Cat Bearing Gifts

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  The way things stood, he figured Birely had some kind of legal claim to this property and to the cash, too. He was Sammie’s only relative, so he said. Maybe a claim they could make stick. All they had to do was find some softhearted defense group, a two-bit lawyer providing free legal help for the needy, making his money from some kind of federal grant. Guy like that, he went into court, he could get anything.

  But if Birely died, what? In a way, that would free things up. He could just take off with the money, get the hell out of there, and who would know? Forget about the property that he’d thought Birely could sell, move on out with the cash, and the cops’d never think about any hidden money, how could they know? Sure as hell Emmylou wouldn’t tell them, if she’d found any of it for herself. Not unless she could prove it was hers, which he doubted. Say she did tell the cops there was hidden cash, but couldn’t prove she had some legal claim. Cops got in the act, she’d never see those packs of bills again, they’d vanish like spit in a windstorm.

  Picking up the keys to the Lincoln where he’d laid them on the edge of the stained sink, he stood looking at the other five keys on the ring. Had to be a house key on there, and who knew what else? Little fat key that might fit a padlock or a safe. Moving to the far wall, he removed the last few planks they’d left loose, removed the loose stone behind them. Reached down into the disintegrating pocket of old concrete, fished out the last two packs of musty hundred-dollar bills they’d left stashed there. Turning toward the door, he saw Birely was awake.

  “What you doing, Vic?” Little bastard had raised up on one elbow, groaning watching him, his breath wheezing in his throat.

  “Going to hide this in the Lincoln with the rest,” Vic said easily. “Maybe pull off one of the door panels. If that Emmylou comes snooping, spots us in here and maybe calls the cops, we’ll need to take off fast. I want the money stashed where they can’t find it, ready to roll.”

  Birely retched and coughed and reached for the cup of water that Vic had set on the floor beside him. “What if the cops get their hands on the car, what then? We’ll never see that car again, and there goes my money, every damn bit of it.” Birely always put the worst spin on things, he never could see the positive side.

  “I’ll muddy up the license plates until I can steal some. Maybe I’ll dirty up the whole car.” Vic smiled. “A bucket of garden dirt, a little water. Don’t look like the cops have a BOL out on the Lincoln yet, we passed three CHP units on the highway and two sheriff’s cars, and not one of ’em even turned to look. Maybe that old couple didn’t think to report the car stolen, maybe they were too far gone.”

  But Birely wasn’t paying attention, he was real white. “I need a doctor, Vic. Otherwise I’m gonna die. You got to take me somewhere, to an emergency room.”

  “Codeine should have kicked in by now,” Vic said. “I’ll give you another pill, then you’ll rest easy.”

  Birely was hugging his belly and wheezing for air, and Vic felt his temper rise. Birely was going to slow him down, was going to get in his way, going to give the cops time to start looking for the Lincoln, and maybe time to find it.

  As Vic stood pondering what to do, Birely began to talk as he had earlier, as he’d been muttering on and off ever since the accident, snatches of his childhood, some of them repeated over and over, useless memories of his sister and their old uncle, that old train robber that he guessed was famous in his day. “It was our uncle, Lee Fontana, sent the money to her,” Birely said now, “and Sammie only a kid, twenty-some, that old man sending her money like that, what was that about? He didn’t send me none.”

  “Why didn’t she put it in a bank?” Vic said. If Birely kept on talking he’d wear himself out and go to sleep again.

  “Maybe she hid it all that time because it was stolen,” Birely said, “afraid the feds had the serial numbers and would trace them if the money went in the bank, maybe thought the feds would want to know where she’d got it. Well, anyway she hated banks. Uncle Lee hated banks, she got that from him. I’m not so fond of banks, neither. Never have done business with one, all my life long.” That made Vic smile. Birely’d never had no money to put in a bank.

  Some of what Birely muttered about was things before he was born, that Sammie’d told him. Some man following their mother, coming to the house when her daddy was off in the war. World War II, and that was some long time ago. Birely’d said Sammie was about seven. This stuff Sammie’d told him years later, it got stuck in his memory and he’d keep repeating it, stories about the man following and beating their mom, and the cops wouldn’t do anything, garbled stories warped by time and distance. Birely started whimpering again, as if the codeine hadn’t ever taken hold. Vic didn’t know how much codeine he could give him before he checked out for good, and he was torn about that. You had a dog this sick, hadn’t eaten and couldn’t eat, dog hurt like that, you’d put it out of its pain.

