Cat Shining Bright

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Kit didn’t answer, she leaped back up to the rafter and pushed out through the tangle of eucalyptus branches. Joe, having freed himself of some of the sparkling glass pellets, shouldered through beside her. “Kit, where is he? Were you together? Watch the glass. Where the hell is Pan?”

  Kit’s heart was pounding so hard it shook her all over. Had other trees fallen? Could Pan be hurt? She raced from the broken tower down the pepper tree to the street, Joe beside her. Across the street and up again to the roofs on the other side, back the way she had come. The wind shifted and twisted, was choking them, pushing against them so they could hardly move. “We were together,” she shouted in Joe’s ear, “we saw that man hide a car then hurry away looking in other cars. I chased him but Pan jumped up to peer in the bedroom window of the house where the car was hidden and he never caught up with me.” The full terror of what might have happened to Pan sent her racing hard into the heavy blow.

  In the Damen bedroom, Clyde had pulled on a pair of pants and was grabbing a jacket when Ryan stopped him. “We can look for Pan but no good trying to follow that man from the Jeep, by now the car that picked him up is probably on the freeway.” She had dressed quickly, she was reaching for her slicker when Clyde shook his head.

  “Wait here, Ryan, please. Someone needs to be here, Pan might be hurt, they may need us.” He was halfway down the stairs when they heard sirens: Ryan ran to the studio window. Below, headlights were coming from either end of the street, their red flashers bright on the fallen tree and smashed car. The two black-and-whites drew close to the wreck and parked; their loud whooping stopped. Ryan followed Clyde down to meet them, praying that their noise and lights might bring Pan home.

  Out in the wind Joe and Kit heard the sirens, heard them stop, heard the squawk of a police radio. The wind had died a little, the rain had stopped, and several blocks down where swaying trees led across from roof to roof, they saw a pale shape among the blowing branches. When they reached it, the ghostly shape was gone.

  As they searched, balancing among swinging tree limbs, they heard scrambling, the sound of claws on rough bark. When they looked up, a cypress branch shook hard and Pan leaped down, straight into Kit’s and Joe’s faces. Kit threw herself at him nuzzling and scolding him; the three hunched together as the wind gusted harder.

  “Where were you?” Kit said. “I thought you were behind me and you weren’t and that man stole another car and then a tree fell and I thought Joe was killed, it fell right on top of his tower and I couldn’t see you anywhere and I went to help him . . . Are you all right?” She stopped talking long enough to lick Pan’s ears, to look him over and see he wasn’t hurt.

  “I’m fine,” Pan said. “I’d started to follow you, then I saw the same man up the side street breaking into cars and when he couldn’t get one started he just stole what he wanted. I thought you’d be following but I couldn’t find you. There was another, skinny man breaking into cars, taking things, then he broke into a black Audi.

  “It didn’t take him long, he got the engine started, neat as you please. He took off, turned right at the next block but moving real slow as if looking for someone. I followed him. Behind me, I heard a couple of windows break, heard a car start. I kept following the Audi. He met another car, they stopped and talked, so low I couldn’t hear, then they both took off without lights. When I heard a tree fall I went back to look for you to see if you were all right. The street was quiet, the Jeep that had been parked there was gone. I was two blocks past the plaza when I heard sirens, saw red lights. Looked like the cops were at Joe’s house and I headed back fast.”

  “The tree fell on Joe’s house,” Kit said, “on Joe Grey’s tower and on the stolen Jeep! The driver squirmed out and ran. Ryan reported it but we need to tell the cops he stole the BMW and locked it in that garage and—”

  “No,” Joe said.

  “But—”

  “No way. How do you think that would look? What would the phantom snitch be doing at this hour out in the storm, so close to Clyde’s house?”

  There had already been too many questions over the years about who the snitch was, the voice that had given the department so many useful leads but who would never identify himself. Even though the cops knew the snitch’s voice wasn’t Clyde’s, they’d have to wonder who would be out in this blow, so close to Clyde’s, at three in the morning, following the thieves.

  “No,” Joe said again, his ears back, scowling at Kit.

  She hung her head in silence. It wasn’t likely the cops would ever guess anything so bizarre as that a cat was their informant—though there had been some strange looks from the chief, and from the officers. “But,” she said, “someone has to tell them . . .”

