Cat Laughing Last

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Dear Elliott,

  Good to hear from you and to know you're settled so quickly and back at work. The new book sounds fascinating. You're to be commended for being able to finish writing the novel and oversee production of the play-two very distinct projects- when you're feeling under the weather.

  Yes, there are several collectors in the bay area. I'll put together a list, try to get it off to you at the end of the week. All my good thoughts are with you. I hope the casting and rehearsals go well. Hope the treatments are not too uncomfortable. Sounds to me like you're doing very well. Give me a call if you and Vivi want to come up for a talk with these people, or if you simply want to get away for a weekend.

  Very best, Harlan.

  When she heard the Traynors returning, she had dropped the envelopes and letter hastily into her trash bag. But it was the next day that she faced real temptation, when Traynor's manuscript pages began to appear on his desk, one new chapter each morning, printed out, lying beside the computer.

  Alone in Traynor's paneled study with its leaded windows and pale stone fireplace, she had guiltily reached for the first pages, telling herself she wanted just a peek. Because she loved his work. Because she longed to see his work in progress, still forming, see how he accomplished his smooth and exciting prose. The guilt she should normally feel took a weak second place to the artistic hunger that rose in her, a keen fascination at the proximity of this fine writer.

  Traynor's study looked the same each morning when she entered, the desk immaculate, no paper left out. The little footstool pushed just so, to the corner of the desk against the bookcase, its loose, tasseled pillow aligned perfectly on top. She thought perhaps he used the pillow to ease his back as he worked. The books he had brought with him from New York were few, and all on California history-a row perhaps two feet long standing neatly on the otherwise empty shelves, beside a stack of photocopied research material. The bookshelf stood at right angles to his desk, close enough to be reached from his chair. It was flanked by a window directly at the end of the desk that looked out on the drive and front garden.

  Charlie's aunt Wilma, who was a research assistant at the Molena Point library, had mailed a thick package of machine copies to Traynor nearly a year ago, all research on local California history, much of it family journals collected over the years by priests at the nearby mission, and a history of the mission itself as well as the surrounding land, which had been divided by grants into huge cattle spreads. Because of Wilma's thoroughness in her assistance, Traynor had sent quite a nice, and welcome, donation to the library's book purchasing fund.

  Alone in Traynor's study, eagerly picking up the pages, Charlie had thought, Why am I doing this, why am I so interested? I'm not a writer, I have no professional curiosity. Her animal drawings were quite demanding enough of her creative skills; there was plenty to learn studying bone structure and doing quick sketches of moving animals. She had no time to divert her attention to a second discipline, no matter how much the beauty of the written word made her want to try. And yet any work of art, in a state of becoming, was fascinating stuff, seeming to her vividly alive. She had begun to read eagerly, glancing out the window in case they might return.

  She'd had no idea how Traynor's prose would affect her-no notion of the sudden, perplexed unease that would wash over her.

  She had laid the pages down, had stood beside the desk staring out at the empty drive, confused and puzzled, not understanding why he had written this-how he could have written this.

  This was not the lyric prose she had so admired from Elliott Traynor; his sentences were awkward and confused. The experience had shocked and saddened her. There was no other explanation than that his illness had affected his work. She had turned away filled almost with a personal loss. And ashamed, too, that she had pried-and she was touched as well with a cold little fear for herself, with a sharp sense of helplessness, that creative skills might so suddenly be diminished.

  8

  Clyde woke in the dark predawn when he felt Joe drop off the far side of the bed. He hadn't slept well, had just managed to drift into sleep, and wasn't happy to be jerked awake again. He'd dreamed of Kate, not pleasant dreams. Why did she insist on staying in San Francisco? Jimmie was safely in prison, he couldn't hurt her now. In the dream, she'd been so- distant. So removed, darkly preoccupied, not at all like the bright, sunny Kate Osborne he knew.