  Sick man, dying man, what use did he have for two hundred thousand in musty bills? Nor did Emmylou, neither. What was she going to do with that kind of money? All she ever did was work away at her so-called remodeling project, and clump around in her scraggly yard talking to that mangy yellow cat. That in itself showed she didn’t have good sense. Sure as hell she was seeking out the money little by little, down there, as she tore out the walls. What a waste, what would she use it for?

  OUTSIDE, EVEN AS Vic headed over to open the door, the yellow tom dropped down from the window and was gone. He’d watched from among the trees as the man stared around into the night searching for a prowler he’d never find. He’d heard enough through the window to know that Birely was Sammie’s brother, and to remember more clearly that moment from his earlier life. To remember that ex-con following Sammie’s mother and beating her. The other guy was a classmate from her high school. Sammie’s daddy off in the Pacific fighting in the war that was meant, once again, to end all wars, and this scum comes onto his young wife. Now, listening to Birely, that distant time came clear, the rooms of their tiny cottage in that small Southern town, the polished floors and handmade rag rugs, a gold-colored cross hanging over the bed; and then the old gas station and garage that Sammie’s daddy bought when he did get home from the war, bought to make a living for the three of them. Birely’s words woke in him sharp fragments of memory, each scene filtered through the eyes of the young and careless tomcat that he had been in that earlier life.

  13

  LUCINDA GREENLAW’S GLASS-FRONTED cubicle in the Santa Cruz ER was so tiny that Kate had to slide in sideways, pushing back the canvas curtain, joining Charlie Harper and Charlie’s aunt, Wilma. The two women stood crowded against the wall between the water basin, the hazardous-waste receptacle, and Lucinda’s hospital bed. But Lucinda was even more constricted, bound to her bed by a tangle of tubes and wires, as captive as a bird caught in a net, this active older woman whom everyone admired for her youthful outlook and vigorous lifestyle. Now, she slept, she was hardly a bump beneath the thin white blanket, so fragile, her breathing steadied by the oxygen that whispered through her mask. She wore a cast on her lower left arm, and a heavy white bandage around her left shoulder.

  Charlie gave Kate a hug. “Sorry I brought you out in the night.” Her unruly red hair shone bright in the overhead light, tied back crookedly with an old brass clip, caught across one shoulder of her brown sweatshirt, which she’d pulled on over what looked like a pajama top, pale blue with little white stars.

  “I’d have been mad if you hadn’t,” Kate said. Her questioning look at Charlie brought a shake of the head. There was no word, yet, of Kit, then. Wilma took Kate’s hand, trying to look hopeful. She wore a red fleece jacket over jeans and a navy sweater, had pinned her gray hair hastily back into a knot. Her canvas carryall stood on the floor beside her booted feet, looking so suspiciously lumpy that Kate knelt and peered in.

  Dulcie looked up at her, the expression in her green eyes worried for Kit. Above them in the
narrow bed, Lucinda stirred a little, muttered then was silent again.

  “Still sedated,” Charlie said. “They set the arm right away, and slipped her dislocated shoulder back into place. Thank God it wasn’t broken. She’s bruised all over, and scraped down her left side, where he jerked her out of the car. The nurse said she was still mad as hell, too,” Charlie said. In the bright fluorescent light, Lucinda’s skin seemed as thin as crumpled tissue, the veins of her wrists dark above the adhesive that held the invasive needles. She barely resembled, now, the slim, robust woman who walked the Molena Point hills several miles a day with Pedric, their Kit racing joyfully ahead leading them to the wildest paths and up the steepest climbs.

  “She was able to describe what happened, then?” Kate asked, still kneeling and stroking Dulcie.

