Cat Spitting Mad

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  "She's lame on her left front knee. An abrasion, blood and dirt. Yes, like she stumbled. I doctored it. You haven't found Helen and Ruthie either?"

  "We found Ruthie and Helen." Max's voice was flat. "They're dead, Charlie."

  "Dead?" Her breath caught. "How? What happened? Where is Dillon?"

  "Someone was up there in the hills. Someone met them on the trail. Their throats were cut. We haven't found Dillon," he repeated.

  Every drop of strength had drained away. She sat down at the table, pulling Hestig close.

  "Both Ruthie and Helen were slashed across the throat," Harper said, as if perhaps she hadn't heard, or understood. Hadn't wanted to hear.

  She stared into the shadows of the hall, holding the dog close, filled with the sickening picture of the mother and that lovely young woman lying up there on the dark hills alone.

  "Dillon," she said again. "Where is Dillon? The mare… The mare came home alone."

  "I told you, Charlie. We haven't found her. Did you unsaddle the mare?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "How much did you handle the tack?"

  "I… As little as possible."

  "Why, Charlie? How did you know I'd want prints?"

  "I just-with three riders missing, I just-thought it might be wise. I don't know. Just seemed a good idea. Where-where are you?"

  "In the hills north of you. I'll send an officer down. Are you alone?"

  "I have Hestig with me."

  "Be wary. Stay in the kitchen. Squad car will be there pronto."

  She hung up, staring at the two dark doorways, wondering if the killer had brought Redwing home-maybe ridden her home- then come into the house.

  But why would he do that? After he killed Helen and Ruthie, he'd surely run, try to get away. Shivering, she looked more carefully around the kitchen.

  Nothing seemed out of place, not even a dirty dish in the sink. Max kept his house, and even the feed room and tackroom, in the same orderly manner in which he ran the police station, every piece of equipment clean and ready, in its place where it could be quickly found.

  She knew Max's house; she knew where he kept his gun-cleaning equipment, and where a.38 Chief's Special was cushioned beneath the shoe rack in his closet.

  But she would have to go down the dark hall to reach the closet, passing the dark bathroom and bedrooms. She remained at the table, stroking Hestig, feeling cowardly and anxious, waiting for the squad car.

  The kitchen still showed a woman's warmth, Millie's cookbooks still on the shelf above her little desk, her dried flowers in a vase, the flowered chair cushions. Millie had been a cop, and a good one. But she'd liked having a cozy home. All this, the flowers, the little pretty touches, he had kept, legacy from a cherished and cherishing wife. Millie had been dead for nearly two years before Charlie ever knew Max, before Charlie ever moved to Molena Point.

  These last weeks, as she and Max worked with the pups, Max had told her more than he realized about Millie. He'd told her a lot about Clyde, too, as he recalled their high school days, their summers riding bulls on the rodeo circuit. And Harper had told her a lot about himself and the way he looked at life. She hadn't known he could be so talkative.

  And all the evenings she had spent up here, with the excuse of training the pups, she'd kept turning down dinner with Clyde, turning down dates, a simple movie, a walk on the beach.

  She had gone with Clyde to the jazz concert, though she wanted to be up here with Max. And she'd agreed to see the outdoor theater's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but only to ease her conscience-then had sat on the hard bench during the performance, thinking about Max.

  She was such a fool.

  And how could she think about all this tonight?

  But she couldn't think steadily about what had happened to the Marners. About what could be happening to Dillon. She was terrified to think about Dillon. Staring at the black windows, she realized that Dillon could be here on the ranch, could have slipped from the saddle out there beyond the lights.

  She rose, nearly toppling her chair, snatching up the torch. Commanding Hestig to heel in a voice that brought him lurching to her side, she headed out to the yard, was sweeping her meager torchlight between the oaks, jumpy at every imagined sound, when headlights came down the road and turned onto the lane.

  It was not the squad car she's expected, but Clyde's roadster, flashing down the lane butter-yellow, stirring in her a picture of the night Clyde had escorted her to the opening of her first art exhibit-not a one-man show, but her work prominently featured among that of five local artists. What a lovely evening, and how caring Clyde had been, dressing up for her, polishing the antique car until it gleamed, timing their arrival to pull up grandly before a crowded gallery, handing her out as if she were a movie star.

