring rush behind them that made them dive for cover.

  Crouched beneath a stone overhang, they were poised to run again, to make for the nearest tree.

  A rustle among the dry bracken. They imagined the cougar slipping through the dead ferns and pines as intently as they would stalk a mouse-and something exploded out of the woods straight at them, bawling and mewling.

  The kit thudded into Dulcie so hard that Dulcie sprawled. She pressed against Dulcie, meowing loud enough to alert every predator for twenty miles-"Yow! Yow! Yow!"-her ears flat, her tail down. She couldn't stop shivering.

  Dulcie licked her face. "What is it? What happened to you? Shh! Be still!" Staring into the woods, she tried to see what had chased the kit. Above them, Joe moved up into the forest, stalking stiff-legged, every hair on end.

  "No! Down there," the kit said. "We have to go down there. It was terrible. I heard them scream and I smelled the blood and…"

  Dulcie nudged her. "Slow down, Kit. Tell it slowly."

  The kit couldn't be still. "The horses bolted nearly on top of me. I ran. I don't want to go back, but…"

  "Start at the beginning," Dulcie said softly.

  "I went back afterward, after that man was gone. I went back there just now and they're dead." The kit stared round-eyed at Dulcie. "Two women, one young and pretty. So much blood. They're all over blood."

  "Show us," Joe said, slipping down beside them.

  "I don't want…"

  "Show us, Kit," Joe Grey said, towering over her.

  The kit dropped her head obediently, this kit who was never obedient, and padded slowly down the hills where the black pines reached in a long and darkly forested peninsula. Slipping along through the edge of the forest, the two cats stayed close beside her. Down three steep, slick shelves of stone, dropping down among the dry ferns and loose shale, then onto the bridle trail and that was walled, all along, by the forest. The night was filled with the smell of blood and with the stink of death, mixed with the scent of the kit's fear.

  2

  THE NIGHT was alive with the tiny noises of other creatures, with little rustlings and scurryings and alarm-cries where small nocturnal browsers fed on the forest's vegetation, prey to nocturnal hunters and to each other. The kit led Joe and Dulcie down through the forest over the jagged ridges toward the sharp, metallic smell of blood-but then the kit drew back.

  Warily, the two older cats approached the bridle trail and the two dark heaps that lay there. The smell of death forced their lips in a deep flehmen; that stink would soon bring predators crouching unseen in the night.

  But no four-legged predator had done this terrible deed.

  Where was the person who had stabbed and torn his fellow humans? Was he hidden in the forest, watching? Might he be listening, so that if they spoke, he would know their secret?

  Tasting the damp wind, they sniffed and tested before they approached the two dead humans. When at last they slipped closer, they were skittish, ready to bolt away.

  They looked and looked at the two women, at their poor, torn throats, at their pooled blood drying on their clothes and seeping into the earth.

  The cats knew them.

  "Ruthie Marner," Dulcie whispered. The younger woman was so white, and her long blond hair caked with blood. Dulcie crouched, touching her nose to Ruthie's icy arm, and drew back shivering. Blood covered the woman's torn white blouse and blue sweater. She had a deep chest wound, as well as the wide slash across her throat. So much clotted blood that it was hard to be sure how the wounds might have been made.

  Helen Marner's wounds were much the same. Her blond hair, styled in a short bob, was matted with dirt where she had fallen. She was well dressed, much like her daughter, in tan tights, paddock boots, a tweed jacket over a white turtleneck shirt, her clothes stained dark with blood. A hard hat lay upside down against a pine tree like a sacrificial bowl.

  No horse was in sight. The horses would have left the fallen riders, would have bolted in panic, the moment they could break free.

  Dulcie backed away, her tail and ears down. She'd seen murders before, but the deaths of these two handsome women made her tremble as if her nerves were cross-wired.

  The cats could see no weapon, no glint of metal near the bodies. They did not want to pad across the footprints and hoofprints, to destroy the tenuous map of what had taken place here.

  But something more terrible, even, than the sight of the double murder held both cats staring.

  A jacket lay on the ground beside the bodies, trampled by the horses' hooves, a creamy fleece jacket with a strand of red hair caught in the hood, a jacket the cats knew well. They sniffed at it to make sure.

  "Dillon." Dulcie's paws had begun to sweat. "Dillon Thurwell's jacket."

  Dillon always wore that jacket when she rode, and she'd been riding every day with the Marners. Dulcie looked helplessly at Joe. "Where is she? Where is Dillon?"

  Joe looked back at her, his yellow eyes shocked and bleak.

  "And Harper," he said. "Where's Max Harper? It's Saturday, Harper always rides with them on Saturday." He backed away from the bodies, his angled gray-and-white face drawn into puzzled lines.

  Police Captain Harper had taught Dillon to ride. These last two months, the foursome had been seen often riding together, as Dillon and Ruthie trained for some kind of marathon.