  “Clearly,” Charlie said. “We talked a few minutes, while they were preparing her for surgery. It’s Pedric who doesn’t remember much, and that’s worrisome. Some moments come clear, but then he can’t fill in the spaces between. That should come with time,” she said. “Even so, he remembers enough to be raging mad, too. When they’re awake and lucid, they’re both impatient to talk to the CHP, to the county sheriff up there, and most of all, to Max.” Max Harper, Charlie’s husband and Molena Point chief of police, would most likely coordinate the Greenlaws’ statements for the other law enforcement agencies. “He’ll bring it all together,” she said, “that will help ease Lucinda and Pedric from so many interviews. Multiple interviews are necessary, but it will wear them out.”

  Charlie watched Lucinda, sleeping so quietly. “You won’t get these two down for long,” she said hopefully. She filled Kate in on the wreck and the attack, repeating what Lucinda had told them. “There’s a BOL out for the Lincoln. If those two men are picked up, they’d better be locked up, away from me.”

  “Away from all of us,” Kate said, looking into Dulcie’s own angry eyes. “By now, who knows how far away they’ve gotten. Headed where? Arizona? Oregon? Mexico?”

  “Lucinda told us what’s in the car,” Charlie said. “If they dump the car or sell it, will they trash all those lovely purchases? But maybe,” she said, “maybe they won’t find the rest.

  “At least Kit wasn’t in the car,” she said, thinking of what Kit might have tried to do, trapped in the Lincoln with those two men, and what they might have done to her.

  “Have Ryan and Clyde called?” Kate asked. “Can you call them?”

  “They called once,” Wilma said, “when they parked up at the slide. They were just setting out to search.” She touched Kate’s shoulder, where she knelt beside the carryall. “Kit’s tough, Kate. She’s smart and quick—and she has Lucinda’s phone. When she sees the Damens’ truck, sees them start up the cliff, don’t you think she’ll use the phone or else call out to them, lead them right to her?”

  “If she’s not afraid to lead something else to her,” Kate said. She wished she were there, she couldn’t shake her fear for Kit, she felt as weak with fright as if she herself, in cat form, crouched small and lost up there in the black night, with only her claws and little cat teeth to protect her against whatever prowled, hungry and listening.

  “Their house keys are on the ring with the car keys,” Wilma said. “Ryan said that first thing in the morning she’ll get her lock man out. I’ll put holds on the credit cards. They have some blocks on them and on their bank accounts, but better to be safe.

  “Pedric gave the hospital their insurance information, he still had his billfold, the guy missed that, too busy harassing Lucinda and stealing the Lincoln. When we got here, Lucinda’s focus was all on Pedric and on Kit, she couldn’t rest at all. She wouldn’t let them take the X-rays until we assured her the Damens had gone after Kit, she just kept begging for Kit, fussing and trying to get out of bed. She made such a rumpus she disrupted the whole floor, the nurses had a time with her. We got here, talked for only a few minutes, told her Rock was tracking Kit. Finally they took her to X-ray, gave her a shot, and in less than an hour she was off to surgery.”

  The three women watched Lucinda and watched the lighted monitor above her bed with its moving graphs and numbers that mapped Lucinda’s life processes, oxygen level and blood pressure and the slow steadiness of her heartbeat. “Once we’ve taken care of the credit cards and changed the locks,” Charlie said, “we need to make arrangements for when they come home. Maybe they won’t have to go into rehab, if we take turns staying at the house, have nurses come if they’re needed. We could put someone in their downstairs apartment if . . .”

  She shook her head. “I’d even thought of Debbie Kraft,” she said with a wry smile. “She needs the job, and the Damens’ would be thrilled to get her out of their cottage. But it would take more effort to ride herd on Debbie than to move in ourselves. To say nothing of the torment that older girl would dish out. There’d be no peace, with Vinnie in the house.”

