Cat Under Fire

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  She'd talked to Dulcie ever since she'd brought her home as a small kitten. Cats were to talk to. She'd always talked to her cats. When Dulcie's replies had been a rub against her ankle, a purr, and a soft mewl, life was simple. But the first time Dulcie answered back in words, both their worlds had changed.

  Now, of course, their conversations were hardly remarkable. Just relaxed remarks between friends.

  Does the vacuum cleaner really bother you?…

  Only when it jerks me out of a sound sleep; if you'll wake me up before you start it, that will help… I do love the scent of lavender in the sheets… Is there any more of that lovely canned albacore?…

  Do you want to watch Lassie?…

  No, Wilma. We both know Lassie is stupid…

  You are a cat of impeccable taste. How about a Magnum rerun?… Oh, I would much rather watch Magnum. And could we have a little snack of sardines…?

  Charlie swept into the kitchen, dressed in fresh jeans and a pale yellow sweatshirt. She had tied back her hair with a yellow scarf, the curly red tendrils already escaping around her face, the effect fresh and electric. Snatching up a handful of cookies, she hugged Wilma and punched Clyde's shoulder to move him along.

  Wilma stood at the kitchen window watching as they drove away in the Packard.

  She had to be more careful around Charlie. In spite of her wariness, she had caught Charlie several times studying Dulcie too intently.

  She told herself that was only the gaze of the artist. Charlie did have an artist's disturbing way of staring at a person or an animal as she memorized line and shadow, as she absorbed the bone structure and muscle, committing to memory some rhythm of line.

  She hoped that was all Charlie was seeing when she studied Dulcie. She hoped Charlie wasn't observing something about the little tabby cat that would best go unnoticed.

  6

  The cats careened uphill streaking through blowing grass, racing against time. Tangles of heavy stems whipped above their heads wild as a storming sea. Racing blindly up, the wind deafened them. Then, gaining the hill's crest, they paused to look back.

  Far down the falling land, the houses were toy-sized, and along the winding streets they still saw no police unit heading up from the village. They could not, from this vantage, see up across the black, burned hills to the streets that flanked Janet's house, to see if a police unit was already parked there. The buffeting wind tore at their fur, and they hunched down, flattening their ears against its onslaught.

  But suddenly, below, something moved in the grass, a huge dark shape slipping upward, a quick, heavy animal shouldering closer. The wind picked up its scent as it lunged into a run.

  They spun around, exploded apart, leaped away in opposite directions-the dog couldn't chase them both.

  He chased Dulcie. She could feel the beast's heat on her backside, could hear it snapping at her hindquarters. She thought it had her, when she heard it yelp. She dodged to look, saw Joe riding its neck-he had doubled back. The dog bellowed with pain and rage, twisted to grab him, and she flew at its head, clawed its ears, clinging to its face, digging in. It ran blindly, bucking. They rode it uphill, twisting, and she could smell its blood.

  Riding the beast, she began to laugh, heard Joe laughing, felt the dog tremble beneath them confused, terrified. It had never heard a cat laugh.

  When it couldn't shake them and couldn't grab them, it bolted into a tangle of broom, trying to scrape them off. The rough branches tore at them, they were scraped and slapped by branches, hanging onto the beast, hunching low, ears down, eyes squeezed shut.

  "Now!" Joe shouted.

  They leaped clear, down through tangles of dark thorny limbs dense as basket weave. The dog thrashed after them, snapping branches, lunging, sniffing. They crouched below the dark tangles, creeping away, pulsing like the terrified rabbits they hunted. Listening.

  He thrashed in circles, searching.

  They fled away through the thorny forest, then again they went to ground, straining to hear, to feel his vibrations coursing beneath them through the earth. Maybe he would scent them and follow, maybe not. They dared not go into the open. Dulcie, hiding and frightened, knew he was the dog that had followed her down among the houses. He was the hunter now, and she the prey, and she didn't like the feeling.

  He was quiet a long time, only a little hush of movement, as if he were trying to lick his wounds.