  Behind Clyde's bright antique convertible, a black-and-white turned in from the road. Clyde was coming up the steps as it parked. The instant she released Hestig, the big pup rushed at Clyde, leaping and whining. Officer Wendell got out of his unit and stood in the yard, asking if she was all right, then went in to search the house. Wendell seemed even more rigid than usual, less friendly. He was always a quiet man. Thin and sour, not a lot of laughs. Maybe the murder had sickened him-or maybe just a sour mood. Wendell had taken a severe demotion recently, after getting into some kind of trouble over a woman. Charlie didn't know what had happened. She knew that Max wasn't easy on his men.

  Clyde put his arm around her and drew her into the house. "Any coffee?" He looked tired. His dark hair stood in peaks, his T-shirt hung limp with sweat. His voice was hoarse the way it got when he was upset or out of sorts.

  She poured the last of Harper's breakfast coffee into a mug and stuck it in the microwave. "Redwing came home." She pointed out toward the fence where she'd found the mare huddled. She'd never thought of a horse being huddled, but Redwing had been.

  Another squad car arrived. Detective Davis and Lieutenant Brennan got out. Both had cameras. Usually, Davis did the photography. Davis waved her out, nodding toward the stable, her short, dark hair catching the light.

  As Charlie hurried out, Lieutenant Brennan began to photograph the stable yard, his strobe light picking out every ripple in the soft earth, every hoofprint. Charlie showed him where she had led the mare to the stable and then crossed from the stable beside the pup. Brennan nodded curtly. She guessed murder of a woman and young girl was not business as usual to these officers.

  She hadn't known the Marners well. Helen was divorced; she and her daughter had been in the village maybe a year, having moved up from LA about the same time that Charlie herself moved down from San Francisco to stay with her aunt Wilma.

  Stepping into the stable alleyway, she pointed out to Juana Davis which saddle and bridle belonged to the mare, answered Davis's questions about where she'd found the mare and in what condition, where she had moved within the stable, how she had handled the tack. Her footprints showed clearly where she had crossed the alleyway from the mare's stall to the feed room and to the dogs' stall.

  "Nice stable," Davis said. "You spend much time here?"

  "Yes, since we started training the pups. Not before that." She didn't let her expression change, would not let herself bristle or take offense.

  But cops could be like that. Blunt and nosy.

  The stable was cozy-two rows of four box stalls running parallel, separated by a covered alleyway, and with a sliding door at each end. It had originally been a two-stall barn, which Harper had enlarged.

  When Davis, making careful notes, had all the information she needed from Charlie, Charlie headed back to the house. She could see in through the bay window; Clyde was standing at the sink, filling the coffeepot. She paused a moment in the yard to watch him-his dark, rumpled hair, his sweaty T-shirt across his heavy shoulders, his jaw set into lines of anger and resolve. She could imagine him up on the mountain searching for the riders, then looking at the torn bodies, and suddenly she wanted to hold him, to ease his
distress and her own. Suddenly she felt a great tenderness for Clyde. Quietly she went in, shutting the screen door behind her.

  6

  ONE INSTANT the kit was there beside Joe and Dulcie, under the folded convertible top, and the next minute she was gone, vanished in the night. The minute Clyde parked in the stable yard, the three cats had leaped out and slipped beneath the car-except that then the kit wasn't with them.

  "Why does she do that?" Dulcie hissed. "She has to be exhausted, wandering the hills for three days. Has to be hungry- but now she's off again, with cars and riders everywhere. She makes me crazy. What possesses her?"

  "She won't be found if she doesn't want to be. Let her go, Dulcie."

  "I haven't any choice," she said crossly. But Joe was right. Looking for the kit, in the black night, would be like trying to catch a hummingbird in a cyclone.

