Cat Telling Tales

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  “Oh, right,” he said, cutting her a look. How many years since the central coast had seen snow flurries? This was California. What felt like snow, and smelled like snow coming, was no more than a fanciful illusion.

  “Do you think,” she said, “we should swing by Jolly’s alley? I’m more than starved, that cinnamon bun only made me hungrier. If we go by my house, Wilma will start asking questions—she’ll worry for sure if we head out again in this weather.”

  “She’ll worry more if you don’t come home.”

  “Well, she has to know what’s going on,” Dulcie said to ease her conscience. “Maybe she’ll think we’re still in Max’s office, cozy and warm and picking up information.” Wilma Getz was as close with the department as were Ryan and Clyde, she knew about the meth house, and she would already know about the cartons of chemicals. Dulcie, lashing her tail with irritation because her housemate too often looked over her shoulder, swerved away in a sharp detour, heading for Jolly’s alley. Joe galloped close behind her, thinking of smoked salmon, crab salad, scraps of rare prime rib—then they’d search Sammie Miller’s cottage. He wondered, as they dropped down into the picturesque alley, if Emmylou had hidden Hesmerra’s metal box there in the house, when she broke in. Would she do that, with cops all over the neighborhood?

  He still wasn’t sure whether Max had seen the box half hidden in the backseat of Emmylou’s car and whether he’d glimpsed the Kraft letterhead sticking out. Wasn’t sure what Max had thought at seeing him there. He told himself the chief was used to seeing him in strange places—he was, after all, an annoyingly nosy tomcat. Given the chief’s matter-of-fact take on life, what else could Harper think?

  “Oh, my,” Dulcie said, licking her whiskers at the smell of roast chicken drifting up to them from Jolly’s alley. Scrambling down a potted bottlebrush tree into the brick-paved alley, they were about to make a dash for the food bowl when, from the shadows, a dark little shape leaped away and vanished, a little black-and-white cat, diving behind a potted geranium where, in fact, they could easily corner the little thing. They remained still, hoping it would come out again; they didn’t want to scare it all the more. The scent was of tomcat, a little young tomcat.

  “Sammie Miller’s other cat?” Dulcie said. “Did he have a mustache mark?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said. “I’m starved.”

  “We’ll share,” she said, “we’ll leave him some, he’ll come out when we’re gone. I’ll tell Wilma, maybe he’ll come out for one of the volunteers.” No one wanted to trap a cat unnecessarily, if he was friendly. And Jolly’s alley didn’t make good trapping, with so many neighborhood cats stopping in for handouts. Odds were, they’d have to release two dozen cats before they caught this one. Dulcie headed for the bowl, and Joe shouldered in next to her. It took great restraint to leave any chicken for the stray, they slurped up the deli’s offering as eagerly as if they, too, were homeless and starving.

  When they’d finished, leaving a generous portion, they scaled the bottlebrush tree back to the roof, and waited nearly half an hour for the little cat to come out. When at last he did creep to the bowl, he inhaled their leavings in six big bites. “If they can catch him,” Joe said, “he’ll be happy to see his sister, and they’ll be fine at Chichi’s.” Chichi Barbi’s cages, set up in her airy daylight basement between the guest rooms, were large and clean with multiple levels for each cat; the cats, according to Ryan, got plenty of petting and attention from the women Chichi was sheltering. Leaving the young cat licking the bowl, they headed for Sammie Miller’s. This was a lot of fuss for a box of business papers that could turn out to be nothing; but something prodded Joe to find it, his instinct about those papers was as urgent as the curiosity of a stubborn cop.

  No exterior lights burned around Sammie’s cottage; Molena Point neighborhoods didn’t have streetlights, the only illumination was what homeowners chose to install on their own. Sammie’s yard was not only dark but smothered by overgrown bushes clutching the walls, reaching toward the grimy windows. The frame building was no wider than a double garage, maybe six hundred square feet at best. Even from outside, the house had the sour smell of accumulated dirt and rotting wood, a house overripe for a teardown. In better economic times someone would already have bought it, razed it, and be building a new little retreat in its place. Or would have bought several adjoining houses, torn them all down, and built yet another overlarge, too impressive residence; even in this unpretentious neighborhood, every square foot of land was valuable.