  They heard him move again, hesitantly. They dared not rear up to look.

  Then, poised to run, they heard him crashing away.

  He was leaving. Joe reared up, watching, then laughed, dropped down, and strolled out of the bushes, lay down on the grass, grinned at her. "You raked him good."

  "So did you." She stood up on her hind legs, to see the dog amble away downhill, making for the houses below, where, perhaps, he could find a friendlier world.

  They lay down in the windy sun. "We should have stayed on his back," Joe said. "He would have carried us clear up to Janet's."

  She spit out dog hair. "I smell like a dog, and I taste like a dog."

  Far below, the dog had stopped in the yard of a scruffy gray house with a leaning picket fence. An added-on room jutted from the back, with a small, dirty window beneath the sloped roof.

  The mutt lifted its leg against the picket fence, then began to twist in circles, trying to lick its wounded back while pawing at its face. But after a while it gave up, wandered to the curb, and leaped into the bed of an old black pickup.

  That truck had been in the neighborhood for some time. Several weeks ago they had watched a thin, unkempt man moving into the back room, carrying in two scruffy suitcases and several paper bags. They had watched him, inside the lit room, moving around as if he was unpacking. They had not, then, seen the dog.

  "Maybe it was in the cab of the truck,'' Joe said. "Or already in the room." He looked at her worriedly. "The mutt ought to be chained." He licked her ear. "That beast running loose really screws up the hunting."

  "Maybe he'll lie low for a while, after the raking we gave him."

  "Sure he will-about as long as it takes the blood to dry."

  She smiled, rolled over in the warm sun. But a little ripple of fear touched her, thinking of the white cat somewhere among the hills, maybe hurt. If that dog found him…

  She had dreamed about him again last night, but she hadn't told Joe-the dreams upset him. Joe Grey might be a big bruiser tomcat who could whip ten times his weight in bulldogs, but some things did scare him. The idea of prophetic dreams was a scenario he did not like to contemplate. When it came to spiritual matters, the tomcat grew defiant and short-tempered.

  But her dreams were so real, every smell so intense, every sound so sharply defined. In the first dreams, when the white cat trotted away, wanting her to follow, he had vanished before she could follow. But in one dream, he stood on the surface of the sea. It was a painted sea, blue and green paint, and he had sunk into the painted waves, and the paint faded to white canvas so nothing remained but canvas.

  And in her dream last night she had seen him wandering through twilight, walking with his head down as if burdened by a great sadness. He stepped delicately, lifting each paw hesitantly and with care, stepping among tangles of small white bones: the white cat walked among animal bones, little animal skulls.

  But again when she tried to follow, he vanished.

  He had been so real; he had even smelled stridently male. She longed to tell Joe the dream, but now, heading uphill again, running beside him, she still said nothing. Soon they had left the healthy wild grass and padded across burned grass, across the black waste, crossing the path of the fire, crossing its stink.

  This was the shortest way to Janet's, but they trod with care through the gritty charcoal, watching for sharp fragments, for protruding nails and torn, ragged metal, for broken glass to cut an unwary paw. Skirting around fallen, burned walls, they crept beneath fire-gnawed timbers that stood like gigantic black ribs, angling over them.

&
nbsp; A child's bedroom wall rose alone, like the remains of some dismantled stage set, its pink kangaroo wallpaper darkened from smoke. A baby crib stood broken, one rail crushed, its paint deeply scorched, blistered into a mass of brown bubbles. A sodden couch smelled of mildew, its springs and cotton stuffing spilling out. A burned license plate lay atop a heap of broken dishes and twisted silverware, a warped metal sink leaned against a bent and blackened car wheel. They trotted between melted cookpots lying whitened and twisted, between blobs of glass melted into bubbling new forms like artifacts from alien worlds.

  The smell of wet ashes clung in their mouths and to their fur. They stopped frequently to clean their paws, to lick away the grit embedded in their tender skin and stuck between their claws. A cat's pads are delicate sensors in their own right, an important adjunct to his ears and eyes. His pads relay urgent messages of sharp or soft, of hot or cold. The feel of grit was as unwelcome as sand in one's eyes.