  They watched from beneath the car as Lieutenant Brennan photographed the yard. They watched Charlie cross from the house to the stable behind Detective Davis, and return some ten minutes later. They could see, in through the bay window, part of the kitchen where Clyde stood doing something at the sink, and soon they could smell coffee brewing, a cozy aroma filling them with visions of home and hearth fires. They remained under the Chevy roadster for perhaps an hour watching Brennan at work, watching Charlie and Clyde sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. When they heard a horse coming down the lane, they slipped out to see Captain Harper, on a very tired Bucky, the gelding eating up the road with his distinctive running walk, even though his head hung. Dismounting in the yard, Harper paused for a moment to speak with Brennan.

  "The Eagle Scouts and several more riding groups will be out at first light. Three groups of hikers will work along the sea cliffs, and we have kayakers out. A Civil Air Patrol unit is standing by to make a series of passes over the hills and take photographs. Not much chance she'll be seen from the air, but with telephoto lenses and observation with binoculars, they might turn up something."

  As Harper moved away, leading Bucky to the stable, Joe and Dulcie slipped through the shadows into the alleyway behind him, and into the feed room, to vanish among the bins of grain. They could see through to the stable yard. Beside the fence, Detective Kathleen Ray knelt beneath powerful lights, sifting sand where the mare had stood, looking for any small bits of evidence, a lost button, even a few threads from the killer's clothes.

  In the alleyway, they watched Detective Davis dust the mare's bridle and saddle and broken girth for prints. When Harper loosened Bucky's cinch and eased the saddle off, the gelding sighed deeply. Gently Harper sponged Bucky and rubbed him down, his brown eyes distant and hard, the lines of his thin face etched deep. The cats could guess what he was thinking-that Dillon's disappearance was his fault, that it was his fault Dillon had ever begun to ride.

  Dillon's mother had never let her have riding lessons, until Max Harper said he'd teach her, until Harper took a liking to the child and said she could ride Redwing. The Thurwells had thought Dillon would be safe with the chief of police-and Harper had taken good care of her. Harper had told Clyde once that Dillon was the spunkiest little girl he knew. Told Clyde that if he and Redwing could help get Dillon through her teen years without mishap, that was all he asked.

  Harper was cleaning Bucky's feet, lifting Bucky's left front hoof, when he paused, frowning.

  "Davis, give me more light. Shine your torch here."

  The gelding stood patiently, resting his left front hoof in Harper's hand, leaning his head on Harper's shoulder. Harper looked up at Davis. "We'll need shots of this."

  "Looks like a stone cut, right across the metal." She adjusted her camera. Her lights flashed and flashed again, taking half a dozen shots.

  Setting Bucky's foot down, Harper shone his torch along the line of Bucky's hoofprints leading out into the yard. "Same prints as at the scene." His face was set like a rock. "Photograph them, Juana. Every few feet, back down the alleyway, across the yard, up the lane. Pick out individual trails of prints, going and coming. Get them going down the road, where I left this afternoon, and coming back, as far as you can see them."

  Davis knelt, looking. "Exact same scar. I got plenty of shots at the scene."

  "Shots where I rode?"

  "Shots where Bucky never set foot." Rising, she began the tedious, close-up photographing, while Harper put Bucky in his stall, fed and watered him, and headed for the house, avoiding the lines of hoofprints.

  Two shadows followed him, flashing across the porch into the darkness beneath a metal chair, Joe's eyes blazing with anger.

  Moving inside, Harper picked up the phone, dialing quickly.

  "Turrey, you awake?" Through the screen door, his voice was clear and decisive. He listened, and laughed. "I know it's not light yet. I need you now. Get a cup of coffee and get over here. We need to pull Bucky's shoes to be entered as evidence, and reshoe him. No, I can't pull his shoes. They're evidence. I need someone not connected. I have to tell you, Turrey, somewhere down the line you'll likely have to testify in court."

  Turrey must have reacted sharply to that announcement. The cats could hear the faint, sharp crackle of his voice at the other end of the line, and Harper smiled.

  "That's all right, the judge doesn't care if you're not a professional speaker."

  "I don't understand," Dulcie whispered. "Those big heavy hoofprints at the scene, they did have a scar. But they weren't Bucky's. They were there before Harper arrived."

  But Joe was watching the threesome in the kitchen. Clyde and Harper sat at the table, where Harper was opening a cold can of beans and a box of crackers. Outside, Detective Ray had stopped sifting sand, retrieved a box from her car, and came carrying it into the kitchen. "Here are the Polaroid shots, Captain. And the first plaster casts."