  The little front porch was no more than a slab of flaking concrete with three cement steps leading up. The front door was painted a dark, sticky color undetectable in the night, sealed with a new hasp and padlock, courtesy of MPPD, where Emmylou had pried the old lock open. There was a small window at either side, but no cat door. Trotting around the side of the house, they pushed downhill through patches of thorny pyracantha bushes, moving to the back where the dropping lot allowed for a taller basement, enough space for another pair of small, dirty windows. Twelve wooden stairs led up to a wooden landing supported by four-by-four pillars. The steps smelled rank and wild. “Raccoons,” they said together, hissing with disgust.

  The back door was narrow, decorated with the same dark sticky paint. To the left, a cat door had been cut into the wall, a homemade affair closed by a flap of warped plywood hanging on rusty hinges. Raccoon fur was caught around the edge, where the beasts had pushed inside. “This,” Joe said, “might not be such a breeze, if we corner one of those mothers in there.”

  “You want to leave? Wait until the department has a go? If they can get a search warrant. We could tell them we think maybe there might be a box hidden in there and maybe it contains information . . .”

  “All right. Enough.” Laying back his ears, he shoved beneath the plywood flap into the kitchen. The place stank of raccoons and, even more viral, it smelled of soured milk and spoiled food from the refrigerator. They paused, listening.

  There was no sound, no scuffling or snarling as if they had surprised some rough-furred bandit. The linoleum was gritty beneath their paws, the floor scattered with kibble where the animals had torn open a large bag of dry cat food. A five-foot length of counter held the sink, its dark cabinets featuring the same sticky paint as the front and back doors. The ancient gas stove was small, round cornered, pale enamel with chrome trim, short curved legs and curved feet. It stank of old grease and of the gassy pilot light, those smells blending with the aroma of cat kibble and the stink of raccoon.

  A cracked white bowl stood on a rubber mat just inside the cat door. It was empty, licked clean save for two muddy, long-toed pawprints marking the white interior. Together, the cats pawed the cupboards open.

  Old dented pots and pans in the bottom, five cans of soup in the top cabinets, a bag of flour with bugs crawling out, and half a dozen ants wandering aimlessly as if discouraged in their hopeless scouting trip. The inside of one cupboard door held a row of cup hooks where Sammie had hung a beer opener, a flat grater, a key on a ring, a set of measuring spoons, and a little rusty strainer. The refrigerator, when Joe swung on the handle and kicked the door open, offered half a loaf of moldy bread, a bottle of curdled milk, a bowl of spaghetti green with mold, three rotten tomatoes. The freezer, the size of the glove compartment in a compact car, held two packs of rotten meat. Had Sammie neglected to pay her bills, even before she vanished? The power company, with so many folks moving away with rent and bills unpaid, had grown rather surly in such matters.

  Moving into the front of the house, they found one long room, with a notch cut out for a bathroom that left a narrow sleeping alcove with a brown curtain drawn halfway across. The same dark walls as the kitchen. A fusty gray carpet, gritty beneath their paws. Toppled stacks of newspapers cascaded against the furniture, some of the papers shredded among torn-apart paperback books. Had the raccoons done this? Or had someone else? Rumpled clothes were tossed across a fat, overstuffed couch and matching chair of undetermin
ed color.

  The room had four small windows, those each side of the front door, and two artlessly placed in the center of the side wall, half covered by graying lace curtains hanging crookedly. Sammie might have a roof over her head, in contrast to her wandering brother, but this environment seemed far more grim than his open roads. Beneath the smell of raccoons and the smell of dust came, faintly, the hint of young cats, an old and fading scent. No cats were visible. They started at floor level, scenting out like bloodhounds looking for the tin box, trying to pick up a whiff of water-soaked ashes, nosing into every pile of papers, old sweaters and rumpled T-shirts, feeling with careful paws for the smooth cold feel of metal. But only Joe thought the hunt might be worth the effort; Dulcie really didn’t think Emmylou would have hidden Hesmerra’s box in here, it didn’t seem to her a safe place at all—if the papers were of any value.