  Pan nuzzled Kit and licked her face. “Let it be. We’ll think of a way.”

  “But we need to tell them now.”

  “Let it be, Kit,” Pan said gruffly.

  “I guess,” she said doubtfully, rubbing her face against his—and wondering how long the stolen BMW would remain in that garage.

  Joe, watching the two, wanted suddenly to be close to Dulcie and the kittens, wanted to be tucked up with his own family, listening to the storm’s howl only from beyond solid walls.

  He knew Dulcie worried about him, out on a wet, windy night. But he worried about her in a different way.

  Ever since the kittens were born Dulcie, in the house with them most of the time, had experienced fits of cabin fever, a fierce longing to run the roofs with Joe and Kit and Pan, tracking the car thieves—or just to run the roofs alone, to snatch a few moments of freedom. Even now, when the kittens were four months old, even with Wilma to watch them, Dulcie wanted another cat to be near the youngsters, a cat who would make the unruly kittens behave, a cat more stern with them than Wilma ever was. Those three were so hardheaded, so adept at thinking up new trouble. To Wilma, disobedient kittens were amusing, they were not the same as a human parolee, to be sternly disciplined.

  Now, crouched in the wind, the three cats moved quickly back to the safety of Joe’s house, dodging the blaze of lights from the two patrol cars and the cops’ LED flashlights. Near the wrecked car, Clyde and Officers Crowley and McFarland stood talking. On the roof, Pan paused, intently watching the officers. “Maybe we do need to call in and report that white BMW hidden car in the garage.”

  “No,” Joe said again. “It’s too close, they don’t need to get curious.” Backing down a pine tree beside Ryan’s studio they beat it to the downstairs cat door. In the living room they were safe from the wind and, hopefully, from falling trees. They were wildly hungry; they were heading for the kitchen when Joe saw three white flecks clinging to the rug behind Pan’s hurrying paws.

  He sniffed at them, and nudged Pan. “Hold up your paws.”

  Puzzled, Pan held up one hind paw, then the other. Deep in the creases between his pads Joe found five more flecks. “What are those?” The specks had a faint but unfamiliar smell. Pan frowned, studied his paws and sniffed at them. Kit sniffed, and nosed at a fleck that clung to the rug. It came away sticking to her nose.

  “Styrofoam,” she said, pawing it off. “Flecks from Styrofoam packing? Like they use to ship china or glassware? How could that stuff stick to your paws when you were running, out in that fierce wind?” She nosed at Pan’s front paw. “It does stick. Like wool threads stick to your fur. Static electricity, Lucinda says.”

  “Where did it come from?” Joe said. “From that house?”

  “Maybe,” Pan said. “Even in the wind and dark, I noticed some specks. I thought they were from the bushes, maybe flower seeds. I was more interested in trying to get the smell of the man.”

  “Did you?” Joe said.

  “A sooty smell,” Pan said, “like he could use a bath. I still say we need to report that BMW before . . . the way he acted, he doesn’t live there. So why would he leave the car there for very long? You can bet your paws he plans to move it, and maybe pretty quick.”

  “We can’t report it,
” Joe repeated. “Too close to my house. The cops know all our voices, and of course they know Ryan or Clyde.”

  “We’ll think of a way,” Pan said. He said no more as the cats raced for the kitchen where a battery light was burning and the smell of coffee and of the butane camp stove wafted out to them. They could hear someone puttering about, and Joe thought about the leftover roast beef he knew was in the refrigerator. With the camp stove and a minute’s wait, they could settle in for a nice warm feast.

  4

  From the kitchen Ryan heard the cat door flap open. She looked out to the living room as the three cats bolted in, sopping wet. As they fled for the kitchen she grabbed the phone. First she called the Firettis. “Pan’s here, and Kit, too. They’d better stay until morning, until the storm dies. Yes, Joe’s fine, they all seem fine, just hungry as bears.” The cats stared up at her impatiently, dripping puddles on the linoleum. On the phone, John Firetti said something that made her laugh but that made her wipe a tear, too. “I know, John. Well, it keeps the adrenaline flowing.”