  Leaping up the stone ledge, Dulcie stood tall on her hind paws, staring around her into the night, looking for another rider.

  Nothing stirred. There was no smallest whisper of sound- every insect and toad had gone silent. High above her in the forest she could see the kit, peering out from among the rocks.

  Trotting up to j
oin her, Dulcie began to quarter the woods, as Joe searched below, both cats scenting for any trace of Dillon.

  Circling ever wider, rearing up to sniff along a clump of young pines, Dulcie caught a hint of the child, well to the north of the bodies. "Here. She was here-she rode here. I can smell her, and smell a horse."

  But Joe was assessing the hoofprints that raced away from the scene tearing up the trail.

  "Four horses." He looked up solemnly at Dulcie. "One with small, narrow hooves. That would be Ruthie's mustang. And a big horse, heavy-wide hooves. The other two sets seem ordinary."

  Dulcie looked at Joe. "The big horse-big hooves, so deep in the earth. Like Max Harper's gelding."

  "But Harper couldn't have been with them. They wouldn't have been harmed if Harper was with them." Joe's yellow eyes blazed, the muscles across his gray shoulders were drawn tight. "Four horses. The Marners. Dillon. And the killer. Not Max Harper."

  The prints of the big horse showed a scar running diagonally across the right front shoe, as if the metal had been cut by a hard strike, maybe from a stone.

  Warily the kit came down out of the rocks to press, shivering, between Joe and Dulcie. She was usually such a bold, nervy little morsel. Now her eyes were wide and solemn.

  Helen and Ruthie Marner had lived in Molena Point for perhaps a year. Joe's housemate, Clyde, had replaced the brake linings on Mrs. Marner's vintage model Cadillac. Clyde ran the most exclusive automotive shop in Molena Point, and he was as skilled and caring with the villagers' imported and antique cars as a master jeweler with his clients' diamonds.

  Clyde hadn't liked Helen Marner much; he called her stuck-up. It had amused him that Max Harper encouraged Helen's friendship, but they all knew why. Harper had refused to ride with Dillon alone and put himself in a position that might attract slander.

  Harper had gotten to know Dillon during a grisly murder investigation at Casa Capri, an upscale retirement home. Joe and Dulcie had begun their own investigation before anyone else suspected foul play. But Dillon had come into the act soon after- before anyone had a reason to call the police. She, too, had sensed something wrong. And her stubborn redhead's temperament had kept her prying, despite what any grown-up said. Of course she'd been right, just as Joe and Dulcie had been, all along.

  Max Harper had been very impressed with Dillon-had, during the surprising investigation, grown to respect and admire the child.

  When Dillon told Harper that she longed to learn to ride, the captain had volunteered some lessons, if Dillon's parents agreed and providing someone else came along. An ever resourceful child, Dillon had recruited the Marners, as well as Clyde Damen's girlfriend, Charlie, as an occasional backup.

  "And now they're dead," Joe said, looking down the nightdark hills, his ears and whiskers back, his yellow eyes blazing.

  "Maybe," Dulcie said softly, "maybe Dillon got away."

  "On that little, aged mare? Not hardly. Escape a killer on a big, heavy horse, a rider bent on stopping her?" He turned to look at Dulcie. "If Dillon saw him murder Helen and Ruthie, he'd have to silence her."

  She sighed and turned away.

  He crowded close to her and licked her face and ear. "Maybe she did escape, Dulcie. She's a spunky, clever kid."

  That was what he liked about Dillon. Thinking of Dillon hurt made him sick clear down to his tomcat belly.

  The cats could see no bike tracks along the trail, and the path was too narrow for a car. Staying on the bracken, studying the dirt and the surround, they could find no boot or shoe prints leading in to indicate someone had followed the riders on foot. Joe imagined a stranger on horseback pulling Helen Marner from her horse, grabbing Ruthie's horse, and pulling her off, knifing them as Dillon escaped, whipping Redwing to a dead run.

  Why? Why had someone done this? What had they gained?

  "Robbery?" he said softly. "How much money would people carry, out for a Saturday ride? And their horses weren't valuable, just common saddle horses." He knew that from hearing Harper and Clyde talking.

  He wanted to shout Dillon's name, bawl her name into the night until the child came running out of the bushes, safe.

  He tried again to catch the smell of the killer but could detect nothing beyond the stink of human death, and the sweeter perfumes of horse and of the pine woods.

  To look upon a human person brutally separated from life by another human never ceased to sicken the tomcat. This kind of death had no relationship to his own killing of a rabbit or squirrel for his supper.

  Dulcie had left him; he could hear her up in the forest padding through the pine needles, and he caught a glimpse of her sniffing along, following Dillon's scent. Calling the kit, he leaped up the hill, watching for the predators that would soon come, drawn by the smell of blood.