  The heavy sideboard and two end tables were coated with the same dark paint as the doors and kitchen cupboards. Had Sammie bought a barrel of the stuff and kept painting until it was all used up?

  The receiver of the phone had miraculously remained in place but when Joe pushed it off and listened, the line was dead. With all the letters jammed in the mailbox, it was likely Sammie hadn’t paid her bills; the phone company wasn’t charitable about such oversights. The cats, prowling and poking, lost track of time as they dragged stacks of debris aside to search among the next layer. Together they fought out heavy drawers, looked under the couch and chairs, burrowed beneath the cushions, wondering what Emmylou had been doing in here. Outside the grimy windows, the pines pressed against the house heavy and dark, the night sky beyond forming small, pale islands between the shaggy limbs.

  “This is dumb,” Dulcie said. “Emmylou wouldn’t hide anything in here. Why would she, when whoever was here might come back?”

  Joe was silent, rummaging in the little closet. “Come smell this,” he said, his voice muffled from beneath a bag spilling out old towels and linens. She bellied under, and then into the bag. Over the smell of very old cloth, she breathed in the scent of smoke and wet ashes.

  But there was no box, nothing like hard metal beneath their seeking paws.

  “If she did hide it there,” Joe said, “then moved it again, why would she? Unless it was of value?”

  “Well, it’s gone now,” Dulcie said crossly. “I just know, if we have to toss a house, I’d rather search anywhere else than this depressing mess. How could she live like this?” Lashing her tail, she looked down with disgust at the old metal vent set into the carpet. “Even the heat vents are rusty and dirty and . . .” She paused, and approached closer. She sniffed at the metal grid then backed off, making a flehmen face.

  “What?” He was beside her in one leap, sniffing at the grid and then backing off, too, with the same grin of disgust.

  She said, “Maybe it’s a dead raccoon. Or . . . Oh, not one of the cats. One of Sammie’s cats? Oh, the poor thing can’t have gotten trapped down there, trapped under the house?”

  “I don’t know, Dulcie,” he said impatiently. While the smell was certainly of something dead, of a body left to perish, the faint stink wafting up from the basement could be anything. Gopher? Ground squirrel? Dead dog?

  But whatever it was that lay moldering down there, there was only one way to find out. “Come on,” he said, and headed back through the kitchen, through the homemade cat door and out, to find a way underneath.

  23

  The wind had stilled as Joe and Dulcie prowled outside the house looking for a way into the dank cellar, to the source of the dead smell. The thin rain was sullen, and colder, hiding any hint of moon or stars. It was strange, fitful weather, its penetrating cold made them shiver and move closer together beneath the dense bushes; and even under the wet bushes the smell of death clung in their nostrils. Easing around to the far side of the house where they hadn’t yet explored, where the land dropped down, they at last found a small door into the basement, a crude affair built of matching wooden siding and crowded by early-budding mock orange bushes whose sweet scent blended strangely with the stink of decay. The door was locked.

  Leaping up, Joe pawed at the rusty hasp and padlock hoping the screws might be loose. He knew that, in his desire to get inside, he was destroying fingerprints with his grasping paws, but it couldn’t be helped. He was fighting the lock when Dulcie said, “Wait, Joe. Come this way.”

  He could see only her backside, she was halfway under the house where the siding had rotted, leaving a ragged slit barely high enough for her to wriggle through. Joe dropped down, and joined her, pushing under, the wood so soft that pieces of desiccated siding clung to their fur as they bellied through into the dark, earthen cellar.

  Drooping cobwebs hung down from the floor joists, so thick and long they brushed their ears. The dead smell led them into the blackness toward the front of the house, where the ground rose.

  “If it is a human body,” Joe said, “there’s not much room for a cop to crawl back in there.” In most of the cellar, there was hardly belly space for a cat. Only where a swale ran along between the rough wooden wall and the earth, was there room for a human to move, bent over. The thought of a human body stuffed up into that claustrophobic crawl space made Joe’s fur rise along his back. Hard clods of dirt bit into their paws. Splintered scraps of wood and bent nails cut their pads, and the longest cobwebs clung to their whiskers like sticky tape. “This is what we do for entertainment?” Joe said.