  “I can stay,” Kate said. “I’d planned to be with them for a while. I could stay, and you all could run the errands, pick up the meds and groceries. Would that work?” She wanted to be there, in part to watch over Kit, whose wild but vulnerable nature was so like Kate’s own temperament. She longed to hold the little tortoiseshell safe, keep her close and safe. No one said, If Pedric comes home, if he heals from the concussion, and can come home. No one said, If Kit comes home, if Ryan and Clyde can find her. Wilma took Kate’s hand and Charlie’s, as if by touching, by all of them willing it, they could help to heal the older couple and could bring them home, and bring Kit home. It was in that quiet moment that tabby Dulcie crept out from Wilma’s carryall and slipped up onto Lucinda’s bed. Stepping delicately among the snaking tubes, she padded up beside Lucinda, on her unhurt side, slipped under the covers, laid her head on Lucinda’s shoulder, and softly began to purr. Maybe Lucinda, deep in dreams, would imagine she held Kit in her arms, snuggling close, maybe that thought would help to heal her.

  LEAVING BIRELY HALF asleep, Vic headed out the door and down the stairs along the side of the stone building carrying a couple of rusty screwdrivers he’d found in the stone shack, an empty old bucket and a dirt-crusted spade he’d found in the yard, and a paper bag with four bottles of water, eight cans of beans, the rusty can opener, and the two packs of hundred-dollar bills he’d had on him. Maybe he’d find something useful among all that junk in the Lincoln, maybe a couple of blankets. The rest of the stuff he’d dump somewhere, all them fancy packages from the San Francisco stores. He should have had all this when he linked up with the fence, it’d be worth something. He didn’t know much about upholstery material, if that’s what those bolts of cloth were, but the fancy pictures and lamps had to be worth something—that old couple were big spenders. Had to be, driving a Town Car and all. Maybe when he headed out he’d swing through Frisco again and see what he could get for the lot.

  Standing in shadow at the bottom of the stairs, he watched the house below. The old Chevy was parked off to the side on the dirt drive where that stringy old woman kept it. There was no light in the kitchen window, no reflection of lights from anywhere in the house, shining out against the pine trees. Moving around to the shed door, he removed the lock, eased the door back so it wouldn’t squawk, and slipped inside.

  He deposited the paper bag among the packages in the backseat, then carried the bucket outside again. Kneeling close against the stairs, he began scooping up loose garden dirt with the spade and with his hands. Filling the bucket, he turned back inside, poured in a bottle of water, and stirred the mess with the spade, into a thick mud. Earlier, leaving the wreck, he’d hidden the cash behind the back console. Maybe he could do better than that before he took off, maybe find a hiding place the cops wouldn’t think to poke into with just a casual stop, a stop he might talk his way out of. If he changed his looks, got a haircut, cleaned up in different clothes, maybe he could slip by.

  He thought how drug dealers pry off the door panels of a car to secure the
ir stash, he’d watched a guy do that, once. Took special tools, which he didn’t have. He sure didn’t want to bend or crack the panel, not be able to put it back right. But he didn’t want the money on him, neither. And if he decided to stay put here for a while, he didn’t want to hide it again in the stone room. He had an uneasy feeling about Birely up there whining and carrying on. If that old woman heard him and came nosing around, who knew what she’d poke into that was none of her business?

  Pulling down the armrest, he removed the packs of hundreds. The little metal tray beneath was screwed in place, with a small square hole in the front, along with two small connections where, he thought, people could charge their cell phones. When he poked the screwdriver down in the hole he could feel a space beneath, about an inch deep. Using the Phillips, he removed the screws and lifted the tray out.

  The space beneath was big enough to stash most of the packs of bills. He stuffed the rest in his pocket, screwed the black plastic tray back in place, then got to work on the outside of the car. Stirring up the bucket of dirt and water, and using a wadded-up shirt from Birely’s pack, he began to spread the mud on. First the license plates, and then the outside of the car, dirtying up the shiny black paint and the dents, just enough, not to overdo it. Working away humming to himself, he thought about a better place to hide the car, away from that old woman poking around. One thing, he’d have to lift a new set of plates, maybe from the far side of the village. But the car itself he wanted nearby where he could keep an eye on it.

  There were plenty of empty houses down the hill, abandoned places, no one ever around, no furniture when he’d looked in through the dirty windows. Skuzzy neighborhood, foreclosures, empty rentals, the grass grown tall and brown, FOR RENT signs tipped crooked or lying on the ground. Their narrow, one-car garages, the ones he could see into, were empty. Stash the Lincoln for a few hours, steal himself another set of wheels or borrow them.