  Higher up the hill, black trees stood naked, reaching to the sky in mute plea. And one lone, blackened chimney thrust up, an old solitary sentinel. The fire, after burning the top floor of Janet's house, had careened southward, leveling nearly all the dwellings within its half-mile swath.

  But above Janet's burned house, on up the hill, the blaze had missed eight houses. They marched prim and untouched along the rising hill, along their narrow street. And, strangely, nearer to Janet's two houses had been spared, one up the hill behind her burned studio, one across the side street. And though Janet's studio was gone, flattened to ashes, the apartment beneath stood nearly untouched, held safe beneath the concrete slab which formed its roof, which had formed the studio floor. From the blackened slab rose three black girders, twisted against the clouds.

  The garden below the house was largely undamaged, though its lush greens were dulled by ashes. The daylilies were blooming, their orange and yellow blossoms brilliant against the burn.

  The front of Janet's apartment was all glass, the five huge windows dirtied by smoke, but unbroken. Behind the smoky glass, long white shutters had been closed across four of the windows, effectively blocking the view of the interior. The last wide window, down at the end, was uncovered-almost as if someone was there, as if someone had not been able to bear closing the house entirely. The sight of that window made Dulcie shiver-as if some presence within wanted sunshine, wanted to look out at the hills for a little while, look out at the village nestled below.

  There was no police car parked below the apartment, and none above on the street behind, or in the drive which led to the studio slab. The little side street was empty, too, beyond the blackened vacant lot. There was no car at all parked along the side street before that untouched house. Strange that that ancient brown dwelling, among all the newer houses, would be left standing.

  Steps ran up the hill. Halfway up, Janet's deck gave access to the front door. The cats avoided the steps, where charcoal and rubble had lodged. Trotting uphill they stirred clouds of ashes. Their eyes and noses were already gritty with ash, their coats thick with ash, Dulcie's stripes dulled, Joe's white markings nearly as dark as his coat. If they needed a disguise, they had it ready-made.

  A fallen, burned oak tree lay across the entry deck. The front door was covered by plywood nailed across, affixed with yellow police notices warning against entry. They could see, beneath the plywood, the remains of the door, hanging ragged and charred. Dulcie dug at it, rasping deep into the burned wood, ripping away flakes and chunks of wood. She was nearly through when Joe hissed.

  "Someone's watching-the house across the street."

  She drew back tried to look like she was searching for mice. Glancing across the empty lot she could see within the lone house a woman peering out, the lace curtain pulled aside, her face nearly flattened against the glass.

  "Hope she gets an eyeful." Dulcie waited until the woman drew back and disappeared before she dug again, tearing at the charred wood. She had made a hole nearly two inches wide when a patrol car came up the side street.

  The cats backed away as it parked directly below. Slipping up the hill to the concrete roof, they crouched at its edge among heaps of ashes, watching a lone officer emerge. Detective Marritt came quickly up the steps, carrying a crowbar and a hammer, his tightly lined face seeming far older than his shock of yellow hair and his lean, muscular body.

  Metal screeched against wood as he pulled nails and pried away the barrier. Leaning the two sheets of plywood against the house, he unlocked the burned door, disappeared inside. Dulcie moved to follow, but Joe nipped her shoulder.

  She turned back, her green eyes blazing. "What? Come on, can't you?"

  "You're not going to push right in under his feet."

  "Why not? He won't know what we're doing."

  "Wait until he's finished."

  "We can't. We won't know if he finds the diary. If he puts it in his pocket…" She started down the hill again, but Joe moved swiftly, blocking her, shouldering her into a heap of ashes and rubble.

  She hissed and swatted him, but still he drove her back, snarling, his yellow glare fierce. She subsided unwillingly, ears back, tail lashing.

  "The cops saw too much of us, Dulcie, when Beckwhite was killed. Captain Harper has too many questions."

  "So?"