  “No. This is what we do because we can’t help ourselves. Because we’re cats. Because we’re cursed with too damn much curiosity.” She moved ahead of him into the blackness like a stalking tiger, every fiber honed to the quarry. He could see the ancient furnace deep in, a hulking black box sprouting fat pipes that led up through the floor, a squat, low affair beyond which Dulcie vanished.

  Soon he could hear her digging. He picked out her dark shape, half hidden, clawing at the earth. How could she stand the stink? When she gave a sudden squeak and flew backward, he jumped nearly out of his skin.

  When he pushed up against her, she was shivering. When he nosed at her, her paws smelled so bad he backed away. Hastily she pawed at fresher earth, trying to wipe the smell off, unwilling to lick her paws and force the taste into her mouth. “Fingers,” she said, looking at him.

  “Fingers?”

  “Human fingers, Joe. A hand, an arm. I left them half buried. Let’s get the hell out of here. We need to call the station.”

  They fled for the crack where icy air wafted in together with the clean cold smell of rain. This wasn’t the first body they’d dealt with, they’d reported plenty of deaths over the years, but this one smelled the worst, sent them scrambling out beneath the rotted siding sucking fresh air and then racing straight up a juniper, inhaling its sharp, clean scent.

  Only high in the branches did they stop, looking down, and consider the implications if they called the department. To report what appeared to be a murder, to report those frail skeletal fingers and arm—to try to explain how the department’s two best snitches, supposedly human snitches, had “just happened on” a body buried in a space hardly high enough for a child, half hidden behind a furnace in a pitch-black cellar that could be entered only through a padlocked door.

  Whatever they said, or didn’t say, was going to generate any number of unanswerable questions. Queries to which they couldn’t even imagine a believable reply. Uncomfortably they looked at each other, trying to figure out how to handle this new level of deceit, this even more complicated web of lies, to the very officers they wanted only to assist.

  The rain had all but stopped, the drops seeming to have slowed until they were almost floating. The midnight village was wrapped in a strange silence, even the rhythm of the sea hushed. High in the hills, Kit could hear not even a passing car; no sound at all until suddenly a great horned owl boomed, too close to her. From her tree house she watched him descend above her and on down over the village gardens; he would be sensing the warmth of
some small creature. Not me, Kit thought, you won’t take me, you daren’t come in my tree house, you’d snatch nothing in here but a beakful of pillows—and my claws in your face.

  She and Lucinda and Pedric had been home from the Firettis’ for nearly an hour but she couldn’t sleep. She’d started out in the house on the bed between the old couple but she was too restless, too warm, her blood pounding too hard. Slipping down off the quilt to the floor, she’d trotted through the house to the dining room, leaped to the table, across to the sill, and pushed out through her cat door along the twisted oak in the icy night and into her tree house, where she’d burrowed deep beneath the pillows.

  She listened in the silence until another owl answered from farther up the hill; she thought about Pan, and that was why she couldn’t sleep and her claws kneaded sharply into the pillows. She thought how the firelight glanced off his red coat, thought about his travels, thought how she and Pan had listened together to Misto’s tales. Pondering the stories and adventures of both tomcats, she grew so restless that at last she left her warm cushions, too, scrambled down out of her oak tree, and raced across the neighbors’ yards until, where the houses rose closer together, she hit the roofs again. Putting the call of the owls behind her, farther and farther behind her, she prowled the roofs above the village shops, scrambled over peaks and dormers feeling bold and wild, looking into second-floor penthouses, trotting, racing, stopping again to peer into the rooms of strangers. She looked into Erik Kraft’s elegant penthouse, slipping under the terrace wall. It still looked neat and unlived in, the bedroom elegantly furnished and totally unused. Quilted black bedspread made up just so, thick black towels folded perfectly on the shelf in the master bath, one black towel perfectly aligned on the rod, as neat as if a decorator had placed it there. Even the white ceramic drinking glass and tray by the basin were placed just so.