  He could feel the warmth at his back where the tomcat, moments before, had been curled up asleep before he thumped softly to the wood floor, apparently trying to be silent. Why all the stealth; what was he up to? Joe's usual departure was a four-star performance, tramping across Clyde's stomach with those big, hard paws, dropping to the floor with all the finesse of a truckload of rocks.

  In the near-dark, Clyde watched Joe pad softly around the end of the bed, a shadow sneaking across the Sarouk rug, heading away down the hall.

  In a moment he heard Joe's cat door slap, swinging against its metal frame.

  Between Joe's unusual behavior and his own unpleasant dreams, Clyde was wide awake. Leaving the warm bed, he stood at the open window, peering out from behind the curtain like some little old lady spying on the neighbors. The sea breeze was cool against his skin. In the faint moonlight that filtered through the blowing oak leaves, he could see Joe fast disappearing up the sidewalk, his gray coat nearly lost among the leafy shadows, only his white paws clearly visible, flashing along with swift determination.

  Joe went out every night to hunt rabbits or, if he was obsessed with some police business that was none of his business, to peer into windows or slip into people's houses, poking and prying- Clyde had ceased to ask for details. But the tomcat was seldom silent in his nocturnal departures. And it wasn't like there was some big crime under current investigation-nothing but that break-in at Susan Brittain's place. No jewel heist or bank robbery, no murder that they knew of. Well, the damn cat wouldn't leave anything alone. Let someone steal a pencil, Joe was on their case.

  Wide awake and angry, he had half a mind to pull on his jeans and shoes and follow Joe. He could see him, almost to Ocean now, hardly visible in the blowing night. Clyde reached for his jeans but didn't pull them on. If he tried to follow, the tomcat would simply take to the roofs and vanish.

  His dream of Kate was still vivid; he'd been with her in San Francisco, walking the windy midnight streets. She told him she wasn't coming back to Molena Point ever, that she wouldn't see him again, that they didn't belong together, that he wasn't right for her.

  But they had been right for each other, they'd known it long before she left Jimmie, though neither did anything about it. And then suddenly Jimmie was involved in murder and car theft; those days came back to him sharply. A killer loose in the village, hired by Jimmie to murder Kate-an incredible scenario, and the Welshman killer also had personal reasons for stalking Joe Grey and Dulcie.

  That was when Clyde first learned that Joe Grey could speak, and Joe himself first became aware of that alarming talent-as if the shock of seeing a man murdered had thrust Joe from one facet of his existence into a deeper consciousness. That was when Joe's true nature had come to light, and of course Dulcie's hidden abilities as well.

  Standing before the open window in his shorts, holding his jeans and a sweatshirt, he wondered how long before Kate would get over her fear of being in the village and decide to move back home. He thought of her not as in the dream, but as she really was, imagined her there with him, her golden hair catching the faint moonlight, her eyes loving and kind. Dreaming of Kate, he started when a dark shape leaped to the window, crouching on the sill, pressed against the screen.

  In the darkness, Joe's white paws and chest were sharply defined, the white triangle down his nose pinched into a scowl. He looked intently at Clyde, at the jeans and sweatshirt. "What are you doing, Clyde? You weren't going to follow me?"

  Clyde looked at him innocently. "Couldn't sleep," Clyde said inadequately.

  "You weren't going to snea
k out into the night and follow me? Pry into my private business? At three in the morning?"

  "Would I do that? That's very insulting. In all the hundreds of times you've gone out looking for trouble, in all the nights I've lain in bed worrying that you'd got yourself killed, have I ever followed you?"

  "So why were you putting on your jeans?"

  "I wasn't putting them on. I was holding them. And is there any law against putting my pants on, going into my own kitchen, and making a sandwich? I couldn't sleep. All right?"

  "You never put your pants on when you invade the kitchen in the middle of the night, waking up old Rube and the other cats. Why are you so testy? Why would you want to follow me?"

  Clyde glowered. Why did he have to get involved with a tomcat who seemed to know exactly what he was thinking?