  When she’d hung up, she dialed Kit’s house. Normally, Kit might be out anywhere at night getting into all kinds of trouble, Lucinda and Pedric had learned to sleep through their worries; but they didn’t often have a storm like this. She had started to tell Lucinda about the fallen tree when Kit hopped to the counter. Ryan held the phone so Kit could talk; she imagined tall, gray-haired Lucinda Greenlaw in her robe and slippers listening patiently as the bedraggled tortoiseshell went on and on in her usual endless narrative. “. . . and there was glass over everything, too, all over us like little diamonds, but Clyde and Ryan got it off us and Officers Crowley and McFarland are here lifting prints off the car and . . .”

  Ryan put a hand on Kit, and at last Lucinda, at the other end of the line, was able to quiet her. Lucinda gave her strict orders, she was not to come home until morning, until the wind died and branches quit falling, and she was to watch for power lines. Kit, switching her tail, hissed at the phone and stalked away. She did not like to be told what to do.

  Ryan, laughing, breaking the connection, called Wilma because Dulcie would be worried about Joe; then she called Kate Osborne. Their beautiful blond friend was staying by herself up in the hills at the cat shelter that Ryan and her construction crew had just completed. The living arrangement was temporary, until Kate could hire acceptable caretakers; she wouldn’t leave the shelter cats alone at night, in case of fire or some other emergency. But it was a lonely place, and Ryan worried about her, in this storm. When Joe and Pan leaped to the counter beside Kit, crowding close to listen, Ryan turned on the speaker.

  “I’m fine,” Kate said. “Scotty’s here. He . . . wanted to make sure we didn’t have any damage.”

  Joe and Pan glanced at each other, guessing that Scotty had been there much of the night.

  “But then there was an accident,” Kate said. “That neighbor who lives alone on the five acres that I wanted to buy? Voletta Nestor? The wind broke the window over her bed, cut her pretty badly. Scotty drove her down to emergency and they patched her up. They just got back, he covered the window with plywood. I had cleaned up the glass, pulled off the bedding, dumped it on the back porch and remade the bed. Scotty told her he’d order a new window.

  “You can imagine how grouchy she was,” Kate said. “She’s bad tempered at best, and the storm and broken window and her cuts and pain didn’t help. He was glad to get her home again, see her settled and get out of there. The doctors wanted her to hire a nurse to be with her, but of course she refused.” Voletta Nestor, small and wrinkled, with frizzled gray hair sticking out as if she’d stuck her finger in a light plug, and her disposition about the same. Kate said, “She seemed edgy and nervous to have Scotty in her house, even if he was helping her. Taking her home, helping her down the hall, he glimpsed, on the dresser in one of the guest rooms, a stack of cartridge boxes, .38 specials. Voletta didn’t see him looking, she was too busy trying to use the walker the hospital rented her.”

  Ryan laughed. “That little old woman with a firearm? Well, it is lonely up there. I hope she’s had some sensible training—she can be pretty cranky.”

  “Scotty said that in her bedroom she kept glancing nervously out the other window down at that flat half acre of mowed weeds that she calls her lawn. What was she looking at? Or looking for?”

  Ryan said, “She is strange. Could you put Scotty on the phone? We have a tree down, across the roof. And we’ll need new windows for Joe’s tower.”

  “Oh my,” Kate said. “Is Joe all right?”

  “He’s fine,” Ryan said as the cats began to wash themselves dry. Scotty came on the line, he said he’d be down in the morning to clear away the tree and start repairs. Ryan said, “I’ll have Manuel and Fernando here. It’s that big, heavy tree that stood just across the street.”

  Hanging up, she turned to feed the cats. They sat glaring at her, demanding her full attention, hungrily licking their whiskers. She warmed up a helping of roast beef but saved a nice slab for Officers Crowley and McFarland. If they stayed to watch over the stolen Jeep as she guessed they would, they’d be hungry before morning. Her last words to the cats were, “You three are to stay out of the refrigerator. Paws off. The rest of the roast is for the law.”

  Joe Grey scowled.

  “If you ever want to eat in this house again, Joe, you will leave the rest of it alone. Eat the cold spaghetti.” Followed by another angry scowl, she moved out to join the men. She stood with Clyde, his arm around her, looking up at Joe’s poor, damaged tower.