  "Think about it. We've already made Harper plenty nervous. He's a cop, he's not given to believing weird stuff. This stuff upsets him. You force yourself on him, and you blow your cover."

  She turned her back on him, lay down in the ashes at the edge of the roof, looking over the metal roof gutter watching the door below, sulking.

  Joe growled softly "We can't find out anything if every time we show our faces around the police, they smell trouble and boot us out."

  She sighed.

  He lay down beside her. "We do fine when they don't know we're snooping. Don't push it."

  She said nothing. She was not in a mood to admit he was right.

  "We make Harper nervous, Dulcie. Give the man some slack." He moved closer, licked her ear. And they lay side by side, watching for Marritt to come out and waiting for their own turn to search the house. Hoping, if the diary was there, that Marritt came through in his typical sloppy style and missed it.

  7

  The cats could hear from the apartment below a series of thumps, as if Detective Marritt was opening and closing cupboard doors. They heard crockery clash-perhaps he was moving dinner plates, looking behind them-then a metallic crash as if he'd dropped the saucepans. Dulcie smiled. "He's really good at this, very smooth." She shifted impatiently from paw to paw, then rose and began to pace, her ears swiveling with nerves.

  "Settle down. He'll be gone soon." "If he finds the diary, we'll never see it." "It'll make a bulge in his pocket. So what's the alternative, go down there, snatch it out of his hand?"

  She cut her eyes at him. "If I were alone, I'd charm him until he laid it down to pet me, then grab it and run like hell."

  She shook herself, scattering ashes. Curving round, she tried to lick ashes off her coat, but that was like eating out of the fireplace. She spit out flecks of ashes and cinder. Beyond the heaps of ashes that had been raked up by the police, the charred garage door lay across the drive. The police had hauled away the remains of Janet's van.

  "I wonder if her diary will have anything about the museum opening," Dulcie said softly. "I wonder if she wrote in it that night when she got home from San Francisco. It would be interesting to know her version of the weekend, after the testimony her friend Jeanne Kale gave."

  Janet's friend from San Francisco had testified that Janet arrived in the city around seven Saturday morning, checked into the St. Francis, leaving her van in the underground garage, and the two women had breakfast in the hotel dining room.

  "Imagine," Dulcie said, "breakfast at the St. Francis. White tablecloths, cut glass bowls, lovely things to eat, maybe French pancakes. And to have a beautiful hotel room all to yourself, with a view of the city. Probably a turn-down at night, wi
th chocolates on the pillow."

  He nuzzled her neck. "Maybe someday we'll figure out how to do that."

  She opened her mouth in a wide cat laugh. "Sure we will. And figure out how to go to the moon."

  Ms. Kale told the court that she and Janet had shopped all day Saturday, using public transportation, had ridden the cable car out to Fisherman's Wharf for lunch. "Cracked crab," Dulcie said, "or maybe lobster Thermidor." Her pink tongue licked delicately.

  "I get the feeling your major interest here, is in the gourmet aspects of the case."

  "Doesn't hurt to dream. They must have had a lovely weekend."

  Late in the afternoon the two women had stopped at an art supply store, where Janet bought oil paints, four rolls of linen canvas, and a large supply of stretcher bars. She had had the supplies delivered to the St. Francis, where she gave a bellman her car keys, directing him to put the supplies in her van, in the underground garage. That night, Jeanne said, Janet had dinner with Jeanne and her husband and with the couple for whom Janet was doing a huge sculpture of leaping fish, the sculpture she had meant to finish the morning she died. They had eaten at an East Indian restaurant on Grant, walking from the hotel, taking a cab back to the St. Francis afterward.

  Nancy and Tim Duncan had been friends of Janet and Kendrick Mahl before the divorce. Over dinner they talked primarily about the sculpture; Janet meant to deliver it to San Francisco early the following week. The Duncans owned a popular San Francisco restaurant, for which the ten-foot sculpture was commissioned. Janet had not taken her van from the parking garage that night, as far as Jeanne knew. After dinner she said she was tired, and had gone directly to her room.