  "You were dreaming about Kate, calling her name in your sleep. Go on out in the kitchen, Clyde. Drink some hot milk and brandy, maybe that will help you sleep."

  Clyde just looked at him.

  "You want to know where I'm going," Joe said. "What difference does it make? You can't stop me, and you can't help me. You're getting way too nosy in your advanced years."

  "Forty-some is not advanced, as you put it. I had no intention of stopping you. I simply wondered where were you going. Wondered why the secrecy? Why all the silence, slipping out trying not to wake me?"

  "For your information, I was being thoughtful. Apparently that concept escapes you. You were obviously having trouble sleeping. You'd dozed off at last, and I didn't want to wake you. Okay?"

  "So where are you going? This is some kind of state secret? I know what you do at night, I know about your snooping. Someday, Joe-"

  "If it's any of you business, Dulcie and I thought we'd wander over to Hidalgo Plaza and check out the shops."

  "At three in the morning."

  "Why not? We can look in the windows. Dulcie loves to look in shop windows."

  "So you're nosing around Casselrod's Antiques, just because he snatched that old chest from Cora Lee. And would this have anything to do with the break-in at Susan Brittain's?"

  Joe sighed. "For your edification, antique stores, estate sales, yard sales… That's where any cop would start looking for the guy who trashed Susan's place."

  "That's so simplistic. Max Harper would laugh his head off."

  "Not at all. A cop checks out the obvious first, even if it is simplistic. Take my word. Dallas Garza will be having a good look among the local junk dealers." Joe gave Clyde a toothy smile, twitched a whisker, and was gone as swiftly as he had appeared, swarming up the oak tree to the roof, where he would again head for Ocean Avenue. Clyde imagined Dulcie waiting for him there among the trees of Ocean's wide, grassy median, imagined the two galloping up the median to disappear in the direction of the long, wild park that bordered Molena Point on the southeast.

  At the mouth of the park stood the cluster of converted buildings that made up Hidalgo Plaza, a collection of steep-roofed houses and old barns remodeled into a complex of antique and craft shops, boutiques, and art galleries. The largest structure among them, the old Hidalgo mansion, was now Molena Point Little Theater. Above many of the shops were offices and small businesses that didn't need the exposure of a storefront. Casselrod's Antiques occupied the entire two floors of its building, with wide showroom windows facing the brick walk.

  Up on the roof, on the tilting peak, the two cats padded along the sharp hip. Where the peak ended, they dropped down to the tiny false balcony that protruded from the featureless wall three stories above the ground.

  Rearing up on the four-inch protrusion, Joe pawed at the glass, shaking and forcing the frail old casement. Because the window opened in a sheer wall with only the fake four-inch balcony, it had never presented a security problem, and no one had bothered to lock it. The casement gave, and Joe and Dulcie slipped inside.

  Padding through the dark attic beneath stacked chairs and tables, between ancient trunks and antique dressers and cartons of bric-a-brac, their paws stirring through rivers of dust, they were searching for a way down to the shop below when they saw, against the far attic window, a figure poised, back-lighted from the street below. Though they had been silent, and hadn't spoken, she was surely watching them.

  Scenting out, they couldn't smell anything remotely human. Warily, they crept closer.

  "A mannequin!" Dulcie breathed.

  "Buckram and wire," Joe said, disgusted. Sniffing at the construction then brushing past the flimsy form, he headed for the stairs.

  The second floor of Casselrod's Antiques was not only cleaner and smelled better but was handsomely arranged, with small groups of ornate furniture displayed on fine Oriental rugs, against nice paintings and antique screens.

  "Just like the architectural magazines," Dulcie said, lifting a paw to stroke the soft patina of a fine cherry dresser, patting at the clustered grapes that had been wrought by a master carver.

  Trunks and small chests stood on the floor among the furniture or on various tables. "Mostly Chinese," Dulcie said. Certainly they were not roughly made, like the chest from the McLeary yard sale. Some were no bigger than a little birdhouse, some large enough to conceal a German shepherd. The cats prowled every dark corner and open shelf but did not find the chest they were looking for.