  Officer Crowley, tall and gangly, and young Officer Jimmie McFarland stood beside the wrecked Jeep. They watched Detective Dallas Garza pull up in his tan Blazer and get out, carrying his camera and strobe light. Garza’s dark, short hair was tangled in the wind, his square, Latino face solemn from sleep. He had pulled on a faded sweat suit. His shoes had no laces. “My God, a straight hit. Is Joe Grey all right?”

  Clyde laughed. “We thought a bomb had struck. It took Joe a while to untangle himself and shake off some of the glass beads.”

  “But he wasn’t hurt?” Dallas said. The Latino detective had never been much for cats, had been a dog man all his life, but with Joe Grey hanging around the station, Dallas had learned to care for the tomcat. Dallas didn’t know Joe’s secret, no one in the department knew that the tomcat could have sassed them back as cuttingly as they needled each other.

  Dallas put his arm around Ryan. “Did you see the driver before he took off, did you see anything?”

  “I saw just what I told the dispatcher,” Ryan said. “Darkly dressed, heavy man. Ran around the corner, got in a waiting car, and took off. The car was running dark.” One could see the resemblance between uncle and niece; though Ryan’s eyes were green, and Dallas’s nearly black, their hair was dark, they had the same warm Hispanic coloring, the same fetching smile—and often the same deadpan expression that gave nothing away. Dallas had been her mother’s brother. Redheaded Scott Flannery, her building foreman, was her father’s brother—Ryan a charming Scots-Irish and Hispanic mix. Her two uncles had moved in with Mike Flannery and the three little girls when their mother died. Raised by three men, two in law enforcement, the girls had grown up obedient, hard workers, and with minds and tempers more keyed to the interests of three sensible men than to frilly dresses and callow high school boys.

  “The crash woke us,” she told Dallas. “I grabbed the flashlight, I thought the tree would be halfway through the ceiling. But there were only leaves and smaller branches poking through Joe’s cat door. Clyde and I pulled the ladder off my truck, he held it while I had a look. In the wind, the whole roof was a mass of blowing leaves. With clouds coming over the moon, I couldn’t see much of the shingles, just the damaged tower.”

  Dallas photographed the Jeep, the damage to its body and interior, as much as could be seen beneath the fallen tree. Working in between the broken branches, wearing gloves and using a flashlight, he found and copied information fr
om the registration so he could notify the car’s owner. When he’d finished, he turned to the two officers.

  “I’ll be back as soon as it’s daylight, for more shots. Crowley, McFarland, go ahead and set up sawhorses and reflective lights. You’re on watch, leave your cars where they are. And try to stay awake. On my way out I’ll check the side streets.” None of the three officers, heading for the fallen tree, had seen on the dark side street the vandalized cars that the cats had observed. With the noise of the wind, it was doubtful any of the nearby residents had heard the sound of breaking glass and called the station, unlikely that anyone yet knew that their cars had been broken into or were gone.

  Ryan told Crowley, “Give me your thermoses. I have a fresh pot of coffee, and I’ll put together some sandwiches.”

  In the kitchen, the cats heard Dallas’s Blazer pull away. They heard Clyde come in, fighting the front door against the wind. He was carrying a roll of plastic from the garage. “I gave Crowley a key to the front door. Make sure the coffeepot’s full.”

  The cats followed him upstairs, watched him cover Joe’s broken window and cat door with plastic and duct tape to break the heavy wind. Clyde cleaned the rest of the glass fragments off Joe, removed those that clung in Kit’s long, fine fur. Ryan toweled them dry, and they all piled into the big king bed, Ryan and Clyde, the three cats, and little Snowball. As the wind howled harder, the down comforter felt deliciously cozy. Kit, curled up beside Pan, fell at once into deep sleep, worn out and full of supper. But in sleep she dreamed of her own small house, her tree house blowing and shaking, she could feel its oak branches whipping and her pretty pillows sucked away and thrown across the yard; in her dream she thought the wind grabbed her and carried her away, too, she thought the whole world was blowing apart.

  5

  Voletta Nestor was so drugged with painkillers, with whatever the doctors had given her, she should have slept at once. But she still hurt and some of the bandages felt tight enough to strangle her. Tucked in her bed, trying to drift off, she woke fully and suddenly, remembering the front door. Had that Scott Flannery locked it as he’d promised? Sitting up, reaching painfully for the walker, she made her way unsteadily down the hall.