  Harper wolfed down cold beans and crackers as he studied the casts and the photos.

  "Same scar, deep in the outside curve."

  Kathleen Ray looked hard at the captain. "That one, Captain, is from Bucky. This one, with the leaf at the edge of the cast? That was underneath the bodies. Underneath. Helen Marner's shoulder. The casts are of the same horseshoe. Or one is a good copy."

  Harper just looked at her.

  "And this shot was made way up the hill, in a place you didn't go. I know where you rode. You didn't go up there, didn't go near that part of the hill."

  "Appears to be Bucky's shoe," Harper said tiredly. Joe and Dulcie looked at each other. Charlie, standing at the stove, scrambling eggs and cooking bacon, was white faced and grim, her freckles as dark as paint splatters. Harper looked up at her. "Charlie, I don't have time to eat."

  She stared at the cold beans and crackers. "You are eating. I bet you haven't had a hot meal since yesterday."

  Harper nodded to Detective Ray. "Turn your tape recorder on, Kathleen. You can take my statement."

  Charlie turned away. Clyde looked at Harper a long time, his eyes filled with helplessness. He looked around him once as if half expecting help to materialize from the woodwork; then he rose and left the house, passing within three feet of Joe and Dulcie. He was too preoccupied to see them.

  The two cats, sitting in the shadows beneath the porch chair and peering in through the screen door, listened to Harper recount his movements of the previous afternoon, giving Detective Ray place and time for every smallest action, laying it out in far more detail than he had for Detective Davis-as if Harper were the suspect. And as the facts and Harper's vulnerability were revealed, the cats' fears deepened into a raw, claw-tingling indignation. Joe Grey sat glowering, working himself into a deep rage.

  Any pleasure he had ever taken in teasing the police captain vanished now. Any smug tricks and sly innuendos, as Joe secretly collected and passed on information, were forgotten. At this moment, Joe's admiration for Max Harper ruled him.

  Someone, some lowlife, was out to get Max Harper, to ruin him big time.

  Harper, with no witness to his movements during the time of the murder, woul
d have only his uncorroborated statements, as told to the two detectives. As the cats crouched listening, deeply alarmed, above them the sky began to pale and the dawn wind to stir sharper; and up the hills, the lights of the searchers moved ever higher into the wild, rocky forest.

  And farther north, at the edge of the forest within the Pamillon estate, the cougar prowled, stepping soundlessly on thick pads among the fallen walls of the mansion, the big male seeming, in the first gray haze of dawn, no more than a shifting shadow. He was a powerful beast, sauntering casually across the rubble as if he owned this land. In his own wild way, he did own it-had made it part of his territory.

  The front walls of the big Victorian mansion had fallen away, leaving the first and second floors open like a two-story stage set on which the king of beasts was, at this moment, the only player.

  Pausing at the threshold to the open parlor, he scented out keenly, his ears sharply forward, his eyes narrowed and intent. Softly panting, he lifted his gaze up past the broken stair to the second-floor nursery, where something drew his attention.

  Moving silently into the parlor, he prowled among the rotting, vine-covered furniture, his yellow eyes fixed on the ragged edge of the floor above. He crouched.

  In one liquid and powerful leap he gained the broken ceiling and stood in the upstairs nursery.

  Moving without sound among the remnants of chests and beds, he sniffed at the fallen bricks beside the fireplace. He licked the leg of a rocking chair, tasting blood.

  He pawed, for some moments, at the bloody debris around the chair, then dug beside the fireplace at a pile of broken timbers. Something was there, had been there, something had bled there.

  But the sharp stink of wet ashes within the fireplace warped all lesser scents. The smell stung his nose, made him grimace. He could scent nothing alive now, nothing edible. He dug again at the timbers, stopping when he raked his paw on a nail and his own blood flowed. Snarling, he backed away.

  Padding to the edge of the broken floor, he looked back once, then dropped down again to the parlor, his movements as smooth as water flowing, and sauntered away into the garden. He was, in the rising dawn, the color of spun honey.