  Descending the last flight to the main floor, they faced a wide bank of windows where beyond the glass shone the street lights of the plaza, and the softly lit windows of other shops. Here on the main floor, they could smell the perfume of Richard Casselrod's assistant, a distinctive and clinging scent, in one of the upholstered chairs where Fern Barth had apparently sat. Joe sniffed at the too sweet perfume and made a flehmen face, lifting his lip in disdain. "Does she buy that stuff by the quart? Smells like dimestore jelly beans."

  "Maybe it's something very expensive, to appeal to the opposite sex."

  "I bet it has the men flocking."

  Dulcie backed away from the smell, leaped to the shelves, and prowled carefully along them, skirting among delicate Dresden figures and porcelain dinnerware. To her right, a table was covered with boxes of silver flatware and stacks of lace and linens. Amazing how much care, how much time and art went into the accessories for human lives. "No matter how much we dislike Richard Casselrod," she said softly, "you have to admit, he buys lovely things."

  But Joe had vanished. No shadow moved, not a sound. She mewed softly.

  Nothing.

  Leaping to the top of a drop-front desk, she yowled.

  "In here," he hissed from beyond an open door.

  Dropping to the floor, trotting under the chairs and between table legs, she paused at the door to a small, fusty office that was nearly filled with a rolltop desk. "In here?"

  No answer. Moving on, she slipped into a large workroom that smelled of paint, and raw wood, wax and varnish. The floor was scattered with sawdust and with curls of wood trimmings that tickled her paws. Joe stood atop a worktable, poised rigid with interest. She leaped up.

  High above them through a small window set among the rafters, faint light seeped in from the street, seeming in the dusty air to filter all to one place, onto seven white slabs of painted, carved wood that lay among a collection of hammers and screwdrivers.

  Two sides, two ends, and the lid of the chest lay beside two planks that had made up the base. These appeared to fit together like two slices of bread for a sandwich, each slice hollowed out in the center to form a shallow dish. When joined by their neatly carved wooden dovetails, the base of the chest would have a hiding place.

  Joe sniffed at the planks. "Smells like jelly beans."

  "I smell Casselrod, too," Dulcie said. "That tweedy, musty scent. So what was hidden in here? Or did they take it all apart and find nothing? What were they looking for?"

  Where the joints of the little trunk had been left unpainted, the old, seasoned oak shone deep and rich. The four sides and top had been carved in geometric patterns, with a circular design in the center. The pa
int over the carving was thick and uneven, filling up some of the indentations. "The circle is a rosette," Dulcie said. "It's a…" she stared at Joe. "Oh, my."

  "What?"

  "It's a Spanish motif. I've seen it on pictures of Spanish furniture."

  "So?"

  "Like the old Spanish chests in Elliott Traynor's play, that Catalina's lover carved and gave to her, where she kept some of the letters she wrote to him, that she never sent. Could this be one of those? Is that why Casselrod was so interested-why he snatched it from Cora Lee?" Her green eyes widened. "The research that Wilma collected for Elliott Traynor said that likely the old casks had been lost, broken or rotted or burned in the fire that destroyed the rancho some years after Catalina died."

  Joe nosed at the rough white slabs. "This stuff doesn't look all that valuable."

  But Dulcie was fascinated, tingling with a resonance that made her whiskers twitch. She wasn't sure what to call the feeling, but the sensation made her purr boldly, the same as when she had a rat by the scruff of the neck, ready to dispatch it.

  Was this the key to the events of the last few days? Was the answer right there in Elliott Traynor's play? Had some of the letters survived that Catalina wrote to her lover? Dulcie was wild with excitement-but Joe was still thinking it over.

  "Why now?" he said. "Why would Casselrod and the men who broke into Susan's suddenly be so interested?"

  "Because now that the play is about to be produced, everyone has a script. All of a sudden, more people know about the letters."