  He didn't like to leave the bodies alone, to be ravaged by hunting beasts-both out of respect for the sanctity of human creatures and because evidence would be destroyed. But the highest urgency was to find Dillon.

  The sky had cleared above them, enough so he could see through the treetops a sliver of rising moon, its thin light seeping in hoary patterns between the black pine limbs.

  "I saw more," the kit said softly.

  Joe paused, his paw lifted. "What did you see? Did you see the person who killed them?"

  "I heard the screams. I ran to see. Two horses bolted right at me and swerved away down the mountain. No riders, reins flying. Then a girl came racing, leaning over her horse, and a man riding after her, trying to catch her. He grabbed at her horse. They were deep in the trees. I couldn't see what happened. They disappeared over the hill. The man was swearing."

  "What did he look like?"

  "He looked like Police Captain Harper."

  "What do you mean, he looked like Captain Harper?"

  "He was tall and thin and had a cowboy hat like Captain Harper, pulled down, and a thin face and a jacket like the captain wears. A denim jacket. I could smell the girl's fear. I ran and ran; I didn't go back until just now, when I found you. I came back in the dark when I heard you. I don't…"

  "Listen," Joe said. Voices came from far down the hills, calling, calling, moving up toward them. "Ruthie! Ruthie Marner! Dillon! Helen! Helen Marner! Dillon! Dillon Thurwell!"

  And below them, all across the bare slopes, lights came rising up and they could hear horses-a snort, the rattle of a bit, a hoof striking stone. Up the hills they came, their torches sweeping the slopes and shining down into the ravines. And down beyond the horses and hikers, cars moved along a winding road shining spotlights among the far, scattered houses. The red bubble of a police car rose up over the crest, then two more red-lit units searching for the Marners and for Dillon-searching too late for the Marners. Drawing slowly up the hills toward that grisly scene.

  3

  DILLON! DILLON THURWELL! Ruthie! Ruthie Marner!" The night hills rang with shouts, and swam with careening lights that faded and smeared where scarves of fog crept up the little valleys. "Dillon! Dillon Thurwell!" Max Harper's voice cut through the others, tense and imperative. "Dillon! Answer me! Dillon, sing out! Whistle! Dillon!"

  And up the hills above the searchers, Joe Grey stood on a rock beside the bleeding bodies, wanting to shout, too, wanting to halt the cries and bring the searchers swarming to where the murdered women lay, wanting to shout, Here! They're here! Ruthie and Helen are here. Here, below the broken pine!

  Right.

  He could do that.

  Shout as loud as a cat can shout, bring the riders galloping to take one look at the murder scene and fan out again searching for the killer, their horses trashing every bit of the evidence in their urgent haste-to say nothing of trampling three fleeing cats.

  He had to draw the searchers without alarming them into tearing up the surround.

  Slipping behind the rock where he wouldn't be seen, rearing tall behind the boulder to nearly thirty inches of sleek gray fur, Joe Grey yowled.

  Opened wide and let it out, yowled-howled-caterwauled-bellowe
d-ululated and belly-coughed like a banshee screaming its rage and venom into the black, cold night.

  Every light swung up. Torchlight illuminated the cats' boulder as if its edges were on fire. Captain Harper pushed Bucky fast up the hill, the tall, thin officer pulling his rifle from the scabbard as the big buckskin ran sliding on the rocks. A rifle!

  Joe knew that the men of Molena Point PD carried rifles in their squad cars, along with a short, handy shotgun and an array of far more amazing equipment. He'd never thought about an officer carrying a rifle on horseback. He guessed that in the wild mountains to which these foothills led, in the rugged coastal range, a rifle might come in handy-there had been times, up in these hills, when he'd wished a cat could use a firearm.

  "There!" Harper shouted. "By the boulders-under the broken pine!"

  Every beam centered on the rocks and on the angled tree behind them, and on the two bodies sprawled across the dust-pale bridle path. Lights scoured the boulder where the cats had been.

  Crouching higher up the hill, they watched Harper's buckskin gelding top the rise at a gallop and, behind Harper, riders flowing up like a stampede in a TV western, the pounding of their hooves shaking the earth. Crouched close together, the cats shivered with nervous excitement.

  Harper held up a hand. The riders pulled up their horses in a ragged semicircle, some fifty feet below the bodies-a ring of mounted men and women, their flashlights and torches bathing the corpses in a brilliance as violent as if the light of final judgment shone down suddenly upon Helen and Ruthie Marner.

  Around the grisly honor guard, the night was still.

  A bit rattled. A horse snorted nervously, perhaps at the smell of blood.

  Max Harper holstered his rifle and dismounted, swinging down from the saddle to approach the bodies alone. Leaving Bucky ground-tied, he stepped with care to avoid trampling any footprint or hoofprint. His long, thin face was white, the dry wrinkles deeply etched, his dark eyes flat and hard as he looked down on Helen and Ruthie, then looked away into the night, shining his light up into the forest.